EARLY EXPERIENCES
‘Truth springeth out of the earth; and righteousness hath
looked down from heaven.’--PSALM lxxxv. 11.
Our enforced sojourn in the capital for the first four months of the
year 1872, while in some respects a privation, afforded me more time to
work at the language. I was also able, while there, to buy most of the
wood for our future manse, to get brick-moulds, and agree with a master
bricklayer for building it. Many other things were also arranged which
it would have been difficult to negotiate from Fìhàonana.
We started back for Vònizòngo in May, and as we thought it would
be easier for my wife and the baby to go as far as possible--about
halfway--by canoe (along with some friends who were travelling west for
a holiday), we adopted this course; but with such results to both, from
exposure on the water to the unclouded sun for six hours, that we never
repeated the experiment. I had sent the wood for the manse down the
river by canoe, and wished to see where it was stored.
At the end of the voyage, we had our first and last real difficulty
with the palanquin-bearers during thirty years. After eating all I
had provided for them, they coolly told me that as their companions
(who were to carry our friends to their destination--a few miles from
where we landed) were not going on to Vònizòngo, they declined to
keep to their contract and take us there, and demanded prepayment for
carrying the _empty_ palanquins from Antanànarìvo. As I refused
to accede to their preposterous demands, they took advantage of my
absence when seeing after my wood, to set off on their return to the
capital, carrying off my palanquin, which they had, however, to return
a fortnight later with a humble apology. The leader of this conspiracy
I had to encounter and conquer, on our way to the coast in 1879, after
which we were good friends.
Fortunately I had sent to Fìhàonana for eight men to meet us, in case
porters enough from the capital, willing to go to Vònizòngo, were not
to be had. These men had to carry my wife, two children, and the nurse
twenty miles. I had to tramp on foot. Four men carried our eldest
child and the nurse, took them across the streams and swamps, and then
returned for me. Our good friend Mr. Cameron, who was making a trip to
Vònizòngo in the interests of geography to take bearings for a map of
Madagascar, kindly let my wife have two of his eight bearers, and thus
they reached Fìhàonana by sunset, but we did not arrive until nearly
ten o’clock; still our reception was well worth all the trouble we had
experienced.
On the arrival of my wife and Mr. Cameron at Fìhàonana, they told of
the plight in which we had been left. Razàka and the young chief called
the men of the village together, and told them how we were placed, and
they volunteered to come and meet us, with a supply of torches made of
dried grass to light them on their way. We saw the flaring light on the
hills miles in front of us, and could not understand what the moving
mass of fire marching towards us meant until we came within shouting
distance. We were carried into Fìhàonana in right royal style, amid
the blaze of torches and the shoutings of the people. The whole village
had turned out, and the shouting, hurrahing, and joyous yelling, with
the singing and hand-clapping of the women and children with which we
were welcomed, was a thing never to be forgotten.
A fine site for the manse was secured on the rising ground to the east
of the village of Fìhàonana. A very large village had formerly stood
there, and so there was a fosse and embankment round it. The chief
and his brother made it over to me, declining any rent. I told them,
however, that there must be rent, however nominal, in order that I
might make an agreement with the government for it on behalf of the
Society, and then they agreed to the nominal sum of four shillings a
year. When the agreement came to be signed by the then Hova foreign
secretary--a ‘haughty Hova,’ thinly veneered with a profession of
Christianity--he took the chiefs to task for allowing me to have such
a site so ridiculously cheap. This led to an animated interchange of
ideas between him and me. Ultimately it was agreed that the ground-rent
should be twelve shillings a year. For that small sum an enclosed site
of five acres was secured for forty years to the London Missionary
Society. There I built a manse, a large school-house, and a smaller one
for girls. Afterwards another dwelling-house and school were erected
there. But, alas! in 1897 all that remained of these buildings were
seized by the French, and no compensation has ever been paid for them.
With the moulds brought from the capital, I soon taught the people
how to make sun-dried bricks. The chiefs and pastors of the district
offered to have all the bricks required made for nothing; but having
strong views on the subject of slavery, I asked them: ‘Will you hire
and pay men to make them or will you simply make your slaves do it?’
Of course they said they would set their slaves to make the bricks,
so I felt I must decline their generous offer. At this they seemed
astonished and hurt.
My action in this matter was a mistake. I ought to have accepted their
proffered aid, and then given their slaves the money afterwards paid
for making the bricks, in the form of ‘presents’ wherewith to buy salt
and beef, to fit them for their extra work. But we have all to buy our
experience.
