MALAGASY TYPES.
A HOVA PRINCESS. A HOVA CHRISTIAN.
A MINSTREL. MALAGASY POUNDING RICE.
Probably bad proof-reading was responsible for many mistakes in former editions of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. For example: in Gen. xviii. 4, instead of Abraham saying to the angels, ‘Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet,’ the father of the faithful was made to say, ‘Wait until I steal a little water,’ &c. The Bible records that the builders of the Tower of Babel said, the one to the other, ‘Go to, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly,’ but the word boriky (Fr. bourrique), ‘ass,’ was used in the old editions of the Bible in mistake for birìky (Eng. ‘brick’); and so they were made to say, ‘Go to, let us make asses, and burn them thoroughly!’
In the story of Samuel we are told that, while a lad, ‘His mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year’ (1 Sam. ii. 19). The Malagasy had no such garment, and hence no name for it. The name ànabỳ (Fr. un habit) which was used for a coat, was the name for the English soldiers’ old coats or tunics with the short tails, two hundred of which were given by the British government annually for many years to Radàma I, along with the same number of old flint-locks, to clothe and arm his guards, in return for his agreeing to stop the slave trade. Samuel’s mother was therefore said to have made her son an ànabỳ, a coat with short tails, and taken it to him year by year. These were all slight blemishes, however, when compared with the glorious truths the Bible made known to the Malagasy people—truths that were in every sense of the word revelations, transforming their lives.
A few weeks after we were settled at Fìhàonana Razàka came to me bringing a deacon, who had been sent from one of the distant villages to seek my advice under the following circumstances: the local preacher of the village church from which the deacon came had fallen into sin, and was living with a young woman, one of the singers, notwithstanding that he was a married man. The church came to know of his conduct, and were for excommunicating him at once; but they had to face this difficulty: the church possessed no Bible of its own, and that which had been used from the first belonged to this man. Now, if they excommunicated him, naturally he would take his Bible with him, leaving the church without one; and yet they could not think of allowing him to remain as a preacher. What were they to do? I soon put matters right by giving the deacon a pulpit Bible for the church, which should belong to it and to no one man, and telling them to suspend the man from church fellowship at once.
Shortly after this deacon visited me I was told, on good authority of a chief down towards the north-west coast, who having heard that the queen, the prime minister and the officers of the palace had become Christians, and that the great majority of the people in Imèrina had followed their example, thought he and his people ought to go and do likewise. He convened all his subjects, of whom I understand there was a goodly number; and, having secured the services of a man from the capital, who professed to be a Christian pastor or preacher with authority to baptize converts, he had the whole of his clansmen and slaves baptized there and then. He then addressed them to this effect: ‘Now you are all baptized Christians, see that you conduct yourselves in a proper manner; for if I hear of any of you doing wrong, I shall certainly punish you very severely. For the first offence I shall have you beaten, and for the second I shall have your heads cut off!’
I was assured that this had a most wonderful and beneficial effect for a time on that part of the country, but of course it did not last. Men cannot be forced into religion, or coerced into Christianity—and their religion would not be worth having if they could. The condition to-day of those districts in which coercion was practised or permitted by the so-called ‘Palace Church Evangelists’ and other government officials, from mistaken motives, is a sad enough example of that.
One of my pastors came to me during my first year in the district to ask what was to be done in the following case: A man had been baptized after having attended the classes for instruction in the ‘fundamentals of the faith’ for the appointed time. His character was good, he seemed to understand what he had learned, and was believed to be a Christian man. Some time after his baptism, as he wished to join the church, he attended the communicants’ class for further instruction, and at the end of the appointed period, there being nothing against the man, but everything in his favour, the members were about to receive him into the church; but then they were met, as they thought, by a great difficulty. His wife did not wish to join the church, was not even baptized, and had no wish to be. Their problem was this—could they receive the man alone, and so, in a sense, separate husband and wife? There was another analogous case, where the wife wished to join the church, but not the husband. ‘May we admit the husband without his wife, or the wife without her husband?’ they asked; or ‘Must we tell the husband that he must wait for his wife, and the wife for her husband?’ Of course I replied that they were not to keep a man from the Communion because of his wife, or a woman because of her husband.
On my first visit to Ankàzobè, a large village about thirty miles to the north of Fìhàonana, while conducting the Communion Service I saw three small boys among the communicants, and asked who they were, and what they wanted. I was informed that they were church members, and I afterwards discovered that one of them was the son of a local preacher. I told the church that it was not the custom to take such young children into membership, as they could not understand what the ordinance meant. After the service I had a long talk with the church as to who ought, and who ought not, to be received as members with regard to years, knowledge and character.