COPIED MADAGASCAR

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

COPIED MADAGASCAR

PERSECUTION IN GERMANY. STORY OF CENTURY AGO. The bitter persecution of Christians in Germany reminds us that this is the centenary of another attempt •to stamp out Christianity in the name of a people, says the Children's Newspaper. It was Madagascar which tried it before; the Hitler Nazis are copying Queen Ranavalona. and it is interesting to recall the story. One day in 1835 Ranavalona, Queen of Madagascar, addressed her people in her capital, Antananarivo. There Is on the west of the city a vast plain used to-day for athletic contests, and on that plain the queen held a Kabary, or massmeeting. It was her Christian subjects who were the cause of the assembly. They ■were few, but their numbers were grow-? ing. The queen had heard that they served another king, one Jesus, and she believed there could not be two rulers in Madagascar.

Some brave Welshmen had brought the Christian message to the island. David Jones and Thomas Bevan had landed in 1818. To this day thp Welsh look upon Madagascar as a kind of adopted island, and every Welsh boy knows the names of David Jones, David Griffiths, and others who were to Madagascar what St. Columba and St. Augustine were to Britain. The king and his successor had welcomed the white men because' of their learning, but when Ranavalona came to the throne in 1828 she determined tq crush' the Christians. She told the missionaries to leave the country, but one of them hastily made her two bars of soap, and this new and attractive industry gained for the church a few years more of peace. But by 1835 the queen was really alarmed, so everyone was ordered to the Kabary, We can picture the fear in the hearts of the Christians, who did not know much of their new religion, but knew that the queen was angry with them, In a tense atmosphere, amid martial display, the Decree was read. It told how the queen detested the new religion which foreigners had brought. Were not the gods of their fathers good enough for her people? The Christians wete to accuse themselves within a month and promise no longer to follow the new faith-

Speech after speech was made by the obsequious chiefs, who told the queen they would serve her alone and would be ready to punish all who did not submit. The assembly lasted tjll sundown. Then the little companies of Christians went home, some to meet in their 1 churches to read the Bible and pray together. Some; of course, obeyed the queen, but many said they could not deny their Lord. So began the great persecution, The missionaries were expelled, and the Christians fled into hiding in the hills and in the forests. Some were sold into slavery.

The first martyr was Rasalama, who was speared to death in 1837. Others were burned, or thrown from the Rock of Hurling. But some remained in hiding for able to keep their faith alive because they had the Bible in their own language. The missionaries had raced to complete a translation of the Bible, and in June of 1935, just before they left, it was finished. They buried about 70 copies in hiding-places known to the Christians, who met in little groups to read them while ope listened for spies. One “buried' Bible" is 4 treasure of the Bible Society’? headquarters at London. It was kept during those dark days in a cave which had been used as a small-pox hospital. There Rasaka, afterwards a' leader of the church, hid for two years. No ope knows exactly how many martyrs there were, but there must have been over 80. Yet when the persecution ceased with the queen's death in 1861 the church was far stronger in numbers and character than it had been before. There is still living at Oxford the Rev. w. E. Cousins, who went out for the London Missionary Society in 1862, who has talked with those who suffered and can tell of the days when Christians came forth after persecution to find themselves part of a great and courageous church.