A few weeks after we were settled at Fìhàonana Razàka came to me bringing a deacon, who had been sent from one of the distant villages to seek my advice under the following circumstances: the local preacher of the village church from which the deacon came had fallen into sin, and was living with a young woman, one of the singers, notwithstanding that he was a married man. The church came to know of his conduct, and were for excommunicating him at once; but they had to face this difficulty: the church possessed no Bible of its own, and that which had been used from the first belonged to this man. Now, if they excommunicated him, naturally he would take his Bible with him, leaving the church without one; and yet they could not think of allowing him to remain as a preacher. What were they to do? I soon put matters right by giving the deacon a pulpit Bible for the church, which should belong to it and to no one man, and telling them to suspend the man from church fellowship at once. Shortly after this deacon visited me I was told, on good authority of a chief down towards the north-west coast, who having heard that the queen, the prime minister and the officers of the palace had become Christians, and that the great majority of the people in Imèrina had followed their example, thought he and his people ought to go and do likewise. He convened all his subjects, of whom I understand there was a goodly number; and, having secured the services of a man from the capital, who professed to be a Christian pastor or preacher with authority to baptize converts, he had the whole of his clansmen and slaves baptized there and then. He then addressed them to this effect: ‘Now you are all baptized Christians, see that you conduct yourselves in a proper manner; for if I hear of any of you doing wrong, I shall certainly punish you very severely. For the first offence I shall have you beaten, and for the second I shall have your heads cut off!’ I was assured that this had a most wonderful and beneficial effect for a time on that part of the country, but of course it did not last. Men cannot be forced into religion, or coerced into Christianity--and their religion would not be worth having if they could. The condition to-day of those districts in which coercion was practised or permitted by the so-called ‘Palace Church Evangelists’ and other government officials, from mistaken motives, is a sad enough example of that.