us look at the Episcopal Church of the United States, and see
what moral effect it can have on the population, as a source of
religious instruction.... The influence of the two Churches as
confined to England and New York (alone) is as one to seventy....
Such influence on the manners and habits of the people [in that
state] is next to nothing, and yet you extol your Church above that
of England, and exclaim against establishment! Add to this, the
dependence of your clergy upon the people for support--a state of
things which is attended with most pernicious consequences ... but
in general, the clergy of all denominations in the United States,
are miserably dependent upon their congregations.... It is the duty
of Christian nations to constitute, within their boundaries,
ecclesiastical establishments.... For it is incumbent upon nations
as upon individuals, to honour the Lord with their substance.
(Pages 41-47.)

Bishop Strachan's early and later writings abound in expressions of
similar views. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that a man of
his strong convictions would seek to give practical effect to them in
dealing, as opportunity offered, with questions of church establishment
and the clergy reserves.

It is true that by his persuasive words and strong personal
influence--when the object was the financial benefit of the
Church--Bishop Strachan rallied around him many of the leading members
of the Church of England in Upper Canada who aided him in his plans for
endowing the Church out of the public domain. Yet it is also true that
many equally sound churchmen were opposed to these schemes, and saw in
them the germ of a fatal canker, which in time would be sure to destroy
the Church's missionary zeal, and paralyze all of those noble and
generous impulses which characterize a living Church in the promotion of
Christian effort in the various departments of Church work.[80]

As time has passed on the little band of loyal churchmen, who incurred
the Bishop's unmerited censure for opposing his exclusive schemes of
Church aggrandisement, has increased to thousands in our day. They
deeply regret the success of those schemes, and deprecate the existence
of clergy reserves and rectory endowments as in themselves fatal to the
healthy development of Church work as an active and aggressive force in
the Christian life.

It is not necessary to refer here