I became a member of the Committee for the Revision of the Malagasy Bible in 1883, and remained a member for four years—till the finish of the work. This duty proved most interesting and enjoyable. The revision was not the triumph that the translation made by the first missionaries had been—partly, I think, because it had been overlauded, which led the people to expect too much from it; partly because, while a more correct and literal translation, it was, in consequence, not so idiomatic, and perhaps because the paragraph form in which it was printed was not so popular, at least in the schools, as the old form in verses. It occupies much the same place among the Malagasy that the Revised English Version does among ourselves, with this difference, that it is the only version which the Malagasy can now obtain.

The work of the revision led us to think more highly than ever of the splendid work done by the early missionaries during the thirteen years they were in the island. Reducing the language to writing, founding churches and schools, making those noble—one might almost say marvellously idiomatic—translations of the Bible, the Pilgrim’s Progress, and other books, and so planting Christianity in the hearts of the people that it could not be uprooted, was a work that has never been surpassed in any mission field, and seldom, if ever, been equalled. There were certainly giants in the mission field in those days; but, as we have lately seen, the race has not quite died out.

We saw in the work of revision some fine examples of ‘the word-moulding power of Christianity.’ To give a few of them: Fitòndràntèna meant carriage of the body, or one’s self; hence tsàra fitòndràntèna meant good carriage—as we would say, a lady, or a person of good carriage—debonair; but it has come to mean good conduct, hence moral character. Fièritrèrètana, which meant the faculty of meditation, has come to mean conscience. Fàhadiòvana, an abstract noun from root dìo, whence adjective madìo, clean, pure, hence white, meant cleanness, purity or whiteness of, say, a garment, or a cotton làmba (plaid); it has come to mean moral purity (a virtue formerly unknown in Madagascar, as it is in all heathen lands), as fàhadiòvampanàhy, the purity or whiteness of the soul. Hàmasìnana and fàhamasìnana, from root hàsina, probably connected with hàsina—if not really the same word—the sacred tree, meaning sacredness, has come to mean holiness. Fanàtitra meant a present, a gift; it now means, and is used almost exclusively for, a religious offering. Thus: Fanàtitra nòho ny òta, a sin-offering, lit. an offering on account of sin. Fanàtitra alàtsa-drà, a sacrificial offering, lit. an offering in which there is shedding of blood. Fandràisana meant the time or place of receiving, now Ny Fandràisana stands for the Communion. Fàhaverèzana, abstract noun, meant disgrace, of an officer or an official, or any one who lost their position, now stands for the loss of the soul. Fanàhy, if derived from the root àhy, which means care or solicitude, anxiety, would mean the faculty of care, solicitude or anxiety; but if, as seems more probable, it is derived from the root nàhy, which signifies will or intention, it would mean the faculty of will, or choice; but it has come to mean (if it did not always mean that, in a vague sort of way at least) the soul, the spirit. The existence of a soul or spirit, as distinct from the tèna, body, and nòfo, flesh, seems always to have been recognized; for so much was certainly implied in the belief of the people in ghosts, matòatòa, and àmbiròa, shades, or second selves. Radàma I’s father when dying said: ‘It is my body that will be buried, but my (fanàhy) spirit will be with you to whisper to you words of counsel.’ Fanàhy vàovào is a new spirit, which a Christian receives at conversion. Tsàrafanàhy is a good spirit, hence Lehilàhy tsàrafanàhy is a good man, lit. good-souled man. Ràtsifanàhy is a bad spirit, hence wicked.

The late J. Andrìanaivoràvèlona—the Spurgeon of Madagascar—was a member of the Bible Revision Committee for twelve years, and did more for the idiomatic tone of the new translation than all the others put together. He was not only the orator of the island, but was also a genius in his knowledge and use of the language, and a giant in physical strength. He came into the committee looking very tired and exhausted one morning. Our chief reviser said to him: ‘You look very tired and worn-out this morning, Andrianaivo—what’s the matter? what have you been doing?’ He answered: ‘I am tired; for I have not recovered from my Sabbath labours yet.’ He was asked what he had done on the Sabbath, when he replied that he had preached fourteen times! He had left the capital at five o’clock, had his first service at six, had food prepared for him at various centres, and continued services till seven o’clock at night—fourteen in all—little wonder if he was tired. I have heard all the great British preachers of the past forty years; and I would as soon have heard Andrianaivo as any of them. I have seen him keep an immense congregation spellbound for an hour and twenty minutes. When at his best, the force, fervour and enthusiasm of the man were magnificent, and carried all before them.

