FOOTNOTES:[A]This was published in 1845.[B]See Wentworth’s Colony of New South Wales, second edition, 1820.
FOOTNOTES:
[A]This was published in 1845.
[A]This was published in 1845.
[B]See Wentworth’s Colony of New South Wales, second edition, 1820.
[B]See Wentworth’s Colony of New South Wales, second edition, 1820.
Mr. Marsden appointed to the Magistracy—Objections to this considered—Cultivates Land—Charge of Secularity considered—His connexion with the London Missionary Society, and care of its Polynesian Mission—Revisits England in 1807.
Mr. Marsden appointed to the Magistracy—Objections to this considered—Cultivates Land—Charge of Secularity considered—His connexion with the London Missionary Society, and care of its Polynesian Mission—Revisits England in 1807.
The retirement of the senior chaplain left Mr. Marsden in sole charge of the spiritual concerns of the infant colony. He had now to officiate at the three settlements of Sydney, Paramatta, and Hawkesbury without assistance. The nature of the population, consisting as it did of a mass of criminals, rendered his ministerial labours peculiarly distressing. The state of morals was utterly depraved; oaths and ribaldry, and audacious lying were universal; marriage, and the sacred ties of domestic life, were almost unknown, and those who, from their station, should have set an example to the convicts and settlers, encouraged sin in others by the effrontery of their own transgressions. Under discouragement such as would have subdued the spirit of most men, did he, for the long period of fourteen years, continue at his post; cheered it is true with occasional gleams of success, but upon the whole rather a witness against abounding vice, than, at present, a successful evangelist. Nor were domestic trials wanting to complete that process of salutary discipline by which “the great Shepherd of the sheep” was preparing his servant for other and wider scenes of labour, and for triumphs greater than the church in these later days had known. His firstborn son, a lovely and promising child scarcely twoyears old, was thrown from its mother’s arms by a sudden jerk of the gig in which they were seated, and killed upon the spot. It would be impossible to describe the agonized feelings of the mother under such a bereavement, nor were the sorrows of the father less profound. He received the tidings, together with the body of his lifeless boy, we are told, with “calm, and even dignified submission,” for “he was a man who said little though he felt much.” A second stroke, still more painful, was to follow. Mrs. Marsden, determined not to hazard the safety of another child, left her babe at home in charge of a domestic while she drove out. But her very precaution was the occasion of his death: the little creature strayed into the kitchen unobserved, fell backwards into a pan of boiling water, and its death followed soon after. Thus early in his ministerial career the iron entered his own soul, and taught him that sympathy for the wounded spirit which marked his character through life.
DISTANT VIEW OF SYDNEYDISTANT VIEW OF SYDNEY
But from these scenes of private suffering we must turn aside. The public life and ministerial labours of Mr. Marsden require our attention; and as we enter upon the review of them we must notice two circumstances which from the very outset of his career exposed him to frequent suspicion and obloquy, both in the colony and at home, and formed in fact the chief materials, so to speak, out of which his opponents wove the calumnies with which they harassed the greater portion of his life.
He had scarcely arrived at his post when he was appointed a colonial magistrate. Under ordinary circumstances, we should condemn in the strongest manner the union of functions so obviously incompatible as those of the Christian minister and the civil judge. To use the words of a great living authority on judicial questions, a late lord chancellor,[C]“it is the union of two noble offices to the detriment of both.” Yet it seems in the case before us, that the office was forced upon Mr. Marsden, not as a complimentary distinction, but as one of the stern duties of his position as a colonial chaplain, who was bound to maintain the authority of the law amidst a population of lawless and dangerous men. Port Jackson, or Botany Bay as it was generally called, was then and long afterwards merely a penal settlement. The governor was absolute, and the discipline he enforced was, perhaps of necessity, harsh and rigid. Resistance to the law and its administrators was of daily occurrence; life and property were always insecure, and even armed rebellion sometimes broke out. If the government thought it necessary, for the safety of this extraordinary community, to select a minister of the gospel to fill the office of a magistrate, he had no alternative but to submit, or else to resign his chaplaincy and return home. Mr. Marsden chose to remain; moved by the hope of being able to infuse something of the spirit of the gospel into the administration of justice, and to introduce far higher principles than those which he saw prevailing amongst the magistrates themselves. In both of these objects he succeeded to an eminent extent, though not till after the lapse of years, and a remonstrance carried by himself in person to the government at home. Justice was dealt even to the greatest criminals more fairly, and the bench of magistrates grew at length ashamed, in the presence of the chaplain of Paramatta, of its ownhitherto unabashed licentiousness. But the cost was great. He was involved in secular business from day to day, and that often of the most painful kind. His equal-handed justice made him a host of personal enemies in those whose vices he punished; and, still more, in those whose corrupt and partial administration of the law was rebuked by the example of his integrity. In the share he was obliged to take in the civil affairs of the colony differences of opinion would naturally arise, and angry feelings would, as usual follow. Of course he was not free from human infirmity, his own temper was sometimes disturbed. Thus for years, especially during his early residence in New South Wales, he was in frequent collision with the magistrates, and occasionally even with the governor. Again and again he would have resigned his commission, but was not allowed to do so; meanwhile his mind was often distracted and his character maligned. To these trials we shall be obliged to refer as we trace his steps through life; but we mean to do so as seldom as we can, for the subject is painful, and, since few men can ever be placed in his circumstances, to most of us unprofitable.
Another point on which Mr. Marsden’s conduct has been severely, and yet most unjustly blamed, is that he was engaged in the cultivation of a considerable tract of land. Avarice and secularity were roundly charged upon him in consequence; for it was his painful lot through life to be incessantly accused not only of failings of which he was quite guiltless, but of those which were the most opposite to his real character. A more purely disinterested and unselfish man perhaps never lived. One who under the constant disturbance of every kind of business andemployment, still “walked” more “humbly with his God,” is not often to be found. Yet the cry once raised against him was never hushed; until at length, having rung in his ears through life, as a warning to him, no doubt, even in his brightest moments of success, that he should “cease from man,” it was suddenly put to shame at last and buried with him in his grave.
The circumstances were these: When he arrived in the colony, in the beginning of 1794, it was yet but six years old. The cultivation of land had scarcely begun; it was therefore dependent on supplies of food from home, and was often reduced to the brink of famine. One cask of meat was all that the king’s stores contained when Mr. Marsden first landed on those shores from which the produce of the most magnificent flocks and herds the world has ever pastured was afterwards to be shipped. Governor Phillip, as we have seen, had laid the foundation of the colony amid scenes of difficulty and trial which it is fearful to contemplate. In September, 1795, Captain Hunter arrived, and following in the steps of his predecessor, exerted himself in clearing land and bringing it under cultivation. To effect this he made a grant to every officer, civil and military, of one hundred acres, and allowed each thirteen convicts as servants to assist in bringing it into order. Mr. Marsden availed himself of the grant, and his farm soon exhibited those marks of superior management which might have been looked for by all who were acquainted with the energy of his character and his love of rural pursuits. Where land was to be had on such easy terms, it was not to be desired or expected that he should be limited to the original grant. He soon possessed an estate of several hundred acres—the model farm of New South Wales;—and, let it not be forgotten, the source from whence those supplies were drawn which fed the infant missions of the Southern Seas, while at the same time they helped their generous owner to support many a benevolent institution in his own parish and neighbourhood. Years afterwards he was induced to print a pamphlet in justification of his conduct in this as well as other particulars on which it was assailed; and as we copy an extract from it, our feeling is one of shame and sorrow that it should ever have been required. He says, “I did not consider myself in the same situation, in a temporal point of view, in this colony as a clergyman in England. My situation at that period would bear no such comparison. A clergyman in England lives in the very bosom of his friends; his comforts and conveniences are all within his reach, and he has nothing to do but to feed his flock. On the contrary, I entered a country which was in a state of nature, and was obliged to plant and sow or starve. It was not from inclination that my colleague and I took the axe, the spade, and the hoe: we could not, from our situation, help ourselves by any other means, and we thought it no disgrace to labour. St. Paul’s own hands ministered to his necessities in a cultivated nation, and our hands ministered to our wants in an uncultivated one. If this be cast upon me as a shame and a reproach, I cheerfully bear it, for the remembrance never gives me any cause of reproach or remorse.” Monsieur Perron, a commander sent out by the French government to search for the unfortunate La Perouse (who had recently perished in an exploratory voyage to the islands of the South Pacific), visited Mr. Marsden’s farm in 1802,and records, with the generous admiration his countrymen have never withheld from English enterprise and industry, his astonishment and delight. “No longer,” he exclaims, “than eight years ago, the whole of this spot was covered with immense and useless forests; what pains, what exertions must have been employed! These roads, these pastures, these fields, these harvests, these orchards, these flocks, the work of eight years!” And his admiration of the scene was not greater than his reverence for its owner, “who,” he adds, “while he thus laboured in his various important avocations was not unmindful of the interests of others. He generously interfered in behalf of the poorer settlers in their distresses, established schools for their children, and often relieved their necessities; and to the unhappy culprits, whom the justice of their offended country had banished from their native soil, he administered alternately exhortation and comfort.”
Indeed, it would be no easy task to enumerate all the schemes of social, moral, and spiritual enterprise upon which Mr. Marsden was now employed, and into all of which he appears to have thrown a force and energy which is generally reserved, even by the zealous philanthropist, for some one favoured project. Thus the state of the female convicts, at a very early period, especially attracted his attention. Their forlorn condition, their frightful immoralities—the almost necessary consequence of the gross neglect which exposed them to temptation, or rather thrust them into sin—pressed heavily upon him, and formed the subject of many solemn remonstrances, first to the authorities abroad, and when these were unheeded, to the government at home. The wrongs of the aborigines, theirheathenism, and their savage state, with all its attendant miseries and hopeless prospects in eternity, sank into his heart; and under his care a school arose at Paramatta for their children. The scheme, as we shall explain hereafter, was not successful; but at least it will be admitted “he did well that it was in” his “heart.” He was often consulted by the successive governors on questions of difficulty and importance, and gave his advice with respect, but at the same time with honest courage. Amusing anecdotes are told of some of their interviews. A misunderstanding had occurred between Governor King and himself, which did not, however, prevent the governor from asking his advice. Mr. Marsden was allowed to make his own terms, which were that he should consider Governor King as a private individual, and as such address him. Much to his credit, the governor consented. Mr. Marsden then locked the door, and in plain and forcible terms explained toCaptainKing the faults, as he conceived, ofGovernorKing’s administration. They separated on the most friendly terms; and if we admire the courage of the chaplain, we must not overlook the self-command and forbearance of the governor. With a dash of eccentricity the affair was honourable to both parties.
Another instance of Mr. Marsden’s ready tact and self-possession may be mentioned. Governor King, who possessed, by virtue of his office, the most absolute power, was not only eccentric but somewhat choleric. On one occasion, when Mr. Marsden was present, a violent dispute arose between the governor and the commissary-general. Mr. Marsden not being at liberty to leave the room, retired to a window, determined not to be a witness of the coming storm. Thegovernor, in his heat, pushed or collared the commissary, who in return, pushed or struck the governor. His excellency, indignant at the insult, called to the chaplain, “Do you see that, sir!” “Indeed, sir,” replied Mr. M., “I seenothing,”—dwelling with jocular emphasis on the word see. Thus good humour was immediately restored, and the grave and even treasonable offence of striking the representative of the sovereign was forgotten. These trifling circumstances are worth relating, not only in illustration of Mr. Marsden’s character, but of the history of the earlier days of the colony.
But graver duties had already devolved upon him. Amongst the unpublished manuscripts of the London Missionary Society, there is one document of singular interest, in connexion with the name of Samuel Marsden. It is a memorandum of seventeen folio pages on the state and prospects of their missions to Tahiti and the islands in the South Seas, dated “Paramatta, 30th January, 1801,” and “read before the committee” in London—such was the slow, uncertain communication fifty years ago with a colony now brought within sixty days’ sail of England—“on the 19th of April, 1802.” Foremost in the literature of another generation will stand those treasures which slumber, for the most part unvalued and undisturbed, on the shelves of our missionary houses. For men will surely one day inquire, with an interest similar to that with which we read of the conversion of Britain in the dim light of Ingulphus and the Saxon Chronicle, or the venerable Bede, how distant islands were first evangelized, and through what sorrows, errors, and reverses, the first missionary fought his way to victory in continents and islands of the southern hemisphere.And of these, the document which now lies before us will be esteemed as inferior to none in calm and practical wisdom, in piety, or in ardent zeal tempered with discretion.
