CHAPTERIX.PROGRESS AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.In the following pages have been gathered a few very important papers that will be of permanent value, but necessarily the limits are very narrow, and only a sketch of the beneficent influences of the sweet and holy Gospel of Jesus as it comes into the dark, and cruel and ignorant heart of Moslem heathen, or breathes a new life into the dead forms of the ancient church of Armenia can be given. It may, however, be the less regretted as the great missionary periodicals of every Christian church have given to Christendom for years the ever thrilling and precious story of the victories won by grace. It is to be hoped however that these papers will freshen the interest of the reader and increase his faith in the coming of the kingdom of Christ—the kingdom of peace and good will and righteousness, wherein the terrible evils which prevail under the rule of Islam shall never more be done, but the will of God be sweetly supreme.A CHAPTER OF MISSION HISTORY IN TURKEY.BY REV. H. O. DWIGHT, OF CONSTANTINOPLE.The providential preparation for the opening of the mission of the American Board at Constantinople sixty years ago was sufficiently remarkable to warrant recallingthe story. In the year 1825 a tract by the Rev. Jonas King on the necessity of studying the Scriptures was published in Syria. It was translated into Armenian by Bishop Dionysius at Beirût and sent in manuscript to an influential Armenian at Constantinople. Its convincing words produced an extraordinary effect upon all who read them. Minds largely ignorant of the Bible and its teachings were aroused at once, to see the lacks of the Armenian Church in the matter of Bible knowledge. A school, having for its principal object the education of the clergy, was established at the Armenian Patriarchate at Constantinople, under charge of the eminent teacher Peshtimiljian. A rule limiting ordinations for the priesthood in Constantinople to graduates at this school was adopted, indicating slightly the ignorance which had been prevalent up to that time among the ordinary priesthood. Peshtimiljian, the head master of the new school, was a learned man for his day and was also firm in his conviction that the Bible is the sole standard of Christian life and doctrine.Thus it was that when five or six years later the missionaries of the Board went to reside at Constantinople, there to urge upon the people individual examination of the Bible, their access to Armenians was easy. They found a strong group in the Armenian Church who were already exercised with this question, although it was pathetically evident that they had no idea that any other branch of the Christian Church was equally interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is noteworthy that all the first converts under the labors of the missionaries at Constantinople and many of the later ones received their first impulse towards evangelicalChristianity from the school of Peshtimiljian, and that, perhaps, before a missionary had reached Constantinople.An impressive ceremony in the Armenian Patriarchal Church in Constantinople, held in September, 1833, was part of the fruits of this remarkable movement. It was the first ordination of Armenian priests under the new rule. Fifteen young men, who had completed their studies in the school, were then solemnly set apart for the priest’s office, and the missionaries were specially invited to be present at the ceremony. One of the men ordained on that day, the Rev. Kevork Ardzrouni, had been brought into such relations to the missionaries, that after his ordination Dr. Goodell and Dr. Dwight could call upon him in his cell of retirement. As they were leaving, Der Kevork asked an interest in their prayers. It surely was not without significance in the after life of this priest that there, at the threshold of his church service, he received the benediction of that holy servant of God, Rev. William Goodell, who solemnly invoked upon him the descent of the Holy Spirit as they stood together in the cloisters of the Armenian Patriarchate.Der Kevork’s name appears repeatedly in all the early records of the mission at Constantinople. His early history was inseparably linked with the history of the founding of the mission. He himself, full of years and of good works, died at Constantinople in January 1984, at the age of one hundred and seven. From the first Der Kevork was prominent among the fifteen priests, ordained on that great day in 1833, as a man of learning and of piety. During five or six years after his ordination he was one of the principalteachers in a great Armenian school in Hasskeuy, the religious influence of which he at least helped to make as pure and as strong as that of the mission school. He also spent much time at that early day in visiting from house to house among the people, reading the Scriptures, and exhorting the people to obey the gospel message. Wherever he was there was a quiet but powerful influence for the spread of evangelical ideas.