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1826–1830.

The conversion, life, and martyrdom of Asaad Shidiak,¹ so very early in the history of this mission, is a significant and encouraging fact. He not only belonged to the Arab race, but to a portion of it that had long been held in slavish subjection to Rome. His fine mind and heart opened to the truths of the Gospel almost as soon as they were presented; and when once embraced, they were held through years of suffering, which terminated in a martyr's death. With freedom to act, he would have gone forth an apostle to his countrymen. The Arab-speaking race is estimated at sixty millions, and they must receive the gospel mainly from those to whom the language is vernacular. It will tend greatly to strengthen the faith of Christians as to this result, to contemplate the grace of God as seen in the case of this early convert. Space cannot be afforded to do full justice to the facts, which were chiefly recorded by the Rev. Isaac Bird, but the reader is referred in the margin to more ample sources of information.²

Asaad Shidiak was the fourth son of a respectable Maronite, and was born about the year 1797, at Hadet, a small village a few miles from Beirût. His early training was among the Maronites. Such was his ability and fondness for learning, that his family aided him in preparing for the Maronite college at Ain Warka, the most noted seminary on the mountains. He entered the college at the age of sixteen, and remained nearly three years, applying himself diligently to rhetoric, and to natural and theological science, all of which were taught in the Arabic and Syriac languages.

Having completed his college course with the highest honor, he became a teacher, first of a common village school, and then of theology and general science in a convent. Occasionally he was permitted to deliver public lectures. His text-book in the instruction of the monks, was the theological treatise of St. Anthony of Padua, translated into Arabic; of which he made an abridgment, that is still used among the Maronites.

From about the year 1820 to 1824, Asaad was successively in the employ of the Maronite bishop of Beirût, and of several Arab chiefs. These frequent changes were apparently not for his advantage.

He next made application in person to his old college instructor, who had been elevated to the Patriarchal chair. His holiness gave him a cool reception, and reproached him for having preferred the service of sheikhs and princes to that of his bishop. Yet so valuable were his services, that he remained a while with the Patriarch, copying, illustrating, and arranging certain important documents of the Patriarchate, and making out from them a convenient code of church-laws for the Maronite nation, which has since been adopted for general use. But for some reason Asaad felt himself unwelcome, and returned home dissatisfied.

At this time the Maronite priesthood began to be alarmed by the distribution of the Scriptures, and the spread of Protestantism. The Patriarch issued a proclamation against the missionaries, and they replied. Asaad set himself to answer their reply. It was in this connection that his name first became known to the missionaries, to whom he was reported as a man of talent and high education. The dignitaries of the church did not see fit to allow his essay to be published.

In March, 1825, a well-dressed young man, of easy manners and sedate countenance, came to Beirût and asked to be employed by the mission as a teacher of Arabic. As soon as he gave his name, he was recognized as the man who was to have answered their reply to the Patriarch. He took no pains to conceal his agency in the matter, and even frankly begged the liberty of examining the original book, containing one of the most important quotations in the reply by the mission.

There was then no special need of another teacher; and though his very gentlemanly appearance and apparent frankness, and his good sense pleaded in his favor, it was thought prudent to decline his proposal. Little did those excellent brethren think, as this young man turned to go away, how soon they would welcome him to their hearts and homes, and how many thousands of Christian people, even across the ocean, would thrill in sympathy with his sufferings as a martyr for Christ.

Providence so ordered it, that Mr. King arrived from Jerusalem just in time to secure the services of Asaad before he went elsewhere. He was for several weeks Mr. King's instructor in Syriac. The two were well met, and in their frequent discussions, on the differences between the doctrines of the Gospel and those of the Papacy, Mr. King found him one of the most intelligent and skillful reasoners in all the mountains. He was shrewd, sensible, and inquisitive, candid and self-possessed, and was always as ready to hear as to speak. His age was then twenty-nine. There is no good reason to believe that Asaad was actuated, at this time, by higher than worldly motives.

At the close of his connection with Mr. King, he made another effort to secure employment from his Patriarch. Not succeeding, he became Arabic teacher to Mr. Fisk; at the same time assisting Mr. King, then about leaving the country, in preparing his celebrated "Farewell Letter" to his Arab friends. After having put this into neat Arabic style, he made a large number of copies, to be sent to different parts of the country.

