At the date of this writing, Ali has been again to Mohammed's camp, taking books and medicines, and has done his utmost to prepare the way for opening schools among the Bedawin in their own camps. Ali has brought another letter from Sitt Harba, in which she gives her views with regard to the education of the Bedawin. I sent several written questions to her in Arabic, to which she cheerfully gave replies. The following is the substance of her answers:

I. The Bedawin Arabs ought to learn to read and write, in order to learn religion, to increase in understanding, and to become acquainted with the Koran. They profess to be Moslems, but in reality have no religion.

II. The reason why so few of the Bedawin know how to read, is because it is out of their line of business. They prefer fighting, plundering, and feeding flocks and herds. Reading and books are strange and unknown to them.

III. If they wished to learn to read, the true time and place would be in the winter, when they migrate to the East in the Jowf, where they are quiet and uninterrupted by government tax-gatherers.

IV. I learned to read in the vicinity of Hums. My father brought for my instruction a Khoteeb or Moslem teacher, who taught me reading. His name was Sheikh Abdullah. The Sheikh Mohammed taught me writing.

V. The Bedawin esteem a boy better than a girl, because the boy may rise to honor, but the girl has nothing to expect from her husband, and his parents and relatives, but cursing and abuse.

VI. A man may marry four wives. If one of them ceases bearing children, and she be of his family, he makes a covenant of fraternity with her, and he supports her in his own camp, but she is regarded simply as a sister. If she be of another family, he sends her home, and pays her what her friends demand.

VII. The girls and women have no more religion than the boys and men. They never pray nor fast, nor make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But the old women repeat certain prayers, and visit the ziyaras, mazars, and welys, and other holy places.

VIII. If teachers would come among us, who can live as we do, and dwell in our camps, and travel with us to the desert, they could teach the great part of our children to read, especially if they understood the art of medicine.

Ali spent several weeks among them, sleeping in the camp, and attending upon their sick. The camp was on the mountains east of the Sea of Galilee. Fevers prevailed through the entire district from Tiberias to Damascus, and Ali devoted himself faithfully to the care of the sick. The Sheikh himself was ill with fever and ague, as were several members of his family. One day Ali prepared an effervescing draught for him, and when the acid and the alkali united, and the mixture effervesced, the Bedawin seated in the great tent screamed and ran from the tent as if the Ruellas were down upon them! What, said they, is this? He pours water into water, and out come fire and smoke! The Sheikh himself was afraid to drink it, so Ali took it himself, and finally, after explaining the principle of the chemical process, he induced both the Sheikh and the Sit Harba to drink the draught. On leaving the encampment, the Sheikh gave Ali a guard, and three Turkish pounds (about $14,) to pay for his medicines and medical services, saying, that as his Bedawin were growing poor since they were forbidden to make raids on other tribes, they could not pay for his services, and he would pay for all. He offered to give him a goat skin bottle of semin (Arab butter) and several sheep, but Ali was unable to carry either, and declined the offer. Ali brought a specimen of Bedawin bread. It is black, coarse, and mixed with ashes and sand. The Bedawin pound their wheat, and knead the coarse gritty flour without sifting, and bake it on the heated earthen ovens.

The Bedawin swarm with vermin. Their garments, their persons, their tents and their mats are literally alive with the third plague of Egypt, lice! Ali soon found himself completely overrun with them, and was almost driven wild. The Sitt Harba urged him to try the Bedawin remedy for cleansing his head. On inquiring what it was, he declared he would rather have the disease than the remedy! After his return to his village in Lebanon, he spent several days in ablutions and purifications before venturing to bring me his report. The Sitt Harba gave him a collection of the nursery rhymes which she and the Bedawin women sing to their little brown babies, and some of them will be found in the "Children's Chapter" of this volume. The Sheikh Mohammed, who can neither read nor write, repeated to Ali the following Kosîdeh or Song, which he composed in Arabic poetry, after his victory over Feisal, of the Ruella tribe, in 1866. The Ruellas had previously driven Mohammed's tribe from one of the finest pasture regions in Howian, and Ed Dukhy regained it after a desperate struggle.

The Arabic original of these lines breathes the true spirit of poetry, and shows that the old poetic fire still burns in the desert. Feisal now lives in the region adjacent to Mohammed Dûkhy, and they leave a space of several miles between their camps to prevent trespass, and the danger of re-opening the old blood-feud.

I would commend the Arabs of the Desert to the prayerful remembrance of the Women of America. How the gospel is to reach them, is one of the great problems of our day. Their women are sunken to the lowest depths of physical and moral degradation. The extent of their religion is in being able to swear Mohammedan oaths. "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known." Although their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them, let them feel that there is one class of men who love them and care for them with a disinterested love, and who seek their everlasting welfare!

CHAPTER XV.

"Woman possesses a nature remarkably impressible and susceptible to influence, owing to the delicacy of her organization and the peculiarities of her structure. Her proper culture therefore calls for the greatest possible skill and care to protect her from those corrupting influences to which she is by nature especially susceptible. We should therefore neither leave her locked in the fetters of the ancient barbarism and rudeness, nor leave her free to the uncontrollable liberty of this modern civilization, for both these extremes bring her into one common evil estate and both have one effect upon her.

