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235 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Syria
tions are coextensive with the jurisdiction of the bishopric, which extends over the congregations and interests of the Anglican Church in Egypt, the Sudan, the region on both sides of the Red Sea, Palestine, and Syria, parts of Asia Minor, and the island of Cyprus. (3) The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts proposed a mission to the Druses of Lebanon in 1841, but it was many years later before it really entered Syria. In 1905 the society agreed to become trustees of the property of the Jerusalem bishopric, and since then has aided in many of its enterprises. (4) The Church Missionary Society's work in the Holy Land may be said to be the outcome of previous work done about the shores of the Mediterranean and the establishment of the Jerusalem bishopric. It has 11 European and 116 native workers. Its operations are mainly in Palestine, where in 28 stations and outstations it carries on an extensive educational work in 46 schools with nearly 100 teachers and an average daily attendance of 2,581 scholars. Its medical work in 4 well-equipped hospitals and many dispensaries is a great blessing to the country. The native church organizations with 10 ordained men form the Palestine Native Church Council, which aims at self-administration and ultimate financial independence. The communicants number 777 and the adherents 2,239.
5. The German Evangelical Missions: These include the following agencies: (1) The deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, whose work comprises orphan training, higher education of all nationalities, and hospital nursing, and there are 64 sisters in Beirut, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Haifa. They began labor in Sidon after the massacres of 1860 and then transferred their work to Beirut, where, in 1910, they have 31 deaconesses and 6 native helpers who serve in the Johanniter Hospital, the large orphanage, and their schools, which contain 320 pupils. In Jerusalem 10 of the deaconesses are nurses in the hospital, 13 serve in the Talitha Kumi Orphanage, and 6 in the magnificent new Augusta Victoria Institute on the Mount of Olives. Two serve in Bethlehem and 2 in Haifa as visiting nurses and kindergarten teachers. They represent one of the finest Christian enterprises in the world. (2) The Syrian Orphanage, commonly called Schoeller's, after its founder, at Jerusalem, is one of the most useful, varied, and successful of the enterprises which came into existence after the massacres of 1860. It has maintained and trained thousands of orphans, instructed the blind, and done much for the industrial improvement of Syria. With 21 German and 14 native workers it carries on a system of kindergarten, elementary, and higher education in the orphanage and tributary schools, which enroll 315 pupils. Its most important features have been its training workshops, where hundreds of boys have been taught printing, blacksmithing, locksmithing, tailoring, carpentry and turning, pottery and brickmaking, basket and chair making, and its agricultural departments at Bir Salem in the Plain of Sharon and near Nazareth, the latter a gift of Germans living in Ameriea. Its Protestant community embraces 118 communicants and 277 adherents. (3) The Jerusalem Stiftung, which cares for the German
congregations in the Church of the Redeemer at Jerusalem, operates schools, and maintains chapiaincies at Beirut and elsewhere. (4) The Herrnhut or Lutheran Brethren have charge of the Leper Asylum near Jerusalem, where 40 to 60 of these sad sufferers now receive Christian care from trained deaconesses. (5) The Jerusalem Verein (Berlin) was founded in 1852 to assist German evangelical institutions in the orient. It long enjoyed the royal protection of the Empress Augusta and since the present emperor's visit to the Holy Land in 1897 has received special support and encouragement. While contributing yearly to the hospitals, orphanages, leper asylum, supporting German pastors in Jaffa and Haifa, it has also provided native pastors for Arabic-speaking congregations at Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Beit Jala. It took up independent work at Bethlehem in 1860, Beit Jala in 1870, Hebron in 1884, and Beit Sahur in 1900. (6), The Knights of St. John own the hospitals in Beirut and Jerusalem and the hospice at Jerusalem, and are to have charge of the Augusta Victoria Institute on the Mount of Olives, the largest and finest pile of buildings in the Holy Land devoted to Protestant mission work, which were dedicated with ceremony by Crown Prince Eitel Frederick Apr. 9, 1910.
8. The British Syrian Mission: This enterprise, formerly the. British Syrian schools founded in 1860 by Mrs. J. Bowen Thompson and afterward conducted by her sister, Mrs. A. Mentor Mott, has completed its first half century of superb work for the girls and women of Syria and begins another period with extensive enlargements of its training-college at Beirut, where the mission aims thoroughly to train teachers for its own 38 schools, which are grouped about the main centers at Beirut, Damascus, Baalbec, Tyre, Hasbeya, Zahleh, ShemlS.n, and Ain Zehalteh, and also to render the largest possible assistance to the work of all other societies. Twenty English workers superintend the 38 schools, with 82 teachers and over 3,000 pupils. Fifteen Bible women visit thousands of homes and teach Christian and Moslem women to read. Two schools for the blind, one for girls and one for men, the latter with 23 pupils, teach various forms of handicraft in addition to reading and other studies.
7. The Society of Friends (English): This organization carries on work on Mount Lebanon with resident missionaries at Brumana, Beit Miri, and Ras al-Metn. In Brumana are two large boardingschools for boys and for girls, and a hospital with 20 beds where clinics are held regularly and a number of Syrian girls have been trained as nurses. Besides these larger stations they have schools in eight villages and about 1,000 pupils under instruction, 13 English missionaries, and 35 native workers. This mission was founded in 1873 by Theophilus Waldemeier, and was carried on by a special committee until 1898, when it was taken over by the Board of the Friends' Foreign Mission Association as one of its five fields of missionary labor (Syria, India, Madagascar, China, and Ceylon). In 1896 Waldemeier left the mission and founded the Lebanon Hospital for the Insane at Asfurfyeh just outside of Beirut. After extensive journeys in Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States,