One morning I sent for the men who professed to be equal to making the
bricks I required. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘I want 200,000 bricks (made); how
much per thousand will you make them for?’
‘Well,’ they said, ‘you are a good man who has left his home,
relatives, and native land to come to teach us.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘that’s all right, but never mind those trifles at
present, we can discuss them at any time, they will keep, let’s discuss
the bricks now. How much will you make them for per thousand?’
‘Well,’ they answered, ‘as you are that good man we mentioned, we will
make them for _you_ for four shillings a thousand.’ That would
have been $200 = £40, but then equal to £200 to them.
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘I am much obliged, but I can only give sixpence per
thousand.’
‘Only sixpence a thousand,’ they said, with well-simulated astonishment.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘We won’t make them for that,’ they said.
‘Well,’ I answered, ‘I think you had better go home and reconsider your
demand for four shillings a thousand; for you know very well that such
wages are simply ridiculous, and when you have come to your senses,
and are prepared to be reasonable, come back and we will talk the
matter over.’
They went away, but returned the following week to offer to make the
bricks for two shillings and sixpence a thousand.
‘No,’ I said, ‘sixpence per thousand.’
Away they went for another week, and by that time they had come down to
one shilling and sixpence per thousand.
‘No,’ I replied again, ‘sixpence per thousand’; but I added: ‘How
foolish all this is on your part; you keep on haggling, first saying
four shillings per thousand, then two shillings and sixpence, and now
one shilling and sixpence. Now, as I don’t wish to be hard on you, and
I want this haggling brought to an end, and the work begun, if you come
down one sixpence I will go up one.’
‘That’s it, sir,’ they said, and so we struck a bargain for one
shilling a thousand.
I expected to have to pay tenpence or one shilling a
thousand--although, if I could have held out, I might have got them for
my first offer--but if I had offered one shilling I might have had to
go up to one shilling and sixpence. As it is only during the dry season
that bricks can be made and houses built, I had to raise my offer to
get them to set to work.
But perhaps some good sensitive soul may be thinking, ‘The interests of
the Society are all very well, but what about the interests of the poor
natives?’ Well, my friend, you may with confidence leave the interests
of the natives in the hands of their best friends, the missionaries, as
few of them are likely to take a mean advantage of their charge. But
even if they were, with few exceptions, most natives I have met with
may be left to look after their own interests; they are quite equal to
that. But to show I was taking no mean advantage of my people I may
state that, up to the time of our settlement at Fìhàonana and for long
after, a porter had to carry eighty pounds of salt from Andrìba to
Fìhàonana--a three days’ journey--for threepence! My brick-makers, by
working morning and forenoon, could easily make two shillings a week.
They could live and keep a wife and family on sixpence a week in those
happy days. Rice in the husk, in the harvest season--when most people
who had not large rice-fields of their own laid in a stock of rice
for the year--could be bought for a penny a measure in Vònizòngo, and
two measures would serve a fairly large family for a week. Since 1896
rice has never been under one shilling a measure. It has been as high
even as three shillings in some parts. Starvation was formerly almost
unknown in Madagascar. The men who made my bricks had very few expenses
except for food; for their tailor’s, draper’s, hatter’s, shoemaker’s
and upholsterer’s bills were very light!
The master bricklayer failed us. He sent some professed bricklayers in
his place, but if they were bricklayers they were surely the poorest
who ever laid bricks. They were either ignorant of the use of the
plumb-rule, or were too lazy, or in too great a hurry to get the walls
rushed up to use it, with the result that they built the walls off the
plumb. In my anxiety to overtake the work I foolishly kept on all my
classes and district duties. I ought to have stood beside these men and
seen every brick laid; but I regarded this as a sheer waste of time,
with so much teaching, preaching, and other mission work to be done.
Those who gave up all their district work for months, while their
houses were being built, acted wisely. The result was that I would
often return home, after an exhausting day, to find that the walls had
been run up several inches off the plumb.
To have our bedrooms as far from the ground as possible, for health’s
sake, the manse was built double-storied, as is most desirable in a
malarious district. It was the first two-storied house built in that
part of the island, and as its walls rose they caused much talk among
the people. At last Razàka came to ask me if I quite understood what
I was doing. There had never been such a high house built there, and
the people were afraid it might fall or be blown down by the frequent
hurricanes. I assured him that I quite understood what I was about, and
that there was no fear of the house falling or being blown down. It
stood all the hurricanes we had, some of them very severe, and might
have lasted for another thirty years, but for its being burnt down in
1897.