"Have you not observed how the customs of ancient rude barbarism corrupted the manners of woman and obliterated all those virtues and excellencies for which she is especially designed by nature? It was deemed most opprobrious for woman to learn to read and write, to say nothing of other arts. It was thought indispensable to bind upon her mouth the fetters of profound silence so that none ever heard her voice but her own coarse husband, and the walls of the enclosure in which she was kept imprisoned. She had no liberty of thought or action. Every woman's thoughts were limited by the thoughts of her husband, and her character was cast in the mould of his, whether that were good or bad. And in addition to this, she always suffered from whatever of rudeness there might be in her rough companion, who availed himself of his superior brute physical strength as a weapon to overcome her moral power. He scourged and cursed and despised her in every possible way, when she was innocent of crime or error. As a result of this course, her own self respect, and the feeling that she was abused and insulted by her companion or partner, led her oftentimes to cast off all shame and modesty, whenever a suitable opportunity presented itself. This grew out of the fact that she no longer regarded herself as the companion of her husband and the sharer of all his natural and moral rights, his joys and sorrows, but she rather imagined herself his captive and bond slave. She thus sank to the position of a slave-woman who is never allowed peace or rest, and cares nothing for the training of her children or the ordering of her house, since she looks upon herself as a stranger in a home not her own, and we all know how difficult it is for a slave to perform the duties of the free!

"On the other hand, have you not observed how the influence of modern civilization is corrupting the nature of woman and making havoc with her morals?

"There is nothing strange in this, for her delicate nature, when it had escaped from the chains and imprisonment of the mildest barbarism, into the open free arena of civilization, lost its reckoning, and wandered hither and thither in bewilderment according to its own unrestrained passions. Woman thus became like a feather, 'Borne on the tempest wherever it blows, and driven about where no one knows.'

"Now since evil images and objects are far more numerous in this world than those which are good, it becomes evident that the influence of evil upon the mind of woman is stronger and more abiding than the influence of the good, owing to this intense delicacy of texture in her mental constitution. Let us suppose that one man and one woman were placed in a position where they should only see evil deeds, or only good deeds: the woman would leave that place either vastly worse than the man, or vastly better. Now the moral misconduct of woman is far more detrimental to the propagation of the race, than is the misconduct of man. It is therefore better for the woman not to go to the extremes of the modern civilization, whose evils are equal to, yes, and far surpass, its benefits. Have you not noticed that the leaders of modern civilization in our age, have imitated, if not surpassed, all the excesses of riot, and lust and rapine, ever practiced under the barbarism of the ages of antiquity? Do not the women of this age go lower in shamelessness than the women of ancient times? Here we see them veiling their faces with the flimsy gauze of artifice, and befouling the pure waters of life with the turbulent stream of their own vanity. They pollute the purity of real beauty by the foul arts of beautifying, and cry out in loud rude voices in every assembly and gathering. They strut about in vain-glorious conceit, and flaunt their gaudy apparel in indecent boldness. They claim what does not belong to them and meddle with what does not concern them. They do not blush to cloud the precious jewel of modesty with the selfish airs of passion. Nothing is said which they do not hear, nothing occurs which they do not see. They become bold, unblushing and unwomanly.

"Such being the state of things, there can be no doubt that an excess of this kind of civilization for woman amounts to about the same thing as the excess of her rude barbarism in ancient times. The two extremes meet. The dividing line between them then, that is, the middle course, is the proper one for woman to take. To this middle course there must be some natural and legitimate guide. This guide is a sound education, and on this subject we propose at some future time to write, inasmuch as the education of woman is one of the most important of subjects. Woman is the one fountain from which is derived the life of man in its earliest periods. She is the source of all training, and the root of character. Have you not heard that she who rocks the cradle, moves the world?"

It is evident that the author of this paper has not been so happy as to see the noblest type of a sanctified Christian civilization, such as can be seen in the Christian homes of America and England, or even in the truly Christian homes of Syria. Let us hope that the day is not far distant, when even in Aleppo, a pure Christianity shall have taken the place of that semi-barbaric system styled the papacy, which enthralls the intellects and hearts of so many of the nominal Christians of the Orient, and when the enslaved inmates of the Moslem hareems shall be set free, not to indulge in the license of a Parisian libertinism, but with that liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free!

THE VALUE SET ON WOMAN'S LIFE IN SYRIA.

The free license allowed to men by the Koran in the beating of their wives, has led the entire population of the East to set a low estimate upon the life of woman. Until recently in Syria women were poisoned, thrown down wells, beaten to death, or cast into the sea, and the government made no inquisition into the matter. According to Mohammedan law, a prosecution for murder must always be commenced by the friends of the victim, and if they do not enter complaint, or furnish witnesses, the murderer is not even arrested. And if he be convicted of the crime, he is released on paying to the relatives of the victim the price of blood, which is fixed at 13,000 piastres, or $520! A man may well "count the cost" before committing murder. This constant compounding of punishment has degraded the popular views of the value of human life, so that formerly the murder of a woman was never punished. In March, 1856, a Druze girl near B'hamdûn married a man of her own choice, instead of marrying the man assigned to her by her family. She was waylaid by her own brother and the rejected suitor, murdered and thrown into a well.