On Thursday, July 30, 1885, Razàka, the pastor of our old station church at Fìhàonana, was called to his rest and his reward. Few men were ever more missed or more sincerely mourned than he was. He was the best and noblest Malagasy Christian pastor I ever knew, and one of the truest and most sincere men I ever met. ‘He was a faithful man, and feared God above many.’ He was loved and looked up to by his fellow countrymen in a way, and to an extent, I have never known in the case of other Malagasy pastors.

A tall, handsome, noble-looking old man, he appeared like a king among men, with his ‘silvery locks waving in the breeze,’ in his case a veritable ‘crown of glory.’ You felt, when you met him, that he was no ordinary man. ‘Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men’s faces,’ says Thackeray, ‘which is honoured almost wherever presented.’ It was so with dear old Razàka, for it might almost have been said that ‘his face was his fortune’; for, although he had no ‘face like a benediction,’ yet honesty was so stamped upon its every feature that you had but to see it to feel that its owner was one of God’s noblest works—an honest man.

One could not help being drawn, as by some magnetic influence, towards the good old man. I well remember our first meeting, a few weeks after our arrival at Antanànarìvo. We could not exchange a word, we could only grasp each other by the hand, and look in each other’s faces; but I felt, as I looked in that transparently honest face, that here was a true man; and my heart warmed towards him, as a man who had done, and said, and suffered much for the cause of Christ in Madagascar; and the longer I knew him the more I loved and respected him. We drew to each other from the first. We were fellow labourers in the vineyard of God for many years, and the fastest friends to the day of his death. He was ever a tower of strength to me. I hardly know how I could have got through one-half of the work I was privileged to do in Vònizòngo but for the help and encouragement I received from Razàka. ‘He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.’

Napoleon Bonaparte said: ‘Conquest made me what I am, and conquest must sustain me.’ It was the grace of God, and the conquest it made of him heart and soul, that made Razàka what he was, and sustained him to the end. He had a deep and passionate love for his Bible: I have seldom met any one who knew it as he did, for he seemed to know it from Genesis to Revelation, and ‘the word of Christ dwelt richly’ in him, ‘in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,’ while he strove to live up to his light and to the testimonies of the Book he so dearly loved.

Once in a Bible-class I said to him: ‘Supposing some one were to say to you, Razàka, that the Bible was not trustworthy—what answer would you give him?’ ‘No one would be so foolish as to say anything of the kind,’ he replied, ‘except some foolish Malagasy, who did not know what he was speaking about. I should tell him to hold his peace until he knew what he was talking about.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘suppose some Vazàha (European) were to say such a thing to you—how would you answer him?’ It was difficult to get the good old man to imagine any European who could doubt or deny that the Bible was the Word of God. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘just let us suppose such a case for the sake of argument—I would like to hear how you would answer him.’

‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘I know that God made me, and I feel quite certain that whoever wrote the Bible knew a great deal about me; for it describes my state and wants as a sinner so exactly, that no one who did not know me could have pictured them as the Bible does. Now I know that no Malagasy wrote the Bible, or could write it—you Europeans brought the book from over the sea; and what European there knows anything about me? You know more about me than any other European, but you did not write it; for the Bible was here years before you came. The way I explain it, sir, is this: God made me, and “holy men of God” wrote the Scriptures, “as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”—and that is how I find my low and lost estate and my wants so pictured there.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that is very good; but suppose the European were to say: “My good old man, that may satisfy you, but that proves nothing, and certainly does not prove that the Bible is true or the Word of God. It is only a tissue of cunningly-devised fables, legal fictions, and falsehoods.” What would you say then, and how would you answer that, and prove that the Bible was trustworthy and the Word of God?’

