There are others among these girls who have been taught in evangelical schools, who have learned to love Christ, whose faith is strong and whose trust sustains them and keeps them patient and cheerful amid very great trials and even cruel treatment from their husbands, "Strengthened in their endurance by the vision of the Invisible God."
To go back to Mohammedan women. It is surprising how exceedingly ignorant many of them are, even the women of the higher classes from whom you might expect better things. A visitor inquired of her Mohammedan hostess if she would tell her the name of the current Mohammedan month. "I do not concern myself with such things, you must ask the Effendi." Their minds seem to be blank except in regard to their relations to their families, to sleeping, eating, and diseases, to their clothes, and their servants, and the current gossip of the neighborhood. Formerly it was not believed that girls were capable of learning anything, and years ago an Effendi in Tripoli, when urged to have his daughter taught to read, exclaimed, "Teach a girl to read! I should as soon try to teach a cat!" But those days are passing and the Mohammedans are beginning to bestir themselves in the matter of educating their girls. They are opening schools for girls in all the cities, though judging from the attainments of some of the teachers, the girls are not taught very much. When these schools were first opened in Beirut, the only available teachers were girls who had been in attendance on the Protestant schools, and some of them had only been there a few months.
In Sidon there is a large Mohammedan school for girls, where are gathered from five to six hundred girls. The Koran is the text-book, reading and writing are taught and needle-work has a large place in the curriculum.
Years ago an old Effendi was attending the examination in Miss Taylor's school for Mohammedan and Druze girls. "My two granddaughters are here," he said to a missionary sitting beside him. "I was instrumental in starting a school of our own for girls, and I took my granddaughters away from here and put them in the new school. One day I went to visit the school. When I was still at a distance I heard the teacher screaming at the girls and cursing them, saying, 'May God curse the beard of your grandfathers, you dogs!' Now, I was the grandfather of two of those children and I knew they heard enough of such language at home without being taught it at school, so I brought them back to this good place."
The aim of the Mohammedans in their schools is twofold: being both to benefit and train the girls, making them more companionable, and also to fortify them against Christian teaching. The aim of our work and our teaching is more than that, for we desire, not only to enlarge the mental horizon but to cultivate the heart, to open up for them the wellspring of true joy and store their memories with hymns of praise and the inspiring and comforting words of Christ. But more than all to lead them to accept for themselves their only Saviour, the Son of God, who died for them, who only is the true "Prophet of the Highest," whose mission is "to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." We claim for these dear women and girls the liberty which their own sacred Koran inculcates: "Let there be no compulsion in religion." (From the Sura called "The Cow," v. 257.)
And will the favored Christian women of England, America, and Germany, and all free Christian lands not join those already on the field either in prayer or personal service, that they may have a part in bringing many of these Mohammedan women, sweet and lovable, and capable of rising to high levels as many of them are, out of their "darkness into His Marvellous Light"?