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