THE MORNING BREAKING
‘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].