Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/89

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THE RIGHT REV. ALFRED BARRY, D.D.
63

in order to follow the expansion of the population. Every year new parishes are being formed and new missions established. The great difficulty is the sparseness of population in newly-settled country, there being many so-called parishes which are really missionary circuits, perhaps 200 miles round. As the country is still mainly pastoral, the population is very scattered, and there is in consequence great difficulty in providing for it—a difficulty which it would be impossible to cope with except by the very free use of lay agency.

“Besides, however, the regular work of the Church in Australia for our English people—and it may be remembered that of all the colonies Australia is the most predominantly British in character—there has to be undertaken some distinctly missionary work among the subject races. First, among the remnant of the aborigines, now chiefly found in Queensland and Western Australia, for whom provision is made by the Civil Authority, and, as far as possible, by Church missions also; next, among the Chinese immigrants, found in most of the colonies, but especially in the northern part of Australia. There are missions to the Chinese in several Dioceses, and by these Chinese congregations have been formed, and Chinese converts have been ordained. In Sydney, for instance, near Botany, there is a very flourishing Chinese church, to which I myself ordained the first