On the day of Mr. King's departure from Beirût, Asaad, at the request of the mission, commenced an Arabic grammar-school for native boys. His leisure hours were devoted to composing a refutation of the doctrines contained in Mr. King's "Farewell Letter." This is his own account: "When I was copying the first rough draught of my reply, and had arrived at the last of the reasons, which, he said, prevented his becoming a member of the Roman Catholic Church; namely, their teaching it to be wrong for the commom people to possess or to read the Word of God, I observed that the writer brought a proof against the doctrine from the prophet Isaiah; namely, that if they spoke not according to the law and to the testimony, it was because there was no light in them.

"While I was endeavoring to explain this passage according to the views of the Roman Catholic Church, with no other object than the praise of men and other worldly motives, I chanced to read the twenty-ninth chapter of Isaiah from the fifteenth verse to the end. I read and was afraid. I meditated upon the chapter a long while, and feared that I was doing what I did with a motive far different from the only proper one—the glory and pleasure of God. I therefore threw my paper by without finishing the copy, and applied myself to the reading of Isaiah.

"I had wished to find in the prophet some plain and incontrovertible proofs of the Messiahship of Christ, to use against Moslems and Jews. While thus searching, I found various passages that would bear an explanation according to my views, and read on till I came to the fifty-second chapter, and fourteenth verse, and onward to the end of the next chapter.

"On finding this testimony, my heart rejoiced and was exceeding glad, for it removed many dark doubts from my own mind. From that time, my desire to read the New Testament was greatly increased, that I might discover the best means of acting according to the doctrines of Jesus. I endeavored to divest myself of all selfish bias, and loved more and more to inquire into religious subjects. I saw, as I still see, many doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, that I could not believe, and which I found opposed to the truths of the Gospel, and I wished much to find some of her best teachers to explain them to me, that I might see how they proved them from the Holy Scriptures. As I was reading an appendix to a Bible printed at Rome by the Propaganda, and searching out the passages referred to for proving the duty of worshipping saints, and the like, I found that these proofs failed altogether of establishing these doctrines, and that to infer them from such Scripture texts was even ridiculous. Among other things, I found in this appendix the very horrible Neronian doctrine, 'that it is our duty to destroy heretics.' Now every one knows, that whoever does not believe that the Pope is infallible, is, in the Pope's estimation, a heretic. And this doctrine is not merely that it is allowable to kill heretics, but that we are in duty bound to do it.

"From this I was the more established in my convictions against the doctrines of the Papacy, and saw that they were the doctrines of the ravenous beast, and not of the gentle lamb. After I had read this, I asked one of the priests in Beirût about this doctrine, and he assured me that it was even as I had read. I then wished to go even to some distant country, that I might find a Roman Catholic sufficiently learned to prove the doctrine above alluded to."

Receiving two letters from the Patriarch, requiring him to leave the missionaries on pain of the greater excommunication, and promising to provide him a situation, he went to his friends at Hadet. But his thoughts were drawn to the subject of religion, and finding nothing in which he could take delight, he returned to Beirût, and engaged himself to Mr. Bird for a year. This was in December, 1825. For greater security, a consular protection was now obtained for him from Mr. Abbott, which ensured him, while in the employ of the mission, all the liberty and safety of an English resident. There was no American Consul in the country at that time. He now applied himself to searching the Scriptures, and discussing religious doctrines. Discarding all unwritten traditions, the Apocryphal books, and all implied dependence on the fathers and councils, he found himself standing, in respect to his rule of faith, on Protestant ground.

With all his strong points of character, Asaad had the constitutional weakness of being artless and confiding. In January, 1826, the Patriarch sent his own brother, as a special messenger, inviting Asaad to an interview, and making him flattering promises. The consultation with the priest was private, but it soon appeared, that Asaad was disposed to comply with the patriarchal invitation. It was suggested to him, that the Patriarch was meditating evil against him; but his reply was that he had little fear of it, that the Maronites were not accustomed to take life, or to imprison men, on account of religion. So confident was he that good would result from the visit, that the brethren in the mission ceased to urge their objections. On reaching the Patriarch's convent, he thus wrote:—

"I am now at the convent of Alma, and God be thanked, I arrived in good health. As yet, however, I have not seen his blessedness.

"I pray God, the Father, and his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, that He will establish me in his love, and that I may never exchange it for any created thing; that neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor riches, nor honor, nor dignity, nor office, nor anything in creation, shall separate me from this love. I beg you to pray to God for me, which request I make, also, to all the believers."

