Loyalists’ Centennial Souvenir - 1887 - p17

Year
1887
Article Title
n. t.
Author
Mr. J. W. Lawrence
Page Number
17
Article Type
Language
Article Contents
the President of the New Brunswick Historical Society, then addressed the meeting. He said: "We are now in the last hour of the century, to fill up the last page in the last chapter of New Brunswick's first hundred years, and where a more fitting place than the highest spot in the city which was founded by the Loyalists; where a more fitting place than in the last ecclesiastical structure erected in the century? As the first act of the Loyalists on landing was prayer and praise, it is fitting, in this closing hour, that we should think of the loving kindness of the Lord in the midst of His temple. Their first act of worship upon landing was in the great temple of nature, whose maker and builder is God, with the heavens for a canopy, and the trees of the forest — the spruce, the fir, and the pine—for its walls and buttresses. The prayer for the Queen to-night recalls the days of GEORGE III, her grandfather; if he had only had her wisdom, and had taken the counsel of a Chatham instead of a North, in place of the two flags which now float over this continent there would have been only one — the standard of Britain. The presence of the American Consul and the Rev. Mr. HOLBROOK (acting for my friend, the Rev. GEORGE ARMSTRONG), and the salutation to the British flag at Yorktown some eighteen months ago, show that the two flags now float peacefully together. May we always continue to dwell together in the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace." Mr. Lawrence went on to speak of many interesting facts in connection with the early history of St. John, but as they were an epitome of themselves, it is impossible to do them justice in the limited space at our disposal.