The day was observed by all the clergy, but the Governor-General for some reason declined to make it official, and, only when the worst of the danger was over, appointed the 4th of October as a fast-day. The Bishop arranged the services, but was too unwell to attend them. This was the beginning of his last illness; and though he held an ordination some weeks later, these latter weeks were all sinking, and increasing feebleness. A sea-voyage was twice attempted, but without success; and on the 1st of January, 1858, his trembling hand wrote, “All going on well, but I am dead almost.—D. C. Firm in hope.”
Daniel Calcutta, whom these initials indicated, wrote these words at half-past seven at night. By the same hour in the morning he had peacefully passed to his rest.
One more Bishop of Calcutta we have since mourned; though the shortness of his career was owing to accident, not disease or climate. But with Daniel Wilson the see of Calcutta became established as a metropolitan bishopric, and ceased to possess that character of gradual extension which rendered its first holders necessarily missionaries. True, it needs many subdivisions. Four Bishops are a scanty allowance for our vast Indian Empire, and the see of Calcutta has a boundary scarce limited to the north; but these are better days than when it included the Cape, Australia, and New Zealand. The Bishop has now more to do with the development of old missions than with the working of new ones; and there can be no doubt that though there has been much of disappointment, and the progress is very slow, yet progress there is. The older converts form more and more of a nucleus, and although there is a large class who hang about missions from interested motives, there are also multitudes of quiet and contented villagers whose simplicity and remoteness shield them from the notice of the travellers who sneer at Christianity and call mission reports couleur de rose, because they have been taken in by some cunning scamp against whom any missionary would have warned them.
The towns and the neighbourhood of troops are not favourable places for observing the effects of Christianity. The work of the schools in the great cities tells but very slowly. At present,
out of a hundred boys who go thither and receive the facts of Christianity intellectually, only the minority are practically affected by it; and of these, some lose all faith in their own system, but retain it outwardly in deference to their families, while others try to take Christian morality without Christian doctrine; and only one or two perhaps may be sincere and open believers. But even if only one is gained, is not that an exceeding gain? It took three hundred years of apostolic teaching to make the Roman Empire Christian. Why should we “faint, and say ’tis vain,” after one hundred in India?
CHAPTER VIII. SAMUEL MARSDEN, THE AUSTRALIAN CHAPLAIN AND FRIEND OF THE MAORI.
It has been mentioned that the island of Australia was considered as an archdeaconry of the see of Calcutta. This enormous island, first discovered in 1607 by Luis de Torres, and inhabited only by the very lowest race of savages, appeared to the Government of George III. a convenient spot for forming a penal settlement; and in 1787 the first convict ships carried out an instalment from the English jails to New South Wales, where the city of Sydney was founded by Governor Phillip.
As usual in those days, the provision made for the moral or religious training of this felon population was lamentably and even absurdly deficient; for it seemed to be considered, that so long as the criminals were safe out of England, it did not greatly matter to her what became of them. But the power of grace is sure to work sooner or later wherever the Christian name has been carried, and a holy man rose up, not only to fight hard with the mass of corruption in Australia, but to carry on the light to the more distant shores of the Southern Ocean.
This good man, Samuel Marsden, was the son of a small farmer at Farsley, near Calverley, in Yorkshire, and was educated at the free Grammar School at Hull by Dr. Joseph Milner, whose Church History used to be a standard book in the early part of this century. He began his career as a
tradesman at Leeds, but his school influences had given him higher aspirations; and a body termed the Elland Society, whose object was to educate young men of small means and suitable character for the ministry, and whose chief supporters were Wilberforce, Simeon, and Thornton, selected him as one of their scholars, and placed him at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He had not even taken his degree when, to his surprise, he was offered a chaplaincy in New South Wales! The post was no doubt a difficult one to fill,—for who would willingly undertake to be one of two clergymen sent to labour among an untamed multitude of criminals?—and Mr. Wilberforce was, no doubt, glad to suggest a young man so blameless and full of zeal, and of whom, from personal observation at Cambridge, Mr. Simeon had so high an opinion.