At the time as having formerly at her marriage received of his bounty.”* when Hales "was forced from the Lady Salter's, that family or college broke up or dissolved;" + Bishop King being under the same interdict as himself of being harboured in the family. Thus within the short space of twelve months he was compelled again to take up his abode with widow Dickenson, in whose house he remained till the day of his decease. Some time previous to the loss of his Fellowship, "he had lived fourteen days with beer and bread and toast, in order to try how little would keep him if sequestered. At his being at Richings [Lady Salter's] towards his latter end, when he was alone, he was usually reading Thomas a Kempis, which (of a small print) he read without spectacles. He was never out of humour, but always even, and humble, and quiet; never disturbed by any news, or any loss, or anything that concerned the world; but much affected if his friends were in want or sick."+ (To be continued.) AUSTRALIAN CHARACTERISTICS. PEACEABLE AND CONFIDING HABITS OF THE NATIVES, As resident Magistrate of the Murray District, I may almost say, that for the last three years I have lived with the natives. My duties have frequently taken me to very great distances up the Murray or the Darling rivers, when I was generally accompanied only by a single European, or at most two, and where, if attacked, there was no possibility of my receiving any human aid. I have gone almost alone among hordes of those fierce and blood-thirsty savages, as they were then considered, and have stood singly amongst them in the remote and trackless wilds, when hundreds were congregated around, without ever receiving the least injury or insult. In my first visit to the more distant tribes, I found them shy, alarmed, and suspicious; but soon learning that I had no wish to injure them, they met me with readiness and confidence. My wishes became their law; they conceded points to me that they would not have done to their own people; and on many occasions cheerfully underwent hunger, thirst, and fatigue to serve me. Former habits and prejudices in some respects gave way to the influence I acquired. Tribes that never met or heard of one another before were brought to mingle in friendly intercourse. Single individuals traversed over immense distances, and through many intervening tribes, which formerly they never could have attempted to pass, and in accomplishing this the white man's name alone was the talisman that proved their safeguard and protection. During the whole of the three years I was Resident at Moorunde, not a single case of serious injury or aggression ever took place on the part of the natives against the Europeans; and a district, once considered the wildest and most dangerous, was, when I left it in November, 1844, looked upon as one of the most peaceable and orderly in the province. PATERNAL AFFECTION OF A NATIVE AUSTRALIAN. Upon meeting children after a long absence, I have seen parents "fall upon their necks, and weep" bitterly. It is a mistaken idea, as well as an * Wood, ut supra. + Izaak Walton in Fulman's MSS. Idem, ibid. unjust one, that supposes the natives to be without sensibility of feeling. It may often be repressed from pride or policy, but it will sometimes break forth uncontrolled, and reveal, that the best and genuine feelings of the heart are participated in by savage in common with civilized man. The following is an instance in point:-A fine, intelligent young boy was, by his father's consent, living with me at the Murray for many weeks; but upon the old man's going into Adelaide, he took his son away to accompany him. Whilst there, the boy died; and for nearly a year I never saw anything more of the father, although he occasionally had been within a few miles of my neighbourhood. One day, however, I was out shooting about three miles from home, and accidentally fell in with him. Upon seeing me, he immediately burst into tears, and was unable to speak. It was the first time he had met me since his son's death, and my presence forcibly reminded him of his loss. The same circumstance occurred when he accompanied me to the house, where everything he saw recalled the memory of his child. RELIGIOUS NOTIONS AND SUPERSTITIONS. The natives of New-Holland, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no religious belief or ceremonies. A Deity, or great First Cause, can hardly be said to be acknowledged, and certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes. They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others. But we have here a somewhat different account :-"The account given me by some of the natives of the Murray of the origin of the creation is, that there are four individuals living up among the clouds, called Nooreele, a father and his three male children; but there is no mother. The father is all-powerful, and of benevolent character. He made the earth, trees, water, &c., gave names to every thing and place, placed the natives in their different districts, telling each tribe that they were to inhabit such and such localities, and were to speak such and such a language. It is said that he brought the natives originally from some place over the waters to the eastward. The Nooreele never die, and the souls (ludko, literally, ‘a shadow') of dead natives will go up and join them in the skies, and will never die again. Other tribes and natives give an account of a serpent of immense size, and inhabiting high rocky mountains, which, they say, produced creation by a blow of his tail. But their ideas and descriptions are too incongruous and unintelligible to deduce any definite or connected story from them." Evil spirits, sorcery, and witchcraft, enter largely into the belief of all the natives. Of