You know why I have told you this story.  You know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  He said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me.”  Wherever Jesus leads it is safe for us to go.  How many boys and girls there are who think they know a better path than the one Jesus calls them to follow.  There are “stranger” voices calling on every side, and many a child leaves the path of the Good Shepherd, and turns aside to hear what they would say.  If they were truly lambs of Jesus’ fold, they would love Him, and follow Him in calm and storm, and never heed the voice of strangers.

I was once travelling from Duma to Akura, high up on the range of Lebanon.  It was a hot summer’s day, and at noon I stopped to rest by a fountain.  The waste water of the fountain ran into a square stone birkeh or pool, and around the pool were several shepherds resting with their flocks of sheep and goats.  The shepherds came and talked with me, and sat smoking for nearly an hour, when suddenly one of them arose and walked away calling to his flock to follow him.  The flocks were all mixed together, but when he called, his sheep and goats began to raise their heads and start along together behind him.  He kept walking along and calling, until all his flock had gone.  The rest of the sheep and goats remained quietly as though nothing had happened.  Then another “Rai,” or shepherd, started up in another direction, calling out in a shrill voice, and his sheep followed him.  They knew their shepherd’s voice.  Our muleteers were talking all the time, but the sheep paid no attention to them.  They knew one voice, and would follow no other.

We will now hasten on to Beirut.  You will wish to see the Female Seminary, and the Sabbath School and the Steam Printing Press, and many of the Beirut Schools, before we start to Abeih again.

Here is the Female Seminary.  There are a hundred girls here, studying Arabic reading and writing geography, arithmetic, grammar, botany, physiology and astronomy, and a few study English, French and music.  But the great study is the Bible.  I am afraid that very few schools in America have as much instruction in the Bible, as the girls in this Seminary and the Sidon Seminary receive.  You would be surprised to hear the girls recite correctly the names of all the patriarchs; kings and prophets of the Old Testament, with the year when they lived, and the date of all the important events of the Old and New Testament History, and the Life of Christ, and the travels of the Apostle Paul, and the prophecies about Christ in the Old Testament, and then recite the whole Westminster Assembly’s Catechism in Arabic!  I have given out one hundred and twenty Bibles and Hymn Books as rewards to children in the schools in Beirut, who have learned the Shorter Catechism perfectly in Arabic.