Several weeks brought no farther direct intelligence, and there were conflicting reports, which awakened apprehension as to his safety. In the latter part of February, a messenger was sent to obtain accurate knowledge of his situation. The man saw him at the convent of Alma, and had a short private interview. Asaad said, that three things were before him; either to be regarded as mad, or to commit sin, or to offer up his life; but he was ready, he said, to go to prison, or to death. He was engaged in daily controversy with the Patriarch, the Bishop, and others. The main topics on which he insisted, were the necessity of a spiritual religion in distinction from mere forms, the sufficiency of Scripture, and the absurdity of holding the Pope to be infallible. The Patriarch was highly displeased with these bold sentiments, and gave utterance to cruel threats, though at other times offering promotion and money.

Asaad objected to the plan of rescuing him by consular authority, as it might endanger his life. He thought it best to await some providential opening for his escape. One soon occurred. After a week, he left the convent at midnight. The mountain paths were narrow, stony, and crooked, and he often found himself astray, stumbling over rocks and hedges, wading in brooks, or miring in mud. Reaching the sea-shore, he found a shelter under which he rested for a while, and then walked on to Beirût, where he was received most joyfully. The Patriarch and his train were engaged in morning prayers when Asaad's escape was announced. There was great excitement. One man among them, who had sympathized with Asaad, ventured to speak out in his justification. "You had reason," he said, "to expect nothing else. Why should he stay with you here? What had he here to do? What had he to enjoy? Books he had none; friendly society none; conversation against religion abundant; insults upon his opinions and feelings abundant. Why should he not leave you?" Messengers were sent in quest of him in every direction, but in vain.

Asaad's written account of his experiences during his absence on the mountains, is very interesting, but there is not room for even an abridgment of it.¹ A few of the incidents may be noted. The chief object of the Patriarch was to induce him to say, that his faith was like that of the Romish Church. This he declined doing, as it would be a falsehood. The Patriarch offered to absolve him from the sin of falsehood, to which Asaad replied, "What the law of nature condemns, no man can make lawful." Accompanied by a priest, he visited his own college of Ain Warka, but gained no light; and the same was true of his visit to the superior of the convent of Bzummár, who desired to see him. It is a suggestive fact, that the infallibility of the Pope, even then, was everywhere a controverted point between him and the priesthood. The weakness of the reasoning on the papal side was everywhere so apparent to him, as greatly to strengthen his evangelical faith. In one of his interviews with the Patriarch he said: "I would ask of you the favor to send from your priests two faithful men to preach the Gospel through the country; and I am ready, if necessary, to sell all I possess and give it towards their wages." He afterwards offered to go himself and preach the Gospel. But neither of these proposals was accepted.

He was at length deprived of his books, and severely threatened by the Patriarch. "Fearing," he says, "that I should be found among the fearful (Rev. xxi. 8), I turned, and said to him, 'I will hold fast the religion of Jesus Christ, and I am ready, for the sake of it, to shed my blood; and though you should all become infidels, yet will not I;' and so left the room."

Asaad says, in his narrative: "A friend told me, that the Patriarch wondered how I should pretend that I held to the Christian religion, and still converse in such abusive terms against it. And I also wondered, after he saw this, that he should not be willing so much as to ask me, in mildness and forbearance, for what reasons I was unwilling to receive the doctrines of the Pope, or to say, that I believed as he did. But, so far from this, he laid every person, and even his own brother under excommunication, should they presume to dispute or converse with me on the subject of religion. Entirely bereft of books, and shut out from all persons who might instruct me, from what quarter could I get the evidence necessary to persuade me to accept the Patriarch's opinions?

"Another cause I had of wonder was, that not one of all with whom I conversed, when he thought me heretical, advised me to use the only means of becoming strong in the faith, namely, prayer to God Most High, and searching his Holy Word, which a child may understand. I wondered, too, that they should ridicule and report me abroad as insane, and after all this, be afraid to engage in a dispute with the madman, lest he should turn them away from the truth."

As the Patriarch, and the Bishop of Beirût, whose diocese included Hadet, were determined to shut him out from the people, and even threatened his life, Asaad resolved on escaping to Beirût, which he accomplished, as already stated, on the morning of Thursday, March 2, 1826.

Asaad's statement was forthwith copied and sent in various directions through the mountains, and afterwards it had a much wider circulation in a printed form.

The Patriarch's first effort to recapture the fugitive, was by means of a Turkish sheriff, and it failed. On the following Monday, an uncle and the two elder brothers of Asaad came to see what they could do; and they were followed by another brother, and then by the mother and her youngest son. The older brothers were loud and violent in their denunciations. All these the persecuted young Christian met with a calm firmness, but he was at one time almost overcome by the distress of his mother. She was at length pacified by the declarations, that he was not a follower of the English, that he derived not his creed from them, that he believed in the Trinity, that Jesus was God, and that Mary was his mother. Phares, the youngest brother, consented to receive a New Testament, and was evidently affected and softened by the interview.

