274 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



in the mountains and the plains, regularly "read prayers " 

 to their patriarchal household, consisting of their own 

 family, their man-servants and their maid-servants, their 

 stockmen and shepherds. Only on special occasions, 

 when there was a collective cliristening or a confirmation, 

 was a clergyman or the bishop, at distant intervals, called 

 in. The bishop having promised to come up and 

 christen the younger members. Lady Bountiful makes 

 white frocks for the catechumens. It is a beautiful 

 winter's mornmg. The drays roll up, bringing elders 

 and youngers, and each dray load is given to eat ; as 

 many as one hundred individuals arrive. The squatter 

 and his wife stand sponsors. The children are lifted or 

 carried to the officiant. The bishop's commanding 

 figure and clear, penetrating voice (how well one remem- 

 bers the good old bishop !) ensure a reverent demeanour, 

 and his consecrating presence converts a secular abode 

 into a church. The simple rite administered, he delivers 

 a short sermon, and speaks helpful words to all the 

 groups, one by one. The tiny community is lifted a 

 degree upwards in the scale of civilisation.* 



The squatters who settled in Australia went out into 

 the wilderness, carrying with them neither the ieraphim 

 of the Semitic nor the household fire of the Aryan 

 migrant ; in rare cases they may have taken with them 

 their family or pocket Bibles. We may well believe 

 that the religion which had been ingrained in them by 

 centuries of theological teaching and pious living was 

 still ahve within them, but in the records of those early 

 days we find but few mentions of the forms of worship 

 having been maintamed. Away out in the wilderness, 

 a hundred or, perhaps, hundreds of miles distant from 

 a church, those of them Avho had had the habit of 

 domestic worship may have fostered it. The Aberdeen- 

 shire Leslies on the Darling Downs and the many Scots 

 elsewhere must have been brought up in it ; and who 

 can conceive Alexander or David Berry pretermitting 

 the venerable exercises of " the cottar's Saturday (or 

 * Barker, Station Life in New Zealand, letter xix. 



