Arabic, so that the youngest
child can understand them. In 1862, we printed the first Children's
Hymn-book, partly at the expense of the girls in Rufka's school. We have
now in Arabic about eighty children's hymns, and a large number of
tracts and story books designed for children. We also publish an
Illustrated Children's Monthly, called the "Koukab es Subah," "The
Morning Star," and the children read it with the greatest eagerness.

The Koran, which is the standard of classic Arabic, cannot be changed,
and hence can never be a book for children. It cannot be a family book,
or a women's book. It cannot attract the minds of the young, with that
charm which hangs around the exquisitely simple and beautiful narratives
of the Old and New Testament. It is a gem of Arabic poetry, but like a
gem, crystalline and unchanging. It has taken a mighty hold upon the
Eastern world, because of its Oriental style and its eloquent assertion
of the Divine Unity. It is reverenced, but not loved, and will stand
where it is while the world moves on. Every reform in government,
toleration and material improvement in the Turkish Empire, Persia and
Egypt, is made in spite of the Koran and contrary to its spirit. The
printing of the Koran is unlawful, but it is being printed. All pictures
of living objects are unlawful, but the Sultan is photographed, Abd el
Kader is photographed, the "Sheikh ul Islam" is photographed. European
shoes are unlawful because sewed with a swine's bristle, but Moslem
Muftis strut about the streets in French gaiters, and the women of their
harems tottle about in the most absurd of Parisian high-heeled slippers.

The Arabic Bible translated by Drs. Eli Smith and Cornelius Van Dyck, is
voweled with the grammatical accuracy and beauty of the Koran with the
aid of a learned Mohammedan Mufti, and yet has all the elegant
simplicity of the original and is intelligible to every Arab, old and
young, who is capable of reading at all. The stories of Joseph, Moses,
and David, of Esther, Daniel and Jonah are as well adapted to the
comprehension of children in the Arabic as in the English.

Not a few of the hymns in the Children's Hymn book are original, written
by M. Ibrahim Sarkis, husband of Miriam of Aleppo, and M. Asaad
Shidoody, husband of Hada. This Hymn book was published in 1862, with
Plates presented by Dr. Robinson's Sabbath School of the First
Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn.

This digression seemed necessary, in orde