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Chapter 9

The Hymn Book and the Book of Common Prayer, 1906–1908

It was a remarkable feature of Cody’s career that he had achieved such prominence in the Canadian church while still only acting rector of St. Paul’s, technically “Rector in Charge.” The anomaly between his nominal and his actual status was now corrected. On April 23, 1907, Bishop Sweatman formally appointed Cody rector of St. Paul’s, and he was formally inducted on May 26, 1907. Congratulations came from O’Meara (the new Wycliffe principal), Archbishop Matheson, and others. Gustavus Munro, the Presbyterian minister in Embro, hoped that this formal recognition would prevent Cody from leaving the ministry to devote his life to academic or “official” work. Munro was posing the central problem in Cody’s career – which path to follow.¹

Cody’s pastoral ministry at St. Paul’s continued, and each Sunday he recorded in his diary his sermon texts for the day. Thus, in July 1906, he preached on Psalm 43:5, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? ... hope thou in God”; on Psalm 55:22, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.” Additional light on his preaching ministry is revealed in the program for his Lenten service in 1908: Christ the Centre of Christianity; The Completeness and Complexity of Christ; The Shortness of Christ’s Life; The Individual Dealing of Christ; The Intolerance of Christ; The Sinlessness of Christ.

Cody was already preaching long sermons, even by the standards of the more accommodating congregations of the early twentieth century. An evening service that lasted only fifty-five minutes was an occasion for a note in his diary.

Cody’s large city congregation was a cross-section of Toronto society, containing people of every class, but it took its tone from the comparatively well-off and well-read elements in the church: the Blakes, the Caldecotts, the Willisons, the Denisons, the Jarvises, the Blackstocks, and the many like them. On February 4, when Cody lunched at the National Club with those of his sidesmen who were members, he recorded a dozen names, including Shirley Denison, F.A. Rolph, and Dean Ivey. When he married one of the Ansleys to a Baron Alfred von Wattenwyl in 1906, he recorded such names as Smallpeice, Catto, Hodgins, and Caldecott in the list of guests. John Willisons paper, the News, caught the atmosphere of St. Paul’s in an article published in 1907: “Educated, thoughtful, alert, businesslike, self-respecting and respectful of the rights of others, people who are helping to make the city’s social, commercial and collegiate life, men and women to whom life has been kind, such is the congregation of St. Paul’s. Thus it may be seen any Sunday morning quietly seated, waiting to hear some truthilluminated discourse.”²

The church was in good shape financially. In 1908 the annual report indicated a total income of over $30,000, large by the standards of the church at the time. The mortgage on the Sunday School had been paid off and the entire church property was free of debt. St. Paul’s was destined to be a tower of strength in the church, giving assistance to less affluent congregations such as St. Paul’s, Runnymede.

Occasionally an offer of assistance from St. Paul’s was gallantly declined. When the St. Paul’s Women’s Auxiliary offered some gifts for the children of a country clergyman, he declined, explaining that his stipend had been raised and he felt that he and his wife could manage without assistance.

S.H. Blake, who was 71 in 1906, continued to give Cody (then 38) fatherly support and advice. He praised Cody’s sermons on matters of churchmanship, and on June 3, 1908, he wrote in his usual caustic style about some negotiations between the Anglicans and two other churches for cooperation in Indian work. Afraid that some of the Anglican bishops, no doubt the high church ones, might prejudice the scheme, he urged Cody to try and prevent this, adding, “You are not a Bishop, so that you have no fear of being dragged by the hair round the council chamber if you happen to disagree with the statements made by any member of the Episcopal Bench.”³

In contrast to his tribulations in the 1920s and early 1930s, this was a happy period in Cody’s life. The Codys entertained a great deal, particularly on Sundays. Almost always they had guests to lunch, tea, or dinner. Visiting preachers were usually welcomed at 603 Jarvis Street. Often, they stayed with the Codys. Florence was a gracious hostess. She did not like going out in Toronto society but got on well with a some of its members.