‘The Bible a fable, full of fictions or falsehoods, sir,’ he said, ‘that can’t be; for the work it has already done in the land proves that it must be the truth of God; I don’t know what your European falsehoods, fables or folk-lore may be like; but the Scriptures are very different from our Malagasy ones. Our fables and folk-lore are filthy trash, and our lies as black as they can be made. I am an old man, but I never in my life knew a lie do any good. As our Malagasy proverbs say: “A falsehood may be very fat when it is uttered, but it becomes very lean when confronted.” “A lie is like the early rice—it serves the occasion, but does not hold out.” ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘if we think of the good that the Bible has already done in this country, that seems to me to prove it to be God’s book; for no book could have done what it has done in this land unless it were the Word of God. What was this country before the Bible came? The people are not nearly so wise and good yet as we hope they may become; but a great change has come over them, and it is the Bible that has wrought that change. I remember what the past was, and I know what the present is, and so can compare them. The book that has brought this great change about cannot be a mere tissue of fables and folk-lore, fictions and falsehoods—it must be the Word of the Almighty to have wrought the miracles it has wrought in the land, and to have done the good that it has done. I could not believe that any collections of mere fables and folk-lore, or fictions and falsehoods, could be the cause of all the good that has been done.’

Razàka was quite right: the Bible is its own best witness, and the miracles it works, both at home and among the heathen, the best proof of its divine origin.

Razàka was born at Fìhàonana, Vònizòngo, probably about the year 1814, so that he had reached the ‘three score years and ten’ before he passed away. He was the only child of his parents, and hence was spoiled by them, and grew up a very wayward, wilful, wicked lad, the terror of the village and neighbourhood, and a great authority on heathen charms, especially love-philtres. His father being one of the head-men of the district, numbers of the people visited him to consult him with regard to district affairs; but such was their terror of the son, even as a lad, that they would not venture to enter the village if they knew he was in it.

As he grew up to manhood, his delights were cock-fighting, bull-fighting, and dìamànga, a kicking game. Some years after he was married, as his wife had no family, his father pressed him to take a second wife; but he declined to do so, not from any high or pure motives; but simply because he disliked the idea of having two wives. He came to be on friendly terms with several of the public criers, the men who used to proclaim in the fairs and district markets the royal proclamations, laws of the land, and edicts on the affairs of the kingdom, &c.; and, being a born speaker, he soon gained great power and made money. He was restless, however, and early got weary of the life he was living. God was preparing him for better and nobler work, although he knew it not.

About 1833 some of the early missionaries visited Vònizòngo, and a school was begun at Fìhàonana. Among the first scholars was a son of the chief, who was a friend of Razàka’s. One day this lad told him about the things they learned at school, and, among other things, told him the story of Adam and Eve. The following day he was told something that surprised him very much more than that, and arrested his attention as nothing before had ever done. He was told that God created the world and all in it, and that, although it is appointed once for all men to die, God would raise them to life again at the last day. Such truths laid hold of his heart and mind, agitated him, and set him a-thinking, and ultimately led him to attend the school himself, in order that he might learn more about the new Fìvavàhana—religion. Being sharp, he very soon learned to read, and to the end of his long life was a beautiful reader, and a most fluent and gifted speaker.

When the chief’s widow (who was the first convert to Christianity in Vònizòngo, and whose eldest son, Ràmitràha, the young chief, was afterwards burned at Fàravòhitra, Antanànarìvo, for his faith in Christ) heard that Razàka had entered the school, and had so quickly learned to read, she said to him: ‘I am so glad to hear that you have gone to school and learned to read, and that you will now be able to study the Word of God. Now don’t be wilful and wicked any more—for the Word of God forbids such things.’ These few words from that good woman seem to have done more to break Razàka’s proud spirit and humble him than all that had ever been said to him before. He obtained possession of a copy of the Psalms in Malagasy, and a translation of a catechism of the main doctrines of Christianity by the late Dr. Russell of Dundee, and of the very small hymn-book the converts then had—all of which he greatly prized. He afterwards obtained possession of several portions of the Scriptures.

Razàka retained a great affection for the memory of the early missionaries, especially for that of the Rev. D. Griffiths. I remember once calling to see him, and finding him sitting on the floor of his room writing, and by his side was a cut-glass ink-bottle, with a brass cover which screwed down on to the mouth. I asked him from whence he had obtained such a nice ink-bottle; and he answered that Mr. Griffiths had given it to him as a parting present. Wondering how he regarded such presents, I said to him: ‘You had better let me buy it from you, as it is just the sort of ink-bottle I want to carry with me on my journeys, and you can easily get another to serve your purpose for all the writing you have to do.’ He made me no answer, but went on to talk about something else. I returned to the subject, but he again evaded giving me an answer. I then said: ‘You had better let me buy that ink-bottle, Razàka’; and he answered: ‘Well, sir, if you really want it I will make you a present of it, but as I received it from Mr. Griffiths as a keepsake, I will never sell it.’ ‘No, my friend,’ I said, ‘I do not want your ink-bottle; you keep it, I was only joking. I am glad to find that you still retain such an affection for your former missionary friend, that you will not part with his gift for money.’ Yes, Razàka was a born gentleman—one of Nature’s noblemen, who could never stoop to a mean thing.

