The faltering beginnings of christianity in australia : 1788-1793

Memorial to the first Christian Service held in New South Wales
at the corner of Hunter and Bligh Streets, Sydney.

In a small reserve adjacent to the intersection of Hunter and Bligh Streets in central Sydney is a spired monument in the Gothic style which bears the following inscription :

To the glory of God 

and in commemoration of 

the first Christian Service held in Australia 

February 3rd 1788

Rev. Richard Johnson BA 

the Chaplain 

being the preacher.

The text of the sermon : 

What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me?

Psalm CXVI 12.

The Service - most probably what was known in The Book of Common Prayer as Mattins or Morning Prayer - took place a week after the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove (1) and beneath the shade of a great tree.  The monument is located on the site of the first church (see below), but not marking the exact spot where the Chaplain conducted the first Divine Service in the new colony.  (2)  A record indicates that a band of soldiers accompanied the singing of hymns at this service.  The full text of Mr Johnson's sermon has not been preserved, but it is most fortunate that the scriptural text he chose as the basis for his sermon has.  It was Psalm 116.  It is most indicative of his own piety and sense of the occasion :

What shall I return unto the Lord for all his bounty unto me?  I will raise the cup of Salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord ... I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.

It is perhaps noteworthy and even indicative that a whole week elapsed before the first Christian Service was celebrated in that area which Captain Arthur Philip had claimed for the British Crown. (3)

An artist's impression of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove, January 1788.

Image : First Fleet Fellowship of Victoria

Let us trace how Richard Johnson came to be appointed as Chaplain to the First Fleet and new Colony.  Most readers will be familiar with the protestant hymn Amazing Grace, written in 1772 by an English parson, the Reverend John Newton.  Mr Newton was a leading figure in the Evangelical revival within the Church of England in the eighteenth century.  His story is, in its own right, most interesting (but beyond our scope here).  In 1786, Newton wrote :

A minister who should go to Botany Bay without a call from the Lord and without receiving from Him an apostolical spirit, the spirit of a missionary, enabling him to forsake all, to give up all, to put himself into the Lord’s hands, to sink or swim, had better run his head against a stone wall.

Mr Newton persuaded the government of the day to send such a Chaplain with the First Fleet and recommended the Reverend Richard Johnson as that man.  At that time, Mr Johnson was in his early thirties and serving as a curate in a London Parish.  A native of Yorkshire, he had been educated at Cambridge.  In the same month that Captain Arthur Philip was appointed to the charge of the First Fleet (October 1786), Mr Johnson was appointed by the British Government to be its Chaplain. (4) He sought a wife to accompany him to New South Wales and they married quickly. 

The First Fleet of eleven ships and approximately 1400 persons - convicts, sailors, marines, officials with wives and servants - left Portsmouth Harbour under the command of Captain Philip in May 1787.  Mr and Mrs Johnson were on board the vessel The Golden Grove.  On The Golden Grove he was able to conduct a service each Sunday, and to read prayers every evening. When the Fleet reached Rio de Janeiro, he visited the other ships to minister to those on board, marines and convicts alike.  It seems obvious that Richard Johnson did not see himself as part of the Authority of the new Colony of NSW, but rather as a preacher of the Gospel, with a zeal for the salvation of souls. (5) A man who wished for comfort or prestige would never have accepted such an appointment.  But a man who fervently lived the Gospels might; and such a man was Richard Johnson.

A portrait of Captain Arthur Philip RN painted in 1786;
Commander of the First Fleet and First Governor of NSW.
The Collection of the State Library of NSW.

Captain Arthur Philip, however, possessed no such fervour, nor saw merit in such a ministry in the Colony of NSW.  He was a navy man and he had his Orders.  After Captain Philip was appointed to command the First Fleet and to establish the Settlement at Botany Bay as its Governor, he had the responsibility of assembling those whom he thought would benefit the establishment of the Colony.  He managed this most effectively.  Arthur Philip foresaw that what began as a settlement for the cast-offs of England would develop into place of great value to the British Crown.  He wrote : "Nor do I doubt but that this country will prove the most valuable acquisition Great Britain ever made."  Few in the British Government, however, shared this view. Arthur Philip wished to reform the convicts, not simply gaol and punish them.  He also wished to befriend Australia's Indigenous peoples. But Philip's was also a very pragmatic vision; he was no dreamer.

