SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT. 353 



came forward to be baptized and to become church members ; 

 and every missionary was pressed with work and felt over- 

 whelmed with the responsibility thrown upon him. The 

 number of congregations in the central province of Imerina 

 increased in two years more than tenfold, and the atten- 

 dants upon public worship in a somewhat less proportion ; in 

 fact, almost the whole population of Imerina professed them- 

 selves to be Christians. 



The news of this wonderful movement was received witli 

 great enthusiasm in England, and caused very exaggerated 

 and incorrect notions to be formed as to the character and 

 real significance of the change which had come over Malagasy 

 society. A little consideration would have made it evident 

 that a vast proportion of these new converts were only Chris- 

 tians because the Government favoured Christianity, and 

 would have probably become Eoman Catholics or even 

 Mohammedans with almost equal readiness had their rulers 

 favoured those forms of religion. Besides all this, it was 

 forgotten how large a country Madagascar is, and that these 

 changes had only affected two or three out of its many dif- 

 ferent tribes ; while the great majority of the people, probably 

 at least three-fourths of the whole population of the island, 

 were hardly at all influenced by Christianity. 



There was, no doubt, great reason for thankfulness in the 

 fact, that in the central provinces all external hindrances to 

 the progress of the gospel had been removed, but its very 

 success had become its difficulty, and its triumph seemed 

 likely to prove its greatest embarrassment. The small body 

 of Protestant missionaries resident in the capital at the close 

 of 1869 (there were only ten of them) seemed utterly in- 

 sufficient to guide and control the almost heathen crowds who 

 filled the chapels and pressed into church communion ; and, 

 to this very day, the presence of such nominal Christians in 

 the churches forms one of the greatest difficulties and causes 

 of perplexity with which the missionary has to contend. 



But strenuous efforts were made to cope with the great 

 press of work involved in the new state of things. In 1870 

 the mission staff" was largely increased, until, in two or three 

 years' time from the destruction of the idols, it numbered 



z 



