THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Evening Star, Issue 10510, 31 December 1897, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

GOD’S GREATER BRITAIN.

[As Seen by the Rev. Dr Clifford ] Nobody can ever forget Australasian or Canadian hospitality who has once seen and experienced it. Again and again I was told that i. should find a distinctively Australian i of man. I have.. But it is not in length of body ; for I did not see more cornstalks in a day’s march in Melbourne or Brisbane than I have done in Manchester or Nottingham. It is not in the features of the face;.though an interviewer persuaded me to confess (hat Australian women possess a rare opulence of beauty. It is not in any special intonation or mode of speech; though I did fancy I caught an exaggerated “Cookneyism” here and there in the capital of Victoria. No 1 it is lx the boundless generosity and overflowing hospitality to the stranger from the Homeland! Like the bishop of the New .testament, the Australian is given to hospitality. He cannot do too much for you. He will get anything for you he can, show you anything he has, and tell you anything he knows. You land in the early morning,' but these good people are at the docks before you with smiles and bouquets and invitations. Or you arrive late at night; and what is this ? Here are a dozen men come twenty miles or more to meet you, and to ride with yon-to your destination and see that yon are comfortably located. A Baptist minister who, so you imagine, cannot bo astoundmgly nch, drives you about as if you were a prince j and when yon express your alarm at the accumulating bill for transit he calmly tells you that one of his friends has authorised him to spend all that is necessary in order to show you anything you wish to see. In Canadian city you desire to visit two or three State schools, and the superintendent of public education readily gives von more than half a day of his time, and supplies yon with all the printed information you oan need. Encouraged by their overflowing kindness you modestly ask for anv documents that will tell you all that the State Is doing, in any department whatever for the- people, and especially in directions not frequented by the British Government, and forthwith there is a wealth of matter placed at your disposal that will profitably occupy you for months, I have seen much competition” in my time, and regretted not a little its fierceness and oassion; but never before have I witnessed such a sustained sace in hospitable and generous treatment of “An Inqmnng Visitor.” Your politics 1 they made no difference. In fact, I received a certificate from a Presbyterian minister that 1 am a good “Conservative,” and if anything make me believe it,, it P 8 f* 16 . wa 7. * n w k*ch politicians of different colonies, like Christians of different churches, united In their endeavors to serve me. Even “interviewers” told me more than 1 told them, and members of Parliament were not only ready to satisfy a desire for knowledge that already existed, but sought to quicken and deepen it. The heads of departments” were as full of ardor in their work as of kindness, and the representatives of Her Majesty acted as though they had altogether lost sight of the differences of Christians in the greater claim ?L a . C , O T OD citizenship. So instinctive is this kind heartedness, and so tropical in its growth, that it overflows towards any one from the Old Land who shows any living conBritain* 1, UD ’ t3r au( * P ro ß ceßS of Greater

There is the same “ full assurance of faith ” as to the free and frank intercourse of the people of the colonies with one another, ibey are at home with each other as we are nob.* Caste is less operative. Of course the divisive and anti-social heritage of the Englishman is nob wholly exhausted; indeed there are strenuous efforts made by some Britishers, who desire to eut a figure in society, to revive its sway; but the sense of equality is so strong that it begets a freedom which exhilarates and broadens human life bocial emulation is nob extinct by any means, and will not be j but in a society where so many men exult in the fact that they or their fathers started on the lowest rung of the ladder, it is more widely recognised that * 8 The rank is but the guinea's stamp A man s a man for a v that. is strong. Each man feels that he has to make hia own way, and he may make it, and so self-reliance is a marked characteristic of the majority of the colonists, men and women alike. An Australian poetess says of the Australian She has a beauty of her own, A beauty of a paler tone v B .. Than English belles. Yet bouthern sun and Southern air Have kissed her cheeks until they wear Xhe dainty tints that oft appear On rosy shells. Her frank, clear eyes bespeak a mind Old world traditions fail to bind. ....... She is not shy Or bold, but simply self-possessed : Her independence adds a zest Unto her speech, her piquant jest, Her quaint reply. Hence men and women act out themselves mere fully. There is a freer initiative. Greater inventiveness in methods of work is po> Bible. Opportunities for self-fulfilment are more abundant. One class does not so easily crush another. Personality is able to express and to fulfil itself; and although that expression naturally, though not necessarily, is in some cases unspeakably painful, since self-possession passes into an irritating selfassertiveness, and self-dependence falls over into an ovor-weening-self-oonceib. Yet these individuals are. In ho sense, typical of Australian or Canadian life.

