PALESTINE.
1824-1843.
In February, 1824, the Grand Seignior, influenced, as it would
appear, by Rome, issued a proclamation to the Pashas throughout
Western Asia, forbidding the distribution of the Christian
Scriptures, and commanding those who had received copies to deliver
them to the public authorities to be burnt. The copies remaining in
the hands of the distributors were to be sealed up till they could
be sent back to Europe. But few copies were obtained from the
people, and the Turks seemed to take very little interest in the
matter.
Messrs. Fisk and King made their third and last visit to Jerusalem
in the spring of 1825, arriving there on the 29th of March. On their
way, they had stopped a few weeks in Jaffa, where their labors gave
rise to some very absurd reports, which yet appeared credible to the
superstitious people. Some said, that the missionaries bought people
with money; that the price for common people was ten piastres, and
that those ten piastres always remained with the man who received
them, however much he might spend from them. Others said, that the
picture of professed converts was taken in a book, and that the
missionaries would shoot the picture, should the man go back to his
former religion, and he would of course die. A Moslem, having heard
that men were hired to worship the devil, asked if it were true,
saying that he would come, and bring a hundred others with him.
"What," said his friend, "would you worship the devil?" "Yes," said
he, "if I was paid for it."
The brethren were cordially received by their acquaintances at
Jerusalem. Two days afterwards, the pasha of Damascus sat down
before the city, with three thousand soldiers, to collect his annual
tribute. The amount to be paid by each community was determined
solely by his own caprice, and what he could not be induced to remit
was extorted by arrest, imprisonment, and the bastinado. Many of the
inhabitants fled, and the rest lived in constant terror and
distress. So great was the confusion and insecurity within and
around the city, that the brethren decided to return to Beirût,
where they arrived on the 18th of May. From 1822 to 1825 they and
their associates had distributed nearly four thousand copies of the
Scriptures, and parts thereof, in different languages, and about
twenty thousand tracts. After staying a month at Beirût, Mr. King
passed six weeks at Deir el-Kamr in the study of Syriac, with Asaad
el-Shidiak for his teacher, a remarkable young Maronite, who will
have a prominent place in this history. On returning to Beirût, Mr.
King wrote a farewell letter to his friends in Palestine and Syria,
which Asaad translated into excellent Arabic, and afterwards
multiplied copies for distribution. It was a tract destined to exert
an important influence.
Mr. King's term of service had now expired; and on the 26th of
August, 1825, after three years of active and very useful missionary
labors, he left Syria homeward bound. He went first to Tarsus by
ship, and thence, by what proved a tedious land journey, to Smyrna.
His clothes, books, papers, and several valuable manuscripts were
sent by a vessel, that was taken by a Greek cruiser, and only a part
of them were returned. On his arrival at Smyrna, December 4, he
received the painful intelligence of the death of his beloved
associate at Beirût.
Mr. King remained several months at Smyrna, waiting the recovery of
his effects, making good progress, meanwhile, in the modern Greek
language, and doing much service for the Greeks. He then visited
Constantinople with the Rev. Mr. Hartley, of the Church Missionary
Society, where he was received by several high Greek ecclesiastics
with a kindness similar to that he had received from the Greeks of
Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. It was after his departure,
that a copy of his Farewell Letter found its way into the hands of
Armenians, who brought it before a council convened for the purpose,
as will be related hereafter. He returned to France just four years
from the time of his departure to enter upon his mission. Pious
people were everywhere exceedingly eager to hear his statements.
Enough was contributed by friends in Paris, to purchase a font of
Armenian type for the press at Malta, which he ordered before
leaving the metropolis. When in England he obtained funds for Arabic
types, and left orders for a font in London. Mrs. Hannah More, then
at an advanced age, was among the contributors. He returned home at
the close of the summer of 1827, and soon after the annual meeting
of the Board made a tour as agent through the Southern and Middle
States, which occupied him till April of the following year. The
Rev. Edward N. Kirk (now Dr. Kirk of Boston) was associated with him
in this agency.
