‘Happy is the people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is the people, whose God is the Lord.’—Psalm cxliv. 15,
The year 1875 was by far the best since we came, in work done and progress made, in schools established, in money raised, in enlarged congregations, and in the fewness of scandals. We had to remember for our comfort that we were but breaking up the fallow ground, preparing the soil and sowing the seed of the Kingdom, and that it was too soon to look for a harvest. We found that there was great truth in the remark that ‘after a religious creed has been established in a community’—as to some extent at least it had been in Vònizòngo—‘the preacher educates gradually, far oftener than he converts suddenly.’
By degrees the Gospel became a power in the land. Old things passed away, and all things became new. The whole face of society was quietly revolutionized, and changes effected in matters social, political, and religious. Everything in fact, from the fireside to the forum, and from the queen on the throne to the prisoner in chains, felt the new influence. It was perhaps a matter for more thankfulness than we were always prepared to admit, that we had experienced so little of the sensational, the startling, and the marvellous; although from another point of view, the work might well be deemed a marvellous transformation.
During that year we had several exhibitions of the power of the people to apply the knowledge acquired. I might give many instances, but let one suffice. The church at Antsàmpandràno had given much trouble from the time of its formation, in fact more trouble than all the other churches of the district. This had arisen almost entirely from the fact that there were seven àndrìandàhies (petty chiefs) in that village, and they all wanted to be leaders or pillars in the church. All desired to be pastors, preachers, or deacons, although there was not one of them fit even for church fellowship. They were all bad. But notwithstanding this, when the church was formed in 1865, as it was almost entirely composed of their own clansmen and slaves, two of these petty chiefs were chosen pastors and two preachers.
As Antsàmpandràno was a long way from Fìhàonana, I had not been able to visit it often (although I had visited it much oftener than many of the other churches) hence it was some time before I came fully to understand the real state of matters. Even after I did so, I found it quite impossible to take action, as I could find no pretext for expelling these men from their office and membership. No one was bold enough to bring any charge against them. This was little to be wondered at. At last, however, the two pastors and one of the preachers had a quarrel with the other preacher; and these three entered his hut, while he was in bed, beat him in a most brutal manner, leaving him bruised, bleeding, and senseless. He appealed to the queen, and his assailants had a narrow escape of being put in chains; but, I suppose, they had managed to bribe the judges and so got off. When I heard of what had taken place, I called a Quarterly Meeting of pastors, teachers, and deacons to meet at Antsàmpandràno, to suspend these men from office and fellowship. When we arrived at Antsàmpandràno, we found that this had already been done. The small church, mainly composed of their own clansmen and slaves, had expelled their chiefs and masters from church membership. The Quarterly Meeting of course ratified what the church had done.
After behaving fairly well—outwardly at least—for a year, these men applied to be restored to church fellowship; and the two teachers—whom the Quarterly Meeting had placed in charge of the church—sent on to me to ask what they were to do. I sent back word that neither they nor the church could do anything, as only the Quarterly Meeting could restore to membership in such cases. For we had been compelled by our peculiar circumstances to pass a by-law, that if any one was suspended from church fellowship, only by vote of the Quarterly Meeting could the party be restored. We had been compelled to pass this by-law because we found, when any of the petty chiefs or head men were suspended from church membership, generally they had only to say they repented, and they were restored to full communion, or if they were not, they managed to make things very uncomfortable for both office-bearers and members until they were. We had, therefore, as a body, to come to the rescue of these weak and harassed churches, in order to put a stop to such a state of matters. All suspended persons had to be restored by the Quarterly Meeting and not by the individual church as formerly.
After a time these men applied to the Quarterly Meeting to be restored; but we were unanimous in the opinion that they were unfit for church membership, and ought not therefore to be readmitted. At this they were very much astonished and angry. On the way home from the meeting, they managed to intimidate and terrify their slaves (who had been the representatives of the church of Antsàmpandràno to the Quarterly Meeting), so that they did not report to the church that their masters had been refused readmission. It was such an extraordinary thing for chiefs to be refused anything, that I suppose the church had taken it for granted that their application had been sustained, and they were received to the communion the following Sabbath. We heard on the Monday what had been done, and I sent on at once to inform the church that they would be cut off from all connexion with us, unless these men were at once expelled. On the Wednesday following, the two teachers, along with the deacons of the church, came to see me, and discovering how matters stood, they returned home, and to their credit be it told, notwithstanding threats and attempts to intimidate and terrify them, the small church, mainly composed of clansmen and slaves, expelled their chiefs and masters from fellowship, as being unfit for communion in the Church of Christ!