Some three years after the time mentioned above, the praying was prohibited, persecution began, and death was made the penalty of worshipping ‘the white man’s ancestor Jesus Christ’; but Razàka was left unmolested for some years, and many drew to him for counsel and prayer. This was especially the case after the martyrdom of his chief, Ràmitràha, as Razàka got his big Bible and continued his midnight prayer-meetings.

Shortly after this he was drafted into the army, in which he had to serve down to 1876 without a penny of pay, and having many a pound to pay to his officers; for under the Hova régime, the officers lived mainly by blackmailing their men and by loot; hence tribal wars were very popular, as they were simply plundering expeditions. His father died the year he was drafted into the army, and in those days a funeral was a very expensive affair indeed to relatives, so that it was a time of trouble to him; but, notwithstanding his troubles, he was the means of leading many to the Lord, of comforting and supporting others, and of building others up in the faith.

The idol-keepers were continually at war with him, as he refused to honour the gods of the ancestors, and even denounced them, and as the land was full of idols and idol-keepers then, he was heartily hated by all who had vested interests in that class of property. He was regarded as ‘a setter forth of strange doctrines,’ a man who was bent upon ruining his country by uprooting the religion of his forefathers. Such was the hatred of the heathen party to him, that the wonder is they did not make an attempt on his life. His wife was taken from him by her heathen parents, and he was watched and followed when he left his hut at night to visit some of the converts, or to go to one of their midnight gatherings for prayer, as it was thought that he went out during the night to rifle the tombs—a heinous crime in Madagascar, and held worthy of death. Treasures were often buried with the dead, and parties caught in the act in pursuit of them were summarily dealt with. Many a night, as he learned afterwards, did his enemies lie behind the tombs, with their spears ready to transfix him if he had approached them, even if only to take a seat, as it would have been taken for granted that he did so for no good purpose. One night, while he and a few others were having a midnight gathering for prayer, and he was offering prayer, a stone was flung into the hut, which struck his eldest son on the head, and laid him bleeding and senseless on the floor. When the father ceased praying, and a light was procured, he found his son lying seemingly dead, but he had only fainted.

In the year 1849 the persecution became much more severe, and on March 28 of that year, Razàka, along with many others, was sold into slavery, because he was a noted leader among the ‘prayers.’ As he was purchased by some of his relatives, his case was not so hard as that of many others. Some who had made profession of Christianity were found faithless when the hour of trial came; but he and many others stood firm to their faith. The converts in Vònizòngo and the neighbourhood, who had proved faithful, still met in his hut in Fìhàonana for their midnight prayer-meetings, and for the reading of the Scriptures.

Razàka and his wife were among the first of the converts from Vònizòngo who were baptized after the persecution began. They were baptized at a midnight prayer-meeting in the house of Rafàravàvy one very dark night, while the rain descended in torrents, the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared. Her house was at Imarìvolànitra, near to the spot on which the London Missionary Society printing-office now stands, and within gunshot of the palace. It would have been death to the whole party if they had been discovered In 1850 they were received into church fellowship, and for the first time partook of the Lord’s Supper; and from that time Razàka became a more prominent member than ever of the persecuted band of Christians, with whose lives and fortunes the future of the Church of Christ in Madagascar was bound up.

Razàka became so noted among the ‘prayers’ in Vònizòngo, that the queen sent officers to arrest him and bring him to the capital. He had notice of their coming, and escaped. He got back to Fìhàonana one dark night and into the cave. He was able to let his wife know that he was there, and she took him food during the night. He lay hidden in that cave—the small-pox hospital—for two years, his wife taking his food to him during the night. He lay near the mouth of the cave during the day reading and re-reading the Bible—which was hidden there—until he seemed to have got the whole book by heart. As he was thus out of sight for two years, it was thought that he had escaped to the Sàkalàvas, and been murdered by them as a Hova spy; and so search for him was given up. Afterwards, in order to keep him and a few others of the more prominent ‘prayers’ in Vònizòngo out of danger, Prince Rakòto Radàma (afterwards Radàma II) sent Razàka and other five down to Bàly on the west coast, under the pretence of seeing what the French priests were doing there; but really to get them out of danger, in case their zeal for the propagation of the faith might attract the notice of the queen, and cost them their lives.