The mental picture formed by those statesmen and bureaucrats in England who planned the Penal Settlement, namely, that Botany Bay (6) was a fertile land where crops would readily grow to support the needs of the residents, were not realised in the land immediately surrounding the settlement at Sydney Cove.  We need only ponder the difficulty of establishing a self-sustaining settlement in an unknown land, completely unlike England, with a harsh climate and its own peoples who had lived on the continent for tens of thousands of years.  At various points in the first two years after settlement, the starvation of both convicts and the troops guarding them seemed a real possibility; there was insufficient to feed those who arrived in January 1788 and subsequently in 1789 and 1790. The planting of crops around Sydney Cove had failed and convicts, sailors, even Mr Johnson himself, went out into Port Jackson in boats to catch fish to feed the Settlement.

A map of the Settlement at Sydney Cove in July 1788 - just six months after the landing - shews clearly a tract of land in approximately the area bounded by the present Harrington, Essex, Grosvenor and George Streets which had been set aside for the building of a church.  From this, we can surmise that the construction of a church had been discussed between Governor Philip and Mr Johnson. (7)

An engraving of the Settlement at Sydney Cove based on a detailed map drawn up
in July 1788.  The ornament and the no. 7 indicate the spot which
had been selected for the construction of a church. 
It was eventually built elsewhere in 1793.

One of the telling aspects of the attitude of the Government of the new Colony, however, was that it took fully five years before a building specifically for the purpose of Divine Service came to be constructed.  And even then - 1793 - it was paid for out of the pocket of the Chaplain, Mr Johnson.  It was also not on the land indicated on the 1788 map.  By the time that church had been completed, Arthur Philip had relinquished government of the colony and returned to England.  A request from Mr Johnson of Philip in 1792 for convict labour and some financial support to build churches both in Sydney and Parramatta was declined by the Governor.

A sketch by the architect and historian Morton Herman of
the first Christian Church in Australia, erected in 1793 on the corner of Hunter
and Bligh Streets Sydney.
The T-shaped building was able to seat a few hundred souls
and was dedicated to Saint Philip.

In five years as the first Governor, Arthur Philip had accomplished much in establishing the settlements of New South Wales from their natural states to a self-supporting colony.  He was a fair man, persevering, determined, just and possessed of courage. He was not capricious, or cruel or readily prone to discouragement. In less steady hands, it is most likely that the Settlement in 1788 would have collapsed, leaving an awkward situation for all concerned.  For all his virtues, however, Arthur Philip seemed not to have been a man of any religious conviction.  He did not approve of the Chaplain's desire to evangelise the convicts of the new Colony, or those in charge of them.  He asked Mr Johnson to focus his attention on instilling a sound morality instead, which was of more obvious social benefit.

In other cultures, in other ages and even other contemporary nations (such as Spain and France), building a temple, a shrine or a House of God would seem a sensible way of seeking God's help for a struggling society.  Men of the Enlightenment, however, such as Governor Philip and his officers, lacked such a sensibility.  Mr Johnson conducted Divine Service initially in a tent and sometimes in rooms which were made available on a Sunday.  In those earliest days, no one was compelled to attend and evidence is lacking as to how many of the Settlement's inhabitants actually did.

In the next posts in this series, we shall further discuss the Christian ministry of the Reverend Richard Johnson in the infant Colony; the landing of Count La Perouse at Botany Bay, the Catholic convict James Ruse and the stirrings of Catholicism in those early years.

AMDG

NOTES

1. Sydney Cove includes the spot we now refer to as Circular Quay. 

2. It would seem doubtful that the site of the Memorial marks the spot of the first Christian Service, which was more likely closer to the Sydney Cove. A map of the Settlement made in March 1788, indicates that the corner of the present Hunter and Bligh Streets was an area outside the Settlement. There does not seem to be documentary evidence to be definite about this point. The Memorial, however, certainly indicates the place where Rev'd Mr Johnson built the first church in 1793.