About a year after the massacres of 1860, while the European Commissioners were still in Syria, and Lebanon was beginning to attain something of its wonted quiet, several Turkish soldiers made an assault upon a young Maronite girl from the village of Ain Kesûr, who was carrying a jar of water to the workmen on the Deir el Komr road. Mr. Calhoun was requested by the Relief Committee in Beirût to devote the charity funds distributed in this part of Lebanon, to giving employment to the needy in road-building. This girl was employed to supply the men with water. The brutal soldiers attempted to gag her with a handkerchief, in order to accomplish their design, but she was too strong for them. The struggle was long and violent, but she finally effected her escape, leaving on the road the fragments of the broken jar, her shoes and shreds of calico which they had torn from her clothing. Just at that moment Giurgius el Haddad, Mr. Calhoun's cook, came up, and seeing the broken jar and the clothing, guessed what had happened, and after finding the girl, and hearing her story, started in pursuit of the soldiers to Ainab, whither they had gone, and where a Turkish officer was stationed. He stated the case to the officer, and received in reply a blow on his arm from a heavy cane. The case was reported to the Turkish Colonel in Abeih, who summoned all parties and ordered each of the soldiers to be beaten with forty lashes on the bare back. But word had reached Col. Frazier, the British Commissioner, and he came at once to Abeih in company with Omar Pasha, with order from Evad, Pasha, to examine the case de novo. The result was that two of the soldiers were condemned by military law to be shot, and were shot at sunset June 5th, in front of the old palace just below Mr. Calhoun's house. The event produced a profound impression, and Druzes and Moslems began to feel that a woman's life and honor were after all of some value.

In April, 1862, when Daûd Pasha was governor of Mt. Lebanon, a Druze, named Hassan, murdered a Druze girl of his own village, supposing that Daûd Pasha would not interfere with the time-honored custom of killing girls! Much to his surprise, however, he was arrested, convicted and hung, and the poor women of all sects in the mountain began to feel that after all they had an equal right to life with the other sex.

In most parts of Syria to-day, the murder of women and girls is an act so insignificant as hardly to deserve notice. Mt. Lebanon and vicinity constitute an exception perhaps, but woman's right to life is one of those rights which have not yet been fully guaranteed in the Turkish Empire.

In October, 1862, the Arabic official newspaper in Beirût, contained a letter from Hums which illustrates this fact. A fanatical wretch from Hamath, one of the infamous Moslem saints, set up the claim that he had received the power to cast out devils by divine inspiration. He found credulous followers among the more ignorant, and went to Hums to practice his diabolical trade. A poor woman had lost her reason through excessive grief at the death of her son. The husband and others of her relatives went to consult the new prophet. He refused to go and see her, stating that he would not condescend to go to the devils, but the devils must come to him. The poor woman was accordingly brought to him, and left to await the opportune moment, when he could cast out the devils, which he declared to be raving within her. After a few days, her father called to inquire about her, and found her growing constantly worse. The Hamathite told him that he must bring a gallon of liquid pitch, to be used as a medicine, and the next day the devils would leave her. The pitch was brought, and after the father had gone, the lying prophet tied a cord around her feet, and drew her up to the ceiling, and while she was thus suspended, thrust a red hot iron rod into one of her eyes, and cauterized her body almost from head to foot! He then placed the pitch on the floor under her head, and set it on fire until the body was "burned to charcoal!" The next day the friends called, expecting to find her restored to her right mind, when the wretch pointed them to the blackened cinder. They exclaimed with horror and asked him the reason of this bloody crime? He replied that on applying the test of burning pitch, one of the devils had gone out of her, tearing out her right eye, and when he forbade the rest from destroying the other eye, they fell upon her and killed her! The body was buried, but the government took not the slightest notice of the fact. The official journal in Beirût simply warned the public against patronizing such a bloody impostor!

CHAPTER XVI.

Mr. Naame Tabet, the husband of Miriam, who was educated by Dr. and Mrs. De Forest, writes as follows:—

The Rev. John Wortabet, M.D., Professor of Anatomy in the Syrian Protestant College, and husband of Salome, writes as follows:—

CHAPTER XVII.

Mrs. E. Watson, an English lady of great energy and zeal in the cause of female education, after years of labor in North and South America, Greece and Asia Minor, came to Syria in 1858, and commenced a girls' school in her own hired house. She afterwards removed to Shemlan, in Mount Lebanon, where she erected a building at her own expense for a girls' boarding school, and afterwards gave it to the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East. She has since, with untiring energy, erected another building for a Seminary for Druze and Christian girls, the former Institution continuing as it has been for many years under the efficient management of Miss Hicks, assisted by Miss Dobbie. She has also recently erected a neat and substantial church edifice in Shemlan.

