Psalm 11 verse 3, if the foundations be
destroyed what can the righteous do?
Notice the if in this question.
It is not a certainty.
What would happen if one of our politicians
stood up in Parliament and stated that this
is a Christian nation built on Christian principles?
I think you know that the response in
the present atmosphere of Ottawa would be, please
hush up, this is not a place for
religion.
But there was a time, not too very
long ago, when such would have been well
received and would have been given a man,
not a deferral, but rather would have given
him stature and commendation in the ranks of
the political leaders of our nation.
Now my interest in this subject this evening
began a good number of weeks ago as
I was reading about the history of the
United States and how it has been firmly
planted from the days of the pilgrims arriving
in the Mayflower to its constitution, 1776, built
on Christian Protestant principles and truths.
And I read this book which prompted me
to say, well, is this something of this
nature concerning our country in Canada?
And can we without hesitation say that this
is similar, if not the exact same, in
this dominion of Canada?
And so I started to do some searching
and I thought it was going to be
tough going to find real hard evidence of
key figures, political leaders, institutions that were unquestionably
and unashamedly built for the glory of Christ
and for the cause of spreading the kingdom
of God in this part of the world.
Well, instead of tough going, I am now
swamped with so much information on the subject
that my difficulty is, how do I narrow
it all down to a sizable amount of
information for a meeting like this?
And this evening I really am only be
able to tell a few stories that will
illustrate the facts of our Christian heritage here
in Canada.
Now, most of this does not get told
in our schools today.
In fact, much of it doesn't even get
told in Christian schools today.
In fact, the reality is that most of
what I want to tell you this evening
is edited from the humanist agenda in public
education.
And there is every attempt in the swing
of educational institutions today to dismiss the Christian
history and heritage of this nation.
In Sweden, for example, where social experiments went
all out to promote the humanist history, the
true biblical Christian history of that once great
Christian nation, Sweden, which knew reformation, fire, and
blessing was dismissed.
And everything before 1932 when the Social Democrats
came to power was of no significance.
It has been noted regarding Sweden's policy of
rewriting or withholding history from the youth that
a complete break from the past had to
be made in order to accomplish the goal
of socialism.
And I'm going to quote from a Swedish
author.
It is a truism that to change people
it is desirable to cut off the past.
In the Swedish schools, the study of history
has been truncated.
That means it has been chopped up and
the pieces that are not liked left out.
An emphasis has been led upon the Swedish
labor movement.
The European heritage and the classical background have
been dismissed.
And an atmosphere created in which only recent
decades appear to count.
Now, I speak of Sweden because they are
slightly ahead of the Western world's movement towards
humanism.
They began the experiment with more determination and
in a broader sweep than just about any
other Western country.
And humanists view contact with history a great
risk.
And so they either rewrite history or they
totally ignore it.
Now what's happening in Canada today, and I
think even more alarmingly what is happening in
evangelical circles, is that we buy into the
humanist agenda.
We fail to study the history of Christianity
even in our own nation.
We drift along the pathway of man's religion
of humanism rather than contend for those well
-founded, firm, godly foundations that have been of
tremendous blessing in this nation and generations gone
by.
Now to assist us in this sweep of
history, which I'm going to curtail to the
1800s.
I had hoped to start a way back
and just bring us up to date here
tonight, but it's impossible to do that.
I'm going to start with pre-confederation and
main figures that led up to the confederation
of Canada 1867, and some who were directly
involved in the shaping of the confederation of
Canada.
But before we get into that, I think
we need to define what is humanism.
I don't want to use terms that either
we are so generic or so broad that
we confuse ourselves.
I want us to grasp when we speak
about the humanist agenda, that we really grasp
what's going on in the education system and
in the political powers that be in our
land at this time.
Let me give you a brief definition of
what is humanism.
The modern definition of humanism is the belief
that all life begins and ends with man.
Man is man's chief end.
