THE PASTORAL CULT 275 



Sabbath) night " ? To such men the Bible was their 

 chief moral nutriment, the generator and sustainer of 

 the inflexible principle that carried them triumphantly 

 through the hard and bare life, the temptations and im- 

 broglios of a pioneer settlement. Was it not David Berry 

 who said, " I find more comfort and consolation in the 

 Bible than in all else besides ? In thrilling interest it 

 surpasses all the novels ever written, and in all respects 

 concerning the true welfare of man, as regards this 

 world and the world to come, all other books bear no 

 comparison with it." The utterance is halting, but 

 the sentiment is respectable, and it goes far to explain 

 the inception and growth of the Shoalhaven estate. 



Such sentiments and such practices were far from 

 being normal. Constant course and strenuous occupa- 

 tion with animals, gentle or fierce, or with material 

 things, deadened in most the finer sensibilities on which 

 religion depends. The lack of association with piously 

 disposed persons inhibited the further growth of the 

 rudiments that lie in all compact communities ; for, 

 do not the sociologists tell us that religion is but the 

 intensest form of the common (not the individual) con- 

 sciousness ? Most of all, the total absence of the forms 

 and ceremonies of the nominal religion, and of the con- 

 secrated individuals who administer them, is fatal to 

 that consciousness. The Sabbath, says Renan, is not 

 a patriarchal institution, nor is the Sunday a sacred 

 day in the Australian bush. Work proceeds on the 

 pioneer stations much as on other days ; it is a chance 

 if the name of the day is remembered. The immigrant 

 jackeroo, who may be hundreds of miles distant from 

 a church, listens in vain for the sound of church bells, 

 summoning him to prayer and sacred lessons, and he 

 feels an aching void when the long-wonted, mellow notes 

 no longer greet his ear. 



The squatter and his family, with here and there an 

 educated immigrant, possess mental resources beyond 

 the reach of their employees, and, aided by the spiritual 

 ministration of books and music, which at length find 



