CHAP. XV. THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE PRESENT. 425 may, for purposes to us inscrutable, be allowed by the all wise and all-merciful God to be again enforced. It may be sufficient therefore to say that, so far as my opportunities of observing it have extended, the religion of the present is the same as that of the past, and appears to be sincere and satisfactory, a religion derived simply and solely from the teachings of God’s holy word, unfolded, applied, and sustained by the operations of the Holy Spirit. Under this Divine influence it appears to have attained a measure of development that is truly marvellous. That it is to be ascribed to this source alone would appear from the fact, that a large number of those who have suffered became Christians after the last missionaries had left the country. I repeatedly passed the places where the martyrs suffered, spots that will be consecrated by the most hallowed and affectionate associations in the minds of the Malagasy through out all future ages. I had met and conversed repeatedly with their widowed survivors and their orphan children, as well as with those who witnessed the steadfastness of their faith and the quiet triumph of their death; and from their testimony had derived more than confirmation of all that we had previously heard. The authorities in Madagascar, who sought by torture and death to extinguish the Christian faith, by whatever motives they may have been actuated, only imitated the Diocletians of the early ages, and the Alvas, the Medicis, and the Marys of more recent times, and with corresponding results in the invincible constancy of those who fell and the subsequent fruits of the imperishable seed which was scattered in the martyrs’ blood. Deeply affecting were the details which I received of the sorrows and the consolations of the sufferers; of their conduct in the hour of peril, as well as on the day of impeachment land of trial; with the noble testimony which they bore, when brought before judges and rulers, for His