his winter palace in Baabda, and Nejm took my letter to him. While
awaiting a reply at the door, some one informed him that his daughter
was at the fountain. Without waiting further for official aid, he ran to
the fountain, took up his daughter, put her on his back, and ran for
Beirut, a distance of about four miles, where he brought her to my
house, and placed her in my room, with loud ejaculations of thanks to
God. "Neshkar Allah; El mejd lismoo." Thanks to God! Glory to His name!
The mother soon followed, and the girl was sent as a day scholar to the
Seminary. They are now living in Baabda. The mother, Zarify, united with
the Evangelical Church of Beirut, July 21, 1872, giving the best
evidence of a true spiritual experience. The little girl is anxious to
teach, and it was proposed to employ her as an assistant in the girls'
school in Baabda, but the tyrannical oppressions of the priesthood upon
the family who had offered their house for the school, and the refusal
of the Pasha of Lebanon to grant protection to the persecuted, have
obliged the brethren there to postpone their request for a school for
the present.
Alas for the poor women of Syria! Even when they seek to obtain the
consolations of the Gospel by learning to read the Word of life, they
are surrounded by priests and Sheikhs who watch their chance to destroy
the "Bread of Life!" In March, 1865, a Maronite woman called at the
Press to buy a book of poems, to teach her boy to read. "Why not buy a
Testament?" asked the bookseller. "I did buy an Engeel Mushekkel," (a
voweled Testament.) "Be careful of it then," said Khalil, "for the
edition is exhausted, and you cannot get another for months." "It is too
late to be careful now, for the book _has been burned_." "Burned? by
whom?" "By the Jesuits, who gathered a large pile and burned them." God
grant that as Tyndale's English New Testament, first printed in 1527 was
only spread the more widely for the attempts of the Papal Bishop of
London to burn it, so the Arabic Bible may receive a new impulse from
the similarly inspired efforts of the Bishop's successors!
CHAPTER IX.
LUCIYA SHEKKUR.
The work done for Christ and for Syrian girls in the families of
Missionaries in Syria, may well compare with that done in the
established institutions of learning. Mrs. Whiting was not alone in the
work of training native Arab girls in her own home. The same work had
been done by other Missionaries before her, and has been carried on with
no little success by Mrs. Bird, Mrs. Calhoun and others, up to the
present time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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