3. The new colony of New South Wales initially comprised all of the Eastern half of the continent, as far as what is now South Australia.

4. Some early historians, repeated by others over the years, have asserted that the inclusion of a Chaplain to the First Fleet was an after-thought, decided upon not long before the Fleet sailed from England.  This is completely inaccurate, since both the Chaplain and the Commander of the First Fleet were both appointed in October 1786, when the matter was still in the planning stages.

5. In the language of the Church of England, Mr Johnson would be described as an Evangelical, but one of the Officers of the new Colony, Lieutenant Tench went so far as to describe him as a "Methodist".

6. In August 1788, Captain Philip wrote to the Authorities in England, describing in detail the map of July 1788.  All the buildings he planned and his intentions for the laying out of streets &c. are mentioned in this letter.  But there is no mention of the construction of a church in the letter.

7. Based upon Captain Cook's discovery in 1770, and the observations of the botanist on that voyage, Sir Joseph Banks, the British Government had settled upon Botany Bay as the place for the Penal Settlement.  Often New South Wales was referred to colloquially as Botany Bay.  But when the First Fleet reached New South Wales and Captain Philip assessed Botany Bay, he found it not in the least suited to the needs of a large new settlement.  A short expedition Northward in a long boat lead to the discovery of Port Jackson (which we now refer to as Sydney Harbour) and, in particular Sydney Cove.  Captain Philip sailed the Fleet into Port Jackson and landed at Sydney Cove, claiming it for the British Crown on 26th January 1788.


REFERENCES

The following online articles give useful accounts of the lives of Arthur Philip and Richard Johnson.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/phillip-arthur-2549

http://acl.asn.au/resources/richard-johnson-first-chaplain-to-australia/

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks15/1500721h/0-dict-biogI-K.html#johnson1

The following monographs were used in preparing this article :

Cedric Flower The Illustrated History of NSW, Rigby Publishers Limited, Sydney, 1981.

GB Barton The History of New South Wales from the Records, volume 1 Governor Philip 1783-1789, by Authority, Sydney,  1889.

Old Saint Mary's and the Benedictine Monastery

Image : Sydney Archdiocesan Archives

This engraved sketch was drawn in Hyde Park in or shortly after 1840.  

Engraved by William Baker of King Street, Sydney, it is a quite accurate depiction of the Cathedral precinct at that time.  

Standing at the fence of Hyde Park and centrally positioned, are two figures in black, who are Benedictine monks; their religious habit is shewn very clearly.  On the left of the image is depicted the buildings commenced by Father Therry for a residence, schoolhouse and chapel, but which were subsequently used for the Benedictine Monastery.  Between these buildings and the Cathedral, is a small market garden and a figure can just be made out at work there.  

The engraving, in the collections of the Sydney Archdiocesan Archives, was photographed by Giovanni Portelli and digitally enhanced for presentation in this post. 

Click on the image for an enlarged view.

AMDG.

Historic Images of Saint Mary's Cathedral Sydney

Saint Mary's Cathedral from Hyde Park, 1930.
Image : The Saint Bede Studio.

This photograph was taken in 1930 by an amateur photographer.  Looking south-east, it shews the Cathedral in its completed state after the additions which were constructed between 1914 and 1928.  

In order to depict what is in the photograph more clearly, we include the photograph below, which depicts the additions in the early stages of their construction. It is taken from almost the identical angle to the 1930 photograph.  Hyde Park also has changed in those eight or nines years : trees have grown up, but other trees and landscaping have disappeared.  This was the consequence of much of the centre of the Park being dug up in the early 1920s during the extension of the City Circle underground railway.

Saint Mary's Cathedral circa 1921.
Image : State Library of NSW

Click on the images for an enlarged view.