In Miss Hicks' absence, Mrs. Watson has addressed me the following letter:

Mr. Elias Suleeby, aided by friends in Scotland, has for a considerable period conducted common schools in a part of Mount Lebanon and the Bukaa, and now the enterprise has been adopted by the Free Church of Scotland, who have sent the Rev. Mr. Rae to be their Superintendent.

Their schools are chiefly for boys, though in all the village schools it is usual for a few of the smaller girls to attend the boys' school. In Suk el Ghurb, however, they have a boarding school containing some twenty-five girls.

THE PRUSSIAN DEACONESSES INSTITUTE IN BEIRUT

The Orphan House, Boarding School and Hospital with which the Prussian Deaconesses are connected, were established in 1860. The two former are supported by the Kaiserswerth Institution in Germany, and the latter by the Knights of St. John.

In the Orphan House are one hundred and thirty orphan girls, all native Syrians, who are clothed, fed and instructed for four or five years, and often transformed from wild, untutored semi-barbarians to tidy, well behaved and useful young women. They have ordinarily about fifty applicants waiting for a vacancy in order to enter.

The Boarding School is for the education of the children of European residents, Germans, French, Italians, Greeks, Maltese, English, Scotch, Irish, Hungarians, Dutch, Swiss, Danish, Americans and others. The medium of instruction is the French language.

Since the Orphan School began, many of the girls have married, thirty have become teachers, and about twenty of them are living as servants in families.

In August of the year 1861, the Deaconesses had received about 110 orphans. The children entering are received for three years, and the surviving parent or guardian is required to sign a bond, agreeing to leave the child for that period, or if the child is withdrawn before that time, to pay to the Deaconesses all that has been expended upon her.

In the summer of 1861, several of the parents came and tried to remove their children, though they had no means of supporting them, but the contract stood in the way, and they had no money to pay. The Jesuits then came forward and furnished the parents with French gold in Napoleons, and withdrew in one day fifty orphan girls from the institution, sending them, not to an institution of their own, but turning them back upon their wretched parents and friends to be trained in poverty and ignorance. A few days later, thirty more of the girls were removed in the same way, leaving only thirty. The parents had a legal right to remove the children on the payment of the money, but what shall be said of the cruelty of the Jesuits who turned back these wretched children to the destitution and misery of a Syrian orphan? The Jesuits are the same everywhere, unscrupulous and intriguing, counting all means as right, which promote their own end.

THE BRITISH SYRIAN SCHOOLS.

These Schools, so numerous and widely extended, have grown up since the massacre year 1860. I remember well the first arrival of Mrs. Bowen Thompson in Beirût, and her persevering energy in forming her little school for the widows and orphans of Hasbeiya, Deir el Komr and Damascus.

From that little beginning in 1860, the school increased the following year, until finally other branch schools were organized in Beirût and Lebanon, and then in Damascus and Tyre, until now, the following schedule, furnished to me by the officers of the Institution, will show to what proportions the enterprise has grown. The Memoir of Mrs. Thompson, entitled "The Daughters of Syria," gives so full a history of these schools, that I need only refer the reader to that volume for all the information desired. Since the lamented death of Mrs. Thompson, the direction of the schools has been entrusted to her sister, Mrs. Mentor Mott. The Central Training School in Beirût was under the care of Mrs. Shrimpton, who labored with great earnestness and wisdom in that important institution until the spring of 1873, when she resigned her position and became connected with the work of Female education under the American mission in Syria. She was aided by English and native teachers. The schools in Zahleh, Damascus, Hasbeiya and Tyre are under the care of English and Scotch ladies, who have certainly evinced the most admirable courage and resolution in entering, in several of these places, upon outpost duty, without European society, and isolated for months together from persons speaking their own language. I believe that such instances as these have demonstrated anew the fact that where woman is to be reached, woman can go, and Christian women from Christian lands, even if beyond the age generally fixed as the best adapted to the easy acquisition of a foreign language, may yet do a great work in maintaining centres of influence at the outposts, and superintending the labors of native teachers. These young native teachers trained in Shemlan, Sidon, Suk el Ghurb and Beirût, cannot go to distant places as teachers, and ought not to go, without a home and proper protection provided for them. Such protection is given by a European or American woman, who has the independence and the resolution to go where no missionary family resides, and carry on the work of female education. Even at the risk of offending the modesty of the persons concerned, I cannot refrain from putting on record my admiration of the course of Miss Wilson in Zahleh, Miss Gibbon in Hasbeiya, and Miss Williams in Tyre, in making homes for themselves, and carrying on their work far from European society and intercourse.

The British Syrian Schools are doing a good work in promoting Bible education. Many of the native teachers, male and female, have been trained in our Mission Seminaries, and not a few of them are members of our evangelical churches. It has always been my aim, from the time when Mrs. Bowen Thompson first landed in Syria to the present time, to do all in my power to "help those women which labored with me in the gospel."

