Thirty years in Madagascar

‘A light for revelation to the Gentiles.’—St. Luke ii. 32.

From the first I had to give a good deal of medical advice to my people, and my work in that direction increased so rapidly that, finally, I had to confine medical work to one day a week, unless the case was very urgent. It is important that the majority of missionaries should know something about medicine—if only enough to impress them with its mysteries and their ignorance of its action, so as to keep them from prescribing unless they are pretty sure of their diagnosis. Medical skill is often of great service in the work and to the workers themselves. Besides, no native will believe that a European knows nothing of medicine. There is, however, a danger of a man being tempted (and many yield to the temptation) to give more time than he can afford to that part of his work, to the detriment of other and even more important duties.

Dentistry was very popular, for the Malagasy suffer much from toothache. One of their proverbs says: ‘A worm in the tooth, there is no cure except extraction.’ The Malagasy may almost be said to know nothing of nerves in our sense of the term; but I have seen a Malagasy young woman writhing on the ground under the agony of toothache, from which she only found relief on my extracting the tooth. One morning I drew three teeth, one after the other, for one woman, who never once winced, but, with her mouth half full of blood, simply said, ‘Thank you, sir!’ and walked away as if nothing had happened.

Operating upon others was easy enough; it was when one had to draw one’s own tooth—as I had to do one Sabbath morning—that the difficulty came in. I had had a night of excruciating toothache, and in the morning was half beside myself with the pain. I was due that morning to preach at one of the outlying churches. I knew the people would be waiting for me, but while in such agony I did not feel fit to go. In my desperation I determined to have the offending tooth out. I wanted my wife to draw it, but she said she could not. ‘Fix the forceps on it, then,’ I said, ‘and I will draw it myself.’ She did as requested. I waited a little, then I wrenched the tooth out, flung the forceps from me, danced through the hut for a few minutes in agony, then all was over, and I mounted my palanquin, and went off to my preaching. Fortunately it was an upper tooth, otherwise I could not have succeeded.

Just after we had settled at Fìhàonana, a boy was brought to me with his hand seemingly crushed to a pulp. At the entrance of the villages in the country a circular block of granite used to be rolled in between four upright pillars of the same material during the night to block the entrance. Sitting swinging upon one of these, he had got his hand crushed between the circular block and one of the pillars. When first I saw it I thought the whole hand was bruised to a jelly; but after soaking it for some time in tepid water I found that it was not nearly so bad as I had feared. The first joint of the middle finger, however, had been so crushed that I deemed it best to amputate it. I laid the lad down on a mat at my own door, with a crowd of natives standing round, administered chloroform, took my knife and performed the operation. The hand was dressed and done up before consciousness quite returned. After all was over his friends asked the lad whether he had felt the vazàha (white man) cutting him. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Did he cut me?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘he cut off the point of your finger.’ ‘I never felt him,’ he replied. His confession caused the deepest wonder. ‘What magicians these white men are!’ the people said; ‘they just put a rag with a few drops of eau-de-Cologne’ (eau-de-Cologne was the only liquid with an odour with which the Malagasy were acquainted) ‘to a boy’s nostrils, and off he goes to sleep, and they can cut him without his knowing anything about it.’

Of course an exaggerated account of this simple operation was spread abroad, and gave rise to an exaggerated estimate of my own powers and that of my medicine, which stood me in good stead for many years; although I only discovered this during the rising in 1897.

In those early days, and even until 1896, we had domestic slavery in Madagascar. It was, no doubt, the mildest form of slavery, and in most cases the slaves were regarded as almost members of the family and treated as such. Still slavery it was; and that is the sum of all villanies. When masters treated their slaves badly they ran away. In those days also the soldiers of the native army were soldiers for life, and received no pay. They had to maintain their wives and families as best they could; that was their business and not the government’s. In consequence, many of the soldiers deserted, and one can attach small blame to the poor fellows who flung away their rifles and fled to the forests and joined the runaway slaves. Together they formed marauding bands, and dwelt for the most part in the forests of the far north. They made periodic raids on Imèrina, Vònizòngo, and the other provinces, and were a terror to many parts of the country.

