1. Insurmountable Difficulties – in the Absence of Faith1
Calvin MacKenzie
“Here we have to contend with the depravity and corruption of the human heart, heightened and confirmed in all its vicious habits by long and repeated indulgences of inbred corruption . . . hence iniquity abounds, and those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person contemptible in the public eye and obnoxious to the civil law are become fashionable and familiar.”2 This bleak, although sadly accurate, observation of the moral evils of Sydney society on the eve of the period under review, was communicated by the God-fearing Congregational minister, James Fleet Cover, to the Directors of the London Missionary Society on 25 August 1799.
James F Cover had been sent by the Directors of the London Missionary Society to Tahiti as one of a group of 11 Protestant missionaries in 1797. Having fled threatened martyrdom in Tahiti, James Cover and his colleagues arrived in Sydney aboard the Nautilus on 14 May 1798, where they were warmly received by Samuel Marsden. During the early, formative years in the colony, these missionaries were a great help to the Church of England chaplains, Johnson and Marsden.
Together with William Henry, a preacher in the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connection, James Cover established an itinerant ministry based around Parramatta, and their congregations, it was said, were greater than those of the official Church of England chaplains. Cover and Henry set up regular preaching stations at Toongabbie and at three places within the then “northern boundary” of the colony. A congregation established at Kissing Point soon developed into St Anne’s, Ryde, the third church building and congregation to be established. Besides their ministerial and pastoral duties, both Cover and Henry engaged in teaching, while Cover also gave regular Sabbath evening lectures at Parramatta. After 21 months of intense labour, James Cover
1The first section of a paper given at the Youth Conference in Sydney in 2011. It follows on from the paper printed in this Magazine from September to November 2011.
2Cover, Henry and Hassall to Directors, 25 August, 1799, LMS Archives, 1,1,A. Quoted in A T Yarwood, Samuel Marsden the Great Survivor, Melbourne, 1977, p 75.
returned to England with his wife in February 1800, feeling much discouraged and describing “the fainting of his heart on meeting difficulties which were insurmountable to an arm of flesh, in the absence of a complete faith in divine support”.3
In October 1798, after Richard Johnson’s first chapel – on the corner of what is now Bligh and Hunter Streets – was burnt to the ground, the more spiritually-minded Governor, John Hunter, initiated work on what was to become two substantial, stone church buildings. The first was to rise on land at Church Hill in what is now Lang Park, although this building was not to be opened until 1810. The second, St John’s, was to rise in what is now known as Church Street, Parramatta, and was opened in 1803.
By 1800, the population of Sydney had grown to approximately 2500 souls. In October that year, the Colony’s first chaplain, Richard Johnson, returned to England with his family in the Buffalo, and Samuel Marsden, who had arrived on 10 March 1794, took over the role of Principal (Church of England) Chaplain.4 At the time of the Johnsons’ departure for England, Samuel Marsden was to say, “I feel great regret in their leaving the colony. Their kind attention to us will always endear them to me. I hope Mr Johnson will recover his health now he is returned to his native country.”5 As the name and unremitting labour of love of Richard Johnson are indelibly imprinted upon the pages of the Church history of the colony of New South Wales during the almost 13 years from its inception to October 1800, the name of Samuel Marsden is, among several other most worthy Christian labourers, writ large in the events of the next 30 years.
The three decades under review saw great changes within the Christian Church in NSW. The arrival of ministers and missionaries of other Evangelical denominations, while they did not have the support of the state until 1836, ensured the gospel was preached in the various villages in which they resided – often beyond the ability of the two state-appointed chaplains to visit regularly. While many Roman Catholic convicts arrived in the early years, the first officially-appointed Roman Catholic priests were not to arrive until 1819-20.6 NSW had the inestimable privilege of a 32-year religious foundation in Evangelical Christianity without the influence of Rome. “Bless the Lord, all His works in all places of His dominion: bless the Lord, O my soul (Ps 103:22).
3Yarwood, Samuel Marsden, pp 72-75.
4Macintosh, Richard Johnson, Chaplain to the Colony of New South Wales, Sydney, 1978, p 92.
5MacKaness, George, Some Private Correspondence of the Reverend Samuel Marsden. Sydney, 1942, p 20.
6http://www.sydneycatholic.org/about/key\_dates\_in\_our\_history.shtml.
