Untitled - St.Francis Magazine

St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 | April 2012 continue to read God’s word with diligence and prayers... and remain in their Church until they were excluded from it, if matters should ever come to such an extremity. ..... after some further interchange and letters, a missionary went with one local evangelist to inquire more closely into the matter.... they learned that several heads of families who with their respective wives and children amounted to seventy out of the four hundred Christian souls in Nablus, had signed a mutual promise to hold together in their seeking and following the Holy Scriptures, and especially to do their utmost to obtain for their children an education based upon the principles of the pure word of God..... I determined quickly to buy a good house, large enough for a boys’ and a girls’ school, and to accommodate a teacher and his family. I installed an intelligent, most promising young man, a native of Nazareth, but resident in Nablus, as master under the supervision of two influential men of the Society..... on September 5th, the school was opened with 21 boys (there are now 25)..... (Memoirs pp.252-­‐254) News of the venture clearly spread to surrounding villages, for despite an outbreak of cholera as a result of which several from the school die, there begins a small movement of Arab Christians into Nablus. Sundry Christian inhabitants of the villages in the mountains of Samaria have decided to migrate to Nablus, in order to associate themselves with our friends...to send their children to a Christian school. (Memoirs p.255) By the following year, in Gobat’s annual letter dated November 1st 1849, he was able to report that schools had opened in several other places: indeed, he was now anxious for such numbers to increase, following a local ruling that had pronounced freedom for Arab Christians to associate with any group of Protestants that they wished. 291