A set of these freebooters pounced down one morning upon a large village near Fìhàonana, bound every man, woman, and child in it, and carried off all that they could lay their hands on—cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry. The day following a man passing the village thought that it was very quiet, and entered to discover the reason. He found the inhabitants all lying bound in their huts. These robber bands often carried away women and children, especially those belonging to the Hovas, and sold them to the Sàkalàva tribe, or body of tribes, who inhabit some six hundred miles of the west side of the island.

One of my pastors came to tell me what had happened at that village, and to warn me of the approach of the band. I thanked him, but added that I was not at all afraid of their molesting us: but I did not know then, nor for many years after, to what we owed our exemption from their depredations. The report of my operation, and of the effects of the chloroform, had reached even them. They had been told that, if they went near that vazàha’s house, even during the night, it would be the worse for them; for he kept most powerful medicine—had but to open his window, and fling it out, and all would fall down asleep, and by-and-by wake up to find themselves all bound and ready to be sent as prisoners to the capital!

But even the mildest form of domestic slavery was utter ruination to all family morality. For, even in the days when polygamy was rampant, a man’s female slaves were all at his mercy, and were practically his concubines, or those of his sons, or both. As the children of the slaves, whether married or single, were all the property of the masters, the more the slave children increased, the richer they became; thus a premium was put upon immorality, as a slave woman who had children was better treated than one who had not.

As barren women were hated and despised among the Hovas, and not always well treated, a young woman who had a child could choose her husband from among many suitors. As a consequence of this, Hova parents urged and encouraged their daughters to immorality, and young men were allowed to live and associate with them in the hope of their having children.

When a slave owner left home in former times on a raiding or a trading expedition, a female slave was sent along with him as his cook or housekeeper, ostensibly to attend on him and look after his wants; but the euphemistic name given to her showed why she was sent. If this could not be done, owing to the fewness of the female slaves or for some other reason, he and his wife gave each other the saodrànto, a temporary divorce—literally, the divorce of trade—and so each was free to take up with whom they pleased during the period of separation.

Such are some of the milder phases of heathenism; and yet some people ask, Why disturb the heathen in their happy, blissful life? The Hovas were dying out when Christianity found them, and saved them as a people. Like the Roman empire, when Christianity was introduced into it they were rotting away, and would have soon ceased to exist.

While doing all I could in the way of teaching and preaching, I was hard at work on the language. Owing to my own bad health and my wife’s serious illness I was unable to give more than some six months to this subject before my first examination fell due. I passed it, but only by the skin of my teeth. I read my first address in the vernacular three months after I began the study of the language; but I have often wondered how much of it was understood by the people—I am afraid very little. It is not till one can think in a language, and is able to look at things in some measure as the natives do, that one can really reach them and touch their hearts to any profit.

Our late principal used to hint to his students that many a young missionary spoke to the natives in an unknown tongue without the aid of inspiration! He was right. We have had a few curious examples in Madagascar of the mistakes made by young missionaries in their first attempts at preaching in a new language. A devoted missionary had selected the text, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ which in Malagasy is Tòmpo, Tòmpo, vohày ìzahày! but instead of this he read and repeated, Tòmpo, Tòmpo, voày ìzahày! which was ‘Lord, Lord, we are calf crocodiles!’ Our hostess, during our first fortnight in Antanànarìvo, meeting her native nurse in the lobby, by a slip of the tongue gravely asked her if she had cooked, instead of asking if she had bathed the baby! The look of horror on the face of the nurse, and her ‘What, madam?’ caused our hostess to realize what a slip she had made.

The Malagasy were too polite to laugh at one, even when the grossest mistakes made by a young missionary in phrase, grammar, or pronunciation greatly tempted the risibility of the hearer. The Hovas were a very polite people; they would not pass you on a country road without asking your permission to do so. They received reproof gracefully, and I have been thanked for giving a man a very severe scolding.

