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’.

Of the families in the Osgoode congregation, it was said that “every dinner table was a theological class, and with the pork and potatoes went Calvinism and Arminianism” with the Bible serving as “the arbiter of the daily discussion”. As a Baptist contemporary, E.W. Dadson, once put it: “There was no escaping God and the Bible in that community”.

It bears noting that McPhail’s acceptance of the Osgoode pastorate did not mean that his itinerant labours came to a complete end. He continued to engage in evangelistic work as opportunity allowed and he “preached in private homes, in barns, in school houses or in the open air” throughout the Ottawa Valley. In addition to the hundreds converted under his ministry, it has been estimated that a dozen or so churches came from his evangelistic forays. Moreover, those who heard McPhail were generally agreed that his preaching was neither scholarly nor what was regarded as eloquent in his day. The power of his preaching lay in his intimate knowledge of the Scriptures and of the human psyche, his earnestness and Christian integrity, and, most of all, a life of prayer.

Piety and prayer

In this connection it is noteworthy that of the three circular letters that McPhail wrote for the Ottawa Association, the first, written in 1841, was entitled ‘Piety and Prayer’. McPhail began by emphasizing that prayer is “the all important means” by which a life of piety or spirituality is maintained: “there is no piety where there is no prayer”. He offered three “considerations” or evidences to support this affirmation.

First, according to the Bible, a person with “a prayerless life” has clearly not been the recipient of grace, the foundation of true spirituality, for “wherever there is a spark of divine grace, there is … a panting after [God]…, a seeking towards Him, a looking up to the throne of His mercy”. Second, prayer is vital for assurance of salvation, for knowing the joy of the Lord, and for being prepared to serve God fully in word and deed. Here, McPhail likened prayer to a channel that links the person who is praying to God, the fountain of all grace.

Since Christians are human and still beset with sin, they are “leaky vessels” and thus they “need to be daily replenished from the fountain of grace”. In other words, divine grace is needed fresh each day, and the way that grace comes to us is through prayer. In McPhail’s words, “prayer … as [the] means appointed by God, will secure our growth in grace”. Finally, McPhail instanced a variety of Biblical examples to support his argument: Jabez (1 Chron.4v10), David, and especially Paul. It was the latter who urged the recipients of his letters to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess.5v16), for example.

While there is no doubt that McPhail was right to emphasise that prayer is central to the Christian’s walk with God, did his silence about other means of grace (the reading of the Scriptures and hearing them preached, for instance, or communing with God at the Lord’s Table) mean that he did not consider them important? Probably not, but from his argumentation in this circular letter, it does seem to be the case that he regarded prayer as the main spiritual discipline without which spiritual vitality cannot be secured.