Woman and her Saviour in Persia_." Boston, 1865.

The year 1847 opened with an earnest and eloquent appeal from the
missionaries for an increase to their number.1 And there is nothing
more painful in the retrospect of this mission, than the numerous
and often unexpected and surprising openings for usefulness, that
were so often effectually closed, solely, as it would seem, because
there were not missionaries to enter and take possession. There is
space for only a single extract from this appeal. Addressing the
Prudential Committee, they say:

1 See _Missionary Herald_, 1847, pp. 185-193.

"We tell you, with all earnestness, that there is great danger, that
the work may languish almost to lifelessness, even at the two posts
which you now occupy in Syria, before your new messengers can be
found, cross the ocean, and pass through the primary process
indispensable to fit them to prophesy upon the slain. Yes, we must
make you understand with unmistakable explicitness, that unless you
hasten the work, and quicken the flight of those who have the
everlasting gospel to preach, the voice may cease to sound, even in
the valleys and over the goodly hills of Lebanon! Your infant
seminary for training native preachers may droop, or disband; your
congregations on the mountains, and on the plain, may be left
without any one to break to them the bread of life; and your press
may cease to drop those leaves, which are for the healing of the
nations. All this may, yes, must occur, by a necessity as inexorable
as the decree that commands all back to dust, unless you hasten to
renew the vitality of our mission, by throwing into it the young
life of a new generation of laborers."

The appeal was published; but it continued painfully true, that the
harvest was plenteous, while the laborers were few.

Among the interesting events of the year, were the accession of nine
persons to the church at Abeih; and a "fetwa" of the mufti, or
Moslem judge, at Beirut, deciding that the Druzes stand in the same
relation to the Mohammedan community and law with the Jews, or any
Christian sect; _i.e_. as "_infidels_;" and, consequently, that a
Druze was not subject to prosecution in the Turkish courts, in case
of his embracing Christianity. Mr. and Mrs. Benton joined the
mission in the latter part of the year.

In the spring of 1847, the Protestants of Hasbeiya sent one of their
number to Constantinople, to lay their grievances before the Sultan.
The