Chapter 22
THE AMOUNT OF BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION GIVEN IN MISSION SCHOOLS.
There has been great difference of opinion with regard to the proper position of Education in the Foreign Missionary work. While some have given it the first rank as a missionary agency, others have kept it in the background as being a non-missionary work, and hence to be left to the natives themselves to conduct, after their evangelization by the simple and pure preaching of the gospel. The Syria Mission have been led, by the experience of long and laborious years of labor in this peculiar field, to regard education as one of the most important auxiliaries in bringing the Gospel in contact with the people. Society and sects are so organized and constituted, that while the people of a given village would not receive a missionary as simply a preacher of the Gospel, they will gladly accept a school from his hands, and welcome him on every visit to the school as a benefactor. They will not only receive the daily lessons and instructions of the school-teacher in religious things, but even ask the missionary to preach to them the Word of life. Schools in Syria are entering wedges for Gospel truth.
Our schools are of two classes, the High schools or Seminaries for young men and young women, and the common schools for children of both sexes. In the former, Biblical instruction is the great thing, the chief design of the High schools being to train the young to a correct and thorough acquaintance with Divine truth. The course of Bible instruction conducted by Mr. Calhoun in Abeih Seminary, is, I doubt not, more thorough and constant, than in any College or High School in the United States. While the sciences are taught systematically, the Bible is made the principal text-book, and several hours each day are given to its study. In our common schools, likewise, Bible reading and instruction hold a prominent place. Owing to the paucity of books in the Arabic language proper to be used as reading books, a reading book was prepared by the Mission, consisting almost exclusively of extracts from the Scriptures. In addition to this book, the Psalms of David and the New Testament are used as regular reading books in all the schools. There are daily exercises in reading the Bible and reciting the Catechism. It will be observed from what I have stated, that the amount of spiritual knowledge acquired by the children, in the very process of learning to read, is not small. Being obliged to commit to memory texts, paragraphs, and whole chapters, from year to year, their minds become stored with the precious words of the Sacred Book. Very much depends upon the teacher. When we can obtain pious, praying teachers, the Scripture lessons can be given with much more profit and success, and it is our aim to employ only pious teachers where we can get them. And the example of the teacher receives a new auxiliary, as it were, in impressing these lessons on the mind, where the pupils can attend a preaching service on the Sabbath. Sometimes a pressing call comes from a village, where it seems important for strategic reasons, to respond at once. A pious teacher cannot be found, and we send a young man of well-known moral character. But only necessity would oblige us to do this, and a change for the better is always made as soon as practicable.
Bible schools are a mighty means of usefulness. I think nothing strikes a new missionary with more grateful surprise on entering the Syrian Mission-field, than to witness the great prominence given to Biblical instruction, from the humblest village school of little Arab boys and girls, to the highest Seminaries. The examinations in the Scriptures passed by the young men in Abeih, and the girls in the Beirût and Sidon Seminaries, would do credit to the young people in any American community. Bible schools are not merely useful as an entering wedge to give the missionary a position and an influence among the people; they are intrinsically useful in introducing a vast amount of useful Bible knowledge into the minds of the children, and through them to their parents. In countries where the people as a mass are ignorant of reading, they are an absolute necessity, and in any community they are a blessing. Had all Mission Schools been conducted on the same thorough Biblical basis as those in Syria, there would have been less objection to schools as a part of the missionary work.
THE SPHERE AND MODES OF WOMAN'S WORK IN FOREIGN LANDS.
In this age, when Christian women in many lands are engaging in the Foreign Mission work with so much zeal, it is important to know who should enter personally upon this work, and what are the modes and departments of labor in which they can engage when on the ground.