We are engaged in a common work, surrounded by thousands of needy perishing souls, Mohammedan, Pagan and Nominal Christian. The work is pressing, and the Lord's husbandmen ought to work together, forgetting and ignoring all diversities of nationality, denomination and social customs. There should be no such word as American, English, Scotch or German, attached to any enterprise that belongs to the common Master. The common foe is united in opposition. Let us be united in every practicable way. Let our name be Christian, our work one of united sympathy, prayer and coöperation, and let not Christ be divided in His members. I write these words in connection with the subject of the British Syrian Schools, because I can speak from experience of the value of such coöperation in the past. As Acting Pastor of the Native Evangelical Church in Beirût, to the communion of which I have received so many young teachers and pupils from the various Seminaries and schools, I feel the great importance of this hearty coöperation and unity of action among those who are at the head of the various Protestant Educational Institutions in Syria.

The Emissaries of Rome are laboring with sleepless vigilance to win Syria to the Papacy. Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Nazareth, Jesuits, Lazarists, Capuchins, Dominicans, and Franciscans, monks, nuns and papal legates, are swarming throughout the land. Though notoriously jealous of each other's progress, they are always united in their common opposition to the Evangelical faith, and an open Bible. We have thus not only the old colossal fortresses of Syrian error to demolish, but the new structures of Jesuitical craft to overturn, before Syria comes to Christ.

It has been stated on a preceding page that in 1835, the American wife of an English merchant, Mrs. Alexander Tod, gave a large part of the funds to build the first school-house for girls ever built in Syria. That substantial union has been happily reproduced in the cordial coöperation of the Anglo-American and German communities in Beirût, both in the Church, public charities and educational institutions, up to the present time.

Let us all live in Christ, work for Christ, keep our eye fixed on Christ, and we shall be with Christ, and Christ with us!

BRITISH SYRIAN SCHOOLS, 1872.

MISS TAYLOR'S SCHOOL FOR MOSLEM GIRLS.

This worthy Christian lady from Scotland is doing a quiet yet most effective work in Beirût, with which few are acquainted, yet it is carried on in faith from year to year, and the fruits will no doubt appear one day, in a vast reformation in the order, morality and general improvement of the Moslem families of Beirût.

Ever since the days of Mrs. Sarah L. Smith, and Mrs. Dr. Dodge, Moslem girls have been more or less in attendance upon the schools of the Syria Mission, but the purely Moslem schools of Miss Taylor and of the British Syrian Schools are making a special effort to extend education into every Moslem household.

This school was opened in February, 1868, for the poorest of the poor. It received the name of "The Original Ragged school for Moslem Girls." No one is considered as enrolled, who has not been at least three weeks in regular attendance. The number already received has reached very near five hundred, all Mohammedans, except five Jewish and fifteen Druze girls. Native teachers are also employed, and the pupils are taught reading, writing, geography, and arithmetic. The principal lesson-book is the Bible. The early history of this institution is replete with interest; but it has attracted little public notice hitherto. It has always been a prudential question whether it would not be wiser to proceed with its work in a quiet unobtrusive way, so as not to awake fanatical opposition. But steady and appreciative friends have stood by it from the beginning, and those who know the school best have commended it most earnestly.

CHURCH OF SCOTLAND SCHOOL FOR JEWISH GIRLS IN BEIRUT.

This school has been in operation since 1865. Although established originally for Jewish girls alone, of whom it frequently had fifty in regular attendance, it has also had under instruction, Greek and Moslem girls.

Three European teachers and two native teachers have been connected with it, under the supervision of the Rev. James Robertson, Pastor of the Anglo-American congregation in Beirût.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Our schools are of two classes, the High schools or Seminaries for young men and young women, and the common schools for children of both sexes. In the former, Biblical instruction is the great thing, the chief design of the High schools being to train the young to a correct and thorough acquaintance with Divine truth. The course of Bible instruction conducted by Mr. Calhoun in Abeih Seminary, is, I doubt not, more thorough and constant, than in any College or High School in the United States. While the sciences are taught systematically, the Bible is made the principal text-book, and several hours each day are given to its study. In our common schools, likewise, Bible reading and instruction hold a prominent place. Owing to the paucity of books in the Arabic language proper to be used as reading books, a reading book was prepared by the Mission, consisting almost exclusively of extracts from the Scriptures. In addition to this book, the Psalms of David and the New Testament are used as regular reading books in all the schools. There are daily exercises in reading the Bible and reciting the Catechism. It will be observed from what I have stated, that the amount of spiritual knowledge acquired by the children, in the very process of learning to read, is not small. Being obliged to commit to memory texts, paragraphs, and whole chapters, from year to year, their minds become stored with the precious words of the Sacred Book. Very much depends upon the teacher. When we can obtain pious, praying teachers, the Scripture lessons can be given with much more profit and success, and it is our aim to employ only pious teachers where we can get them. And the example of the teacher receives a new auxiliary, as it were, in impressing these lessons on the mind, where the pupils can attend a preaching service on the Sabbath. Sometimes a pressing call comes from a village, where it seems important for strategic reasons, to respond at once. A pious teacher cannot be found, and we send a young man of well-known moral character. But only necessity would oblige us to do this, and a change for the better is always made as soon as practicable.

