ies have been obliged to _leave the work_ and return to their
native land. There are trials growing out of the hardness of the human
heart, our own want of faith, the seeming slow progress of the gospel,
and the heart-crushing disappointments arising from broken hopes, when
individuals and communities who have promised well, turn back to their
old errors "like the dog to his vomit" again. But of joys it is much
easier to speak, the joy of preaching Christ to the perishing,--of
laboring where others will not labor,--of laying foundations for the
future,--of feeling that you are doing what you can to fulfil the
Saviour's last command,--of seeing the word of God translated into a new
language,--a christian literature beginning to grow,--children and youth
gathered into Schools and Seminaries of learning, and even sects which
hate the Bible obliged to teach their children to read it,--of seeing
christian families growing up, loving the Sabbath and the Bible, the
sanctuary and the family altar.--Then there is the joy of seeing souls
born into the kingdom of our dear Redeemer, and churches planted in a
land where pure Christianity had ceased to exist,--and of witnessing
unflinching steadfastness in the midst of persecution and danger, and
the triumphs of faith in the solemn hour of death.

These are a few of the joys which are strewn so thickly along the path
of the Christian Missionary, that he has hardly time to think of
sorrow, trial and discouragement. Those who have read Dr. Anderson's
"History of Missions to the Oriental Churches," and Rev. Isaac Bird's
"History of the Syria Mission," or "Bible Work in Bible Lands," will see
that the work of the Syria Mission from 1820 to 1872 has been one of
conflict with principalities and powers, and with spiritual wickedness
in high and low places, but that at length the hoary fortresses are
beginning to totter and fall, and there is a call for a general advance
in every department of the work, and in every part of the land.

Other agencies have come upon the ground since the great foundation work
was laid, and the first great victories won, and in their success it
becomes all of God's people to rejoice; but the veterans who fought the
first battles, and overcame the great national prejudice of the Syrian
people against female education, should ever be remembered with
gratitude.

It has been my aim in this little volume to recount the history of
Woman's Work in the past. Who can f