Thirty years in Madagascar

‘All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.’—Numbers xiv. 21.

In former times the Malagasy used to hold great feasts, rum-drinking and horrible orgies at the funerals of all people of any consequence. The corpse was rolled in a silk làmba, while all clothes, dresses, and jewellery belonging to the deceased were placed in the family or royal tomb, as the case might be, along with the corpse. I remember the death of a very old and famous chief, ‘the head of the black people.’ It was stated that his corpse was rolled in eighty-four silk làmba! It was also the custom to fill the mouth of the corpse with cut money—silver cut up to the size of broken rice. If the deceased had been fond of rum during his or her lifetime, water-pots filled with it were placed in the tomb!

The Malagasy of Central Madagascar had been in the habit for ages of opening the tombs of their ancestors at stated periods, removing the rotten làmba, and rolling the bones in new làmba. To purchase the new làmba a levy was made on the descendants and clansmen of the deceased. Even the slaves of the various families were expected to contribute to Ny mamàdika ny màty, i. e. ‘the turning of the dead,’ which were often occasions for great gatherings at which there were feasting and drinking, music and dancing, for which bands of musicians and female singers—both being generally of the lowest and most abandoned of the community—were hired, and heathen orgies and hideous debauchery were the order of the days and of the nights.

After the general acceptance of Christianity in the central provinces, there were often religious, or semi-religious, services and often preachings at those gatherings; but, as the after conduct of many was hardly consistent with such religious exercises, we were compelled to decline countenancing them and now they have almost died out or been put a stop to.

Such were some of the customs of former times connected with the burial and turning of the dead, and probably similar customs are still rife in those parts of the island on which the new light has not yet dawned—two-thirds of the island being still in heathen darkness. About a million, perhaps, of the people of the central provinces have been reached in some way, and some at a few points on the coast; but the rest—some three millions—are still in a state of heathenism. There murder, infanticide, slavery, drunkenness, polygamy, obscenity, war and all the other horrors of heathenism and degradation are rampant.

But on the other hand, to show the change that was coming over the people as to their views of death and their burial customs, I may mention that the first legacy was left to the church during that year by the wife of a petty chief, who was one of our village pastors. I was invited to preach at her funeral, which was conducted in a quiet, decent, and most orderly manner. There was no feasting, drinking, music nor dancing, and her money was left to the church instead of being buried with her corpse.

Our good Christian queen gave an example during that year of her desire to be a nursing-mother to the church. An officer of high rank in the native army, who had been married for some years to a woman of lower social rank than himself, divorced her as she had no family by him. As he was a member of the church in his native village he was first remonstrated with, and then suspended from church fellowship for divorcing his wife without proper cause. Being a person of some consequence in his own village, he resented being excommunicated and, in a measure, disgraced in the eyes of his relations and fellow villagers; but as the church refused to readmit him, unless he took back his wife, he began in various ways to persecute the pastor, office-bearers, and members of the village church. It was a ‘child,’ that is, connected with and under the care of the mother-church of Ampàribè in the capital.

One of the pastors of Ampàribè was also one of the queen’s chaplains. The village pastor had complained to him of the treatment he and his people had received at the hands of the officer for doing their duty. One day, while conversing with the queen about the progress of the churches, he told her about the faithful little village church and the conduct of this officer. The queen summoned all the parties before her, heard all that had taken place, and asked the officer if the statements made were correct, and he had to admit that they were. She ordered him to take back his wife, and for persecuting the pastor and church for doing their duty she disgraced him, took away all his honours and reduced him to the ranks. The queen then turned to the pastor and office-bearers of the church and thanked them for so courageously doing their duty, and said: ‘Remember that in the Church of Jesus Christ we are all equal. I am the same as a slave woman there!’ That was a most extraordinary statement for her to make. Twenty years before, such a statement might have cost her her crown, if not her life.

On one occasion a woman appealed to the queen to be separated from her husband, to whom she had taken a great dislike. She said that she hated him and could not live with him, and did not wish to see his face again as long as he lived. Her Majesty ordered her to be brought before her, and inquired fully into her case. She asked if the husband was a bad man, or if he used her badly. The woman said ‘No.’ But when asked why she wished to be separated from him she could give no reason, except that she had taken such a great dislike to him that she could no longer live with him. After hearing all the woman had to say, Her Majesty replied that all she wished could be very easily accomplished, and the woman was accordingly jubilant. The queen summoned an officer, to whom she said: ‘This woman has appealed to me to be separated from her husband, whom she says that she hates, and that she does not want to see his face again. Now you take charge of her, take her to Fort Dauphin (at the extreme south of the island, five hundred miles from the capital), where she is to live for the rest of her life, and so make certain that she never sees again the husband whom she hates so much.’