Francis Schaeffer put it this way.
Humanism is the placing of man at the
center of all things and making him the
measure of all things.
And if you want to make it really
simple, humanism's agenda is this.
If it feels good, do it.
If it pleases carnal, sinful, fallen man, let
him do it as long as he's having
a good time and he's not directly harming
anyone else.
The humanist manifesto, point number eight, is a
fairly good definition from their own terminology.
Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human
personality to be the end of man's life,
that means the purpose of man's life, and
seeks his development and fulfillment in the here
and now.
This is the explanation of the humanist's social
passion.
And let me state clearly tonight, humanists are
probably more passionate about their agenda than born
-again Christians are about the gospel agenda.
That is a tragedy.
That is a sad state of affairs.
And I begin this series this evening, first
of all, preaching to myself and preaching to
our own congregation that we may be awakened,
that there is a battle going on for
the hearts and minds of Canadians, and we
need to be as passionate for Christ as
the humanist is to promote himself and the
mere good of man.
I think you will know that Christianity is
based on this agenda.
Man's chief end is to glorify God and
enjoy him forever.
You don't even have to be a Presbyterian
or a free Presbyterian to know that.
Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God.
In the beginning, God is central.
And of course, John 1-1, in the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.
Christ is center of his own creation and
of the world.
And this is where Christians must stand.
And let me give you another little aside
before we get into the history tonight.
Christians today are under attack, being guilt-ridden
with this statement.
You need to be neutral.
And in this nation of Canada, we have
what is now called the mosaic of multiculturalism,
but in reality, in the religious perspective, it
is polytheism.
Polytheism.
That means many gods.
And as this country grows in diversity of
cultures, nationalities, and religion, it is evident that
polytheism will begin to make pressures and demands.
Now, if we buy into the neutral position,
we will say that everybody should become a
nothing and that I have no right to
set the Christian agenda, the Christian mission, the
glory of the true God before a man
or woman who is loyal to another deity,
who is a false god.
And so we must be delivered from the
mentality that in Canada, to be a good
citizen, to give people civil and religious rights,
that we should all be neutral.
When God met with Moses at the burning
bush, he was not neutral.
And he didn't say to Moses, you can
keep your shoes on or you can take
them off, whatever you like.
If Moses was going to be the servant
of God, he was a servant of a
holy God, the Jehovah God.
And as he revealed himself to Moses, and
later in those ten commandments gave the summary
of that law of God to his servant,
the God of Moses was not neutral and
he did not expect Moses to be neutral.
Now, our answer to the pressures today for
neutrality, the pressures for live and let live,
the pressures for we have a right to
our opinion but others have a right to
their opinion too.
And let me tell you, what is that?
What is that?
It's humanism.
Man's opinion is humanism.
I'm not here tonight as a preacher of
the gospel to give you my opinion.
I am here tonight to give you the
gospel.
And the gospel is not man's opinion.
The gospel is the divine revelation of eternal
truth, the plan of God centered on his
Son to save men from sin.
Nothing neutral about it.
It is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth.
But to them that believe not, they'll end
up in hell.
There's nothing neutral about hell.
There's nothing neutral about a man living in
darkness and dying in sin and losing his
soul.
And praise God, there's nothing neutral about being
born again by the Spirit washed in the
blood and going home to glory one day.
So we want to address this ruse, I
will call it, that to be a citizen
in Canada we are to be neutral.
Neutral is just a euphemism for the humanist
agenda.
We are Christian.
It is my glory to exalt my Savior.
It is our calling to honor Him in
all our ways.
As we get to these figures and institutions
in the 1800s of Canada, we're going to
see that neutrality was not even a factor.
And the humanist agenda was not what built
this nation and brought us many of the
benefits that still are the liberties and freedoms
that we enjoy to this very day.
Now as I said earlier, I want to
narrow the field to the 1800s.
