much for the pattern of Cody’s university life. It remains to consider the broad areas of thought that occupied the university (and Cody) in this period. It was a time of intellectual ferment in the fields of politics, economics, and social development. There were signs of burgeoning Canadian nationalism, but the most obvious struggle was between those who saw Canada’s destiny as lying in close association with the United States (Goldwin Smith, Sir Richard Cartwright) and those who saw Canada’s destiny as lying within the British Empire (Macdonald, Sir George Parkin, D’Alton McCarthy, G.M. Grant, the Imperial Federation League). These latter saw no conflict between Canadian ambition and the British connection. They were Britons who were living in North America and were developing a unique culture, different from that of the mother country. Many of them regarded the United States as a money-grubbing, godless outfit. In the 1880s the National Policy was encountering opposition from western free traders, disgruntled labour people, and others. French ultramontanism (bishops Bourget and Laflèche) was regarded in Ontario as an alarming attempt to promote French Catholic culture in the West. The North-West Rebellion of 1885 widened the breach between French and English. It was a time when many kinds of reform were being demanded: prohibition, more rights for women, cleansing of municipal politics.
Cody took an active interest in politics during his university career. He was a member of the Political Science Club and attended many debates on subjects of public importance, sometimes at the university but more often in the city. He attended debates in Convocation Hall on such resolutions as “The present union among the provinces of Canada is not likely to be permanent” (October 30, 1885); “It would be to the advantage of Canada to substitute for responsible government a system similar to the U.S.” (December 4, 1885); “Canada should foster a military spirit” (November 9, 1888); and “The policy adopted by Great Britain towards the French Canadians has been conducive to the best interests of Canada” (December 14, 1888).
During the federal election of 1887, Cody attended a Tory meeting on February 12, at which the principal speaker was the Hon. Thomas White, the minister of the interior. On election night, he went downtown to hear the results of the election, another Tory victory. On January 25, 1888, he saw Sir Alexander Campbell, the lieutenant-governor, open the session of the Ontario Legislature.
Many political meetings concerned Irish Home Rule. Cody heard Michael Davitt and Justin McCarthy as well as Dr. Aubrey, “the defeated Gladstone candidate in Hackney.” On May 14, 1887, he attended a meeting called to oppose the activities of an Irish activist who was visiting Canada.
Cody found the pro-British and other sentiments of the Conservatives congenial, but his most immediate concerns were in the fields of religion and philosophy. For the most part, the theology of the churches with which he had been in contact was orthodox and conservative. Canada, however, was beginning to feel the impact of forces emerging in Europe, particularly in Germany, as well as in Great Britain and the United States. The challenge to orthodox Christianity initiated by the biologists and the biblical critics was under way in Great Britain, as evidenced by major publications in the period: Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859); Essays and Reviews, published by a group of biblical scholars in 1860; A.R. Wallace’s Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870); Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871); and Driver’s Israel Life and Times (1888).
Literary skepticism was also a challenge to orthodox Christianity. Matthew Arnold, who regarded the Old Testament as poetry, published Literature and Dogma in 1873 and God and the Bible in 1873. J.S. Mill presented a picture of himself as a rational unbeliever (Autobiography [1875]), and Leslie Stephen published Freethinking and Plainspeaking in 1873.
Meanwhile, Conservative theologians defended the orthodox interpretation of Christianity. Brooke Foss Westcott published the Revelation of the Risen Lord in 1883 and Alfred Edersheim, a converted rabbi, the Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah in 1885.
In Canada the theologians and philosophers attempted an accommodation between the scientists and biblical critics on the one hand and traditional Christians on the other. Principal G.M. Grant of Queen’s University pleaded for a fair consideration of the scientists and biblical critics.11 Idealist philosophers such as John Watson of Queen’s attempted to preserve the ethics of Christianity while questioning its supernatural basis. Clarke Murray, the McGill philosopher, shared his ethical idealism.
Cody was brought in touch with ethical idealism by the professor for whom he had the highest admiration, George Paxton Young. Young was a former Presbyterian minister whose philosophic development had by 1864 made it impossible for him to give to the Westminster Confession “the sort of assent expected by the Presbyterian Church.” In 1871 he had been appointed to the chair of logic, metaphysics and ethics in University College. Young, a bearded and venerable presence, was a popular lecturer. His message reassured a generation perplexed by the challenge of science to Christianity, helping them to see that it was possible to lead a moral and satisfying life without necessarily accepting the supernatural aspects of Christianity. The Ethics of Freedom, a volume based on Young’s lectures, is an illuminating indication of his ideas on the moral standard.12 He declared that man’s chief good was “the realization of the moral ideal.” Man’s knowledge of the moral ideal, he argued, would always be imperfect, but the ideal could be known “insofar as the moral nature has unfolded itself and there exhibited the capabilities that are in it.” It was the function of conscience to reveal to man the moral law. Thus, Young attributed to the moral law an authority which Christians had accorded the Scriptures and the church.
Cody was one of Young’s brightest pupils. Not only did he sit at the feet of the Master in his lectures, he also went to tea at his home. It was Cody who drew up a testimonial the students presented to Young on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Cody was one of the guard of honour who stood beside Young’s coffin at his funeral in 1889. Years afterwards in an interview with the Toronto News, he recalled that Young had “left his mark on every man who ever sat under him. Not so much for the particular philosophy that he taught as for his power of inspiring thought and his love of truth before all things.”13
In 1950 Cody told John Irving, who was making a study of early Canadian philosophers, that Young “was held in real reverence by all the students. We had a feeling that here was a man at the very antithesis to the materialist, that here was a man who behaved in the dominance of the intellectual and the spiritual. We always had the impression that he was the typical seeker after truth.”14
One cannot avoid speculation as to the nature of Young’s influence on Cody. He was obviously impressed by Young at the time, but Young can scarcely have effected a lasting influence on Cody’s thinking. There was an obvious conflict between Young’s ethical idealism and the evangelical beliefs which constituted Cody’s position in early manhood. What he retained was an admiration for Young as a fervent seeker of truth.
While Cody was hearing the message of ethical idealism he was also being brought in touch with more orthodox Christian influences. Like some more recent university students, he attended a wide variety of churches, hearing sermons by the local clergy as well as by visiting preachers from Britain and the United States. He concentrated on Anglican churches, particularly the evangelical ones (St. Paul’s, the Church of the Redeemer, St. Philip’s, St. Peter’s), but he also attended other churches (Central Presbyterian, St. Andrew’s, Zion Congregational, Elm Street Methodist).
What proved to be the dominant influence in Cody’s career was the close connection he established in this period with the Wycliffe community and its principal, James Paterson Sheraton. Wycliffe, an Anglican theological college, had been established by a group of Anglican evangelicals in 1877, despite the opposition of Neil Bethune, the Bishop of Toronto. It had since become the centre of the evangelical community in the university and in the Diocese of Toronto. Sheraton gave it strong leadership until his death in 1906.
Cody’s connection with Wycliffe