No woman should go to the Foreign field who has not sound health, thorough education, and a reasonable prospect of being able to learn a foreign language. The languages of different nations differ as to comparative ease of acquisition, but it is well for any one who has the _Arabic_ language to learn, to begin as early in life as practicable. It should be borne in mind that the work in foreign lands is a self-denying work, and I know of no persons who are called to undergo greater self-denial than unmarried women engaged in religious work abroad. They are doing a noble work, a necessary work, and a work of lasting usefulness. Deprived in many instances of the social enjoyments and protection of a _home_, they _make_ a home in their schools, and throw themselves into a peculiar sympathy with their pupils, and the families with which they are brought into contact. Where several are associated together, as they always should be, the institution in which they live becomes a model of the Christian order, sympathy and mutual help, which is characteristic of the home in Christian lands. Christian women, married and unmarried, can reach a class in every Arabic community from which men are sedulously excluded. They should enter upon the foreign work as a life-work, devote themselves first of all to the mastery of the language of the people, open their eyes to all that is pleasant and attractive among the natives, and close them to all that is unlovable and repulsive, resolved to love the people, and what pertains to them, for Christ's sake who died for them, and to identify themselves with the people in every practicable way. Persons who are incapable of loving or admiring anything that is not American or English had better remain in America or England; and on the other hand, there is no surer passport to the affections of any people, than the disposition to overlook their faults, and to treat them as our brethren and sisters for whom a common Saviour died. Let no missionary of either sex who goes to a foreign land, think that there is nothing to be learned from Syrians or Hindoos, Chinese or Japanese. The good is not all confined to any land or people.
Among the departments of woman's work in foreign lands are the following:--
I. Teaching in established institutions, Female Seminaries, Orphan Houses and High Schools.
II. Acting as Nurses in Hospitals, as is done by the Prussian Protestant Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, who are scattered over the East and doing a work of peculiar value.
III. Visiting from house to house, for the express purpose of holding religious conversation with the people _in their own language_. This can only be done in Syria by one versed in the Arabic, and able to speak _without an interpreter_.
Ignorance of the language of the people, is a barrier which no skill of an interpreter can break down, and every woman who would labor with acceptance and success among the women of Syria, must be able to speak to them familiarly in their own mother tongue. Interpreters may be honest and conscientious, but not one person in a thousand can translate accurately from one language to another without previous preparation. And besides, interpreters are not always reliable. There is still living, in the city of Tripoli, an old man named Abdullah Yanni, who acted as interpreter for a Jewish Missionary some forty years ago. He tells many a story of the extraordinary shape which that unsuspecting missionary's discourses assumed in passing through his lips. One day they went through the principal street to preach to the Moslems. A great crowd assembled, and Abdullah trembled, for in those days of darkness Moslems oppressed and insulted Christians with perfect impunity. Said the missionary, "Tell the Moslems that unless they all repent and believe in Christ, they will perish forever." Abdullah translated, and the Moslems gave loud and earnest expression to their delight. They declared, "That is so, that is so, welcome to the Khowadja!" Abdullah had told them that "the Khowadja says, that he loves you very much, and the Engliz and the Moslems are 'sowa sowa,' _i.e._ together as one."
Abdullah soon found it necessary to tell his confiding friend and employer, that it would not do to preach in that bold manner, for if he should translate it literally, the Moslems would kill both of them on the spot. The missionary replied, "Let them kill us then." Abdullah said, "it may do very well for you, but I am not prepared to die, and would prefer to wait." The very first requisite for usefulness in a foreign land is the language. It might be well, as previously intimated in this volume, that in each of the Female Seminaries, the number of the teachers should be large enough to allow the most experienced in the language to give themselves for a portion of each week to these friendly religious visits. The Arab race are eminently a sociable, visiting people, and a foreign lady is always welcome among the women of every grade of society, from the highest to the lowest.
