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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

Sydney, July 20th, 1904. My Dear Friends

Sydney, My Dear Friends,

We left Hobart on Wednesday morning, July 13th, and were confidently expected in Sydney on the Friday afternoon. The same evening a meeting was arranged for at the church—there are no "chapels" here—to give us a welcome. But a head wind all the way kept us back, and we did not land till 9-35 at night. However, the meeting held on till our arrival at 10 o'clock, and we were straightway greeted in four speeches, to which I had to reply without blushing. Indeed, I have lost the art of blushing since I came here; but I am too old to take all the compliments paid to me as due to myself. A third part I put down to the credit of the Association which sent me; another third to the kindly feeling towards a friend from the old country; and about the remaining third I hesitate as to whether I may appropriate it to my own account. I tell them everywhere that of thanks the largest part is due to my own congregation, who have so generously lent me for the Australasian mission.

On Sunday I preached twice to good congregations. The Church was what we call "well filled" in the page 22 morning, and in the evening it was literally crowded. There is certainly an abundant harvest to be reaped here, but the congregation has been very unfortunate. At the compulsory retirement of the late minister, under circumstances which were only too well known, it came near to being closed. It is entirely due to the brave and resolute enterprise of the Rev. George Walters, a younger brother of Mr. Walters, of Newcastle, that it has not only been kept open, but is retrieving its position as the representative of Unitarian Christianity in New South Wales. On Monday I lectured in the Church; Tuesday, met the Committee to talk over their position, legal and financial; Wednesday, lectured again; all which left us plenty of time for visiting some of the many beautiful spots in the neighbourhood. I was especially interested by a visit to Botany Bay, a name familiar to all of us older folk when we were yet children, as the place to which we transported men and women whom we wanted to get rid of without having upon our consciences the responsibility of hanging them.