Thirty Years in Madagascar

er advisers. Christianity and heathen barbarism could not exist together. Very soon, however, to the astonishment of the queen and her advisers, it was found that although the missionaries had been expelled, and the Bible and other religious books burned, a stop had not really been put to the 'praying.' They had not been able to expel the Spirit of God from the hearts of the people. The good seed of the Kingdom began through persecution to strike its roots deeper, and under the influence of the dews of Heaven to spring up and yield fruit. Midnight prayer-meetings were begun in the capital itself, within gun-shot of the palace. At one of those midnight prayer-meetings, when discovery meant certain death, a young man, Razaka, and his wife from Vonizongo were baptized. He had been a scholar in the mission school at Fihaonana, and afterwards became the native pastor of the mother-church at Fihaonana, which office he held for more than twenty years. Not only so; he became the ApostleSevere Persecution 43 of Vonizongo, and founded some forty of the village congregations in that district. The queen, thus thwarted, became more incensed than ever, and severer measures were resorted to in order to exterminate the hateful' praying.' Death was the penalty of the slightest act of disobedience; but still the people continued to pray, and the Kingdom of God to make quiet but sure progress. The queen discovered, as other persecutors had done before, that the more she per...