Miriam, the teacher, is a heroine.  Her parents were Greeks, but sent her to school to learn to read.  She learned in a short time to read the New Testament, and to love it, and to keep the Sabbath day holy.  The keeping of the Sabbath was something new in Safita.  The Nusairiyeh have no holy day at all, and the Greeks have so many that they keep none of them.  They work and buy and sell and travel on the Sabbath as on other days, and think far more of certain saint’s days than of the Sabbath.  When Miriam was only seven years old, her father said to her one Sabbath morning, “go with me to the hursh (forest) to get a donkey load of wood.”  She replied, “my father, I cannot go, it is not right, for it is God’s day.”  The father went without her, and while cutting wood, his donkey strayed away, and he had to search through the mountains for hours, so that he did not reach home until twelve o’clock at night, and then without any wood.  He said he should not go for wood on Sunday any more.

But a few Sundays after, it was the olive season, and Miriam’s mother told her to go out with the women and girls to gather olives.  They had been at work during the week, and the mother thought Miriam ought to go on Sunday with the rest.  But Miriam said, “don’t you remember father’s losing the donkey, and what he said about it?  I cannot go.”  “Then,” said her mother, “if you will not work, you shall not eat.”  “Very well, ya imme, I will not eat.  If I keep the Lord’s day, He will keep me.”  Away went the mother to the olive orchard, and Miriam went to the preaching and the Sunday School.  At evening, when the family all came home, Miriam read in her New Testament and went to bed without her supper.  The next morning she said, “Mother, now I am ready to gather olives.  Didn’t I tell you the Lord would keep me?”

After this Miriam’s father became a Protestant, and allowed the missionaries to send her to the Seminary in Sidon, where she was the best girl in the school.  When she went home in the vacation in 1869, new persecutions were stirred up against the Protestants.  The Greek Bishop, with a crowd of priests and a body of armed horsemen, came to the village, to compel all the Protestants to turn back to the old religion.  The armed men went to the Protestant houses and seized men and women and dragged them to the great Burj, in which is the Greek church.  Miriam’s father and mother were greatly terrified and went back with them to the Greeks.  They then called for Miriam.  “Never,” said she to the Bishop, “I will never worship pictures and pray to saints again.  You may cut me in pieces, but I will not stir one step with them.”  The old Bishop turned back, and left her to herself.  Near by was a man named Abu Isbir, who was so frightened that he said, “yes, I will go back, don’t strike me!” But his wife, Im Isbir, was not willing to give up.  She rebuked her husband and took hold of his arm, and actually dragged him back to his house, to save him the shame of having denied the Gospel.  He stood firm, and afterwards united with the Church.