in large measure, to the colonial love of extempore preaching.  For sermons read out of a book public opinion of all denominations in Australia has the greatest contempt.  Like English lower middle-class communities, again, they like a good pronounced type of doctrine from the pulpit.  The lower regions are popular; but most successful is the denunciation of the people over the way who bow down to wood and stone, and commit sundry other iniquities for which Protestants are in no fear of being indicted.

As you notice a man’s general appearance and manner before you can form any idea of his character, so I have described churches and denominations before entering seriously into the question of religion.  If Churchmen—­who will probably form the majority of my readers—­cannot but be grieved at the picture I have drawn, of the condition of the Australian Church, they may at least take comfort when I state that the preponderating feeling of Australian cities is essentially Christian, according to the received meaning of the word.  The citizens are, for the most part, of a distinctly religious turn of mind.  They may not be, and—­except in Adelaide—­are not, such good church-goers as at home; but they have not drunk of the poison of infidelity, nor eaten of the sweets of indifference.  Amidst the distractions of colonial life this could hardly have been the case, but for the Puritan origin of so many of the more influential among them, and the healthy competition between the various sects, as well as the freedom from State control and interference already alluded to.

As in social matters Melbourne may be regarded as the extreme type of Australia, so in religious matters Adelaide affords the easiest text to preach upon.  Essentially lower middle-class, Nonconformist and Radical in its origin, South Australia might well claim the title of the New England of the Antipodes.  Even to the present day, it preserves signs and tokens of the Principles on which it was founded:  its progress having been the gradual and healthy growth of a Pastoral and agricultural colony, undisturbed by the forced marches of gold-mining.  In Adelaide middle-class respectability is too strong for larrikinism, and imparts a far healthier social and moral tone than obtains in either Melbourne or Sydney; but for these advantages the little town pays the small but disagreeable price of Philistinism.  Want of culture, Pharisees, and narrow-mindedness find a more congenial home there than anywhere else in Australia; but, to my mind, these are a cheap price to pay for the piety and real goodness which they cloak.

The Adelaidian may be unpleasantly conceited and self-satisfied in religious matters, but then he is kind and hospitable, religious and moral, and not so sophisticated as the Victorian, who is probably a more agreeable person superficially.  Yet in neither Melbourne nor Sydney can religion be said to be wanting.  It is kept more in the background than in Adelaide, and there is not so much of it as in the smaller town; but the religious character of all three, taken either singly or together, will, I think, compare favourably with that of any other modern city or cities.