History of the missions of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions to the oriental churches, Volume I.Anderson, Rufus
Religion
History of the missions of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions to the oriental churches, Volume I.
Anderson, Rufus
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; Missions -- Eastern churches
At the close of his connection with Mr. King, he made another effort
to secure employment from his Patriarch. Not succeeding, he became
Arabic teacher to Mr. Fisk; at the same time assisting Mr. King,
then about leaving the country, in preparing his celebrated
"Farewell Letter" to his Arab friends. After having put this into
neat Arabic style, he made a large number of copies, to be sent to
different parts of the country.
On the day of Mr. King's departure from Beirut, Asaad, at the
request of the mission, commenced an Arabic grammar-school for
native boys. His leisure hours were devoted to composing a
refutation of the doctrines contained in Mr. King's "Farewell
Letter." This is his own account: "When I was copying the first
rough draught of my reply, and had arrived at the last of the
reasons, which, he said, prevented his becoming a member of the
Roman Catholic Church; namely, their teaching it to be wrong for the
commom people to possess or to read the Word of God, I observed that
the writer brought a proof against the doctrine from the prophet
Isaiah; namely, that if they spoke not according to the law and to
the testimony, it was because there was no light in them.
"While I was endeavoring to explain this passage according to the
views of the Roman Catholic Church, with no other object than the
praise of men and other worldly motives, I chanced to read the
twenty-ninth chapter of Isaiah from the fifteenth verse to the end.
I read and was afraid. I meditated upon the chapter a long while,
and feared that I was doing what I did with a motive far different
from the only proper one,--the glory and pleasure of God. I
therefore threw my paper by without finishing the copy, and applied
myself to the reading of Isaiah.
"I had wished to find in the prophet some plain and incontrovertible
proofs of the Messiahship of Christ, to use against Moslems and
Jews. While thus searching, I found various passages that would
_bear_ an explanation according to my views, and read on till I came
to the fifty-second chapter, and fourteenth verse, and onward to the
end of the next chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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