1888. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 191 
Their liturgy, which was originally in the Coptic, has been 
translated into the Arabic, their vulgar tongue. 
1%. The Protestants have been firmly established in Syria and 
Palestine. Those of Syria are for the most part Presbyterians, 
and those of Palestine Episcopalians. They number many 
thousands, and are the most intelligent and best educated of all 
the people of the country. Few of them, male or female, are 
unable to read. The Scriptures have been translated into pure 
and classical Arabic, and are very widely circulated, not only 
among Protestants, but, through their efforts, among the other 
sects of the land. Since the appearance of the Protestant 
version, the Jesuits have also translated the Bible. ‘The educa- 
tional institutions of the Protestant missionaries are of a high 
order, and have become the models for those of the other com- 
munions. Before the establishment of the Syrian Protestant 
College there was not a collegiate institution in Syria. There 
are now six in Beirtiit, besides the above named, belonging to 
the Mohammedans, the Greeks, the Greek-Catholics, the Maro- 
nites, the Jesuits, and the Hebrews. The Syrian Protestant 
college and the Jesuit institution are universities, with several 
faculties, and large apparatus of instruction. 
The existence of this large number of sects and nationalities 
in Syria and Palestine, although in some senses a drawback to 
the prosperity and progress of the country, favors a larger reli- 
gious toleration, and the success of the educational method of 
elevating the whole body politic,in no common degree. A 
** Young Syria” is growing up, free from the sectarian animosities 
of the past, and imbued with an ever increasing spirit of patriot- 
ism and zeal for knowledge. The power of fanaticism grows 
yearly less, and all sects are beginning to dwell more and more 
on the brotherhood of man. 
To give practical expression to this idea, the German Order of 
the Temple has established an agricultural colony at Haifa, and 
another at Jaffa, where the foreign colonists live in brother- 
hood with the natives, and cultivate the soil according to Kuro- 
pean methods. 
I cannot close this lecture without alluding to the great revival 
of learning which has been brought about through the influence 
of Protestant missions in Syria and Egypt. Common schools 
for both sexes have greatly multiplied throughout Lebanon, 
Colesyria, the neighborhood of Damascus, and Palestine, and 
along the Nile as far as Nubia. The native sects have been 
driven, by fear of proselyteism or by a more honorable spirit of 
emulation, to favor this movement. In many cases they have 
aided the missionaries in their efforts; in others, they have 
