service at B’hamra on the Sabbath.  He forbade her to eat for a whole day, and she prayed that God would give her bread.  Soon after, on her way to the village fountain, she found part of a merkuk, loaf of bread, by the wayside, which she picked up and ate most gratefully, regarding it as a direct answer to her prayer.  Another Ghuzaleh, was brutally beaten because she would not swear and blaspheme, and all were threatened and insulted because they would not work on Sunday.

In November, 1871, seven of these girls, on their own application, were received into the membership of the Church.  It was an interesting sight to see that group of Nusairiyeh heathen girls standing to receive the ordinance of Christian baptism.  In the spring of 1872, another was added to the list.  These little ones of Christ have all thus far shown themselves faithful.  They were sent back to their homes in the summer, and several, if not the most, of them may be forbidden to return again to the school.  Some may say, why allow them to go home?  The policy of encouraging children to run away from their parents and connect themselves with foreign missionaries and missionary institutions, will lead the heathen to hate the very name of Christianity, and to charge it with being a foe to all social and family order, and on the broad ground of missionary usefulness, the girls can do far more good in their own homes than elsewhere.

CHAPTER V.

CHRONICLE OF WOMEN’S WORK FROM 1820 TO 1872.

It must not be inferred from what has been said on a preceding page with regard to the favorable position occupied by the women of the nominal Christian sects of Syria as compared with the Mohammedan women, that the first missionaries found the Greek and Maronite women and girls who speak the Arabic language eager or even willing to receive instruction.  Far from it.  The effects of the Mohammedan domination of twelve hundred years have been to degrade and depress all the sects and nationalities who are subject to Islam.  Not only were there not women and girls found to learn to read, but the great mass of the men of the Christian sects could neither read nor write.  Many of the prominent Arab merchants in Beirut to-day can neither read nor write.  I say Arab merchants, and yet very few of the Arabs of the Greek Church have more than a mere tinge of Arab blood in their veins.  To call them Syrians, would be to confound them with the “Syrian” or “Jacobite” sect, who are found only in the vicinity of Hums, Hamath and Mardin.  So with the Maronites.  They are chiefly of a darker complexion than the Arab Greeks, and are supposed to have had their origin in Mesopotamia.  Yet all these sects and races speak the common Arabic language, and hence it will be convenient to call them Arabs, although I am aware, that while many of the modern Syrians glory in the name “Oulad el Arab,” many others regard it with dislike.