AMDG

NOTES

The photographs on this blog are taken from a variety of sources, some in online Archival collections, some from books, some original images in the editor's collection.  They are presented here in a "modernised" digital form, and with as much detail of the structure of the Cathedrals enhanced in order to make them more accessible to a new generation of Australian Catholics.  The original image on which this digital rendering is based is held by the State Library of NSW.  Thanks are due to Special Collections of the State Library for undertaking a search to locate this and other rare images.  Please do not reproduce these unique images without permission. 

Go to the foot of the Cross

If there is one thing more obvious than another in the vocation to which the Almighty has called us Christians, it is its absolute claim over all that man has and is - the entireness of the change by which the Christian has become a new creature, and which old things are passed away, and all things are become new.  Hence, indifference is amongst its deadliest enemies or, rather, it is a foe which bears within itself the concentrated mischief of all others.  Open sin degrades and makes miserable the sinner, but it leaves his with his eyes in some degree open, if it be only to see his own nakedness. ...

The first and the greatest of all commandments – the first of the two on which hang all the law and Prophets, runs thus: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.”  Recall to memory the terms which are used by the inspired writers of the New Testament, in order to describe true nature of the life which is to be led by the disciples of Christ : it is a pilgrimage, a race, warfare demanding watchfulness, and endurance, and stout heartedness.  The merchant of our blessed Lord’s parable, having found the one pearl of great price, went his way and sold all that he had, bought it.  If Christian men would be indeed followers of Him whose name they bear, they are warned of the cost as earnestly as they are lovingly invited; they are to take their Cross daily; they are to stand prepared to give up all that is dearest in human life, and that life itself also, when their Master’s call is heard.  The same voice which is ever crying throughout the world “Come to me all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you,” utters also the warning exhortation “You cannot serve God and Mammon” : the same Good Shepherd who gathers the lambs in his arms, and seeks out with so loving a perseverance the wandering sheep, has Himself told us of the day when He will say to those who - at the appointed hour, shall have no oil in their lamps -  “I know you not.”

¶

There is a fearful error, Dearly Beloved, against which no warnings of mine can be too solemn and importunate.  It is the error of supposing the Christian life to be a thing of negatives, as if all you had to hope and strive for were the avoiding of flagrant transgression of the penal laws of God.  What an unworthy distortion of Christian thought, and yet how many seem to adopt and live in this distortion !  You are “to cease to do evil” certainly, but it is that you may “learn to do well” and these two things are as inseparable in practice as they are in precept.  What is the main character of the spirit taught by the Church and by the Holy Scriptures?  Is it not the filial temper of love and self-sacrifice, and devout imitation of our Lord, in very contra-distinction to the grudging, reluctant, sluggish, lukewarm temper of the slave who fulfils an unloved service under constraint and fear of punishment? Think too, again, of that revelation which our Saviour has graciously made to us of the manner in which the last judgement will be conducted.  How much it declares, and how much it implies…. The blessed are blessed for what they have done; the cursed are cursed for what they have left undone.  Most merciful and dread lesson!  Let us take it to heart.

What we have said, Dearly Beloved, and what we have suggested, is enough to guide your thoughts in the direction in which we would in this season have you employ your self-examination.  What is the remedy … if you discover that practical indifference has fastened upon yourselves, or upon any you love and care for?  This one thing; recurrence to one of the first statements of your catechism - man was created in order to know God and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him in the next.  Enter into the depths of this truth and when you are in some tolerable measure permeated by a sense of what it implies, then look at this world, at its utmost good and evil in such a light.  Or listen to these words of eternal wisdom: “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul?”  

Better still to go to the foot of the Cross; spend these few days of the penitential season in the slight self-denial that is required of you, strengthen your heart and purge your soul by the spiritual exercises of the Church, and then look up into the face of the Crucified, and see whether you can find any excuse for indifference.  Never did Christian man, as he stood upon Calvary and contemplated its spectacle, think of half measures.  Truly and wholly, in the church and in the world, in prosperity and adversity, “I am yours and yours only, My Lord and my God.”  May this be in all your hearts; and make the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  Amen.

Excerpts from Archbishop Polding's Pastoral Letter for 1860 as contained in the anthology The Eye of Faith.

