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Gobat in respect to the treatment due to the American missionaries; and when the Druzes inquired of him what support they might expect from England, the answers they received led them to the conclusion, that England would not protect them unless they renounced the American missionaries, and put themselves under the exclusive instruction of clergymen from the English Church.
In the spring of this year war broke out afresh between the Druzes and Maronites, and Lebanon was again purged by fire. It was in no sense a religious war, but a desperate struggle for political ascendency. The Maronite clergy in the Druze part of the mountain had been rapidly recovering power, and were as rapidly rising in their opposition to the mission.
At this moment two Druzes, one the leading feudal sheik of the province, the other a man of unequaled personal bravery, made their way through the excited crowd; seated themselves by the side of the Emir; protested in the strongest language against the treatment the Protestants were receiving from their townsmen; warned all against treating them as men who had no friends to take their part; and called upon the Emir to stand forth in their defense, promising to support him if he did.
They therefore held consultations with the Druze sheiks, and the results were communicated to the British government. As a natural consequence, the Druze sheiks expected support from England, and some at least of the British officers were in favor of such support, should the Druzes put themselves under the instruction of the American missionaries.
One whole family connection of eighty individuals declared their readiness to pledge their property as security that they would never apostatize from the Christian faith; and had it been in the power of the mission to secure to them the political standing of Christian sects, and had the brethren been disposed to favor a national conversion, after the example of the early and middle ages, it is probable that the whole body of the Jebal Druzes, at least, would have become nominal Protestants.
Alas! that long experience with people here, and especially with the Druzes, compels me to receive with hesitation their most solemn protestations. "Sept. 5. M., the ruling sheik of A., came down from the mountains to request Christian instruction and baptism for himself and family. He is very earnest and rational, for a Druze, and thinks that nearly all his villages will unite with him.
Those who believe in reincarnation think that the spiritual worlds are restricted to the worlds of human imagination. Moreover, some of them, like the Druzes and the Nusayris, think that existence is restricted to this physical world. What an ignorant supposition!
The excitement among the Druzes continued, and visitors from all parts of Lebanon thronged the house of the missionary, till winter rendered communication with the mountains difficult. Near the close of November, a number of Druzes, who had become Greek Papists, were seized by order of the Pasha, and cast into prison, whence five of them were drafted into the army.
Gobat, a German in the service of the Church Missionary Society, arrived from Malta. He had long been known as a missionary in Egypt and Abyssinia, and was a personal friend of the older members of the mission. His object was to see if he could make arrangements by which evangelical missionaries of the English Church could advantageously share in the labors for converting the Druzes.
But they had now seen them torn in pieces, trampled under foot, and burned by the enemies of their religion. Of the nineteen pupils in the seminary at Abeih in 1850, four were Druzes, three were Greeks, four Maronites, four Greek Catholics, two Protestants, one Syrian, and one Armenian; all on a level, eating at the same table, mingling in the same sports, and meeting at the same place of prayer.
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