And when we get to the 1900s, Lord
willing, next week I'm probably going to be
under more pressure for time because there are
two main figures that I want to tell
you about.
One is Dr. T.T. Shields of Toronto.
He is called the Spurgeon of Canada.
And I want to also talk about a
Bible college in the prairies that at one
time had a thousand students.
Now, I'm not talking about a Bible school
that is a mixture of liberal arts and
a mixture of psychology.
I'm talking about a real Bible school where
if you didn't accept the Bible, you'd never
have been And just to think of that
50 years ago, within a thousand miles of
where we are now, there was such a
school in this nation.
That is a great story in itself.
And I want to take time to tell
that story and some of the key figures
involved in it.
But tonight, we're going to go back into
the 1800s before the railroad was built in
this country, before there were even four provinces
in Confederation, before Sir John A.
Macdonald was even the first Prime Minister of
this country, and go back to those days
whenever there was provincial rule or direct rule
from Great Britain and to the days of
Queen Victoria, who herself is, of course, a
story on her own.
But we want begin tonight with a man
called Sir Charles Tupper of Nova Scotia and
his part in Confederation.
We begin there because Nova Scotia, along with
a few other maritime provinces, were blessed at
the end of the 1700s with times of
mighty gospel revival.
This is the period when Britain and America
were fighting it out for independence around 1776.
And you had the flow of peoples from
the colonies of the USA back up into
Canada again to the maritime provinces.
And with them came preachers who preached the
gospel.
A man who stands out is Henry Alene,
a Congregationalist, the son of a New England
farmer.
But he brought the gospel as people were
displaced and set about their new homesteads in
Nova Scotia.
And he was instrumental in what became known
as the New Light Revival.
Now, that demands an explanation, but I confess
I don't know all the facts of why
it was called the New Light Revival.
But what I was able to discern, I
could say truly that it describes what I
have read of revivals either under Jonathan Edwards,
under George Whitefield in Scotland, Wales, England.
It was a revival where it was evidently
not the pressures of men stirring up people,
but the Spirit of God humbling people.
And they were crying out, like one of
old, what must I do to be saved?
I think I could best give this to
you in Alene's own words as he wrote
of a time when he arrived back in
Nova Scotia.
He wrote this, When I came to Liverpool,
that's an area there, I had the happiness
to meet a number of my friends on
the wharf who informed me of the glorious
work of God that had appeared ever since
I left them and was still going on
in the place.
Almost all the town assembled together, and some
that were lively Christians prayed and exhorted, and
God was there with the truth.
I preached almost every day and sometimes twice
a day, and the houses where I went
were crowded almost all the time.
Many were brought out of darkness and rejoiced
and exhorted in public, and oh how affecting
it was to see some young people not
only exhort their companions, but also take their
parents by the hand and entreat them for
their soul's sake to rest no longer in
their sins, but fly to Jesus Christ while
there was hope.
The work of God continued with uncommon power
throughout almost all the place.
Now that was God moving at the end
of the 1700s, the beginning of the 1800s
in the maritime, and a man who was
really the fruit of that outpouring of God's
Spirit in that time was this man, Topper.
He became a leading figure in confederation, a
man who brought this very province so much
of Christian value and worth that the Spirit
of God was truly at work.
He himself was the son of a Baptist
minister, and he contributed to the politics and
the life of Nova Scotia to a great
degree, and it is recorded that this Christian
heritage even in politics is echoed in present
-day Nova Scotia.
Now these are important things because they were
formative days.
They were days when there was no education
system in place, and these were the figures
that began the ministries and the administration, call
it the bureaucracy of government in Canada leading
up to confederation, and these men were the
leaders who took the savor of the gospel
and put it to work, and that's why
you have a nation in various, in its
various parts, portions that is built on Christian
values and truth.
Now speaking of confederation, another man comes to
fore, a man called Leonard Tilly.
Do you know why this nation today is
called the Dominion of Canada?