The three men came to our next Quarterly Meeting, but we again declined to restore them, and told them that we did not believe in their repentance; that we did not believe they were converted men, and would not receive them into church fellowship again, until we had good reason for believing they were. That we did right was proved shortly afterwards by the fact that one of these men, who had been chief pastor, was wanted by the queen for knocking out a man’s eye!
The total amount raised by the churches of the district during that year was large. This was an encouraging sign of progress, and of the hold of their religion on the hearts of the people. They had little money, and what they had they did not readily part with. The sum raised—exclusive of the usual church expenses—amounted to £62 12s. 0d., equivalent to £313! This too from a people who divided their money down to the fifteenth part of a penny, and who, ten years before, had not raised £10 in the interests of religion.
We were delighted on our return from our enforced holiday in the capital to find our new church thatched, and that the people had been so diligent and active in our absence. It proved that they had profited by our instruction and example to an extent for which we had not always given them credit.
On our return I set off on an itinerating tour through the two districts. Itinerating was very trying work in those days, mainly in consequence of the filthy huts in which we had to sleep, often with pigs and poultry on the other side of a bulrush partition, and with a copious supply of vermin. I was seldom allowed into the house on my return home, until I had changed my clothes. Boiling water had to be poured over my underclothing, and the rest of my garments aired for days, brushed, and minutely inspected before they could be worn again.
On this tour I had quite a novel experience. I had misjudged the distance to a large village, at which we were to have a Quarterly Meeting next day. At sunset we found ourselves a long way from it, and as it becomes dark quickly after sunset, we were compelled to turn aside to a miserable collection of some half-dozen bulrush huts on the ridge we were crossing. After tea, feeling tired, and not quite up to the mark, I turned in, and was soon fast asleep. I awoke to find I was being turned out of bed. An enormous pig had pushed aside the rush door, walked into the small hut in which I was sleeping, got under my stretcher, and turned me out of bed. I awoke struggling on the floor of the hut with my huge, dirty, uninvited visitor, whose grunts brought me to my senses. As I heard my men talking, I shouted for them. They immediately came. ‘Why did you allow this beast in upon me?’ I asked. ‘How could we prevent it, sir?’ they said. ‘It was roaming about, and pushed its way through the door into the hut.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘take it away and tie it up, and prevent its return here.’
I did not fall asleep after that. The night had become so cold that I could not sleep. Being, as the village was, on an eminence, the cold east wind blew through the frail tenement with chilling effect, all the more that it was the middle of the cold season, when the nights are often piercingly cold. I was glad to get up, long before daylight, rouse my men to get my coffee and quinine, and be off for the village where our gathering was to be held, and where we had a Quarterly Meeting in the enjoyment of which I soon forgot the discomforts of the night. By sunset I was in my own house again.
I have heard of men telling of sleeping in huts in Madagascar, with scorpions crawling over them, snakes hanging from the roof hissing in their faces, and of being taken out in the morning, set up to be speared, and only waiting to hear the ‘Klick’ (which does not exist in Madagascar) as the signal for being speared! All such are but ‘travellers’ tales,’ the product of disordered livers or diseased imaginations. The scorpions were only cockroaches or rats; the snakes, long festoons of soot, such as hang from the roof of most Malagasy huts, which have no chimneys; the being taken out and set up to be speared, only a dream, probably the effect of too hearty a supper after a long exhausting day’s journey! There were discomforts and difficulties in those days; but they were hardly worth mentioning, when compared with what have to be faced in some mission fields, such as New Guinea, the Congo, and Central Africa. Hotel accommodation cannot be expected in the mission field, and those who look for it ought to remain at home.
The Quarterly Meetings grew to be sources of great strength and usefulness. They were the means of uniting all in the common work. I declined to decide cases of dispute, church discipline, or other serious business as an individual. I laid the graver matters before the Quarterly Meeting, and settled them by the vote of the majority. By means of these meetings, pastors, local preachers, deacons, and church members were trained in habits of self-reliance in dealing with the difficulties that were always cropping up in newly formed churches, as well as with general church business. We had, as a rule, good meetings, and not a little to do. I was ex officio chairman, and by the exercise of a little tact, generally got them to vote as I wanted.
We had a fine station school at Fìhàonana. The girls, one hundred and fifteen in number, were taught in the small school-house in the manse yard, to be near my wife; and the boys, one hundred and twenty-five in number—instead of twenty-five as formerly—in the church in the village. Here, as elsewhere, the great change in the number of the schools and the scholars was mainly brought about (apart from the royal proclamation with regard to education) by interesting the local authorities in the education of the children, by making them members of the village school-boards, and leading them to induce the parents to send their children to school.