Bible schools are a mighty means of usefulness. I think nothing strikes a new missionary with more grateful surprise on entering the Syrian Mission-field, than to witness the great prominence given to Biblical instruction, from the humblest village school of little Arab boys and girls, to the highest Seminaries. The examinations in the Scriptures passed by the young men in Abeih, and the girls in the Beirût and Sidon Seminaries, would do credit to the young people in any American community. Bible schools are not merely useful as an entering wedge to give the missionary a position and an influence among the people; they are intrinsically useful in introducing a vast amount of useful Bible knowledge into the minds of the children, and through them to their parents. In countries where the people as a mass are ignorant of reading, they are an absolute necessity, and in any community they are a blessing. Had all Mission Schools been conducted on the same thorough Biblical basis as those in Syria, there would have been less objection to schools as a part of the missionary work.

THE SPHERE AND MODES OF WOMAN'S WORK IN FOREIGN LANDS.

In this age, when Christian women in many lands are engaging in the Foreign Mission work with so much zeal, it is important to know who should enter personally upon this work, and what are the modes and departments of labor in which they can engage when on the ground.

No woman should go to the Foreign field who has not sound health, thorough education, and a reasonable prospect of being able to learn a foreign language. The languages of different nations differ as to comparative ease of acquisition, but it is well for any one who has the Arabic language to learn, to begin as early in life as practicable. It should be borne in mind that the work in foreign lands is a self-denying work, and I know of no persons who are called to undergo greater self-denial than unmarried women engaged in religious work abroad. They are doing a noble work, a necessary work, and a work of lasting usefulness. Deprived in many instances of the social enjoyments and protection of a home, they make a home in their schools, and throw themselves into a peculiar sympathy with their pupils, and the families with which they are brought into contact. Where several are associated together, as they always should be, the institution in which they live becomes a model of the Christian order, sympathy and mutual help, which is characteristic of the home in Christian lands. Christian women, married and unmarried, can reach a class in every Arabic community from which men are sedulously excluded. They should enter upon the foreign work as a life-work, devote themselves first of all to the mastery of the language of the people, open their eyes to all that is pleasant and attractive among the natives, and close them to all that is unlovable and repulsive, resolved to love the people, and what pertains to them, for Christ's sake who died for them, and to identify themselves with the people in every practicable way. Persons who are incapable of loving or admiring anything that is not American or English had better remain in America or England; and on the other hand, there is no surer passport to the affections of any people, than the disposition to overlook their faults, and to treat them as our brethren and sisters for whom a common Saviour died. Let no missionary of either sex who goes to a foreign land, think that there is nothing to be learned from Syrians or Hindoos, Chinese or Japanese. The good is not all confined to any land or people.

Among the departments of woman's work in foreign lands are the following:—

I. Teaching in established institutions, Female Seminaries, Orphan Houses and High Schools.

II. Acting as Nurses in Hospitals, as is done by the Prussian Protestant Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, who are scattered over the East and doing a work of peculiar value.

III. Visiting from house to house, for the express purpose of holding religious conversation with the people in their own language. This can only be done in Syria by one versed in the Arabic, and able to speak without an interpreter.

Ignorance of the language of the people, is a barrier which no skill of an interpreter can break down, and every woman who would labor with acceptance and success among the women of Syria, must be able to speak to them familiarly in their own mother tongue. Interpreters may be honest and conscientious, but not one person in a thousand can translate accurately from one language to another without previous preparation. And besides, interpreters are not always reliable. There is still living, in the city of Tripoli, an old man named Abdullah Yanni, who acted as interpreter for a Jewish Missionary some forty years ago. He tells many a story of the extraordinary shape which that unsuspecting missionary's discourses assumed in passing through his lips. One day they went through the principal street to preach to the Moslems. A great crowd assembled, and Abdullah trembled, for in those days of darkness Moslems oppressed and insulted Christians with perfect impunity. Said the missionary, "Tell the Moslems that unless they all repent and believe in Christ, they will perish forever." Abdullah translated, and the Moslems gave loud and earnest expression to their delight. They declared, "That is so, that is so, welcome to the Khowadja!" Abdullah had told them that "the Khowadja says, that he loves you very much, and the Engliz and the Moslems are 'sowa sowa,' i. e. together as one."

Abdullah soon found it necessary to tell his confiding friend and employer, that it would not do to preach in that bold manner, for if he should translate it literally, the Moslems would kill both of them on the spot. The missionary replied, "Let them kill us then." Abdullah said, "it may do very well for you, but I am not prepared to die, and would prefer to wait." The very first requisite for usefulness in a foreign land is the language. It might be well, as previously intimated in this volume, that in each of the Female Seminaries, the number of the teachers should be large enough to allow the most experienced in the language to give themselves for a portion of each week to these friendly religious visits. The Arab race are eminently a sociable, visiting people, and a foreign lady is always welcome among the women of every grade of society, from the highest to the lowest.