The circumstances which called it forth were these. The Tahitian mission, the first great effort of the London Missionary Society, and indeed the first Protestant mission, with perhaps one exception,[D]to savage tribes, had hitherto disappointed the sanguine expectations of its promoters. We trust we shall not be thought to make a display of that cheap wisdom which consists in blaming the failures of which the causes were not seen until the catastrophe had occurred, if we say that, great and truly magnificent as the project was, it carried within itself the elements of its own humiliation. The faith and zeal of its founders were beyond all human praise; but in the wisdom which results from experience, they were of course deficient. “To attempt great things, and to expect great things,” was their motto; but they did not appreciate the difficulties of the enterprise; nor did they duly estimate the depth of the depravity of the savage heart and mind. Dr. Haweis, a London clergyman of great piety and note in those days, preached before the Society when the first missionary ship, the Duff, was about to sail. He described to his delighted audience the romantic beauty and grandeur of the islands which lie like emeralds upon the calm bosom of the Southern Ocean, and anticipated their immediate conversion as soon as they should hear the first glad tidings of the gospel. The ship sailed from theTower wharf, with flags flying and banners streaming, as if returning from a triumph, amidst the cheers of the spectators. Amongst the crowd there stood a venerable minister of Christ, leaning upon the arm of one who still survives—himself a veteran in the service of his Lord. As they turned slowly away from the exciting scene, the aged minister mournfully exclaimed, “I am afraid it will not succeed: there is too much of man in it.” His words were prophetic; for nearly twenty years no success followed, but one sweeping tide of disappointment and disaster;[E]till, at length, when, humbled and dejected, about the year 1814, the missionaries, as well as the Society at home, in despair had almost resolved to abandon the station, the work of God appeared in the conversion of the king of Tahiti; and with a rapidity to be compared only to the long, cheerless, period in which they had “laboured in vain, and spent their strength for nought,” the missionaries beheld not only Tahiti, but the adjacent islands transformed into Christian lands.
It was in the midst of these disasters that Mr. Marsden was consulted, and wrote the memorandum to which we have referred. If in some places he seems to lay too great stress upon what may appear to the reader prudential considerations of inferior importance, let us remind him that on these very points the missionaries had betrayed their weakness. Their own quarrels and even the gross misconduct of some few amongst them, were not less painful to the church at home than their want of success.
We make a few extracts:
“... The first and principal object for the consideration of the directors is to select men properly qualified for the mission; unless persons equal to the task are sent out nothing can be done. It may be asked, who are proper persons, and what are the requisite qualifications? To the question I would reply in general terms. A missionary should be a man of real sound piety, and well acquainted with the depravity of the human heart, as well as experimental religion; he should not be a novice; he should not only be a good man in the strictest sense of the word, but also well informed, not taken from the dregs of the common people, but possessed of some education, and liberal sentiments. He should rather be of a lively active turn of mind than gloomy and heavy. A gloomy ignorant clown will be disgusting even to savages, and excite their contempt. The more easy and affable a missionary is in his address, the more easily will he obtain the confidence and good opinion of the heathen.“In my opinion a man of a melancholy habit is altogether unqualified for a missionary; he will never be able to sustain the hardships attending his situation, nay, he will magnify his dangers and difficulties and make them greater than what in reality they may be. A missionary, were I to define his character, should be a pious good man, should be well acquainted with mankind, should possess some education, should be easy in address, and of an active turn. Some of the missionaries who have come to this colony, are the opposite character to the above. They are totally ignorant of mankind, they possess no education, they are clowns in their manners. If the directors are determined to establish a mission in these Islands there is another object to be attendedto; they must send out a sufficient body and furnish them with the means of self-defence. Unless the missionaries are able to protect themselves from the violence of the natives, they will be in constant danger of being cut off by them. Their lives, if unprotected by their own strength, will hang sometimes perhaps upon the fate of a single battle between two contending chiefs. Can any idea be more distressing than for the lives of a few defenceless missionaries to depend upon the sudden whim or turn of an enraged savage, without the means of self-defence? See them driven, in order to escape the savage fury of the natives, into holes and caverns of the rocks, suffering every hardship that nature can bear from hunger, toil, and anxiety, without so much as the prospect of relief in time of danger from Europe, or accomplishing in the smallest degree the object of the mission. Yet this must and will be the case, unless the missionaries are furnished with the means of self-defence, and are able to convince the natives of their superiority in point of skill and protection.”
“... The first and principal object for the consideration of the directors is to select men properly qualified for the mission; unless persons equal to the task are sent out nothing can be done. It may be asked, who are proper persons, and what are the requisite qualifications? To the question I would reply in general terms. A missionary should be a man of real sound piety, and well acquainted with the depravity of the human heart, as well as experimental religion; he should not be a novice; he should not only be a good man in the strictest sense of the word, but also well informed, not taken from the dregs of the common people, but possessed of some education, and liberal sentiments. He should rather be of a lively active turn of mind than gloomy and heavy. A gloomy ignorant clown will be disgusting even to savages, and excite their contempt. The more easy and affable a missionary is in his address, the more easily will he obtain the confidence and good opinion of the heathen.
