Our History
We have much for which to give thanks to God in the foundations of Knox. In 1820 the Church of Scotland, which included most Scottish Presbyterians, was just beginning to emerge from what has been known as 'the reign of Moderatism,' in which a cold religion of moralistic self-effort had in many parishes largely taken the place of the gospel of God's saving grace in Jesus Christ. But in the person of the Rev. James Harris, Knox's first minister, we had a representative of the Seceders, who had left the Church of Scotland in the preceding century under the leadership of the Erskine brothers in protest against the declining standards of faith and life. Mr. Harris was also an Irishman, which reminds us that early Toronto was a multicultural place, more like today than all the intervening generations. The great Scottish migration to Ontario was not to begin until well into the 1820s, and then would run throughout the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, so shaping Knox that some claim to Scottish ancestry would become almost a prerequisite of acceptance. But it was not so in the beginning, and the best example of this is Jesse Ketchum, Harris' father-in-law, exceedingly generous benefactor of Knox, and one of the greatest philanthropists that Toronto has ever known. Ketchum was an American and a Methodist, but found his spiritual home in Knox.
By the late 1820s and early 1830s the Evangelicals were beginning to replace the Moderates as the dominant and most dynamic section of the Church of Scotland, and among the increasing number of immigrants to Toronto were many who had thus been brought into a living relationship with Jesus Christ. They usually attended St. Andrew's on King Street, the second Presbyterian congregation in the city, and which was in connection with the Church of Scotland. But when the struggle in Scotland between Moderates and Evangelicals reached its climax in the formation of the Free Church in Scotland in 1843, (frequently referred to as the Great Disruption), there were many Presbyterians in Toronto and throughout British North America who wished to identify themselves with this movement. Included was the congregation of Knox, with a large minority from St. Andrew's. They immediately set about planning a new building on the Knox lot at Queen and Yonge, and set about calling a new minister. Knox has been blessed in having many of its ministers with the gift of leadership, but none more than Robert Burns who was inducted in 1845.
Burns was a theological heavy-weight who taught at the newly-founded Knox College while also pastoring the congregation. He was in addition a man of missionary vision. For many years in Scotland he had served as the secretary of the Glasgow Colonial Society which sought to send Evangelical ministers to the colonies. When he came to Toronto he roamed not only Canada West, as Ontario was then called, but the Maritimes as well. With his vision, energy and entrepreneurial skill he established many new Free Church congregations, several of which still bear his name, helping the denomination to achieve remarkable church growth. Burns naturally drew around himself many able Christians, none more prominent than the father and son team of journalist, Peter and George Brown. They established a paper to support the Free Church known as the Banner, which would eventually become the Record, the precursor of today's periodical of the same name. They also founded the Globe newspaper, making it the voice of much of Ontario on political, economic, social and moral issues, one of the results being that George became a leading Father of Confederation.
« Previous page Next page »