What may perhaps be described as the defect of this freer life is what seemed to me a little too much sensitiveness to criticism, and a reluctance to forgive those who failed to see and appraise at their full value all their excellences. Fronde’s mistakes are not yet forgotten; and a second visit from Max O’Rell would, I fancy, put a somewhat severe strain on the generosity of many Australians. A slight incident indicates the same mood. On my return from the journey to the Jenolan Caves I chanced to endorse the saying of the Australian novelist, Marcus Clarke, that “the dominant note of Australian scenery is that of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry—weird melancholy.” I have just travelled through miles upon miles crowded with the blue-gum tree, shut in sometimes almost as much as if in a London street; I had gone through acre upon acre where the trees, “ringed” and doomed to die, reared themselves in ghastly whiteness, without leaf and without bark, and I felt at every step that such mountain forests were indeed “funereal, secret, and stern,” and spoke accordingly. But a newspapt r twlftly exposed my mis judgment, and reminded me of the lovelier aspects of Australian scenery. But, after all, this sendtiveness to praise or censure is a fine feature in the colonial temper. It indicates pride of country, boundless self-reliance, and unsub. duable faith in the future, and so long as it does not check pity for the erring, or beget hesitancy in inv6ntion t or forgetfulness of God, it will work little but what is good. Very pleasant was it to see that with all this free, strong, and forceful life there was no lack of courtesy or of grace of speech and manner. Kindly manners mated with patient force, goodheartedness blended with robust strength, were the qualities we oftenest saw, and as I gazed on the "bottomless forests ” of Australia and Canada, and thought of them as merely samples of millions of acres, I felt, as I never had before, the greatness of those patient and heroic men who had gone forth as the pioneers and martyrs of our widening empire. They are the true makers of God’s Greater Britain in this century. They cleared away the “ bush ” and built the city, constructed the roads, fought the roaring rivers, and opened the gates of the world for the entrance of civilisation. These men, with axe and shovel, have patiently dug up the forests and laid the foundations of the crowded and growingMelbournsa andMontreala, Sydneys, and Torontos of the Greater Britain of today, and there irnot a man or a child dwelling under the British flag who is not in their debt.

AN UNUSUAL PROCEEDING, A proceeding, fortunately not often witnessed in the colonies, was gone through at the Chapter-house of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, very recently, A church court sat, it being open to the parties interested and the public, for the purpose of administering discipline to a clergyman who bad been found guilty of several acts of

drunkenness. The Bishop of Melbourne and there were several clergymen and other persons present. The offending clergyman was the Rev. Jas. Barley Sharp, of Christ Church, Brunswick. A commission, of which Mr Justice Hodges, as chancellor of the diocese, was chairman, had found him guilty of three acts of drunkenness, and the bishop now sat to give effect to the recommendation. Mr Sharp was intoxicated once at the Sunday school, and at another time at a Sunday service. He had been nineteen years in the ministry. The Bishop, m the course of his address, said it would have been very consolatory to him in this sore trial if the respondent had given . evidence that he had truly repented' of his sin; but when his bishop , pointed out to him how unseemly it would ha to resume his religious duties at Christ Church immediately after the commission had found him guilty, he still persisted in doing so, as if nothing had happened; and shortly after this, when some friends of the respondent published a document containing laudatory accounts of his past ministerial woik. he bimaelf added a postscript, in which a painfully inappropriate quotation from the poet Wyatt seemed altogether inconsistent with the broken and contrite heart which God does not despise.