“In my opinion a man of a melancholy habit is altogether unqualified for a missionary; he will never be able to sustain the hardships attending his situation, nay, he will magnify his dangers and difficulties and make them greater than what in reality they may be. A missionary, were I to define his character, should be a pious good man, should be well acquainted with mankind, should possess some education, should be easy in address, and of an active turn. Some of the missionaries who have come to this colony, are the opposite character to the above. They are totally ignorant of mankind, they possess no education, they are clowns in their manners. If the directors are determined to establish a mission in these Islands there is another object to be attendedto; they must send out a sufficient body and furnish them with the means of self-defence. Unless the missionaries are able to protect themselves from the violence of the natives, they will be in constant danger of being cut off by them. Their lives, if unprotected by their own strength, will hang sometimes perhaps upon the fate of a single battle between two contending chiefs. Can any idea be more distressing than for the lives of a few defenceless missionaries to depend upon the sudden whim or turn of an enraged savage, without the means of self-defence? See them driven, in order to escape the savage fury of the natives, into holes and caverns of the rocks, suffering every hardship that nature can bear from hunger, toil, and anxiety, without so much as the prospect of relief in time of danger from Europe, or accomplishing in the smallest degree the object of the mission. Yet this must and will be the case, unless the missionaries are furnished with the means of self-defence, and are able to convince the natives of their superiority in point of skill and protection.”
Many will condemn this counsel. Nor do we feel bound to justify it to the letter. A reasonable degree of caution in avoiding danger, and under great emergency in preparing measures for self-defence, may be allowed even to the missionary. Yet experience shows that his safety chiefly lies in cultivating and exhibiting the spirit of Him who “suffered the just for the unjust,” and “when led as a lamb to the slaughter, yet opened not his mouth.”
Various prudential hints follow, on marriage and other delicate subjects. The reader will smile to learn that fifty years ago it was a question at missionary boards whether married men were not disqualified for missionary work. It was argued that their wives would be exposed to ill-usage from the natives, and that they themselves would be diverted by the anxieties or the comforts of home from their proper calling. Mr. Marsden combats both of these objections. “It appears to me that a married woman, coming along with her husband in the mission, would have no extraordinary dangers to apprehend from the natives, and would, if a prudent woman, prove the greatest comfort and protection to her husband, sweeten his toils and sustain his burdens.” Beyond this even Mr. Marsden’s views did not yet extend. The time had not yet come when experience should drive the friends of missions, in the failure of many a plausible theory, to fall back simply on the New Testament, not merely for their principles, for this they did, but for the best and safest precedents in missionary work. They forgot how large a share of the honours of the primitive church in its labours for Christ belong to the weaker sex. That a missionary’s wife might be no less, nay in some instances far more, successful than her husband was a thought not yet entertained in missionary counsels. They did not foresee that the instruction of the native woman, and the Christian education of the heathen child, would soon become the special province of the missionary’s wife. Mrs. Wilson had not yet arisen “a mother in Israel,” nor Mrs. Judson, nor others whose fame is only less in missionary annals, because their work has been carried on in places less interesting, or at least less open to the world’s gaze, than Calcutta and Burmah. Nor can we give more than a hesitating and partial consent to some of the following observations:
“Civilization must pave the way for the conversion of the heathen. As the natives in these islands are totally unconnected with the commercial world, however friendly disposed they may be towards strangers, they are, nevertheless, in a state of gross ignorance and barbarity. They must, from their social situation, their great distance from the civilized part of the world, be less prepared to receive the gospel than the Esquimaux on the coast of Labrador or the negroes in the West Indian Islands, and other parts of the heathen world where the Moravians in general send their missionaries. The heathens in these islands are, in the strictest sense, in a state of nature. Hence it becomes the indispensable duty of the missionaries to use every means for their civilization, and not to imagine they are already prepared to receive the blessings of Divine revelation.”
“Civilization must pave the way for the conversion of the heathen. As the natives in these islands are totally unconnected with the commercial world, however friendly disposed they may be towards strangers, they are, nevertheless, in a state of gross ignorance and barbarity. They must, from their social situation, their great distance from the civilized part of the world, be less prepared to receive the gospel than the Esquimaux on the coast of Labrador or the negroes in the West Indian Islands, and other parts of the heathen world where the Moravians in general send their missionaries. The heathens in these islands are, in the strictest sense, in a state of nature. Hence it becomes the indispensable duty of the missionaries to use every means for their civilization, and not to imagine they are already prepared to receive the blessings of Divine revelation.”
True, they were not prepared. But here we are at variance alike with Dr. Haweis on the one hand, and Mr. Marsden on the other. “The preparation of the heart,” the wise man tells us, “is from the Lord;” and this is a kind of preparation which civilization will not supply. It is easy, as we have said, to find fault with men who, whatever their mistakes, deserve the veneration of the church. Let it be borne in mind that of savage life, its horrors, its ferocity, its cannibalism, England then knew but little. Had they been favoured with the experience we now possess, they would have felt more deeply how impotent a weapon is civilization to hew down the strongholds of Satan in a heathen land; their failures perhaps would have been fewer, and their successes more speedy if not more complete. A true Christian missionary, amongst savages, must be of necessity a civilizer. His own pure and quiet homestead, adorned with the artsof life, his cultivated garden, his neatly fenced paddock, the corn-field which soon follows, and then the mill—all these, and, we may say, all the habits and circumstances of his life, directly tend to civilize; and thus the process of outward reformation goes on amongst the surrounding tribes, while the spiritual seed is being sown in the native heart. And it will sometimes happen that native tribes are civilized before they are converted, simply because the carnal mind rejects the spiritual lesson, while selfishness, or the mere love of imitation, (equally powerful in the breast of children and of savages) induces them readily to adopt European habits. But after all we question whether the native heathen thus outwardly changed is one whit more likely to embrace the gospel than before.
There is, however, much truth in the following remarks; they show a thoughtful mind, and they prove too, if we are not mistaken, that the gospel of Jesus Christ has lost nothing of its pristine force after the lapse of eighteen centuries; for the Christian missions of our own day have triumphed amidst some difficulties against which even the apostles had not to contend. “The conduct of the apostles cannot exactly apply as a guide to the missionaries in these islands; St. Paul was sent to preach a crucified Jesus, not to savage, but to civilized heathens; to Greece and Rome, to nations noted for their politeness of manners and human learning, the inhabitants both of Greece and Rome had obtained the highest degree of civilization, they were”—intellectually, of course, Mr. Marsden must be understood to mean—“prepared for the reception of the gospel; their philosophers had for ages been making diligent inquiries after the true God; they had erected altars and the most magnificenttemples for the worship of some superior being whom they knew not. This is not the case with the natives of these islands.... It is unnecessary for me to contrast the situations of the primitive apostles and the present missionaries, and to point out their vast difference. Sacred and profane history will furnish the missionaries with this information, provided they will study their records.”