IV. Holding special Women's Meetings of the Female Church members from week to week in the homes of the different families. The neighboring women will come in, and the native women, who would never take part in a women's prayer-meeting, in the presence of a missionary, will gladly do it with the example and encouragement of one of their own sex. Such meetings have been conducted in Hums and Tripoli, in Beirût, Abeih, Deir el Komr and Sidon, and in Suk el Ghurb, B'hamdûn, Hasbeiya, and Deir Mimas for many years. Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Isaac Bird, Mrs. Thomson, Mrs. Van Dyck, Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Goodell, Mrs. Dr. Dodge, Miss Williams, Miss Tilden, Mrs. De Forest, Mrs. Calhoun, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Ford, Mrs. Foot, Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. W. Bird, Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Bliss, Miss Temple, Miss Mason, Mrs. S. Jessup are among the American Christian women who have labored or are still laboring for the welfare of their sisters in Syria, and younger laborers more recently entered into the work, are preparing to prosecute the work with greater energy than ever. There are other names connected with Woman's Work in Syria as prosecuted by the American Mission, but the list is too long to be enumerated in full. Many of them have rested from their labors, and their works do follow them.
THE BEIRUT FEMALE SEMINARY.
The last Annual Report of the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, speaks of these two Female Seminaries as follows:
"The Beirût Seminary is conducted by Miss Everett, Miss Jackson and Miss Loring, containing forty boarding and sixty day scholars, where the object is to give an education suited to the wants of the higher classes of the people, to gain a control over the minds of those females who will be most influential in forming society and moulding opinion. This hold the Papal Sisters of Charity have striven earnestly to gain, and its vantage ground was not to be abandoned to them. The institution is rising in public esteem and confidence, as the number and the class of pupils in attendance testify. The Seminary is close to the Sanctuary, not less in sympathy than in position, and its whole influence is given to make its pupils followers of Christ."
In addition to this brief notice, it should be said that there are in the Beirût Seminary thirty charity boarders, who are selected chiefly from Protestant, Greek and Druze families, to be trained for teachers of a high order in the various girls' schools in the land. A special Normal course of training is conducted every year, and it is believed that eventually young women trained in other schools will enter this Normal Department to receive especial preparation for the work of teaching.
The charity boarders are supported by the contributions of Sabbath Schools and individuals in the United States, with especial reference to their being trained for future usefulness.
After an experience of nearly ten years in conducting the greater part of the correspondence with the patrons of this school, and maintaining their interest in the pupils and teachers whom they were supporting by their contributions, I would venture to make a few suggestions to the Christian Mission Bands, Societies, Bible Classes, Sabbath Schools and individuals who are doing so much for the education of children in foreign lands.
I. Let all contributions for Women's Work and the education of girls, be sent through the Women's Boards of Missions, or if that is not convenient, in the form of a banker's draft on London, payable to the Principal of the Seminary with whom you have correspondence.
II. If possible, allow your donation to be used for the general purposes of the Seminary, without insisting that a special pupil or teacher be assigned to you. But if it be not possible to maintain the interest of your children and youth in a work so distant without some special object, then by all means,--
III. Do not demand too much from your over-taxed sisters in the foreign field in the way of letters and reports. The labors of a teacher are arduous everywhere. But when instruction is given in a foreign language, in a foreign climate, and to children of a foreign nation, these labors are greatly increased. Add then to this toil correspondence with the Board of Missions, the daily study of the language, the work of visiting among the people, and receiving their visits, and you can understand how the keeping up of correspondence with twenty or thirty Sabbath Schools and Societies is a burden which no woman should be called on to bear.
IV. Do not expect sensational letters from your friends abroad. Do not take for granted that the child of ten years of age you are supporting, will develop into a distinguished teacher or Bible woman before the arrival of the next mail. Do not be discouraged if you have to wait and pray for years before you hear good tidings. Should any of the native children ever send you a letter, (and they have about as clear an idea of who you are and where you are, as they have of the satellites of Jupiter,) do not expect from their youthful productions the elegance of Addison or the eloquence of Burke.
V. Pray earnestly for the conversion of the pupils in Mission Schools. This I regard as the great advantage of the system of having pupils supported by Christians in the home churches, and known to them by name. They are made the subjects of special prayer. This is the precious golden bond which brings the home field near to us, and the foreign field near to you. Our chief hope for these multitudes of children now receiving instruction, is, that they will be prayed for by Christians at home.
THE SIDON FEMALE SEMINARY.
