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 far the
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, mentions their
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]
[F] To Avison Terry, Esq., Hull.
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; and obtained 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 "Eclectic Review,") 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.
[G] Eclectic Review, vol. v. pp. 988-995.
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 same field. 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 the life 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 the simple 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 the use 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. John Butler, 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. Charles Simeon, 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 just
returned 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 dying he 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]
[H] See Life of Dr. Mason Good, by Dr. Olinthus Gregory.