‘Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.’—Isaiah lx. 1.
On Friday, August 6, there was a meeting of the Imèrina District Committee, that is, the committee of management for all London Missionary Society affairs in Imèrina. I laid my instructions from the Directors of the London Missionary Society on the table, and asked for some one to go with me to Vònizòngo, in order to examine the district and see where it would be best, in the interests of the mission, for me to have my station. For although I was allowed by my instructions to remain for the first year at the capital, if I felt so inclined, and thought it would be of advantage to my work, or for my acquisition of the language, I was very anxious to go at once to my own station and become acquainted as soon as possible with the people for whom I had especially come. Our minds were made up accordingly to go on at all risks.
The Rev. W. E. Cousins, the senior member of the Committee, was asked to accompany me to Vònizòngo, and kindly consented. But before we could start, I was prostrated by another severe attack of sciatica, from which I suffered for four months, and was thus prevented from reaching Vònizòngo at all during 1870, as by the time I was better the rainy season had set in. As it afterwards proved, however, this illness and disappointment were but blessings in disguise.
Early in 1871 we began to make preparations for proceeding to Vònizòngo; but to this the doctors very strongly objected. They said I was quite unfit to face the fever of the west, adding that I little knew to what I was going, and in this they were perfectly right. As, however, we refused to abandon our determination to push on to our station as soon as the season would allow, the doctors ordered us away to the hills near the Great Forest for a month, that we might get somewhat braced up before starting for the west. We were on the hills during the month of April, and on our return to the capital, Mr. Cousins and I set out on a fortnight’s tour in Vònizòngo. We went over the greater part of the district, and everywhere met with a very hearty reception.
The province of Vònizòngo is one of the central provinces of Madagascar, situated about forty miles to the north-west of Antanànarìvo, the capital. It lies between two ranges of high hills, and is bounded on the north, south, and west by two large rivers, the Ikòpa and Bètsibòka, or to speak more precisely still, by two branches of one river, the Bètsibòka, or Kàtsèpo. Within these two branches of the Kàtsèpo lies Vònizòngo proper. It has no very extensive valleys (though in a sense about half of the province is one long, wide valley); but small fertile valleys abound, where large quantities of rice are grown. Like other parts of the island, the province formerly was split up into numerous subdivisions. The five most important places were Fihàonana, Fierènana, Ankàzobè, Isoàvina, and Miàntso.
Vònizòngo was never conquered, but the Andrìandàhy, or chiefs, submitted themselves to the rule of the Hova government on certain conditions. Originally the whole province was under a number of chiefs, or petty kinglets, very similar to the chiefs of the Scottish highlands in former times; and, of course, there was much intestine warfare. Every large village had its own chief or kinglet, who was lord and master of all it contained, either as slaves or vahòaka (clansmen). The people were almost at the absolute disposal of their chief, and hence generally followed blindly as he led to good or evil. In several cases I discovered that the chief had been chosen pastor of the church in his village, apparently for no other reason than that as chief of the village the people thought he ought to be also pastor and head of the church.
This arrangement, with all its drawbacks, was perhaps not the worst that could have been made, in the then ignorant and semi-heathen state of the people, and in the absence of proper men to undertake the duties of the pastorate. It must be remembered, and gratefully acknowledged, that to many of these pastor-chiefs the Church of Christ in Vònizòngo owed a great deal. Some of the most devoted of the martyrs came of their number, as Ràmitràha for one, and many of the most earnest and zealous of the pastors and preachers of our own time were also drawn from this class.
Vònizòngo was a province that had always been renowned for having an unusual number of petty chiefs. These generally claimed exemption from certain kinds of government service, such as digging, fetching wood from the forest, and assisting in building palaces for the sovereign. A number of these petty chiefs were chosen by Radàma I, to assist in cultivating some land at Foule Pointe, on the east coast, where he formed a colony; and on the service being declined by them, as incompatible with their dignity as chiefs, Radàma yielded the point; but he still availed himself of their services, by ordering that, as carrying a spade would be derogatory to their dignity, carrying a musket could not, and they must, therefore, honourably serve with the army in his wars. Hence there was a far larger number from Vònizòngo in the army than from any other province in the island.
The inhabitants of Vònizòngo were notorious in former times for their attachment to charms and idols. They have now for years been famous for their affection for the Gospel, their knowledge of it, and trust in it. In the year 1828, three of the natives of this province were executed for making òdy mahèry—powerful medicines or spells; in other words for being sorcerers. During the persecution, fourteen from Vònizòngo were put to death for their love to the Lord Jesus Christ.