I give here an illustration of the good done by Bible teaching, especially among the young. A little Malagasy girl was brought to Antanànarìvo from the north-west province of Madagascar, and placed in the Friends’ High School for Girls, at that time under the charge of Miss Helen Gilpin. Miss Gilpin made the imparting of Bible knowledge a very special feature of her teaching. The girl was quick at learning, as most Malagasy children are, and was very diligent; she made extraordinary progress in all subjects, but in no subject more than in Scripture knowledge.
The stories of the Bible threw a spell over her; she was fascinated with them as she had never been before by any stories, so she was never weary of listening to the Bible being read to her, until she could read it for herself. The story of the Flood; of Noah and his family in the ark; of Joseph and his brethren; of the wonders at the Red Sea; of the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness; of the death of Moses on the mount; of the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace; of Daniel in the lions’ den—were there ever such stories as these?
Those of the New Testament were no less captivating. There was the visit of the Wise Men from the East, led by the star, seeking for the infant Saviour; the flight into Egypt; the murder of the children of Bethlehem; the calling of the Apostles; the conversions on the Day of Pentecost; the conversion of St. Paul, and his travels, &c.
Then the parables and the miracles. But most wonderful and heart-stirring of all, there was the death of the Saviour on the Cross! These filled the mind and memory of that little girl by day and her dreams by night, and were as real as anything that happened to her in her own life.
After being ten months at school, her mother came up from the west to take her home for the holidays, which lasted two months. The journey took two days to accomplish. At the end of the first day, they entered a village to spend the night there, intending to continue their journey the following morning. While the rice for supper was being boiled, they all sat (teo amòrom-pàtana) round the hearth and chatted, and the little girl and her mother were asked many questions—where they had come from, where they were going, why they had been in the capital, &c. The little girl told how she had been at school in the capital, and what she had learned there, and began relating some of the Bible stories, as samples of the knowledge she had gained.
After supper, at the request of the people, she continued to tell more of those wonderful stories, and also what she knew about the ‘New Religion,’ and its Author Jesus Christ (Ny Zànak’ Andrìamànitra Andrìanànahàry, ‘the Son of God the Creator’). It was very late before they lay down on their mats to sleep, and hence it was late before the little girl and her mother rose the following morning.
They at once prepared to continue their journey home. To their astonishment, however, the people would not hear of this; they said they wanted to hear more of those delightful stories, and also more about the book from which they were taken, and the ‘New Religion.’ They advised the girl and her mother to rest for the day, and promised to provide food and lodging free, if they would remain another night with them. This they did, and the evening and up to midnight was spent as the previous one had been. A number of the neighbours, who had heard about the wonderful stories, came in to hear for themselves, and they also were enthralled by what the little girl told of the ‘New Religion’ and by the hymns she sang. On the following morning, before the girl and her mother could start on their journey home, they were waited upon by a deputation of the villagers to ask them to stay another night, that they might hear still more of the wonderful tales. They said they would provide rice and ‘laoka’ (kitchie) for them, give them a larger and cleaner hut in which to stay, and into which the people could come together in greater numbers to listen. Once more they consented to remain another night.
Next morning there was another deputation from the other end of the village, asking them to come to their end, and tell them those delightful stories there. The result was that they had to remain for a week in that village, while the little girl night after night to crowded houses told Bible stories, sung her hymns, and all she could tell about the ‘New Religion.’
They had to remain over the Sunday, and that little girl had to tell her stories, sing her hymns, and tell all she knew, from morning to midnight, such was the anxiety of the people to hear her. Their eagerness for information about the wonderful ‘New Religion’ was intense, and this thirst for knowledge grew until a congregation was gathered in that village. At first they would simply meet on the Sunday, sit quiet for an hour, and then break up. Some one with a good memory, perhaps, would retell what of the Bible stories he remembered, or they would sing over and over again all they remembered of some of the hymns they had heard; and so they went on. Afterwards a church was formed in that village, and to-day there are five-and-twenty village churches and five-and-twenty day schools within a circle of five miles of that village, where the little girl and her mother lodged, and where she began telling the people those wonderful Bible stories.
That little girl has been for many years among the best and most devoted of the workers for the Kingdom of God. She did what she could, and has kept on doing so, and her efforts were greatly blessed by Him in Whose service the Bible stories were so effectively used.
At our first school examinations in 1874, our schools were found to be in a very poor state, and very deficient in elementary Bible knowledge. This was just what might have been expected. I expressed my sorrow at their state. The people also said they were sorry, but they explained that most of the children had only been under instruction for a few weeks; and as the majority of them were children of heathen, or all but heathen families, but little interest had been taken in their progress by their parents. They hoped to have them in a much more satisfactory state next year, and they had. During the following few weeks, three hundred copies of the elementary catechism were sold. The altered condition of the schools led to a very great increase in the sale of first lesson books, catechisms, Bibles, Testaments, and school material. More were sold during that year than during the previous four, and £120 was paid into the printing-office that year. Of our Malagasy monthly, Good Words, 3,000 copies, and 3,000 elementary catechisms were disposed of.
