THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY PRINTING-OFFICE.
THE NORMAL SCHOOL.
When the rising had been put down, the captives returned to their homes, and the first thing they did was to re-thatch or rebuild their own huts and then their village churches. They recommenced their Sabbath services. Many had met for worship within the roofless walls of their old buildings for months. The children were gathered into the day-schools again. They sent on to me for Bibles and hymn-books, to replace what the rebels had torn up, or burned, and during three months I sold to the people of one section of our country district 300 Bibles and 500 hymn-books.
The people who returned from captivity came back in a state of absolute destitution. And it refreshed one’s heart to witness the way in which the Christian people of the A-kànga district received them and helped them. They made collections of money, manioc, rice, clothing, &c. for them. They helped to dig and prepare their rice-fields—a thing that many of them, poor creatures, were far too weak to do for themselves. They helped them to rebuild or re-thatch their huts and churches, and in many ways showed such practical sympathy with them in their distress as won the hearts of numbers of the merely nominal adherents to Christianity, and outsiders, for they said: ‘If this is a sample of the fruits of the “New Religion,” it must be a good thing.’
In stating how these young Malagasy church members behaved towards their fellow members and others in their distress, I am but making known the grace of God bestowed on them. They had had great trials themselves, had suffered much, and had been robbed by the heathen rebels. Moreover, many of them who were formerly affluent had been reduced to poverty by the abolition of household slavery. But still they rose to the occasion in a way that was eminently to the credit of their Christian profession. Their zeal was an object-lesson such as many have never witnessed before; a great contrast to the selfishness of heathenism to which they had been accustomed. Many were thus led to take a much deeper and kindlier interest in the ‘New Religion.’
I managed to engage a very clever young fellow, a French corporal, and a Bachelor of Science, who was freed from military duty, to teach French in the A-kànga High School for Girls. He came to our house two afternoons a week to read French with me. We read through the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistle to the Romans together. When we came to the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospels, that young fellow broke down, burst into tears, and weeping, said: ‘Was it really like that?’ I asked, what? When he answered: ‘The Crucifixion of our Lord.’ ‘Have you never read about that before?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I have not; for I have never seen a Bible before in my life until I saw this one of yours!’ As I have mentioned, that soldier was a Bachelor of Science, a German scholar, and a fair English one, and yet he had never seen a Bible in his own or any other language before. He was a Roman Catholic, but by no means a bigoted one.
When any of the French Protestant missionaries preached for me at A-kànga, he was always there to hear them, and seemed to enjoy their discourses very much. When he told me that he had never seen a Bible before I said I would be very pleased to make him a present of one if he would accept it. He said he would only be too delighted to get it. I gave one to him and also to his companion. I often asked him if he read his Bible, and he said he always read it at night, when he could find it; but he explained that he could not always find it, as his comrades, when off duty, took it, read it, and were deeply interested in it. He told me that they thought that we British missionaries could not be such bad men as the Jesuits said, or we would not give such good books to the ‘niggers’ to read. They thought, of course, that it was vain and foolish labour, as nothing could ever be made of the ‘niggers’! I afterwards gave my friend a copy of a small volume of Mr. Spurgeon’s sermons in French, and some other booklets; and I heard from him several times after he left the island.
Some time after the war and annexation of the island, a consignment of Malagasy New Testaments was sent out by the British and Foreign Bible Society. They were being passed through the custom house, in the presence of the Society’s agent. The late Malagasy government had allowed all copies of the Bible into the island duty-free; but the French authorities demand duty on them. One of the French officers took four copies out of one of the boxes. The agent asked him why he did so, and he answered: ‘To have them translated to see that there is nothing in them against the French!’
In a sermon once I told of an old friend of mine in Scotland, who, I said, made clothes for Jesus Christ. One of my local preachers present was very much impressed by what I said, and he retold what he had heard, when preaching in one of the village churches in the neighbourhood of the capital. A shoemaker, a member of that church, was struck by what he heard, it seems, and said to himself: If that European tailor can do his work for Jesus Christ, why can’t I do mine for Him; if he can make his clothes for Him, why can’t I make my shoes for Him? and he determined he would.
Some months afterwards he called on the local preacher and told him the following story. He said: ‘I have been a church member for some years, but it never struck me that my religion should have any bearing on my daily work. I thought if I went to church twice on the Sabbath, and to the Communion once a month, gave a little money to the collection, and read my Bible and prayed sometimes, that was all that was required of me. But that story you told of that European tailor has impressed me, and threw such a flood of light upon my duty as a Christian man, that I at once saw that I had been all wrong in the past, and that I ought to do all my work for Jesus Christ.