From the time that the first missionaries arrived at Antanànarìvo, in 1820, a number of the people of Vònizòngo came into contact with them; and when they opened their first schools, they had several young men from the province as pupils, some of whom were for years among the most devoted pastors of the district. To certain of these, such as the late Razàka, the pastor of the mother-church at Fihàonana, we owed, under God, almost all that had been done in the province for the advancement of the Redeemer’s Kingdom. I was told that Mr. Johns, who to the day of his death had a deep interest in Vònizòngo, first visited Vònizòngo in 1832, when he gathered ‘the seekers after God’ into six small congregations, and afterwards began schools at Fihàonana, Fierènana, Ankàzobè, Miàramanjàka, Àndrambàzana, and Ìsoàvina.
The hut in which we lived for nearly two years in the village of Fihàonana, stood on the site of the hut in which the first small congregation used to meet thirtynine years before our arrival. The mother of the chief of Fihàonana was the first convert, and her eldest son, Ràmitràha, became the first preacher to the small church. A third son was second pastor of the church at Fihàonana whilst we were in Madagascar.
The people have always had the highest respect for the memories of these devoted missionaries who first carried the glad tidings of the Gospel to Madagascar. They often spoke most affectionately of them and their work. For the Rev. Mr. Johns and the Rev. Mr. Griffiths they entertained a more than ordinary regard. The year after the churches were founded in Vònizòngo, Radàma I died; but the churches seem to have made progress for some years. Even after the expulsion of the missionaries, when they were entirely at the mercy of Queen Rànavàlona I, they flourished and gained strength. When matters had assumed a really serious aspect at the capital, all was still quiet in Vònizòngo. This may be accounted for in part by the distance of Vònizòngo from the capital, in part also by the small numbers of government officials there, compared with the rest of the country.
After the mission was reopened in 1862, Vònizòngo was visited for the first time by the Rev. W. E. Cousins. He paid a second visit in May, 1864, after which visit he wrote: ‘This district formed a hiding-place for many of those who fled from the capital, and from it many of the most steadfast martyrs came. Nothing would so rejoice the Christians of Vònizòngo as the appointment of a missionary to reside among them, and take charge of the churches in the district.’
Of course the people in most of the large villages were very anxious that the missionary should settle in their particular village; but after the most careful consideration of all claims we came to the conclusion that Fihàonana, ‘The Home of the Martyrs,’ where was located the mother-church of the province around which clustered so many sacred associations, memories of the martyrs and of the persecutions of former times, was decidedly the most suitable place for the new mission station, and every year of our stay in the island proved the wisdom of this decision.
Much preaching and teaching was done during this visit. We attended many gatherings of the pastors, local preachers, and deacons, and a great number of questions of all kinds were answered. Some of the questions put to us were of a somewhat curious nature. For example, I was asked: ‘Who was the Queen of Sheba, and where did she come from?’ ‘How was it that Melchisedec had neither father nor mother?’ ‘Who were the brethren of the Lord?’ ‘How was it that Satan was allowed to fight in heaven?’ That seemed to be a great difficulty with them, since they thought all fighting was finished here on earth, and how there could be fighting again in heaven was a great mystery to them. And then we were asked a very strange question, but one which showed more than all the others the stage in religious knowledge reached by the people at the time of our settlement among them. The question was: ‘Whether the late Mr. Pool (the Society’s architect and builder for Madagascar, whose name is pronounced by the Malagasy Powlie), and the Apostle Paul (also pronounced Powlie), who wrote the Epistles, were one and the same person!’
We found that one of the local preachers had been electrifying the district by a sermon, which consisted mainly of a dialogue purporting to have taken place in heaven between God the Father and God the Son, when the Son, prompted by love, wished to leave heaven and come amongst men to seek and to save the lost. The Father was represented as remonstrating with the Son, and warning Him that mankind were intensely wicked; that they would treat Him very badly, and finally murder Him: and the Son as replying, that He knew all that very well; but such was His love for men, that although they were so very wicked, and although He was well aware they would put Him to death, and indeed just because they were so bad, He was determined to come and save them. And consequently, in spite of His Father’s remonstrances, He left heaven, came to earth, suffered from privation and poverty, and finally was crucified by the very men He came to redeem. Nevertheless, by that same death the salvation of men had been made possible; for such was the Father’s love for the Son, that He had agreed that all who believed on Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and accepted Him as their guide and friend for the future, should be saved with an everlasting salvation.