On the coasts of Madagascar, and for about half or two-thirds of the
way up to Antanànarìvo, the native huts are built of a framework
of poles and bamboo, filled in with bulrushes, and roofed with the
leaves of the so-called ‘traveller’s tree,’ a kind of palm. In Central
Madagascar the huts are built of layers of mud, one layer being allowed
to dry before the next is laid on. The houses are built of sun-dried
brick. In many cases now--especially in the capital--the outside
walls are of burnt, and the inside of sun-dried brick. The roofs were
thatched with flags from the swamps, or with rank grass from the moors
or the stream sides. All houses in the capital have now to be tiled for
fear of fire. We built our house of sun-dried brick. There is no frost
in Madagascar, so well-built houses, with verandah round, if the roof
is kept in repair and the outside walls are replastered from time to
time, will stand for fifty years.
We plastered the walls of our houses outside and in with mud, mixed
with a substance remotely related to ‘attar of roses’! Then we covered
them with cheap wall-paper, glazed the windows, and so made nice,
comfortable, homelike houses. By far the nicest, most convenient, and
most comfortable house we ever had in Madagascar was the manse built at
Fìhàonana, which cost only £250, and £40 of that even went for carriage
of material. It was found fault with in later years by a young,
up-to-date missionary because it was not aesthetic enough! In those
days we did not trouble ourselves about aesthetics, we thought more
of health and convenience. The idea of a missionary set down among a
heathen people concerning himself about aesthetics is quite refreshing,
almost as refreshing as the remark of the man who said district
itinerating could never be properly done until there were railways, and
so gave up attempting to do it!
All government work--and much for members of the government and
upper officers--was formerly done in Madagascar by a kind of feudal
service called _fànompòana_. As it was often very severe, it was
heartily hated, and was generally got through as quickly as possible.
Thus a tendency to scamp work became almost second nature with most
workmen, unless strictly watched, even when working for wages. I got
some carpenters who were most unsatisfactory. Not only was their work
scamped, but wood and tools disappeared. I resolved to catch them
red-handed before bringing a charge against them. One day I suddenly
appeared on the scene, when they had no suspicion that I was in the
neighbourhood, and found them hanging the room doors. They had made the
screw-holes for fixing the hinges, with a gimlet so large that they
could push the screws in with their thumbs! These doors, made of hard
and heavy wood, must have proved awkward for any one on whom they might
fall.
When I appeared on the scene the screw-driver was seized, and a
pretence was made of sending the screws home, which, of course, seemed
very hard to do. When they had finished I said: ‘Yes, that is very
fine, now give me the screw-driver.’ I then turned the screws and
picked them out with my fingers. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘you have been cheating
me for weeks, and scamping your work. I can’t stand any more of this.
Go home. I give you an hour in which to leave the village, and if you
have not left by that time I shall write to the prime minister, tell
him the whole story, and leave him to deal with you. Apply to him for
the wages due to you, and when he applies to me I will send the money.
I hope this will prove a warning to you, and teach you not to cheat or
scamp your work for the future, but to do honest work for honest wages.’
They left the village within half an hour, and no application was ever
made to me for arrears of wages. Of course they spread false reports
about me and my treatment of workmen. This led to a long delay before I
could get carpenters to come from the capital to work for me; but, at
last, I was so fortunate as to secure a little man who had something
almost akin to genius for carpentry. He worked for me at various times
for twenty-eight years. My troubles with these men were thus a blessing
in disguise. Without them I should never have found my born carpenter
Andrìantàvy. He was one of the pastors of a very small church in the
neighbourhood of the capital, and a most trustworthy man.
The Sabbath services were always the most helpful, whether at Fìhàonana
or out in the district, as one had a sense of freedom and the feeling
that nothing was being neglected in order that they might be held.
The conduct of my bricklayers, and the want of carpenters for several
weeks, ran me far too near the end of the dry season with my manse
unroofed. Had the rains come on while it was roofless, my ceilings
would have been brought down and the walls greatly damaged. As it was,
we only escaped by two hours; for the thatching was finished at four
o’clock, and at six we had the first rains of the season. In order to
accomplish this, however, I had to hire forty men, and give up all
other work to superintend them and see that the thatching was properly
carried through under my own eye.
