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views, and to touch their hearts seems hard, as the sense of sin is sorely deficient. Repentance and conversion is all very well for Jews and Druses, they seem to think, but for baptized Christians, who have a priest to have recourse to for services and for visits in sickness, such ideas are irrelevant. However, as the Bible becomes more circulated amongst them, and Protestant schools more spread, they will be gradually enlightened, I trust, the laity in advance of the priests, who are not reached much by the Americans. The Romans, and the various bodies in submission to the Pope, such as the Maronites, Greek Catholics, Syrian Catholics and others, do their best of course to keep the word of God out, but as St. Paul says, 'The word of God is not bound,' and it finds its way in spite of them into some homes and hearts; I hope into many.

The Protestants appear to me to lack a high tone of moral elevation and of devout prayerfulness and self-devotion, making religion to consist too much in correct notions of doctrine as to justification, and in resisting all ritual, sacerdotal, sacramental notions as abominations. The temperate views of our Church on these subjects, with its moderate, solemn, searching ritual, and reverent, devout, quiet spirit, encouraging so much the soul's breathing after holiness and close imitation of Christ, seem to be just what is wanted to bring the Bible home to the heart and life in the power of the blessed Spirit, for which it witnesses so sacredly and steadily and with such vivid reality. Both Rome and Geneva will do what they can to prevent the entrance of the Church of England and its influences, and it may not be God's will that we should find admission at present.

I try and thread my way about these rocky pathways amid vines and mulberries to the villages. We sit on the rocks and have a talk together, but the priests look after me pretty sharply, so I have to act warily and make no demonstration. Yesterday I got to a village three miles off on the road to Sineen, the loftiest of the Lebanon heights. I got a little company of children and elders about me, and was emptying my pockets of their contents of Testaments, when two Roman priests and a deacon, very gentlemanly and fairly courteous men, came up to see what I was about, so there is an end of my work for that afternoon, as they see me safely out of the village before they say 'Good night.' However, I had a little Arabic converse with the people before they discovered me. I get a pretty good number of visits from the people round me, which are generally ended by a little Bible reading, so I seem in some small measure to have got back to my old missionary lines of work, and shall be glad if God allows me to see this door open again before me, and no man to shut it. I feel I must no more seek any great things for myself, but be content with small and humble spheres of duty.

To MRS. KNOX.

Brumana, October 4.

I am almost sorry to be leaving Lebanon, as it has yielded me to some considerable extent the place of solitude and retreat I craved so long and felt so needful. . . . I have never had before such an opportunity for witnessing against Rome, and testifying to the great Reformation doctrines of our Church. It grieves me to see the pall of darkness, which the Church of Rome seems labouring to spread over all these lands, though its sisterhoods are working as usual with extreme devotion, and sowing much seed that would be most precious, if it were not grievously blighted by Mariolatry and bitter opposition to the spread of the Bible. The priests are notorious in these lands for their Bible-burning. They have watched most jealously and resolutely my efforts to circulate the Bible in these Lebanon villages around Brumana. In my walks I usually carry my coat on my arm, its pockets full of Testaments and children's books, which said pockets always return empty, or nearly so.

I speak Arabic better, but am far as yet from understanding freely the vulgar dialect, especially when spoken by the women, whose rapidity of utterance beats me rather distressingly. However, each month one gets one rung of the ladder higher in this also, and I have six more months at any rate, please God, before I turn my steps direct homewards.

The pines on the Lebanon seem to me the most graceful trees I have ever seen. I can't help thinking of them as the ladies of the vegetable world. Such attractiveness is there in their forms, rich colours of leaf and bark, and even their gestures and delicacy of bend on the hill-sides-a complete picture of sweetness and dignity. The bold way in which the hills throw out their strong rocky roots, like massive buttresses, cannot but remind one of the striking prophetic image, 'For He shall cast forth His roots like Lebanon.'

I should like to have been able to traverse the loftier heights, which are full of remains of old pagan and Phoenician temples of Baal, records of the degrading yet doubtless beautiful and bewitching Thammuz worship, towards which the people of Israel were constantly being beguiled, and against which the prophets of God, as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea, protested so manfully.

The Syrians are a very imaginative, poetic, dramatic sort of people, and one can well understand how their mystic and romantic rites of heathenism, which tried to be in such close sympathy with nature and its changeful seasons, its charms of storm and sunshine, death and revival, had a grievously magical effect on God's own Church in the East when its heart fell away. I hope to see a little more of the Mohammedans of Syria and also of the British Syrian schools during my journey, besides visits to some few of the holy places....

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The bishop had intended to go first to Damascus, but the illness of his dragoman Hadoori, whom he had to leave in hospital at Beyrout, determined him to change his plan and accept an invitation from Mr. Hall, of Jaffa, to take part in a missionary conference there in November. The rest, the extracts from his letters will make clear.

To MRS. FRENCH.

Mar Elias, Monastery on Mount Carmel, near Haiffa, Oct. 23. This monastery of Carmelite fathers is of ancient foundation, and stands on a projecting height of Carmel about 200 feet above the bay of Haiffa. I preferred coming up here to staying on the seashore at a German hotel, partly for economy's sake, and partly because of the rather stifling heat below at this season. All is delightfully clean, and the fare, though somewhat meagre, is sufficient, and the fathers tolerably civil. They have spacious grounds all round the convent, and eke out of the rocky soil all they can for olive and fig plantations. One of them is a Belgian monk, an old Indian missionary, of eighty years of age, I should think, decrepit and worn: he says he will often pray for me that we may meet in heaven. The library has nothing to boast of in the way of precious and antique treasures, as sixty years ago the monks were massacred, and their buildings burnt, and their possessions have been slowly recovered and held by precarious tenure. There is a tomb of the French sick and wounded, who were left by Napoleon at Acre and massacred by the Turkish troops in their hospital with their attendant monks. Our Lady of Carmel is a great object of worship here, and attracts pilgrims from all over Europe. Underneath the house is a grotto of Elijah the prophet, where he is said to have resided, and which is visited once a year by crowds of Druses and Moslems, all of whom regard him with awe, and an oath taken by the prophet Elijah is held most sacredly binding.

