3. “Whatsoever Thy Hand Findeth to Do”1
Calvin MacKenzie
No Government funding was available to build a place of worship in Sydney when Lang arrived, so he set about raising subscriptions to establish a Presbyterian church on the grant of crown land he was given on the corner of Jamieson Street and York Street, in an area later known as Church Hill. Governor Brisbane, from the same part of Scotland as Dr Lang,
1Last month’s article described further developments in the State. It ended by referring to the first Presbyterian minister in Sydney, John Dunmore Lang, who belonged to the west of Scotland. This is the final section of a paper given to a Youth Conference in Australia.
laid the foundation stone of the original church on 1 July 1824. A stone building with a plain steeple and seating 1000 people was opened for worship on 16 July 1826. A manse was built next to the church and so was, soon afterwards, the Australian College – a centre of learning. Subsequently, Lang became its principal, and it paved the way for Sydney University. This was the first general college of higher education in the colony. Glasgow University awarded Lang a Doctorate in Divinity in 1826.2
Lang was an accomplished orator whose influence as a Christian minister was to be felt in the colony for more than 50 years; he made an enormous contribution to education, politics and journalism. He also served as a member of the NSW parliament for more than 25 years and, on several visits back to the UK, Dr Lang was successful in recruiting ministers and settlers to emigrate to NSW. Such was the dissipated and immoral nature of convict society that he and others believed that the land could only prosper with an influx of God-fearing and industrious settlers that would outnumber the convict population, bring an improved moral tone and set about building a new empire in the south.
Those Scots Presbyterian settlers who arrived in response to Lang’s plea for emigrants were church members; many of them were Lowlanders, often from the Secession churches, and some were Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and Islanders. They brought with them a high esteem for the Scriptures and a love of the Sabbath day, as one writer recalls: “Our pioneering forefathers revered the Fourth Command very deeply. . . . All manual labour, unless in dire emergencies [such] as a bushfire or a flood, was suspended on Sundays, and even domestic tasks were cut down to a minimum. The housewives would have been horrified at having any washing seen out on the line on the Sabbath, while Sunday sport was a thing unheard of.”
As a Presbyterian, Lang held views on the roles of Church and state which were opposed to those of the Anglicans who established and ran the colony. As time passed, Lang’s relationship with the Anglicans deteriorated to the extent that after 11 years in the colony, Lang was to say of it: “The greatest calamity that has hitherto befallen the Australian colonies, in regard to their moral and religious welfare, is the prevalence of a jealous, exclusive and intolerant system of Episcopal domination”.3
Lang was greatly incensed that Church of England clergymen like Samuel Marsden acted as civil magistrates, dispensing secular punishment while concurrently maintaining the spiritual oversight of their flocks. He also believed
2D W A Baker, Days of Wrath: A Life of John Dunmore Lang, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1985, p 42.
3Ken Inglis, Australian Colonists, p 90.
that the Church of England establishment discriminated against Dissenters. This, of course, was remedied by the 1836 Church Act to which we have already referred.
Samuel Marsden’s relationship with the Government, and in particular, Governor Macquarie, was often strained; Macquarie and Marsden disagreed on a range of issues. In particular, Marsden’s sense of position and social order was offended by Macquarie’s support of emancipists in the community. Macquarie’s authoritarian approach often clashed with Marsden’s role as Principal Chaplain. For example, the Governor ordered that Government notices be announced during services, while his interest in and regulation of commerce brought objections from Marsden who was also a landowner and successful farmer. Professional relationships can be difficult to maintain and, when they break down, there is often a certain degree of fault on both sides. The Apostle exhorts us in Romans 12:18: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men”.
In 1814, Marsden showed a lapse in judgement by embracing, for a time, W Goode’s 1811 revision of the Psalms, A New Version of the Book of Psalms with original Prefaces and Notes, critical and explanatory, which he commenced reading in services rather than the Psalms contained in the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer. (It was the practice of the Anglican Church of that time to “read through the Psalter once every Month, as it is there appointed, both for Morning and Evening Prayer”. At the end of every Psalm, and of every part of Psalm 119, the congregation would repeat, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.”)
The Governor, by way of correspondence from his secretary John Campbell, quite rightly reminded one of Marsden’s assistant chaplains of his obligation to use only the Psalms appointed for reading. Macquarie reported this matter to Earl Bathurst in a letter on 14 October, 1814, in which he said, “If these principles were sanctioned by me (as they would appear to be, were I not to repress them), they would give such latitude to Dissent, that I am fully convinced various sectaries would spring up in this young and unschooled colony, much to the injury of that established uniformity of worship, which I conceive to be of the utmost importance to the peace and harmony of the colony to preserve inviolate”.4
It is sad to note that in process of time, relations between the Governor and the Senior Chaplain broke down so irretrievably that in January 1818
4Governor Macquarie to Earl Bathurst, 7 October 1814, Historical Records of Australia, vol VIII, pp 336-8. Cited in B N Kaye ed, Anglicanism in Australia, A History, Melbourne University Press, 2002) pp 10, 317 n 21.
