II.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND SERVICE.
Dr. and Mrs. Whately gave their children a careful religious and moral training, and sought to instil into their minds the highest motives for right doing, and to set before them a high standard of conduct. Mrs. Whately early associated her daughters with herself in visiting among the poor in the village of Stillorgan, which adjoined the grounds of Redesdale, and in teaching in the village school. The poor of Dublin also were not forgotten, and especially at Christmas time Mary shared with her mother in the distribution of gifts among the deserving poor in the city, and in the entertainment of many of them in the servants' hall of the palace.
It is not known, perhaps she could not herself tell, exactly at what period the light of the Gospel first dawned upon her heart, but a subsequent time at which her spiritual life was much deepened and intensified was very marked. In 1849 the health of her brother broke down, and he was ordered by the physicians to spend the winter on the Continent. Mary accompanied him. They went first to Nice, but the climate disagreeing with them, they passed on to Florence and Pisa, and subsequently spent some time among the Waldensian valleys. This tour was in many ways a preparation for Mary's future life. She took lessons in painting, which was to be the chief recreation of her later years; she attained some proficiency in Italian, which led her a few years afterwards to engage in mission work among the poor Italians in Dublin; and her visit to the Waldensian valleys gave her her first insight into evangelical work abroad. But most important of all, she became acquainted with M. Meille, a young Waldensian pastor, and his wife, through her intercourse with whom her religious convictions became intensified and her spiritual horizon widened. When she returned to Dublin the great Irish famine was still continuing. The distribution of food and other efforts to relieve the distress were occupying the attention of all philanthropic persons. Mrs. Whately had become actively engaged in this work, and she and her daughters henceforward took a more prominent part in aggressive Christian work than they had hitherto done. Famine relief paved the way for greatly extended effort to spread Gospel knowledge among the Roman Catholic population. Industrial and Bible schools, refuges, and other Christian institutions sprang up in various parts of the country. Protestant missions to Roman Catholics were greatly extended. In this work Mary Whately found opportunity for the expression of her deepened spiritual experience. She taught in the adult classes at the Townsend Street Mission Hall joined her sisters and other ladies in founding a ragged school for boys—the first in Ireland—and afterwards in instituting a work among destitute girls, which issued in the Luke Street Girls' Home where hundreds of poor girls were taught to live respectable and Christian lives. These various forms of Christian service gave her tact and experience in dealing with the poor, which proved invaluable in her subsequent work in Egypt. As her sister says, "The Irish Church Mission work was the preparatory training to which she always especially looked back with thankfulness. The admirable manner of teaching and explaining Scripture employed in their schools she felt to have been the most valuable education for her subsequent life-work." [l]
[Footnote 1: Life of Mary L. Whately, by E.J. Whately, p. 15.]
In 1856, as she was in ill health, it was recommended that she should spend the winter in a warmer climate. Egypt was chosen, and, accompanied by a friend, she landed at Alexandria and proceeded to Cairo, where she remained several months. This was her first acquaintance with what was to be the land of her adoption. Before returning home in the spring of 1857 she made a prolonged tour in Syria and Palestine. She took much note of the mission work carried on in various places, and so greatly interested was she in the work among Jewesses then carried on in Jerusalem that she had some thoughts of giving it for a time her personal assistance.
III.
FIRST EFFORTS IN CAIRO.
The year 1860 was one of sorrow and bereavement to Mary Whately. She lost first her youngest sister, then her mother. Under the strain of nursing and sorrow her own health was seriously affected, and she was ordered by the doctors to spend the winter in a warmer climate. Her thoughts recurred to Egypt and her former pleasant sojourn there; accordingly she selected Cairo as her residence, purposing in her heart to make an attempt to bring the Gospel within reach of the Moslem women and girls. Egypt was then very different from what it is now. Railways were but just beginning to make their appearance, the Suez Canal was not yet cut, European customs, now so prevalent, had scarcely begun to invade the age-long usages of the upper classes. English residents in Cairo and tourists up the river were alike few in number. Few outside influences had been brought to bear on the Mohammedan population to moderate their extreme bigotry and hatred of anything called Christian—a word which they invariably associated with the picture and image worship of the members of the Greek or Roman Church with whom they had come in contact, or with the irreligious pleasure-seeking of tourists, or travellers by the overland route to India. The Copts, or descendants of the early Egyptian Christians, were almost without exception buried in the profoundest ignorance of the Scriptures and of Christian truth, given over to superstitious beliefs and practices, and destitute of any real spiritual life. Education for boys was of the most primitive character; for girls it was never thought of, nor had any educational effort ever been made for them during the twelve centuries which had elapsed since the rise of Mohammedanism. Christian missionary operations were almost non-existent. The American Presbyterians had recently commenced missionary effort, but their work was mainly, as it still is, among the Copts, and they had not yet opened a station in Cairo. Since 1827 indeed the Church Missionary Society had maintained a missionary—sometimes two—in Cairo, but their work had not issued in the formation of a Protestant Christian Church.
"It was laid on my heart," says Mary Whately, "to try and do something for the girls and women of the land, especially those of the Moslem poorer classes, far the most numerous, of course. The only schools hitherto opened for the children of the land had no scholars except from the Copts or native Christians; others were considered quite out of reach, and many of my friends endeavoured to dissuade me from an attempt which was sure to end in failure, as they said. However, it seemed best to make an effort, at all events. But it was begun in prayer, and therefore difficulties and delays did not greatly discourage me." [l]