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[Page 184]
172
A PARTING WORD FOR THE RACE OF MURRI.
The dark side of this people has not been concealed in this book. Their degrading customs and their brutal crimes have been spoken of. A very large book might be filled with instances in which Australian Aborigines have exercised have exercised the nobler qualities of man as faithful servant and true friends of Europeans. In no branch of the Human Family can there be found more convincing proofs of gratitude and affection. Many a settler and traveller could related instances of blacks who, when assured that a white man was heir friend indeed, held to him in danger and distress with unalterable attachment. The faithfulness with which Jacky Jacky attended the explorer Kennedy in his last hours, which has been commemorated by the Muses of History and Painting, is by no means a solitary case of devoted attachment.
Many a lost English child has been saved from a miserable end in the bush by the earnest and clever search of aboriginal trackers; many a colonist has been rescued from the floods by aboriginal swimmers; and many a time has the poison injected by a snake-bite been sucked from a wounded settler by a blackfellow. There have been instances at different mission stations, of Aborigines who manifested in their lives a good under-standing of the principles of the Christian Faith, and a conscientious resolution to fulfil its obligations. As for the artistic part of worship, a congregation assembled in St. Phillip's, one of the episcopal churches of Sydney, has heard approvingly the sacred music of the service, without knowing until afterwards the fact that an aboriginal organist was leading their devotions.
Hitherto, it must be confessed, British colonization has done much to destroy, and British Christianity has done little to save, the Aborigines of Australia. Sometimes effort tor their good is discouraged by the anticipation of their speedy extinction. But this too popular theory of the speedy extinction of the Aboriginal race must be modified, if not negatived by such a sight as I have seen, and as may still be seen in some parts of New South Wales, - an assembly of hundreds of them, including dozens of hoary heads, and dozens of infants at the breast.
When the Christianity we profess has become a living and a ruling power in a British Australian community, - when the questions concerning different ecclesiastical traditions and rules which at present engross too large a proportion of our zeal, have given place to a supreme desire that the will of God may be done upon earth, - it will be one of the objects which the Australian Church will seek with the most intense earnest-ness to convey to the remnant of the race of Murri and to their kindred , from Cape York to Cape Leuwin, the knowledge of the love of Him who gave himself a ransom for all.
Sydney: Thomas Richards, Government Printer–1875.