This was well, as will appear in the sequel. But it is impossible not to see, that the progress of the mission, in the years immediately following 1863,--in the increase of converts, and the multiplication of churches, with native preachers and pastors,--was not such as the facts already stated gave reason to expect. This the brethren on the ground foresaw, and their anxious appeals for help abound on the pages of the "Missionary Herald," and were enforced by appeals from the Prudential Committee. The "Annual Report" for 1863 thus states the deficiency of laborers at that time:-- "The field north of Beirut, a hundred miles long and fifty wide, has no missionary, although hundreds in Hums, and the large district of Akkar, are looking to the mission for instruction. A score of villages, in each one of which a faithful preacher would find an audience, do not receive a visit once a year from a gospel minister. Mount Lebanon, with its four hundred thousand inhabitants, scattered through its thousand villages, into nearly every one of which more or less light has penetrated, and from which cries for help constantly come, has but two missionaries; and one of them is confined, for the most part, to the Abeih Seminary. The southern district, comprising one half of the Syria mission field, with its ten regular preaching places, crippled by the disability of its oldest native helper and by the death of another, has but two missionaries, one of whom is just commencing to learn Arabic. Within the last eight years, thirteen missionary laborers, male and female, have entered the Syria field, while twenty-five have left it. During this period, the work has increased tenfold. Many who have fallen asleep took part in sowing, where now the harvest is so great that the few who remain cannot gather it; and unless the Lord of the harvest send more laborers, much precious fruit will be lost." It is painfully evident, that the degree of missionary spirit in the churches at home then fell short of the providential calls for evangelical labor in this field. Yet it is by no means certain what would have been the effect of a very large, sudden increase in the working forces. Without the restraining grace of God, it might have been the occasion of a fierce and malignant outbreak of opposition. The deficiency of laborers sufficiently accounts for the slow progress, and even the decline there was in not a few of the places named; as in Tripoli, and Hums, not to speak of promising villages in the western and southern sections. Churches, towns, cities in the most favored portions of New England would suffer a decline in religion and morals, if left, as these places necessarily were, with no more of the means of grace. CHAPTER XL. SYRIA. 1863-1869.