To MRS. MOULSON.

Nazareth, Galilee, Holy Land, Oct. 26.

It is not often that one is privileged to give such an address as the one with which I head this letter. . . . It is indeed a wonderful place to look upon from the heights which hem it in and form a setting to the rich jewel. On every knoll almost is some Christian church, Greek, Roman, Maronite, English or other. The Latin is said to be on the site of the synagogue from which that first most gracious sermon was preached in Nazareth. Almost all over the slopes, which form the circular basin or concavity, are built white houses, seldom in streets or rows of buildings, but

each in its distinct little courtyard, too glaring in their whiteness in full sunlight, but lovely doubtless under shadow or clouds or at sunset, not hovels nor yet palaces, but mostly of moderate dimensions.

I could not find any inn or caravanserai, but I remembered the name of one of the C. M. S. native schoolmasters here, so to his house I resorted, and was pressed to occupy two rooms. . . . He talks English, but I laid an embargo the first minute on all language but Arabic, and I heard his examination of three classes in Scripture this morning, so I hope to use well these five or six days for adding to my stock in this wonderful tongue. A little fawncoloured dove is the companion of my studies, pacing the room in fearless freedom, and reminding me of the Descent at the holy baptism.

It took me seven hours to reach this in a carriage from Haiffa at the north foot of Mount Carmel, with a bright view of Acco or Acre in the distance. The promontory beyond it of Ras Nakoor prevents Tyre from being visible. . . . Every grand historical scene and every fine natural position, whether surpassing height or cool grotto, is fought for by Romans and Greeks, and the Romans usually bear off the laurels of triumph. The most despised is the poor Church of England, of which it might be said, "This is Zion, which no man seeketh after.'

To have as yesterday, the heights of Carmel, the Mediterranean, the great stretch of the Esdraelon valley, and the first sight of Nazareth, made a day of unique privilege, indeed not soon to be forgotten.

To MRS. SHELDON.

Nazareth, Festival of SS. Simon and Jude, Oct. 28. Winding round by many curvatures of hill and dale, at length one has the surprise of finding oneself within the outskirts of the village itself, which by this entrance unfolds itself very gradually from behind clefts which partly conceal it. The views of the whole basin, in the heart of which and up two sides of which the little town is built, are best obtained from the opposite hills.

I was not prepared to find anything so unique and remarkable in its conformation, as is the place whose name has rung in men's ears and stirred men's hearts with such varied emotions ever since the blessed Saviour, Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee, was brought up there, and nursed those high and heavenly thoughts and inspired words, which have healed so many broken hearts, and lifted so many from earth to heaven, and helped to make the worn and withered world new again. . . .

...

I got up before daylight this morning to pay a visit to the early services at both the rival grottoes of the Annunciation. The Latin was the more largely attended, but the whole service was simply

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a succession of masses, performed in an inaudible monotone, at which the Arab congregation looked on in silence; no sermon or scripture-reading, or response. . . . The Greek service was a little more audible. The Greek bishop on his throne looked lofty and solemn enough, but there is no preaching there I am told, except it be at some great and scarce festivals.

...

I got back by 7.30 and got ready for our Church of England service at 9 a.m., at which I had promised to preach, partly in English by interpreter, and partly (as I now am able) in not very perfect Arabic. . I shall count it a matter of thankful praise I trust through life that I was allowed to make this venture amid the scenes of our Lord's first entrance on His ministry. The church was really well filled, the men largely preponderating over the women, and they bore most kindly with nearly an hour's sermon on Rev. xxii. 12, 13, in which I compared the double character of this last sermon of the risen Lord, as regards gracious invitation on the one hand, and solemn, terrible warning on the other, with the same double character of his first sermon at Nazareth.

To MRS. FRENCH.

Nazareth, Oct. 29.

I have just returned from a visit to Miss Adams and her beautiful school, nobly and grandly housed on one of the loftiest heights, fifteen of which, says Dean Stanley, shut Nazareth in as the lips of a chalice or basin. The basilica-like character of the place struck me at once. How Miss Dickson, the first lady principal, managed to build for herself a Windsor Castle like this on the heights of a Mohammedan town I am at a loss to divine, and to shut it in with such fortress walls as only an artillery force of 72-pounders, or a sharp shock of earthquake, would seem likely to shake.

The Beyrout schools of the same kind are either Latin or Presbyterian. The latter were secured by adroitly using the influence of the Prince of Wales, when he visited Beyrout, to request permission to build them; and the Latins stay themselves on French statesmanship, and the incessant intrigues and wiles of the Jesuits. Here for once the Church of England has asserted itself, and is regarded of course with great jealousy.

I addressed the school of about eighty young Syrian ladies', as yesterday, partly in Arabic and partly in English, from Heb. vi. and its lessons. The bright and eager answers of the children quite surprised me.

I managed the walk this afternoon to Cana with Mr. Ewing. Cana can hardly be what it once was, being now composed of small huts of loose stones and mud for mortar, and only two

1 Rather orphan girls.