THE

MISSIONARY HERALD.

VOL. LXIV. DECEMBER, 1868.- No. XII.

2

LEBANON AND THE ABEIH SEMINARY.

BY REV. S. H. CALHOUN AND REV. H. H. JESSUP.

THE prominent object in the engraving is the Mission Seminary at Abeih on Mount Lebanon. It consists of a series of rooms, seven in number, arranged in the form of an L, all on the ground floor, with a portico in front. The building is of yellowish, compact limestone, one story high, and was erected for seminary purposes, about the year 1849. The view is northward.

The building to the left, with a gambrel roof, is on the mission premises, and is occupied by Mr. Calhoun. The building at the base of the picture, of which the upper part only is seen, is a hired house, occupied by Mr. Bird. The cypress grove, below the seminary, to the left, was set out by the missionaries, and under its shade rest some of the little dead. To the extreme right, and quite above the seminary, are two well-built houses, owned and occupied by Druze Sheiks. Two or three peasants' houses are also seen above the seminary, in one of which is kept our common school, for boys and girls of the village. To the extreme left, and in the distance, is seen the new Druze high school.

The reader will observe, from the various ascents by steps, that our houses are built on sloping ground. The village of Abeih, which contains about 200 houses, is mostly below the mission premises. The perpendicular height of the village above the sea is 2,400 feet. The highest peak, seen in the engraving above the seminary, is not far from 2,800 feet. The air-line distance to Beirut, nearly due north, is about ten miles. Our shortest distance to the sea, westerly, is about five miles. The mountains just behind the seminary are rocky, with no trees, and terraced with walls, for wheat fields. Those in the distance are utterly bare and yellow.

The view from the roof of the seminary is extensive and beautiful. We have a semicircle of sea (the Mediterranean) to the west and north; and behind us, the lower ridges of Lebanon, intersected by well-cultivated valleys. A walk of fifteen or twenty minutes takes us to the height above the village, from which

we have a magnificent prospect of the higher ranges and peaks of the goodly mountain. To the south and southwest, the vision stretches away into the territory of the old tribes of Naphtali and Asher, and reaches Tyre and Sidon and Sarepta, on the coast. We have often seen the mountains on the island of Cyprus, more than one hundred miles distant.

"The Lebanon," as it is usually called, is a range of mountains, stretching on towards the north from the borders of Galilee, seventy-five or eighty miles. It is eminently a "goodly mountain." The number of inhabitants is about 300,000, more than half of whom are of the Papal church. The Druzes number about 55,000; the remainder are adherents of the Greek Church and Mohammedans, of both the Turkish and Persian sects. The universal language is Arabic.

The lands on Lebanon are held in fee-simple, which accounts for the spirit of enterprise and industry found among its population, as compared with the people in other parts of Syria, where the lands are owned by the government, and farmed out. The houses, even of the peasants, are always of stone; usually but one story high, with flat roofs of earth, and without glass or chimneys. The principal productions are silk and olives. The grape, too, is abundant.

The Lebanon has been at times subject to great disorders, but the people soon recover from the effects of their civil wars. Under the government of His Excellency Daoud Pasha, there has been a profounder peace than is enjoyed in most other countries. The building of better houses, the enlargement of vineyards, the breaking up of long-neglected grounds, for new mulberry and olive orchards, are signs of felt security and tranquillity.

Our seminary has been in operation about twenty years. Its course of study has been chiefly confined, hitherto, to the Arabic language, and has embraced the Arabic Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and Prosody; Arithmetic, Geography, Algebra, and Geometry; with instruction, to a limited extent, in Astronomy and Natural Philosophy. But the Bible has been the chief text-book. The Old and New Testaments are studied thoroughly, through the entire four years' course. The pupils enter the seminary from all the various sects of the country, many of them strongly prejudiced against the Bible and evangelical religion, and yet few of them leave it without becoming, intellectually at least, Protestant Christians.