Church and manse building, even in the mission field, is very prosaic
work, with little of the rainbow of romance about it, but it has to be
done. In our case it was a most serious undertaking, for we were 100
miles from the ‘forest,’ and all the wood had to be brought the whole
distance, with the exception of some twenty miles, on the shoulders of
men from there. The building of our manse was perhaps a more serious
affair than it ought to have been. In addition to all the difficulties
of the situation, I, in common with most missionaries, knew nothing
about house-building. I had never had to do with the building of a
house in my life, except a rabbit-hutch, when I was a lad, to which
an old tea-chest lent itself. I knew a little about some branches
of practical mechanics. This was of more use to me than much other
knowledge to acquire which I had spent a good deal of time, and not a
little ‘midnight oil’; but of house-building I was wholly ignorant. In
the circumstances I had just to buckle to and make the best of things.
If a man only does this he will be astonished to find what he may
accomplish under God’s blessing.
I have thus dwelt a little on some of the kinds of work which it falls
to a missionary opening a new station to carry out, to show, if that
be still required, that, as Dr. Livingstone says: ‘A missionary is not
merely a dumpy man with a Bible under his arm,’ as many good people
suppose him to be. The true missionary is a many-sided man, who must
be prepared, and will be, to be anything or nothing that will help
forward his work, without any fear of its being beneath his dignity.
My experience fully bears out Dr. Livingstone’s statement that: ‘If
young missionaries for Africa would spend one-half the time they have
to spend over Latin verbs, in learning how to make a wheelbarrow, or
mend a waggon, it would be infinitely more useful to them afterwards.’
At the same time, it is well to keep in mind, that what may be very
suitable for one part of the mission field may not be so for another.
A university training would be the best preparation for some fields.
If his missionary enthusiasm will not carry a young man through a
university course, it cannot be of the right kind, and would not carry
him far in the mission field.
There is little that is sentimental or romantic about the erection
of mission buildings, and yet they have a decided value of their own
in showing the natives among whom he is destined to labour, that the
‘white teacher’ has come to stay, and that he means work. This most
useful, necessary, and trying work is, strange to say, often one of the
most thankless tasks that a missionary can take in hand. A man may be
thankful if he gets off without censure for ‘erecting so many buildings
at his station,’ even when he has found among his personal friends
most of the money for their erection. From some fellow labourers he
may incur blame for having so much to do with ‘mere secular affairs.’
Nothing which ought to be done should be regarded as merely secular,
and least of all where it is to be a means of extending Christianity.
‘Christianity touches everything, or it touches nothing.’ The man who
is not prepared to be anything and everything--a hewer of wood or a
drawer of water--or who has not got above regarding this or that kind
of work as being beneath his ‘abilities,’ ‘culture’ or ‘dignity’ to
take part in or do, ought not to go to the mission field. ‘When St.
Boniface landed in Britain he came with the Gospel in one hand and a
carpenter’s rule in the other; and from England he afterwards passed
over into Germany, carrying thither the art of building.’ It may be
easy for one class of workers to look askance at another, because the
circumstances of the latter may compel them for a time to be a good
deal ‘among bricks and mortar.’ It is, however, quite possible to serve
God and His cause even in such lowly work. In saying these things I am
fighting no phantoms.
Of course things have altered, and have been very much improved in some
respects during the past quarter of a century, even to the country
missionary. In our time he had not only to be physician and dentist
to his own family, but also to some 10,000 people. He was not only
preacher, teacher, and guide to the churches and people, but amateur
architect, builder, bookseller, and general adviser to his district
on almost all subjects; in fact, director of practically everything,
and for some years actually judge of the divorce court! Indeed there
fell to him too much work of all kinds, much of which he ought not to
have had to do; but then there was no one else to do it, and he had to
take it up and do his best. Work under these circumstances in country
districts, in these early days at least, was the most laborious,
worrying, and wearying I have ever known. It was never finished, but
its very difficulties and drawbacks, in my opinion, made it all the
more elevated, enviable, and honourable.
I have mentioned the divorce court, or rather, the cases of divorce
which came before our monthly church meetings, and on which we had to
pronounce judgement. It was a most disagreeable duty which we were
thus compelled to take up. There was one satisfaction about it: our
judgements were seldom disputed or departed from. They were almost
always loyally carried out. During the earlier years of our first term
of service we seldom had three church meetings in succession without
having a case of divorce to settle. But such has been the progress even
in that direction, that I had only one bad case to deal with during the
past fifteen years.