Well, if you turn in your Bible to
the Psalm 72, to Psalm 72, you will
discover that it's right here in the Bible.
Verse 8, He shall have dominion from sea
to sea, and this is credited to Leonard
Tilly.
Leonard Tilly was a New Brunswicker.
He was converted at the age of 21
through a sermon of a William Harrison.
He became active in the temperance movement, seeking
to banish alcohol in every way he could.
This was impressed upon him because one day
he heard the cries of young girls.
He ran to their rescue and discovered that
their drunken father had just murdered their mother,
and he found this woman withering in her
own blood, and the little girls sobbing, and
he saw the father carried off to jail,
and I don't know the fate of the
father, but that impression never less this man
Tilly, and he began to work for the
temperance movement.
He became an executive of a temperance and
so successful was he that he was called
to run for politics, and he was present
in P.E.I. 1867 at the time
of confederation, when the British North American Act
was set up.
The question of the day was, what shall
we call the new nation that was to
be born?
This man had gone to his bedroom and
read Psalm 72, and as if the Lord
had spoken to him from his word, he
went back to Sir John A.
Macdonald and others involved in that process of
confederation, and almost to a man there was
full agreement that that's what this should be
called.
From sea to sea he shall have dominion.
What, what a testimony to the Christian spirit
and ethic of that time that was reigning
in the highest levels of government.
Here is a letter that John A.
Macdonald wrote to Queen Victoria, that the name
the Dominion of Canada was a tribute to
the principles that they earnestly desired to uphold.
What are those?
If you read the text, he Christ shall
have dominion from sea to sea, and I
cannot say all, but there were many men
unashamed of seeking to give birth to a
new nation that would seek to have the
Lord reign from coast to coast.
Now Tully's reputation remained unscarred and unmarred even
though John A.
Macdonald got himself into trouble, and when you
hear this you'll say there's nothing new under
the sun.
At the building of the railroad across Canada
there was a contractor called Allen who gave
a huge donation to John A.
Macdonald's Liberal Party prior to receiving the contract.
It sounds like nothing ever changes in certain
fields of politics, and for a time John
A.
Macdonald had to step down from politics.
But although Tully was very much his right
-hand man, he was not involved in that
scandal whatsoever.
Tully became the Minister of Finance under John
A.
Macdonald at a later date, and in 1879
he received a knighthood from Queen Victoria.
A Christian man, a man who knew the
Bible and did what he could to imprint
the truths and values of Christianity upon the
future generations of this nation.
Number three is the story of Egerton Ryerson.
I have put a bit of this information
in the back of the bulletin, and if
you want it in text, I hadn't room
for it all, but a good part of
the history of this man was right there.
This man is called the father of public
education in Canada.
Now I should say that the humanist wants
to get their hands on education at every
opportunity.
They know that the way to change a
nation and to change the ideas of a
rising generation is to take over the education
system.
Neutrality is the thing that children in school
are taught from kindergarten right through.
Christianity is not tolerated.
I spoke of that event in Peggy's Cove
on the East Coast when Prime Minister Chrétien
gave the command.
This is common knowledge today.
He gave the command that the name of
Jesus was not to be used.
That's in keeping with the humanist agenda in
the education system of today, and the guilt
is leveled upon Christians.
You can use the name of Jesus at
home or in your church, but don't do
it in public.
Now that is not civil and religious liberty.
That is not even equality, because we are
called upon to deny the very God whom
we serve doing so.
Now in 1844, this man Ryerson was appointed
the superintendent of education in Canada, and he
began with, and I'm going to quote this
because I want to get it right and
I want you to know that I'm not
just speaking off the top of my head
here, that this is a quote that we
can stand upon.
The prospect of seeing every child of my
native land in the school going in the
way and of witnessing one comprehensive and unique
system of education from ABC of the child
up to the matriculation of the youth into
the provincial university, which would present an aspect
of equal benignity to every sect and every
party upon the broad bases of our common
Christianity.
