. Gladstone's little volume on "The State in its
Relations with the Church," and Macaulay's answer thereto in the
_Edinburgh Review_, had not then been published. But some of the most
conclusive arguments adduced by Macaulay were as old as the world
itself; and even Mr. Gladstone, in all his youthful exuberance, did not
venture to take so preposterous a stand as was assumed by the upholders
of a State Church in this Province. Their bigotry and intolerance were
utterly out of keeping with the times in which they lived, and were
better suited to the days of Archbishop Laud or Sir Robert Filmer. Of
that heaven-born charity which suffereth long, and is kind; which
vaunteth not itself, and is not puffed up; which seeketh not her own,
and is not easily provoked; which thinketh no evil; which rejoiceth not
in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; which beareth all things,
believeth all things, endureth all things--of the spirit which impels to
such a state of mind as this, we find few traces in the lives and
writings of the upholders of State-Churchism in Upper Canada in those
days. We find, on the contrary, much unkindness, much vaunting of
themselves, much selfish conceit, much seeking, not only of their own,
but of that which of right belonged to their neighbours. The champions
of ecclesiastical monopoly were easily provoked to anger, and to
thinking and speaking all manner of evil of those who differed from them
as to the distribution of the Clergy Reserves. Roman Catholicism they
contemplated with a certain amount of toleration, as the Roman Catholic
hierarchy yielded the Government an unwavering support in return for the
freedom and privileges which they enjoyed. But their toleration was not
broad enough to cover any other form of religious belief. Dissent, in
all its multiform phases, they looked upon with mingled abhorrence and
contempt--as a thing to be shunned and tabooed by all right-minded
persons. Dissenting ministers of religion were regarded as "low
fellows," whom it was no sin to persecute, and, if possible, drive out
of the country. Comparatively few of the latter were permitted to
solemnize matrimony during the first forty years of the Province's
history. By the statute 38 George III., chapter 4, passed in 1798, the
privilege of doing so was accorded to ministers of "The Church of
Scotland, or Lutherans or Calvinists;" but it was hedged about with
cumbrous restrictions which must have been felt as humiliating a