We also found, or rather were told, of an instance in which church discipline had been exercised after a new, and rather a drastic fashion, a few weeks before our arrival in the district. The Malagasy knew of no discipline except military discipline, which they had introduced into the church, and would have employed still, had we not arrived on the scene. The special case was this: A worthless character from the capital had been going through the district teaching hymn-singing. He taught so many hymns and tunes for so many dollars. He posed as one of the aides de camp of the prime minister, and this gave him a status in the eyes of the people which he otherwise would never have had. At the same time it ensured the prompt payment of his fees. At one of the villages he met with one as worthless as himself in the person of the wife of one of the deacons, and together they eloped. When this was discovered, a church meeting was called and the husband laid his case before the meeting. He said: ‘Here is a servant of the church at large, whom you brought here. He has run away with my wife, and I think it is your duty to help me to recover her.’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘that is quite right,’ and they thereupon appointed another deacon to accompany the husband and assist him in his search for his lost wife. They found out the direction the runaways had taken, followed, and found them sitting sunning themselves on a rock overhanging the river Ikòpa. They caught the man, bound him, rolled him up in his cotton plaid, tied the ends, and flung him from the top of the rock into the river. Then taking the woman with them, they returned and reported the church business finished[28]!
Our visit to Vònizòngo in 1871 was most memorable. I then met for the first time many of the early disciples, men and women who had fought a good fight and kept the faith all through ‘the killing times,’ and who had hazarded their lives for the Gospel, and suffered the loss of their little all for their loyalty to the New Religion. Some had been sold into slavery, while others had been put in chains, and others again had to flee for safety to the forest, or other parts of the island, or, like Razàka, had to hide for years in caves, or rice-pits, or dens of the earth. It was a joy to see such noble men and women, headed by the noblest of them all, Razàka. I also met for the first time the widow and children—a son and daughter—of the martyr Ràmitràha, and the son of Àndrìampanìry and his wife, who were burned along with Ràmitràha at Fàravòhitra.
We visited the famous small-pox hospital, the cave, in which the Bible was hidden for over twenty years, and Razàka for two. We also saw the small space inside the circle of immense boulders on the hill-side, where during lulls in the persecution from ten to twenty-five of the persecuted Christians met on the Sabbath mornings for worship. It thrilled one to see these truly sacred places, and to hear what the faithful band had to tell us of the sufferings of those times of strain and trial. We were given portions of the Scriptures, even leaves of the Bible, or of the Pilgrim’s Progress, leaves of the hymn-book, tracts, portions of sermons, and catechisms, which had been kept all through the darkest days, and handed on from one to the other, and so had helped to support the faith of those suffering saints.
My friend and I had some memorable experiences during that visit to Vònizòngo. Of course, preachings, catechizings, interrogations, and deputations were abundant. Our experiences in the science of entomology were rather trying; but one of our greatest troubles was that our food was so badly cooked, and so smoked that we could hardly eat it. This was intentional on the part of the cook and his assistants, whose perquisite what food we left was; so we had to take measures to stop such practices.
We were not able to visit the Ankàzobè district, at the north end of the province, as malarial fever was raging there that season. All our porters were not vìtatàzo, i. e. fever proof, so for their sakes and our own we were advised not to go, and returned to Fìhàonana. The Malagasy have the idea that if once you have malarial fever severely and recover, you will never have so severe an attack again, and so will be vìtatàzo. I have known a porter on a journey to the coast abstain from taking quinine, although he had it at hand, and deliberately run the risk of a severe attack of fever, since if he got over it he would be vìtatàzo, and so fit to go anywhere.
There is no doubt something in this idea, as I have proved in my own person during the past twenty years; for after suffering greatly from malarial fever during the last five years of our first period of service, having been prostrated with it ten times, I have only had four mild attacks of fever since. It is necessary to state, however, that we have not lived in such a malarious district during the last twenty years as we did during the first ten. By exercising greater care, by taking quinine and a certain form of iron, and by other precautions, such as good food, wearing flannel, or lamb’s wool underclothing, &c., we have been able to keep ourselves as near normal health as possible. Once you get below par in the tropics, it usually means fever or something worse. Dr. Livingstone says that ‘living in a malarious district, the whole tone is so lowered through the blood being poisoned, that you are not only liable to all the ills that flesh is heir to; but that if you do get any of them, you have it ten times worse.’