Obviously he was a public figure and he
was not going to promote one denomination above
another, and he was going to promote what
was at that time a Christian ethic that
was the very warp and woof of society,
and had no public problem promoting it.
He achieved his goal with the legislative assembly
of Ontario in the school act of 1871,
so that had been just four years after
confederation, and universal education became an accomplished fact,
resulting in a well-ordered school system in
which elementary education was free and compulsory attendance
would soon become the norm.
Now you may say, but that's the agenda
of the humanist today, to grab the education
system, but what I'm going to read now
is what makes the difference.
The role and the curriculum of the grammar
schools had been redefined, and the foundations of
a free secondary school system also had been
led.
The students used textbooks in which Christian value
and loyalty to the constitution were included, and
then in brackets, Ryerson wrote the textbook First
Lessons in Christian Morals, 1871, and they were
taught by instructors who met and approved certification
criteria.
In 1876, the Department of Education became a
ministry, and Ryerson retired from the superintendency, his
work completed.
Now, why is this so important?
The question is, would the education ministry today
accept an Egerton Ryerson to be a decision
maker, to direct the goals of education?
The humanists would scream.
They would say, this man is not sufficiently
neutral.
He has an agenda, a Christian agenda.
That's the difference in this nation today than
1871.
My fourth example is a man called William
Dawson.
He was the third principal of McGill University,
and I have really been very fortunate in
discovering some of this information, because I went
on the McGill University website to try and
find a little bit of their history, go
to one of their buttons, About Us, you
know, hoping to be led to their beginnings
and so on.
And let's remember that prior to Confederation, almost
every education system in Canada was Christian, formed
by some Christian church or other.
Some Catholics, some Protestants, some Anglicans, some Baptists,
some even Methodists, but almost all learning institutions
pre-Confederation were church schools.
And so I wanted to discover what church
or denomination gave birth to McGill University.
Their website hadn't got one line on it.
All it spoke about the generosity of the
McGill family to try and fund the beginning
of a university.
I then talked to a man in this
church who I knew at least had some
links with that university, if he could do
some research for me, and he got me
a seven-page fax piece of information, and
still nothing that defined McGill University as a
Christian organization.
And then on Wednesday, I was studying for
our adult Sunday school Bible class on anthropology,
and a name came up in a theology
book, William Dawson.
Now, there was no information about who William
Dawson was, and so I did some search
on him.
And turned out that he was the third
principal of McGill University.
And when you discover the Christian caliber of
this man and his academic credentials, you will
not argue that McGill University, which has been
called the Harvard of the North, the leading
academic institution of this nation, was soundly based
on Christian principles.
Now, this man, William Dawson, was born in
Nova Scotia.
He was educated in Scotland, returned to Nova
Scotia in 1847, and he became the third
principal of McGill University in 1855.
Now, at that time, it was a mere
cow pasture.
It was not really a campus of any
size at all, and it also had financial
difficulties.
So, it can truly be said, and indeed
this article that I have before me does
say, that this man, William Dawson, made McGill
University a world-class university.
He was the man with the brain and
the drive and the organizational skills to produce
McGill at that time.
Now, Dawson changed McGill's academic focus.
He believed that the teaching of natural and
applied sciences, geology and paleontology, was foundational.
Now, remember, 1855, that's four years before Charles
Derwin published his book, The Origin of Species,
which sort of is the time of the
burst of evolutionary thinking.
William Dawson refuted it.
He was himself a student of geology and
of paleontology, of bones and fossils and so
on.
He started his own little museum, and in
McGill University today, there is a museum called
after him on that very field.
William Dawson took a very, very distinct Christian
stand.
Dawson was highly critical of Derwin's arguments concerning
the fossil record, and unlike Derwin, Dawson believed
steadfastly that nature was the result of a
divine creator, and that nature could not be
mindless, random, without a plan.
