Daily Inspiration Quote by John Strachan

The line carries the cool urgency of a man doing pastoral triage on a frontier. Strachan isn’t simply lamenting a lack of buildings; he’s naming an emergency of infrastructure and authority. “Scattered settlements” does double duty: it describes geography while implying social drift, a population dispersed enough to slip beyond institutional reach. When he says schools and churches are “of necessity for many years few,” he appeals to realism, but also quietly asks for patience, funding, and centralized planning. The phrase “of necessity” is a pre-emptive defense against critics: don’t blame the Church (or its leaders) for the vacuum; blame distance, scarcity, the conditions of settlement.

Then comes the rhetorical pressure point: “multitudes…are growing up in great ignorance.” “Multitudes” amplifies the stakes, turning a local administrative problem into a looming moral and political one. “Ignorance” here isn’t neutral. In Strachan’s clerical worldview, ignorance is spiritual vulnerability, civic instability, and a threat to orderly hierarchy. Education and worship aren’t presented as optional goods; they’re the mechanisms by which a diocese produces disciplined subjects and coherent communities.

Context matters: early 19th-century British North America (especially Upper Canada) was anxious about identity, loyalty, and social cohesion in a rapidly expanding colony. Strachan, a key Anglican power broker, used the language of care to argue for institutional expansion. Beneath the pastoral concern is a blueprint: build the church-school network or watch the colony grow up untutored, ungovernable, and, implicitly, susceptible to rival denominations and political dissent.