Mr. Marsden continued to be through life the confidential adviser of the London Missionary Society, and the warm friend and, as they passed to and fro upon their voyages, the kind host of their missionaries.
His character was now established. The colony was rapidly increasing in importance; and yet no change had been made in its government, which was still committed to the absolute direction of a single mind, that of the colonial governor. He too was a military officer, and not always one of high position and large capacity, or even of the purest morals; for by such men the governorship of his Majesty’s territory in New South Wales would have then been disdained. Mr. Marsden had done much, but much more remained to be accomplished. There were mischiefs that lay far beyond his reach, and spurned control. On the first establishment of the colony all the military officers were forbidden to take their wives with them—the governor and chaplains were the only exceptions—and there is one instance of a lady whose love to her husband led her to steal across the ocean in the disguise of a sailor, who was actually sent home again by Governor Phillip without being permitted to land. Our readers may anticipate the consequences which followed in an almost universal licentiousness. The most abandoned females often appeared fearlesslybefore the magistrates, well knowing that they would have impunity even for the greatest crimes; and male offenders used their influence to obtain a judgment in their favour. Expostulation, remonstrance, and entreaty Mr. Marsden had tried in vain. “Of all existing spots in New South Wales the court of judicature at Sydney,” it was publicly affirmed, “was the most iniquitous and abandoned;” and at length a rebellious spirit broke out, and the authority of the governor, even in his military capacity, was at an end. The efforts of the faithful chaplain were now thwarted at the fountain head, and his life was not unfrequently in danger. Mr. Marsden’s sagacity fastened the conviction on his mind that a crisis was at hand, which could only be averted by the interference of the government at home. He therefore asked for, and obtained, permission to revisit England. His fears were just; he had already assisted in quelling one rebellion, and another of a more serious nature broke out soon after he embarked, which drove the governor from the colony, and ended in his recall, and the establishment of a new order of things. The spiritual fruit of Mr. Marsden’s labours had not yet been great, but already the foundations had been laid for extensive usefulness. On the eve of his departure, he was presented with a gratifying address, bearing the signatures of three hundred and two persons, “the holders of landed estates, public offices, and other principal inhabitants of the large and extensive settlements of Hawkesbury, Nepean, and Portland-Head, and adjacent parts of New South Wales,” conveying “their grateful thanks for his pious, humane, and exemplary conduct throughout this whole colony, in the various and arduous situations held by him as aminister of the gospel, superintendent magistrate, inspector of public, orphan, and charity schools, and in other offices.” They thank him too for “his attention and cares in the improvement of stock, agriculture, and in all other beneficial and useful arts, for the general good of the colony, and for his unremitting exertions for its prosperity,” and conclude thus:—“Your sanctity, philanthropy, and disinterestedness of character, will ever remain an example to future ministers; and that God, whom we serve, may pour down his blessings upon you and yours to the latest posterity, is the sincere prayer of those who sign this address.”
FOOTNOTES:[C]Lord Brougham.[D]That of the Moravians to Labrador. The Wesleyans had a mission in the West Indies, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had long had the care of the Danish missions at Malabar. But none of these were missions, in the strict sense, among savages.[E]This anecdote we relate on the authority of the younger minister, from whom we received it. The elder one was the Rev. Samuel Bradburn, the friend and associate of Wesley.—Editor.
FOOTNOTES:
[C]Lord Brougham.
[C]Lord Brougham.
[D]That of the Moravians to Labrador. The Wesleyans had a mission in the West Indies, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had long had the care of the Danish missions at Malabar. But none of these were missions, in the strict sense, among savages.
[D]That of the Moravians to Labrador. The Wesleyans had a mission in the West Indies, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had long had the care of the Danish missions at Malabar. But none of these were missions, in the strict sense, among savages.
[E]This anecdote we relate on the authority of the younger minister, from whom we received it. The elder one was the Rev. Samuel Bradburn, the friend and associate of Wesley.—Editor.
[E]This anecdote we relate on the authority of the younger minister, from whom we received it. The elder one was the Rev. Samuel Bradburn, the friend and associate of Wesley.—Editor.
Various measures devised for the benefit of New South Wales—The establishment of Missions in New Zealand—Friendship with Dr. Mason Good.
Various measures devised for the benefit of New South Wales—The establishment of Missions in New Zealand—Friendship with Dr. Mason Good.
Mr. Marsden returned home in His Majesty’s ship Buffalo, after an absence of fourteen years. On the voyage he had one of those hair-breadth deliverances in which devout Christians recognise the hand of God. The Buffalo was leaky when she sailed, and a heavy gale threatening, it was proposed that the passengers should quit the ship and take refuge in a stauncher vessel which formed one of the fleet. Mr. Marsden objected, Mrs. Marsden being unwilling to leave Mrs. King, the wife of Governor King, who was returning in the same vessel, and who was at the time an invalid. In the night, the expected storm came on. In the morning, the eyes of all on board the crazy Buffalo were strained in vain to discover their companion. She was never heard of more, and no doubt had foundered in the hurricane.
On his arrival in London he waited on the under secretary of state to report his return, and learned from him that his worst fears had been realized, and that the colony was already in a state of open insurrection, headed by the “New South Wales Corps,” who were leagued with several of the wealthier traders. The insurrection was, however, suppressed, and Lieut.-colonel Macquarie was sent out with his regiment to assume the government. Lord Castlereagh, the colonial minister, was quick to perceive the value of such an adviser on the affairs of Australia as Mr.Marsden, and encouraged him to lay before the government a full statement of his views. Seldom has it happened to a private individual to be charged with weightier or more various affairs, never perhaps with schemes involving more magnificent results. As the obscure chaplain from Botany Bay paced the Strand, from the colonial office at Whitehall to the chambers in the city where a few pious men were laying plans for Christian missions in the southern hemisphere, he was in fact charged with projects upon which not only the civilization, but the eternal welfare, of future nations were suspended. Nor was he unconscious of the greatness of the task. With a total absence of romance or enthusiasm—for his mind was wanting in the imaginative faculty on which enthusiasm feeds—he was yet fully alive to the possible consequences of his visit to his native shores, and intensely interested in his work. He aimed at nothing less than to see Australia a great country; and, with a yet firmer faith, he expected the conversion of the cannibal tribes of New Zealand and the Society Islands; and this at a time when even statesmen had only learned to think of New South Wales as a national prison, and when the conversion of New Zealanders was regarded as a hopeless task, even by the majority of Christian men, and treated by the world with indifference or scorn. In fact, during this short visit he may be said to have planned, perhaps unconsciously, the labours of his whole life, and to have laid the foundation for all the good of which he was to be the instrument.
