Beyond Andohálo, proceeding south, we rise to the highest part of the city-hill: and here in a cluster stand the Queen’s Palace and many houses of the Prime Minister and the chief nobles of the country. The Great Palace is growing a more conspicuous object than ever; owing to the verandah of stone pillars by which Mr. Cameron is now strengthening it. When finished it will be a handsome building: but it has been a heavy tax upon the people’s energies. The Queen’s residence is a smaller palace of wood just behind. Close to it is the Royal church, a handsome building also, erected after an English pattern by Mr. Pool. These various buildings have often been sketched by writers on the city; they are shown in the frontispiece to this volume; and I need only refer to them. The many improvements introduced into them in recent years, as well as into the churches and dwelling-houses in their neighbourhood, give striking indications of the great advance made by the upper classes in the island.
Our social life in Antanónarivo had few excitements. More than twenty families are now stationed in the city, connected with the different missions; and constant and most friendly intercourse takes place between them. My colleague and myself were made most welcome in their pleasant homes, and the friendship extended to us did much to lighten the burden of what would otherwise have proved a somewhat lonely life. Social gatherings frequently took place. But the most pleasant of all was the regular Friday-evening prayer meeting, held at the different houses in succession; at which thirty or forty were present; and which was felt to be a constant stimulus to spiritual life and power, where external aids were so largely wanting. Our English service on Sundays in the Andohálo school-room furnished similar help. By common consent my colleague was installed as principal chaplain during our visit: and his wise counsels and the ripe Christian experience embodied in his discourses, were not only a present help and pleasure, but will be long remembered now that he has returned home.
We all felt much out of the world in Madagascar. To the great world which we had left, the trade, the government, and the people of the island, are linked by very slender ties. The Malagasy know very little of foreign lands: few understand the English language and the condition and affairs of England. Those who have been to England have not felt free to tell what they saw: in former days it would have been dangerous to tell it: for to depreciate Madagascar by showing the superiority of other countries was neither more nor less than high treason. Knowledge is increasing among them; the pictures and sketches of the Illustrated London News and the Graphic, are teaching them many things: and the monthly periodical, Tény Soa, issued by the Mission, systematically describes many others. Perhaps it is well that, where they are so far behind the great world, the knowledge of that world should not be brought to bear upon them too fast or too far. The mass to be lifted is broad and heavy: power may well be applied to it by degrees and steadily: it is rising now and will be lifted more rapidly in due time.
Meanwhile the vis inertiæ around them exercises a most depressing influence on the English community. Its tendency is to weary out the efforts of the enterprising, to damp the spirits of the cheerful, and to produce languor in the earnest. We could not but notice this immediately when we arrived. There was a stillness in the air which was in strong contrast to the active life which we had just quitted. There seemed a want of cohesion, of the active co-operation, which we naturally looked for. The diligent were working earnestly, but alone. The stillness had doubtless been intensified by the fact that the mission were waiting for those final rearrangements, which had been in preparation for some time, but the details of which had yet to be shaped out in consultation with ourselves. We also felt the influence of the quiet. The quick, electric life of London, in politics, in scientific discussion and religious thought was gone. We had only one mail a month, which at its best brought us a limited supply of news. Even this mail was irregular. The postmaster at Bourbon through whose hands the bulk of it passes, occasionally detained the mail till next time; or suddenly began charging us sixteen shillings postage on some newspaper; or was guilty of other vagaries inscrutable by an ordinary mind. We received a few periodicals, and there reached us indistinct echoes of parliamentary discussions, of startling addresses by Huxley or Tyndall; of the Indian famine, and of the revival commencing in Scotland. The mail which should have brought us intelligence of the great break-up of the Liberal Party and the election of the new House of Commons, never came at all, till its successor reached us.
Such things greatly affect the English communities abroad. Who can wonder that as years go by they fall somewhat behind the age: and that the more isolated they are, the less complete is their knowledge of the society which they quitted and their sympathy with the progress which it has made. This is a point to which the attention of English missionaries in all countries should be carefully directed. Their function and their work are of the loftiest kind. They are the sources of spiritual power to tribes and nations destitute of it. The converts and their churches look to them for counsel and instruction in regard to things present, and for stimulus and suggestions in respect to future progress. So long as their zeal and self-denial are fresh, their enterprise will be fresh and spirited also. If they lack spring and energy, they will fall into routine; their watchfulness will give place to dullness: and continued advance will be slow, if not impossible. I used to feel these things when in India: and was glad that in a city like Calcutta the external aids to the maintenance of freshness and vigour in our work were numerous and powerful. We had frequent mails, a good supply of the latest English literature, discussions in the Calcutta Missionary Conference, and friendly counsel and co-operation not only amongst ourselves but in the different Societies. Such aids will ever be of high value, but the greatest help of all will be found in a continued and lofty self-consecration to that high aim which above all men on earth the Christian missionary professes to follow; will be found in the rule “One thing I do,” “looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of faith.”
Shortly after our return from Ambátovóry, in the beginning of January, it was arranged that a General Conference of the English missionaries should be held in Antanánarivo, to consider the present position and needs of their missionary work in the island. The place chosen for the meeting was the Memorial Church at Faravohitra: and it was impossible not to associate the present prosperity of the mission and its consequent demands, with the uncompromising fidelity of the martyrs from which they have sprung. Mr. Pillans and I took the deepest interest in all the details of that great day of suffering, which the Faravohitra Church specially commemorates. We heard the story from men who had witnessed the events: we trode every step of the ground which the feet of the sufferers have made evermore sacred: and from the platform on which the church stands, every spot connected with it from its beginning to its close was before our eyes. It was patiently rehearsed for us: the crowded assembly on the Análakély plain beneath: the booming of the cannon; the agitation of the people: the sentence pronounced by the judges on the noble four, of death by fire. There (we were told) they mounted the red clay road, singing: “There is a happy land, far, far away:” here they crossed the bare granite rock: there they rounded the old tombs: here they reached the weird, waste ground, whereon the brushwood was already piled. Around them were the silent crowd, that wondered and trembled but could not understand them. We stood on the spot where they died; where they died joyous, triumphant, singing and apparently without pain. In the first meeting of the Conference we sang their dying hymn: a hymn which is now used as their dismission-hymn by more than a thousand Christian congregations in Madagascar every Sabbath-day. It is always sung to the tune Mariners.
“Grant us, Saviour, royal blessings,
Now that to our homes we go;
Fill our hearts and lives with gladness,
Make us love divine to know: