AND STATISTICS OF THE DIOCESE OF MONTREAL. BY FRANCIS FULFORD, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF MONTREAL AND METROPOLITAN OF CANADA. Montreal: DAWSON BROTHERS; LONDON AND CAMBRIDGE: RIVINGTONS. 1865. 100 r. 455 PREFACE. In any future history of the Anglican Church, no unimportant chapter will be that in which its rise and progress in the Colonies of England is described; and as the chief agent in promoting this good work, "the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel" will merit special acknowledgment and commendation. The earliest labours of that Society were connected with this Continent; and though interrupted in the United States by the political revolution which separated them from the mother country, yet some of the good seed sown there, before that event took place, has produced fruit; while in these Provinces, for the greater part of a century, down to the present time, the Society has never failed to act as the careful and beneficent nursing-mother of the Church and all her institutions. For a long period, the Clergy who officiated in Canada were, in the strictest sense, Missionaries of that Society: they were selected and sent out from England, reported all their proceedings directly to the Secretary, and drew their stipends from the Treasurer in London. And even after the appointment of one or more Bishops, the actual position of the Church here was for many years practically but little altered, though its administration was in some respects more regular and effective. Presided over by a Bishop, resident within the Colony, who could confirm the baptized, ordain the Clergy, and consecrate the Churches,-still the Clergy were only so many isolated individual missionaries, and continued to be largely dependent for their stipends on the grants of money made by the Society in London. There are some names connected with the Church during this period that will well deserve being recorded in her annals, as having borne the burden and heat of the day in the early life of the Colony; and to whose unwearied exertions and faithful ministrations we are indebted for those foundations of the building which we, their successors, have been allowed to assist in erecting. We must ever cherish with feelings of reverence and gratitude the names of my two predecessors— Bishop Stewart, and the late Bishop Mountain; while many individual clergymen who, like them, are gone to render up their account, are affectionately remembered as having, in the true spirit of Christian Missionaries, lived, and laboured, and died in various parts of the earlier rough settlements of the Province. If our position is now altered or advanced in any measure, we must acknowledge what we owe to these faithful men, who, like the emigrant in the backwoods, made the first clearance in the spiritual wilderness, and, in faith and hope of future harvests, cast in a few seeds of heavenly truths amid the stumps and boulders that seemed almost to forbid their growth. It was evident, however, as the work began to prosper, and the Church to multiply, that such a state of things could not continue; and that, while some more complete provision was needed for the government and internal regulation of the Church, so also the Church ought to be acquiring such strength and influence in the country as would enable it to maintain itself without depending upon the aid hitherto so largely received from England. It was just about the period of the formation of the Diocese of Montreal, by the division of the old Diocese of Quebec, in 1850, that "the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel" began to enforce its reasonable demand that some more systematic efforts should be made by the Church, in order to raise the necessary funds for its own support, and thus relieve them from the burden they had so long and so |