Having settled that Fìhàonana was the right place for our work, we sought out a hut in which we could live until I built a house. We found a large mud hut, some twenty feet by twelve, in the centre of the village of Fìhàonana. Although it was far from what we would have liked in the way of a dwelling, it was the best to be had; so we took it, had it cleaned out, and the walls whitewashed. It was the ordinary mud hut of Central Madagascar, an oblong structure with mud walls, earthen floor, and a pillar in the centre for the support of the thatched roof. There was no ceiling, of course, and as the thatch was thin we suffered from the bitter east winds during the nights of the cold season. There were three small apertures in the walls, one at each side and one in the end, which served the purpose of windows, or rather wind-holes, for they let very little light into the hut. I had frames filled with glass fitted into these apertures, and this helped to keep the dust out of the hut, but did not increase the scanty supply of light.
As we were in the middle of a Malagasy village, our surroundings were not of the sweetest, especially as in those days the villages of Vònizòngo swarmed with pigs. Whenever we opened the door these creatures came into the hut. Of course I helped them out, to the astonishment of the natives, with whom the pigs were great favourites. People and porkers lived and slept in the same hut; and to my remonstrances the people replied: ‘The pigs help to keep the hut warm on the cold nights, sir.’
We found that enteric fever was endemic in the village; but I was able to improve things a little by having channels made from the stagnant pools and cattle-pens to the fosse, from which the water drained away to a lake south-east of the village, and thus the rains of the wet season helped to cleanse the village and somewhat sweeten the atmosphere. It cost some trouble to get those channels cut, for the stagnant water with its coat of green slime on it had stood in pool and pen from time immemorial, and why make any change? One Sabbath afternoon, while we were all in church, a child toddled out of a hut and fell into one of the stagnant pools and was drowned. The mother, who was in the hut, heard nothing. She wondered why the little fellow had not found his way back into the hut again. On looking out to see where he was, she saw the body in the pool. An alarm was raised, we were called out of church, and did our best to restore animation, but we had been called too late.
A space of some six feet at the north end of our large hut was partitioned off by a low mud wall, and this we made our bedroom. We had besides two small huts; half of one was my study and the other half served as a storeroom, while the remaining hut was used as a kitchen. Everything was of the most primitive, makeshift, and inconvenient nature; but nothing else could be obtained until I could get a house built. When circumstances will not bow to mind, the only alternative is for mind to bow to circumstances, and make the best of it. This we did, and, all things considered, were fairly comfortable.
In 1873 the late Rev. Dr. Mullens, the then Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society, and the late Rev. John Pillans were sent by the Board of Directors to visit the Madagascar Mission. During the fortnight they spent with us in Vònizòngo, I took them down to see the village of Fìhàonana and our former habitation there. After looking into the hut, Dr. Mullens said: ‘Well, you did write us some strongly worded letters about your need for a proper house; but I admit you had cause. We had no idea in London that you were living in a hovel like that, and amid such surroundings.’ And yet we were no worse off than hundreds of missionaries who go to found new mission stations in other heathen lands. Those who spend all their missionary life amid the comforts and conveniences, such as they are, of city or sanatorium stations, know little of what life at lonely country stations in unhealthy districts means, and consequently do not always sympathize as they ought with others less fortunately placed.
A missionary’s life at a lonely station, far from friends, fellow labourers, and human sympathy, is often very trying, but it is also one in which many useful lessons are taught more directly than they could be anywhere else, or in any other walk of life.
It was while living in the village of Fìhàonana that my wife had her first severe attack of malarial fever, while our child had croup badly, followed by a severe attack of bronchitis, brought on by the bitterly cold night winds, from which our hut afforded us insufficient protection. In this connexion I am reminded of a splendid feat of one of our Malagasy men, who had been a servant of ours, but had fallen into disgrace and been discharged. When he heard that I wanted a man to go to the capital for medicine for my child, he volunteered to go, and ran to the capital and back, a distance of eighty miles, in fourteen hours! We took him back into our service, my wife trained him to be a good cook and a first-class baker, and he only left our service in 1898 to take up a temperance restaurant at Fìhàonana.
On July 12, 1871, we left Antanànarìvo for Vònizòngo, and arrived that evening at Fìhàonana, where we settled down to work. We lived and laboured there until driven away in July, 1879, after many months of severe suffering from fever. The first and last years of our first term of service were trying indeed. In our first year my own protracted sickness, followed by my wife’s dangerous illness, made it a specially trying time for us. Throughout our last year we had not a single month in which one or other of us was not prostrated by fever. We had two very bad fever seasons in succession in Vònizòngo, and lost some five thousand of our people. The interval between our first and last years was simply glorious. Full of our work, we flung ourselves heart and soul into it. We loved our work and our people, and were loved by them in return. As their first missionaries we were their first Rai-àman-drèny, ‘father and mother.’ They had several teachers after us, but none that they ever recognized in the same way as their Rai-àman-drèny.
