Volume I Part 13 (2/2)
which had grown into an organization under the political excitement of the times. They returned home in consequence of an order obtained from the Pasha of Damascus, but not until they had drawn away perhaps twenty, old and young, some of whom soon after returned to the instructions of Mr. Thomson and Tanns, who had taken the place of Mr. Smith and Butrus. While they were absent on the mountain to recover from illness, the result of confinement, anxiety, and a suffocating sirocco, the ”Young Men” rose in arms, against the Protestant brethren. They virtually took the government of the place into their own hands, and the Protestant men fled to escape their murderous violence. Returning to Hasbeiya, Mr. Thomson found only the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of those who had fled; some of them so poor as not to know how or where they could find their daily bread, yet apparently without fear. He overtook the fugitive people the next day, who were half peris.h.i.+ng with hunger.
Abeih was their place of refuge; and there they remained till October, zealously attending upon religious instruction.
In that month, one of the two Druze skeiks [sic] arrived, who had interposed on their behalf on the fifteenth of July, bringing with him a doc.u.ment from the Pasha of Damascus, procured, it was said, by Mr. Wood, English Consul there, directing their return and guaranteeing their entire security. The guaranty proved to be illusive, though probably not intended to be so. Strong, unfriendly influences were subsequently brought to bear on the Pasha.1 They were accompanied by Butrus, and it was intended that one of the missionaries should soon follow. The party reached Hasbeiya on the fourteenth of October, and found those who had remained there in great fear. The Patriarch having arrived the same day, to inflame the pa.s.sions of their enemies, intimidate the governor, and weaken the hands of the Druze sheiks. Butrus wrote, advising that no missionary come there until the Patriarch was gone, and things had become more quiet. He was succeeded by Tanns, in October, and he, in the following month, by Elias el-Fuaz. The friendly governor was at length set aside for one more in sympathy with their persecutors.
On the two following Sabbaths, the Bible-men were stoned in the streets, and Elias el-Fuaz was seriously wounded; while the governor made only a sham resistance, that emboldened the evil-doers, as he intended it should, till the native preacher was driven from the place, and some of the Protestants fled to Lebanon. Others, wearied with persecutions to which they could see no end, complied so far with the demands of the Patriarch, as to visit the Greek church, though they took no part in the services, and openly spoke against its idolatries. This very partial compliance relieved them from persecution, but inwardly set them more firmly against an organization that resorted to such measures to retain them.
1 Not only the influence of the Patriarch of Damascus, but also of the Russian Consul-general of Syria, who wrote to the Pasha as follows, on learning that Mr. Wood had privately secured permission for the Protestants to return home:--
”However, I may desire to address your Excellency on this subject in a friendly manner, I must remind you, that I am serving the magnificent Emperor of Russia, and that _we have the right of protecting the Greek Church in the Ottoman dominions_. I should greatly regret, if I were compelled to change my language and protest against every proceeding which may lead to the humiliation of the Greek Church at Hasbeiya, and the encouragement of pretended Protestants, especially as _the Sublime Porte does not recognize among her subjects such a community_.”
I give this on the authority of the Rev. J. L. Porter, English missionary at Damascus, a man every way competent to give testimony in this case.
The station at Jerusalem was suspended in this year, and Mr. Lanneau removed to Beirt. Mr. and Mrs. Keyes, in consequence of a failure of health, returned to the United States.
The seminary was now revived, not at Beirt, but at Abeih, fifteen hundred feet above the sea-level, in a temperate atmosphere, and with a magnificent prospect of land and sea. The experience gained in the former seminary was of use in reconstructing the new one. Its primary object was to train up an efficient native ministry. None were to be received to its charity foundation, except such as had promising talents and were believed to be truly pious. The education was to be essentially Arabic, the clothing, boarding, and lodging strictly in the native style, and the students were to be kept as far as possible in sympathy with their own people.
A chapel for public wors.h.i.+p was fitted up, and here, as also at Beirt, there was preaching every Sabbath in the Arabic language, with an interesting Sabbath-school between the services. Mr. Calhoun having joined the mission, coming from Smyrna, the charge of the new seminary was committed to him. The Rev. Thomas Laurie arrived from Mosul the same year.
Yakob Agha died in the year 1845. The evidence he gave of piety had never been wholly satisfactory, but for the last six years he was a communicant in the church. In this time he appeared to be a changed man, and his missionary brethren hoped that, with all his failings, he was a sincere believer and died in the Lord.
In the spring of this year war broke out afresh between the Druzes and Maronites, and Lebanon was again purged by fire. It was in no sense a religious war, but a desperate struggle for political ascendency. The Maronite clergy in the Druze part of the mountain had been rapidly recovering power, and were as rapidly rising in their opposition to the mission. The result of this war, as aforetime, was the destruction of their villages and their power; and the Patriarch sank under the disappointment and died. Moreover the party in Hasbeiya, which stoned the Protestants and their teachers, were driven out of the place by the Druzes, and great numbers of them killed, so that the ”Young Men's” party seemed to be broken to pieces.1
1 There was a special enmity of the Druzes against the Christians of Hasbeiya. The most celebrated sacred place of the Druzes is on the top of a hill just above Hasbeiya, called Khlwat el Biyad. In their revolt against Ibrahim Pasha in 1838, he was aided by the Christians, and when the Druzes were defeated in a battle near this place, their sacred place was entered, and several chests of books, setting forth their tenets, were scattered through the land. The Christians paid dearly for their trespa.s.s. The leader of the Hauran rebellion became, for a time, the governor of Hasbeiya, and for this loss imposed exorbitant indemnities on every one, who had been known to take a book. The consequent enmity between the parties doubtless had much to do with the events described above.
