Evangelical Balance Sheet: Character, Family, and Business in Mid-Victorian Nova Scotia

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review, an instructor of
Liturgy in the Anglican Studies Program at Regent College, Vancouver,
and pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Hope, B.C.

The Victorian age was a time of change. The economy became
international, no longer regional or even national. The middle class
emerged as a potent political force. A new wave of evangelical pietism
began to shape the society of the new Canada. Political liberalism
brought about the emergence of self-conscious individualism. Evangelical
Balance Sheet uses the personal diaries of Norman Rudolf to show how all
these emerging forces and ideologies helped shape the life of one Nova
Scotia man.

Born in Lunenburg in 1835, Rudolf moved to Pictou in 1853 to work as a
clerk for Primrose Sons, a shipping and banking firm run by the
entrepreneur James Primrose. By the time Rudolf began his diaries in
February 1862, he was junior partner in the firm and the married father
of an infant daughter. His diaries ended in Liverpool, England, shortly
before his death in December 1886. Anne Wood has combed these diaries
carefully to note how Rudolf’s evangelical (and Anglican, for most of
his life) Christian faith influenced his career, his family life, and
his participation in the religious and political life of the community.
To do this Wood provides the reader with a wealth of background material
on trends, events, and conflicts in church, education, the business
world, and government. To draw these many threads together, she uses the
Victorian concept of “character,” a self-reflective attempt to make
a mark on society, on one’s occupation, and on one’s family.
Rudolf’s diaries were his ongoing personal reflections on himself and
others around him so that he could learn how to mould his own character
to achieve these ends.

Wood’s book is a pleasure to read. It begins with a “List of
Persons,” four pages that the reader can use repeatedly to keep the
many characters straight in the mind. The author carefully footnotes
references to the great variety of sources she has used to provide the
wealth of background material. But most of all she helps the reader
understand how Rudolf’s faith-based world view helped him deal with
the many rapid social, political, and economic changes of the second
half of the 19th century.