Thomas T. Matthews

“ The Malagasy are a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. As a people they cannot originate anything, but they are great imitators, and they are also much readier to imitate the bad than the good. There is not much that is original in them, as a people, except ‘original sin,’ and of that virus they have a fair share. Overgrown children, they were attracted by what was sensational—especially in preaching—but not nearly so much by the tinsel in religion as might have been expected. ”

“ They answered the questions put to them with a fervour and eagerness which did one’s heart good. They led the singing. Their voices made the church ring with the songs of salvation. They were the most attentive listeners to the sermon, and their eyes sparkled with an intelligence of which their poor parents knew nothing, and never would know: they were too old to learn, even if they wished to, which many of them did not. From the schools of the first missionaries came some of the foremost of the martyrs, and the best and most devoted pastors in the country. ”

“ Since the government of the Republic has declared Madagascar a French colony, royalty has become useless in Imèrina. I have therefore invited the queen to resign her functions, and, at her request, have authorized that she retire to the island of Bourbon, where she will receive the greatest hospitality from the French authorities. The last few months have shown you what the words ‘Madagascar, a French colony,’ mean. They signify that France is henceforth the sole sovereign power in Madagascar, and that it cannot share its power with any one. It alone is mistress over the entire island. ”

“ Central Madagascar can in no sense be called either picturesque or beautiful. Those who have described the bare plateau and bald hills of Imèrina as beautiful must either have an inaccurate notion of what constitutes beauty of scenery or must have viewed that portion of the island through a highly-coloured medium. As a general rule, not only is the central province of Imèrina without the two main elements of beauty—variety of outline and variety of colour—but the features are rarely so grouped together as to form any distinct or impressive combination. ”

“ I have come into close enough contact with them to be able to affirm that they have accepted loyally and without any reservation the actual condition of affairs, that they work for the pacification of minds, and that they solicit only one favour—to be able to continue their work in peace, not with a political end in view, which they have never followed, but with the aim of converting the Malagasy people. They have spontaneously offered the French government their most devoted co-operation, and with their thousands of converts they represent a force morally incomparable. ”

“ These were our ancestors, so that we have little to be proud of, but much to be thankful for which the Gospel brought us—light, liberty, privileges, and blessings we should never have known but for foreign missions.
Foreign missions can never be a failure. Directors may die, princes and great men in the church may fall, and missionaries may be martyred; but the Great Head of the church lives and works. He was dead, but is alive for evermore, and has the keys of death and of Hades. He lives and rules and reigns for ever and ever, and while He lives and reigns His work must make progress. ”

“ On Thursday, July 30, 1885, Razàka, the pastor of our old station church at Fìhàonana, was called to his rest and his reward. Few men were ever more missed or more sincerely mourned than he was. He was the best and noblest Malagasy Christian pastor I ever knew, and one of the truest and most sincere men I ever met. ‘He was a faithful man, and feared God above many.’ He was loved and looked up to by his fellow countrymen in a way, and to an extent, I have never known in the case of other Malagasy pastors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The queen discovered, as other persecutors had done before, that the more she persecuted the people of God the more they increased and grew. Had the queen taken Christianity under her patronage, after the expulsion of the missionaries, she might have stifled it, or made it a mere name; but in persecuting the Christian faith she did it the best service possible. Persecution rooted and grounded Christianity in the hearts of the Hova people in a way that nothing else could have done. ”

“ This week from four different directions, I might almost say from four cardinal points, news has come to us that the Jesuits have made simultaneously at these points attempts to seize Protestant churches in order to say mass in them, and to take possession of some school buildings belonging to our mission, in order to place in them their own teachers. They tell those who are willing to listen to them, that they are all powerful with the government, and, unfortunately, the support given to them by some officers and administrators lends a semblance of truth to it. ”

“ If a man only does this he will be astonished to find what he may accomplish under God’s blessing.
I have thus dwelt a little on some of the kinds of work which it falls to a missionary opening a new station to carry out, to show, if that be still required, that, as Dr. Livingstone says: ‘A missionary is not merely a dumpy man with a Bible under his arm,’ as many good people suppose him to be. The true missionary is a many-sided man, who must be prepared, and will be, to be anything or nothing that will help forward his work, without any fear of its being beneath his dignity. ”

“ What would you say then, and how would you answer that, and prove that the Bible was trustworthy and the Word of God?’
‘The Bible a fable, full of fictions or falsehoods, sir,’ he said, ‘that can’t be; for the work it has already done [254] in the land proves that it must be the truth of God; I don’t know what your European falsehoods, fables or folk-lore may be like; but the Scriptures are very different from our Malagasy ones. Our fables and folk-lore are filthy trash, and our lies as black as they can be made. I am an old man, but I never in my life knew a lie do any good. ”

