In accordance with this action the individual members of the mission sent a request to be released from their connection with the American Board, and they were released by vote of the Prudential Committee. The members of the mission, at that time, were Drs. Thomson, Van Dyck, and H. H. Jessup, and Messrs. Calhoun, Eddy, Bird, Samuel Jessup. I. N. Lowry, and James S. Dennis. The author would naturally have great pleasure in quoting from their letters of farewell, but can only refer the reader for them to the "Missionary Herald."[1] [1] _Missionary Herald_, 1870, pp. 391-398. RESULTS OF THE PAST. The history of the mission of the American Board to Palestine and Syria cannot be closed better than by the retrospective summary made by the mission at the close of their relations with the Board. They are speaking of the results of past labors. "To Protestant influence, in great part, may we ascribe the changed feeling, which has come over the minds of the Mohammedans towards Christians. The Christian religion has become understood by them to be not wholly the system of idolatry, which they once regarded it, nor professing Christians as devoid of morality as they once seemed. As a consequence, there has been a sensible quenching of the flame of Moslem bigotry, and a greater respect for Christians, their rights, their Bible, and their religion. The relative positions of the crescent and the cross are not what they were when the missionaries came to Syria. The Bible has gained ground, and the Koran has lost it, as a controlling influence in the land. Some Mohammedans are among the attendants upon our preaching, and these would doubtless be more numerous, but for the risk to property and to life, which inquirers from among them incur. "Not without results have the children of the Druzes been taught in our schools during all these years, and so many conversations been held with adults of that sect. The leaven of the Gospel has penetrated even to the secret inner sanctuaries of their religion; and the white turbans of the initiated Druzes seen in our Sabbath congregations, the inquirers who come to our houses, and the baptized converts from among them, show that not in vain to the Druzes has the light of the Gospel again dawned upon Syria. "But principally among the nominally Christian sects have the indirect results of missionary labor extended. These are visible in the changed power of the clergy. Once excommunication was a terror above all terrors. Now it is so powerless a weapon, that those who once wielded it so effectively are ashamed to challenge ridicule by exposing its weakness. "Protestantism, once regarded by the mass of the people as the blackest of heresies, finds everywhere its defenders and vindicators, even where it lacks followers, and no longer can the lies gain currency, with which the clergy were accustomed to frighten away their flocks from gospel influence.