Though amongst the lower types of the human race, the Aborigines have made excellent stock riders, bullock drivers, fencers, and servants in every department. And they have proved honest and faithful, especially when kindly treated. Australians are sometimes bitter against them, for a reason that ought rather to awaken sympathy. They take Aboriginal boys or girls into their service, they train them just till they are beginning to be useful, and lo! they go back to their own people. But in almost every case of that kind, the reason is perfectly clear. They are only taught so far as to make them useful tools. Their minds were not instructed, nor their hearts enlightened in the fear of God and the love of Jesus. They were not on an equality in any way either with children or with servants. They grew up without equals and without associates. They saw their parents and tribesmen treated with contempt and abuse. They instinctively felt that the moment they were unable to serve the self-interest of their employers, they themselves would be thrust out. They had not the spirit of the slave, though kept in the rank of a slave; and they yearned for satisfaction of these instincts, which the supply of their mere animal necessities could not assuage. Among the whites, they felt degraded and outcast; amongst their own people, they had the honour and esteem that were within reach of their kindred, and they might weave around their poor lot the mysterious and ever-blessed ties of family and home. And here and there, doubtless, flashed in the heart of some Native boy a gleam of that patriotism that led Moses to escape from Pharaoh’s court, and refuse to be identified with the despisers and oppressors of his own enslaved race,—divine in the Aboriginal as in the Hebrew, though each might give a very different account of its origin!
A book once fell into my hands, entitled,—“Sermons on Public Subjects,” by Charles Kingsley. I knew him to be a man greatly gifted and greatly beloved; and hence my positive distress on reading from the eighth sermon, page 234, “On the Fall,” the following awful words:—[1]“The Black people of Australia, exactly the same race as the African Negro, cannot take in the Gospel.... All attempts to bring them to a knowledge of the true God have as yet failed utterly.... Poor brutes in human shape ... they must perish off the face of the earth like brute beasts.”
I will not blame this great preacher for boldly uttering and publishing what multitudes of others show by their conduct that they believe, but dare not say so. Nor need any one blame me, if, knowing facts and details which Kingsley could never know, I turn aside for a few moments, and let the light of practical knowledge stream in on this and all similar teaching, come from whatsoever quarter it may.
While I was pondering over Kingsley’s words, the story of Nora, an Aboriginal Christian woman, whom, as hereafter related, I myself actually visited and corresponded with, was brought under my notice, as if to shatter to pieces everything that the famous preacher had proclaimed. A dear friend told me how he had seen Nora encamped with the blacks near Hexham in Victoria. Her husband had lost, through drink, their once comfortable home at a Station where he was employed. The change back to life in camp had broken her health, and she lay sick on the ground within a miserable hut. The visitors found her reading a Bible, and explaining to a number of her own poor people the wonders of redeeming love. My friend, Roderick Urquhart, Esq., overcome by the sight, said,—
“Nora, I am grieved to see you here, and deprived of every comfort in your sickness.”
She answered, not without tears, “The change has indeed made me unwell; but I am beginning to think that this too is for the best; it has at last brought my poor husband to his senses, and I will grudge nothing if God thereby brings him to the Saviour’s feet!”