Probably bad proof-reading was responsible for many mistakes in former editions of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. For example: in Gen. xviii. 4, instead of Abraham saying to the angels, ‘Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet,’ the father of the faithful was made to say, ‘Wait until I steal a little water,’ &c. The Bible records that the builders of the Tower of Babel said, the one to the other, ‘Go to, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly,’ but the word boriky (Fr. bourrique), ‘ass,’ was used in the old editions of the Bible in mistake for birìky (Eng. ‘brick’); and so they were made to say, ‘Go to, let us make asses, and burn them thoroughly!’

In the story of Samuel we are told that, while a lad, ‘His mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year’ (1 Sam. ii. 19). The Malagasy had no such garment, and hence no name for it. The name ànabỳ (Fr. un habit) which was used for a coat, was the name for the English soldiers’ old coats or tunics with the short tails, two hundred of which were given by the British government annually for many years to Radàma I, along with the same number of old flint-locks, to clothe and arm his guards, in return for his agreeing to stop the slave trade. Samuel’s mother was therefore said to have made her son an ànabỳ, a coat with short tails, and taken it to him year by year. These were all slight blemishes, however, when compared with the glorious truths the Bible made known to the Malagasy people—truths that were in every sense of the word revelations, transforming their lives.

A few weeks after we were settled at Fìhàonana Razàka came to me bringing a deacon, who had been sent from one of the distant villages to seek my advice under the following circumstances: the local preacher of the village church from which the deacon came had fallen into sin, and was living with a young woman, one of the singers, notwithstanding that he was a married man. The church came to know of his conduct, and were for excommunicating him at once; but they had to face this difficulty: the church possessed no Bible of its own, and that which had been used from the first belonged to this man. Now, if they excommunicated him, naturally he would take his Bible with him, leaving the church without one; and yet they could not think of allowing him to remain as a preacher. What were they to do? I soon put matters right by giving the deacon a pulpit Bible for the church, which should belong to it and to no one man, and telling them to suspend the man from church fellowship at once.

Shortly after this deacon visited me I was told, on good authority of a chief down towards the north-west coast, who having heard that the queen, the prime minister and the officers of the palace had become Christians, and that the great majority of the people in Imèrina had followed their example, thought he and his people ought to go and do likewise. He convened all his subjects, of whom I understand there was a goodly number; and, having secured the services of a man from the capital, who professed to be a Christian pastor or preacher with authority to baptize converts, he had the whole of his clansmen and slaves baptized there and then. He then addressed them to this effect: ‘Now you are all baptized Christians, see that you conduct yourselves in a proper manner; for if I hear of any of you doing wrong, I shall certainly punish you very severely. For the first offence I shall have you beaten, and for the second I shall have your heads cut off!’

I was assured that this had a most wonderful and beneficial effect for a time on that part of the country, but of course it did not last. Men cannot be forced into religion, or coerced into Christianity—and their religion would not be worth having if they could. The condition to-day of those districts in which coercion was practised or permitted by the so-called ‘Palace Church Evangelists’ and other government officials, from mistaken motives, is a sad enough example of that.

One of my pastors came to me during my first year in the district to ask what was to be done in the following case: A man had been baptized after having attended the classes for instruction in the ‘fundamentals of the faith’ for the appointed time. His character was good, he seemed to understand what he had learned, and was believed to be a Christian man. Some time after his baptism, as he wished to join the church, he attended the communicants’ class for further instruction, and at the end of the appointed period, there being nothing against the man, but everything in his favour, the members were about to receive him into the church; but then they were met, as they thought, by a great difficulty. His wife did not wish to join the church, was not even baptized, and had no wish to be. Their problem was this—could they receive the man alone, and so, in a sense, separate husband and wife? There was another analogous case, where the wife wished to join the church, but not the husband. ‘May we admit the husband without his wife, or the wife without her husband?’ they asked; or ‘Must we tell the husband that he must wait for his wife, and the wife for her husband?’ Of course I replied that they were not to keep a man from the Communion because of his wife, or a woman because of her husband.

