Our author has, in the foregoing paragraph, certainly touch most of the weak points of Protestant missionary working. Even a cursory analysis of the reports before thus confirm every word of this quotation from his book. Like every Protestant account of missionary work, the Turkish Missions-Aid Society's Reports are interlarded with scriptural quotations, having always the same significance—that the time for seeing the results of the labor has not yet come, but soon will be; or, as Mr. Urquhart puts it, they supply to those who subscribe the funds, plausible grounds for expecting that the consummation is near.
Some years ago, a grand case of quasi martyrdom was reported that Exeter Hall, and must have been worth much money to the societies who furnish missionary funds for the East, both in England and America. It was the cause of many questions being asked, and much correspondence being furnished, in both Houses of Parliament. Dispatches were written, the Turkish Government threatened, and the life of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who was then our representative at the Porte, made a burden to him for a time with extra work. The story was that some American Protestant missionaries, when "preaching the Gospel" on Mount Lebanon, were stoned and otherwise ill-treated, being finally turned out of the village in which they resided; some of them being badly wounded. The tale was well told, but, like other histories of the kind, was allowed to the forgotten [{347}] as soon as it had served its purpose. Here is Mr. Urquhart's version of the affair, gathered as it was in the country itself, is not unlikely to prove the true version of the story:
"The missionaries arriving at Eden (a village not far from the celebrated cedars of Lebanon, the inhabitants consisting entirely of Maronite Catholics) entered a house, and disposed themselves to occupy it. The master of the house told them that he would not and could not receive them. They persisted, threatening him in the name of the Turkish authorities. A great commotion ensued, and the people, with the fear of the Turkish authorities before their eyes, devised a plan for dislodging the missionaries by unroofing the house. A roof in the Lebanon is not composed of tiles and rafters; to touch a roof is a very serious affair, not to be undertaken in wantonness. The people had the satisfaction of seeing the missionaries mount and depart without any act on their part which would expose them to after-retribution."—The Lebanon, vol ii. p. 82.
I said before, Mr. Urquhart is one of the very last men who could be accused of any leaning toward Catholicism, still less of any affection toward the native Christian population of Syria and Lebanon. Of this his volumes bear witness in every chapter. But in a dozen instances he proves what we have so often heard asserted by travellers returned from these regions, that the people do not want, and do not wish for, the American missionaries, and would far rather be without them. Also that wherever these Protestant apostles are located, their presence is a continual source of trouble and annoyance, by causing quarrels among the people, and that their sojourn in the land is most certainly not conducive either to the glory of God on high, or of peace on earth to men of good will. That their so-called mission has been a most complete religious fiasco, is pretty well proved by the returns which at page 308 we copy from these reports. If the reader will but turn back to it, he will find that with twenty-four missionaries and thirty-seven native assistants, the number of "church members" in the Syrian "field" amounts to no more than two hundred, and this after the Americans have worked as missionaries in this "field" for the last quarter of a century or more. Surely no clearer proof than this is wanting for endorsing what Mr. Urquhart has said above respecting the way and the reason why these religious undertakings are puffed up, and "plausible grounds" given for expecting that the consummation of "gospel" triumph is at hand.
There is, perhaps, no Christian population in the world more united as a body, more attached to their clergy, more faithful in their holding to the See of Peter, or more orthodox in every particle of their faith, than the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. To illustrate, even in the most superficial manner, the history and ritual of this singular people would extend this paper far beyond our limits. Suffice it to say that upward of ONE THOUSAND years before the discovery of America, the holy sacrifice of the mass was offered up in their churches, and matins, lauds, vespers, and complins sung every morning and evening in their sanctuaries, just as at the present day. Their name is derived from that of St. Maroun, a holy hermit, who, in the fourth century, when the heresies of Eutyches and the errors of Monothelism were so common throughout the East, preserved the inhabitants of Lebanon and the adjacent parts from those influences. "The Maronites," says Mgr. Patterson, in his work, which is the third on our list at the head of this paper,—
"The Maronites maintain that they have never swerved from the Catholic faith, and love to assert that their Patriarch is the only one whose spiritual lineage from St. Peter, in the see of Antioch, has been unbroken by the taint of heresy or schism." (P. 389.)
Their secular clergy number about 1,200, and the regulars, inhabiting sixty-seven monasteries, comprise some 1,400 monks, priests, and lay brothers. They have besides fifteen convents, in which there are about 300 nuns.
"The blessings of education (continues the same author) are widely diffused among the Maronites. Almost all are able to read and write; and though few even of the clergy can be called learned, they are all sufficiently instructed in the most necessary things, and especially in the practical knowledge of their faith. Offences are rare among them, crimes almost unknown. The number of the Maronites of Lebanon appears to be about 250,000. In 1180, William of Tyre estimated them at more than 40,000; in 1784 Volney placed them at 115,000; and Perrier, in 1840, at 220,000. Elsewhere they are hardly to be found; the largest number I know of is at Cyprus, where there are about 1,500. A few also are found at Aleppo and Damascus, and some at Cyprus.
* * * * *
"There are (among the Maronites of Lebanon) four principal colleges for the education of the clergy. The most ancient is that of Ain Warka, in which between thirty and forty pupils are educated. They are taught Arabic (their vernacular), Syriac, which is the liturgical language of this rite; logic, moral theology, Italian, and Latin. Six exhibitions for the maintenance of as many scholars at the College of Propaganda were attached to this college. At the time of the first French occupation of Rome, the funds which provided for them were seized, and have never been restored; but the pupils still go to Rome, and many of them are to be met with in the higher ranks of the Maronite clergy." (P. 388.)
It is then to turn this people, and these priests, from the faith which they have so long and so honestly held, and from the spiritual paths in which they have walked for at least fifteen hundred years, that respectable black-coated American gentlemen, whose experience of life has been confined to Boston or New York, are sent over and maintained by the funds furnished by the zealous evangelicals of England and the United States. No wonder if those to whom they come would rather be without them. With the people whom they are sent to "convert" they have not a single idea in common. The very vernacular of the country has to be studied and learnt by them (an undertaking of at least two or three years, as Arabic is perhaps the most difficult language in the world for an adult to acquire a proficiency in), before they can preach or even converse with those whom they wish to teach what they themselves deem, the truths of eternal life. Without the most remote approach to a thing like a ritual, and without even the barest liturgy to recommend them, they come among a people who from very very infancy are perhaps more familiar with the meaning and teaching of earnest ritualism than any nation on earth. Mr. Urquhart, in the quotation we have given elsewhere, says of the American missionaries, that "as to converting the Turks, they might just as well try to convert the Archbishop of Canterbury;" might he not have said the same as to the converting of the Maronites? From the 200 "church members," which the returns of the Turkish Missions-Aid Society state as the result of the "missionary" labor on the Syrian "field" during the quarter of a century and more which the work has been going on, if we deduct the personal servants of the twenty-four missionaries, and of thirty-seven native assistants, how many will then be left as real, true, and earnest converts from their own faith to that which the American missionaries would teach them? "It has to be observed," says Mr. Urquhart, "that the proselytism carried on is not, as is supposed in Europe, against unbelievers, but between Christians;" [Footnote 105] and surely here is proselytism of the kind forced upon a people against their will, by the inhabitants of another far-off country, who would do very much better if they spent their yearly £25,000 among themselves, in "converting" the thousands of worse than pagans to be seen daily in the streets of every great town of England and America, and whose "faith" is from time to time shown in their "works."