A WOMAN'S WORK IN TURKEY.
By Miss C. H. Pratt
Illie, the Bible woman in Midyat, is a woman of very ordinary abilities, but she has surely had divine help in her work; and, with tact, sympathy, and devotion to souls, she has labored against opposition greater than has been met in such work in any other place in our field. She went to Midyat thirteen years ago, before there was a church there, and before there were any really Protestant women. There were a few Protestant men, but their wives, on one occasion, after being induced to start for the chapel where they were to have a meeting, slipped away when their leader's eyes were turned, and on reaching the door she looked back to find herself alone. The Jacobite women in Midyat are strongly opposed to Protestantism, as are Catholic women in Mardin, and in those early days they were much more vigorous in their opposition than now. After Illie had been at work there a few years, the missionary was one day calling with her, when a tall, fierce woman meeting them said:— "You are the ones that have spoiled Midyat," and answered one of the lady's remarks with, "I would wring your neck; I would throw you down from the roof." And only three years ago, when a prominent Jacobite joined the Protestant church, there was a mob of women in the chapel yard the first time he attended the Protestant service. Illie has given lessons in reading to more than a hundred women, but her most valuable work has been her faithful religious teaching. She knows the religious condition of every woman in the Protestant community, and of almost every other Christian woman in the village. All the women in the Protestant church and community were brought in mainly through her efforts, and through her instructions a large number of other women know the truth perfectly, though they do not yet acknowledge it. Many men confess that her expositions of the truth in the house first shook the foundations of their faith in the old church, and that she was the means of bringing them over to Protestantism.—Miss C. H. Pratt, Missionary of the American Board.