Has anyone in my family saved any souls? Probably not, but here goes ...

My great-great-grandfather was a Methodist lay preacher, having no religious qualification, but a passion to spread the word. An engineering blacksmith by trade, on Sundays he’d hitch his pony to his gig and travel the muddy tracks out of Shepparton to the surrounding hamlets, and in small halls and wooden churches he’d hold forth to meagre congregations, warning them of the temptations of this life and extolling the rewards of the next.

Four generations later, I’m still in the family trade. Using this gig, I sally forth on weekends attempting to help this congregation of readers live a victorious life over sin. There’s no evidence that either of us ever turned a single congregant from the primrose path to destruction towards a more righteous existence, but we preach, nonetheless, in hope.

I have John’s handwritten journal chronicling his preachings during the early 1900s. The entries are filled with a sense of mission. “I was led by the favourable character of my recent experience in Rushworth to bring out ‘Job’ again ... it seemed to go very well indeed to a fair congregation, attentive generally, but containing a few idiotic gigglers.” This is where John and I differ – my ideal congregation is idiotic gigglers. Idiotic gigglers are honest, laughter being so reflexive and unfiltered. What a ruckus of doubt hides behind silent piety.

“21-6-03. Tatura – Mooroopna on a heavy winter road. Had a fair congregation ... may I venture to record the impression that the Lord spoke through me in an especial manner. Surely, this sermon ‘Wisdom’ is His message and I think it was impressively rendered...” Artists and performers get this feeling regularly. In these days of unbelief it’s called “being in a state of flow” or “on a roll” or “in the zone”. If God really is making the magic possible, he’s getting less credit now.

“19-7-03. Morning moist after a wet night and the roads being very heavy, I started at 12.30 ... Congregation about 16 or 18 – quite as many as could be expected on such roads ... Gave ‘Death’ which went apparently well – truly and forcibly for such a small house.” I’d love to hear John’s Death sermon in his lilting Irish Australian accent. Death built the Church, brick-by-brick, parishioner-by-parishioner, the promise of its annulment is religion’s cornerstone.

“23-8-03. Went to West Shepp. Where I heard Rev Ingham ... too much dogmatic theology about the Holy Spirit, he was very definite and therefore very definitely wrong.” There’s a lovely flash of rebellion I can get behind – even if John’s denunciation of definiteness is absurdly definite.

“Afternoon to Tallygaroopna where I had a very poor congregation considering the recent decline of that place.” Does anyone know what happened at/to poor old Tallygaroopna in the late 19th century? What form its decline took? Diphtheria? Brucellosis? A sinister collaboration of both? Or perhaps Catholicism was having a heyday.

“28-11-03. Afternoon went to Cosgrove as per appointment, but nobody there, place not even open owing to wet.” The Goulburn Valley was full of fair-weather Christians before bitumen – but I suppose a preacher had to turn up in case a grieving widow braved the bog to touch base with her departed ploughman.

John’s journal isn’t just weather reports and road conditions, it’s a showbiz log, full of observations on how his sermons are being received, and the favourable comments they earn. There is a great thrill in delivering a sermon – the performance a mix of divine mission and vanity. He suffered misgivings about their strength and pertinence, naturally enough.

But anyone who wants to change the world is sorely aware of how little it is changing, and at times must wonder if it’s possible to make any headway against human nature. To be any good at all you must incessantly question the potency and truth of your preachments. It’s the price of being a decent preacher, teacher, unionist, communist, columnist, parent ... or person.

In this same year, 1903, that John was journaling his Sunday sorties among the threadbare farmers, his younger brother Joseph had a novel titled Such Is Life published. Joseph’s writing on Wesleyans was invariably hostile and at one point he refers to them as, “a cult where the pathetic effort to serve God and Mammon is reduced to a system”. Imagine John getting home from a storm-wracked Sunday ride and a single-figure congregation and putting his feet up by the fire and reading that. The frost on the Christmas turkey in the Furphy household must have been thick that year.

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Anson Cameron is a columnist for Spectrum in The Age and the author of several books, including Boyhoodlum and Neil Balme: A Tale of Two Men.