502 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
God, whose spiritual presence and divine support, there 
is reason to believe, was richly experienced by many. 
The members of the Mission, though distressed, were not 
in despair, and, though cast down, were not destroyed. 
They were enabled still to hope in God. Though deprived 
of every means of usefulness among the people, and assured 
that, at least till the rage of their enemies should be some¬ 
what allayed, any deviation from the requirements of the 
queen would be perilous to themselves, and certainly fatal 
to the natives, who would be gladly seized and sacrificed to 
the deep-rooted enmity of the idolaters, if this could be done 
with any show of justice. 44 We owe it,” they remark in a 
letter dated March 10th, 1835, 44 to the merciful care of our 
heavenly Father, that no violence has yet been used towards 
us; but we are cautioned, and warned, in the most authori¬ 
tative manner, by the government, to be on our guard, as 
the least violation of the law of the country would be visited 
with the most unsparing vengeance.” 
44 How soothing,” another observes, 44 is the refuge of 
Jehovah’s immutable promises in such a day as this ! How 
consoling to reflect, that from the very nature of divine truth 
and the extreme folly of idolatry, no earthly power can 
reinstate, in the once converted Christian’s affections, a 
senseless block, for the spiritual presence of the eternal 
God.” 
Though the disrespect shown to the idols by the indivi¬ 
dual who was sentenced to the tangena, the charges of the 
officer against the Christians, and the report of their increase, 
were, in all probability, the chief causes of the grief and 
rage under which the queen sought by present measures 
to extinguish the light of truth in the country,—by her 
advisers, they were only seized as favourable occasions for 
accomplishing purposes deliberately resolved upon. Among 
