Dr. Van Dyck had been connected with the mission since 1840, and very soon made himself master of the spoken Arabic, in which he greatly excelled as a preacher. It soon appeared, that he was the man to succeed Dr. Smith as translator of the Scriptures, and the mission arranged his removal, for that purpose, from Sidon to Beirût; so that in due time he was enabled to bring the great work to successful completion.[1]
[1] See chapter xl.
Mr. Aiken had joined Mr. Wilson at Hums, a new station north of Damascus, where he was bereaved of his wife before she had been six months in the field. The arrangement for 1857 was that Beirût should be occupied by Messrs. Van Dyck and Ford, and Mr. Hurter, the printer; Abeih by Messrs. Calhoun and Bliss; Sidon by Mr. Eddy; Deir el Komr by Mr. Bird; Bhamdûn by Mr. Benton; Tripoli by Messrs. Jessup and Lyons; and Hums by Mr. Wilson. Dr. Thomson and Mr. Aiken were in the United States; the latter with health so impaired as to forbid his resuming his mission. He had previously married Miss Cheney. In the following year, Miss Jane E. Johnson and Miss Amelia C. Temple arrived to take the care of a girls' boarding-school at Sûk el Ghurb, on Mount Lebanon; but the former was soon found unable to endure the climate. Dr. Thomson, while in this country, published a valuable work on Biblical literature, in two volumes, entitled "The Land and the Book." Dr. and Mrs. De Forest had come to this country in the hope of a restoration of his health; but on the 24th of November, 1858, this excellent missionary was released from long and severe physical sufferings by a peaceful death.
The health of Mrs. Wilson made it necessary, for a time, to leave Hums without a resident missionary. The principal operations, both here and at Deir el-Komr, were through schools for both sexes, which had been embarrassed by Syrian and Greek opposers, but in no case suppressed. The female department of the school at Deir el-Komr commenced with a dozen pupils, but in six months the attendance exceeded fifty. When Mr. Bird came to that place, he thought there were not six females in the nominally Christian population, who could read; but a year had not passed before half the pupils in his girls' school could read their Bibles. There were other mountain schools under the care of the station, and in one there were more than sixty pupils.
The following contrast of the state of things in 1857 with what it had been fifteen years before, indicates a preparatory work in no small degree encouraging. "Then, the missionary could hardly purchase here the necessaries of life; and when he left, he was followed by stones and execrations. Now, he is welcomed and honored. Then, fear kept even his friends from venturing to visit him; now, priests and even a bishop are ashamed not to return his calls. Then, the Protestant sect could not be vilified enough; now, it is spoken of with favor in public and in high places. The old Emir Beshir, once the persecutor and terror of Protestants, has passed away, and his dilapidated palace is used as barracks for Turkish soldiers. His prime minister, or secretary, who did much injury to the cause of evangelical religion, and whose mansion was, as it were, the stronghold of the enemy, is no more. What remains of this Ahithophel's house is the abode of the missionary, and furnishes apartments for Scripture schools, and a Protestant chapel. His sons-in-law were leaders in the movement which brought us to Deir el-Komr, and are among our firmest friends. His grandchildren learn the folly of popery by the knowledge of the Bible they acquire in our schools.
"Time was, when every one trembled at the anathema of the clergy. Now, the latter dare not show their impotence by pronouncing it. Some of the people would be glad to be thus dissevered from a church which they abhor, for they would thus not only gain their end, but retain the sympathies of many who would else oppose them. Those who send their children to our schools, have been refused admission to the confessional and the eucharist; the Maronite bishop, however, has at length yielded the point, and tries to win, rather than compel. Their high school he has made free of charge, and has promised to open a girls' school beside. In the Greek Catholic communion, on the other hand, the men and some of the women remain "suspended;" yet they are of good courage, some glad of so excellent an excuse to get rid of the confessional, and others incensed at the glaring injustice that would admit the drunkard and the notoriously vicious, but exclude the respectable and the moral. We have here the anomaly of those being thrust out of the church, who are still its very pillars, its substantial supporters, whose names are known, and whose influence is felt, throughout the region.
"We have reason to thank God and take courage. Still we long to see a work more purely spiritual. Light is being diffused, but there is not the corresponding religious interest. The truth is viewed by many as a beautiful theory, the heart remaining a flint. We have to regret the fact, that some of the best minds in the place are tinged with skepticism. Happily the most influential are, notwithstanding, our firm friends, and are in favor of good education and good morals."
Ain Zehalty, a village situated in the heart of Lebanon, has been already mentioned.[1] Mr. Bird says, "We now have there five church-members. There have been regular Sabbath services under the charge of the native helper, Khalil. The audience has been on the increase, and is now not only larger than that in Deir el-Komr, but is composed of better materials. Those who come desire instruction, and are regular attendants and declared Protestants." An Ain Zehaltian, when out of his village, if not a Druze, was set down at once as a Protestant. The day school in that place had forty scholars, and half as many attended the evening school for adults. This school was for the special purpose of studying the Bible, and the pupils had gone through the historical books of the Old and New Testaments. Their custom on Saturday and Sabbath evenings was to read the devotional parts, and hold a prayer meeting.
[1] Vol. i. p. 383.
Mr. Ford made a visit to Hasbeiya in February, 1857, with Mr. Jones, Secretary of the Turkish Missions Aid Society. He had never before been in that region, and speaks highly of the native laborers. Of the church-members he says: "When compared with the rock from which they were hewn, and the hole of the pit from which they were digged, they show the genuineness of the work of grace in their hearts." "The signs of the times," he adds, "in the community around, are most encouraging. I will only refer now to a remarkable stirring up of the Maronites to defend themselves against the inroads made by the gospel upon their hitherto solid ranks. Their ecclesiastics have always maintained an attitude of proud contempt, as though conscious of the strength of their hold upon their people, and they have rarely deigned to come into personal contact with the despised preachers of the gospel. But the serious diminution of their numbers in various parts south of us, and the diffusion of spiritual light among the rest of their flocks, have forced them down from their assumed elevation, and now they select the ablest of their priests, ordain him bishop, and send him on a crusade through Deir el-Komr, Hasbeiya, Merj Aiun, and so on to Alma, where the spirit of Asaad es-Shidiak, the modern martyr of Syria, seems to be revived in the hearts of a simple people, preparing them to brave death itself for the Gospel's sake. This bishop has sought public discussions with Mr. Bird, at Deir el-Komr, and also with Mr. Wortabet, at Hasbeiya. In the latter place there had been two such discussions held just before we arrived. In the first, the bishop was effectually caught in his own craftiness, and so completely worsted, that he and his friends came to the second session prepared to regain by violence the advantage they had lost in argument; and the result was a stormy debate, terminated abruptly by an assault upon some of the Protestants present."