The Annual Report above mentioned, speaks thus of the Sidon Seminary: "It is conducted by Miss Jacombs and Miss Stainton, and has numbered about twenty boarders and six day scholars. The boarders are exclusively from Protestant families, selected from the common schools in all parts of the field, and are in training for the Mission service, as teachers and Bible readers. Four of the graduates of last year are already so employed. One difficulty in the way of reaching with the truth the minds of the women in the numerous villages of the land, will be obviated in part, as the results of this work are farther developed.
"There has been considerable seriousness and some hopeful conversions, in both these seminaries during the past year.
"The work is worthy of the interest taken in it by the Women's Boards of Missions, and by societies and individuals in the church who have co-operated in it."
The Sidon Seminary, as stated on a previous page, was begun in 1862, and has had four European and six native teachers. Of the latter, one was trained in Mrs. Bird's family, one in Shemlan Seminary, three in the Sidon school, and one by Mrs. Watson.
Ten of its graduates have been employed as teachers, and eight are still so engaged.
I annex a list of Girls' Schools now or formerly connected with the Syria Mission.
No. of No. of When begun Location. Pupils. Teach'rs
Beirût, Day School, 50 2 1834 " Seminary, 50 10 1848 Sidon, Seminary, 20 3 1862 " Day School, 6 1 1862 Abeih, " 60 1 1853 Deir el Komr, " 50 2 1855 To be resumed soon. Ghorify, " 40 1 1863 All Druzes. El Hadeth, " 40 1 1870 Shwifat, " 70 2 1871 Dibbiyeh, " 20 1 1868 B'Hamdûn, " 30 1 1853 Discontinued. Meshgara, " 30 1 1869 Boys and girls, Ain Anûb, " 20 1 1870 and 60 boys. Kefr Shima, " 40 1 1856 Boys and girls. Rasheiya el Fokhar, " 30 1 1869 Jedaideh, " 40 1 1870 El Khiyam, " 25 1 1868 Ibl, " 30 1 1868 Deir Mimas, " 15 1 1865 Kana, " 35 1 1869 Hums, " 40 1 1865 Safita, " 30 1 1869 Hamath, " 30 1 1872 ------------- ----------------- Totals 23 801 36
This gives a total of twenty-three girls' schools besides the twenty-four boys' schools under the care of the Mission, and three schools where there are both boys and girls. I have kept the name of B'hamdûn in the list, for its historical associations, but the thirty pupils credited to it, will be more than made good in the girl's school about to be resumed in Tripoli under the care of Miss Kip.
The total number of girls is about 800, and the number of teachers 36. The total cost of these twenty-three schools, including the two Seminaries in Beirût and Sidon, is about eight thousand dollars per annum, including rents, salaries of five American and English ladies, and thirty-one native teachers.
The average cost of the common schools in the Sidon field is sixty dollars per annum, and in the Lebanon field it varies from this sum to about twice that amount, owing to the fact that the Deir el Komr and other schools are virtually High Schools.
The teacher in the Sidon field, and in Abeih, and Safita, are graduates of the Sidon Seminary.
It is probable that a High School or Seminary for girls will be opened by Miss Kip in Tripoli during the coming year.
The preceding schedule can give but a faint idea of the struggles and toil, the patient labors, disappointments and trials of faith through which the women of the American Mission have passed during the last forty years, in beginning and maintaining so many of these schools for girls in Syria.
