James Forbes (minister)
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James Forbes (1813-1851) was a Scottish-Australian Presbyterian minister and educator.
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[edit] Background and education
James Forbes was the oldest of the ten children (only five surviving infancy) born to Peter and Margaret Forbes who farmed "New Braes" on the estate of Sir Arthur Forbes in the parish of Leochel-Cushnie about 40 kms west of Aberdeen, Scotland. He was baptised on 4 April 1813, and was educated locally and at Aberdeen Grammar School. He entered King's College, Aberdeen in 1826 and completed the Arts course but, like the majority of students who regarded it as an expensive formality, he did not bother to graduate. Presbytery of Garioch records show that he was enrolled in divinity for part of 1829/30, 1830/31 and as a regular student 1831/32. He must have had doubts about his fitness for the ministry for he accepted a teaching appointment at the Royal Grammar School at Colchester in England 1832-35. Here he experienced an evangelical conversion as he heard the sermons given in the school assembly by the Church of England preachers. This brought him back to the divinity course at Aberdeen which he completed in 1837. He was licensed as a preacher by the Presbytery of Garioch on 10 May 1837. Recruited for Australia through the influence of Rev John Dunmore Lang he was ordained with his friend William McIntyre by the Presbytery of Glasgow on 29 June 1837 for work in Australia.
[edit] Departure for Australia
Leaving Greenock on the 541 ton barque Portland on 24 July 1837, Forbes arrived in Sydney on 4 December 1837. The passengers included Dr Lang and a number of other ministers and teachers. Forbes rejected Lang's proposal that the new ministers join him in forming a Synod to rival the existing Presbytery, and duly became a member of the Presbytery of New South Wales. His appointment being for the District of Port Phillip, he arrived there by boat on 20 January 1838. He found his future father-in-law, Rev James Clow, had arrived in Melbourne to settle the previous Christmas Day. Clow was a Church of Scotland chaplain from Bombay retired due to health issues and of independent means. Forbes offered to go to Geelong, but Clow deferred to the younger man with an official appointment. Forbes thus became the first Christian minister settled as such in Melbourne, which was then a settlement of a few huts and two weatherboard houses that served as hotels. Within 18 months the population increased from a few hundred to 3000.
[edit] Presbyterian beginnings in Melbourne
Forbes held his first Presbyterian service on Sunday 3 February 1838 in the Pioneers Church on the south side of Bourke Street near William Street. The Church of England soon made exclusive claims to this communal building and so Forbes held services in Craig and Broadfoot's store in Collins Street until a temporary timber building called Scots Church was opened on the south side of Collins Street near William Street (about where the Olderfleet buildings now stand) in July 1838. It was essentially a large room with a fireplace. It served as the place of worship for a little over a year until the building of Scots School was opened in portion of the present site. The first purpose built Scots Church on the present site, corner of Collins and Russell Streets, was opened on 3 October 1841. It was designed for 500 sittings and the contract sum was £2,485 without plastering, gallery, vestry or fittings. The building was opened with temporary seating on 3 October 1841, plastering was carried out the following year, proper pews, gallery and vestry were added in 1849 and a spire some years later. (The present building was opened 29 November 1874 seated for 1000.)
Forbes visited Geelong in November 1838 and obtained Rev Andrew Love from Scotland as minister for this place. He arrived in April 1840. In 1842 three more ministers were secured and the Synod in Sydney approved Forbes' request for a separate Presbytery of Melbourne to be formed. It held its first meeting on 7 June 1842.
[edit] The Free Kirk
The effects of the Disruption of the Established Church of Scotland in May 1843 had repercussions in Australia. Forbes and one of his three elders adhered to the position also adopted by those who formed the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia on 10 October 1846. Reasons of distance and the general desire of those in Port Phillip to run their affairs without control from Sydney, meant Forbes organised a distinct body but on similar lines to the PCEA. He issued his Protest on 29 October 1846, submitted it to the Presbytery of Melbourne on 17 November, the date of the organising meeting of what the minutes call The Free Presbyterian Church of Australia Felix. The first service was held in the Mechanics Hall (where the the Athenaeum now stands) on 22 November 1846 with about 200 people crowding the building.
Forbes gave up his handsome stipend (£200 from the government plus £150 from the congregation), the church, school and manse he had erected, and commenced afresh. The building of John Knox Free Presbyterian Church, Swanston Street was opened 8 May 1848 on the corner with Little Lonsdale Street and with frontage to that street. It was reconstructed in 1863 and re-opened by Rev William McIntyre 26 July of that year. It now houses the Church of Christ congregation. The congregation erected a two-storey manse next door in Swanston Street late in 1850.
