Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present CenturyGibbs, Mifflin Wistar
History
Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century
Gibbs, Mifflin Wistar
African Americans
To summarize, approximately there are now 110 foreign missionaries on
the island; over 2,000 congregations, with a total of 400,000 adherents,
which include 100,000 church members; while the Protestant schools
contain 150,000 children. No statement of the Christianizing agencies
and influences would be just or correct that did not include that of the
Roman Catholic Church. "No one," it has been truly said, "can be long in
Madagascar without learning to admire the self-denial, patience and
heroic fortitude with which its work is carried on." It has been thus
fittingly described, a few years ago, by an English visitor: "In 1861,
when Catholic missionaries landed on the shores of Tamatave there was
not a Catholic on the island; but little by little, by dint of
unwearied labor, suffering and preaching, they won over not hundreds but
thousands of pagans to the love and knowledge of our Lord and His truth,
so that their pagan converts number over 130,000. They have built a
magnificent cathedral, which is the glory and pride of Antananarivo.
They have also 300 churches and 400 or more Catholic stations scattered
over the island, where 18,000 children are taught and trained by a large
and elevated staff of Christian brothers and sisters of St. Joseph, and
641 native teachers. They have also created industrial schools, where
various trades are taught by two devoted brothers, Benjamin and Arnoad,
and at Ambohipo they have a flourishing college for young Malagash. They
have also on the island four large dispensaries, where thousands of
prescriptions are distributed gratis to all who seek to relieve their
sufferings. They have also established a leper hospital at Ambohivoraka,
where the temporal and spiritual wants of 150 poor lepers are freely
administered to, and have already opened another such establishment, in
Betsilio land. Prison visitation, dispensing rice, clothing, and
spiritual instruction to half-starved and naked prisoners under the
Madagascar rule; their catalogue of books devotional, literary and
scientific; a dictionary, all of which have been edited and published in
the Madagascan language, are among the golden contributions for
civilization by the Catholics in this far-off island continent in the
Indian seas."
In referring to their labors, and to which, comparatively, I have made
but brief reference, Mr. Cousins says: "To much in the Roman Catholic
system we may be strenuously opposed; but to their zeal, their skill,
their patience, their self-denial, we render the homage of an ungrudging
admiration."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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