On my first visit to Ankàzobè, a large village about thirty miles to the north of Fìhàonana, while conducting the Communion Service I saw three small boys among the communicants, and asked who they were, and what they wanted. I was informed that they were church members, and I afterwards discovered that one of them was the son of a local preacher. I told the church that it was not the custom to take such young children into membership, as they could not understand what the ordinance meant. After the service I had a long talk with the church as to who ought, and who ought not, to be received as members with regard to years, knowledge and character.

While occasional irregularities appeared in different places, there were not half so many as I expected. As a whole the churches were in a marvellous condition, considering the scanty opportunities they had enjoyed of being instructed in the things that pertain to the Kingdom of God. If they made mistakes, which of course sometimes happened, it was almost always solely from want of knowledge. If they knew what ought to be done, they generally did it. I fancy this is more than can be said of some church members at home. I may also add that grave mistakes were few—so few, indeed, that one was reminded of the words: ‘They shall be all taught of God.’

If anything of a really difficult nature cropped up they usually sent on to Fìhàonana to ask my advice; and before our settlement there they sought guidance from the capital. Repeatedly I had to crush the idea that I was the head of the churches, and that what I said must be regarded as law. I always tried to impress upon them that I was in no sense a supreme authority, but only one of their teachers, and that the assembled pastors of the district should settle the questions which arose, e.g. whether a church was needed or not, and what was the best site on which to build. For they knew the district and people and their needs better than I could, and were quite capable of deciding such matters. Then again, I thought it wise to leave everything the Malagasy could do for themselves in their own hands, that they might learn self-reliance.

Missionaries for the most part should merely stand behind the scenes and prompt their people in the right direction, and then, as far as possible, allow them to act for themselves. It is essential to the best interests of Christianity that the assembled pastors of the churches in any district should decide how many churches should be formed in that district; otherwise every tiny village might set up a church, although it had only six huts, and whenever one petty chief fell out with another each would cause his people to build a church in his own village, of which he would probably be appointed pastor, even if there were but twenty people, and half of these twenty children. This sort of thing was done repeatedly in certain districts.

I must content myself with sketching the broadest outlines of my work, giving glimpses of certain parts merely, the general facts connected with the whole; for there were many matters that occupied my time and attention during those earlier years which cannot be embodied in a short account like this.

The people were most grateful for all I could do for them medically, although they entertained most absurd notions, and had absolute faith in my power to cure all little ills that flesh is heir to. I was often at my wits’ end, and did not know what means to use—a state of mind which generally ended in making an experiment upon them, and giving what I hoped would do them good. When they returned to tell me that they were cured, and thank me for it, I often wondered whether it was the medicine, or their faith, or old dame Nature herself that had cured them—and if she would not have done it, even if they had taken no medicine at all.

I was perplexed for some time, by their always asking me, when medicine was given, if they ought to fast, until I discovered that the old idol priests and sorcerers were doctors, of a kind, and that their general prescription (and I am inclined to think their best) was fasting, especially from pork. The Malagasy often made themselves ill by overeating. It seemed as if the people reasoned somewhat in this way: If the old idol-keepers, priests, and sorcerers could cure some diseases, the teachers of the true religion must be able to cure all. Be that as it may, a small service to the body gave great influence over the minds of these people.

The vast majority suffer from the effects of poisoned blood, due to hereditary taint or vicious habits. As a consequence, hundreds of innocent infants perish; precious lives ebb away before their time; disease is fostered; and deterioration—physical, mental, and moral—is spread throughout the entire community.

Bookselling took up much time also, until a colporteur was found. I sold about £30 worth of books during our first year at Fìhàonana; but to the Malagasy that really represented what £150 does to us.