The Codys were quite friendly with the Blackstocks and took a kindly interest in their daughter, Barbara. At Christmas, 1909, Barbara reciprocated by sending a Christmas card to Florence and a cake made by herself to Cody. Florence responded with a friendly note: “Mr. Cody cut his cake on Christmas Day and officiates at it each time it is placed at the table. It is a beautiful one, I can assure you, and one that we all enjoy with him, as a safeguard against his participating too freely of it, as he might be tempted to do, if we did not watch him.”⁴

Cody managed a few breaks in his excessively busy life, particularly in the summers. In July 1906 he had a few days among friends in the Georgian Bay area, Minnicog, Indian Harbour, and Penetang, and in the summer of 1907 he was in Europe, touring England and the Low Countries. Cody had never been a great athlete when in school and university, but he did participate in lawn bowling when the parish established a bowling green behind the church. Occasionally he bowled at other city rinks, and he was sufficiently interested to attend the Dominion Bowling Tournament in 1907, in which some of his parishioners were competing. Probably he got more exercise when he took Maurice, aged 10, to the Toronto Exhibition.

In addition to Sheraton, two other men of some importance in Cody’s career died in this period. John Langtry, the doughty and hard-hitting exponent of the high church position, died in August 1906. Langtry had been the great opponent of the evangelicals in the debates of the 1870s over the Church Association, but his insistence on the authority of Scripture towards the end of his career had made him more acceptable to them. Cody no doubt shared the view of the other evangelicals that Langtry was a vigorous opponent whom they could respect for his honesty and forthrightness. Cody had friendly relations with Langtry, whose parish, St. Luke’s, adjoined St. Paul’s. Cody and Canon Baldwin, another evangelical, were pallbearers at Langtry’s funeral.

T.C. Des Barres, Cody’s old rector, died on September 2, 1907, four months after his formal retirement from St. Paul’s. He had not been able to attend Cody’s induction in May of that year. Cody later referred to him as “one of the most saintly characters I have ever known.” In the 1890s he had exercised an important influence on Cody, and to the end he was a sympathetic supporter. Cody took his funeral and preached the funeral sermon. His notes on the sermon might well have applied to Cody himself. He stressed Des Barres’s long ministry, his friendship with leading evangelicals, and the fact that he was a faithful pastor, a diligent student of the Scriptures, and one who declared “the whole counsel of God” in regard to the Atonement, the New Birth, the Holy Spirit and Christ’s Second Advent.⁵

Cody’s talents as a mediator were enlisted at Wycliffe and Havergal. Miss Knox was again threatening to resign, apparently because of a difference of opinion between herself and S.H. Blake, the chairman of the board. She wrote to Cody, giving him a free hand in the matter: “Do not trouble to answer this, make any moves you like or none. I am ready to run the school on the lines which I believe to be best for it or to go as you and the Directors will.” Cody seems to have resolved the difficulty, since Miss Knox remained as headmistress and wrote in October expressing her gratitude: “It’s good as one’s work goes on to have behind it some of the Trust which makes life worth living.”⁶

Another problem at Wycliffe was more difficult. C.V. Pilcher, a descendent of the Venns, a famous evangelical family, had been appointed to assist Cody in his courses and to teach Greek New Testament. Like other young university professors, fresh out of college, he was a fine scholar but had difficulty in communicating his ideas to his students, particularly the weaker ones. There were rumblings of discontent among the students in 1907, and Cody, who defended Pilcher, had conferences with Principal O’Meara and also with Pilcher. The crisis was apparently resolved, but a year later, in March 1908, a committee of the student body presented a petition demanding that Pilcher’s appointment, a short-term one, should not be renewed. They maintained that as a classical scholar he had “undoubted ability,” but that as a lecturer he was “an absolute failure.”⁷ In spite of his efforts, Cody failed to save his colleague this time. Pilcher retired, officially for reasons of ill health. He returned to the Wycliffe staff in 1916 and became a respected Old Testament scholar. Later he served as Suffragan Bishop of Sydney in Australia.