They started for Bàly on July 4, 1854, suffered great privations on the way—were four days and nights without water, four of their number going mad in consequence—and after all they never reached Bàly; for they were seized by the Sàkalàvas as Hova spies, tied up, and taken to the large Sàkalàva town of Namòroka. The old mode of tying up prisoners, with small cords twisted round their wrists, was a most painful and cruel method; and the cords were twisted more tightly round Razàka’s wrists, until they cut into the flesh, as a sort of honour, he being treated—as he really was—as the leader of the party. Shortly after being caught they were sold as slaves to some Arabs, who, in their turn, sold them to a French trader, who carried them to Nòsibè, where they arrived on September 25, 1854.

At Nòsibè they found a Jesuit priest, who had been in Antanànarìvo, and to him Razàka wrote, asking him to buy them, which he ultimately did. He knew they were Protestants, but he probably hoped by freeing them to make Romanists of them, and to be able to make good use of a man like Razàka. In this he was disappointed, for Razàka and one of his companions refused to change their religion. At this the Jesuit was wrathful. He first tried to win them over, then he tried threatening them, and at last he sent them as slaves to Réunion. Their case was very pitiable—strangers in a strange land, free men and yet treated as slaves. No doubt they would have fared far better if they would have consented to change their religion and become Roman Catholics; but they set their faces like flint against doing so, and they had to suffer for it. On March 5, 1855, they were put on board ship to be taken to Réunion, which they reached on April 1. The scenes that Razàka witnessed on board the slave-ship and at Nòsibè dare not be described.

At Réunion the Jesuits tried hard to persuade Razàka to marry one of their Catholic girls; but he refused, as he said he had a wife in Madagascar. They said: ‘Very likely she has gone all wrong by this time, or, regarding you as dead, has married some one else.’ He answered that he did not think that probable; but in any case he would wait to see before taking another wife. They wanted to rebaptize him. He told them he had been baptized, but if it was likely to do him any good, he had no objection to being done again. They said his Protestant baptism was of no avail, as it had not been performed by a priest. He asked in whose name they baptized, and they replied, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He said: ‘It was in Their name that I was baptized, and I don’t see that being baptized again in Their name will do me any good’; and so he refused to submit to a second baptism.

When they found that they could make nothing of him, and there was a danger of his even turning some they had from the Roman Catholic faith, their treatment of him changed. As he knew his Bible well, had a good memory, and the gift of exposition, when he and the others were shut up in the dormitory at night, he used to recount to them the stories of the Old Testament, and the parables of the New, repeat and explain the meaning of hundreds of verses in the Gospels and the Epistles, until the faith of the listeners in the teaching of the Jesuits began to be greatly shaken. When this was discovered, the anger of the Jesuits knew no bounds; and, as they had no hope of ever being able to make a convert of him, they determined to get rid of him and his companion. On learning this, Razàka and his friend begged to be sent to Mauritius, to be sold to the Rev. Mr. Le Brun, the Protestant missionary, afterwards pastor there; but they would not do that. ‘No,’ they said, ‘we shall send you back to Madagascar, you ungrateful creatures.’

Accordingly, on March 20, 1856, the two were shipped off to the Island of St. Mary’s, which they reached after a voyage of three days, and from there they got over to the mainland, and started up country for home, where, after having been away nearly two years, they arrived on April 7, much to the surprise and joy of their wives, children, and companions.

On July 31, 1861, Rànavàlona I died, and persecution was at an end. All were then free to worship God as they pleased. In 1863 a building was erected in Fìhàonana, but it was soon found to be far too small for the numbers who came together. After a time small churches were formed, and buildings erected in most of the other large villages. Razàka founded some forty of these small churches in the Fìhàonana district in Vònizòngo. He was often away from home for weeks, and even months, teaching, preaching, and founding churches. All this was a pure labour of love on his part; for he obtained no recognition of his work in any way, except that the people looked up to him as their father in the faith, and the God-appointed apostle and ‘father and mother’ of the district.

