HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
529 
selves with the believers. Their conduct furnishes the most 
conclusive evidence of the power of the Gospel on their 
hearts, inducing them to prefer rather to suffer affliction 
with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin 
for a season. 
It was highly gratifying to the devoted but sorrowing 
Missionary, to be made acquainted with the exemplary 
walk, the scriptural simplicity and abounding fruitfulness, 
of those in whose stedfastness and holiness he took so 
deep an interest. Their fellowship was of no common 
order, and the ties that united them were such as the 
Gospel alone could supply and maintain. Every individual 
who joined them, knew that, even by the expression of a 
desire to do so, he placed his life in the hands of those to 
whom he made his desires known; every Christian also 
knew that, by acknowledging to be such as the stranger 
proposed to join, he was exposing his life, should the party 
proposing to unite, not afterwards prove what he professed 
to be. 
Under these circumstances, it will not be surprising that 
the Malagasy Christians, like the primitive believers whom 
the apostle Paul essayed to join himself unto at Jerusalem, 
were led to the exercise of extreme circumspection, in pro¬ 
posing themselves in the first instance, and afterwards 
in admitting others to their fellowship. They adopted 
among themselves, on these occasions, a pledge of fidelity 
similar to that used by the prophet and Jewish monarch, 
as recorded in the prophetic writings, and maintained 
inviolate their engagement, though at the cost, in one 
instance at least, of life itself. 
The Missionary, though no longer allowed to scatter the 
seed of Divine truth in the soil, on the preparation of which 
so much toil had been bestowed, rejoiced with devout thank- 
II. 2 M 