The woman was speechless for a few moments, but, when she had recovered herself, and fully realized what the queen’s orders involved, she fell on her knees crying for mercy, hugged and kissed Her Majesty’s feet, promising to return at once to her husband, to be a good and faithful wife to him, and never again to say that she hated him. The queen, however, paid no attention to her appeals; so the officer came forward and laid hold of her to lead her away; thereupon she fairly became frantic, screamed with terror, clung to the royal feet, and pleaded in such agony for mercy that the queen, seeing that she had most thoroughly frightened her, extended mercy to her, revoked her order, and sent the officer home with her to her husband with instructions that he was to treat her kindly.

I was six years in Madagascar before I had to perform the marriage ceremony for any of our people. We found the vast majority of the church members and adherents married, and those of the latter who were not could not be persuaded to follow the Christian mode of marriage. They said our agreement was too hard, it was till death. We might take our wives till death, as they were wise and good; but as their women were foolish and bad, they could not consent to take them until death. Their view of marriage was that of their own proverb which says that marriage is like marketing—if the parties don’t agree they simply separate.

At last one of my deacons, who was a widower, wished to marry again, and he asked me to perform the marriage ceremony. We had the marriage in the station church one Sabbath morning at the close of the service. The deacon and his bride stood up in front of the rail, and I began reading the marriage service. At one part of it I had to ask the usual question—Efa làsa va ny vòdiòndry? i. e. ‘Has the sheep’s rump gone?’

In former times quarrels seem to have been made up, and serious agreements concluded over the carcase of a slain animal, after which a feast followed (Gen. xxxi. 44–55). Perhaps the marriage agreement was made or concluded over the carcase of a sheep, after which the hinder quarters may have been handed over to the father and mother of the bride, or her guardians, and the reception by them of ny vòdiòndry in the presence of witnesses made the marriage legal. It afterwards came about that a small piece of money took the place of the hinder quarters of the sheep; but that still retained the name of ny vòdiòndry, ‘the sheep’s rump,’ and the reception of that by the father and mother of the bride, or by her guardians, constituted the marriage legal. Not that there was much in the legality; for a man might divorce his wife at any time by simply saying to her, ‘Thanks, go!’ She could not divorce him, but he could divorce her at any time. We had to ask, therefore, while reading the marriage service, if the legal transaction had taken place, because if not we could not go on with the service till it had.

My wife had never read the Malagasy marriage service, I don’t think she even knew about the vòdiòndry; certainly she did not know that we had to ask in the marriage service if that had gone or been received; and hence, when I called out in the middle of the service, ‘Has the sheep’s rump gone?’ the look of surprise and horror which came over her face was a thing to be remembered. I suspect she feared I had taken leave of my senses.

During the previous year our station church had given a salary of £5 to their good old pastor Razàka, who, up till then, had not received any salary, although he had laboured ‘in season and out of season’ for twenty years for the church and district; but, during 1878, they agreed to give their second pastor £2 8s. a year, and an evangelist also £2 8s. They paid the teachers of the Congregational school £7 4s. a year, gave £2 to the Native Missionary Society, besides congregational expenses, which would probably be £2. In all this amounted to £21—but it was to them then what £105 would have been to us. This was from a poor village church of ninety-six members, a third of whom were slaves!

The year 1879 was most disastrous to all branches of the work, for the central provinces, and Vònizòngo in particular, were visited by another epidemic of malarial fever, which was much more severe than that of the previous year. The former had probably carried off 5,000 people, yet it was mild when compared with what we had in 1879. We ourselves also suffered much more severely than we had done in the previous year—partly because we were both very much exhausted by eight years’ very hard work in one of the worst fever districts of the island. For, notwithstanding all the precautions and care that we took, I was prostrated eleven times with fever, and my wife seven times, and some of our children about a dozen times, although during twelve months we had used nearly two ounces of quinine, to which, under God, I believe that we owed our lives.