Let us first turn to the efforts he made for the settlements in New South Wales. The improvement of the convict population was his primary object, and his more immediate duty. He had observed that by farthe greater number of reformed criminals consisted of those who had intermarried, or whose wives had been able to purchase their passage over, and he suggested that those of the convicts’ wives who chose to do so should be permitted to accompany their husbands even at the public expense. This was refused, and it was almost the only point upon which his representations failed; but, as a compromise, the wives of the officers and soldiers were permitted to accompany their husbands, and not less than three hundred immediately went with a single regiment. To encourage honesty and industry he recommended not only remission of the sentence to the well conducted convict, but a grant of land to a certain extent; with which the government complied. But he had no weak and foolish sympathy with crime, and long after the period at which we are now writing, he continued to incur the hatred of a certain class by protesting, as he never ceased to do, against the monstrous impropriety of placing men, however wealthy, who had themselves been convicts, on the magisterial bench. Amongst the convicts he had observed that the greater number were acquainted with some branch of mechanics or manufactures; at present, they were unemployed, or occupied in labour for which they were unfit, and which was therefore irksome to themselves and of no advantage to the colony. He therefore suggested that one or two practical mechanics with small salaries, and one or two general manufacturers, should be sent out to instruct the convicts. But here a serious obstacle presented itself; for this was the age of commercial prohibitions, and it was objected that the manufacturers of the mother country would be injured by such a step. Mr. Marsden met the objection at once. If the government would but accede to the proposal, “he would undertake that the enormous expense at which the country was for clothing the convicts should entirely cease within a certain period.” The wool of the government flocks and the flesh of the wild cattle was already sufficient to provide both food and raiment for the convicts without any expense to the parent state, and all he prayed for was, the opportunity of turning those advantages to the best account. These requests were granted, and on the same night, and at his own cost, he set off by the mail for Warwickshire and Yorkshire in search of four artisans and manufacturers, who were soon upon their way to the scene of their future operations.
The vast importance of Australia as the source on which the English manufacturer must at some future day depend for his supplies of wool, had already occupied his thoughts. He found that within three years his own stock without any care on his part, (for his farm was entirely managed in his absence by a trusty bailiff who had been a convict,) had upon an average been doubled in number and value. With the energy which was natural to him, he carried some of his own wool to Leeds, where he had it manufactured, and he had the satisfaction to learn that it was considered equal, if not superior, to that of Saxony or France. His private letters abound with intimations that ere long Australia must become the great wool-producing country to which the English manufacturer would look. He was introduced to king George the Third, and took the liberty, through Sir Joseph Banks, of praying for a couple of Merino sheep, His Majesty’s property, to improve the breed; and his last letter from England, dated from the Cowes Roads, mentionstheir reception on board. We anticipate a little, but must quote the letter, were it only to let the reader see how possible it is to be at once diligent in business and fervent in spirit. “We are this moment getting under weigh, and soon expect to be upon the ocean. I have received a present of five Spanish sheep from the king’s flock, which are all on board; if I am so fortunate as to get them out they will be a most valuable acquisition to the colony. I leave England with much satisfaction, having obtained so fully the object of my mission. It is the good hand of our God that hath done these things for us. I have the prospect of getting another pious minister. I am writing to him on the subject this morning, and I hope he will soon follow us.... On Sunday I stood on the long boat and preached from Ezekiel xviii. 27: ‘When the wicked man turneth away,’ etc. It was a solemn time, many of the convicts were affected. We sang the Hundredth Psalm in the midst of a large fleet. The number of souls on board is more than four hundred. God may be gracious to some of them; though exiled from their country and friends, they may cry unto him in a foreign land, when they come like the Jews of old to hang their harps upon the willows, and weep when they remember Zion, or rather when they remember England.”[F]
The spiritual wants of the colony were not forgotten. He induced the government to send out three additional clergymen and three schoolmasters; and happily the selection was intrusted to his own judgment. A disciple in the school of Venn and Milner, he knew that the ordinances of the church, though administered by a moral and virtuous man, or by a zealous philanthropist, were not enough. He sought for men who were “renewed in the spirit of their minds;” who uttered no mere words of course when they said at their ordination that they “believed themselves moved thereto by the Holy Ghost.” But here again his task was difficult; clergymen of such a stamp were but few; the spirit of missionary enterprise was almost unfelt; and, to say the truth, there was a missionary field at home, dark and barbarous, and far too wide for the few such labourers of this class whom the Lord had yet “sent forth into his harvest.” Mr. Marsden, however, nothing daunted, went from parish to parish till he met with two admirable men, the Rev. Mr. Cowper and the Rev. Robert Cartwright, who, with their families, accompanied him on his return. His choice was eminently successful. In a short account of Mr. Marsden, published in Australia in 1844, they are spoken of as still living, pious and exemplary clergymen, the fathers of families occupying some of the most important posts in the colony, and, “notwithstanding their advancing years and increasing infirmities,” it is added, “there are few young men in the colony so zealous in preaching the gospel, and in promoting the interests of the church of England.” The schoolmasters too, we believe, did honour to his choice. He had already established two public free-schools for children of both sexes, and he was now able to impart the elements of a pious education, and to train them in habits of industry and virtue. Into all these plans the archbishop of Canterbury cordially entered, and wisely and liberally left it to the able founder to select his agents and associates.