On the 16th of March, Asaad received a kind and fatherly epistle from the Patriarch, begging him to return home, and relieve the anxieties of his mother and family, and giving him full assurance, that he need not fear being interfered with in his freedom. He was thus approached on his weak side. Too confiding, he really believed this insidious letter, and that he might now go home and live there with his religion unshackled. He wrote a favorable reply. The family was doubtless urged to make sure of the victim before anything occurred to change his mind, and the very next day four of his relations, including Phares, came to escort him to Hadet. The missionaries all believed it perilous, and so he thought himself, but he believed, also, that there was now a door opened for him prudently to preach the Gospel. At Beirût, he said, he could only use his pen, "but who is there in this country," he asked, "that reads?" One of the sisters of the mission said, as she took him by the hand, that she expected never to see him again in this world. He smiled at what he regarded her extravagant apprehension, returned some quiet answer, and proceeded on his way, never to return.

Asaad was treated harshly by his older brothers, and had reason to regard his life as imperiled: "I am in a sort of imprisonment," he said, "enemies within, and enemies without," Towards the last of March, twenty or more of his relations assembled, to take him to the Patriarch by force. He expostulated with Tannûs, the eldest of the family except one, as the chief manager in the affair, and besought him to desist from a step so inconsistent with their fraternal relations. The unnatural brother turned from him in cold indifference, which so affected Asaad that he went aside, and prayed and wept.

In the evening, he at one time addressed the whole assembled company in this manner: "If I had not read the Gospel, I should have been astonished at this movement of yours; but now I see through it all. It is just what the Gospel has told me to expect; 'The brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.' Here you see it is just so. You have assembled together here to fulfill this prophecy of the Gospel. What have I done against you? What is my crime, that it should have called together such an assemblage? Be it that I take the blessed Bible as my only guide to heaven, does that injure you? Is it a crime that renders me worthy of being taken as a malefactor, and sent into confinement?"

Surrounded, as he was, by men insensible to pity, the mother's heart was deeply moved seeing him arrested and borne away as if he had been a murderer. She wept, and Asaad sympathized with her, and turned his back on the home of his childhood, weeping and praying aloud.

He was first taken to the convent of Alma, and then to Canobeen. That convent, where he was destined to wear out the miserable remainder of his life, was in one of the wildest and least accessible recesses of Lebanon.

More than a mouth passed without intelligence, when the Mission received reliable information, that Asaad was in prison, and in chains, and that he was beaten a certain number of stripes daily. A cousin was afterwards permitted to visit him, and reported that he found him sitting on the bare floor, his bed having been taken from him, with a heavy chain around his neck, the other end of which was fastened to the wall. He had also been deprived of all his books and writing utensils. Fruitless efforts were made to effect his deliverance, and his family at last relented, and joined in the efforts. The mother accompanied one of the older sons to Canobeen, and found him in chains, which she had not been willing to believe till she saw it for herself. So decided were the two younger brothers in their movements on his behalf, that they had to consult their own safety in flight. Once they almost succeeded. Asaad himself, under the pressure of his sufferings, made several attempts to flee, but not knowing the way, he was easily apprehended, and the only effect was an aggravation of his misery. A priest gives the following account of his treatment, after one of these failures. "On his arrival at the convent, the Patriarch gave immediate orders for his punishment; and they fell upon him with reproaches, caning him, and smiting him with their hands; yet as often as they struck him on one cheek, he turned to them the other. 'This,' said he, 'is a joyful day to me. My blessed Lord and Master has said, Bless them that curse you; and if they strike you on the right cheek, turn to them the other also. This I have been enabled to do; and I am ready to suffer even more than this for Him who was beaten, and spit upon, and led as a sheep to the slaughter on our account.' When they heard this, they fell to beating him anew, saying, 'Have we need of your preaching, you deceiver? Of what avail are such pretensions as yours, who are in the broad road to perdition?' He replied, 'He that believeth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, hath eternal life.' 'Ah,' said they, 'this is the way you are blinded. Your salvation is by faith alone in Christ; thus you cast contempt on his mother, and on his saints. You believe not in the presence of his holy body on the earth.' And they threw him on the ground, and overwhelmed him with the multitude of their blows."

