6. All got safely over, for they were his sheep; he knew them all by
name; he had tried the way before them and shown it; he then called them
to himself.
Of course each of these points was made use of as personally applicable
to the hearers. The sermon did me much good from its quiet and truthful
character.
At this service, it is needless to observe, that there was no separation
of sexes in the congregation. The girls of the school (who are all
taught English) were there placed by themselves, and prettily dressed,
wearing the Oriental _izar_, (or large white veil,) with flowered
borders, a novelty to us.
Returning to the mission-house, the late afternoon and the time of sunset
and twilight were spent in rational conversation of Christian character.
And such was our Sabbath-day of devotion and repose.
How glorious were the colours spread over the vast extent of mountain and
sea, modified by length of shadows as the sun declined! Oh how deep are
such beauties and the perception of their value laid in the innermost
recesses of our soul's nature, only to be completely gratified in the
eternity to come. Here, below, we have gorgeous tints differing in
succession, even after actual sunset, to be followed by a delicate
after-glow, which again gives place to the splendour of night. And as in
earth, so in heaven, with the exception of night; for surely there will
be alternations of beauteous scenes above; surely there will be
developments and variety in light, colour, music, harmony, and the rest
of those "pleasures for evermore," which are everywhere emanations from
the direct love of "Him who first loved us,"--His gifts, who even here
bestows prismatic hues upon icebergs in the arctic circle, and a rosy
flush to the peaks of Jebel Sanneen in the Lebanon.
_Monday_.--Letters were brought at a late hour last night in four hours
from Bayroot, giving recent intelligence from our fleet--all political
affairs going on successfully.
Everybody speaks well of our host the governor, and his family. He is a
studious man, and has acquired from the Americans a good deal of history
and general knowledge; his youngest brother attends the natural-history
class of the mission-school. He is a relative of the famous Abu Neked,
and his wife (Druses have but one wife each) is of the Jonblat family.
The ancestral mansion he inhabits was built by one of the ancient race
called the T'noohh, who flourished there from the 10th to the 17th
century, and artists had been brought for the purpose from
Constantinople; the symmetry of the masonry is admirable, and
consequently the shadows formed from it are particularly straight and
sharp in outline.
The village contains specimens of every form of religion to be found
throughout the Lebanon; each sect, however, keeps somewhat apart from the
rest, which practice being common in the mountain, may account for the
villages appearing to a stranger to consist of separate pieces not quite
joined together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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