Mr. Fisk had a good constitution, and would probably have endured
the climate of Syria for many years, with no more strain upon it in
the way of travel, than subsequent experience warranted. The reader
of the preceding pages will be prepared to apprehend special danger
from his return to Beirût in a season, that was sickly beyond the
recollection of the oldest of the Franks. He first spoke of being
ill on Tuesday, October 11, having had a restless night. His
experience was similar on several succeeding nights, but during the
day he seemed tolerably comfortable, enjoyed conversation, and
frequently desired the Scriptures to be read, remarking on the
importance of the subjects, and the preciousness of the promises.
His devotional feelings were awakened and his spirits revived by the
reading or singing of hymns, such as he suggested. On the 19th his
mind was somewhat affected, and he fainted while preparations were
being made for removing him to his bed. The next day, according to a
request he had made some time before, he was informed of the
probable issue of his sickness. He heard it with composure;
remarking that he believed the commanding object of his life, for
the seventeen years past, had been the glory of Christ and the good
of the Church. During the day he dictated letters to his father, and
to his missionary brethren King and Temple. On Thursday he asked for
the reading of that portion of Mrs. Graham's "Provision for Passing
over Jordan," where it is said, "To be where Thou art, to see Thee
as Thou art, to be made like Thee, the last sinful motion forever
past,"--he anticipated the conclusion, and said, with an expressive
emphasis, "That's Heaven." As the evening approached, he was very
peaceful, and in the midst he spoke out, saying: "I know not what
this is, but it seems to me like the silence that precedes the
dissolution of nature." Becoming conscious that the fever was
returning, he said, "What the Lord intends to do with me, I cannot
tell, but my impression is, that this is my last night." The fever,
however, was lighter than usual, and the next forenoon there was
some hope that it might be overcome. Yet it returned in the
afternoon, with all its alarming symptoms. At six o'clock he had
greatly altered, and the hand of death seemed really upon him. At
eight a physician, who had been sent for, arrived from Sidon, but
Mr. Fisk was insensible. Though the physician expressed little hope
of saving him, he ordered appliances which arrested the paroxysm of
fever, and restored him temporarily to consciousness. He was quiet
during Saturday, the 22d, and there were no alarming appearances at
sunset. But before midnight all hope had fled. "We hastened to his
bedside," say his brethren, "found him panting for breath, and
evidently sinking into the arms of death. The physician immediately
left him, and retired to rest. We sat down, conversed, prayed, wept,
and watched the progress of his dissolution, until, at precisely
three o'clock on the Lord's day morning, October 23, 1825, the soul,
which had been so long waiting for deliverance, was quietly
released. It rose, like its great Deliverer, very early on the first
day of the week, triumphant over death, and entered, as we believe,
on that Sabbath, of eternal rest, which remaineth for the people of
God."
His age was thirty-three. As soon as the fact of his death became
known, all the flags of the different consuls were seen at
half-mast. The funeral was attended at four P. M., in the presence
of a more numerous and orderly concourse of people, than had been
witnessed there on a similar occasion.
Mr. Fisk had a strong affinity, in the constitution of his mind and
the character of his piety, to the late Miss Fidelia Fiske, of the
Nestorian mission, who was his cousin, and whose praise is in all
the churches. He was an uncommon man. With a vigorous constitution,
and great capacity for labor, he possessed a discriminating
judgment, an ardent spirit of enterprise, intrepidity, decision,
perseverance, entire devotion to the service of his Master, facility
in the acquisition of languages, and an equipoise of his faculties,
which made it easy to accommodate himself to times, places, and
companies. He was highly esteemed as a preacher before leaving home.
"And who," said a weeping Arab, on hearing of his death, smiting on
his breast, "who will now present the Gospel to us? I have heard no
one explain God's word like him!" Aptness to teach was the prominent
trait in his ministerial character, and in a land of strangers, he
was esteemed, reverenced, and lamented.