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NOTES

The Eye of Faith was printed by the Lowden Publishing Co., Kilmore Victoria in 1977.  The editors were Gregory Haines, Sister Mary Gregory Foster and Frank Brophy.  Special contribution to the volume were made by Professor Timothy Suttor and James Cardinal Freeman.

AMDG

Looking through the Eyes of Faith : 1

Thanks to the zeal of a previous generation of Church historians, a most important volume was published in 1977, to coincide with the centenary of the death of Archbishop Polding.  

This volume was The Eye of Faith : The Pastoral Letters of John Bede Polding.  Its editors had carefully collated all the Pastoral Letters which Polding had written to the Faithful of the Church in Australia, of which he was bishop, since 1835.  

It is a collection of great value.  

In two marvellous and inspiring essays at the beginning of the volume, the editors describe the significance of these Pastoral Letters.  These are some extracts from the first of those essays :

 

John Bede Polding’s Pastoral Letters are valuable historical documents. During middle forty years of the nineteenth century, Archbishop Polding wrote some seventy letters on a variety of subjects : education; the care of orphans; hospitals; capital punishment; salacious literature and censorship; world events,  including the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny; the papacy and the Papal States; floods and other very local events; politics, the responsibility of government, social harmony and the monarchy.  A number of them comment on questions which are attractive to present-day historians: aboriginals; family life and the role of women; the wider social life of colonial Australia, rather than its more narrow political expression. §

For the historian, the value of the Polding Letters is enhanced by the acuteness of their observations and comment.  Their author’s sensitivity to the nuances of colonial life - as well as to its obvious aspects - grew out of his belief that religion was a vitally involved with human activity, that each moment of time had an eschatological significance. §

Polding did not observe facts alone, but their implications for people in Australia. Each time he wrote he tried to draw his audience closer to God, to encourage upright human conduct and to counter evil, sin and the false ideologies which challenged God’s presence in Australia.  His letters present a consistently based view of the state of religion and of private and public morals in Australia throughout the crucial years of the nineteenth century. §

As historical documents, these letters present aspects of colonial life which are not often encountered in the writings of politicians, administrators and newspaper correspondents.  They have an underlying unity which derives from the known and consistent attitude of the author and which, in turn, is of assistance to those who are seeking a basis of comparison between one time and another during the forty years which they span. §

The Pastoral Letters of John Bede Polding are the footprints of the Australian Catholic Church’s first apostolic tradition and its best surviving expression.  They comprise a testament of the faith proposed for the Church’s belief; of the hope which sustained its faith and justified its discipline; and of the soul of its life of faith and hope, the doing of the truth in charity.   This deeper value, this bond of greater unity in Polding’s Letters is to be seen by those who read, not as students of one discipline or another, but with the eye of Faith. §

The Polding Pastorals are possibly Australia’s only (though by no means pure), example of a religious literature – and of an implied Christian culture – which was both markedly monastic in character and contemplatives in orientation.  They confronted the activism and unbelief which marked his day and do no less today.  ...

Polding  … and his writings suffer no embarrassment by being numbered with John Henry Newman and his works.

To be continued.

NOTES

The Eye of Faith was printed by the Lowden Publishing Co., Kilmore Victoria in 1977.  The editors were Gregory Haines, Sister Mary Gregory Foster and Frank Brophy.  Special contribution to the volume were made by Professor Timothy Suttor and James Cardinal Freeman.

AMDG

NEW PORTRAIT OF ARCHBISHOP POLDING

On this beautiful Feast of the Annunciation, we are pleased to release this new portrait of Archbishop Polding.

This digital image has been prepared for a new printing of the memorial card of Archbishop Polding which has been in distribution since 2019. 

The new portrait, created by The Saint Bede Studio is a good likeness of the Archbishop and is based on a photograph taken of him around the year 1860 when he was in his mid-50s.  This image was prepared by digitally recreating the old photograph with careful attention to detail, whilst adding new features, such as the background.  This is not a click-of-a-button AI image.

