CHAP. XIX.) THE PASTOR, REV. S. NOBLE.

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their farms and merchandise and return in a body to New England. They, however, declined to leave precipitately a place where God had smiled upon them both in spiritual and temporal things, and cast themselves, destitute of means of support, into a place where the necessaries of life might be hard to obtain, and where vice and immorality might prevail, and where vital godliness might not flourish as it did in their own settlement. Thus they replied to their pastor.

But though Mr. Noble could not persuade his church to leave the Province, he himself went away about the year 1777, and remained until the war was over. He then returned and claimed to be the pastor of the Sheffield church, and demanded the arrearages of salary which had accrued during his six or seven years' absence. Both of these claims were of course resisted by the church. Mr. Noble's abandonment of them involved them in serious and long-continued trouble about their church lands, which were claimed by churchmen in his absence. And this was not all. But during Mr. Noble's protracted absence, being much of the time destitute of any religious instructor and guide, the people were subjected to the disorderly inroads of Henry Alline. He visited them several times, beginning in 1779, and as usual created a disturbance in the church, which eventuated in the organization, as elsewhere, of a Separate church. This church, however, died out about 1784.

Subsequently, the old church experienced much

trouble from the apostasy to Episcopacy of one of its ministers, and his attempt to hold the meetinghouse and the land belonging to the Maugerville church; in which he was countenanced and supported by the churchmen and the government of the Province.

The settlement at Maugerville, notwithstanding all the drawbacks which it had to encounter, continued to prosper and increase through the Revolutionary War, and in 1783 was estimated to contain a population of about a thousand souls. The church struggled along with temporary supplies for its pulpit, constantly seeking in various directions for a pastor, until the autumn of 1826, when they succeeded, through the favor of the Rev. George Burder, Secretary of the London Missionary Society, in securing Rev. Archibald McCallum, of Scotland, who continued with it for twenty years, laboring in the meantime assiduously to promote the good cause in all the neighborhood, travelling and preaching in the destitute townships, and organizing Congregational churches wherever there was an opportunity.

For more than a century this Congregational church has maintained itself against various malign influences, including the bitter hostility of the Provincial government and the defection of two or three of its own pastors, and battled bravely for the truth and for its own individual rights. And it has nobly succeeded, maintaining its own prosperous existence, while it has given life and

CHAP. XIX.] THE CHURCH AT SACKVILLE.

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prosperity to other churches in its neighborhood. It has done much to give this rural town a name and a fame through all the Province for thrift, culture and virtue. Its pastor in 1874 was the Rev. William Williams, to whose "Sketch of the History of the Congregational Church of Sheffield, N. B.," and personal correspondence, I am largely indebted for the facts found in this notice.*

Sackville, a little north of Amherst, on the Bay of Fundy, or rather on the Chignecto Basin, was originally settled in part by a Baptist church of thirteen members, which was formed at Swansea, Mass., and emigrated thither in the spring of 1763, with their minister, Nathan Mason.† After about eight years, this church becoming dissatisfied with the country and the government, abandoned the

* An intelligent American gentleman, who formerly lived in Sheffield, and to whom I applied for some information, writes: "Sheffield was from the beginning, and remained up to the date when I knew it, distinguished for the virtue, intelligence, and thrift of its inhabitants. It is my impression that no other rural town in New Brunswick could rival it in these respects.” — MS. Letter.

See Mr. Woodrow's admirable sketch of this venerable church in the Canadian Independent, vol. xiv, 393–99, 480-84. Even Mr. J. Silk Buckingham's book of travels in Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, etc., has furnished some material for this sketch. pp. 400-13, London: 1843.

† Nathan Mason and wife, Thomas Lewis and wife, Oliver Mason and wife, and Experience Baker were from the Swansea church, while Benjamin Mason, Charles Seamans, and Gilbert Seamans, and their wives, were from other Baptist churches. Backus, 111, 146.

place and returned to New England, chiefly to Berkshire, Mass. But there were settlers enough left to constitute a Congregational church in the town, somewhere about 1776, when the great awakening was experienced throughout that country under the labors of Henry Alline and his associates. But this church, like others formed by that wild man, was so loosely put together that it soon fell to pieces.*

A Congregational church was organized in 1819 at Cardigan, some forty miles north of Fredrickton, on the Miramichi river, and was still living in 1876-77, though a feeble body. a feeble body. Besides this, another church was formed, in 1819, at Keswick Ridge, a few miles south of Cardigan, which was a flourishing body apparently, in 1876 reporting one hundred communicants.

Still another was organized, in 1844, at St. John, now the most populous city in New Brunswick. This church had one hundred and nineteen communicants in 1876. A Congregational church was also organized in 1846, at the city of Milltown, or St. Stephen's, on the St. Croix, just opposite Calais, Maine. This is one of the largest and most prosperous churches of our order in New Brunswick, having one hundred and twenty communicants in 1876. And these five churches are all the Congregational churches that were found in the Province in 1876-7.

*Backus' Hist. Baptists, 111, 146; Benedict, 533-4.

CHAP. XIX.]

CHURCHES IN N. S. AND N. B.

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We have now noticed all the earlier Congregational churches which were organized in the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; and indeed, all that have ever been formed in those Provinces, so far as is now known.* The whole number now living in either Province amounts to only twenty, with an aggregate membership of thirteen hundred and fifteen souls, in 1876-7. They are furnished with church buildings, which contain sittings for six thousand three hundred persons, and possess church property valued at one hundred and eight thousand four hundred and fifty dollars. And though generally small churches, their contributions for the year 1876-7 amounted to nearly seventeen thousand dollars.

The American Revolutionary War seriously damaged the Congregational churches of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. A very considerable proportion of the New England settlers returned to the States, led or followed by most of their ministers, an exodus from which the churches slowly if ever rallied. But yet several of the Nova Scotia Congregational churches of inodern date are composed

* The presiding officer of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Congregational Union in 1860 said in his address: "There is reason also to believe that in this Province [the meeting was in Nova Scotia] our churches have been much more numerous than they now are, having been swallowed up among other denominations."- Canadian Indep., VIII.