It must not be inferred from what has been said on a preceding page with regard to the favorable position occupied by the women of the nominal Christian sects of Syria as compared with the Mohammedan women, that the first missionaries found the Greek and Maronite women and girls who speak the Arabic language eager or even willing to receive instruction. Far from it. The effects of the Mohammedan domination of twelve hundred years have been to degrade and depress all the sects and nationalities who are subject to Islam. Not only were there not women and girls found to learn to read, but the great mass of the men of the Christian sects could neither read nor write. Many of the prominent Arab merchants in Beirut to-day can neither read nor write. I say Arab merchants, and yet very few of the Arabs of the Greek Church have more than a mere tinge of Arab blood in their veins. To call them Syrians, would be to confound them with the "Syrian" or "Jacobite" sect, who are found only in the vicinity of Hums, Hamath and Mardin. So with the Maronites. They are chiefly of a darker complexion than the Arab Greeks, and are supposed to have had their origin in Mesopotamia. Yet all these sects and races speak the common Arabic language, and hence it will be convenient to call them Arabs, although I am aware, that while many of the modern Syrians glory in the name "Oulad el Arab," many others regard it with dislike. The Syrian Christianity, moreover, so often alluded to in the history of the Syrian Mission, is the lowest type of the religion of the Greek and Roman churches. Saint-worship and picture-worship are universal. An ignorant priesthood, and a superstitious people, no Bibles, and no readers to read them, no schools and no teachers capable of conducting them, prayers in unknown tongues, and a bitter feeling of party spirit in all the sects, universal belief in the efficacy of fasts and vows, pilgrimages and offerings to the shrines of reputed saints, churches without a preached gospel, and prayers performed as a duty without the worship of the heart, universal Mariolatry, a Sabbath desecrated by priests and people alike, God's name everywhere profaned by men, women and children, and truthfulness of lip almost absolutely unknown; the women and girls degraded and oppressed and left to the tender mercies of a corrupt clergy through the infamies of the confessional; all these practices and many others which space forbids us to mention, combined with the social bondage entailed upon woman by the gross code of Islam, rendered the women of the nominal Christian sects of Syria almost as hopeless subjects of missionary labor as were their less favored Druze and Moslem sisters. In order to present the leading facts in the history of Mission Work for Syrian women, I propose to give a brief review of the salient points, in the order of time, as I have been able to glean them from the missionary documents within my reach.