THE DEAD PAST
‘All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.’
--NUMBERS xiv. 21.
In former times the Malagasy used to hold great feasts, rum-drinking
and horrible orgies at the funerals of all people of any consequence.
The corpse was rolled in a silk _làmba_, while all clothes,
dresses, and jewellery belonging to the deceased were placed in the
family or royal tomb, as the case might be, along with the corpse.
I remember the death of a very old and famous chief, ‘the head of
the _black_ people.’ It was stated that his corpse was rolled
in eighty-four silk _làmba_! It was also the custom to fill the
mouth of the corpse with cut money--silver cut up to the size of broken
rice. If the deceased had been fond of rum during his or her lifetime,
water-pots filled with it were placed in the tomb!
The Malagasy of Central Madagascar had been in the habit for ages of
opening the tombs of their ancestors at stated periods, removing the
rotten _làmba_, and rolling the bones in new _làmba_. To
purchase the new _làmba_ a levy was made on the descendants and
clansmen of the deceased. Even the slaves of the various families
were expected to contribute to _Ny mamàdika ny màty_, i. e. ‘the
turning of the dead,’ which were often occasions for great gatherings
at which there were feasting and drinking, music and dancing, for which
bands of musicians and female singers--both being generally of the
lowest and most abandoned of the community--were hired, and heathen
orgies and hideous debauchery were the order of the days and of the
nights.
After the general acceptance of Christianity in the central provinces,
there were often religious, or semi-religious, services and often
preachings at those gatherings; but, as the after conduct of many was
hardly consistent with such religious exercises, we were compelled to
decline countenancing them and now they have almost died out or been
put a stop to.
Such were some of the customs of former times connected with the
burial and turning of the dead, and probably similar customs are still
rife in those parts of the island on which the new light has not yet
dawned--two-thirds of the island being still in heathen darkness. About
a million, perhaps, of the people of the central provinces have been
reached in some way, and some at a few points on the coast; but the
rest--some three millions--are still in a state of heathenism. There
murder, infanticide, slavery, drunkenness, polygamy, obscenity, war and
all the other horrors of heathenism and degradation are rampant.
But on the other hand, to show the change that was coming over the
people as to their views of death and their burial customs, I may
mention that the first legacy was left to the church during that year
by the wife of a petty chief, who was one of our village pastors. I
was invited to preach at her funeral, which was conducted in a quiet,
decent, and most orderly manner. There was no feasting, drinking, music
nor dancing, and her money was left to the church instead of being
buried with her corpse.
Our good Christian queen gave an example during that year of her
desire to be a nursing-mother to the church. An officer of high rank
in the native army, who had been married for some years to a woman of
lower social rank than himself, divorced her as she had no family by
him. As he was a member of the church in his native village he was
first remonstrated with, and then suspended from church fellowship
for divorcing his wife without proper cause. Being a person of some
consequence in his own village, he resented being excommunicated
and, in a measure, disgraced in the eyes of his relations and fellow
villagers; but as the church refused to readmit him, unless he took
back his wife, he began in various ways to persecute the pastor,
office-bearers, and members of the village church. It was a ‘child,’
that is, connected with and under the care of the mother-church of
Ampàribè in the capital.
One of the pastors of Ampàribè was also one of the queen’s chaplains.
The village pastor had complained to him of the treatment he and his
people had received at the hands of the officer for doing their duty.
One day, while conversing with the queen about the progress of the
churches, he told her about the faithful little village church and the
conduct of this officer. The queen summoned all the parties before her,
heard all that had taken place, and asked the officer if the statements
made were correct, and he had to admit that they were. She ordered
him to take back his wife, and for persecuting the pastor and church
for doing their duty she disgraced him, took away all his honours and
reduced him to the ranks. The queen then turned to the pastor and
office-bearers of the church and thanked them for so courageously doing
their duty, and said: ‘_Remember that in the Church of Jesus Christ
we are all equal. I am the same as a slave woman there!_’ That was
a most extraordinary statement for her to make. Twenty years before,
such a statement might have cost her her crown, if not her life.
On one occasion a woman appealed to the queen to be separated from
her husband, to whom she had taken a great dislike. She said that she
hated him and could not live with him, and did not wish to see his
face again as long as he lived. Her Majesty ordered her to be brought
before her, and inquired fully into her case. She asked if the husband
was a bad man, or if he used her badly. The woman said ‘No.’ But when
asked why she wished to be separated from him she could give no reason,
except that she had taken such a great dislike to him that she could
no longer live with him. After hearing all the woman had to say, Her
Majesty replied that all she wished could be very easily accomplished,
and the woman was accordingly jubilant. The queen summoned an officer,
to whom she said: ‘This woman has appealed to me to be separated from
her husband, whom she says that she hates, and that she does not want
to see his face again. Now you take charge of her, take her to Fort
Dauphin (at the extreme south of the island, five hundred miles from
the capital), where she is to live for the rest of her life, and so
make certain that she never sees again the husband whom she hates so
much.’
The woman was speechless for a few moments, but, when she had recovered
herself, and fully realized what the queen’s orders involved, she fell
on her knees crying for mercy, hugged and kissed Her Majesty’s feet,
promising to return at once to her husband, to be a good and faithful
wife to him, and never again to say that she hated him. The queen,
however, paid no attention to her appeals; so the officer came forward
and laid hold of her to lead her away; thereupon she fairly became
frantic, screamed with terror, clung to the royal feet, and pleaded
in such agony for mercy that the queen, seeing that she had most
thoroughly frightened her, extended mercy to her, revoked her order,
and sent the officer home with her to her husband with instructions
that he was to treat her kindly.
I was six years in Madagascar before I had to perform the marriage
ceremony for any of our people. We found the vast majority of the
church members and adherents married, and those of the latter who were
not could not be persuaded to follow the Christian mode of marriage.
They said our agreement was too hard, it was till death. We might take
our wives till death, as they were wise and good; but as their women
were foolish and bad, they could not consent to take them until death.
Their view of marriage was that of their own proverb which says that
marriage is like marketing--if the parties don’t agree they simply
separate.
At last one of my deacons, who was a widower, wished to marry again,
and he asked me to perform the marriage ceremony. We had the marriage
in the station church one Sabbath morning at the close of the service.
The deacon and his bride stood up in front of the rail, and I began
reading the marriage service. At one part of it I had to ask the usual
question--_Efa làsa va ny vòdiòndry?_ i. e. ‘Has the sheep’s rump
gone?’
In former times quarrels seem to have been made up, and serious
agreements concluded over the carcase of a slain animal, after which
a feast followed (Gen. xxxi. 44–55). Perhaps the marriage agreement
was made or concluded over the carcase of a sheep, after which the
hinder quarters may have been handed over to the father and mother
of the bride, or her guardians, and the reception by them of _ny
vòdiòndry_ in the presence of witnesses made the marriage legal. It
afterwards came about that a small piece of money took the place of
the hinder quarters of the sheep; but that still retained the name of
_ny vòdiòndry_, ‘the sheep’s rump,’ and the reception of that by
the father and mother of the bride, or by her guardians, constituted
the marriage legal. Not that there was much in the legality; for a man
might divorce his wife at any time by simply saying to her, ‘Thanks,
go!’ She could not divorce him, but he could divorce her at any time.
We had to ask, therefore, while reading the marriage service, if the
legal transaction had taken place, because if not we could not go on
with the service till it had.
My wife had never read the Malagasy marriage service, I don’t think
she even knew about the _vòdiòndry_; certainly she did not know
that we had to ask in the marriage service if that had gone or been
received; and hence, when I called out in the middle of the service,
‘_Has the sheep’s rump gone?_’ the look of surprise and horror
which came over her face was a thing to be remembered. I suspect she
feared I had taken leave of my senses.
During the previous year our station church had given a salary of £5
to their good old pastor Razàka, who, up till then, had not received
any salary, although he had laboured ‘in season and out of season’ for
twenty years for the church and district; but, during 1878, they agreed
to give their second pastor £2 8_s._ a year, and an evangelist
also £2 8_s._ They paid the teachers of the Congregational school
£7 4_s._ a year, gave £2 to the Native Missionary Society, besides
congregational expenses, which would probably be £2. In all this
amounted to £21--but it was to them then what £105 would have been to
us. This was from a poor village church of ninety-six members, a third
of whom were slaves!
The year 1879 was most disastrous to all branches of the work, for the
central provinces, and Vònizòngo in particular, were visited by another
epidemic of malarial fever, which was much more severe than that of
the previous year. The former had probably carried off 5,000 people,
yet it was mild when compared with what we had in 1879. We ourselves
also suffered much more severely than we had done in the previous
year--partly because we were both very much exhausted by eight years’
very hard work in one of the worst fever districts of the island.
For, notwithstanding all the precautions and care that we took, I was
prostrated eleven times with fever, and my wife seven times, and some
of our children about a dozen times, although during twelve months we
had used nearly two ounces of quinine, to which, under God, I believe
that we owed our lives.
Towards the end of the previous year I had again brought under the
notice of our churches the subject of teaching our adherents to read.
