The edict of Queen Rànavàlona I against the Christian religion was published on March 1, 1835. To effect a return to absolute heathenism at all costs was the settled policy of the queen and her advisers. Christianity and heathen barbarism could not exist together. Very soon, however, to the astonishment of the queen and her advisers, it was found that although the missionaries had been expelled, and the Bible and other religious books burned, a stop had not really been put to the ‘praying.’ They had not been able to expel the Spirit of God from the hearts of the people. The good seed of the Kingdom began through persecution to strike its roots deeper, and under the influence of the dews of Heaven to spring up and yield fruit. Midnight prayer-meetings were begun in the capital itself, within gunshot of the palace. At one of those midnight prayer-meetings, when discovery meant certain death, a young man, Razàka, and his wife from Vònizòngo were baptized. He had been a scholar in the mission school at Fihàonana, and afterwards became the native pastor of the mother-church at Fihàonana, which office he held for more than twenty years. Not only so; he became the Apostle of Vònizòngo, and founded some forty of the village congregations in that district. The queen, thus thwarted, became more incensed than ever, and severer measures were resorted to in order to exterminate the hateful ‘praying.’ Death was the penalty of the slightest act of disobedience; but still the people continued to pray, and the Kingdom of God to make quiet but sure progress. The queen discovered, as other persecutors had done before, that the more she persecuted the people of God the more they increased and grew. Had the queen taken Christianity under her patronage, after the expulsion of the missionaries, she might have stifled it, or made it a mere name; but in persecuting the Christian faith she did it the best service possible. Persecution rooted and grounded Christianity in the hearts of the Hova people in a way that nothing else could have done. And not only so, but her cruelties did service to the cause of Christ in other lands besides Madagascar; for it was by the light of those martyr fires, which she in her cruelty had kindled, that thousands in this and other lands saw Madagascar, and were roused to take interest in the island and in Christian missions. Thus once more did God make the wrath of man to praise Him.