JOHNSON,
RICHARD
(b.1757) was the first chaplain to the Colony of New South Wales in Australia. Recommended to that position by William Wilberforce and the Rev. John Newton, Richard Johnson, and his wife, Mary Burton, sailed with the First Fleet on May 13, 1787.
On January 26, 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip and Captain John Hunter directed the Fleet up harbor to Sydney amidst warlike demonstrations by the natives from the shore. Upon their landing, they raised the British flag, toasted their Majesties and gave a gun salute.
On Sunday, February 3, 1788, Chaplain Richard Johnson preached his first sermon under a large tree to a congregation of convicts and troops:
“What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me?” (Psalm 116:12). … Take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.1478
In the first five years, he conducted 226 baptisms, 220 marriages and 851 funerals. In need of additional clergymen, Johnson requested:
A man of plain habits, and who humbly yet zealously devotes his time and talents in the discharge of his clerical duties, than on of more refined taste or profound learning, and who for this reason may not be so diligent in visiting them, which from experience I have found so important a part of a minister’s duty, and as the most likely means of his being made useful.1479
Richard Johnson served under the authority of Admiral and Governor Arthur Phillips. The official instructions given to the governor stated that:
He was to enforce due observance of religion and good order among the inhabitants, and take such steps for the due celebration of public worship as circumstances would permit. …
He was to grant full liberty of conscience, and the full exercise of all modes of religious worship not prohibited by law, provided his charges were content with a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the same, not giving offence or scandal to government; he was to cause the laws against blasphemy, profaness, adultery, fornication, polygamy, incest, profanation of the Lord’s Day, swearing, and drunkenness to be rigorously executed …
[The Governor] was to take care that the Book of Common Prayer as by law to read each Sunday and Holy Day, and that the Blessed Sacrament be administered according to the rites of the Church of England.1480
On October 4, 1791, in a letter to Henry Fricker, Esq., Richard Johnson wrote:
I trust I have not laboured wholly in vain, and I trust in time, in spite of all opposition and obstacles, God will make bare his holy arm in the conversion and salvation of the souls of men …
Last Sunday I preached I suppose to not less than six or eight hundred, and I have since heard that one at least went away sorrowful and heavy-hearted, and some others rejoicing in the Son of God manifested towards them.1481
In 1792, Richard Johnson stated in an address:
The gospel … proposes a free and gracious pardon to the guilty, cleansing to the polluted, healing to the sick, happiness to the miserable, light for those who sit in darkness, strength for the weak, food for the hungry, and even life for the dead.1482
In An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, 1792, Richard Johnson stated he was:
Longing, hoping and waiting for the dawn of that happy day when the heathen shall be given to the Lord Jesus for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession and when all the ends of the earth shall see, believe and rejoice in the salvation of God.1483