The memorial card will continue to be distributed to Parishes in the Archdiocese of Sydney (and beyond) as we prepare for the Sesqui-centenary of the Archbishop's death in March 2027.

AMDG.

POPE LEO XIV

 This prayer was approved for publication by the Bishop of Maitland & Newcastle.

AMDG.

Portrait of Archbishop Polding

 

The Most Reverend John Bede Polding OSB

1794-1877

Vicar Apostolic of New Holland 1835 -1841

Archbishop of Sydney 1841 - 1877

Born in Liverpool UK

Died in Darlinghurst NSW

Buried in the crypt of Saint Mary's Cathedral Sydney.

That in all things God may be glorified.

Image created by the Saint Bede Studio 2022 based on an engraving from the 1850s.

A Pastoral Letter for Advent by Archbishop Polding : 1856

The Holy Season of Advent, which commences this day, has been instituted to dispose the faithful to celebrate with proper sentiments the feast of Christmas.   Sorrow for sin : atonement for it by prayer and penitential exercises, in union with all our dear Saviour suffered for our sins; meditation on the Incarnation of the Son of God; [these] are specially recommended and enjoined by the Church, as suitable for this holy time.   It is therefore a Lent, mitigated in form, and shortened in its duration, during which, gratitude for the first coming of Jesus in the flesh, a great desire of His coming and taking possession of your hearts; a preparation for His third coming in great power and majesty to judge the world; these dispositions ought to influence us to amendment and holiness of life.

First, never let us forget the deplorable state from which the Blessed Son of God, by becoming man, has delivered us.  He has opened for us the kingdom of Heaven; He has obtained for us and granted us the means of rising out of the abyss of sin; He has redeemed us from a most cruel bondage.  He is our Saviour.   O, can we reflect on all that He has done and suffered for us, unmoved by feelings of profound gratitude?  Whilst yet in His Mother’s sacred womb let us unite ourselves with her in adoring, in thanking Him with all the affection of a devout and grateful heart.  And for this purpose, let us be assiduous and exact in reciting three times a day the Angelus, a short an excellent exercise of piety, instituted to keep before the mind of the faithful the remembrance of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

A second disposition for this holy time, is to have a great desire for Jesus Christ to be in possession of our souls.  This is the case when his grace is our spiritual life, and his spirit is the animating principle of our conduct. “If anyone love me” He says “the Father will love him, and we will come to him and abide with him.”  Entertain, therefore, a strong desire to be thus united and made one with your Saviour; and as it is impossible for an affection for sin and the love for Jesus Christ to exist in the same soul, hate and detest sin as the greatest of all evils and use the means appointed to be delivered from it.  Prepare to make a good Confession.  Invite your Saviour to come to you in Holy Communion …. Desire with a strong desire to eat the Pasch with your Saviour.  He is our wisdom.  He is our light.  He is our life.  Come then sweet Jesus, delay not! sin in our hearts shall be destroyed, and thou alone shall reign therein.

A third disposition proceeding from the consideration of the third coming of Jesus Christ in judgement, is to have a deep regret for our sins, and in earnest desire to do penance for them.  To inspire us with this disposition the Church brings before our minds on the first Sunday of Advent, the description of that judgement.  For the same reason she, on other Sundays of Advent, addresses to her children the admonitions John the Baptist gave the Jews: “Do penance” said he “the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The axe is already at the root of the tree - every tree which brings forth not good fruit, shall be cut down and cast into the fire. Prepare you the way of the Lord, make straight his path, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  Moved by these admonitions, the faithful from the earliest times, consecrated the four weeks preceding Christmas to fasting and to prayer.

Excerpts from Bishop John Bede Polding's Pastoral Letter published 30th November 1856 as contained in the anthology The Eye of Faith.

AMDG

NOTES

The Eye of Faith was printed by the Lowden Publishing Co., Kilmore Victoria in 1977.  The editors were Gregory Haines, Sister Mary Gregory Foster and Frank Brophy.  Special contribution to the volume were made by Professor Timothy Suttor and James Cardinal Freeman.