He argued that not only did Darwinism sweep
away Christianity and natural religion, but that a
populace imbued with the doctrine of the struggle
for existence would cease to be human in
any ethical sense, and must become brutes or
devils, or something between the two.
In Dawson's opinion, Darwin had committed countless absurdities.
Would this man get hired at McGill University
today?
That's the question.
McGill University became a mother of many other
institutions, including UBC, and it was 1915 that
UBC got its own charter, having been an
offshoot of McGill University.
The tragedy is that our learning institutions today
are humanistic, man-centered, and have rejected the
doctrine of creation, the creator, and a God
-centered education.
Do you know where the whole term university
comes from?
And do you know what is the unifying
factor of a university?
In classical education, university finds its center in
theology, the study of God.
But today, they are very segregated, and very
much ignored, if not totally rejected.
Again, I'm using these examples to show that
150 years ago, Canada, and the greatest institution
in the political leaders that formed this country,
were men of a Christian mindset.
I'm not sure if they were alive today
that they would even join the Free Presbyterian
Church.
I'm sure some of them had quirky ideas,
and little notions, and strong opinions, and this
and that, and they may not all have
been what you would call well-rounded Christians.
But they were men who believed that's the
basis for a good society, and for truth
and righteousness.
Another man that stands out in Canadian history
is a man called William Holland, and he
is called Toronto the Good.
Perhaps you've heard that name of the city
of Toronto.
Well, this man, William Holland, he was born
in 1844.
He went to England in 1876, where he
was converted through the text Isaiah 43.1.
The verse says, Fear not, for I have
redeemed thee, thou art mine.
And he returned to Canada.
He heard a sermon of an Anglican preacher
evangelist, and was soundly converted from his nominal
Anglicanism to a vibrant evangelical faith.
Now, this man became very concerned about the
poor and the squalor of Toronto.
And as a Christian, he began a mission
known as the Toronto Mission Union, and he
worked for the poor, for the orphans, and
for those that were downtrodden in the city
of Toronto.
He was so successful in that mission that
he was persuaded to run for Mayor of
Toronto in 1855.
And, although it seemed impossible, he swept into
office for one term for just three years.
And during that time, he put a big
banner over his office.
It was Psalm 127.1, Except the Lord
keep the city, the watchman waketh but in
vain.
How long would such a banner get staying
over the Mayor's office in Toronto today?
The humanists would be crying out.
They would be saying, We have a Christian
as a leader.
We can't accept that.
We do not have a leader who's neutral.
He worked in various ways to, again, assist
the poor and many workers of factories and
employees of large companies.
And he persuaded people to pay fair wages,
to deal with poverty, orphans, gambling, prostitution, Sabbath
breaking, and unlicensed drinking.
And the list goes on in the three
years that he was in office.
And voluntarily, he stepped down from that office
and went back into Christian mission work and
felt that that was his place to serve
and to minister the gospel.
Now, again, what an example of a time
when our cities, one of our major cities,
was moved and was willing not only to
elect him to office, but assist, carry out
many of his visions as a man of
God to assist people in the city of
Toronto.
Now, these are many wonderful stories.
Let me give you another one.
Time's with us tonight.
We're doing okay.
This is the Merchant Prince, one article calls
him.
His name, unfortunately, is no longer over stores
in Canada today, but his name is Timothy
Eaton.
Timothy Eaton was born in Ireland, Presbyterian parents.
He came to Canada and was converted under
the Methodists and was a Methodist all of
his years.
Now, his name was given to him.
He had two older brothers, James and John.
Parents called them that because that they were
their favorite Bible names.
His father died before Timothy's birth, but his
mother gave him the third favorite name of
his father, Timothy.
He came to Southern Ontario.
His brother there had already started up a
store and merchandise.
He worked with him for some time.
In fact, the story is that he slept
under the counter as an apprentice before he
was able to have his own place for
accommodation.