the first it is said, "They fly about at nights through the air, break down branches of trees, pass simultaneously from one place to another, and attack all natives that come in their way, dragging such as they can catch after them. Fire appears to have considerable effect in keeping these monsters away; and a native will rarely stir a yard by night, except in moonlight, without carrying a fire-stick. Under any circumstances, they do not like moving about in the dark; and it is with the greatest difficulty that they are even induced to go singly from one station to another, a mile or two distant, after night-fall." The sorcerers and witches are supposed able to produce or drive away hail, rain, thunder, wind, tempests, and to cure or bring on disease. They are made so by certain rites, which seem to vary in different tribes. All seem to acknowledge the immortality of the soul; but all probably differ in their notions of its state after death. "Mr. Moorhouse, who has taken great pains in his inquiries among the natives around Adelaide upon questions of this nature, states that they believe in a soul or spirit, (itpitukutya,) separate and distinct altogether from the body, which at death goes to the west, to a large pit, where the souls of all men go. When all are dead, the souls will return to their former place of residence, go to the graves of their forsaken bodies, and inquire, Are these the bodies that we formerly inhabited?' The bodies will reply, 'We are not dead, but still living.' The souls and bodies will not be re-united: the former will live in trees during the day, and at night alight on the ground, and eat grubs, lizards, frogs, and kangaroo-rats, but not vegetable food of any description. The souls are never again to die, but will remain about the size of a boy eight years old." The most singular belief (said also to be general) is, that white people in Australia are the souls and bodies of the black natives, who have risen from the dead, and returned to revisit the scenes and persons familiar to them in the former state of being. But the aborigines are quite astonished that the new-comers do not seem to recognise either the scenes or the persons, nor know even their parents or children, or the places where they lived and died. They suppose, however, that the change must effect an entire oblivion of former things. "One old native informed me, that all blacks, when dead, go up to the clouds, where they have plenty to eat and drink; fish, birds, and game of all kinds, with weapons and implements to take them. He then told me, that occasionally individuals had been up to the clouds, and had come back, but that such instances were very rare: his own mother, he said, had been one of the favoured few. Some one from above had let down a rope and hauled her up by it: she remained one night, and on her return gave a description of what she had seen in a chaunt or song, which he sung for me, but of the meaning of which I could make out nothing."-From Journals of Expeditions of Discovery in Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the Years 1840-1. By E. J. Eyre, Resident Magistrate, Murray River. THE SABBATH. "PRAY that your flight be not on the Sabbath-day;" not on the Jewish Sabbath, because travelling then would give offence to them who were angry with the disciples for plucking the ears of corn on that day; not on the Christian Sabbath, because being forced to travel on that day would be a grief to themselves. This intimates Christ's design, that a weekly Sabbath should be observed in his church after the preaching of the Gospel to all the world. We read not of any of the ordinances of the Jewish church which were purely ceremonial, that Christ ever expressed any care about, because they were all to vanish; but for the Sabbath he often showed a concern. It intimates, likewise, that the Sabbath is ordinarily to be observed as a day of rest from travel and worldly labour; but, according to his own explication of the fourth commandment, works of necessity were lawful on the Sabbath-day, as fleeing from an enemy to save our lives. Had it not been lawful, he would have said, "Whatever becomes of you, do not flee on the Sabbath-day, but abide by it, though you die for it;" for we must not commit the least sin to escape the greatest trouble. But it intimates likewise, that it is very uneasy and uncomfortable to a VOL. IV.-FOURTH SERIES. 3 E good man to be taken off by any work of necessity from the solemn service and worship of God on the Sabbath-day. We should pray that we have quiet and undisturbed Sabbaths, and may have no other work to do on Sabbath than Sabbath-work; that we may attend on the Lord without distraction. To flee in the winter is uncomfortable to the body; but to flee on the Sabbath-day is so to the soul; and what, I would ask, will it not be to the souls of those who afford, as well as those who embrace, the sinful facilities for unnecessary travelling on that sacred day, regarding which the Lord of heaven and earth has enjoined, that in it both master and servant shall rest from all unnecessary work ?-Matthew Henry. METHODISM IN FORMER DAYS. No. XXXII. THE OXFORD METHODISTS.* TO THE REV. MR. WHITEFIELD. SIR,-This little piece was originally written to vindicate the gentlemen called by the name of Methodists, (after an impartial inquiry into their principles and behaviour,) from some virulent and groundless aspersions cast upon them in a letter inserted in "Fog's Journal." And as the conduct of these gentlemen has continued ever since irreproachable, and they have steadfastly persevered in the same course which they so laudably began some years ago, and yet have still the misfortune to find themselves slightly spoken of by many persons, who care not to fall into measures which they may possibly think too strict and self-denying, it must be thought not improper to reprint it now.† And to whom can it be so fitly addressed, as to you, Sir, who have passed under that appellation, and who by your successful preaching have so well justified the conduct of the gentlemen who are the subject of it? It must afford no small pleasure to all serious Christians, to find by your success in the two first cities of the kingdom,‡ that, degenerate as the age is in which we live, a spirit of piety and attention may nevertheless be excited in the minds of the generality, and that without any other novelty than by preaching the plain and obvious doctrines of Christianity, in so serious and affecting a manner, as shall show the Preacher to be in earnest, and himself affected by the doctrines which he would instil into others. And from hence there is little room to doubt, that, if the like method was generally taken by our brethren of the Clergy, and the doctrines of the Gospel were "The Oxford Methodists: Being an Account of some young Gentlemen in that City, in Derision so called; setting forth their Rise and Designs, with some occasional Remarks on a Letter inserted in Fog's Journal of December 9th, 1732, relating to them. In a Letter from a Gentleman near Oxford, to his Friend at London. The second edition, with very great alterations and improvements." London, 1737. + Three editions of this tract were published: the first in 1733, adverted to by the Rev. John Wesley, in the third paragraph of the Preface to his Journals: the second edition in 1737: the third edition in 1738. See Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, vol. ii., 4th series, p. 1089, note. The first edition was written and published by Mr. Law, but without Mr. Wesley's knowledge or consent. When Fog's Journal of December 9th, 1732, came into his hands, he was unacquainted with any of them, (p. 1,) till one of them (John Wesley, p. 2) "informed me of their motives and views," part of which, and in particular the "Questions, I got him to give me in writing." (P. 14.) When the second edition was published, November, 1737, Mr. Wesley was in Georgia: it is consequently addressed to the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, as appears by the letter prefixed. London and Bristol. not made to give way to the only secondarily necessary rules of morality, the like success would attend their labours, and the Christian religion and our sacred function would be freed from that cold neglect, to say no worse, which is now too frequently thrown upon both. I have heard it rumoured that you have been refused, by some of our brethren, the use of their pulpits; but as you have submitted some of your discourses to the public censure,* and as I have not heard it once suggested by the most invidious, that there is anything contained in them in the least repugnant to the doctrines of Christianity in general, or those of the Established Church in particular, I hope it cannot be true, and must be spread by the enemies of those particular Clergymen who are named to have given such a refusal; and who, surely, have too much piety and good sense to be influenced in such a cause by motives of envy or narrowness of mind: for, can it be thought possible, that persons who weekly preach, and weekly write, and hourly talk in defence of our holy religion, who continually complain of the infidelity of some, of the apostasy of others, and of the cold, lifeless unconcernedness of most, should be the persons who would endeavour to throw cold water on that rising flame, in numerous audiences, which, well encouraged, might, in time, blaze out in a laudable zeal for the Gospel of Christ, and be attended with happy consequences to the cause of religion and virtue? But be this as it will, let me exhort you, Sir, not to be discouraged or . dismayed at any opposition that you may meet with in your good designs; but, preserving (in the midst of the dangerous applauses you meet with from the crowded audiences that everywhere attend your preaching) that meekness and humility, which must be inseparable from the doctrines you seek to propagate, (and more than any one thing, besides the blessing of God, insure the success of your labours,) demonstrate to the world, that you are yourself under the happy influences which you seek to spread, that your actions are regulated by the doctrines you preach; and that God's glory, and the religion of the blessed Jesus, are the principal, the only motives that animate your conduct and your views. This will entitle you to the blessing of God, and the approbation of all good men, and particularly to the hearty good wishes of your affectionate, though unknown, brother in our common Lord, November 28th, 1737. A. B. SIR, I hope you will not think me to blame, that I have not sooner answered yours, wherein you inclosed Fog's "Journal" of the 9th of December, 1732, and desired me to inform myself, and you, of the motives, pretensions, and actions of the young gentlemen, there styled Methodists. As I was entirely unacquainted with any of them when you made me this request, it must needs, you will allow, take up time, so thoroughly to make one's self master of this affair, as to be able to answer the desire of so good a friend, and so sincere a man, as, without flattery, I may say you are; and so that you may entirely depend upon the account I should render you, and govern yourself with regard to the disposition you intend to make of the excellent young man, your son.§ * Alluding to Sermons published by James Hutton in 1737–38. + Referring to Mr. Whitefield's "Weekly History." See Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, Fourth Series, vol. i., p. 237. § Mr. William Morgan. |