As another illustration of public sentiment in Syria with regard to evangelical work, I will translate another paragraph from this official newspaper: 

“We have been writing of the progress of the Press in Syria, and of Arabic literature in Europe, but we have another fact to mention which will no doubt fill the sons of our country with astonishment.  You know well the efforts which were put forth some time since in the printing of the Old and New Testaments in various editions in the Arabic language, in the Press of the American Mission in Beirut.  This work is under the direction of the distinguished scholar Dr. Van Dyck, who labored assiduously in the completion of the translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek languages, which was commenced by the compassionated of God, Dr. Eli Smith.  They had printed from time to time large editions of this Bible with great labor and expense, and sold them out, and then were obliged to set up the types again for a new edition.  But Dr. Van Dyck thought it best, in order to find relief from the vast expenditure of time and money necessary to reset the types, to prepare for every page of the Bible a plate of copper, on whose face the letters should be engraved.  He therefore proceeded to New York, and undertook in co-operation, with certain men skilled in the electrotyping art, to make plates exactly corresponding to the pages of the Holy Book, and he has sent to us a specimen page taken from the first plate of the vowelled Testament, and on comparison with the page printed here, we find it an exact copy of the Beirut edition which is printed in the same type with our journal.  We regard it as far clearer and better than the sheets printed from movable types, and we congratulate Dr. Van Dyck, and wish him all success in this enterprise.”

Such statements as these derive their value from the fact that they appear in the official paper of a Mohammedan government, and are a testimony to the value of the Word of God.

The next article is a literal translation of an address delivered in June, 1867, at the Annual Examination of the Beirut Female Seminary.  This Seminary was the first school in Syria for girls, which was established on the paying principle, and in the year 1867 its income from Syrian girls who paid their own board and tuition was about fifteen hundred dollars in gold.  It commenced with six pupils, and now has fifty boarders.  A crowded assembly attended the examination in the year above mentioned, and at its close, several native gentlemen made addresses in Arabic.  The most remarkable address was made by a Greek Priest, Ghubrin Jebara, the Archimandrite and agent of the Patriarch.  When it is remembered that in the days of Bird, Goodell and Fisk, the Greek clergy were among the most bitter enemies of the missionaries, it will be seen that this address indicates a great change in Syria.  Turning to the great congregation of three or four hundred people who were assembled in the American Chapel, Greeks, Maronites, Mohammedans, Catholics and Protestants, he said: