Among the many Christian communities which the traveller encounters in the various countries of the Middle East, western Protestant churches are among the newer arrivals. This collection of papers from a symposium held at the University of Leiden in January 2005 tells the story of these missions from their beginnings in 1815, when the Church Missionary Society began its work in the region, until the First World War which led to the dismantling of the Ottoman empire. The papers set out to describe and reflect on the work of various mission organisations, especially the CMS in the United Kingdom, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the German Kaiserswerth deaconesses. The work of these organisations is presented in studies of the various projects and the people who carried them out. The strength of this approach is the sympathetic and engaging treatment of the people who laboured in this mission field. Among those we are introduced to are Miss Matilda Creasy from England, found beaten to death on a lonely path near Jerusalem in 1858, or Crosby Wheeler who developed education projects in a remote part of Turkish Armenia from 1857 until his retirement in 1893. There is also recognition of achievements in the fields of education, especially the education of women, and medical care. There was controversy too, such as the debate over whether missionaries should seek to convert only or to civilise as means of converting. Since the political realities of working in the Ottoman empire impeded mission among Moslems, the main target group for conversion or renewal were the members of other Churches, especially the Orthodox Churches. Thus the political and ecclesiastical context shaped the character of the Middle East missions. It was a century which saw the establishment of the Latin patriarchate, much mission activity by the Russian Orthodox Church and the strengthening of the mainly Arabic Melkite Church, but, regrettably, these large subjects are not considered in this book, which as a result does not pay sufficient attention to the context in which the missionaries worked. Although their activities did not attract large numbers of converts, many of the institutions they founded still survive and the Protestant approach to faith which they brought with them remains in the region. They continue to provide service and care to local people, as well as giving western Christians a sense of belonging to the land in which Christianity came into being. This series of vivid portraits of the people who set up the projects, the ideals that motivated them and the disappointments that awaited them give many insights into this recently arrived but still vibrant section of the Christian community of the Holy Land.