Forbes sought to obtain additional ministers. He apparently offended the Irish Church by some critical remarks on some individual Irish ministers who had not stood with him in 1846, so assistance came chiefly from the Free Church of Scotland. Thomas Hastie came from Tasmania in January 1847 and was settled at Buninyong and The Leigh, while Rev J.Z.Huie became minister at Geelong in the same year. Schools were established in both parishes. There was little other help until the explosion of population following the discovery of gold in the year of Forbes' death.
The three ministers and Henrie Bell, elder at John Knox, formed the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church on 9 June 1847. Forbes showed himself an efficient administrator. He not only wrote the Fundamental Act of the Synod (which was adopted also by the Free Presbyterian Church of South Australia upon its formation 9 May 1854) but he drew up rules for the guidance of the church. His own death plus the revolution caused by the Gold rush meant his careful positions were modified to facilitate union in 1859. His strong stance against receiving state aid on an indiscriminate basis was modified in 1853. Ironically, the three parishes that ultimately continued the Free Presbyterian Church of Victoria and united with the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia in 1953 (East St Kilda, Geelong (Myers Street) and Hamilton/Branxholme) had all benefited from state-aid.
[edit] Forbes and Education
Forbes has been called rightly Victoria's First Public Educationist (Edward Sweetman, 1939). He wrote extensively on this subject. His church school projects were as follows:
[edit] Scots Church School, Collins Street West
This school began in the temporary church (see above) 26 November 1838 with Robert Campbell as teacher. He had come to Australia with Forbes and was a Scots' elder 1839-42. The school prospered and soon had 80 pupils.
[edit] The Scots Church School, Collins Street East
The school relocated to new brick premises in September 1839 on the part of the 2 acre site granted by the Government on the corner of Collins and Russell Streets which was later the George's department store. The number of students was soon 150, a third of them girls, and two aboriginal children were among those who received prizes at the first examination in June 1840.
[edit] John Knox School, Swanston Street
This school began in John Knox Church on 3 July 1848 with T.J.Everist as teacher. Within a year there were 120 students. An adjoining brick building came into use in August 1850.
[edit] Chalmers Free Church School, Spring Street
This school, named after Thomas Chalmers, the first Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland Assembly, began in purpose-built premises at what is now 257 Spring Street under George McMaster, an experienced Scottish teacher. It was overtaken by other events, not least Forbes' death in August 1851.
[edit] The Melbourne Academy, later Scotch College
Forbes was keen to see a superior educational institution which would provide an education in the higher branches of science and literature as 'the first step towards the training of a Colonial ministry from among the Colonial youth.' He personally sought and obtained the assistance of Miss Mure of Warriston, Edinburgh, to guarantee the salary of a rector and so make the project viable. The Academy opened in the Chalmers premises 6 October 1851 with Robert Lawson as rector. The Academy moved to the south-west corner of Spring and Little Collins Streets in 1852, and to East Melbourne in 1854 wherer it soon adopted the name Scotch College. Forbes doied shortly before the opening, and only recently has Scotch College, now located in Hawthorn, appreciated the qualities of its founder. The first stage of the impressive buildings of the James Forbes Academy at Scotch was opened in 2002.
[edit] Forbes the man
Forbes was of slight build and not of strong constitution. He was abundant in labours in his short life. He was an early temperance advocate, a founding honorary secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society auxiliary (1840), chairman of the Port Phillip Theological Education Society (1841), assisted in the founding of what is now the Royal Melbourne Hospital (1841) and the Melbourne Debating Society (1841). In 1845, the year of his marriage to Helen Clow (1822-98), he inaugurated the Presbyterian Female Visiting Society. As it was not sectarian in 1847 it was renamed the Melbourne Ladies Benevolent Society. He supported aboriginal missions established by Wesleyans and Baptists, and was a true friend of all. Forbes was a man of integrity and strict religious principle, but he was not bellicose and was able to relate well to those with whom he differed. He was a loving, earnest and sympathetic pastor. He and Helen had four children: Margaret (1846) who married Robert Chirnside, James (1847-98) who died unmarried and was buried with his parents, Helen (1849) who married Alexander Creswick, and Charles (1851-1901), also a bachelor, whom he baptised as his last ministerial act. His passing was much lamented. In 1855 his remains were removed to the new Melbourne Cemetery and a memorial erected. His name is held in honour still by both the Presbyterian Church of Victoria formed in 1859 as a union of most of the different strands of Presbyterianism, and by those few who continued the Free Presbyterian Church of Victoria and who in 1953 united with the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia.
[edit] References
- R.S.Ward (ed), Presbyterian Leaders in 19th Century Australia (Melbourne, 1993) 37-53
- M. Harman, James Forbes of Melbourne (Sydney: Crossing Press, 2001)