Mr. Marsden likewise urged upon the home administration the necessity of a female Penitentiary; andobtained a promise that a building should be provided. That he was deeply alive to the importance of an institution of this kind, is manifest in his own description of the state of the female prisoners in the earlier years of the colony, and the deplorable picture he draws of their immorality and wretchedness. “When I returned to England in 1807,” he says, “there were upwards of fourteen hundred women in the colony; more than one thousand were unmarried, and nearly all convicts: many of them were exposed to the most dangerous temptations, privations and sufferings; and no suitable asylum had been provided for the female convicts since the establishment of the colony. On my arrival in London in 1808, I drew up two memorials on their behalf, stating how much they suffered from want of a proper barrack—a building for their reception. One of these memorials I presented to the under secretary of state, and the other to his grace the archbishop of Canterbury. They both expressed their readiness to promote the object.” Years, however, passed before the consent of the colonial governor could be gained; and Mr. Marsden’s benevolent exertions on behalf of these outcast women were for some time frustrated.
The variety of his engagements at this time was equal to their importance. He had returned home charged with an almost infinite multiplicity of business. He was the agent of almost every poor person in the colony who had, or thought he had, important business at home. Penny-postages lay in the same dim future with electric telegraphs and steam-frigates, and he was often burdened with letters from Ireland and other remote parts (so wrote a friend, who published at the time a sketch of his proceedings in the “EclecticReview,”) the postage of which, for a single day, has amounted to a guinea; which he cheerfully paid, from the feeling that, although many of these letters were of no use whatever, they were written with a good intention, and under a belief that they were of real value. He had already been saluted, like the Roman generals of old, with the title of common father of his adopted country; and one of his last acts before he quitted England, was to procure, by public contributions and donations of books, “what he called a lending library” (so writes the reviewer,[G]and the expression seems to have amused him from its novelty), “consisting of books on religion, morals, mechanics, agriculture, and general history, to be lent out under his own control and that of his colleagues, to soldiers, free settlers, convicts, and others who had time to read.” In this, too, he succeeded, and took over with him a library of the value of between three and four hundred pounds.
It was during this two-years’-visit to his native land, that Mr. Marsden laid the foundation of the Church of England mission to New Zealand. In its consequences, civil and religious, this has already proved one of the most extraordinary and most successful of those achievements, which are the glory of the churches in these later times. This was the great enterprise of his life: he is known already, and will be remembered while the church on earth endures, as the apostle of New Zealand. Not that we claim for him the exclusive honour of being the only one although we believe he was, in point of time, the first who began, about this period, to project a mission to New Zealand. The Wesleyans were early in the samefield. The Rev. Samuel Leigh, a man whose history and natural character bore a marked resemblance to those of Mr. Marsden, was the pioneer of Methodism, and proved himself a worthy herald of the cross amongst the New Zealanders. A warm friendship existed between the two. On his passage homewards he was a guest at Paramatta; and no tinge of jealousy ever appears to have shaded their intercourse, each rejoicing in the triumphs of the other. Still, Mr. Marsden’s position afforded him peculiar facilities, and having once undertaken it, the superintendence of the New Zealand mission became, without design on his part, the great business of his life.
He had formed a high, we do not think an exaggerated, estimate of the Maori or New Zealand tribes. “They are a noble race,” he writes to his friend John Terry, Esq., of Hull, “vastly superior in understanding to anything you can imagine in a savage nation.” This was before the mission was begun. But he did not speak merely from hearsay: several of their chieftains and enterprising warriors had visited Australia, and they ever found a welcome at the hospitable parsonage at Paramatta. Sometimes, it is true, they were but awkward guests, as the following anecdote will show; which we present to the reader, as it has been kindly furnished to us, in the words of one of Mr. Marsden’s daughters. “My father had sometimes as many as thirty New Zealanders staying at the parsonage. He possessed extraordinary influence over them. On one occasion, a young lad, the nephew of a chief, died, and his uncle immediately made preparations to sacrifice a slave to attend his spirit into the other world. Mr. M. was from home at the moment, and his family were only able to preserve thelife of the young New Zealander by hiding him in one of the rooms. Mr. M. no sooner returned and reasoned with the chief, than he consented to spare his life. No further attempt was made upon it, though the uncle frequently deplored that his nephew had no attendant in the next world, and seemed afraid to return to New Zealand, lest the father of the young man should reproach him for having given up this, to them, important point.”
The Church Missionary Society, which had now been established about seven years, seemed fully disposed to co-operate with him; and at their request he drew up a memorial on the subject of a New Zealand mission, not less important than that we have already mentioned, to the London Missionary Society, on the subject of their Polynesian missions. He still lays great stress upon the necessity of civilization going first as the pioneer of the gospel; “commerce and the arts having a natural tendency to inculcate industrious and moral habits, open a way for the introduction of the gospel, and lay the foundation for its continuance when once received” “... Nothing, in my opinion, can pave the way for the introduction of the gospel but civilization.” ... “The missionaries,” he thought, “might employ a certain portion of their time in manual labour, and that this neither would nor ought to prevent them from constantly endeavouring to instruct the natives in the great doctrines of the gospel.” ... “The arts and religion should go together. I do not mean a native should learn to build a hut or make an axe before he should be told anything of man’s fall and redemption, but that these grand subjects should be introduced at every favourable opportunity, while the natives are learning any of thesimple arts.” He adds that “four qualifications are absolutely necessary for a missionary—piety, industry, prudence, and patience. Without sound piety, nothing can be expected. A man must feel a lively interest in the eternal welfare of the heathen to spur him on to the discharge of his duty.” On the three other qualifications, he enlarges with great wisdom and practical good sense; but the paper has been frequently printed, and we must not transfer it to these pages.
