MADAGASCAR by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 3, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 22.

MADAGASCAR.

By Editor

IN the last annual report of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, is given a very discouraging account of affairs in Madagascar, owing to the advent of French rule. From this report we cull the following:—

“The circumstances of the country are very peculiar, and in some degree very depressing. There is a bitter feud between the Hovas and the Betsimisaraka. The latter, after long years of oppression, have revenged themselves on the heretofore dominant Hovas. Passions once let loose have broken into fury; all the idle and dishonest in the land have seen their opportunity for rapine, robbery, and bloodshed, and made the most of it. With the advent of the French, the Jesuits have taken heart, and, with the civil power at their back, have been guilty of many acts of aggression on the other missions. Sites and mission buildings, even hospitals, supposed to have been secured by covenants and treaties, have been seized and appropriated to other uses. Scarcely any of the Church [of England] natives have made shipwreck of their faith; others, through fear of consequences, have yielded themselves to the persuasions and bribes of the Jesuits.”

It can not be said that all the disasters and the change in religious influences are the fault of the French Government; it is more the result of church dependence upon the civil arm. The government under the Hova or native régime had favored the Protestant missionary enterprises to the detriment of the Catholics, and when the French came into power, there was a change, and advantage was taken by the Jesuits to retaliate upon their old opponents. Thus from both sides we have illustrated the disposition of a State-supported church to use its government prestige to discommode those who follow not with it. The Church of England and Lutheran missions in Madagascar are suffering from a principle to which they both adhere, namely, a dependence on the State for defense.

The presence of war in any country, and especially where the government has been overturned, gives for a time unbridled license to disorderly classes promiscuously. And when uncivilized or half-civilized people, altho nominally Christian, find encouragement to begin depredations, they are very apt to go beyond what any hostile church or even a professedly civilized army would indorse. So the fact that those who encourage ruthless retaliation against opponents sometimes suffer from the same hands, is not proof that they did not set the ball in motion. Nor is it surprising that churches which have adhered to false principles of support and defense should sometimes become the victims of their own false ideas.

The natives in Madagascar, when once fairly started in the game of depredations on missions as well as upon other classes, have not been over-