The old superstitious fear of the white man’s medicine kept rapidly dying out, as the knowledge of its good effects spread, especially that of Òdi-tàzo, quinine. We had a more severe fever season that year than we had previously known. We were the more impressed by it through the increased number of those who sought our aid. Eight ounces of quinine were sold during the seven months.
A member of the mission, going home on furlough, wished to try the west coast route, to catch the steamer at Mojangà, instead of having to take fifteen days on a ‘Bullocker,’ with two hundred bullocks for fellow passengers, between Tàmatàve and Mauritius. From the report of the state of the churches on that route, brought back by the member of the mission who conducted Dr. Mullens and Mr. and Mrs. Pillans to Mojangà, it was thought it would be well to send another member of the mission with the one going on furlough. They could both visit the churches, do what they could for them, and the one who was to return could bring back a report of their state, and what might be done to help them.
At one village they had a church meeting, at which they noticed that one of the members was under the influence of drink. They called the pastor’s attention to his state, and said that such a person ought not to be allowed to continue in church fellowship, and that he must leave the meeting now. The pastor beckoned to two of the deacons to remove the offending member, and the business of the church meeting went on. As there was much business to be got through, much to explain, and much advice to be given, the meeting lasted some three hours. It was just about to close, when the pastor whispered to the two missionaries: ‘He has repented and wishes to be received back into church fellowship.’ They asked: ‘Who has repented?’ To their astonishment they were told that the intoxicated member, who had been removed from the church meeting some three hours before, had repented, and was anxious to be received back into church fellowship. They said: ‘Nonsense, he can’t have truly repented. He must be still under the influence of drink.’ ‘No, sirs,’ said the pastor, ‘he has truly repented, and is now quite sober; for the two deacons thrashed him into repentance, and until he was quite sober, for so disgracing us all!
The year 1875 had been by far the most prosperous year we had had, and the year 1876 was the most eventful to us and to the whole mission. The country then passed through a great crisis. It underwent a social revolution, second to none, perhaps, that it had ever encountered. A greater change took place than that which followed the death of Radàma II, or of Queen Ràsohèrina, and all without blood. The central, and even the distant provinces were for months in a state of great excitement, caused mainly by two things: a conscription for the native army, which was really a revolutionizing of the whole military system, and in the main tended to its improvement; though this reform in the end failed through treachery; and secondly, an extraordinary excitement which arose on the subject of slavery, brought about by indiscretion and the circulation of false reports. It was currently reported, that the slaves were all to be emancipated, and if they were not, the British, headed by Queen Victoria herself, were coming to free them by force!
Of course such a state of affairs affected our work for a time, though it did no permanent harm. Our work was almost brought to a standstill. If I had not had the finishing of our new church to occupy me, I should have had rather a miserable time of it. The district Bible-class had to be given up, many schools had to be closed for want of teachers, as most of the pastors, local preachers, and teachers were called to the capital. Many of the adherents, and some even of the church members, fell away for a time from the means of grace.
Some of the adherents, when they found that attendance at the church on the Sabbath was not compulsory, or Sabbath government service, as many of the more ignorant had always thought it was, and that they might leave off attendance with perfect safety, did so. Rumours set in circulation by the old heathen party were rife to the effect ‘that the queen had no longer any love or respect for the New Religion, and was about to put a stop to all praying, and close all the schools.’ Heathenism dies hard. Some of the adherents who left us for a time did so from fear; for the people had been terribly cheated once, and it took a long time before they had a thorough trust in any government. They returned to us after the scare was over; for the ‘good seed of the Kingdom’ had found a lodgement in their hearts.
The queen set twenty of our pastors free from government service, and among them Razàka, and sent them home to attend to their pastoral duties, and to do what they could to help forward the good work. They were told they were to attend to the interests of the people, the churches, and the schools of their respective villages; and that that would be taken in lieu of government service.
All the pastors and teachers were ultimately freed from government service, and this was a great boon to the churches and the people. Our Quarterly Meetings went through the list of our pastors, and sent it to the government, so that none might pass themselves off as pastors or teachers to escape the hated fànompòana.
During the conscription, the prime minister, as commander-in-chief, asked one man why he was so anxious to be freed from military service; he replied, because he was a pastor. ‘Were you chosen by the people?’ he was asked. ‘Yes,’ the man answered. ‘Has the missionary of the district confirmed your appointment?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Can you read?’ he was asked. ‘Not much,’ the man replied. ‘Can you write?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘What can you do then to benefit the people?’ ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I do my best for the good of all and for the children in the school.’ ‘That’s right,’ said the prime minister, ‘go home and continue your good work; you are free.’