It is no dishonour done to Mr. Marsden if we say that, in mature spiritual wisdom, the venerable men who had founded the Church Missionary Society, and still managed its affairs, were at this time his superiors. Strange indeed it would have been had the case been otherwise. They listened gratefully and with deep respect to the opinion of one so well entitled to advise; they determined on the mission, and they gave a high proof of their confidence, both in the practical wisdom and sterling piety of their friend, in consulting him in the choice of their first agents. But they did not adopt his views with regard to the importance of civilization as the necessary pioneer to the gospel. So long ago as the year 1815, they thought it necessary to publish a statement of the principles upon which their mission was established. “It has been stated,” they say, “that the mission was originally established, and for a long time systematically conducted, on the principle of first civilizing and then christianizing the natives. This is wholly a mistake. The agents employed in establishing the mission were laymen, because clergymen could not be had; and the instructions given to them necessarily correspond with their lay character. The foremost object of the mission has, from the first, been to bring the natives, by theuse of all suitable means, under the saving influences of the grace of the gospel, adding indeed the communication to them of such useful arts and knowledge as might improve their social condition.” The committee’s instructions to their first agents in the mission abundantly sustain these assertions. Mr. William Hall and Mr. John King were the two single-hearted laymen to whom, in the providence of God, the distinguished honour was committed of first making known the gospel in New Zealand. They bore with them these instructions, ere they embarked in the same vessel in which their friend and guide Mr. Marsden himself returned to Australia:—“Ever bear in mind that the only object of the Society, in sending you to New Zealand, is to introduce the knowledge of Christ among the natives, and in order to this, the arts of civilized life.”
Then after directing Messrs. Hall and King “to respect the sabbath day,” to “establish family worship,” at any favourable opportunity to “converse with the natives on the great subject of religion,” and to “instruct their children in the knowledge of Christianity,” the instructions add—“Thus in your religious conduct you must observe the sabbath and keep it holy, attend regularly to family worship, talk to the natives about religion when you walk by the way, when you labour in the field, and on all occasions when you can gain their attention, and lay yourselves out for the education of the young.”
Mr. Thomas Kendall followed; a third layman, for no ordained clergyman of the church of England could yet be found. The same instructions were repeated, and in December, 1815, when the Rev. JohnButler, their first clerical missionary, entered on his labours in New Zealand, he and his companions were exhorted thus—“The committee would observe that they wish, in all the missions of the Society, that the missionaries should give their time as much as possible, and wholly if practicable, first to the acquisition of the native language, and then to the constant and faithful preaching to the natives.” It is subsequently added—“Do not mistake civilization for conversion. Do not imagine when heathens are raised in intellect, in the knowledge of the arts and outward decencies, above their fellow-countrymen, that they are Christians, and therefore rest content as if your proper work were accomplished. Our great aim is far higher; it is to make them children of God and heirs of his glory. Let this be your desire, and prayer, and labour among them. And while you rejoice in communicating every other good, think little or nothing done till you see those who were dead in trespasses and sins, quickened together with Christ.” These passages fully exhibit the views of the committee of this evangelical Society with regard, not only to the New Zealand, but to all their other missions. Nor do they stand alone; every missionary association, taught in many instances by bitter disappointment, has long since discovered that the arts and sciences do not prepare the way of the Lord amongst the heathen abroad; just as they leave unsanctified our civilized heathendom at home.
But we must return from our digression, which its great importance must excuse.
Before he left England, Mr. Marsden formed or renewed an acquaintance with many great and good men, Mr. Wilberforce, Sir George Grey, the Rev. Daniel Wilson, late Bishop of Calcutta, the Rev. CharlesSimeon, the Rev. Josiah Pratt, Dr. Olinthus Gregory, and others whose names are dear to the church of Christ. But we must particularly notice the friendship which he formed with Dr. Mason Good as productive of the highest blessings to his friend, and of much advantage to himself.
The life of this excellent and accomplished person was published by Dr. Olinthus Gregory, soon after his death, in 1828. He tells us that Dr. Mason Good, when he became acquainted with Mr. Marsden, had long professed Socinian principles, but of these had recently begun to doubt, while he had not yet embraced the gospel of Christ so as to derive either comfort or strength from it. He was anxious and inquiring; his father had been an orthodox dissenting minister, and he himself a constant student and indeed a critical expositor of the Bible. He had published a translation of the book of Job, with notes, and also a translation of Solomon’s Song of Songs. He saw in the latter a sublime and mystic allegory, and in the former a poem, than which nothing can be purer in its morality, nothing sublimer in its philosophy, nothing more majestic in its creed. He had given beautiful translations of many of the Psalms; but with all this he had not yet perceived that Christ is the great theme of the Old Testament, nor did he understand the salvation of which “David in the Psalms, and all the prophets,” as well as Job the patriarch “did speak.” His introduction to Mr. Marsden, in such a state of mind, was surely providential. He saw, and wondered at, his self-denial; he admired the true sublimity of his humble, unassuming, but unquestionable and active piety. “The first time I saw Mr. Marsden,” says his biographer, “was in January, 1808; he had justreturned from Hull, and had travelled nearly the whole journey on the outside of a coach in a heavy fall of snow, being unable to secure an inside place. He seemed scarcely conscious of the inclemency of the season, and declared that he felt no inconvenience from the journey. He had accomplished his object, and that was enough. And what was that object, which could raise him above the exhaustion of fatigue and the sense of severe cold? He had engaged a rope-maker who was willing, at his (Mr. Marsden’s) own expense, to go and teach his art to the New Zealanders.” So writes Dr. Olinthus Gregory.
As a philosopher who loved to trace phenomena to their causes, Dr. Mason Good endeavoured to ascertain the principles from which these unremitting exertions sprang; and, as he often assured his friend, Dr. Gregory, he could trace them only to the elevating influence of Divine grace. He could find no other clue; and he often repeated the wish that his own motives were as pure, and his own conduct as exemplary as those of Mr. Marsden. Thus light broke in, and at length he received the gospel “as a little child,” and began to adorn it by his conduct. For several years he was an efficient member of the committee of the Bible Society, and of that of the Church Missionary Society. To the latter especially he devoted himself with the utmost activity and ardour, and at his death, which occurred in 1827, the committee transmitted to Mrs. Good a resolution expressive of the very high value they set on his services, and of the heavy loss they were conscious they sustained by that event. The resolution was accompanied by a letter of cordial sympathy from the pen of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, the secretary. When dyinghe was, heard, without any suggestion or leading remark from those around him, to repeat with quivering lips the text, “All the promises of God in him (Christ Jesus) are Yea, and in him Amen.” “What words,” said he, “for a dying man to rest upon!”[H]