The late Dr. Mullens met with Razàka when in Madagascar in 1873, and, in his Twelve Months in Madagascar, he says: ‘Of Razàka, the pastor of the church at Fìhàonana, Mr. M. spoke much. It was a great pleasure to Mr. Pillans and myself to see this good man: to talk with him of the hard days of trial; and to hear from his own lips the story of the sufferings he had endured. He told us of the meetings which the fugitive Christians held for worship and mutual help. They used to come long distances to such meetings; tracts were lent from one to the other, as a tract could often be carried and hidden away, when a Bible or a Testament could not. Parts of the New Testament were lent about, even to single leaves; and leaves of the hymn-book and the Pilgrim’s Progress. He said they used often to long for a rainy night, in order that they might be able to sing. He showed us the underground passage, beneath the floor of his huts (from the one rice-pit to another, and from that out to the hollow ditch), by which, when the soldiers came to search, the inmates and visitors could escape. He accompanied us to a pile of immense boulders (in the circle formed by them the persecuted Christians met for worship on the Sabbath mornings, during lulls in the persecution), and showed us the “Cave” beneath the big boulder, into which they used to creep to have a prayer-meeting, and in the dark corner of which the Bible was hid for so long. He brought vividly before us the sufferings and persecutions which his heroic brethren and himself had endured; and in him we realized something of the power of that faith by which all had been sustained. Few finer bodies of Christians have been won for Christ by modern missions than those faithful men and women in Vònizòngo.’

At my request, Razàka wrote an account of his Life and Times, but he stipulated that it was not to be published during his lifetime, in case it might get him into trouble with the government. It was published by instalments, first in Good Words, and then as a small booklet, hundreds of which have been given away as school prizes.

I had the satisfaction of seeing my dear old friend four days before his death. I was in the neighbourhood of Fìhàonana, on my autumnal tour through my district, and went over on the Sabbath morning to visit him and our other friends at our old station, and to preach for them. I found him prostrated with malarial fever, but had no idea he was so near home—so near hearing the welcome, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’ I was never more struck with the calm Christian resignation of the man than I was on that occasion. There he lay, sweltering in the fever—but not a murmur passed his lips. His honest face beamed amid his sufferings, as if light from the ‘better land’ was already falling on it. He expressed his sorrow at being found prostrated with fever, when his friend had come so far to see him, as also his deep disappointment at not being able to go to church to hear me preach. He passed quietly away the following Thursday, July 30.

‘On the Saturday previous, he told us,’ said one of his fellow pastors, ‘that he would like to preach next day’ (although it was not his turn to do so, the first Sabbath of August—the Communion Sabbath—being his turn). His fellow pastors agreed to his wish; but he was never able to carry out his intention; for the following day found him suffering from fever and pneumonia, and of this he died. The day before his death he said: ‘We do not know at all what shall be the day of our death.’ About the middle of the day on which he died he said; ‘Prayer is the breath of the believer,’ and also: ‘Jehovah will answer prayer.’ He asked them to read Isaiah lxi to him, ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, &c.’ He asked for his fellow pastors to be called, and they came and prayed with him. His wife and they asked how he felt, when he replied: ‘There is only a very little (life, or way to go) left.’ Just before he died he said to his daughter-in-law: ‘Don’t look at me any more!’ perhaps he thought she would be frightened if she saw him expire; and so about three o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday, July 31, 1885, he passed to his rest and his reward.

The death of Razàka was a very great loss to the mother-church at Fìhàonana, and to all the churches of the district, a far greater loss than the loss of their missionary: for he was ‘father and mother’ to them all; and they were all very deeply distressed at his death. They realized that a prince and a great man had fallen in the Church of God; and although they did not sorrow ‘as others who have no hope,’ for they knew that Razàka had only gone on a little ahead to join the general assembly and church of the first-born, who are written in heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect. But, feeling that in him they had lost a father and a friend, their distress was very deep, the deeper that there was no one like him left to help and guide them.

A vast multitude assembled at his funeral, and the signs of grief were the greatest and deepest ever seen in Vònizòngo. His grave is on the hill-side, to the east of Fìhàonana, quite near to the ‘Cave’ in which he and the Bible were so long hidden.

Shortly after Razàka died another Vònizòngo veteran passed away, in the person of Andrìantsehèno, the pastor of Ankàzobè. He died on Sabbath, Oct. 25; and just before he expired, he said: ‘Say good-bye to Mr. Matthews and Mr. Cousins, the elder, for me—for I am going!’ and shortly afterwards he ceased to breathe.