Zachary Barry, minister of St. John’s, Fremantle, Western Australia: autograph letter signed, dated 27 August 1855, re. receipt of a shipment of Bibles from the British and Foreign Bible Society.

A$1,750 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Signed

[2] pp, quarto (250 x 200 mm), manuscript in ink on unwatermarked writing paper; headed Fremantle, Western Australia, 27 Aug. 1855 , the letter is addressed simply Dear Sir and is signed at the foot Yrs. very faithfully, Zachary Barry, Incumbent of St. John s Church, Fremantle, West Australia ; Barry advises of the safe arrival from London, per ship Avalanche , of a case of Bibles sent by the British Foreign Bible Society, for which I am greatly indebted I shall according to the form you sent give you some acct. in due time of the way in which they have ben disposed of. In their distribution I shall not confine myself to my own district but shall enable my brother ministers in other districts not so well situated as to convenience of importation to share the supply of your Society. Without your aid that of kindred associations I do not know what we should do. Christianity would languish in these secluded parts of the globe for lack of the bread of life and the dark ages would recur it is no small encouragement to be assured that though labouring in a distant colony little known, I have the sympathy of men engaged in the Lord s service at home. ; written in Barry s neat and easily legible hand, the letter is complete and very well preserved (although without its original envelope). An early, significant and unrecorded item of outgoing correspondence from Western Australia, shedding light on the extent to which the first clergymen and missionaries in the colony relied on such o

• Binding: Hardcover

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