Soon after the capture of Acre by Ibrahim Pasha, in 1832, Mr. Tod, an English merchant, accompanied by Wortabet, obtained an audience with him, and made known the case of Asaad. The Pasha directed the Emir Beshir to furnish ten soldiers to Mr. Tod, with authority to search the convent of Canobeen by force, if necessary. He was received by the Patriarch and priests of the convent with dismay. They asserted that Asaad had died two years before, pointed out his grave, and offered to open it. The convent was thoroughly searched, but he was not found, and Mr. Tod was convinced that he was really dead.1
1 Missionary Herald for 1833, pp. 51-57.
When it is considered how severely and in how many ways Asaad was tried, his faith and constancy appear admirable. His pride of intellect and authorship, and his reputation for consistency, were opposed, at the outset, to any change in his religious opinions. Then all his reverence for his ecclesiastical superiors and his former tutors, some of whom were naturally mild in their tempers, and his previous habits of thought, withstood his yielding to the convictions of conscience and the authority of Scripture. Next, the anathemas of the Church, the tears of a mother appalled by the infamy of having an apostate son, the furious menaces of brothers, and the bitter hatred of masses stirred up by an influential priesthood, combined to hold him back from the truth. All these things were preparatory to being seized by indignant relatives, chained to his prison walls, deprived of the New Testament and other books, and of every means of recreation, refused even those bodily comforts which nature renders indispensable; in such a forlorn condition, exposed to the insults of a bigoted populace and the revilings of a tyrannical priesthood, beaten till his body became a mass of disease, and held in this variety of grief for years, without one ray of hope, save through the portals of the tomb, who expected that he would endure steadfastly to the end?
On the other hand, if he would only recant, promotion awaited him, and wealth, indeed everything that could be offered to prevent a dreaded defection. How many are there, with all our knowledge and strength of religious principle, who, in his situation, would like him be faithful unto death?
CHAPTER V.
THE PRESS AT MALTA.
1822-1833.
The location of the press at Malta, was not the result of design, but because printing could not be done safely, if at all, either at Smyrna or at Beirût. Its operations were begun under the impression of a more extended taste for reading and reflection in the several communities of the Levant, than really existed; and it is doubtful whether the larger part of the earlier publications were well suited to the apprehension of the Oriental mind. However this may be, it was decided, in the year 1829, to make it a leading object, for a time, to furnish books for elementary schools; making them, as far as possible, the vehicles of moral and religious truth. The wisdom of this course was seen among the Greeks. A first book for schools of sixty pages, called the Alphabetarion, went into extensive use. Twenty-seven thousand copies were called for in Greece before the year 1831.
There had been more or less of printing since 1822; but it was not until the close of 1826, that the arrival of Mr. Homan Hallock furnished a regular and competent printer. In the year following, Mr. Temple was bereaved of his excellent wife and of two children, and at the invitation of the Prudential Committee he visited the United States. Meanwhile the presence of Messrs. Bird, Goodell, Smith, and Hallock kept the press in operation. Mr. Temple returned in 1830.
The establishment consisted of three presses, with fonts of type in English, Italian, Modern Greek, Greco-Turkish, Armenian, Armeno-Turkish, and Arabic, but the greater part of the printing was in the Italian, the Modern Greek, and Armeno-Turkish. The most important work was the translation of the New Testament in the Armeno-Turkish, which was printed at the expense of the British and Foreign Bible Society. It was prepared from two translations, one by Mr. Goodell, with the efficient aid of Bishop Carabet, the other by an Armenian priest at Constantinople, in the employ of Mr. Leeves, agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Mr. Goodell's version was made conformable to the original Greek, and the last sheet was printed in January, 1831. During that year, there were printed seventy-eight thousand copies of fourteen works, amounting to nearly five millions of pages, all in modern Greek. The whole amount of printing at Malta, from the establishment of the press in July, 1822, to December, 1833, the time of its removal to Smyrna, was about three hundred and fifty thousand volumes, containing twenty-one millions of pages. Nearly the whole were put in circulation, and additional supplies of some of the books were urgently demanded. The Roman Catholics opposed this work from the first, and anathematized the books issued.