176 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



should have been able to maintain his position as a 

 minister and a citizen, should have held the affections 

 of his congregation, should be a power throughout New 

 South Wales, should die in honour, and be commemorated 

 by one of the best statues in Sydney, placed in a central 

 square 1 



Throughout his career he constantly reminds us of 

 one of his greatest contemporaries — Thomas Chalmers. 

 Both were Presbyterian church leaders and founders 

 of churches. Both were social and pohtical reformers. 

 Both had a firm grasp of public affairs and the capacity 

 of a statesman. Lang enjoyed the splendid oppor- 

 tunities that fall to the lot of men of light and leading 

 in a young country, and he was besmirched in a way 

 impossible to Chalmers. Yet Chalmers was, like Lang, 

 in troubles oft, and he was bitterly assailed by a large 

 section of his fellow countrymen. Hardly should we 

 have inferred from the incidents of his pubhc career 

 that Chalmers was an unworldly. God-fearing man and 

 an intense Christ-worshipper ; but his Journal reveals 

 the secret of his strength. Did we possess the journal 

 of Dr. Lang, what confessions, what evidences of self- 

 abasement, what solicitous anxiety for rectitude, what 

 an enthusiasm of humanity might we not find ? Even 

 the libels which he expiated so bitterly were just such as 

 would be committed by a priest, accustomed to conceive 

 of the difference betAveen right and wrong as infinite, 

 looking at it, as Mme. de Stael would have said, from 

 the heights of Heaven or the depths of Hell. 



He plumed himself on resembhng men who had made 

 many enemies, as Bishop Burnet, or been shunned, like 

 St. Paul. Lord John Russell said of the bustling bishop 

 that he " exposed himself to envy by his independence 

 and disinterestedness," and Lang evidently took 

 Russell's words to himself. So vast was his self-esteem 

 that he habitually tliought of liimself in large relations. 

 When he addressed an open-air congregation on the 

 Turon gold-fields, he remembered that our Saviour had 

 spoken to some thousands of people in not dissimilar 



