“No my friend, I am not ill.  My body is ill; and wasting away but I am well.  I am happy.  I cannot describe my joy.  I have no desire to return to health again.  If you would fill my hands with bags of gold, and send me back to Abeih in perfect health, to meet my family again, I would not accept the offer, in the place of what I know is before me.  I am going to see Christ!  I see Him now.  I know He has borne my sins, and I have nothing now to fear.  It would comfort me to see some of my friends again, and especially Mr. Calhoun, whom I love; but what are my friends compared with Christ, whom I am going so soon to see?” After prayer, I bade him good bye, and a few hours after, he passed peacefully away.

The teacher of the Girls’ School in Hums, is Belinda, also a former pupil of the Beirut Seminary.  Her brother-in-law, Ishoc, is the faithful colporteur, who has labored so earnestly for many years in the work of the Gospel in Syria.  His grandfather was a highway robber, who was arrested by the Pasha, after having committed more than twenty murders.  When led out to the gallows, the Pasha offered him office as district governor, if he would turn Moslem.  The old murderer refused, saying that he had not much religion, but he would not give up the Greek Church!  So he was hung, and the Greeks regarded him as a martyr to the faith!  Ishoc’s father was as bad as the grandfather, and trained Ishoc to the society of dancing girls and strolling minstrels.  When Ishoc became a Protestant, the father took down his sword to cut off his head, but his mother interceded and saved his life.  Afterwards his father one day asked him if it was possible that a murderer, son of a murderer, could be saved.  He read the gospel to him, prayed with him, and at length the wicked father was melted to contrition and tears.  He died a true Christian, and the widowed mother is now living with Ishoc in Beirut.  Belinda has a good school, and the wealthiest families of the Greeks have placed their daughters under her care.

CHAPTER XII.

MIRIAM THE ALEPPINE.

The city of Aleppo was occupied as a Station of the Syria Mission for many years, until finally in 1855 it was left to the Turkish-speaking missionaries of the Central Turkey Mission.  It is one of the most difficult fields of labor in Turkey, but has not been unfruitful of genuine instances of saving faith in Christ.  Among them is the case of Miriam Nahass, (or Mary Coppersmith,) now Miriam Sarkees of Beirut.

From a letter published in the Youth’s Dayspring at the time, I have gathered the following facts: 

In 1853 and 1854 the Missionaries in Aleppo, Messrs. Ford and Eddy, opened a small private school for girls, the teacher of which was Miriam Nahass.  When the Missionaries first came to Aleppo, her father professed to be a Protestant, and on this account suffered not a little persecution from the Greek Catholic priests.  At times he was on the point of starvation, as the people were forbidden to buy of him or sell to him.  One day he brought his little daughter Miriam to the missionaries, and asked them to take her and instruct her in all that is good, which they gladly undertook, and her gentle pleasant ways soon won their love.