But, alas! the mismanagement has increased, pending these difficulties; and while my clergy are left in a state of destitution, large sums continue to be wasted in remunerating services which are really worse than useless, and this to such an extent as to render hopeless the expectation that the clergy reserve fund will ever answer the wise and holy purpose for which it was established.
In this dilemma the Bishop states what he had done to extricate the Church out of its difficulty. In doing so, he uses language which partakes more of the character of a wail than of a simple statement of facts. He also draws a most gloomy picture of the prospective religious state of Upper Canada, should the dearly prized, and as dearly bought, Imperial Clergy Reserve Act prove, after all, to be an apple of Sodom.
It is curious to notice how the Bishop, in his despairing outburst, studiously ignores the active and successful labours of the several voluntary churches—whose claims to a share in the reserves he had so strongly and selfishly opposed—churches which were even then actively engaged in "spreading scriptural holiness throughout the land," without the aid of a penny from the State. In his Pastoral, the Bishop says:—
I applied to the venerable [Propagation Society] in England to advance, in the meantime, the salaries (only £100 per annum each) to my five suffering clergy,—assuring the Society that I had the fullest conviction it would be repaid as soon as it was decided which Government was liable.... The Society paid the stipends for the year ending 30th June, 1843, but have declined since that time to continue the advance.... In consequence, my five clergymen have been left without their stipends since June, 1843 [to December, 1844], ... and this large and increasing Diocese [then the whole of Upper Canada], already so destitute of the means of public worship (if the statute be allowed to operate as it has done for the last four years), will, in a spiritual sense, become, through half its extent, a wilderness. Not only are five clergymen in a state of want, but two parishes are left vacant, and the process is unhappily going on.... I have brought this disheartening and deplorable state of things under the notice of the Provincial Government.... I have pressed [the matter] upon His Excellency the Governor-General.... But all that was in my power to do has been without avail (page 6).
I also quote the foregoing passages from this noted Pastoral, as they throw a vivid side-light upon the course of the Bishop in so vehemently pursuing the shadow of a state endowment for the Church of England in Upper Canada. The subsequent utterances of the Pastoral show how persistently the otherwise clear-headed and practical chief ruler of that Church shut his eyes to the remarkable success and vitality of the non-endowed Churches in the Province, and how much he deplored the necessity of adopting their successful voluntary system in his own church.[128] He says:—
I represented to His Excellency, in May last, that, "on a review of this unfortunate subject ... the distress of my five clergymen, and the desolation with which it menaces the Church, it involves consequences so calamitous and imminent as to justify the representative of the sovereign in assuming more than ordinary responsibility in arresting their progress...."
On the 31st October, I again brought this painful subject at great length before the Provincial Government, and stated that, having failed to receive relief, I could only see one way left of mitigating the evil, and that is by an appeal to my people on the present critical situation of the Church, and in behalf of my destitute clergymen. It is indeed a step which I take with extreme reluctance, and which, were it possible, I would most willingly avoid.... (page 6.)
In a remarkable document, which the Bishop published in 1849, on "The Secular State of the Church in the Diocese of Toronto," he furnishes a painful and striking commentary on the effect of his own teaching: that it was the duty of the State to support the Church, and thus relieve the people of the chief obligation of supporting the Gospel amongst them. Speaking of "contributions to the Church within the Province," he says:
Till lately we have done little or nothing towards the support of public worship. We have depended so long upon the Government and the [Propagation] Society, that many of us forget that it is our bounden duty. Instead of coming forward manfully to devote a portion of our temporal substance to the service of God, we turn away with indifference, or we sit down to count the cost, and measure the salvation of our souls by pounds, shillings, and pence.... While we are bountifully assisted, and seldom required to do more than half; yet we are seen to fail on every side (page 19).[129]
On pages 34-40 of this pamphlet, Bishop Strachan is very severe on the clergy to whom Bishop Fuller refers, whom he accuses of putting forth efforts "to disturb the peace of the diocese—efforts which were rapidly being organized into something of a regular system of agitation, so common ... among the traders in politics" (page 34).