from the Druze community. They have been persecuted, and may be again,
but they stand firm in Christ. Not a few Druze girls are gathered in our
schools in Beirût, Lebanon, and the vicinity of Hermon, as well as in
other schools in Damascus, Hasbeiya and elsewhere, and some of their
young men are receiving a Christian education.




CHAPTER IV.

NUSAIRIYEH.


To the North of Mount Lebanon, and along the low range of mountains
extending from Antioch to Tripoli, and from the Mediterranean on the
West to Hums on the East, live a strange, wild, blood-thirsty race
called the Nusairîyeh numbering about 200,000 souls, and now for the
first time in their history coming within the range of Missionary
effort.

The Druzes admit women to the Akkal or initiated class, but not so the
Nusairîyeh. The great secret of the Sacrament is administered in a
secluded place, the women being shut up in a house, or kept away from
the mysteries. In these assemblies the Sheikh reads prayers, and then
all join in cursing Abubekr, Omar, Othman, Sheikh et-Turkoman and the
Christians and others. Then he gives a spoonful of wine, first to the
Sheikhs present, and then to all the rest. They then eat fruit, offer
other prayers, and the assembly breaks up. The rites of initiation are
frightful in the extreme, attended by threats, imprecations and