The graduates are scattered throughout the East. They are in Lebanon, in the seaport and interior cities, in Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia. Some are preachers and pastors; one is a tutor in the Beirut College; three have been at the head of the Druze College in Lebanon; one is conducting an independent high school in Alexandria, Egypt; several are engaged in mission work in Cairo, Egypt; one is a missionary at Ramoth Gilead, across the Jordan; one is a missionary at Nazareth; and many others are connected with the high and common schools, of various grades, throughout Syria, and connected with various societies. Some are merchants, others dragomen of travelers, and the great majority, even when not professedly pious, yet cast their influence on the side of morality, education, and religion. Until within a short time the institution was free to all, but now a fixed sum is charged for board and tuition, yet so great is the number of applicants that many have to be rejected every year, for want of room. We believe the school has been an important instrumentality in the diffusion of light and truth. Our design is to

make it more and more distinctly theological. And to this end, new rooms will need to be provided, and new books prepared, to furnish a theological apparatus for the young preachers and pastors of Syria. Up to the present time, there is neither Concordance, Commentary, Church History, nor Bible Dictionary, in the Arabic language.

The Druze high school, as seen in the left of the engraving, is a fine building, erected by the Druzes themselves, and the institution is supported from funds formerly appropriated to their religious houses. It is called the Daudîyeh, in honor of the Pasha. Its principal teachers have been graduates from our seminary.

THE THREE FACTS OF THE PAST YEAR.

THE three most important facts in the history of the Board for the past year are, the great advance in efforts to reach the women in our mission fields; the growing interest in China, occasioned in part by the coming of the Chinese Embassy and in part by the increasing facilities for intercourse with that country; and the rising up of our great constituency to the relief of our financial embar

rassment.

1. The long waited-for time of reaching the women of Mohammedan and heathen lands, in their own homes, appears to be close at hand. At many points where, even five years since, they were quite inaccessible, the way is already open. The calls for single ladies to engage in this work have never been so numerous as during the past year, and since the first of January, eighteen have gone out under the care of the Board.

While the way has thus been opened abroad, as never before, a remarkable spirit of consecration to the missionary work has been poured out upon Christian women at home. There has been no occasion for the Board to call for female missionaries. More are ready to go than can be sent, with due regard to a wise economy, and the opportunities open for useful and happy labor. In view of the opening field, and the offers of service from those by experience, refined culture, and character, admirably fitted for successful labor, the Board has felt constrained greatly to enlarge its labors in this direction, relying on the generous support of the Christian women of the denominations which it represents. The formation of coöperative Boards of Missions, at Boston and Chicago, with auxiliary societies at other points, shows that this confidence is well grounded.

The single women under the care of the Board, engaged in missionary work, are distributed as follows: in Western Turkey, seven; Central Turkey, four; Eastern Turkey, eight; Nestorian mission, four; Syria, three; Zulu mission, two; Ceylon, three; Madura mission, four; Foochow, one; North China, three; Hawaiian Islands, three; North American Indians, one; forty-three in all. Of these, two, in the Hawaiian Islands, are supported by tuition fees and by a ladies' benevolent society in the Islands; one, in Eastern Turkey, by a gentleman in New York city, while another, in the same field, keeps her sister company at her own charges; one, in Syria, has all her expenses defrayed by her parents; and seven, in different fields, are at the charge of the Woman's Board of Missions, organized in Boston.

2. China is daily becoming more and more an object of interest. In a few months it will be one of the nearest missionary fields from New York, as it already is from our Western shores. Its relations of every kind commercial and political as well as religious — will soon be more intimate with us than with any other people. We cannot be too prompt in giving this vast nation the gospel, in "planting the shining cross on every hill and valley." The hearts of the young men in Seminaries and Colleges, who are proposing to themselves the privilege of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ among the Gentiles, are turning toward China. Not far from one hundred devoted men and women, from this country, are already there, representing various evangelical denominations. This number should be increased ten-fold at the earliest moment. It is the age of railways and telegraphs; let Christian enterprise keep pace with commercial.

3. The uprising of our great constituency has been most cheering. The saddest feature in our impending debt was not the pecuniary embarrassment; it was the discouragement, the breaking down of heart and hope, in the missionary circle, the feeling that Christians at home were not remembering them in their work. The October Herald, with its fourteen solid pages of donations, representing the offerings of thousands and tens of thousands of Christian hearts, will cheer and quicken to new energy our brethren and sisters "at the front.” It will be the next thing to attending an Annual Meeting of the Board, and feeling one's moral life quickened and strengthened by the love and Christian sympathy of the great congregation. Thanks to the generous givers of their wealth, but joy before God, and renewed courage, because of the great constituency of the humble poor, who did what they could; and when they had no money, gave their prayers.