On 1 October 1800, prior to being sworn in as the new Governor, Captain Philip Gidley King laid the foundation stone of St Philip’s – the original parish church of the City of Sydney, first proposed by Governor John Hunter two years before. This building, completed and opened in 1810, was replaced by the current building in York Street in 1856. The first minister of St Philip’s was the Anglican William Cowper, who was recruited by Samuel Marsden in 1808 to serve as Assistant Chaplain of NSW. Cowper arrived in 1809, preached his first sermon on August 20 and settled down to his duties as the rector of St Philips, where he laboured faithfully for 49 years. He was succeeded by his son William Macquarie Cowper as rector and archdeacon.7
In July 1802 Governor King divided the colony into two parishes: Sydney town was to be the parish of St Philip’s, and the Parramatta area, 22 km west of Sydney, was to be the parish of St John’s. In 1803 the impressive St John’s Church was opened in Parramatta by Samuel Marsden.8 The western facade, with its two distinctive towers added in 1818, remains to this day, although the rest of the building was replaced in the 1850s.9 The Sydney congregation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland worshipped in the mission hall of St John’s from December 1979 until April 1982, before moving to the Tron Kirk hall in Granville in order to have two services each Lord’s Day and a mid-week prayer meeting.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie arrived in the colony in 1810 and, on taking office, replaced the much-troubled and, some would say, troublesome William Bligh of “mutiny on the Bounty” fame. Upon arrival, Governor Macquarie observed: “I found the colony barely emerging from an infantile imbecility and suffering from various privations and disabilities, the country impenetrable, agriculture in a yet languishing state, commerce in its early dawn, public buildings in a state of dilapidation and mouldering to decay, the few roads and bridges formerly constructed almost impassable, the population in general depressed by poverty, no public credit, no private confidence, the morals of the great mass of the people in the lowest state of debasement and religious worship almost totally neglected”.10
The Church of England colonial chaplains had expended much labour for the cause of Christ with, apparently, marginal success in the early years. Along with their ministerial duties, systematic religious and secular education
7http://www.cowper200.com.au/william\_macquarie\_cowper.html.
8“Religion, Church & Missions in Australia”, The State Library of NSW, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover\_collections/history\_nation/religion/foundations/index.html.
9http://english.stjohnscathedral.org.au/index.php/about-us-/our-heritage.
10Macquarie to Bathurst, 27 July 1822, cited by C M H Clark, Sources of Australian History, London, 1971, pp 123-135.
had been instituted despite little encouragement from the state, opposition from the NSW Corps and the convicts, the arson attack against the first church building and the displeasure of the Governors who, in the main, although they supported the establishment of institutions for education, had little or no love for Evangelicalism – preferring a more “High Church” approach, encouraging good works and morality, but nothing more.
The convicts, amongst whom the chaplains laboured, were, for the most part, indolent and irreligious, seeking to ameliorate their isolation by indulging in the “fancied comforts of immorality and drunkenness”. Rum was the currency in these early years; its importation and sale were strictly controlled by the NSW Corps who became known derisively as the “Rum Corps”. The convicts, for the most part, were city dwellers from the poorer social classes who had resorted to theft to ease their poverty. Between crimes, they lazed around and lived off the proceeds of their ill-gotten gains, confirming the truth of the words of Isaac Watts’ religious song for children, well known at the time: “For Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do”.11
The revered Charles Simeon was Rector of Trinity Church, Cambridge, for 49 years and was widely acclaimed as the “father of Evangelicalism” in the Church of England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Simeon mentored many of the young preachers who went out to NSW and other lands under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which he founded. Commenting on Genesis 39:9 and the temptation of Joseph, he said, “Sin universally prevails. . . . Too many indeed will not submit to any restraints, but will even justify the grossest immoralities. They impose upon their excesses some specious appellation; they call drunkenness, conviviality; and whoredom, youthful indiscretion. Thus they commit sin without fear, persist in it without remorse, and even glory in their shame, when, through age and infirmity, they can no longer follow their former courses.”12
Being from the same Evangelical school of thought as Simeon, Samuel Marsden held the conviction – first recorded in 1807 by William Bligh – that his parish in Parramatta was such a “sink of iniquity” and that morality could be preserved only by the most rigorous disciplinary measures. Little wonder Governor Macquarie formed so ill an impression of the state of morality and religious worship in the colony in 1810 despite the best endeavours of the chaplains.
11Isaac Watts, “Against Idleness and Mischief”, a poem in Divine Songs for Children, London, 1715, known in later editions as Divine and Moral Songs for Children.
12Charles Simeon, Expository Outlines on the Whole Bible, vol 1, Cambridge, 1833, reprinted 1988, p 265.