One day one of the best and most godly of our native pastors came to me
in great sorrow. His daughter had been married--against her father’s
will, I think--for some years to a petty chief of some means, but no
character. He had tired of her, or had seen some one else that he
fancied, and so, to get rid of her, he brought a charge of infidelity
against her. She denied the charge most vehemently, but as I was then
in charge of West Vònizòngo, in addition to my own district, her father
came and asked me if I would, as a personal favour to him, go into
the case privately first, and see where the truth lay. I agreed to
do so, and on the day appointed he, his daughter, her husband, their
relations, and a few friends came to the manse, and we went into the
case. I had little difficulty in seeing almost from the first that it
was a trumped-up charge. Few Malagasy can stand cross-examination; they
soon contradict themselves. After I had quite satisfied myself that the
charge was false, I took the husband and wife into my study to have a
private expostulation with him.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘I am quite convinced that you are bringing a false
charge against your wife.’
‘Indeed he is,’ she said; ‘I would sooner die than disgrace my father
and friends by such conduct.’
‘It is very easy for you,’ I added to the husband, ‘to bear false
witness against your wife, and so deceive us by lies; but how will it
be when you have to face those lies at the judgement-seat of God?’
He was startled for a moment, but soon recovered himself, and stuck
to his charge. When we rejoined the others, I said, ‘I feel quite
satisfied that this man is bringing a false charge against his wife,
but, as he holds to it, we must probe the affair to the bottom.’ I
asked him if he had any witnesses, and he named some. I caused them
to be summoned. I again turned to him and asked, ‘Who is the other
culprit, do you know him?’ He answered that he did not, that he was a
petty chief from the north. I asked, ‘Would you know him again if you
saw him?’ He replied that he would not. ‘That,’ I said, ‘is rather
unfortunate for you, because you must find him and bring him before me,
as we must get to the bottom of this business.’ He replied that he was
not going to trouble himself hunting for him or bringing him before me.
We might seek him if we liked, but he would not. ‘But,’ I said, ‘the
matter cannot be settled in that way, it is far too serious. You know
that, for the time being, we are “father and mother” to both districts
of Vònizòngo.’ He replied that he did. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘in virtue of
that, your wife is our daughter, and as we believe her to be quite
innocent of the charges you bring against her, we mean to stand by her
and have her proved innocent. I give you a month to seek for that petty
chief, and bring him before me; but if you fail, I shall write to the
prime minister to ask him, as a personal favour, for a sergeant and six
soldiers to go with you to help you to find that man; because if he is
still alive and in the island he must be found and brought before me.’
The man looked at me with astonishment and terror, and if he had been a
European he would have turned deathly pale; but, as it was, his colour
became something between a green and an ashy grey hue, and when he had
found his tongue it was to confess that the whole charge was false!
The thought of meeting his falsehoods at the judgement-seat of God had
no terrors for him (although, poor fellow, he was nearer eternity than
he or any of us thought, for he died within three months); but to face
the prime minister was too serious a matter. That was an unusually
serious case, but it will help to give some idea of the work which we
had to undertake.
As far as is known none of the tribes in Madagascar were ever
cannibals. The Hovas in particular would have been the last to dream
of _hòman’ òlona_, cannibalism in any form. They regard it as
the most hideous and revolting practice conceivable. Their great
respect for the dead, the care they take of the corpse, and the fine
family tombs they build, all point in the opposite direction. The
horrors of cannibalism, as known in New Guinea and on the Congo,
were utterly unknown in Madagascar. But this, notwithstanding, all
the tribes in the island--including the Hovas, the ablest and most
advanced in civilization of them all, and until the advent of the
French the dominant tribe--had sunk to a most revolting state of moral
degradation. This is still the condition of the majority of the other
tribes. Most of the crimes in that long black list, which the Apostle
Paul brings against the Corinthians, might have been brought against
the tribes in Madagascar, even against the Hovas, with the sentence,
‘Such were some of you.’ So that if missionaries had done nothing
more for the Malagasy than raise some of those tribes--the Hovas in
particular--to a platform of common decency, and inspire them with the
desire for higher and better things than they had ever known, it was
a work well worth doing. But the Gospel has done much more for the
Hovas than this. It has made thousands of them ‘new creatures in Christ
Jesus.’
When Christianity was first introduced to Madagascar, and for many
years after, the Malagasy might have been said to have been perfectly
destitute of spiritual instincts, and hence the reception by them of
spiritual mysteries, not to say spiritual truth, was almost impossible.