IV. Holding special Women's Meetings of the Female Church members from week to week in the homes of the different families. The neighboring women will come in, and the native women, who would never take part in a women's prayer-meeting, in the presence of a missionary, will gladly do it with the example and encouragement of one of their own sex. Such meetings have been conducted in Hums and Tripoli, in Beirût, Abeih, Deir el Komr and Sidon, and in Suk el Ghurb, B'hamdûn, Hasbeiya, and Deir Mimas for many years. Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Isaac Bird, Mrs. Thomson, Mrs. Van Dyck, Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Goodell, Mrs. Dr. Dodge, Miss Williams, Miss Tilden, Mrs. De Forest, Mrs. Calhoun, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Ford, Mrs. Foot, Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. W. Bird, Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Bliss, Miss Temple, Miss Mason, Mrs. S. Jessup are among the American Christian women who have labored or are still laboring for the welfare of their sisters in Syria, and younger laborers more recently entered into the work, are preparing to prosecute the work with greater energy than ever. There are other names connected with Woman's Work in Syria as prosecuted by the American Mission, but the list is too long to be enumerated in full. Many of them have rested from their labors, and their works do follow them.

THE BEIRUT FEMALE SEMINARY.

The last Annual Report of the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, speaks of these two Female Seminaries as follows:

"The Beirût Seminary is conducted by Miss Everett, Miss Jackson and Miss Loring, containing forty boarding and sixty day scholars, where the object is to give an education suited to the wants of the higher classes of the people, to gain a control over the minds of those females who will be most influential in forming society and moulding opinion. This hold the Papal Sisters of Charity have striven earnestly to gain, and its vantage ground was not to be abandoned to them. The institution is rising in public esteem and confidence, as the number and the class of pupils in attendance testify. The Seminary is close to the Sanctuary, not less in sympathy than in position, and its whole influence is given to make its pupils followers of Christ."

In addition to this brief notice, it should be said that there are in the Beirût Seminary thirty charity boarders, who are selected chiefly from Protestant, Greek and Druze families, to be trained for teachers of a high order in the various girls' schools in the land. A special Normal course of training is conducted every year, and it is believed that eventually young women trained in other schools will enter this Normal Department to receive especial preparation for the work of teaching.

The charity boarders are supported by the contributions of Sabbath Schools and individuals in the United States, with especial reference to their being trained for future usefulness.

After an experience of nearly ten years in conducting the greater part of the correspondence with the patrons of this school, and maintaining their interest in the pupils and teachers whom they were supporting by their contributions, I would venture to make a few suggestions to the Christian Mission Bands, Societies, Bible Classes, Sabbath Schools and individuals who are doing so much for the education of children in foreign lands.

I. Let all contributions for Women's Work and the education of girls, be sent through the Women's Boards of Missions, or if that is not convenient, in the form of a banker's draft on London, payable to the Principal of the Seminary with whom you have correspondence.

II. If possible, allow your donation to be used for the general purposes of the Seminary, without insisting that a special pupil or teacher be assigned to you. But if it be not possible to maintain the interest of your children and youth in a work so distant without some special object, then by all means,—

III. Do not demand too much from your over-taxed sisters in the foreign field in the way of letters and reports. The labors of a teacher are arduous everywhere. But when instruction is given in a foreign language, in a foreign climate, and to children of a foreign nation, these labors are greatly increased. Add then to this toil correspondence with the Board of Missions, the daily study of the language, the work of visiting among the people, and receiving their visits, and you can understand how the keeping up of correspondence with twenty or thirty Sabbath Schools and Societies is a burden which no woman should be called on to bear.

IV. Do not expect sensational letters from your friends abroad. Do not take for granted that the child of ten years of age you are supporting, will develop into a distinguished teacher or Bible woman before the arrival of the next mail. Do not be discouraged if you have to wait and pray for years before you hear good tidings. Should any of the native children ever send you a letter, (and they have about as clear an idea of who you are and where you are, as they have of the satellites of Jupiter,) do not expect from their youthful productions the elegance of Addison or the eloquence of Burke.

V. Pray earnestly for the conversion of the pupils in Mission Schools. This I regard as the great advantage of the system of having pupils supported by Christians in the home churches, and known to them by name. They are made the subjects of special prayer. This is the precious golden bond which brings the home field near to us, and the foreign field near to you. Our chief hope for these multitudes of children now receiving instruction, is, that they will be prayed for by Christians at home.

THE SIDON FEMALE SEMINARY.

The Annual Report above mentioned, speaks thus of the Sidon Seminary: "It is conducted by Miss Jacombs and Miss Stainton, and has numbered about twenty boarders and six day scholars. The boarders are exclusively from Protestant families, selected from the common schools in all parts of the field, and are in training for the Mission service, as teachers and Bible readers. Four of the graduates of last year are already so employed. One difficulty in the way of reaching with the truth the minds of the women in the numerous villages of the land, will be obviated in part, as the results of this work are farther developed.

