On July 31, 1861, Rànavàlona I died, and persecution was at an end. All were then free to worship God as they pleased. In 1863 a building was erected in Fìhàonana, but it was soon found to be far too small for the numbers who came together. After a time small churches were formed, and buildings erected in most of the other large villages. Razàka founded some forty of these small churches in the Fìhàonana district in Vònizòngo. He was often away from home for weeks, and even months, teaching, preaching, and founding churches. All this was a pure labour of love on his part; for he obtained no recognition of his work in any way, except that the people looked up to him as their father in the faith, and the God-appointed apostle and ‘father and mother’ of the district.
The late Dr. Mullens met with Razàka when in Madagascar in 1873, and, in his Twelve Months in Madagascar, he says: ‘Of Razàka, the pastor of the church at Fìhàonana, Mr. M. spoke much. It was a great pleasure to Mr. Pillans and myself to see this good man: to talk with him of the hard days of trial; and to hear from his own lips the story of the sufferings he had endured. He told us of the meetings which the fugitive Christians held for worship and mutual help. They used to come long distances to such meetings; tracts were lent from one to the other, as a tract could often be carried and hidden away, when a Bible or a Testament could not. Parts of the New Testament were lent about, even to single leaves; and leaves of the hymn-book and the Pilgrim’s Progress. He said they used often to long for a rainy night, in order that they might be able to sing. He showed us the underground passage, beneath the floor of his huts (from the one rice-pit to another, and from that out to the hollow ditch), by which, when the soldiers came to search, the inmates and visitors could escape. He accompanied us to a pile of immense boulders (in the circle formed by them the persecuted Christians met for worship on the Sabbath mornings, during lulls in the persecution), and showed us the “Cave” beneath the big boulder, into which they used to creep to have a prayer-meeting, and in the dark corner of which the Bible was hid for so long. He brought vividly before us the sufferings and persecutions which his heroic brethren and himself had endured; and in him we realized something of the power of that faith by which all had been sustained. Few finer bodies of Christians have been won for Christ by modern missions than those faithful men and women in Vònizòngo.’
At my request, Razàka wrote an account of his Life and Times, but he stipulated that it was not to be published during his lifetime, in case it might get him into trouble with the government. It was published by instalments, first in Good Words, and then as a small booklet, hundreds of which have been given away as school prizes.
I had the satisfaction of seeing my dear old friend four days before his death. I was in the neighbourhood of Fìhàonana, on my autumnal tour through my district, and went over on the Sabbath morning to visit him and our other friends at our old station, and to preach for them. I found him prostrated with malarial fever, but had no idea he was so near home—so near hearing the welcome, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’ I was never more struck with the calm Christian resignation of the man than I was on that occasion. There he lay, sweltering in the fever—but not a murmur passed his lips. His honest face beamed amid his sufferings, as if light from the ‘better land’ was already falling on it. He expressed his sorrow at being found prostrated with fever, when his friend had come so far to see him, as also his deep disappointment at not being able to go to church to hear me preach. He passed quietly away the following Thursday, July 30.
‘On the Saturday previous, he told us,’ said one of his fellow pastors, ‘that he would like to preach next day’ (although it was not his turn to do so, the first Sabbath of August—the Communion Sabbath—being his turn). His fellow pastors agreed to his wish; but he was never able to carry out his intention; for the following day found him suffering from fever and pneumonia, and of this he died. The day before his death he said: ‘We do not know at all what shall be the day of our death.’ About the middle of the day on which he died he said; ‘Prayer is the breath of the believer,’ and also: ‘Jehovah will answer prayer.’ He asked them to read Isaiah lxi to him, ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, &c.’ He asked for his fellow pastors to be called, and they came and prayed with him. His wife and they asked how he felt, when he replied: ‘There is only a very little (life, or way to go) left.’ Just before he died he said to his daughter-in-law: ‘Don’t look at me any more!’ perhaps he thought she would be frightened if she saw him expire; and so about three o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday, July 31, 1885, he passed to his rest and his reward.
The death of Razàka was a very great loss to the mother-church at Fìhàonana, and to all the churches of the district, a far greater loss than the loss of their missionary: for he was ‘father and mother’ to them all; and they were all very deeply distressed at his death. They realized that a prince and a great man had fallen in the Church of God; and although they did not sorrow ‘as others who have no hope,’ for they knew that Razàka had only gone on a little ahead to join the general assembly and church of the first-born, who are written in heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect. But, feeling that in him they had lost a father and a friend, their distress was very deep, the deeper that there was no one like him left to help and guide them.
A vast multitude assembled at his funeral, and the signs of grief were the greatest and deepest ever seen in Vònizòngo. His grave is on the hill-side, to the east of Fìhàonana, quite near to the ‘Cave’ in which he and the Bible were so long hidden.
Shortly after Razàka died another Vònizòngo veteran passed away, in the person of Andrìantsehèno, the pastor of Ankàzobè. He died on Sabbath, Oct. 25; and just before he expired, he said: ‘Say good-bye to Mr. Matthews and Mr. Cousins, the elder, for me—for I am going!’ and shortly afterwards he ceased to breathe.
FÌANÀRANTSÒA, CAPITAL OF BÈTSILÈO.