Daily Reading for December 22 • Charlotte Diggs (Lottie) Moon, Missionary in China, 1912, and Henry Budd, Priest, 1875
Bishop Anderson, the first Bishop of Rupert’s Land, visited The Pas in 1850, and on that occasion decided to admit Mr. Budd to Holy Orders. After his ordination to the Diaconate and subsequently to the Priesthood, Mr. Budd remained at The Pas, assisting Mr. Hunter in the work of the district. When Mr. Hunter left in 1854, Mr. Budd resumed the charge of the mission, and he remained at The Pas until the summer of 1857, when he was appointed to open a new mission at Fort a la Corne, with the view of teaching the Indians of the Plains. He laboured at La Corne, or the Nepowewin Mission, as it was called, until the summer of 1867, when he was recalled to the charge of The Pas Mission. His work ended in 1875, and on the 5th of April of that year, he was laid to rest among the people whom he had been instrumental in bringing to the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. He was taken away while still in the full vigour of life and quite equal to his work. His loss was keenly felt by The Pas Indians. Some time after his death, the writer of this sketch remarked to an elderly Christian Indian: “You must have been very sorry when Mr. Budd was taken away?” “Sorry,” said the man, “does not express what we felt. My own father died some years ago, but when Mr. Budd died, I felt for the first time what it meant to be an orphan.”
Mr. Budd was a man of fine appearance. He was above the average height and well proportioned. He never had the advantage of a college education, there was no institution for higher learning in his young days, but he made good use of such opportunities as he had, and he was fortunate in being associated with Mr. Hunter, who was a scholarly man and a diligent reader. He helped Mr. Budd in preparing for ordination, and Mr. Budd helped him in acquiring the Cree language and in his translations.
Mr. Budd’s ministrations were almost altogether confined to the Indians, and he rarely preached in English, but he was a good English scholar. He was ready in conversation and he was a good letter writer. In the Cree language, in which he ministered to the Indians, he could hardly be excelled. He was a fluent and forcible preacher and he was gifted with a strong but mellow voice. He was an able minister of the New Testament. . . .
In his ministrations in the Church, Mr. Budd carried out the same principle of care and method which he observed in secular work, and which in the services of the church make for reverence. The services as conducted in Cree, were the simple prayer book service, efficiently and properly rendered, for he himself had a hand in the translation of the prayer book, and he followed the Apostolic precept: “Let all things be done decently and in order.”
From a biography of Henry Budd by Archdeacon Mackay, D.D., in Leaders of the Canadian Church, edited by Canon Bertal Heeney, volume two (Toronto: Musson, 1920). Found at http://anglicanhistory.org/canada/bheeney/2/3.html