Of late years, as most of my readers must be aware, the attention of the benevolent Christian public of Great Britain has been frequently and anxiously directed to the want of proper religious teaching in Syria. Englishmen, both poor and wealthy, have contributed from their purses to supply the deficiency through the
aid of English and native missionaries: the latter having been educated in England expressly for this sacred purpose.
The United States have not been behindhand in this general cause; American missionaries have co-operated with some of their brethren from this country zealously, and with good results. How far those results have extended—how rapidly the elementary principles of the purest Christianity have been spread abroad in the East, through the agency of these godly men, to whose fervent zeal and untiring energy, I can, at least bear the most satisfactory, though humble testimony, has been better and more efficiently told in the annual reports, which the several missionary societies issue to the public, than any description which I could give.
I am truly grateful for the deep interest which these societies and their supporters have taken in the religious welfare of my nation; but it would not be becoming in me to attempt to add anything to their reports.
It will be sufficient for me to assure my readers, that the pious gentlemen employed by the parent societies, have traversed Syria in all directions, piercing even into the very heart of its most mountainous districts, sowing broadcast the seeds of a pure and immaculate faith; that they have found patient listeners in all, and zealous converts in many of our towns and villages. The number of their converts continues to increase; they are re-planting the true faith “The Cedar of Lebanon,” which has flourished in the land from time immemorial, and they have prepared the ground, nay, they have already laid the foundation on which to raise an imperishable temple in honour of the only true Mediator, our Saviour Christ, in defiance of the machinations and intrigues of the “wild beast of Rome.”
They have my most fervent wishes for their complete success, and, trusting to the aid of the Most High, I confidently look forward to that day, when the offshoots of the stately Cedar of Lebanon shall have covered the entire land, casting a holy shade over its inhabitants, when the noxious weeds that now impede its growth and baffle its influence, shall have disappeared from the land, and when the “wild beast” shall have been banished to his den.
I desire, above all things, to remove an erroneous impression which I find prevailing very generally in this country as to the character of the Greek, or Orthodox Eastern Church, to which, by far the greater portion of the Christian inhabitants belong. I have myself styled this Church the “Thistle of Lebanon,” when comparing it with the healthier and purer doctrines of the Reformed Church, which I have ventured to call the Cedar of my beloved Lebanon; but, nevertheless, it would be most ungenerous, nay unfair, to permit my readers to retain the impression that the Greek, or the Orthodox Eastern Church, is an offshoot of the Church of Rome, or in any way connected with it.
Nearly three hundred thousand of my countrymen worship God according to its doctrines, and all of them, excepting, perhaps the most ignorant, would feel indignant at the supposition that they were followers of the Church of Rome.
I will not fatigue my readers with a learned disquisition on the forms of worship, or on points of doctrine, for I shall effect my purpose much easier by a simple statement of the cardinal differences between the two churches, and I have no doubt they will at once be convinced, that there is a greater degree of relationship between the English or any other
Reformed Church, and the Orthodox Eastern Church than there exists between it and the Church of Rome.