Then our children were about us, and we were as happy and contented as could be. But after the first term of service it is always a very different story, for it is then but an impoverished, lopsided life that the missionary and his wife must live. He is a very fortunate man who is able to spend two years out of the next twenty with his family. Therein lies the sacrifice and suffering of missionary family life; and the children feel it most, for they miss their parents greatly, just at the very time when their help and advice would be of highest service. Good, kind, warm-hearted friends do much for the missionaries’ children, and make such compensation for their parents’ absence as is possible. Ninety per cent. of all missionary families have to suffer in this way (otherwise I should feel ashamed to mention the matter); and yet I question if ten per cent. of the members of the home churches, whose messengers, in a very real sense, the missionaries are, ever give a single thought to this side of missionary life.
Our first Sabbath at Fìhàonana was one long to be remembered, for on that day I spoke for the first time to my own people. The small chapel was quite full, although there were few present except the regular congregation. They were all clean, tidy, and attentive, and the only thing I had to find fault with was that so many of them chewed tobacco, or rather sucked snuff, which they placed in their lower lip, holding it between the lip and the gum, and expectorated into spittoons, which were for the most part open tins or earthenware basins, or empty ‘Day and Martin’s’ blacking bottles! I had only once to ask them to desist from such a filthy and objectionable practice in the house of God, though I had the greatest difficulty in putting a stop to the same thing twelve years afterwards in the city congregation of Ambàtonakànga.
We began a day-school at once, and my wife started a sewing-class. We had also a large Sabbath school class for young and old, for Bible reading on the Sabbath afternoons. My first schoolmaster was Rakòtovào, a fine, open-faced, manly fellow, who did splendid work in that school for some years, and then rendered still better service as an evangelist for many more. He and his two sons were carried off by some of his personal enemies, who accompanied the heathen mob which attacked Fìhàonana during the rising in 1897, and all three were shot—murdered in cold blood.
Our station school began with thirty, but went on increasing until we had two hundred and sixty. I did my utmost to get a school started in connexion with every village congregation, or preaching station, for from the first we recognized that in the children lay the hope of the future. My success, however, was by no means what I had expected; very few, except church members, would send their children to school, and as most of these were old, and their children quite grown up, we had but poor schools indeed for some years.
After a time I found out one reason for this reluctance on the part of parents who were only adherents to send their children to school. It was this. The year before our arrival in Vònizòngo, a Jesuit priest had passed through the province, and had tried to found some Roman Catholic stations, and to gather the children into schools. In his anxiety to get the children gathered in, he is reported to have said: ‘We want not your children’s bodies, but only their hearts.’ Some old heathen, proud no doubt of his exceptional wisdom, explained to the people what that meant. He said: ‘Those white men are very clever and very cunning. They want to get the children gathered into schools, under the pretence of teaching them to be wise and good; but once they get them they will kill them, take out their hearts, dry them in the sun, and then reduce them to powder and make it into their medicine. For that is what their powerful medicine is made of, powdered children’s hearts!’ The ignorant people believed that story, hence their reluctance to allow their children to attend school. Later they became more enlightened, the more so after Queen Rànavàlona II issued her famous proclamation with regard to education.
Once settled at Fìhàonana, I began visiting the outlying village congregations, eighty-four in number, of which I was supposed to be in charge. Although I was not able to do much in the way of preaching at each place, still I could give out a hymn to be sung, read certain chapters, and give a short address. The people everywhere were delighted to see me, always giving me a hearty welcome, and these visits did us all good. They listened ‘with eyes and ears’ to all I had to tell them about the Gospel, the love of God, and salvation; for it was a wonderful story to them, and came to them with a freshness and an interest which those who have heard it from their infancy can hardly understand. That Àndrìamànitra Andrìanànahàry, God the Creator, should think of them, and love them, and send His only-begotten Son to seek and to save them, poor, degraded, besotted, sorcery-ridden Malagasy, amazed them, and they were never weary listening to the good news. Even to those of us who could tell the Gospel story only with stammering lips and another tongue for some time, they listened with a patience and a politeness that surprised and encouraged us.
