ative preacher, and his wife Hadla,
and Miriam, the teacher of the girls' school. Yusef is one of the most
refined and lovely young men in Syria. What a clear eye he has, and what
a pleasant face! He too has borne much for his Master. In 1865, when he
left the Greek Church, he was living with his brother in Beirut. His
brother turned him out of the house at night, with neither bed nor
clothing. He came to my house and staid with me some time. He said it
was hard to be driven out by his brother and mother, but he could bear
anything for Christ's sake. Said he, "I can bear cursing and beating and
the loss of property. But my mother is weeping and wailing over me. She
thinks I am a heretic and am lost forever. Oh, it is hard to bear, the
'persecution of tears!'" But the Lord gave him grace to bear it, and he
is now the happy spiritual guide of this large Protestant community, and
the Nusairy Sheikhs look up to him with respect, while that persecuting
brother of his is poverty-stricken and sick, and can hardly get bread
for his children.

Miriam, the teacher, is a heroine. Her parents were Greeks, but sent her
to school to learn to read. She learned in a short time to read the New
Testament, and to love it, and to keep the Sabbath day holy. The keeping
of the Sabbath was something new in Safita. The Nusairiyeh have no holy
day at all, and the Greeks have so many that they keep none of them.
They work and buy and sell and travel on the Sabbath as on other days,
and think far more of certain saint's days than of the Sabbath. When
Miriam was only seven years old, her father said to her one Sabbath
morning, "go with me to the hursh (forest) to get a donkey load of
wood." She replied, "my father, I cannot go, it is not right, for it is
God's day." The father went without her, and while cutting wood, his
donkey strayed away, and he had to search through the mountains for
hours, so that he did not reach home until twelve o'clock at night, and
then without any wood. He said he should not go for wood on Sunday any
more.

But a few Sundays after, it was the olive season, and Miriam's mother
told her to go out with the women and girls to gather olives. They had
been at work during the week, and the mother thought Miriam ought to go
on Sunday with the rest. But Miriam said, "don't you remember father's
losing the donkey, and what he said about it? I cannot go." "Then," said
her mother, "if you will not work, you shall not eat." "Very