I have known missionaries to travel without beds, tents or bedsteads,
and to spend weary days and sleepless nights, so as to be quite unfitted
for their great work of preaching to the people. If you ever grow up to
become a missionary, I hope you will live as simply as you can, but be
careful of your health and try to live as long as you can, for the sake
of the people you are working for, and the Lord who sends you forth. It
is not good economy for a missionary to become a martyr to studying
Arabic, or to poor food, or to exhausting modes of travelling. One can
kill himself in a short time, if he wishes, on missionary ground, but he
could have done that at home without the great expense of coming here to
do it, and besides, that is not what a missionary goes out for. He ought
to live as long as he can. He should have a dry house, in a healthy
location, good food, and proper conveniences for safe travelling.
How pleasant it is to hear that sweet toned bell! Let us climb up to the
roof and read the inscription on it. "From little Sabbath School
Children in America to the Mission Church in Tripoli, Syria." It was
sent in 1862 by the children in Fourth Avenue Church, New York, and in
Newark, Syracuse, Owego, Montrose and other places.
The Moslems abhor bells. They say bells draw together evil spirits. We
are not able yet to have a bell in Hums, on account of the Moslem
opposition. They do not use bells, but have men called Muezzins
stationed on the little balconies around the top of the tall minarets,
to call out five times a day to the people to come to prayer. They
select men and boys with high clear voices, and at times their voices
sound very sweetly in the still evening. They say, "There is no God but
God." That is true. Then they add, "and Mohammed is the Apostle of God,"
and that is not true. As the great historian Gibbon said; these words
contain an "eternal truth and an eternal lie."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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