"There has been considerable seriousness and some hopeful conversions, in both these seminaries during the past year.

"The work is worthy of the interest taken in it by the Women's Boards of Missions, and by societies and individuals in the church who have co-operated in it."

The Sidon Seminary, as stated on a previous page, was begun in 1862, and has had four European and six native teachers. Of the latter, one was trained in Mrs. Bird's family, one in Shemlan Seminary, three in the Sidon school, and one by Mrs. Watson.

Ten of its graduates have been employed as teachers, and eight are still so engaged.

I annex a list of Girls' Schools now or formerly connected with the Syria Mission.

This gives a total of twenty-three girls' schools besides the twenty-four boys' schools under the care of the Mission, and three schools where there are both boys and girls. I have kept the name of B'hamdûn in the list, for its historical associations, but the thirty pupils credited to it, will be more than made good in the girl's school about to be resumed in Tripoli under the care of Miss Kip.

The total number of girls is about 800, and the number of teachers 36. The total cost of these twenty-three schools, including the two Seminaries in Beirût and Sidon, is about eight thousand dollars per annum, including rents, salaries of five American and English ladies, and thirty-one native teachers.

The average cost of the common schools in the Sidon field is sixty dollars per annum, and in the Lebanon field it varies from this sum to about twice that amount, owing to the fact that the Deir el Komr and other schools are virtually High Schools.

The teacher in the Sidon field, and in Abeih, and Safita, are graduates of the Sidon Seminary.

It is probable that a High School or Seminary for girls will be opened by Miss Kip in Tripoli during the coming year.

The preceding schedule can give but a faint idea of the struggles and toil, the patient labors, disappointments and trials of faith through which the women of the American Mission have passed during the last forty years, in beginning and maintaining so many of these schools for girls in Syria.

Did I speak of trials? The Missionary work has its trials, but I believe that its joys are far greater. The saddest scenes I have witnessed during a residence of seventeen years in Syria, have been when Missionaries have been obliged to leave the work and return to their native land. There are trials growing out of the hardness of the human heart, our own want of faith, the seeming slow progress of the gospel, and the heart-crushing disappointments arising from broken hopes, when individuals and communities who have promised well, turn back to their old errors "like the dog to his vomit" again. But of joys it is much easier to speak, the joy of preaching Christ to the perishing,—of laboring where others will not labor,—of laying foundations for the future,—of feeling that you are doing what you can to fulfil the Saviour's last command,—of seeing the word of God translated into a new language,—a christian literature beginning to grow,—children and youth gathered into Schools and Seminaries of learning, and even sects which hate the Bible obliged to teach their children to read it,—of seeing christian families growing up, loving the Sabbath and the Bible, the sanctuary and the family altar.—Then there is the joy of seeing souls born into the kingdom of our dear Redeemer, and churches planted in a land where pure Christianity had ceased to exist,—and of witnessing unflinching steadfastness in the midst of persecution and danger, and the triumphs of faith in the solemn hour of death.

These are a few of the joys which are strewn so thickly along the path of the Christian Missionary, that he has hardly time to think of sorrow, trial and discouragement. Those who have read Dr. Anderson's "History of Missions to the Oriental Churches," and Rev. Isaac Bird's "History of the Syria Mission," or "Bible Work in Bible Lands," will see that the work of the Syria Mission from 1820 to 1872 has been one of conflict with principalities and powers, and with spiritual wickedness in high and low places, but that at length the hoary fortresses are beginning to totter and fall, and there is a call for a general advance in every department of the work, and in every part of the land.

Other agencies have come upon the ground since the great foundation work was laid, and the first great victories won, and in their success it becomes all of God's people to rejoice; but the veterans who fought the first battles, and overcame the great national prejudice of the Syrian people against female education, should ever be remembered with gratitude.

It has been my aim in this little volume to recount the history of Woman's Work in the past. Who can foretell what the future of Christian work for Syrian Women will be?

May it ever be a work founded on the Word of God, aiming at the elevation of woman through the doctrines and the practice of a pure Christianity, striving to plant in Syria, not the flippant culture of modern fashionable society, but the God-fearing, Sabbath-loving, and Bible-reading culture of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors!

A few years ago, a Greek priest named Job, from one of the distant villages high up in the range of Lebanon, called on me in Beirût. I had spent several summers in his village, and he had sometimes borrowed our Arabic sermons to read in the Greek Church, and now, he said, he had come down to see what we were doing in Beirût. I took him through the Female Seminary and the Church, and then to the Library and the Printing Press. He examined the presses, the steam engine, the type-setting, and type-casting, the folding, sewing, and binding of books, and looked through the huge cases filled with Arabic books and Scriptures, saw all the editions of the Bible and the Testament, and then turned in silence to take his departure. I went with him to the outer gate. He took my hand, and said, "By your leave I am going. The Lord bless your work. Sir, I have a thought; we are all going to be swept away, priests and bishops, Greeks and Maronites, Moslems and Druzes, and there will be nothing left, nothing but the Word of God and those who follow it. That is my thought. Farewell."