But on the other hand, to show the change that was coming over the people as to their views of death and their burial customs, I may mention that the first legacy was left to the church during that year by the wife of a petty chief, who was one of our village pastors. I was invited to preach at her funeral, which was conducted in a quiet, decent, and most orderly manner. There was no feasting, drinking, music nor dancing, and her money was left to the church instead of being buried with her corpse. Our good Christian queen gave an example during that year of her desire to be a nursing-mother to the church. An officer of high rank in the native army, who had been married for some years to a woman of lower social rank than himself, divorced her as she had no family by him. As he was a member of the church in his native village he was first remonstrated with, and then suspended from church fellowship for divorcing his wife without proper cause. Being a person of some consequence in his own village, he resented being excommunicated and, in a measure, disgraced in the eyes of his relations and fellow villagers; but as the church refused to readmit him, unless he took back his wife, he began in various ways to persecute the pastor, office-bearers, and members of the village church. It was a ‘child,’ that is, connected with and under the care of the mother-church of Ampàribè in the capital. One of the pastors of Ampàribè was also one of the queen’s chaplains. The village pastor had complained to him of the treatment he and his people had received at the hands of the officer for doing their duty. One day, while conversing with the queen about the progress of the churches, he told her about the faithful little village church and the conduct of this officer. The queen summoned all the parties before her, heard all that had taken place, and asked the officer if the statements made were correct, and he had to admit that they were. She ordered him to take back his wife, and for persecuting the pastor and church for doing their duty she disgraced him, took away all his honours and reduced him to the ranks. The queen then turned to the pastor and office-bearers of the church and thanked them for so courageously doing their duty, and said: ‘_Remember that in the Church of Jesus Christ we are all equal. I am the same as a slave woman there!_’ That was a most extraordinary statement for her to make. Twenty years before, such a statement might have cost her her crown, if not her life.