In the early years of the century, Cody became increasingly involved in the affairs of the Anglican Church in Canada as a whole. It was a period in which the church continued to progress toward a position of autonomy within the Anglican communion. Formation of the General Synod in 1893 had been an important landmark in the emergence of Canadian autonomy, and the church continued to progress through a process marked by successive General Synods in 1896, 1902, 1905, and 1908. The Canadian church produced a hymn book in 1908, “The Book of Common Praise,” and made progress toward the adoption of a Canadian prayer book.

These developments occurred against a background of continuing controversy in the Christian world over evolution, higher criticism, and increasing secularism. The Canadian Churchman and its correspondents showed grave concern that the orthodox position of the church and its clergy should not be destroyed. “The tone of much of the current thought of the present day is either openly hostile or offensively patronizing to the Christian religion,” complained an editorial in 1907. “It is thought by many that science and criticism have undermined the foundations of the Christian Creed. For this reason Christian journals and Christian teachers should show from time to time the strength of the Christian Cause.” The Churchman insisted that clergy whose faith in the traditional beliefs of the church had been undermined by the new intellectual movements should not continue to unsettle their congregations but should withdraw from the ministry.⁸

One notable indication of Christian concern over challenges to the faith was provided by three Anglican bishops in their charges to their synods in June of 1906. Ontario had recently published a high-school geography textbook, and the bishops – Charles Hamilton of Ottawa, W.L. Mills of Ontario, and Arthur Sweatman of Toronto – were concerned with its account of the origins of the earth. Hamilton spoke for much contemporary Anglicanism: “Without at all entering into the discussion of how far the theory of evolution – for it is only a theory – may be true, while it harmonizes with the fundamental laws of human progress, we can all understand its dangerous character when it presumes to tell us that the universe, and this world as part of it, were not the work of a Supreme Being, but the product on the contrary, of chance or accident.”⁹

But the church was already divided over the issue. Some of the Churchman’s correspondents applauded the bishop, but others were more dubious. Herbert Symonds, Cody’s Montreal friend, had a more avant garde outlook and insisted that one could believe in evolution and still be a Christian: “It is tacitly admitted everywhere that a clergyman can be an Evolutionist without forfeiting his reputation of orthodoxy.” “Spectator,” the regular columnist, was critical of the bishops, asserting that the whole question was too deep for synods to consider.¹⁰

Controversies over biblical criticism and evolution tended to draw Anglican high churchmen and evangelicals closer together. The British evangelicals might object to Dr. Pusey’s Tractarianism but they liked his conservative views on the Bible. It was probably John Langtry’s conservative attitude to Scripture that attracted an evangelical like Bishop Carmichael. But as the Toronto episcopal election of 1909 was soon to demonstrate, the older rivalries between high churchmen and evangelicals had by no means disappeared. It was in this situation of challenge and response that Anglican theologians considered the adoption of a Canadian hymn book and a Canadian prayer book.

The movement towards a hymn book began in a formal way when Matthew Wilson, an evangelical from Chatham, Ontario, moved a resolution in the Huron Synod that favoured a new hymn book. Later, in 1896, he got his high church friend John Langtry to present the resolution at the General Synod in Winnipeg, thus bringing the proposal for a hymn book formally before the church. The matter was considered at the General Synods of 1905 at Quebec and 1908 in Ottawa. A committee was set up under the chairmanship of James Edward Jones, a Toronto magistrate and the descendant of a noted clerical family.¹¹ Jones was the strongest spirit behind the movement, and in 1908 the committee secured the permission of General Synod to use the draft hymn book in church services.

To some extent the hymn book movement focused the struggle between the two wings of the church. C.H.P. Owen deplored the influence of evangelical and other conservative elements in the church: “Of course there will be some who will continue to use Moody and Sankey or Ancient and Modern [a British book] as better suited to their tastes than any other.” A.H.R., more evangelical, hoped that some of the Moody and Sankey hymns would be included, particularly in the children’s section.¹²

Cody played an active part in the hymn book movement. He recorded in his diary the sessions on the hymn book at Quebec on September 11 and 12, 1905. In 1908 he was consulted on the issue by Bishop David Williams of Huron, who said that Jones would like to get the book in print as soon as possible.

