Daniel McPhail: A man of continual prayer

It was in the depths of a Canadian winter – on 17 February, 1836 – that various delegates from six Baptist churches met in Montreal to form the Ottawa Baptist Association.

While two of the churches were based in Montreal (an Anglophone work and a French-speaking congregation), the others came from what was a considerable distance to travel in those days: Breadalbane, Dalesville, Hull, and Clarence. Among the stated aims of this Association were the deepening of the ties of fellowship between those “Baptist churches as agree in holding the sentiments commonly called Evangelical” as well as “the advance [of] the cause of Christ”. For the latter, it was stressed, a certain type of man was needed: “Men of deep personal piety – of compassion for ruined undying souls, strong as power, yet tender as a mother’s heart – of love to Christ, which glows with unceasing ardour – of holy, harmless zeal, which never tires – of humility, that sinks into the insignificance of a cypher – of moral courage, which meets difficulties, insurmountable to others, as little things…”

Now, in the minds of many who became members of the churches of this association, the Scottish-Canadian preacher, Daniel McPhail (1811‒1875) was a paragon of such piety.

Early years

McPhail’s parents, Duncan and Janet McPhail, emigrated with their children from the Scottish Highlands in 1820, when Daniel, their eldest child, was nine years old. The McPhails were part of a significant stream of Scottish emigrants during the late-18th and 19th centuries, when some 185,000 Scots left their homeland for Canada.

After initially residing in Côte-Saint-Paul, near Montreal, where Duncan McPhail worked as a schoolteacher for about a year, he and Janet moved with their family to Chatham township, just north of the Ottawa River, in 1821, to what has been well described as a “scrubby farm”. For four years, Duncan McPhail, who had briefly studied at Robert Haldane’s theological seminary in Edinburgh, held a Sunday School and Gaelic preaching service in his home on the Lord’s Day. In 1825 he and a fellow Scot, Robert McNaughton, agreed to found what became Dalesville Baptist Church. It was here that Duncan’s son Daniel was converted and baptised around 1826. And by the time that Daniel was 19 he was regularly leading the worship of the church.

Revival!

Between August and December of 1834, there had been a substantial awakening in a nearby Baptist church at Breadalbane in which 58 men and women had professed faith in Christ and become members of that church. Since the Baptist minister of the English-speaking church in Montreal, the Scotsman John Gilmour, had played a significant role in this local revival, McPhail encouraged him to visit the Dalesville congregation. Gilmour agreed to come at the close of January 1835, but he urged McPhail to pray for divine blessing. As he told McPhail: “Be earnest in prayer that souls may be converted to God.” Gilmour preached his first sermon on the final clause of Isaiah 66:8, “for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children” (KJV).

Subsequent meetings were held every day throughout the week that followed, but initially there seemed to be no significant response to the gospel message of salvation. One evening after the public service, McPhail along with a few friends, concerned that they were relying upon Gilmour’s giftedness as a preacher, decided to spend some time wrestling in prayer for God’s blessing upon the preaching of the word. Their earnestness swallowed up any sense of time and, before they knew it, they had spent the entire night in prayer.

The following day was long remembered as “a Pentecost” as “the Holy Spirit came down in great power”, and some 20 people were converted. The Spirit’s work of conversion continued, though, in the surrounding community throughout that year and between 80 and 90 eventually professed faith in Christ and were added to the church. This move of the Spirit was long remembered as the Great Revival of 1834‒1835. All told, some 365 individuals were added to the churches of the Ottawa Baptist Association between August 1834 and December 1835.

Vital necessity of prayer

Passing through such an evident work of the Spirit of God gave McPhail deep convictions about the vital necessity of prayer in the Christian life. In the early 1890s, Alexander McDonald, who was a pioneer Baptist church planter in the Canadian North-West and who had been profoundly shaped by McPhail’s ministry, recalled that McPhail was “a man of continual prayer, by day [and] by night, in the closet, in the family, as he sat, as he walked, in the pulpit and out of it, his ardent spirit held converse with his Master”.