The following tribute to his memory is from the pen of Mr. Bird:--
"The breach his death has made in the mission, is one which years
will not probably repair. The length of time which our dear brother
had spent in the missionary field, the extensive tours he had taken,
the acquaintances and connections he had formed, and the knowledge
he had acquired of the state of men and things in all the Levant,
had well qualified him to act as our counselor and guide; while his
personal endowments gave him a weight of character, sensibly felt by
the natives. His knowledge of languages, considering his well-known
active habits, has often been to us a subject of surprise and
thanksgiving. All men who could comprehend French, Italian, or
Greek, were accessible by his powerful admonitions. In the
first-mentioned language he conversed with ease, and in the last
two, performed with perfect fluency the common public services of a
preacher of the Gospel. Even the Arabic he had so far mastered, as
to commence in it a regular Sabbath service with a few of the
natives. At the time of his death, besides preaching weekly in
Arabic, and also in English in his turn, and besides his grammatical
studies under an Arabic master, he had just commenced a work, to
which, with the advice of us all, he was directing, for the time,
his main attention. Having in a manner completed the tour of
Palestine and Syria, and having become quite at home in Arabic
grammar, he felt more than ever the need of a dictionary to
introduce the missionary to the spoken language of the country. The
ponderous folios of Richardson are for Persia; Golius, and the
smaller work of Willmet, explain only the written language. We were
therefore of the unanimous opinion, that a lexicon like the one in
contemplation by Mr. Fisk, was needed, not only by ourselves, but by
the missionaries who should succeed us. Our dear brother had written
the catalogue of English words according to Johnson, and had just
finished the catalogue (incomplete of course) of the corresponding
Arabic, when disease arrested him. Had he lived, he hoped to visit
his native country, and probably publish some account of his
Christian researches in the Levant.
"Such were some of the plans and employments of our brother and
companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus
Christ, when he was called off from all his labors of love among
men. He is gone, but his memory lives. Never till called to sleep by
his side, shall we forget the noble example of patience, faith, and
zeal, which he has set us; and the churches at home will not forget
him, till they shall have forgotten their duty to spread the
Gospel."1
1 _Missionary Herald_ for 1827, pp. 101, 102.
The station at Jerusalem was suspended for nearly nine years, when
unsuccessful efforts were made to revive it. The Rev. William M.
Thomson, and Asa Dodge, M. D., were sent for that purpose. Mr.
Thomson was the first to remove his family to Jerusalem, which he
did in April, 1834. Mr. and Mrs. Nicholayson, of the London Jews
Society, went with them to commence a mission among the Jews.
Everything looked promising for a few weeks, and Mr. Thomson went
down to Jaffa to bring up his furniture. During his absence, the
Fellâhîn, roused by an order to draft every fifth man into the army,
rose against Mohammed Ali, the then ruler of Syria. Jerusalem was
the centre of this sudden rebellion; and Mr. Thomson, for nearly two
months, found it impossible even to communicate with his family, so
closely was the city besieged by the rebels. The first sense of
personal danger to the mission families, arose from an earthquake of
unusual severity, which extended to the coast and shook their old
stone habitation so roughly that they were compelled to flee into
the garden, and sleep there. Here they were exposed to the balls
from the muskets of the Fellâhîn outside the walls. At length the
rebels within the city somehow let in their friends outside, and it
was an hour of terror when they took possession of the mission
house, which was near the castle, dug loopholes through its walls,
and began to fire on the soldiers of the fortress. The fire was of
course returned, and the building, already shattered by the
earthquake, was torn by the Egyptian cannon; while both it and the
garden were filled with a multitude of lawless and angry rebels. The
families found refuge in a lower room of the house, where the walls
were thick, and there listened to the cannon balls as they whistled
above them. The arrival of Ibrahim Pasha at length quieted the city.
Able to return to his family on the 11th of July, Mr. Thomson found
his wife suffering from ophthalmia, with high inflammatory fever.
Two days afterwards, Mr. Nicholayson was attacked with a fever, and
the children were all sick. The case of Mrs. Thomson baffled all
their skill. Convinced herself that she would not recover, the
thought did not alarm her. For many weeks, she had been in the
clearer regions of faith, enjoying greater nearness to God in prayer
than ever before, with greater assurance of her interest in the
covenant of grace through the Redeemer. She had indeed cherished the
hope of laboring longer to bring some of the degraded daughters of
Jerusalem to the Saviour; but the Lord knew best, and to His will
she cheerfully submitted. She died peacefully on the 22d of July,
1834. The bereaved husband was apprehensive of difficulty in
obtaining a suitable place for her burial; but the Greek bishop gave
permission, and took the whole charge of preparing the grave.
