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INTRODUCTION This Thesis Is the Result of a Long Held Desire To

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INTRODUCTION This Thesis Is the Result of a Long Held Desire To 1 INTRODUCTION This thesis is the result of a long held desire to document the history of the Baptists in Tasmania and to understand how in the second half of the nineteenth century the entry of men from Spurgeon‘s College in London, to Tasmania, brought about a remarkable transformation of Baptist persuasion in Tasmania and the formation of the Baptist Union of Tasmania in 1884. To do so it has been necessary to draw upon Baptist history in the colony since 1834 and up to and just beyond 1884. As the thesis progresses, it will also be necessary to seek to advance an understanding of the interconnectedness between the Tasmanian Particular Baptists in the second half of the Nineteenth Century and the Spurgeon‘s College men (who confessed to being Particular Baptists when they entered Spurgeon‘s College), and the transition which occurred in the colony at that time when Nonconformist churches were coming into their own. Of all the major denominations, the Baptists were the last to attempt to establish themselves in the colony of New South Wales early in the nineteenth century. The first recorded Baptist service of worship was conducted on 24 April 1831 in the ‗Rose and Crown‘ Hotel in Sydney by the erratic Rev John McKaeg (c1790-c1844?), a Highlander from the Baptist Church at Lochgilphead, Argyllshire.1 McKaeg also conducted the first Baptist baptism in the colony at Woolloomooloo Bay on 12 August 1832,2 but a 1 Alan C Prior, Some Fell on Good Ground: A History of the Beginnings and Development of the Baptist Church in New South Wales, Australia, 1831–1965 (Sydney, Baptist Union of New South Wales, 1966), pp. 19ff. 2 Prior, Some Fell on Good Ground: A History of the Beginnings and Development of the Baptist Church in New South Wales, Australia, 1831–1965, p. 22; Ken R Manley, Shapers of our Australian Baptist Identity (in the holdings of the Victorian Baptist Historical Society, Camberwell), pp. 2f. 2 chapel had to wait for he resigned and began business as a tobacconist.3 The Baptists in the colony made a second start with the arrival of the Rev John Saunders (1806 - 1859) on 1 December 1834. Saunders responded to a request for help from McKaeg‘s congregation.4 On 23 November 1835 the foundation stone was laid for the chapel in Bathurst Street on the same land that had been granted to McKaeg. On 23 September 1836 the building was opened and the church constituted on 15 December 1836.5 The Baptist Churches' official presence in Van Diemen‘s Land began on 2 December 1834 with the arrival of the Rev Henry Dowling. Dowling had been pastor of the Colchester Strict and Particular Baptist Church in England. Based in the north of the island, he became pastor of the Launceston York Street Chapel which opened in December 1840. A group of Hobart Town Baptists had previously constituted the first Baptist Church in the Australian colonies on 14 June 1835. Their Hobart chapel in Harrington Street was officially opened in March 1841. By 1878 the work which the Rev Henry Dowling had commenced in Hobart Town fifty years earlier was slowly dying. It too had been a Strict and Particular work, ‗Strict‘ in that the church was conducted on principles of strict communion - the Lord's Table was closed against any who had not been 3 Michael Petras, Extension or Extinction, Baptist Growth in New South Wales 1900-1939 (Sydney, Baptist Historical Society of New South Wales, 1983), pp. 16f. Following his business failure, McKaeg turned to alcohol and, later, spent time in the debtors‘ prison. 4 Saunders, trained as a solicitor, was sent out the colony by the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) even though the Society did not regard Australia as within its sphere of responsibility. Saunders was a member of the Baptist Church at Cold Harbour Lane, Camberwell. See Prior, Some Fell on Good Ground: A History of the Beginnings and Development of the Baptist Church in New South Wales, Australia, 1831–1965, pp. 14, 26ff; Manley, Shapers of our Australian Baptist Identity, pp. 6ff. 5 In Sydney, Saunders preached his first sermon for the Methodists but within a month of his arrival he had rented a room in York Street and had it fitted out with pulpit, seats and other furnishings. By April 1835 the congregation had grown and moved to a room attached to St James Church of England which was known as the Court House. See Prior, Some Fell on Good Ground: A History of the Beginnings and Development of the Baptist Church in New South Wales, Australia, 1831–1965, pp. 38 and 42 and Rod Benson, ‗The Ministry of the Reverend John Saunders in Sydney, 1834-1847, Part 1‘, The Baptist Recorder, Number 102, pp. 2-10. 