And if you work from early morning to
late night, six days a week, pretty good
place to have your bed just under the
counter.
Then he bought his own store in Toronto
and he ran his store with Christian convictions,
fixed prices, and that was a new thing.
An advertised price that would stay true whatever
date or term it was advertised for.
His workers, he was the first to call
his employees associates.
He believed in paying them fair wages and
even giving them pension plan, when very few
employers of that time even knew what a
pension plan was for employees.
And at the end of his life, he
had 9,000 employees.
He expected honesty from every employee and he
even advertised that shoppers should curtail their shopping
hours because the competition was extending the hours
and he would not.
And he asked the public to not shop
beyond normal hours so that employees could be
with their families and have a normal life.
Very thoughtful, considerate man on that basis.
And then it is well known that he
never opened a store on the Lord's Day.
And I am told that even here in
Vancouver that it was a common practice that
even the shutters were pulled down on the
windows, lest any avid shopper would go along
trying to shop through the window.
He's credited with the catalog shopping system and
that became very, very successful.
When he died, his wife, still a Methodist,
donated all the money to build a Methodist
church in the city of Toronto.
It became the Timothy Eaton Memorial Methodist Church.
And so there was a family that you
could say temporally, at least, God blessed on
Christian principles and succeeded in this land of
Canada.
And what a testimony, what a credit it
is to the blessing of God to those
that honor him, he will honor.
One or two last small stories.
We have in British Columbia the Great Thompson
River.
It's way up past Kamloops somewhere.
I haven't a clue where it begins or
ends, but it is one of the main
rivers in British Columbia.
It is named after an explorer for a
fur trading company that later merged with the
Hudson Bay Company.
And David Thompson went out exploring for that
trading company.
And everywhere he went, he took his Bible.
And when he met voyagers along the way,
he read the scriptures to them.
And in this part of the world, he
was one of the very first to read
the scriptures to the native people and give
them the gospel, although he freely confesses that
language was an exceeding barrier that he never
really overcame.
And there was a limited amount of information
he was able to convey to the native
peoples as he read to them the word
of God.
But he did by many means seek to
give them the gospel.
Now, he has a record in his journal
that after a weary day's march, we sat
by a log fire, we being himself and
his Indian guides.
The bright moor with thousands of sparkling stars
passing before us, we could not help inquiring
who lived in those bright mansions.
They concluded them to be the abode of
the spirits of those that had a good
life.
There's the Indian mind and its paganism looking
up at the stars saying there are the
spirits of those who lived a good life,
the work ethic even amongst them.
But of course, in his limited way, David
Thompson gave them a gospel.
He recorded this in his diary, he said,
a missionary has never been among them and
my knowledge of their language has not enabled
me to do more than teach the unity
of God and the future state of rewards
and punishment.
So here we have in the history of
this province, explorer, major river called after his
name, whoever thinks that he was a man
who walked with God and yet his testimony
and character and service, so honored that his
name was on that river for, I don't
say forever, but for duration of this country.
The last example, and I'll be very brief
with this one, are the Sally Ann Lassies
of Vancouver.
Go to Stanley Park, you will see a
little place called Hallelujah Point and the Salvation
Army girls used to gather right there, just
close to Dead Man's Island, stood on Stanley
Park and they sang the gospel and were
told that in those days before the noise
of a city, or a modern day city,
that their singing wafted across the water and
was heard clearly on the banks of Gastown
and downtown Vancouver and they came and did
a great work for God.
I don't remember all the stories of those
young women, but they were the first and
later forty, forty Salvation Army workers came to
go into the interior of British Columbia with
the gospel.
And so we can only rejoice that these
great things under God have been accomplished and
we have in so much of the fiber
of political life, educational life, the exploration of
this country, the gospel endeavors of this country,
things that have steered this country for the
Lord and for his grace.
Now there's one thing I have to say
in closing.
