Melbourne, Australia, as a Missionary Field by Stephen Nelson Haskell

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1885

Melbourne, Australia, as a Missionary Field.

By Stephen Nelson Haskell

It is a well-known fact that as a country grows older its people become more stereotyped in their ideas and customs. They think just as their grandfathers thought; they follow the same channel as their fathers before them, each generation having the same habits, the same customs, the same thoughts, and the same ideas of morality and religion. Europe, with its teeming millions, long ago settled down into this condition, and to throw them out of the rut which they have followed so many hundred years would require a greater revolution than ever yet passed over a country.

Australia is rapidly growing in population, attracting the adventurous and enterprising from all parts of the world. Although the continent of Australia is so far from the center of the civilized world, yet it ranks with the best in culture and refinement. Melbourne, the principal city of Australia, with a population of over three hundred thousand, is liberally supplied with schools of learning. Fortunes which have been made almost in a day have been expended freely in beautifying the city and establishing educational institutions.

The Workingman's College is free to all, instructions being given therein to all applicants, both day and evening, in practical mechanical work of a wide variety, mechanical drawing, mathematics, and all those branches which will aid an industrious and determined workman to rise in his calling. It is one of those practical institutions everywhere needed, but likely to be especially useful in a new and rapidly growing country.

Melbourne is the largest city in Australia, and Sidney the second. It is said that the streets of Melbourne are over ninety feet wide, and the parks, squares, and gardens, are so numerous that the city occupies a territory half as large as London while its population is only one-thirteenth as many.

The Melbourne University is a picturesque mass of buildings, behind which is the National Museum, freely open to the people, as are all the public places in that city. There are among its numerous State schools, about thirty, whose size and proportion entitle them to rank with the architectural ornaments of the city. It is said there is no city where more has been done for the working classes, or where they have made so good a use of their advantages, about three out of every four mechanics who have reached middle life owning the cottages they occupy.

No better field could be found for presenting the Third Angel's Message than in a country where institutions of learning are free to all, both high and low, where intelligence and enterprise is the rule, and where custom has not yet stereotyped the people. Such a country is Australia, and we believe that the same God who has prospered our efforts in America, also lives there, and that many honest souls from that far-away land will be found in the kingdom of Heaven.

S. N. HASKELL.