For three successive days he was subjected to the bastinado, by order of the Patriarch. Remaining firm to his belief, he was again put in chains, the door barred upon him, and his food given him in short allowance. Compassionate persons interceded, and his condition was alleviated for a time, but no one was allowed to converse with him. After some days, aided, it is supposed, by relatives, he again fled from the convent, but was arrested by soldiers sent out in search of him by the Emeer Abdallah, and delivered to the Patriarch. "On his arrival," says a priest who was with him at Canobeen, "he was loaded with chains, cast into a dark, filthy room, and bastinadoed every day for eight days, sometimes fainting under the operation, until he was near death. He was then left in his misery, his bed a thin flag mat, his covering his common clothes. The door of his prison was filled up with stones and mortar, and his food was six thin cakes of bread a day, and a cup of water."

To this dungeon there was no access or outlet whatever except a small loop-hole, through which they passed him his food. Here he lay several days, and its ever-increasing loathsomeness need not be described. No wonder he cried: "Love ye the Lord Jesus Christ according as He hath loved us, and given himself to die for us. Think of me, O ye that pass by; have pity upon me, and deliver me from these sufferings."

A certain priest, who had been a former friend of Asaad, was touched with compassion, and by perseverance succeeded in once more opening his prison doors, and taking off his chains. But he also became suspected in consequence of his kindness to Asaad, and it is not known how long the sufferer was allowed this partial freedom. One of his brothers visited him in 1828, and found him inclosed within four solid stone walls, as in a sepulchre "full of all uncleanness." In 1829, there appears not to have been any mitigation of his sufferings. For three years or more, the priestly despot had him under his heel, and inflicted upon him the greatest amount of suffering compatible with the continuance of life.

His death is supposed to have occurred in October, 1830. Public opinion was divided as to the cause and manner of it. The Patriarch said it was by fever. There is the same uncertainty as to the manner of his burial. But though thrown down into the ravine and covered with stones, as was alleged, his dust will ever be precious in the eyes of the Lord.

Asaad maintained his Christian profession to the last, and he must ever have an honorable place among the Christian martyrs of modern times.

Soon after the capture of Acre by Ibrahim Pasha, in 1832, Mr. Tod, an English merchant, accompanied by Wortabet, obtained an audience with him, and made known the case of Asaad. The Pasha directed the Emir Beshir to furnish ten soldiers to Mr. Tod, with authority to search the convent of Canobeen by force, if necessary. He was received by the Patriarch and priests of the convent with dismay. They asserted that Asaad had died two years before, pointed out his grave, and offered to open it. The convent was thoroughly searched, but he was not found, and Mr. Tod was convinced that he was really dead.4

When it is considered how severely and in how many ways Asaad was tried, his faith and constancy appear admirable. His pride of intellect and authorship, and his reputation for consistency, were opposed, at the outset, to any change in his religious opinions. Then all his reverence for his ecclesiastical superiors and his former tutors, some of whom were naturally mild in their tempers, and his previous habits of thought, withstood his yielding to the convictions of conscience and the authority of Scripture. Next, the anathemas of the Church, the tears of a mother appalled by the infamy of having an apostate son, the furious menaces of brothers, and the bitter hatred of masses stirred up by an influential priesthood, combined to hold him back from the truth. All these things were preparatory to being seized by indignant relatives, chained to his prison walls, deprived of the New Testament and other books, and of every means of recreation, refused even those bodily comforts which nature renders indispensable; in such a forlorn condition, exposed to the insults of a bigoted populace and the revilings of a tyrannical priesthood, beaten till his body became a mass of disease, and held in this variety of grief for years, without one ray of hope, save through the portals of the tomb, who expected that he would endure steadfastly to the end?

On the other hand, if he would only recant, promotion awaited him, and wealth, indeed everything that could be offered to prevent a dreaded defection. How many are there, with all our knowledge and strength of religious principle, who, in his situation, would like him be faithful unto death?

¹ Written also Asaad el-Shidiak, and Asaad esh-Shidiak.

² See Missionary Herald for 1827, pp. 68, 71–76, 97–101, 129–136, 169–177, 268–271, 369–372; for 1828, pp. 16–19, 115–119, 165, 373, 375; for 1829, pp. 15, 47, 111, 115; and The Martyr of Lebanon, by Rev. Isaac Bird, Boston, 1864, pp. 208.

³ See Missionary Herald for 1827, pp. 71–76, 97–101.

⁴ Missionary Herald for 1833, pp. 51–57.