Macquarie summoned Marsden to Government House and, in front of several witnesses, described him as “the head of a seditious low cabal and consequently unworthy of mixing in private society”. He commanded him to avoid his presence except in connection with public duty. When relations between them broke down to this degree, it was William Wilberforce, back in England, who endeavoured to mediate.5
Lachlan Macquarie, Governor from 1810 to 1821, transformed Sydney through the implementation of Wilberforce’s principles. In his first year in office, Macquarie named a new township on the north bank of the Hawkesbury, Wilberforce, “in honour of and out of respect to the good and virtuous Wm Wilberforce, Esq, MP – a true Patriot and the Real Friend of Mankind”.6 The Governor, together with Elizabeth, his wife, acted with determination on Wilberforce’s expressed opinion that “attention to ye religious and moral state of ye Colony would in a few years produce improvements which men could scarcely anticipate” and that “the Governor’s encouragement of marriage and the domestic virtues would be of unspeakable benefit to everyone in the rising settlements”.7
In Australia, Macquarie followed Wilberforce’s example closely. Macquarie ordered all convicts who were employed by the Government to be mustered on the Lord’s days and marched to church. He condemned cohabitation and withdrew government patronage from couples in such unions. He ordered publicans to close their doors during hours of worship and employed constables to apprehend loiterers. He banned “bawdy” houses and nude bathing in Sydney Harbour. His encouragement of marriage was so successful that in 1810 the number of weddings increased tenfold. Missionaries applauded his support for Evangelical projects like the British and Foreign Bible Society and the “Sunday School” movement. He built hospitals, schools and orphanages.8 Even today, Macquarie is regarded as the “father” of Sydney for his far-sighted infrastructure programme that, under the guidance of the emancipated convict architect, Francis Greenway, provided many of Sydney’s magnificent sandstone buildings still in use today.
5 A T Yarwood, “Samuel Marsden (1764-1838)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol 2, p 210.
6 Lachlan Macquarie, Journal of a Tour of Governor Macquarie’s first Inspection of the Interior of the Colony, Commencing on Tuesday the 6th Novr 1810, entry dated 6 December 1810, Mitchell Library, ref: A778. Available online at: Journeys in Time, 1809-1822: the journals of Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie, Mitchell Library.
7 “William Wilberforce, the Clapham Cabinet, and ‘Liberating the Captives’ in Australia”, a public lecture by Associate Professor Stuart Piggin, on 26 March 2007, at Parliament House, Canberra, to celebrate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, p 10.
8 John Ritchie, Lachlan Macquarie: A Biography, Melbourne, 1986, pp 130-31.
We should also mention Australia’s first “bush parson” Thomas Hassall, who was known affectionately as “the galloping parson”. Samuel Marsden sent Hassall back to England for training under the care of Charles Simeon at Cambridge and, in time, he became the first Australian to be ordained as an Anglican minister. Hassall returned to Sydney on 3 February 1822. He was a strictly-Evangelical preacher and became Marsden’s curate for two years before being inducted to charges in Port Macquarie, on the mid-north coast; Bathurst, just west of the Blue Mountains and the Cowpastures (South-Western Sydney, near today’s Camden). On 12 August 1822 he married Samuel Marsden’s eldest daughter, Anne. The Hassall family website informs us that he based himself on the Denbigh Estate in Cobbity while preaching to a congregation in Mulgoa in the Nepean/Hawkesbury valley and travelling far afield to preaching stations in the Illawarra, Berrima, Bong Bong and Goulburn – a route which often took him over the Abercrombie Ranges.
He was a good bushman and always rode good horses, very safely, in what he described as his “easy chair”. It is said that, except on two occasions when there were accidents, he never missed a scheduled service at any of these places in 40 years. Along the way he stayed in homesteads and performed marriages and baptisms as he went. He built churches all around his district and created several new parishes which were in time settled with ministers. It is said of him that he had a remarkable record of conversions and was known for his love of practical religion.9
We should also briefly notice Rev Lancelot Edward Threlkeld, a Congregationalist minister who arrived in 1817, established a mission to the Aboriginal people in January 1825 in the Lake Macquarie district, became fluent in their language and was a solid supporter of the disadvantaged and dissenting. This caring man was ridiculed because “his approach to missionary work was coloured by his commitment to the Calvinistic doctrine of natural depravity”.10
We have but skimmed the surface of the religious landscape of NSW during the period 1800 to 1830. The material in many sections of this paper has furnished volumes of work by historians and deserves a paper of its own. However, these brief sketches will, I hope, encourage you to study further the multitudes of manuscript, primary and secondary sources we have available to us today to discover more about the rich Christian heritage we have in Australia. Whether Anglican, Congregational, Methodist or Presbyterian, the majority of ministers of this period were, as far as we can tell, earnest, faith-
9http://www.hassall.org/book/Chap04.html.
10Niel Gunson, Threlkeld, Lancelot Edward (1788–1859), Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/threlkeld-lancelot-edward-2734.
ful, Evangelical men, all desiring to win souls to Christ and to do good to their fellow men.
We fully understand the criticisms widely levelled at the Anglican chaplains who were civil magistrates as well as gospel ministers; yet in these times, extraordinary measures were called for, when there were few men who could fulfil the function. It would have been far preferable for these chaplains to have avoided this aspect of the duties that were thrust upon them. Regardless, they carried out their duties as unto God, according to the penal code of the day – harsh though it may appear to have been from this standpoint in time. A new country called for settling; so in the spirit of “subduing the earth”, these men had also to supplement their stipends by farming, and while some are critical of them for the success they achieved and the massive contribution they made to Australian agriculture, they were obedient to the direction: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” (Ecc 9:10). They were “not slothful in business; [but] fervent in spirit; serving the Lord” (Rom 12:11).
They met with varying degrees of success in their primary callings as ministers of the gospel, and only eternity will reveal the good they did. They have left us a rich heritage, although the vast majority of Australians today have no understanding of it nor love for it. We, 170 years later, are blessed with the privileges of the Holy Scriptures that are able to make us wise unto salvation, a faithful gospel ministry, and easy access to the means of grace, without the privations, hardships and loss these faithful, pioneering labourers suffered in this corner of the Master’s vineyard. Accordingly we should ever be thankful that the light of the gospel shone on this land with the advent of European settlement.