Did I speak of _trials_? The Missionary work has its trials, but I believe that its joys are far greater. The saddest scenes I have witnessed during a residence of seventeen years in Syria, have been when Missionaries have been obliged to _leave the work_ and return to their native land. There are trials growing out of the hardness of the human heart, our own want of faith, the seeming slow progress of the gospel, and the heart-crushing disappointments arising from broken hopes, when individuals and communities who have promised well, turn back to their old errors "like the dog to his vomit" again. But of joys it is much easier to speak, the joy of preaching Christ to the perishing,--of laboring where others will not labor,--of laying foundations for the future,--of feeling that you are doing what you can to fulfil the Saviour's last command,--of seeing the word of God translated into a new language,--a christian literature beginning to grow,--children and youth gathered into Schools and Seminaries of learning, and even sects which hate the Bible obliged to teach their children to read it,--of seeing christian families growing up, loving the Sabbath and the Bible, the sanctuary and the family altar.--Then there is the joy of seeing souls born into the kingdom of our dear Redeemer, and churches planted in a land where pure Christianity had ceased to exist,--and of witnessing unflinching steadfastness in the midst of persecution and danger, and the triumphs of faith in the solemn hour of death.
These are a few of the joys which are strewn so thickly along the path of the Christian Missionary, that he has hardly time to think of sorrow, trial and discouragement. Those who have read Dr. Anderson's "History of Missions to the Oriental Churches," and Rev. Isaac Bird's "History of the Syria Mission," or "Bible Work in Bible Lands," will see that the work of the Syria Mission from 1820 to 1872 has been one of conflict with principalities and powers, and with spiritual wickedness in high and low places, but that at length the hoary fortresses are beginning to totter and fall, and there is a call for a general advance in every department of the work, and in every part of the land.
Other agencies have come upon the ground since the great foundation work was laid, and the first great victories won, and in their success it becomes all of God's people to rejoice; but the veterans who fought the first battles, and overcame the great national prejudice of the Syrian people against female education, should ever be remembered with gratitude.
It has been my aim in this little volume to recount the history of Woman's Work in the past. Who can foretell what the future of Christian work for Syrian Women will be?
May it ever be a work founded on the Word of God, aiming at the elevation of woman through the doctrines and the practice of a pure Christianity, striving to plant in Syria, not the flippant culture of modern fashionable society, but the God-fearing, Sabbath-loving, and Bible-reading culture of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors!
A few years ago, a Greek priest named Job, from one of the distant villages high up in the range of Lebanon, called on me in Beirût. I had spent several summers in his village, and he had sometimes borrowed our Arabic sermons to read in the Greek Church, and now, he said, he had come down to see what we were doing in Beirût. I took him through the Female Seminary and the Church, and then to the Library and the Printing Press. He examined the presses, the steam engine, the type-setting, and type-casting, the folding, sewing, and binding of books, and looked through the huge cases filled with Arabic books and Scriptures, saw all the editions of the Bible and the Testament, and then turned in silence to take his departure. I went with him to the outer gate. He took my hand, and said, "By your leave I am going. The Lord bless your work. Sir, I have a thought; we are all going to be swept away, priests and bishops, Greeks and Maronites, Moslems and Druzes, and there will be nothing left, nothing but the Word of God and those who follow it. That is my thought. Farewell."
May that thought be speedily realized! May the coarseness, brutality and contempt for woman which characterize the Moslem hareem, give way to the refinement, intelligence, and mutual affection which belong to the Christian family!
May the God of prophecy and promise, hasten the time when Nusairy barbarism, Druze hypocrisy, Moslem fanaticism, Jewish bigotry and nominal Christian superstition shall fade away under the glorious beams of the rising Sun of Righteousness!
May the "glory of Lebanon" be given to the Lord, in the regeneration and sanctification of the families of Lebanon!
Too long has it been true, in the degradation of woman, that the "flower of Lebanon languisheth."
Soon may we say in the truly Oriental imagery of the Song of Songs,--"Come with me from Lebanon, look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards,"--and behold, in the culture of woman, in society regenerated, in home affection, in the Christian family, what is in a peculiar sense, "a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon!"
"Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field?" When "the reproach of the daughters of Syria," shall be taken away, and when amid the zearas of the Nusairîyeh, the kholwehs of the Druzes, the mosques of the Moslems and the tents of the Bedawin, may be heard the voice of Christ, saying to the poor women of the Arab race, weary and fainting under the burdens of life:
"Daughter be of good comfort, Thy faith hath made thee whole, Go in peace!"
THE CHILDREN'S CHAPTER.