"Dear parents, we rejoice exceedingly to see you here, looking on us with eyes of love. No words can express what you have done for us, especially in sending us here to learn of Jesus. We trust that it has been, or shall be, a blessing to you also. It is our hope that you will be willing to send your daughters to distant places, to make known eternal life. If you do, great will be your reward from the Lord.
"And now, sweet sisters, another year have we sat under our own vine and fig tree unmolested. We have tasted the honey and milk of the blessed land, and drank of the waters from the Rock. But now the time has come to leave these bowers of knowledge, but not the lessons here learned, nor the counsels of our teachers, nor the sweet whispers of the Holy Spirit.
"Dear sisters, let us bear forth with us the light-giving countenance of the Saviour, which will scatter all the evil around us as the light dispels the darkness: without this we cannot go. Though separated in body, let us be united in fervent prayer. Let a conscience made sensitive by grace be our abiding companion. Let the tent of Abraham teach us that we have no abiding city here; and like him, let our first work be to offer those prayers to God which shall testify that he is ours. And now, before going forth, let us clothe ourselves with the meekness and gentleness of Christ. Yea, let us take with us all his virtues, being obedient, teaching our dying associates, and leading them one and all to Christ. Though we part, our love can never be sundered, and we will ask the Lord to send his ministering spirits to strengthen our faltering steps, and feed our souls with heavenly manna, so that if we never more see each other here, we may meet in heaven with our sisters who have gone before."
The teachers improved the interest awakened by the examination in 1850, to urge their older pupils to labor in the village Sabbath schools; and let us look in on their efforts in Geog Tapa. The children there were divided into ten classes, each with one of the pupils for a teacher. Others taught the women who could not read. Soon these were joined by both old and young men, who were taught by pupils from the Seminary at Seir, and as many as forty spelling books were in active use. The children, too, were taught to sing. Thus they labored till winter, when the school was put in charge of the village school teachers. In the spring the pupils resumed the work with undiminished zeal. Nor did they toil in vain, for the attendance increased from about seventy to four hundred; and some of the teachers testified that they spent there some of the most delightful Sabbaths they ever knew. Yonan, who superintended the school with Moses, had also a class of old women, that increased from six to thirty-seven, whom he taught from the book, well known to our Sabbath school children, "Line upon Line." His own account of it is very interesting. He says, "The women, especially the aged among them, have a habit, when they meet, of engaging in unprofitable conversation, and, both on the way to church and in it, we could not stop it. Awakening sermons produced no impression; and though they had heard preaching for fifteen years, they were still very ignorant. But now what I teach them on one Sabbath I require them to repeat the next; and so they are obliged to leave off their gossip, and talk over what they have heard, that they may not forget it. These women are so anxious to be taught, that if I am hindered a little longer than usual in arranging the classes, they cry out after me in the church, that all the other classes are being taught, but they forsaken."
A class of old men, taught by Deacon John, commenced with an attendance of ten, but soon numbered forty. Formerly they went to market on the Sabbath, or sat sunning themselves in the street, going to hear preaching about half the time; but they became so interested in the exercises, that they were unwilling they should close. They brought others with them, and if one of them was kept away one Sabbath, he mourned that the rest had got so far before him.
The women carried their books with them when they went out to the vineyards, and at resting time: while others slept, they read. Some, who could not afford oil at night, read by moonlight, and when they spun, they fastened the book open on a shelf, so that they could read at the same time. Once, when a woman was asked if she could repeat her lesson, she replied, "O, yes; I repeated it over just now while I was milking." The men also took their books out to the fields, that they might improve every spare moment, and one was so earnest that, when waked in the night to attend to the cattle, he read till morning; but his family, finding that he burned so much oil, took care after that to let him sleep. Good old Mar Elias rejoiced to see such a work among his flock; and it was most pleasant to see the large church so crowded by people, seated on the floor, that one could hardly walk about among them.
After the teachers had attended to their classes about an hour and a half, the younger scholars repeated the portion of Scripture they had learned during the week, and the parents were much pleased to hear their children recite.
The daily report of the Seminary was introduced into the Sabbath school in a way that only Orientals could do it. The older members of the school were required to report any cases of swearing, stealing, or quarrelling among the younger ones during the week, who were publicly reproved on the following Sabbath. This made the parents more careful to watch over their children, and the children more circumspect in their daily behavior. If any little trouble occurred among them during the week, they said to each other, "Let us be careful; Sabbath is near;" and though at first some of the people smiled when the children were reproved, it soon became more common for them to weep.
After taking an account of the attendance, the children sung, divided into two companies, on opposite sides of the church; and then Mar Ellas, or some of the elders of the village, addressed the school. Yonan closes his account of it by saying, "We have learned in this work more than ever before the value of female education. Among our most energetic, faithful teachers are young women who love to sit down before little children, and the ignorant of their own sex, and teach them the way of life."
Thursday, June 1st, 1854, was a great day in Geog Tapa. The forenoon was devoted to the examination of a girls' school, taught by Hanee and Nargis, graduates of the preceding year, and both belonging in the village. As it was a feast day, a large number were present from the neighboring hamlets. At nine o'clock the examination commenced in the spacious church, which was crowded, the congregation numbering about six hundred in all. The fifty pupils occupied the middle of the church. The studies pursued were ancient and modern Syriac, geography, arithmetic, both Scripture and secular history, reading and spelling; and in all of them the pupils did credit both to themselves and their teachers. The singing, that day, especially pleased the parents, many of whom exclaimed with wonder, "Our daughters can learn as well as our sons." Miss Fiske rejoiced to see her children's children in the pupils of her first pupil, who gracefully managed her little flock with an easy control. The villages of Gavalan, Vizierawa, and Ardishai, had each a similar school, containing in all one hundred pupils; and each of these schools was as valued a centre of religious influence as of intellectual training. The teachers were in the habit of praying with one of their pupils alone every day, as well as of opening the school with prayer; and Friday afternoon was regularly devoted to a religious meeting with the mothers of the pupils. These schools fitted the teachers for usefulness, and the pupils for admission to the Seminary, as well as for teachers in the Sabbath school; and they furnish a delightful view of the present and prospective usefulness of the Seminary among the people.