The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

“Our college was established to give the Mohammedan world the best the Christian world has. Our aim is to make of you broad-minded, intelligent men whether you continue to be Moslems or become Christians. We believe that the best thing we have is our religion, so we are bound to let you know what it is. Whether you accept it or not rests with yourselves. If, upon investigation, you still think the Moslem religion the best, we believe that the knowledge you have of our religion will make you better and broader Moslems. Religion is for man, not man for religion, and we want you to have the training which will make each one of you the best man, whether he be Christian or Moslem.”

To-day the Mohammedan students attending the services look upon them as largely educational, and they study the Bible as history and literature.

The influence of colleges like this goes far and wide. The students come from villages all over the Turkish Empire and from those of India and Persia as well. Going home, each forms a little hot-bed for the growth of independent thought.

Civilized ideas are spread in other ways besides these. One of the great means of such distribution is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which is attended by nearly half a million Mohammedans from all parts of the Orient. At that time Mecca becomes a great camp meeting or bush meeting, such as we farmers have in Virginia. The people come together and gossip. They discuss the crops and ask one another how they are getting along. Hassan Ali of Egypt says to Mohammed of Turkey, “How is business? Are you making money, and how does your government treat you?” Mohammed replies that the Turks are taxed to death, but they hope for much under the new Sultan. Thereupon Hassan says that the English have cut down the taxes in Egypt and that the church has plenty of money in the treasury. He tells how he has been able to send his boy to college, and that he hopes he will some day be an official. The Turk, thereupon, longs for a better government. At the same time the college students tell what they have learned, and as a result the twentieth-century spirit of modern progress is stirring the Mohammedan world.

In addition to the collegiate work great advances in the spread of our civilization are being made by the Protestant missions. There are now thousands of native Christians in Syria and from seventy-five to one hundred thousand native Christians in the empire of Turkey. The American missionaries alone have more than one hundred schools, with five or six thousand pupils, and the English have many more.

Here in Beirut is the largest and most up-to-date publishing house in the Orient. It belongs to the American mission, and annually turns out tens of thousands of Bibles, school textbooks, and other works on religious and scientific subjects. Altogether, it has published more than seven hundred different works in Arabic, and it is estimated that it has printed in the neighbourhood of a billion pages of one kind or other. It issues around one hundred thousand volumes a year, containing altogether something like thirty million pages. Its Bibles published in Arabic are sold throughout the Mohammedan world.

The medical missionaries are doing a great deal in all parts of the Orient. I have seen their hospitals everywhere on my trips around the world. They are to be found in all parts of India, far up the Nile Valley, and in the leading centres of the Holy Land. One of the best I have visited is situated at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, and headed by Dr. Torrence, who has been treating the Bedouins and others there for the last thirty years. In my talk with him the question of tuberculosis came up, and he described the evils of the great white plague as they are found in his region on the very edge of the desert. He says tuberculosis is rife among the Bedouins although they live out of doors in the purest air all the time. He thinks that the disease is spread largely by the cattle. About 50 per cent. of the cows have tuberculosis, and the people live chiefly on milk.

Another doctor connected with the hospital tells me that Syria had no consumption until about twenty-five years ago, when the disease was brought in from the United States by natives who had emigrated to our country, contracted consumption, and brought it back home. The Syrians had no idea what it meant, and it rapidly spread. The sanitary conditions of this part of the world are bad, the bacteria breed rapidly, and the disease is sweeping the country.

And this brings me to a great work at Juneau within a few miles of Beirut. This is a tuberculosis hospital built there by the Church of the Covenant at Washington, and in charge of Dr. Mary Eddy, who has become famous throughout the Near East for her work as a medical missionary. Miss Eddy is the daughter of the Rev. William W. Eddy, who came to Syria many years ago and remained here until his death. Besides being a woman of fine education and great medical skill, she is an expert on all matters connected with tuberculosis and its treatment.