CHAPTER XIV. SYRIA. 1830-1838. Syria was not in a condition for a return of the missionaries until after two years. Messrs. Bird and Whiting left Malta for Beirut on the 1st of May, 1830. Mr. Abbott, the English Consul, had already returned, and gave them a cordial welcome. The members of the Greek Church greeted them in a friendly manner, and were ready to read the Scriptures with them; but the Maronite priests, faithful to the Church of Rome, forbad their people all intercourse with the "Bible men," whom they described as "followers of the devil." Among those who received them gladly were a few young men, over whom the missionaries had rejoiced in former years, and who had remained steadfast in the faith, and had honored the Gospel by their lives. Gregory Wortabet, one of the two Armenian ecclesiastics who early became connected with the mission, is already somewhat known to the reader. He belonged to the monastic priesthood in the Armenian Church, and there is an interesting autobiography of him in the "Missionary Herald" for 1828. His career up to that time, as described by himself, shows him to have been an uncommon character; and his personal sufferings, both for good and evil doing, prepared him to receive benefit from his converse with the missionaries at Beirut, which began in 1826, when he was twenty-six years of age. He was then ignorant of the Gospel, with his mind in great darkness and confusion. His first ray of light was from the good example of his missionary friends. Comparing their lives with their preaching, he admired the consistency of the two. He then compared both with the Scriptures, reading through the entire New Testament. At length day dawned upon his darkness. He became fully satisfied, that the Scriptures were from God, and committed himself to their divine teaching. Renouncing his self-righteousness, and all dependence on the absolutions of the Church, he trusted for salvation only in the blood of the Lord Jesus. Having adopted the opinion, that his monastic vows were unscriptural and therefore void, he married a discreet woman, who not long after gave good evidence of piety.