Mr. Thomson now visited Beirût to confer with his brethren, and was
advised to remove to that place. The Rev. George B. Whiting and wife
and Dr. and Mrs. Dodge, were to occupy the station thus vacated,
aided by Miss Betsey Tilden. Dr. Dodge accompanied Mr. Thomson on
his return, and assisted him in removing his babe and his effects to
Beirût; and on the 22d of October he and Mr. Whiting were on their
way with their families to Jerusalem.
Early in the winter, Dr. Dodge was called to Beirût to prescribe for
Mrs. Bird, who was dangerously sick. Mr. Nicholayson returned with
him to Jerusalem, arriving there on the 3d of January, 1835, cold,
wet, and exhausted with fatigue, having traveled on horseback nearly
seventeen hours the last day. The peril of such an exposure in that
climate was not realized at the time. Both were soon taken sick, and
Dr. Dodge rapidly sunk, though a physician from one of the western
States of America arrived at the critical moment, and remained with
him to the last. He died on the 28th of January, and Mrs. Dodge
removed to Beirût. The arrival of Rev. John F. Lanneau in the spring
of 1836, furnished an associate for Mr. Whiting. A school was
opened, and numerous books were sold to the pilgrims. Early in the
next year, Tannûs Kerem of Safet was engaged as a native assistant.
He was born and educated in the Latin Church, but in thought and
feeling was with the mission, and enlarged their personal
acquaintance and influence. In the summer the cholera appeared, and
swept off four hundred victims in a month. Mr. Homes, of the mission
to Turkey, was there at the time, and all devoted themselves to the
gratuitous service of the sick, a thing unknown before in that
region. They gave medical aid to many, nearly all of whom recovered,
and thus gained many friends. Preaching was commenced in September
to a small but attentive congregation. Mrs. Whiting and Miss Tilden
had an interesting school, composed chiefly of Mohammedan girls.
There was also a school for boys under a Greek teacher, with
twenty-four pupils. In 1838, Mr. Whiting was obliged, by the
protracted sickness of his wife, to visit the United States, and Mr.
Lanneau was alone at Jerusalem, with Tannûs Kerem, and suffering
from extreme weakness of the eyes; but was encouraged by the arrival
of Rev. Charles S. Sherman and wife in the autumn of 1839. The new
missionary expressed his surprise at finding the different classes
so little affected by the prejudices of sect in their intercourse
with members of the mission. The illness of Mr. Lanneau became at
length so distressing, as to require his absence from the field for
nearly two years. Before his return to the East, which was early in
1843, the Committee had expressed an opinion, that it was expedient
to suspend further efforts at Jerusalem. Mr. Lanneau, however,
resumed his abode there until the visit of the writer, with Dr.
Hawes, in the spring of 1844, This was after there had been a
protracted conference with the mission at Beirût, at which nothing
appeared to affect the decision of the Prudential Committee, and Mr.
Lanneau removed with his family to Beirût. Writing of Jerusalem to
the Committee, Dr. Hawes says: "In regard to this city, viewed as a
field for missionary labor, I saw nothing which should give it a
special claim on our attention. It has indeed a considerable
population, amounting perhaps to seventeen or eighteen thousand. But
it is such a population as seemed to me to bear a near resemblance
to the contents of the sheet which Peter saw let down from heaven by
the four corners. It is composed of well-nigh all nations and of all
religions, who are distinguished for nothing so much as for jealousy
and hatred of each other. As to the crowds of pilgrims who annually
visit the Holy City,--a gross misnomer, by the way, as it now
is,--they are certainly no very hopeful subjects of missionary
effort; drawn thither, as they are, chiefly by the spirit of
superstition; and during the brief time they remain there, kept
continually under the excitement of lying vanities, which without
number are addressed to their eyes, and poured in at their ears."
The burying-ground belonging to the Board, on a central part of
Mount Zion, near the so-called "Tomb of David," and not far from the
city, inclosed by a stone wall, was reserved for a Protestant
burying-place, to be for the use of all sects of Protestant
Christians.