Daniel McPhail and the revival at Osgoode: A ministry marked by prayer

Under the powerful ministry of Daniel McPhail’s preaching, the church at Osgoode flourished.

When McPhail became the pastor of the church, there were 60 members. A year later, the membership had increased to 76. By the annual assembly of the Ottawa Association in 1846, at which McPhail preached the introductory sermon, the Osgoode church had 99 members. A dozen years later, this had nearly doubled to 192. On two occasions, between 1854 and 1856 and then again between 1860 and 1862, McPhail baptised some 90 persons. In 1860, five years before McPhail left Osgoode, the membership stood at 245, by far the largest church in the Ottawa Baptist Association.

A number of those converted under McPhail’s preaching at Osgoode went on to become key Baptist leaders, not only within the Ottawa Association but further afield. There was, for example, Alexander McDonald, who was a pioneer among Baptist missionary work in Western Canada, as well as John McLaurin, who was equally a pioneer missionary to India for much of his life – McPhail had baptised him and 60 or so others one winter in the early 1850s in a hole cut in the ice. And then there was Daniel Arthur McGregor, Principal of McMaster University and the author of the marvellous hymn ‘Jesus, Wondrous Saviour’.