DR. JOBSON ON AUSTRALIA AND ENGLAND

New Zealander, Volume XVII, Issue 1548, 16 February 1861, Page 5

DR. JOBSON ON AUSTRALIA AND ENGLAND

[From the " Maitland Ensign.'']

On Monday evening last nn address was presented to Dr. Jobson in the Wesleyan Chapel, York-street, Sydney. It will he known to most of our readers that Dr. Jobson lias come to this country as the representative of the British Wesleyan Conference. We take the following extract from the interesting speech he delivered on Monday evening from the report in Wednesday's Empire : '• Now with regard to these colonies, some one might say ' Don't commit yourself, you have not been long enough in these colonies to say much about them'; but he held that it was better for' the thoughts to be expressed, for when the mind had been expressed there wiis the room of* that thought left for other thoughts, and lie never was much afraid of committing himself. (Hear, hear.) When a man came to him, and appeared to refrain from saying what he thought, lest he should commit himself, he always i'elt inclined to say, if it were not a breach of good manners, ' My brother, speak out, and let me know what is in your mind.' (Laughter), lie (Mr. Jobson) might have attempted to speak what was the impression upon his mind—he had seen Victoria, and visited Ballaarat—he had travelled through Tasmania from one end to the other; and now he had come to New South Wales: had seen something of it, and he might say it had far surpassed all his previous expectations. (Applause.) Why, he was in the midst of the most beautiful scenery his eyes had ever looked upon, and he might, in passing, say that God had graciously planted within him a love for the beautiful, and the vast, and the grand. No drawing master had ever put it into him. (Applause.) When he was a child, folded in his mother's arms, and trod the lines of maternal love, he gazed with rapture, upon the peach-like bloom of her radiant face. (Applause.) He had sought for the beautiful in Schools of Art; he had sought the lofty and the grand in painting and architecture; poetry and* literature he had a constant craving for ; wherever he went he could not look niton a scene —he could not l(K)k u])on his beloved brethren, or any scene without the strong craving within him for what was true and lovely, and God had greatly favoured this unquenchable feeling, which had had, in one way or another, large opportunities for gratification. He had been on the top of nearly every cathedral tower in England,and had had to wait for hours in the dark until the sexton should let him depart. (Applause.) lie had been through the length and breadth of old England, he had gone from east to west, north to south; he had seen the mountains and the lochs of Scotland; he had seen the beautiful cove of Cork, and the beautiful lakes of Killarncy, which had been said to be a piece of paradise cut oif. (Laughter.) lie had seen the Giant's Causeway and the romantic glens and falls of Wales. He had been through France and Belgium, through Holland, through Prussia, through Germany, through Austria, through Switzerland ; from end to end of old Italy, in which the population had been so long trampled down. (Applause.) He had been through the United States of America, he had gone over the Alleghany Mountains ; he had sailed on the solemn Mississipi ; he had seen the Hoods failing down the falls of Niagara, he had seen the Si. Lawrence, with its thousand Isles ; he had gone down the Hudson River,—he had now come to them, and in doing so had passed down the Bed Sea, and seen the ridge of the mountains on which Moses received the law; he had preached to the Cingalese,—so that he had had good opportunities of seeing what there was in the world. But he must say, after all this, he had had a deeper and more profound impression made upon his mind in viewing these colonies than he had in viewing any country that he had visited. (Great applause.) "When lie saw the capes and bays, and considered the extent of Australia, he had tried to compare it with what he had seen, and he found it as wide as all Europe put together. (Applause.) If they were to throw it into the Atlantic, it would fill up from old Ireland to Newfoundland. (Applause.) One's mind enlarged, it swelled, became colossal, by thinking of the vast extent of Australia or Australasia. (Applause.) He went up and down, thinking sometimes to tell them what was England, and he must, or he should not get freedom from his thoughts. (Laughter.) He went up and down asking the question,' What will this part of the world become, and what is its intended destiny?' That was the great question to a visitor. One went to one's own country —that little country, as the Americans called it—and he had told one swaggering Yankee, when in America, that he was so great it would not hold him (laughter); when he (Dr. Jobson) thought of their old country, he thought it was the best country in the world. (Applause.) As one went up and down in that little great country, he. found it full of memories: he was reminded at every step, of what it had been. Now, here, they found beginning and preparations. Something was begun which would have to !>e carried on, and one asked, what would he the destiny of this part of the world ? He was not a prophet, he was not one of those who attempted to explain events involving prophecy, because he thought it better to leave events to explain themselves, than to say, in 1867, the great tribulation will be past, and the milcnnium will come. (Hear, hear.) He did not know what this part of the world would be or would come to—it might be that God had given this large country to them, to keep and to dress, until it should be a garden from one end to another. He was quite sure it was God's purpose that it should be a part of his great vineyard, and should bear rich, ripe fruit. (Applause.) Let them look on the other side of the globe. Old England was the only true and faithful witness for Protestantism, and he was ready to think that because she had been faithful, God had set before her this door of hope for her overflowing population. (Prolonged applause.) In Martin Luther's own land, spiritual religion was all but ignored,— rationalism prevailed, there was not another country that was either not pandering to the beast, or was ready to do so,—to fall down and worship before him. (Applause.) But Great Britain with all her faults had been a witness for scriptural truth, and if Australia were faithful, she should be a witness on this side of the globe; if she guarded it faithfully as Great Britain had done, she should hold up the charter of scriptural truth to some part of America, as well as to the islands of the Great Pacific. (Applause.)