3 baptised as believers, and ‗Particular‘ in that it was held that God is Particular in whom he has chosen - God has elected some to everlasting life, predestined others to everlasting death. The later doctrine was commonly known in derogatory terms as Hyper-Calvinism. In the north Dowling‘s work was only holding its own. Dowling was never a strong close communionist and, on his retirement in 1867, the York Street chapel became open communion. Two years later, Dowling was dead and for many years thereafter the church was bereft of real and lasting leadership. The York Street work struggled on until 1916. In the south, the membership of the Baptist chapel in Hobart Town wrote into their Trust Deed the principles of strict communion and so it was to remain until the Church's final days in 1886. Its leading elder and lay preacher, Henry Hinsby, was Hyper-Calvinist. Its life-long trustee, Francis Smither Edgar, was an avowed strict communionist. In the lead up to its close, aged and incapable leadership had been theirs for over twenty years. After years of disorder, division and dissolution, the cause died a slow death. The other two small Baptist causes at Constitution Hill and Deloraine, both lapsed in time. It was at Perth, under William and Mary Ann Gibson, wealthy pastoralists of Native Point, that there was reason for hope in a Baptist future on the island.6 It was at the beginning of the 1870s that Baptist work began a new chapter. The eminent London preacher, the Rev CH Spurgeon,7 had begun sending out men from his Pastors' College. The active interest and generosity of the Gibsons made this possible, as the Gibsons paid for their passage. The 6 Laurence F Rowston, Baptists in Van Diemen’s Land: The Story of Tasmania’s First Baptist Church (Hobart, Baptist Union of Tasmania, 1985), chapter 7. 7 For Spurgeon see L Drummond, Spurgeon, Prince of Preachers (Grand Rapids, Kregel, 1992) and lain H Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (London, Banner of Truth, 2 ed, 1973). 4 Gibsons also built churches, chapels, halls and manses. Spurgeon's son, Thomas, visited the island five times between 1878 and 1890. In 1884 the Baptist Union of Tasmania was formed with a combined membership of 305. By 1901 there were sixteen men from the Pastors' College working in Tasmanian Baptist churches. The thesis will seek to show that by the end of 1880s the appeal of Calvinism had all but disappeared in Tasmanian Baptist circles. Context will also be provided by setting the arrival of men from Spurgeon‘s College against the health of the Non-conformist churches at the time thus furnishing something of the non-Baptists‘ interaction with these newly arrived migrants. This thesis draws greatly upon source material which has never before been fully accessed. It directs attention to such sources as the Baptist references in the Northern Tasmanian newspapers until 1890, to Harry Wood‘s memories and to Peter Grant‘s extensive and recent collection of newspaper cuttings on Alfred W Grant. The Baptist references in newspapers were obtained from microfilm readers as digitisation of newspapers did not take place until the thesis was virtually complete. Arguably, this study is unique because it opens up as never before a history of the Strict and Particular Baptists in Tasmania and the life and fortunes of Spurgeon‘s College men in the colony, neither subject ever having been the focus of any thorough scholarly investigation. This is the first time that a comprehensive study of a group of Spurgeon‘s College men in NSW, Victoria or elsewhere has been considered in detail. What has been previously written of Spurgeon‘s College men in Tasmania has been written in a chronological and uncritical style with a somewhat biased and celebratory emphasis. This thesis adds greatly to what little had been known about Samuel Cozens (1820-1887), the author of two small Tasmanian publications published in the 5 memory of the Rev Henry Dowling: A Tribute of Affection and Tracts of Truth and Incidents in the Life of the Rev Henry Dowling.8 In numerous books and articles the decline of High-Calvinism among the English Strict and Particular Baptists in nineteenth century in England is well documented.9 This thesis documents the decline of both the Strict and Particular Baptists in Tasmania. This thesis explores in depth for the first time their sectarian nature and shows just how perilously close was the demise of the Baptist name in the colony by the 1870s. 8 Samuel Cozens, Tribute of Affection (Launceston, Hudson and Hopwood, 1869) and Incidents in the Life of the Rev Henry Dowling. Formerly of Colchester, Essex and More recently of Launceston, Tasmania (Melbourne, Fountain Barber, 1871). 9 K Dix, Strict and Particular.
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