REV. SENDOL B. MUNGER.

THE death of this senior member of the Mahratta mission, at Bombay, on the 23d of July last, was announced in the Herald for October. Mr. Munger was born at Fairhaven, Vermont, October 5, 1802. His hopeful conversion occurred during a revival of religion at Shoreham, Vermont, in 1821, and the same year he united with the Congregational church in that place. In his life memoranda, left at the Missionary House, he states, "I decided to go to the heathen when I first began to study, in 1823." He graduated at Middlebury College in 1828, and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1833; was then employed for a time as an agent of the American Board in Vermont; was ordained at Shoreham in 1834; married Miss Maria L. Andrews, of Bristol, Vermont, and sailed with her from Boston May 21, 1834, for Bombay, where they arrived September 10.

Mr. Munger was first stationed at Bombay, but in 1837 he was reported as at Jalna, where he remained until constrained, by the protracted illness of his wife, to come with her to the United States. They reached this country June 9, 1842, and reëmbarked for India January 3, 1846; but Mrs. Munger died on the passage out, on the 12th of March, and was buried in the Indian Ocean.

Mr. Munger was now stationed for a time at Ahmednuggur, then, for some years, at Bhingar, and in 1855 removed to Satara, which continued to be his station until 1866, when the wants of Bombay constrained his return to that, his first field in India. He visited the United States a second time in 1853, returning the next year, and again in 1860, returning in 1862. He was thrice married, in 1854 to Miss Mary E. Ely, of Chicago, Illinois (who died June 3, 1856), and in 1862 to Mrs. Sarah S. Paul, of Boston, who survives him.

A biographical notice, published in the Bombay Guardian soon after his decease, states: "While Mr. Munger was in Jalna and Ahmednuggur, he spent much of his time in itineracies, traversing on horseback the whole region of country from Sholapoor to Nagpoor, and preaching in every village on the route. He delighted in the work of an evangelist, the work of setting forth the freeness and fullness of divine grace to all that would receive it, through the merits of Christ, the world's only Saviour. He desired to make known this gospel as widely as possible; the field was great, the laborers were few; and he refused to spare himself in this all-important work. He had an admirable command of the Marathi language, great facility, earnestness and power in preaching, and a powerful voice. Men heard him gladly, and in many a village the solemn and affectionate message of the itinerant ambassador was long remembered. In various instances it was blessed to the good of the hearers.

"Mr. Munger did not confine his ministrations to the natives. He deeply felt the truth expressed in Christ's words to Nicodemus, 'Ye must be born again'; did not allow himself to be mystified by the fact that men had been brought up in Christian lands, had received baptism, were familiar with the gospel, and were influenced by it in adventitious matters; but constantly insisted that a real change of heart was necessary in order that men might regard themselves as children of God and heirs of everlasting life. This testimony was to some Europeans, at the stations where Mr. Munger resided, startling and not welcome; but it pleased God to make it the means of bringing some to the knowledge of himself. In one instance, an officer to whom this testimony had been blessed, was desirous, as a thank-offering to the Lord, of placing in the hands of the American Board a large sum of money for the purpose of establishing a new mission at Nagpoor, which had not then been occupied as a mission station. The Board was not in a situation to avail itself of this offer, and it was subsequently made to the Free Church of Scotland's Mission Committee; and the result was the establishment of their Nagpoor mission.

"Mr. Munger had an extensive acquaintance with Marathi literature. Several valuable tracts and books written by him, in the vernacular, have been published, and he has left behind him others, in manuscript.

"Conspicuous in Mr. Munger's religious character, was an ardent, personal love to the Lord Jesus Christ. The cause of the Redeemer was emphatically his own. All his interests were identified with those of Christ's kingdom. To the last he continued at his loved work of preaching Christ, and but a few days before his death, when his strength was so far reduced that he could only speak for one or two minutes, he was at the preaching place in front of the American Mission House. He wished to die at his post, and his wish was granted."

The meeting of the mission was held at Bombay just at the time of Mr. Mun