Cody was regarded by the evangelicals as their principal spokesman in regard to the hymn book. Before the General Synod of 1908 he received some significant letters. The evangelicals objected to three hymns by St. Thomas Aquinas and one by Canon William Bright (of Keble College, Oxford) which they regarded as suggesting the doctrine of transubstantiation. S.H. Blake and W.J. Armitage were particularly determined to remove these hymns. Dyson Hague, who was later regarded as a truculent evangelical, favoured more conciliatory tactics. He wrote to Cody asking him to intervene personally with such high church leaders as Canon F.G. Scott and Bishop A.H. Dunn of Quebec: “Tell them frankly that as a matter of majority the evangelical objection will probably not carry and that the only way in which it can be done properly is for the sake of your brethren and the conscience of the brethren and the peace of the church.” He hoped that Armitage and Blake would not persist “in their policy of extermination.”¹³

Cody accepted Hague’s advice and had “an earnest discussion” with Canon Welch at the General Synod. This prompted a letter from one of the moderate high churchmen, George Forneret of Hamilton, who had been in touch with Welch. Forneret pleaded for a comprehensive hymn book which would satisfy both the high church and evangelical elements. Forneret’s letter was significant in indicating the regard in which Cody was held, even by men who were not evangelicals. Even if one makes allowance for the amenities of polite discussion, Forneret’s remarks are still impressive: “There is no clergyman in Canada for whose character, work, head and heart I have a greater regard than I have for those of the good Rector of St. Paul’s and this makes me have all the more sympathy for the latter in his intellectual and moral difficulty about a few hymns in the proposed Hymnal.”¹⁴

The discussion went on into 1909, but Cody did not succeed in effecting the changes his friends desired. Florence wrote to encourage him in September: “I feel for you stranded among those reactionaries down there,” and later, “I am glad you did such grand work over the Hymn Book. W.J. Armitage was horrified by the new book and exclaimed, “Its acceptance means the death of the Evangelical Cause in Canada.” Blake too disliked the book. In 1910 he was busy organizing some sort of protest, but warned Cody against precipitate action. In the end, the evangelicals decided they could live with the book. N.W. Hoyles wrote to Cody: “My own opinion is strong as to the inexpedience of making any change as things are.” Cody appeared to accept this and there the matter rested.¹⁵

Cody played a more influential part in the movement toward the adoption of a Canadian prayer book, but he became formally associated with discussions only after they had been in progress for some twelve years. The movement had been initiated in the Huron synod in 1896 by the redoubtable Matthew Wilson. He introduced a motion calling on the General Synod to print “a Prayer Book containing all the prayers or other matter framed for the service of the Church of England in Canada.”¹⁶ The result was the General Synod’s proposal to produce not a prayer book but merely an appendix to the English prayer book. After the tortuous history, this idea was finally rejected by the General Synod of 1905. It had too many critics. Dyson Hague, for instance, objected to its English.¹⁷ But the friends of the prayer book would not let the matter die. In 1908 the General Synod set up a “Committee on Prayer Book enrichment and Adaptation.” This was the turning point. From 1908, the adoption of a Canadian prayer book became practical politics.

Cody enters the picture at this point with his appointment as a member of the committee. It was a large and variegated group, including evangelicals (Cody, Armitage, Hague, N.W. Hoyles, and Matthew Wilson) and high churchmen (E.A. Welch, Provost Macklem of Trinity College, and Canon F.G. Scott). The committee was to occupy much of Cody’s attention for the next ten years.

While Cody’s world for the most part continued to be the Anglican Church, there were signs of the political interests which later came to occupy a greater part of his life. He was on formally cordial terms with J.P. Whitney, the premier of Ontario, and with Charles Moss, the chief justice, and he maintained a friendly relationship with Howard Ferguson, now a Tory back-bencher in the Ontario Legislature.

