Thomas
Dove (c. 1802-1882) was a minister of the Gospel in
Tasmania,
Australia.
On graduating from Glasgow
University
he migrated to
Tasmania in
1836, where he laboured variously in
Hobart,
the Aboriginal settlement on
Flinders
Island
(at the Governor's request), the penal colony on
Maria
Island
and for a long period among scattered rural populations as a "bush minister".
When working
among the Tasmanian Aborigines he toiled arduously to reduce their language to
writing
–
but the people had been transplanted from their native homes, and
"notwithstanding every care,
they melted away like snow before the sun". His work among the convicts was
"full of hope" and issued in good results, and throughout his ministry he was
marked for his earnest missionary spirit in bringing the Gospel of the grace
of God to sinners. Gentle as a lamb and yet a man of strong convictions, he held tenaciously to the "faith once delivered to
the saints" (expressed in the standards of the Presbyterian Church of
Tasmania – the Westminster Standards); and he resisted with vigour the
encroaching liberalism of the times.
Thomas Dove's Letter to the Tasmanian Presbyterian Magazine
