The Women of the Arabs

by Henry Harris Jessup

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: