Asaad."
Galeb took me aside, and begged me to urge his brother to go home. I said I had already advised him to do so, but that I could not force him to go—that if he found he could not enjoy liberty of conscience, and the privilege of reading the word of God, in Hadet, he was welcome to stay with me as long as he pleased. "You are a man," said Galeb, "that speaks the truth and acts uprightly, but Asaad and Phares are not like you; they talk very improper things." Among these things, he mentioned a report to which Asaad had given circulation, respecting the patriarch, to which I was obliged to reply, that instead of taking it for granted to be a false report, he ought to believe it to be true, and that such a report was not abroad respecting the patriarch alone, but respecting a majority of patriarchs and bishops of the whole land.
After some further conversation on the wickedness of treating brothers, as they had done Phares and Asaad, we went to Phares, and endeavoured to persuade him to go home with his brother. But it was all in vain. "If I leave this house," said he, "instead of going to Hadet, I will go in the opposite direction." The brother returned without him.
Conversation of Phares with the Bishop of Beyroot.
After Galeb had gone, we put a great many questions to Phares, and he communicated some interesting particulars. Among others was the following:
"The day that Asaad and myself left you, (the 17th,) the bishop of Beyroot was at the next house, and I went to salute him.
"He said to me, 'I understand you have become English, too. You reason on the subject of religion.'
"But," said I, "is every one English, if he reasons on that subject?"
Bishop.—"But you read in the Bibles of the English."
Phares.—"Yes, and from whom is the Bible? is it from the English, or from God?"