[Footnote 114: The fact of four English consuls allowing their names to go forth as patrons of a Protestant College, which is to be got up for the perversion of native Christians, is so utterly at variance with the general practice of our government, that we must express our surprise it has been overlooked at the Foreign Office. We cannot imagine Lord Stanley lending even a tacit sanction to such an outrage of the feelings of the native Syrian Christians.]
In his work upon "Mount Lebanon," from which we have already quoted, Mr. Urquhart relates a conversation which he had with a certain Maronite bishop, which seems so apropos that we give it entire:—
"I wish you to know [said the bishop] that we are not attached to France. France is to us on oppression from which we would be most happy to escape; we have proved this by acts, but no account is taken of them. How France came to be considered our protector is an old story, into which it is needless to enter. The connection awakened against us the hatred of the Turks and of the Greeks, and to it may be attributed the past suffering of our people from both. Here and in the other parts of Syria, in Egypt and in Cyprus, from the middle of the last century to the close of the campaign of Napoleon, we reckon that the blood of 40,000 Maronites has been shed by the Turks or the Greeks. This is the debt we owe to French protection. When, in 1840, the French government sent to us to require us to support Ibrahim Pasha and Emir Beshir, we gave a flat refusal. [{359}] M. —— came to Saida, and sent a message to the Patriarch (of the house of Habesh), who sent his own secretary to give him the answer, which had been decided on by the bishops and chiefs, which was, 'The Maronites have heard much of, but have never seen, the fruit of the protection of France, and could not, in the hope of it, expose themselves to the risks they were now required to run.' Then the English government sent to us an agent (Mr. Wood), accompanied by M. Stendel, on the part of the Austrian government, proposing to us to accept the protection of Austria in lieu of that of France. We declined to make any application for such protection; and we complained to Mr. Wood of the interference in our religion of the Protestant missionaries which made us look with suspicion on the intentions toward us of the English government. He assured us that the English government was opposed to all missionary schemes, and suggested that we should draw up a petition to the Turkish government, requesting the missionaries to be prohibited from entering the country, promising that the English ambassador would obtain from the Porte an order to that effect. Satisfied with these assurances, we aided in the expulsion of Mehemet Ali, although he had every way favored the Maronites.
"The promised order respecting the missionaries never came, England set up a Protestant bishop (in Jerusalem), and obtained from the Porte the formal recognition of the Protestants as a body."(Vol. ii pp. 261, 262.)
The italics in this quotation are our own. They show pretty plainly whether or not the missionaries are welcome to the natives of Syria. But what will these same natives say now, when they see our consuls-general and consuls coming forth as the official patrons and promoters of Protestant missionary proselytism? If it be true—and we have certainly always looked upon it as one of the rules of our government—that the English government "is opposed to all missionary schemes," how is it that the consul-general in Syria, the consul at Jerusalem, and the consul at Damascus, are allowed to take upon themselves the office of "managers" or "local directors" of the Protestant Syrian college?
ORIGINAL.
DELIA.
There is a darkness which is still not gloom,
And thou, poor child, whose young but sightless eyes
Catch no glad radiance from the summer skies—
Worse, still, neglected in thy blindness, whom
Those nurtured like thee in the self-same womb
Have cast on strangers, strangers truly wise,
Since more than waif of gold such charge they prize—
Hast found a joy what others find a doom.
Thou knowest the way unto the chapel door,
And, kneeling softly on its blessed floor.
Thou art no longer blind; the Presence there
Reveals itself to thy adoring prayer;
Hours fly with thee that altar's Guest before,
Till, cowards, we envy what we would not share.