The matter was taken up very heartily by our station church, and
afterwards by the various churches in the district. They also entered
into the plans with great heartiness, and the result was that in a
short time a large number of the churches were at work. We arranged
that the church members who could read should form evening classes in
their own villages to teach the adherents who could not. They were very
much assisted in many villages by the elder scholars from the village
school, and in the course of a few weeks we had 2,000 adults gathered
into evening classes learning to read! Alphabet sheets, to the value of
£1, were given to them, and they themselves spent £7 on first lesson
books! The news of what we were doing in Vònizòngo spread, and the
subject of teaching the adult adherents to read, that they might be
able to read the Bible for themselves, was brought before the church at
the ‘union meetings.’ This stimulated our people again, and they worked
eagerly until, first the epidemic, and then another conscription for
the army, broke up nearly all the evening classes for a time; but the
progress that was made in some congregations even during the very short
time these classes were at work, was really astonishing.
When we settled at Fìhaònana in 1871 there were probably not more than
150, old and young together, in the whole district able to read, and we
left over 3,000; so that if the only result of our work was that 3,000
had been taught to read the Word of God, and had been put in possession
of it, our ten years in Madagascar were well spent. That was, however,
but a very small portion of the work done in connexion with fifty
village churches and schools with 2,600 children in them.
From 1874 to 1879 Madagascar was in a state of transition. A move had
been made which necessitated progress on a more advanced scale, and in
a more decided manner. One step had been taken out of heathen darkness
and degradation into partial light. The people could not remain where
they then were; they had either to go forward to higher and purer views
of God’s truth and duty, or sink back into a dead formality with only a
name to live, or even into the darkness and degradation of their former
conditions. There was great need as there still is, for the prayer, ‘O
send out Thy light and Thy truth!’
I was often asked by friends at home to send them some interesting
facts and _cases_. I sent many facts such as are contained in
these pages. With regard to the ‘cases’--for, as I understood the
request, it was cases of _conversion_ that were meant--I am sorry
to say that during our first term of service we were not cheered by
seeing or knowing of very many. Yet, notwithstanding our inability to
see all in the way of conversion that we longed for, we had a firm
conviction that the Kingdom of God was making decided progress, even
if it was only in the way of preparing the ‘soil of the soul’ for
the ‘seed of the Kingdom’ by educating and enlightening the minds of
the people, especially of the young and rising generation, for the
reception and understanding of God’s truth.
Our good friends at home were very apt to forget the wise words of Dr.
Livingstone already quoted, that most of the soil had to be prepared
for the seed, and that--no matter how efficient the sower, or how good
the seed--then it has to be sown, and, considering the paucity of the
sowers, a great harvest could not be looked for: time also was needed
for the growth of the seed. But there need be no fear for the harvest.
It will come in due time. Still, as we all know, it is not always
when the fresh green wood is crackling and roaring under the boiler,
and volumes of black smoke are curling out of the chimney, that the
greatest heat is being raised or the most steam generated. It is rather
when the fire is at white heat, and all the black smoke and noisy gases
are gone. It is not always when there is most excitement and noise, and
numbers of _cases_ being reported, that most real and lasting good
is being done; but rather when the work is done in quiet. And, though a
stage of excitement may precede, it is by no means necessary.
The rains which refresh the baked and thirsty earth in Madagascar and
renew the face of nature generally descend amid the roar of thunder and
the flash of lightning; but the latter do no good to the soil, or to
the growth of things: it is the rain which comes along with them, and
especially the gentle rain that falls during the quiet of the night,
that makes things grow.
Compared with such fields as New Guinea and the Congo, Madagascar has
in some respects been the ‘Paradise’ of modern missions; but even in
Madagascar large demands are made on the patience and perseverance and
on the hopefulness of Christian missionaries; they cannot afford to
grow weary and fearful, or faint-hearted as to results. They must be
content to use the means and leave the results with God.
It is a great thing if they are allowed to dig out the foundations
for the temple of the Lord, or even merely to prepare the soil for
the seed, or sow the seed from which others shall reap. There is a
danger of almost all missions of our day leaning a little too much on
the past, and forgetting the many discouragements which preceded the
missionary achievements which are now recorded on the pages of history.
A wilderness had to be crossed before the promised land was reached.
The Madagascar Mission might be, and perhaps is, in more danger of
drawing on its past history than most missions, and might be excused
a little if it did; but, if the spirit of its past history lives, it
will continue to inspire fresh effort on the part of its missionaries
of to-day, and on the part of those who have sent them there. With
such a past as Madagascar presents there ought to be little danger of
a ‘rest and be thankful’ policy being followed. Conquest alone has
made foreign missions what they are, and _only_ conquest--i. e.
_conversions_--can sustain them.
The Malagasy, even the Hovas, have been raised by the Gospel from
the depths of depravity to live lives of purity and peace, and from
darkness and superstition to the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God made visible in the face of Jesus Christ. They can hardly be
called a demonstrative people in matters of affection or of religion,
and yet, or perhaps because of that, their feelings with regard to both
are often far deeper and stronger than many, who looking at them on the
surface, would give them credit for.