“ No community would dream of impanelling a jury of cannibals to try a case of culpable homicide, or of appointing blind men judges at a flower-show, or deaf-mutes examiners for musical degrees. Even if they could and did do so, they would not act more irrationally than those who take their conceptions of missionaries and of their work from those who are destitute of all personal religion and all interest in missions. ”

“ Heathen consciences are seared, and their moral perceptions blunted. The memories scarcely retain anything we teach them; so low have they sunk, that the plainest text in the whole Bible cannot be understood by them. It is hard, until one goes to a heathen country, to realize how much civilization owes to Christianity.’ I found when I came to teach my own children the elements of religious truth, how quickly they apprehended them as compared with the Malagasy children; but they had been born with a measure of a mental and moral nature to which the Malagasy children were utter strangers. ”

“ Sabbath government service, as many of the more ignorant had always thought it was, and that they might leave off attendance with perfect safety, did so. Rumours set in circulation by the old heathen party were rife to the effect ‘that the queen had no longer any love or respect for the New Religion, and was about to put a stop to all praying, and close all the schools.’ Heathenism dies hard. Some of the adherents who left us for a time did so from fear; for the people had been terribly cheated once, and it took a long time before they had a thorough trust in any government. ”

“ If I flee to the forest, I shall die of fever. If I flee to the mountains or to the wilderness, I shall die of famine or fever; and if I am to die, I prefer to die for my faith.’ He was carried to the capital, along with some three hundred others, of whom the majority did not stand the test. To save their lives they took the oath to worship the idols and pray to the spirits of their ancestors and the departed sovereigns. Ràmitràha stood firm, and died for his faith in the flames at Fàravòhitra, while his fellow labourer, Rakòtonomè, was rolled down the precipice at Ampàmarìnana. ”

“ Church and manse building, even in the mission field, is very prosaic work, with little of the rainbow of romance about it, but it has to be done. In our case it was a most serious undertaking, for we were 100 miles from the ‘forest,’ and all the wood had to be brought the whole distance, with the exception of some twenty miles, on the shoulders of men from there. The building of our manse was perhaps a more serious affair than it ought to have been. In addition to all the difficulties of the situation, I, in common with most missionaries, knew nothing about house-building. ”

“ But the piety of the people proved to be more substantial than the ‘morning cloud and the early dew that passeth away.’ Central Madagascar had been roused by the power of God’s grace from the sleep of ages. Some regarded our work with suspicion, and, because all our converts did not at once equal the Christians of lands that have had the Gospel for centuries, they were almost prepared to ascribe it to mere political excitement or surface-work. ”

“ Our visit to Vònizòngo in 1871 was most memorable. I then met for the first time many of the early disciples, men and women who had fought a good fight and kept the faith all through ‘the killing times,’ and who had hazarded their lives for the Gospel, and suffered the loss of their little all for their loyalty to the New Religion. Some had been sold into slavery, while others had been put in chains, and others again had to flee for safety to the forest, or other parts of the island, or, like Razàka, had to hide for years in caves, or rice-pits, or dens of the earth. ”

“ The dark green hills, studded with the brilliant red-brick houses of the inhabitants, whose white garments dotted the lanes and footpaths, contrasted with the brighter emerald of the rice-fields in the hollows. The soil everywhere is deep red, almost magenta in colour, and where the roads or pathways cross the hills, they shine out as if so many paint-brushes had streaked the country in broad red stripes. ”

“ The minds of the children were stored with the knowledge of Him ‘Whom to know is life eternal.’ Some warm-hearted friends of missions seemed to suspect that we gave too much time and attention to our schools, and not enough to what they called ‘the preaching of the Gospel.’ They forgot that preaching is not the only means by which a knowledge of the Gospel may be imparted. Real ‘evangelistic work’ may be done to greater advantage in the village school than on the village green. The value which we assign to teaching is the result of experience. ”

“ One who has spent thirty years in the hard, and often very weary, work of a missionary in Central Madagascar—not to mention the arduous and exhausting duties of deputation work while on furlough—with all the duties, difficulties, and anxieties involved in the superintendence of large districts, with their numerous village congregations and schools, could hardly be expected to have much spare time to devote to the cultivation of the graces of literature or an elegant style. ”

“ As it was in our Lord’s time, and is at home now, the rich do not crowd into the Kingdom, and it is left chiefly to the common people to hear the Gospel gladly, and press into it; so, with few exceptions, it has been in Madagascar. The higher the social scale the more profuse was the profession, the less the real practice. From many points of view both the capital and the country districts might have been compared to a stagnant pond, on which the green slime of ages had gathered thickly. ”