Their moral natures, their spiritual instincts and conscience had
almost to be created or recreated. The progress which Christianity made
during the fifteen years that the first missionaries were among them,
and as the result of their labours, was truly astonishing. Persecution
and martyrdom only rooted the faith more firmly in the hearts of the
faithful few, and spread it among others. Hundreds were thus led to
inquire about that ‘faith’ for which their fellow countrymen and women
were prepared to die rather than renounce. Thus by the time the idols
were burned in 1869, and the queen, prime minister, and government
professed their adhesion to Christianity, a great change had come
over the minds of a large number of the people in Central Madagascar
with regard to the ‘new religion,’ as also in their attitude towards
it. Still, in both respects the change was very superficial, and could
hardly have been expected to have been anything else.
The Christianity of thousands who professed it, when the queen did,
was but a thin veneer over their heathenism or semi-heathenism.
Christianity had become the religion of the queen and government, and
thus became the professed religion of the great mass of the people in
Imèrina, some of the outlying provinces, and most of the Hova stations
among the other tribes. Christianity was professed publicly in many
cases, while idolatry and the ‘working of the oracle’ were practised in
private. Even after the majority of the people in the central provinces
had built churches, worshipped in them, and become church members,
heathen practices lingered among them, and died hard, as they always
do. In many cases church membership was not regarded as incompatible
with moral laxity, and hence suspension from church fellowship was
painfully frequent. But there was nothing strange or astonishing in
such a state of things. It was only history repeating itself.
As I have already said, mission work in Madagascar has always suffered
in some measure from its very success. It has lacked in depth from its
great extension. Hence individual dealing with candidates for church
membership was almost an impossibility. During the first rush into the
then existing churches, and into those that were formed just after the
idols were burned, the work of the missionaries then in the island was
difficult in the extreme. They could not overtake a tenth of the work
that suddenly came upon them. There were so many pressing duties, so
many village churches and preaching stations to superintend.
Then, again, it was most difficult to get at the real state of the
candidates for church fellowship, even when the missionary could
examine them, as they simply acquiesced in all you said, and answered
‘yes’ to all your questions, even when the one ‘yes’ contradicted the
other. Thousands accepted Christianity as they accepted the queen and
the Malagasy government. Many at the burning of the idols said, ‘In
the days of the old queen all who prayed to Jesus Christ were put to
death; but now the queen herself, the prime minister, and the members
of the government pray to Him, and if we don’t pray also perhaps we
may be punished.’ So little did they know about Christianity and
its teachings, and how could they have known? They simply took to
‘the praying’ and worshipping on the Sabbaths as to a new form of
_fànompòana_, ‘government service.’ It is much to be thankful for
that this ignorance and these unworthy motives were overruled for good.
Thousands who, if they did not go to church to laugh, only went to do
their _fànompòana_ as they thought, became praying people indeed.
Others got into the habit of attending church on the Sabbath, gradually
became interested in the services, and ultimately got good. They met
with the Lord of the services, and now they take rank among the most
devoted and zealous of His servants.
I called on many of the squire-pastors and had long talks with them,
and after thanking them for what they had done for their churches--and
some of them had really done a great deal--I would say: ‘You are an
old man now, and not able to attend the classes for the pastors, nor
the “union meetings” at the capital, and might not get much good even
if you did. We must also have a day-school here, the children gathered
in, the people instructed, visited, and a new church built, and you are
not equal to all that. Now don’t you think it would be best for you to
retire from the active duties of the pastorate, and become honorary
pastor, and that we should get a younger man elected in your place? You
would have the honour, and he would have the work. Don’t you think that
would be best?’ In some cases I got them to retire, but in others I
could not get them to move. I had to accept the inevitable and make the
best of it.
In one distant church of eighty members I only found four whose
religious knowledge seemed to fit them for fellowship; and yet, up to
their light, they appeared devout. One could do little except pity and
pray for such, and go on instructing them. I found the ignorance very
gross in some cases. For example, in answer to the question, ‘What
must we do to be saved?’ I was told in one case that we must go to
church, be baptized, and receive the Lord’s Supper; in another, that
we could buy salvation in the market; and in a third, that we must sin
in order to be saved! I mention this to give some idea of the darkness
of the heathen mind, and the density of ignorance that has often to be
overcome. This was what we found even in Vònizòngo when we began work
there; but we had a very different state of things by the time we left.