584 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



permitted the church settlements of Otago and Canterbury in New 

 Zealand to appropriate a portion of the funds derived from the sale 

 of lands for the endowment of the Presbyterian and Anglican 

 churches respectively. So far the colonies followed, latterly with 

 halting steps, the history of the mother country. As in political, so 

 in ecclesiastical government, they have anticipated that history. The 

 American state churches did not survive the Revolution. In Can- 

 ada the Presbyterians and other sects successfully asserted their 

 claims to a share in the church endowments, which between 1840 

 and 1853 were distributed among the municipalities, all semblance 

 of a connection between church and state being thus destroyed. 

 New South Wales passed through a period of religious equality with 

 concurrent endowment of the four most numerous denominations, 

 and a long struggle against the principle of establishment was ended 

 in 1879, when the reserves were devoted to the purposes of education. 

 The practice of confiscating for the church n portion of the proceeds 

 of the land sales was gradually dropped in Otago and Canterbury, 

 probably more for commercial reasons than in consequence of the op- 

 position of the democratic governor aforesaid, who spoked the wheel 

 of the South Australians. Yielding to Nonconformist pressure, the 

 liberal Government in 1869 enforced the principle of religious equal- 

 ity throughout the crown colonies, which were thus, willingly or 

 not, made to follow the lead of the movement in Ireland. The in- 

 ternal organization of the colonial church is also anticipative. Fifty- 

 two years ago Sir George Grey bestowed on the Anglican Church in 

 New Zealand, then governed by him, a constitution modeled on 

 that of the corresponding church in the United States, as the political 

 constitution he drafted for the colony was modeled on the Constitu- 

 tion of the United States; and it has been imitated in other Austral- 

 asian colonies, which have thus declared themselves independent of 

 the mother church, while the colony is still politically dependent on 

 the mother country. In yet another point the daughters have out- 

 stripped the parent. Three Presbyterian denominations still fissure 

 the old home of Presbyterianism ; only two have ever existed in the 

 colonies, and for thirty years these two have been one. The four 

 chief Methodist sects in Australia are also said to be on the point of 

 amalgamating. 



The development of doctrine runs a fourth parallel to those of 

 buildings, cult, and organization, and in a brief space it recapitulates 

 a long history. In early colonial communities religious dogma is 

 found in a state of " albuminous simplicity." " A healthy man," 

 says Thoreau, " with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty 

 cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subject 

 for Christianity." Nor will a bush-faller, at twenty-five shillings the 