As I have sifted through this history, I've
had to do one thing, because so many
authors in their ecumenical, modern, contemporary minds, they
will speak about Baptists and they'll speak about
Presbyterians and then Anglicans and then they'll go
to speak about the Jesuits and the Oblate
Fathers as if they were all bringing the
same gospel to this country.
Now you know that that is not the
case.
I haven't even spoken yet tonight about Charles
Chenequay, who also belongs to those years we've
been speaking about.
And how when he was fifty years in
the Church of Rome, converted by the grace
of God, became a preacher and evangelist in
the province of Quebec, the priests would have
killed him.
And there were many mobs and attempts to
end that man's life.
And so don't think that during those years
there was an ecumenical love-in between all
denominations and especially between Romanism and Protestantism.
There was not.
And today, as people write these histories and
we accept the facts on their individual basis,
we don't deny there were Jesuits, we don't
deny there were Jesuits that reached Indians with
their message.
We don't deny that the Oblate Fathers were
the first to create wineries in the Okanagan.
Man, you are not sure whether that's a
blessing or not.
We do not deny that even on the
West Coast, the Roman Catholic movement has been
very strong.
But we must not confuse what was the
French, Catholic, Jesuit agenda to bring this country
to the heel of Rome and the liberties
of the gospel for which General Wolfe died
on the plains of Abraham.
I know that was a political battle, it
was concerning land, but it changed the course
and history of this nation.
And under God, those are real events.
But the lessons are tonight, as we think
of Psalm 113, if the foundations be destroyed,
what can the righteous do?
Well, first of all, that is the if
of impossibility.
And we can only thank God that here
in British Columbia, in this little church, at
least there are some in this country who
still know the gospel.
Isn't that amazing?
And we're not the only ones.
God had across this country, there's a remnant
still defiant to humanism, still eager to serve
the Lord of glory.
The foundations of the gospel will never be
destroyed because they're eternal in the sovereign plan
of God.
And if one ministry fails, and if one
country ceases to be Christian, God will raise
up a new witness.
He has promised that he will never leave
himself without a witness.
Our Lord Jesus said, I will build my
church and the gates of hell will never
prevail against it.
We need to lay hold on those great
certainty.
And while there are attacks and while there
is opposition, we need to labor in hope
and with the confidence that our labor is
not in vain.
And I think we need the determination of
those men and women who labored to found
this country on Christian principles.
I think if they were with us today
to see the attitude of the contemporary evangelical
in this country to the pressures of humanism,
they would scowl in agony.
Those who ought to know the word of
God do not labor for the gospel in
a clear, clear passion.
I think we need the passion that those
founders had.
We need the passion of a William Dawson.
We may not have the brains of a
William Dawson.
We may not have the genius of such
a man.
In fact, in one thing I wrote about
him, he wrote 400 books, 400 books and
pamphlets.
He was a student of paleontology, geology.
He was head of the agricultural department.
He organized the library.
In fact, he became the chief librarian toward
the end of his life.
He was the man who designed the very
new campus, sought to raise the money for
it.
Why did he do it?
He wanted to give the rising generation of
Canada a Christian education in all its spheres.
McGill became one of the first, in fact
was the first university to give a medical
diploma, a med school.
Even there, Christian ethic reigned at that time.
And we need to be prepared in our
day to labor in hope that God may
raise the voice, the witness of the gospel
and not surrender the humanist agenda, become neutral
to all things.
That's so easy.
It is so easy to end up, well,
I just take a neutral position.
And that's what so many are doing and
playing into the humanist agenda.
The church of the Lord Jesus today needs
to awaken.
And we need to be on our knees
crying to God.
He may visit this nation again as he
did in the Maritimes in revival blessing.
And in various periods of time there have
been movings of God's spirit in this country,
all for the showers of blessing.
Let us pray.
Let us labor for these things.
Let us believe that our God is not
done with his church, but will yet build
it for his glory.