I was not long in finding out how true the statement is that ‘There is a work to be done by missionaries which people in Christian lands hardly dream of. They have to create a moral sense before they can appeal to it—to arouse the conscience before they can look to its admonitions to enforce their teachings. Heathen consciences are seared, and their moral perceptions blunted. The memories scarcely retain anything we teach them; so low have they sunk, that the plainest text in the whole Bible cannot be understood by them. It is hard, until one goes to a heathen country, to realize how much civilization owes to Christianity.’ I found when I came to teach my own children the elements of religious truth, how quickly they apprehended them as compared with the Malagasy children; but they had been born with a measure of a mental and moral nature to which the Malagasy children were utter strangers.
The Malagasy have the capacity of our Covenanting and Puritan forefathers for sermon hearing, and four sermons a Sabbath—two in the morning and two in the afternoon—of an hour each was the common thing, until the practice had to be abandoned for lack of preachers. My wife was often asked in those earlier days if I was quite well, because I had not preached quite so long as usual. Even to-day, the modern sermonette prepared for ‘home consumption’ would meet with but scant courtesy and little mercy at the hands of a Malagasy congregation.
In my visits to the outlying congregations of the district I was at first much struck with the appearance of many village pastors and their wives. They were nicely and neatly dressed. The husbands wore clean white cotton pants, white shirts, and white làmbas (cotton plaids); while the wives had pretty print dresses and white làmbas. After a few visits it occurred to me that there was a striking sameness about the dresses of the pastors’ wives; but the obvious explanation was that they had probably all come from the same piece of print.
It was my custom at the first to visit the village congregations at their own request, or after sending them notice of my intended visit; but after a time I thought I should like to pay surprise visits, in order to see what their usual state was. I was astonished to find a sort of epidemic among the village pastors and their wives. Almost everywhere I went, on asking for the pastor I was told he was not well, and his wife also was ill. The epidemic did not seem to affect any one except the pastors and their wives. I soon found out the cause of all this pretended illness. When they were expecting my visit on the Sabbath, the pastor and his wife sent and hired proper clothing for the occasion; but when I arrived unexpectedly, they had no proper clothing in which to appear before the white man, and hence the feigned sickness. This also explained the sameness in their attire; for the same gown, the same pants, and the same white shirt had done duty all over the district, having been hired for a few pence wherever and whenever wanted.
Previous to our settlement at Fìhàonana, some of the village congregations had been visited by strange preachers from the capital, who professed to be local preachers connected with one of the congregations there. Razàka told me how an impostor of this kind arrived at Fìhàonana one Sabbath morning. He was taken at his word, and invited to preach. He gave out a hymn, prayed, and then announced his text—a verse from the fortieth chapter of Matio (Matthew), pronouncing it Madio (clean). Razàka suggested Matio, but he persisted in saying Madio. Razàka then gently hinted that there were not forty chapters in Matio; but the preacher was quite equal to the occasion, for he replied: ‘I don’t know anything about your village Bibles, I go by the capital Bibles!’
The village churches on the long route from the capital to the port of Mojangà, on the north-west coast, were often victimized by these self-styled preachers. A worthless creature, with that gift of speech which so many of the Malagasy possess, would arrive at a village on a Saturday afternoon, pretending to be a local preacher from the capital, and probably adding that he was an officer of the prime minister’s sons, or some palace official. Of course a deputation from the village church at once waited upon him, and invited him to preach next day. As a guest of the Christian community he received hospitality from Saturday to Monday at least, perhaps for a week, sometimes for a whole month. Some member, possibly a deacon’s wife, or a deaconess, but generally one of the young women of the choir, was appointed to keep house for him, and this often led to grave scandals.
I was informed of this state of affairs by my colporteur, whom I had sent down to visit those remote churches. I immediately reported it to the committee in Antanànarìvo. Printed certificates were prepared, which one of the missionaries in the capital, or I, was empowered to fill up, sign, and give to bona fide local preachers. I dispatched my colporteur again to Mojangà, with instructions to show a copy of the certificate to each church, and inform them that no one who failed to bring one of those documents duly signed was to be allowed to preach; nor was any one to be allowed to join them in the Communion Service, unless he brought a certificate of membership from the church to which he belonged.
While my colporteur was at Mojangà, the late Sir Bartle Frere visited the port. He landed on the Sabbath morning, worshipped, and joined in the Communion Service with the small native church there. The following May, being in London, he attended the annual meeting of the London Missionary Society in Exeter Hall, took a seat on the platform, and in the course of the meeting asked the chairman’s permission to make a few remarks. In a graceful speech he testified to what he himself had seen of the fruits of the society’s work on the north-west coast of Madagascar[29].