With regard to the state of the churches, as I found them in 1871, all I can say is, that if not quite all we could have wished them to be, they were a great deal better than we had any right under the circumstances to expect. While others had to tell of multitudes rushing to baptism and many to the Lord’s Table, in an altogether unfit state, I had nothing of the kind to complain of. On the whole things were done decently and in order in Vònizòngo. This was in a great measure, if not entirely, due to the fact that there was such a man as Razàka superintending the district and directing the other pastors. I attribute, under God, the very satisfactory state of the churches found in Vònizòngo, when compared with most other districts, to the wise conduct of Razàka, and Ràinisòa, the chief pastor of the Fìerènana district, and to the kind of men whom, as a rule, they led the churches to choose for pastors and preachers. The pastors as a body, although of necessity they did not possess much knowledge—in fact there were some few of them who could not even read—possessed a good deal of common sense. These men had done, and were then doing, noble work.

Although I have heard much about it, I never saw an instance of people being thrashed to church. I did see, in 1883, in another district, people brought to church by Malagasy policemen, by order of the ‘Palace Church Evangelist,’ who did just as he liked, ruled the district with a rod of iron, and ruined it—so that to-day it is only the shadow of what it ought to have been. We had no such doings in Vònizòngo.

I heard of one little Andrìandàhy—village squire or squireen—who had been accused of thrashing his people to church. I sent for him and all connected with the case, and went into the whole affair, and found, after hours of investigation, that it amounted to nothing more than this: he met a slave of his going to another church, seized him by the arm, and perhaps twisted him round, and told him he ought to attend the same church as himself. The slave informed the pastors of his church what had happened; and the two pastors, not being on the best of terms with his master, tried to make a case against him. I believe my summoning all parties to meet me did good; for the report of what I had done soon spread, and also of what I had said on the subject of masters compelling their people to attend church. This was the only case I ever heard of in Vònizòngo, and I am quite certain that little, if anything, of that kind was done in our district.

One reason of this was that the majority of the people themselves were so anxious to attend the House of God (many of them no doubt from mistaken notions) that nothing of the kind was needed. But even if many of them had been made to attend church by the head-man of the village, instead of being left in the village to steal the goods of those who did go, or to commit worse crimes, I confess that I cannot see it to be so terrible a charge after all. At the same time, I should most certainly tell the head-men to take no such course. It was a phase of ‘compulsory education,’ as the church was then the only means of education, and the Malagasy were only overgrown children. In some districts the ‘Palace Church Evangelists’ fined those who did not attend church; but even that was only history repeating itself. For in England, in the days of ‘Good Queen Bess,’ a man was fined a shilling if he did not attend the parish church once a month.

The state of things I found in Vònizòngo astonished me not a little. What the people chiefly needed was to be taught and guided; and they were most anxious to follow that which was right. Of course many things were done among them which we did not like. But as knowledge was imparted most of the objectionable things disappeared like morning mists before the rising sun. But the piety of the people proved to be more substantial than the ‘morning cloud and the early dew that passeth away.’ Central Madagascar had been roused by the power of God’s grace from the sleep of ages. Some regarded our work with suspicion, and, because all our converts did not at once equal the Christians of lands that have had the Gospel for centuries, they were almost prepared to ascribe it to mere political excitement or surface-work.

More seems to be expected of converts from heathenism than from home converts, and even than from ordinary Christians, when there certainly ought to be much less. No time is allowed for growth in grace, which there certainly ought to be, as it is generally found, I think, that there is as much human nature in most of them as there is in other people—if not more. Heathen habits of a lifetime and heathen superstitions are deeply rooted in their natures, far too deeply to be very easily eradicated. ‘It is very strange indeed that it should not be taken for granted that many native Christians, even when truly converted, are, like so many Christians at home, cold-hearted, inconsistent and vulnerable to the shafts of temptation.’

We cannot expect the subjects of ‘the obscene empires of Mammon and Belial’ to take any interest in Christian missions, or do anything except scorn missionaries, their work, and their converts.

Unless people have a heart interest in religious work, they are likely to make the most of the shortcomings of native Christians—as a sort of self-justification—and to disparage the work of the modern missionary accordingly. They would not dare to disparage the work of the Apostle Paul, because history has vindicated it; but they choose to forget what ‘unsatisfactory’ people many of Paul’s converts in Corinth and Galatia were.