User:Aliayoub18/Howard Bliss

HOWARD SWEETSER BLISS (December 6, 1860 - May 2,1920) President of American University of Beirut, which at the time was named Syrian Protestant College. Born in Souk-el-Gharb, Lebanon, He received his elementary education in Souk-el-Gharb, then left for the United States, following in his father's footsteps, graduating from Amherst College in 1882. He then joined the Union Theological Seminary, and was granted a scholarship which allowed him to pursue his studies for two years at Oxford, Berlin, and Göttingen.

Upon the retirement of his father, Howard Bliss left his work as minister of the Christian Union Congregational Church in New Jersey, and came to Beirut to assume the responsibilities of president of the Syrian Protestant College. He was inaugurated in May 1903.

He was a man of high principles, and was highly respected by the Turkish rulers of this part of the world. During World War I, even though Turkey and the United States were in opposite camps, the College never closed. Many of the College's overseas students were stuck in Beirut, unable to return to their homes. Howard Bliss made sure that neither these students nor the rest of the College would ever be wanting; it was difficult times but he managed to pull through until after the war.

In an article in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, Dr. H. Bliss describes how the Christian Ideal [his words] is at the basis of the College:


 * "Just what this expression -- the Christian Ideal connotes to the modern missionary will be indicated later; but just now I wish to make it as clear as possible that so deeply, nay so passionately, does the College believe in the value of its conception of the Message of Jesus to the world, that it would fain persuade its students to absorb and assimilate, on the athletic field, in the classroom, in their social and religious life, in the communities in which they live, in their temples, synagogues, and mosques, in the forum, the counting house, everywhere, this Ideal. That way lies the fullest life, the deepest joy, the sweetest peace, the truest success.
 * "This, then, in the last analysis is the raison d'etre of the College's foundation. Its classic expression took form in the words of Daniel Bliss, the first president, when, at the laying of the comer stone of College Hall fifty years ago, he said, 'The College is for all conditions and classes of men, without reference to color, nationality, race, or religion. A man, white, black, or yellow, Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Heathen, may enter and enjoy all the advantages of the institution for three, four, or eight years and go out believing in one God or many gods or no God; but it will be impossible for anyone to continue with us long without knowing what we believe to be the truth and our reasons for that belief'.

Later a Christian missionary's view:
 * "He [a Christian] is certain that the Christian view of the world is so superior to all other views as to make it infinitely worth while to proclaim this view to the uttermost parts of the earth.
 * In these beliefs he is in full accord with his predecessors. But his studies and his observation have forced him to a further conviction. He does not believe that Christianity is the sole channel through which divine and saving truth has been conveyed. And this persuasion he admits ungrudgingly and gratefully. For it at once enlarges his spiritual fellowship. All men who are themselves seeking God and who are striving to lead others to God become his companions and his fellow workers.
 * "Our missionary has a new conception of the brooding of God's spirit over the soul of man, the soul which ever retains traces of the divine image in which the light 'which lighteth every man that cometh into the world' is never wholly quenched. Reverently he dares to apply to himself Jesus' pregnant discovery: 'My Father worketh hitherto -- and I work.'
 * "Thus seeking and thus working he discovers with a new humility that, with very much to give he has not a little to receive from men of other faiths: the mystical element so prominent in Eastern religions; a becoming reticence in the presence of the great mysteries of life; a sense of the nearness of God; a recognition of the importance of religion.

On May 2, 1920, the New York Times reported Dr. Howard S. Bliss Seriously Ill attributed to "exertions at the Peace Conference in Paris last year [1919] in favor of a policy of self-determination for his beloverd Syria". Living under stress during the war years may have contributed to his premature death on May 2, 1920 aged 59 years.

Publications include: "THE BALKAN WAR AND CHRISTIAN WORK AMONG MOSLEMS", International Review of Mission, 2, no. 4 (1913), Blackwell Publishing. A Title with the same name later appeared in book form, published in Edinburgh : Office of the International Review of Missions, [1913?]