Events occurring in the history of the Mission from the Queen's edict, 1st March, 1835, to the martyrdom of Rasalama in 1837.

THE immediate effect of the queen's edict was to deprive the missionaries of all sphere of appropriate missionary labour in Madagascar, and, therefore, to force upon them the inquiry what they could or ought to attempt in the prosecution of their work, either by evading the edict or acting in direct defiance of it. The duty of the Christian missionary, to yield obedience to the supreme authority of the Saviour in seeking to make known his gospel to every creature, was unhesitatingly admitted, and felt to remain unaltered, whatever might be the laws and edicts of human princes-" Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye." But the present was a question of practicability. To do what the Malagasy government had commanded should not be done was attended not merely with difficulty and danger, but with physical impossibility; and this reduced the question of what the missionaries ought to do within a small compass. They could not collect the natives to address them, for the natives durst not and would not be collected to be addressed; the congregations were scattered; individual converts might venture by stealth to visit the missionaries and converse with them;

REMOVAL FROM MADAGASCAR.

151

unbelievers would not come, and durst not listen-they knew they were exposed to imminent danger if they did, and they had no inclination to risk the danger. Missionaries might have resolved to visit their houses, but they could not gain access to the natives; for it was now death to a native to lend an ear to their instruction on religious subjects. Nor could the missionaries find even useful occupation in their schools. They had no liberty to communicate instruction there: everything printed was prohibited; and to teach a few children to write on slates, and that writing to consist only of names of villages, &c., and not anything involving sentiment of any kind, was the only sphere of labour allowed them in their capacity of "teachers."

The only thing left for them to do was to complete the translation and printing of the Scriptures. A part of the Old Testament was as yet unfinished, Ezekiel to Malachi, and a portion of Job.

namely, from

To this object

they successfully and unremittingly devoted their energies, resolved, if it were possible, not to quit the country till the whole of the Scriptures were complete in the Malagasy language; and, happily, they saw their determination effected. Mr. Baker, the printer, as the sheets of the translation were put into his hand, composed the whole himself at the press, as the natives who had been taught the art of printing were no longer permitted to assist in furtherance of any such design.

The facts of the case as they occurred were laid before the directors of the Missionary Society, and their advice solicited; still, as no communications could be received from them before June, 1836, sixteen months from the

152

MISSION NOT POLITICAL.

time of the queen's edict, it was deemed expedient by the members of the mission on the spot to come to a resolution on their own responsibility for their present guidance, and it was agreed, that part of them should retire from Madagascar, and others remain another year to see if any changes took place, or were likely to take place, and to await the instructions of the Society. One circumstance that led to the decision of the withdrawment of part of the mission was the view taken by the queen's government, that the mission had some political design. This was of course denied by its members. The government then assumed this position: "If its design is not political, it can have no object in remaining in the country after its religious efforts are made unlawful; and we shall now see, by the conduct of the missionaries, whether they are political agents or not. If religion, as they affirm, is their only end in being here, and that can now be no longer prosecuted, because the queen forbids it, they can have no end in remaining, and will retire. If they remain, it proves they have something else in view besides religion; and as that something must be political, we detect them of falsehood, and hold them guilty of being political spies."

Whether the government itself really believed this argument, it may be difficult to ascertain. Many of its members no doubt did. It was the ostensible view they took of the case, and it required the missionaries to act at once with caution and decision.

It also weighed strongly with the missionaries, in the conclusion they came to, that their best and wisest friends among the native converts advised them to leave, at any

rate for a time, and to retire as far as Mauritius :-not to abandon Madagascar as a lost case, but not to exasperate the government by seeming to act in defiance of its determination. Any such defiance would not only be resented and bring vengeance on its authors, but defeat the object, and render the renewal of the mission less probable at the time, and far more difficult at a future time.

Messrs. Freeman, Cameron, Chick, and Kitching, left Madagascar in June, 1835; Messrs. Johns and Baker remained till July of the following year. "That year," as Mr. Baker justly remarks, in a letter to the directors,

was a year of suspense, anxiety, and pain, to the missionary families that remained, not often paralleled even in the vicissitudes of the history of missions. The servants of the missionaries who had left were subjected to the murderous ordeal of tangena, and two of them died. An infant of another was suffocated the day after its birth by the queen's express orders, on account of the 'fatal day' of its birth. The oppressions of the government became more and more cruel. Sunday was especially and purposely desecrated by public works and amusements. Vice disease, and poverty, increased fearfully.

“In the mean time, those who had preserved their faith in the word of God became gradually known to us and to each other. Slowly and cautiously did they open their hearts even to their most intimate friends. Sometimes a recognition took place by a reference being made to the words in Jeremiah, xxxviii. 15: 'If I declare it unto thee wilt thou not surely put me to death?' to which the answer would be from the following verse:

'So Zedekiah sware secretly unto Jeremiah, saying, as the Lord liveth, that made us this soul, I will not put thee to death, neither will I give thee unto the hand of these men that seek thy life.'

"After a time the natives began to hold secret meetings at our houses and their own, and on the summits of solitary mountains, whence, amidst the treeless hills and vales of Imerina, they could observe the approach of strangers at a very remote distance. These latter were their favourite places of assembly, since they could there freely sing to the praise of their God and Saviour without fear of being overheard, and none so well as afflicted Christians know how soothing oftentimes to the afflicted heart is the language and music of a hymn.

"At length July, 1836, arrived, when the government expected that we should leave of course. We had as yet received no advice from the Society, and it seemed to us a solemn duty to bear, by our voluntary withdrawal, a public testimony to the simplicity and integrity of our object as Christian Missionaries, since we could no longer remain in our missionary capacity. Accordingly, after several unsuccessful efforts to obtain from the government even the most restricted permission to teach and print, we decided for a period, at least, to relinquish the mission. After leaving there about seventy complete Bibles, and several boxes of Psalters, Testaments, Spelling and Hymn Books, Catechisms, and Tracts, among the native Christians, chiefly buried under ground for greater security, we sorrowfully, and in great depression of mind, left, and reached Mauritius in September, 1836."

Just before our friends set out from the capital, the