WILLIAM BLACK'S VISIT IN 1791

William Black's journal, discussed sufficiently in the historical introduction, is remarkable for its balance of emotion and reason. The fact that Black was able to hold both qualities in tension demonstrates his leadership role in British American Methodism. All the more striking, however, is the lack of any missionary activity as a follow-up to his revivalist tour. The subsequent course of Newfoundland Methodism was directed from England, and only after the middle of the nineteenth century did Methodism forge new links with mainland Canada. These links were important in that they created a Canadian mind set out of which not only the legal change, in 1925, of joining the United Church of Canada can be explained, but also the support that the confederation campaign received from United Church supporters in 1948. Foremost among the champions for confederation were the province's first "unreconstructed Methodist" premier Joey Smallwood and the Reverend Lester Burry, Labrador delegate in the National Convention and later the president of the Newfoundland Conference of the United Church. Without this support and prior links with Canada, Newfoundland might not have joined Canada in 1949.

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