"For four years, a large number have been Protestants, and the oppressors have added persecution to oppression. Many fell away at first, but since then we have seen no special signs of apostasy until lately. Their enemies recently made a desperate effort to crush out Protestantism from that region. They took the leading men, one by one, and led them through fire and perils of all kinds; promising, at every step, to give immediate relief, if they would only return to the Greek Church. They fulfilled their promises to some who yielded, and then increased the pressure on the others. At length, seizing the opportunity when our teacher was absent, they made another grand onset. On Sunday morning, the Greek bishop and the abbots of the neighboring convents, with priests and people from all the region around, together with a great number of horsemen and footmen, made a grand parade, and came down like locusts upon the Protestants. Their former oppressor is dead, but his son, Tamir Beshoor, is making his little finger thicker than his father's loins. He headed a grand parade, and brought with him a supply of new garments, which he had purchased as bribes for the occasion. With the bishop and others, he entered the house of every Protestant, and by bribes and promises, followed by fiendish threats, carried off many captives. Some few had previously sold themselves, and agreed to take their stand on this occasion, and then they headed the crowd, and declared that every Protestant had decided to return, and that Protestantism was dead. Where they found a house locked, they forced it open, and sprinkled holy water in it. "But though their success was far too great, it was not complete. They succeeded in taking with them, that morning, twenty-one males. Eleven of them have not been to the Greek church since that time, but continue to meet with our brethren for prayer; and though it is now an important Greek fast, they do not observe it. The other ten either dare not or care not to come back to us, though all came to see me. "Before finishing their work that Sunday morning, they sent men to our school-room, broke it open, sprinkled it with holy water, and stole our bell." The firmness of some of the church-members is thus described: "After exhausting their catalogue of promises and threats on one, he said to them,--'Take my property, my house, my clothes, my family, even my body, and do with them what you will, but my soul you cannot have, and nothing will induce me to leave Christ.' Another said, when they came to his house,--'Come in, and let us read in the New Testament together, and perhaps you will see that we are right.' One girl, who had been two years in the Sidon school, saw her parents and relatives all fall into the procession; but when special effort was made to induce her to yield, she said,--'Though you should cut my body in pieces, I will never go with you.'