1 Tracy's History, pp. 417, 440. Report for 1842, pp. 117-124. Missionary Herald, 1842, pp. 196, 229, 362.
This was very properly regarded as a providential deliverance for the mission, which had never been threatened with so formidable an opposition as at the beginning of the year. It now entered into a correspondence with nearly all the principal Druze sheiks, who felt that they had, by their swords, won the right to schools. The prospects were at that time very hopeful. The country never seemed more open to evangelical labors. For a year there had been no opposition to the schools, except two or three among the Druzes. The press was in operation without censorship, sending forth thousands of copies each year, and there was an increasing demand for books. The mission bookstore, in the centre of the town, was visited by all classes, including very many high officers of government, and even by the Seraskier himself, and there was no complaint against it. No one had been persecuted for a long time for professing the religion of the Bible, and Protestantism seemed to have gained a tacit toleration.
In reply to the objection, that the mission had been long established, and yet the conversions had been very few, Mr. Smith wrote thus: "I ask, what labor? Has it, after all, been so disproportioned to the results? The instrumentality highest on the scale of efficiency for the conversion of souls in every country, is oral instruction, especially formal preaching. Now how much of this has there been in Syria? Before Mr. Bird could engage in it, Mr. Fisk was called away by death. I had hardly been preaching in Arabic a year, when Mr. Bird left for America. Mr. Thomson had but just preached his first sermon when my family was broken up, and I became a wanderer. Since then, we have both been here together but a few months at a time, until the last year. And these are all the Arabic preachers we have had at our station. In the mean time we have all been away, once for nearly two years at Malta, and again for a while at Cyprus. And when here, so many other cares have we had, that a single sermon on the Sabbath has been, for most of the time, all the formal preaching that has been done. Add to this a weekly prayermeeting for six or seven months in the year."
Again he says: "The labor of years has been accomplished in gaining experience, forming favorable acquaintances, doing away with prejudice, disseminating evangelical truth, the successful commencement of printing operations, etc. All this labor is in the language of a vast nation of Mohammedans, the sacred language of the whole sect, the language of their prophet. And when their power falls, it will be so much done towards their conversion. Instead of being alarmed and discouraged by the revolutions that are occurring around me, I am interested in them as forerunners of that great event."
The political changes have generally been very sudden in Syria. In April, 1842, Omar Pasha imprisoned the leading Druze sheiks, and Albanian soldiers were arriving daily, as if to disarm the Druzes. And so it proved. The Turks decided to take the matter into their own hands. An army was marched into Lebanon, accompanied by Moslem sheiks and teachers, and the whole Druze nation was compelled to appear, outwardly at least, as Moslem.1 The motives of the government in this were chiefly political, but partly religious. They wished to be able to draw recruits from this brave people for the army, which could not be done should they become Protestant Christians; and also, to retain a strong party in Lebanon, to be used, as they afterwards were used, against the large nominally Christian majority of its inhabitants. They expected thus to control the mountains, and keep down the influence of foreign Christian powers.
1 These statements are made on the authority of a document received from the mission in the year 1869.
In this manner were the operations for educating and Christianizing the Druzes suddenly arrested. In working out their policy, the Turks necessarily resorted to measures intended to place the Druzes in bitter antagonism to all the native Christians. In the atrocious massacre of 1860, which, for the time, threw the Druzes far from all Christian sympathy, that unfortunate people were used as tools by the Turks to work out their own policy. Events such as these, are among the deep mysteries of Providence. Nor is this mystery yet solved; though, from facts that will appear in the sequel, we shall see enough to authorize the hope of a renewal at some time, of the former pleasing relations between the Druzes and Christian missionaries.
CHAPTER XVI.
SYRIA.
1842-1846.