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degenerated into a few score! No Mission in the annals of modern missionary history, ever had a more pleasing prospect of success than this had for the first two years, in which many of the Blacks were employed at labor, sometimes to the amount of sixty daily; several lads were learning to read and write in their own language, but the expense necessary for their employment and the supporting of so large an establishment was considered by the London Missionary Society as encroaching on the claims of other heathens, much more numerous than these, together with the disappointment of pecuniary aid at the commencement of the Mission by the Local government of this Colony, led to an alteration, under the false principles of Economy, which could never be overcome, and death in various shapes carried off the tribes, until there is barely the name of a few tribes left in existence in these parts; thus rendering the present mission the most unpromising of any in the whole world.
A few individuals may yet be benefited, and an important use might be made of this isolated situation remote from stock-stations, namely, by procuring some few couple of young Blacks from the interior, in the hostile parts, protecting and supporting them at this place, communicating to them religious and civil instruction; and whenever they express a wish to return, permit them, that they may communicate their new ideas to their own people, and thus they would become mediums of intercourse for the Protectors and others with tribes in the interior, in the same manner as M'gill and other Blacks are to me in these districts.
The Aborigines should visit Sydney, in charge of a person, to explain the nature of our customs, laws in our courts, our modes of punishment in our jails, which might all be made subservient to teaching them the important doctrine of future judgement, and of divine punishment for sin.
In these latter days, as in the times of the Apostles, God manifests in divers manners his sovereign power which he has not delegated to other hands "shewing mercy upon whom he will shew mercy, and compassion on whom he will have compassion." -- "So that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." Even the Apostles were forbidden to preach the word in Asia, and they assayed to go into Buhynia, but the Spirit suffered them not. Whilst " a vision appeared to Paul saying come over into Macedonia and help us." But, to us God only manifests his will by his providence, and by the secret operation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those to whom the word is sent. When I resided at Raiatea in the South Seas, Island after Island renounced their Idols and worshipped Jesus. In this Colony, at this place, the same means were used, but all was frustrated, difficulty after difficulty, disappointment after dissapointment, trial after trial arose, and yet no apparent success. So also at the Marquesan Islands where attempt after attempt has hitherto failed. Many a Mission has been abandoned by various Missionary societies, shewing that "Neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase."
The conversion of the South Sea Islanders can be alluded to in corroboration of this fact, where the Islanders were far sunk beneath these Aborigines in superstition, beastiality, lust, and cruelty, yet a handful of what the world calls ignorant men, patiently abode its sneers, the scoff of infidels, the disdain of the philosopher, as wild enthusiasts, for nearly twenty years. Once was the Mission all but abandoned by its friends, and war, and fearful rites were depopulating the Islands, to an alarming extent, when God arose, operated on their hearts by His Holy Spirit, and the Natives became faithful saints in Christ Jesus; and are living witnesses to this day, that "the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds:" thus clearly manifesting, that, "It is not by might, nor yet by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord." -- "For his holy arm has gotten him the victory."
The Providence of God is being manifested towards the Aborigines of the land, and will, humanely speaking, end, either in their total extinction, or, a very small remnant will be called to the acknowledgement of the truth as it is in Jesus: in the which case, "a little one may become a thousand and a small onee a strong nation." Our religious precepts would lead them to congregate themselves together, they would acquire industrious habits, upon such principles which Hell itself, cannot finally overthrow.
The fashionable philosophy of the day, speculating on the intellectual powers of the Aborigines, as manifested in the Bumps of the Brain, is a specious fallacy leading away the mind from the hope of the influence of God's holy spirit regenerating the heart, opening the eyes of their understanding, and turning them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God; and instead of depending as christians, on the promised divine secret influence of the Holy Spirit, this specious science, contemplates only the quantity of accumulation of matter in the formation of the brain, the depositions of bone in the various corresponding concavities ans convexities of the skull, sets aside a positive declaration, to assume an hypothesis, amusing in theory, but dangerous in practice.
The miserable attempt to deduce from such a science, falsely so called, that these Black human beings, "have an innate defficiency of intellect rendering them incapable of instruction," would arrive at the natural conclusion that it would be useless to attempt it, and consequently the Blacks being but a part and parcel of the brute ceation, being defficient of intellect, there can be no responsibility attached to their destruction, more than there is to the extirpation of any oyher animal whose presence is obnoxious to the possessor of the soil!