MISS TAYLOR’S SCHOOL FOR MOSLEM GIRLS.

This worthy Christian lady from Scotland is doing a quiet yet most effective work in Beirut, with which few are acquainted, yet it is carried on in faith from year to year, and the fruits will no doubt appear one day, in a vast reformation in the order, morality and general improvement of the Moslem families of Beirut.

Ever since the days of Mrs. Sarah L. Smith, and Mrs. Dr. Dodge, Moslem girls have been more or less in attendance upon the schools of the Syria Mission, but the purely Moslem schools of Miss Taylor and of the British Syrian Schools are making a special effort to extend education into every Moslem household.

This school was opened in February, 1868, for the poorest of the poor.  It received the name of “The Original Ragged school for Moslem Girls.”  No one is considered as enrolled, who has not been at least three weeks in regular attendance.  The number already received has reached very near five hundred, all Mohammedans, except five Jewish and fifteen Druze girls.  Native teachers are also employed, and the pupils are taught reading, writing, geography, and arithmetic.  The principal lesson-book is the Bible.  The early history of this institution is replete with interest; but it has attracted little public notice hitherto.  It has always been a prudential question whether it would not be wiser to proceed with its work in a quiet unobtrusive way, so as not to awake fanatical opposition.  But steady and appreciative friends have stood by it from the beginning, and those who know the school best have commended it most earnestly.

CHURCH OF SCOTLAND SCHOOL FOR JEWISH GIRLS IN BEIRUT.

This school has been in operation since 1865.  Although established originally for Jewish girls alone, of whom it frequently had fifty in regular attendance, it has also had under instruction, Greek and Moslem girls.

Three European teachers and two native teachers have been connected with it, under the supervision of the Rev. James Robertson, Pastor of the Anglo-American congregation in Beirut.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE AMOUNT OF BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION GIVEN IN MISSION SCHOOLS.

There has been great difference of opinion with regard to the proper position of Education in the Foreign Missionary work.  While some have given it the first rank as a missionary agency, others have kept it in the background as being a non-missionary work, and hence to be left to the natives themselves to conduct, after their evangelization by the simple and pure preaching of the gospel.  The Syria Mission have been led, by the experience of long and laborious years of labor in this peculiar field, to regard education as one of the most important auxiliaries in bringing the Gospel in contact with the people.  Society and sects are so organized and constituted, that while the people of a given village would not receive a missionary as simply a preacher of the Gospel, they will gladly accept a school from his hands, and welcome him on every visit to the school as a benefactor.  They will not only receive the daily lessons and instructions of the school-teacher in religious things, but even ask the missionary to preach to them the Word of life.  Schools in Syria are entering wedges for Gospel truth.