Abeih, now a missionary station, was inhabited by both Druzes and Maronites, and the conflict began there on the 9th of May. Our brethren were all along a.s.sured by both parties, that neither they nor their property would be molested, whichever was victorious. The Druzes early had the advantage, and the Maronite part of the village was speedily in flames, and more than three hundred and fifty Maronites were obliged to take refuge in a strong palace belonging to one of the Shehab Emirs. About two hundred more, and among them several of the most obnoxious, found an asylum in the houses of the missionaries, and in the house of a native helper of the mission, which, being in the centre of the Maronite quarter, was crowded with refugees. Mr. Thomson ventured out in the midst of the tumult, and succeeded in getting a guard of Druzes and Greeks whom he could trust, placed around this house, and thus the people with their goods were secured. The palace was in danger of being taken by storm, and the people within it all ma.s.sacred; when the leaders of the Druzes, to avoid this, requested Mr. Thomson to carry a flag of truce, with offers of safety and permission to retire whenever they might choose. This was done at some risk, as the battle was still raging. After the surrender, Dr. Van Dyck dressed the wounded Maronites in the palace, and brought several of them to his own house. He also performed like services for the wounded Druzes. This he did not without peril to himself; for, returning alone from the neighboring village, where he had gone on this professional errand, a Druze warrior mistook him for a Maronite, and was so enraged that one in an Arab dress and with an Arab tongue should pretend to be an American, that, but for the providential coming up of one who knew the Doctor, he would have killed him on the spot. Meanwhile Mr.
Laurie had come safely from Beirt, attended by only two janissaries, and pa.s.sing through hordes of the victorious Druzes.
Finding, on his arrival, a half-burned corpse of the Italian padre lying in the street, he buried it under the pavement of his chapel.
The Maronites being in a starving condition, the missionaries baked for them all the flour they had on hand, and sent express by night to Beirt for more. Fearing, too, that the Maronites might be ma.s.sacred by the Druzes on their way down to Beirt, notwithstanding their Turkish escort, they sent an express to Colonel Rose, the English Consul-general, which brought him up immediately with his most efficient protection. It should be added, that on the day the Maronites left Abeih, a strong proclamation came out from the Maronite and Greek Catholic bishops at Beirt to all their people, requiring them to protect all the members of the American mission.
The reflections of Mr. Smith on the death of the persecuting Patriarch, are just and impressive. ”What a lesson,” he says, ”does that event, in such circ.u.mstances, teach us! After having martyred that faithful witness Asaad s.h.i.+diak, caused the Bible often to be burned, had missionaries insulted and stoned, and boasted that he had at last left no spot open for them to enter the mountains, he finds himself stripped of all his power; missionaries established permanently in the midst of his flock, and his own favorite bishop constrained to give orders for their protection; his people once and again ravaged and ruined in wars, which his own measures have hastened, if they have not originated; and finally he sinks himself under his disappointment and dies. How signally has the blood of the martyred Asaad been avenged upon him even in this life.”
The war broke up the schools in the mountains; but in the following year there were ten schools in charge of the station at Abeih, with four hundred and thirty-six pupils. One hundred and forty-four of these were girls, and one hundred and ninety-seven Druzes. Connected with the Beirt station, were four schools for boys and girls, and one for girls alone. In Suk el-Ghrb, a village four miles from Abeih, a Protestant secession from the Greek Church was in progress, embracing fourteen families, and religious services were held with them every Sabbath. At Bhamdn, the summer residence for the brethren of the Beirt station, there were a number of decided Protestants, who declared that they found persons to sympathize with them wherever they went. Even in Zahleh, the hot-bed of fanaticism, there were men who openly argued from the Gospel against the prevailing errors. Mr. Smith wrote of a village on Mount Hermon, that sixty men were known to be standing ready to follow the example of Hasbeiya, as soon as the Protestants in that place had made good their position. He also declared the movement in Hasbeiya the beginning of what would doubtless have been a great revolution, had persecution been delayed.
Mr. Lanneau's health constrained him to retire from the field in 1846. In the same year, Dr. Van Dyck, having acquired an extraordinary facility in the use of the Arabic language, was ordained to the work of the Gospel ministry.
CHAPTER XVII.
GREECE.
DR. JONAS KING AND THE GREEK HIERARCHY.
1845-1847.
The struggle of Dr. Jonas King with the Greek Hierarchy, deserves a permanent record. The point at issue between them was, freedom to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d and to preach the Gospel in Greece. The conflict was not waged by Dr. King as a Greek citizen, for such he never claimed to be, though he was a property-owner in Athens, and married to a Greek lady, who retained her nominal connection with the Greek Church.
These facts were helpful to him, as was also his American citizens.h.i.+p. A mere citizen of Greece could not have maintained his ground after the persecuting hierarchy had overawed the courts of justice and the officers of state. His courage resembled that of Martin Luther. He was a st.u.r.dy Puritan, which no Greek at that time could have been; and he had strong resemblances to the great Reformer, as will abundantly appear in the sequel. Yet the fact of his foreign origin made him to be no more than the forerunner of a Grecian Luther. His labors and sufferings only prepared the way for a national reformation, which it may be hoped is yet to come.
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