AMBATONAKANGA AND FARAVOHITRA.

OUR young friends who worked so well in raising the £2500 for the Memorial Church at Antananarivo will, we are sure, highly value the engravings contained in this month's Magazine. They are copied from photographs which Mr. Ellis has sent home; and they will enable our readers almost to see the scenes where the four nobles suffered.

One of these engravings represents a spot named Ambatonakanga. You will see a house in the centre with the black cross. It is now connected with another house, but this was not the case formerly. This is, on many accounts, a deeply interesting object. No other building in the country has been so closely connected with the trials and the triumphs of the Christians. It was their first place of public worship. Here Mr. Griffiths, Mr. Johns, and other missionaries, preached the Gospel; and truly wonderful were the scenes they witnessed. Whenever it was known that service would be held, hundreds crowded into the place, and hundreds more listened at the door and the windows, to the strange but good tidings which

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were brought to their ears. Nor was the Gospel preached in vain, for the Spirit of God carried home the message to many hearts. When the splendid palaces and temples of the world shall be as though they had never been, that rude house, with its mud walls, its narrow windows and its thatched roof, will be had in everlasting remembrance. Of this sacred place it will be said, "This and that man was born there!"

But, in 1828, Radama I. died, and Ranavolona, the late persecuting queen, took the throne. For a time, the Christians still flocked to Ambatonakanga. There, seated as close as they could be to each other upon the floor, with upturned faces and glistening eyes, the eager crowd might still be seen every Sabbath, drinking in the words which fell from the preacher's lips. But at length the darkness of a long night began to fall upon the capital. Command after command followed each other quickly from the Queen, which alarmed the Christians and hindered the Missionaries: and on Thursday, February 26th, 1835, public worship was held for the last time at Antananarivo.

For awhile this humble but honoured house of the Lord was unused. But, in two or three years, it was again filled with Christians, not now, indeed, as a sanctuary, but as a prison. Hither men and women were dragged, and were held in bondage. And from this place they were led forth either to slavery or to death. But a light shone into that prison, and, above the clanking of their chains, there was often heard the