Cody’s other contacts were less directly related to Ontario politics. In January 1907 he met George Parkin, the secretary (technically “the organizing representative”) of the Rhodes Trust. Parkin had been a leading member of the Imperial Federation group in Canada, a group whose views on the Empire Cody largely shared. At a dinner at George Wrong’s in March 1907, Cody met William Wood, the Quebec historian. Among the other guests were B.E. Walker, the Toronto financier, and Edward Kylie, then a rising young man in the history department at the University of Toronto. Cody heard Henri Bourassa, the Quebec nationalist, at the Canadian Club in 1907, and in 1908 in Convocation Hall he heard William Jennings Bryan, the great American free silver advocate.

Cody had many religious contacts beyond the confines of the Anglican Church of Canada. In March 1907 he heard General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, at the Canadian Club. In April he dined at the Grange with a group of university academic and religious leaders, including Maurice Hutton, Nathaniel Burwash (president of Victoria), T.R. O’Meara of Wycliffe, and H.T. Duckworth, professor of Greek at Trinity. In September he heard the Bishop of London, Winnington-Ingram, at the Canadian Club. Sir Wilfrid Grenfell, the famous Labrador missionary, preached at St. Paul’s in 1909. Cody corresponded with John R. Mott, the leader and organizer of the Student Volunteer Movement, and later was a principal speaker at the Student Volunteer Convention organized by Mott in Cleveland.

For a time in 1906–1907 Cody had a fair chance of being appointed president of the University of Toronto, in succession to President James Loudon. Presidents at the university were nominated by the board of governors and appointed by the Ontario government. The search committee set up by the board in June 1906 included three of Cody’s associates on the royal commission of 1905–1906: B.E. Walker, Joseph Flavelle, and Goldwin Smith.¹⁸ Cody had strong support among the alumni and his name was put forward by John D. Swanson of Kamloops, who emphasized Cody’s fine scholastic record at the university and the role he had played in the abolition of hazing. He described Cody as “a young man of honest Canadian stock, who has made his own way unaided to the highest honours in the gift of the University.” Swanson further asserted that “his life and influence have been to many University men of his time a very wholesome memory.”

Howard Ferguson tried to persuade Premier Whitney that Cody should be appointed: “I attended college with Cody and have known him intimately for a number of years. He possesses the brains, culture and executive capacity to do the position great credit.”¹⁹ But Whitney demurred. He professed great respect for Cody but thought he would not be “ugly” enough for the post, which, Whitney thought, demanded something of an “intellectual tyrant.” The premier no doubt recalled the stormy course of university politics under Loudon and did not want it repeated.

The search committee was flooded with recommendations, eightyfive altogether. By January 1907 the committee had narrowed the list to four: Cody; Robert Falconer, the principal of Pine Hill College in Halifax; Michael Sadler, an English educator; and A. Ross Hill, the dean of Teachers’ College, University of Missouri. Falconer was strongly supported by J.A. Macdonald, the managing editor of the Globe. Macdonald, a member of the Search Committee, had visited Falconer at Pine Hill in 1905 and later had talked to him at a meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. The presidency was offered to Michael Sadler, who declined it in March 1907.

Blake was indignant about a leak to the press in February about the negotiations in regard to the presidency. He was even more indignant about the proposal to make public the discussions at the board meeting of April 25. Unable to attend the meeting, he wrote to Walker complaining that private communications were to be made public “in an offensive manner.” He continued, “We lose the feature of a calm deliberative assembly and enter the region of advocates for a particular candidate or mode of dealing in advance.”²⁰ But Blake’s complaints did not affect the course of the negotiations. Falconer, who had been unofficially ranked ahead of Cody on the short list of four, was offered the presidency after the board meeting on April 25. He accepted on June 14.

Cody lost out because of Falconer’s many qualifications, well described by his biographer, James G. Greenlee. There had been a division of opinion in the university community over whether to appoint a local man or someone outside the province. The outsider won out. According to Cody’s friend Bishop White, “recent adjustments in the University set-up made it advisable to seek a President from outside the Province.”²¹