The chaplain of the Rattlesnake noted down an affecting conversation with the aged minister upon his voyage, which we are permitted to insert:—
“We enjoyed a most lovely evening. I had a long conversation with Mr. Marsden on deck. He spoke of almost all his old friends having preceded him to the eternal world; Romaine, Newton, the Milners, Scott, Atkinson, Robinson, Buchanan, Mason Good, Thomason, Rowland Hill, Legh Richmond, Simeon, and others. He then alluded in a very touching manner to his late wife; they had passed, he observed, more than forty years of their pilgrimage through this wilderness in company, and he felt their separation the more severely as the months rolled on. I remarked that their separation would be but for a short period longer. ‘God grant it,’ was his reply; then lifting his eyes towards the moon, which was peacefully shedding her beams on the sails of our gallant bark, he exclaimed with intense feeling.
‘Prepare me, Lord, for thy right hand, Then come the joyful day.’”
CHAPTER XIII.
Mr. Marsden’s ministerial pursuits and journeys—Love of the Country and of Patriarchal story—His Old Age—Its mental features—Anecdotes—Love of Children—Bishop Broughton—His reverence for Mr. Marsden’s character—Mr. Marsden’s views of Death, etc.—His Habits of Prayer—His Illness and Death.
Mr. Marsden had now passed the allotted span of human life, though his days were not yet “labour and sorrow.” Entering upon his seventy-second year with stooping gait and failing eyesight and a decaying memory, he had otherwise few of the mental infirmities of age. He was still a perfect stranger to fear, as well as to that nervous restlessness and susceptibility which wears the appearance of it, though often found, as may be daily observed, in connexion with the truest courage. After his return home from his last voyage he was attacked, when driving with his youngest daughter, upon one of his excursions in the bush, by two famous bush rangers Wormley and Webber, part of a gang who for a period of two years kept the whole country in a state of terror. One of the ruffians presented a loaded pistol at his breast and another at his daughter’s, threatening with horrid imprecations to shoot them both, if they said a word, and bidding his daughter to empty her father’s pockets into their hands. Perfectly undismayed, Mr. Marsden remonstrated with them on their wicked course of life, telling them at last that he should soon see them again, he had no doubt, on the gallows. At parting, though charged, with the usual threats, not to look behind him, he turned round, and continued, while they were in sight, to warn them in the same strain of the certain consequences of a life of crime. His admonition was soon verified; the wretched men were apprehended for other outrages and sentenced to death, and he himself attended them from the condemned cell to the place of execution.
These excursions into the country around Paramatta, where he had gone about for a period of nearly forty years doing the work of an evangelist or home missionary, were continued to the last. To wind through devious paths in the bush in his one horse chaise, where his good horse Major seemed as if trained to penetrate, gave him the highest pleasure. The way was often trackless, and he was obliged to ask his companion whether the trace of a cartwheel could be seen. Yet there was an instinctive feeling of safety in his company, and a refreshment in his conversation, which always made the vacant seat in the gig prized by those who knew and loved him. “As he drove along,” says a Christian lady, the wife of Captain B—— who was his companion on some of his last journeys, “wherever he went there was always to be found some testimony to that goodness and mercy which had followed him all the days of his life. Some Ebenezer he could raise where helped perhaps in an encounter with a bushranger, having only the sword of the Spirit with which to defend himself and disarm his foe, or some Bethel, it might be, where like Jacob he had been enabled to wrestle and prevail. With such a companion no one could be a loser. On these excursions, no matter to what distance, he seemed to think preparations needless, he would travel miles and miles without any previous consideration for his own comfort or convenience. Even a carpet-bag was an encumbrance. He had been too long accustomed to make his toilet with the New Zealander, and take with him his meal of fern-root, to be particular, or to take thought, what he should eat, or wherewithal should he be clothed.”
His love of the country and of rural scenes gave a strong colouring, and great originality to his preaching as well as to his own religious character. He called his estate “The plains of Mamre.” This property we may remind the reader had been presented to Mr. Marsden in the early days of the colony, when land uncleared was absolutely worthless, to eke out his insufficient stipend. It had now become valuable, and he was exposed both in the colony and in England to many unjust remarks, even from those who should have known him better, on the score of his reputed wealth. His own justification of himself is more than sufficient. Being told that he was charged with avarice, “Why,” said he, “they might as well find fault with Abraham whose flocks and herds multiplied. Abraham never took any trouble about it, nor do I. I can’t help their increasing;” and he added, a remark so true and of such pregnant import that it ought for ever to have put to silence this miserable carping; “It was not for myself, but for the benefit of this colony and New Zealand, that I ever tried to promote agriculture or the improvement in sheep or cattle.” Had he done nothing else for Australia, his introduction of Merino sheep with a view to the growth of wool would have marked him down upon the roll of her greatest benefactors.