regular ordained minister—each male member being required to exercise what is technically termed "his gifts." Mr. Mouritz had received a liberal education, and being possessed of considerable ability, he soon became a regular preacher, and was favourably known as such. He married, and in course of time arrived in Sydney, where he preached to the Baptist denomination. In July, 1840, he came on to Melbourne, and officiated as a Baptist minister in a furniture show-room in a large two-storied building belonging to Mr. S. Crook, which stood off the streetway on the land next to the Town Hall, now the site of the Victoria Coffee Palace. The first "Independent" service was held on the site of the present Bull and Mouth Hotel, and not far from where a wooden theatre, the first in Melbourne, was about to be erected, and hence, it may be said, sprang also the first regular Baptist congregation. The minister was, however without any fixed stipend, or other emolument, and as the best of men cannot maintain himself and a family upon spiritual aliment alone, it was needful that he should resort to some certain means of support. He purchased a slice of the Bowerman Estate, then taking in a good deal of Newtown (Fitzroy) in the vicinity of Gertrude Street, and putting twenty cows upon it, started a luxury often not less acceptable than prayer, pure "undoctored" milk, unbaptized by immersion either in fresh or salt water. But distilling evangelical milk from the Gospel was more congenial to him than extracting it from horned cattle, and the new venture terminated in a failure. In fact the cows procured were wild cattle, so untameable that they scorned the restraint of either bail or leg rope, and, to the little more than novice in dairy-farming they were simply unmanageable. After resorting ineffectually to several pacifying expedients, Mr. Mouritz was advised to compel his milchers that would not be milked to "take the veil," and he accordingly procured a number of empty mat-made sugar sacks known as "sougie bags," and, at much risk to life and limb, each cow was hooded with one of them when the milking time came. This only made bad worse—the cattle irritated before, were now actually maddened, and they plunged and kicked out in the stockyard in a way that soon cleared it of all but themselves. One day, after the "veiling process" had been with difficulty accomplished, the cows, considering that the nonsensical farce had gone far enough, rushed the fence, bore everything before them, fled blindfolded into the bush, and neither they nor the abducted "sougie bags" were ever heard of after. The farm, and the stocking of it, cost Mr. Mouritz £400, and he was only too willing to sell his interest in the runaways for a £5 note. He built a house on portion of the ground, and resumed his preaching there. Furthermore, to avoid the inconvenience of a journey to the beach for immersion purposes, he had a baptistry (the first in the colony) put up in his garden, the use of which he gave freely to the denomination.
Towards the end of 1841 an effort was made to unite the members of the congregation more closely, and bring them together in a more central locality, for Fitzroy was then considered quite a long and wearisome walk from Melbourne. It was so far successful that Mr. Mouritz discontinued the services on the Bowerman Estate, and the Baptists obtained from the Rev. James Forbes, the Presbyterian minister, as a temporary chapel, the use of a wooden shed or building situated off Little Collins Street, rearward of the Scots' Church. Here Messrs. Mouritz, Lush, Dwyer, Wilson, and others officiated, until the arrival of the Rev. John Ham in December, 1842, shortly after which event Mr. Mouritz withdrew from the general body and resumed the services in Fitzroy, where he continued preaching and engaged in the other offices of religion until his death in 1868.
The First Ordained Baptist Minister,
Was Mr. Ham, who came from Birmingham, en route to Sydney, but, touching at Melbourne, was induced by representations made to him to go no further. Mr. W . H . Mortimer, recently deceased, had a good deal to do in the securing of Mr. Ham's valuable services, and though an Independent himself, Mr. Mortimer's energy and liberality on behalf of the early Baptists were as remarkable as creditable to him.
The Rev. Mr. Ham conducted services in the Mechanics' Institute, and with such success that he determined on remaining in Melbourne. A church was formed on the 20th July, 1843, and zealous efforts made to procure sufficient money to warrant an application to the Government for a grant of land upon which to erect a suitable place of worship. This was accomplished, and though there was no difficulty in obtaining the church site, there was much perplexity in finally determining where it was to be. Of the landlots eligible for the purpose there were only three available, viz.: —(1) the half-acre allotment in Collins