Towards the end of the previous year I had again brought under the notice of our churches the subject of teaching our adherents to read. The matter was taken up very heartily by our station church, and afterwards by the various churches in the district. They also entered into the plans with great heartiness, and the result was that in a short time a large number of the churches were at work. We arranged that the church members who could read should form evening classes in their own villages to teach the adherents who could not. They were very much assisted in many villages by the elder scholars from the village school, and in the course of a few weeks we had 2,000 adults gathered into evening classes learning to read! Alphabet sheets, to the value of £1, were given to them, and they themselves spent £7 on first lesson books! The news of what we were doing in Vònizòngo spread, and the subject of teaching the adult adherents to read, that they might be able to read the Bible for themselves, was brought before the church at the ‘union meetings.’ This stimulated our people again, and they worked eagerly until, first the epidemic, and then another conscription for the army, broke up nearly all the evening classes for a time; but the progress that was made in some congregations even during the very short time these classes were at work, was really astonishing.

When we settled at Fìhaònana in 1871 there were probably not more than 150, old and young together, in the whole district able to read, and we left over 3,000; so that if the only result of our work was that 3,000 had been taught to read the Word of God, and had been put in possession of it, our ten years in Madagascar were well spent. That was, however, but a very small portion of the work done in connexion with fifty village churches and schools with 2,600 children in them.

From 1874 to 1879 Madagascar was in a state of transition. A move had been made which necessitated progress on a more advanced scale, and in a more decided manner. One step had been taken out of heathen darkness and degradation into partial light. The people could not remain where they then were; they had either to go forward to higher and purer views of God’s truth and duty, or sink back into a dead formality with only a name to live, or even into the darkness and degradation of their former conditions. There was great need as there still is, for the prayer, ‘O send out Thy light and Thy truth!’

I was often asked by friends at home to send them some interesting facts and cases. I sent many facts such as are contained in these pages. With regard to the ‘cases’—for, as I understood the request, it was cases of conversion that were meant—I am sorry to say that during our first term of service we were not cheered by seeing or knowing of very many. Yet, notwithstanding our inability to see all in the way of conversion that we longed for, we had a firm conviction that the Kingdom of God was making decided progress, even if it was only in the way of preparing the ‘soil of the soul’ for the ‘seed of the Kingdom’ by educating and enlightening the minds of the people, especially of the young and rising generation, for the reception and understanding of God’s truth.

Our good friends at home were very apt to forget the wise words of Dr. Livingstone already quoted, that most of the soil had to be prepared for the seed, and that—no matter how efficient the sower, or how good the seed—then it has to be sown, and, considering the paucity of the sowers, a great harvest could not be looked for: time also was needed for the growth of the seed. But there need be no fear for the harvest. It will come in due time. Still, as we all know, it is not always when the fresh green wood is crackling and roaring under the boiler, and volumes of black smoke are curling out of the chimney, that the greatest heat is being raised or the most steam generated. It is rather when the fire is at white heat, and all the black smoke and noisy gases are gone. It is not always when there is most excitement and noise, and numbers of cases being reported, that most real and lasting good is being done; but rather when the work is done in quiet. And, though a stage of excitement may precede, it is by no means necessary.

The rains which refresh the baked and thirsty earth in Madagascar and renew the face of nature generally descend amid the roar of thunder and the flash of lightning; but the latter do no good to the soil, or to the growth of things: it is the rain which comes along with them, and especially the gentle rain that falls during the quiet of the night, that makes things grow.

Compared with such fields as New Guinea and the Congo, Madagascar has in some respects been the ‘Paradise’ of modern missions; but even in Madagascar large demands are made on the patience and perseverance and on the hopefulness of Christian missionaries; they cannot afford to grow weary and fearful, or faint-hearted as to results. They must be content to use the means and leave the results with God.

It is a great thing if they are allowed to dig out the foundations for the temple of the Lord, or even merely to prepare the soil for the seed, or sow the seed from which others shall reap. There is a danger of almost all missions of our day leaning a little too much on the past, and forgetting the many discouragements which preceded the missionary achievements which are now recorded on the pages of history. A wilderness had to be crossed before the promised land was reached. The Madagascar Mission might be, and perhaps is, in more danger of drawing on its past history than most missions, and might be excused a little if it did; but, if the spirit of its past history lives, it will continue to inspire fresh effort on the part of its missionaries of to-day, and on the part of those who have sent them there. With such a past as Madagascar presents there ought to be little danger of a ‘rest and be thankful’ policy being followed. Conquest alone has made foreign missions what they are, and only conquest—i. e. conversions—can sustain them.

The Malagasy, even the Hovas, have been raised by the Gospel from the depths of depravity to live lives of purity and peace, and from darkness and superstition to the light of the knowledge of the glory of God made visible in the face of Jesus Christ. They can hardly be called a demonstrative people in matters of affection or of religion, and yet, or perhaps because of that, their feelings with regard to both are often far deeper and stronger than many, who looking at them on the surface, would give them credit for.