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Then came the reaction against the evangelicals. The more ignorant and bigoted of the clergy looked with terror upon the influx of light among the common people. It seemed to promise only harm to ecclesiastics who had not, and cared not to have, spiritual understanding of the priestly duty. The reactionary party gained the control of the church, they secured the imprisonment and banishment of the evangelical leaders in the Armenian Church, and the excommunication and cruel persecution of all among the laity who persisted in claiming the right to read the Bible and to judge by it of the value of the usages of the ancient church. Der Kevork was one of the pious priests imprisoned in 1839 and banished to a remote part of Asia Minor. The whole hope of reform in the Armenian Church seemed to be destroyed. The Sultan made a proclamation against the Protestants as enemies of the peace of the empire; the ecclesiastics, citing the fact that Dr. Hamlin did not make the sign of the cross or fast, officially asked for his expulsion from Bebek; the American Episcopal missionary added fuel to the flame by translating into Armenian, for the edification of the reactionary party among the clergy, passages from theMissionary Herald, which he claimed showed a purposeto break up the church, and in print and in speech he denounced the missionaries of the Board as infidels and “radicals.” All these circumstances had their influence upon the mind of Der Kevork, and by the time this terrible persecution had led in 1846 to the organization of a separate evangelical church at Constantinople, Der Kevork had decided to make his peace with his own church and to break off relations with the missionaries. In doing this he did violence to his conscience. But his hope that still he might be able to aid in reforming his church from within, offers sufficient justification for charity towards this pious priest.It was long before Der Kevork ventured to renew intimate relations with the missionaries and the evangelical Armenians. I can remember, forty years ago, being taken by my father to see Der Kevork in his home in Hasskeuy. There was evident constraint in their conversation, but the old affection of twenty years before still existed. And when the old man—for his beard even then was white as snow—laid his hand on my head and said, “God bless you, my son, and make you a good man!” it was like a blessing from a man of God.As the conscience of the venerable priest more and more resumed its sway over his life he became more and more earnest in teaching evangelical truth. His great age made it necessary some time ago for him to commit the principal part of his parish duties to an assistant, happily a kindred spirit. But his influence in the Armenian Church, especially during the last fifteen years, has been thoroughly and penetratingly the influence of a simple and pure-minded Gospel Christian. He had a standing order in the Bible House for all new religiouspublications, and to the day of his death he loved to talk with missionaries and pastors of the evangelical church upon the things of the kingdom. His last sermon was preached at Easter, 1892, when he was carried in a chair to the church which he had served for more than half a century. There, supported by loving arms, he preached a most powerful discourse upon the duty of Bible study and of conformity of life thereto in pure and spiritual piety and devotion to Christ.The public life of this aged priest of the Gregorian Armenian Church corresponded with the whole period of the existence of the American Board’s mission among the Armenians. His spiritual life was largely determined by the influence of the fathers of that mission, and the outcome of his work was essentially on the same lines as the work of the mission. It is, then, a suggestive token of the great change which God had already effected in the Armenian Church that Protestants and Armenians joined in mourning his loss, and that both honored in him the same traits of character: a hearty love for the simple gospel and a life conformed to the life of Jesus Christ.HAVE MISSIONS IN TURKEY BEEN A FAILURE?BY A. H. HAIGAZIAN.University of Chicago.It is only a short time that I have been in America; yet my intercourse with American friends has led me to this conclusion, that the people in general do not know what the missions have done in Turkey.So far as I can judge, much has been said on the dark side of the mission work. It seems to me that even the missionaries who return home for a short rest,finding the people more interested with the funny customs of the Old East; they are tempted to forget to tell more about the results of the missions.I thoroughly admit, that the need must be pictured before the eyes of the people as vividly as possible, and for this end the costumes and the beliefs of the natives are to be discussed. This must be done; but on the other hand, the results and the fruits of the sincere prayers and long toils should not be omitted. The former pleases the people but the latter encourages them.Dear American friends, I assure you that the missions in Turkey have not been a failure. Your prayers and best wishes for Turkey have been answered by the Great Master of the work.The mission’s first and most important work has been in the establishment of many strong and evangelical churches in Turkey. At this point you must remember that the main work of the missions in Asiatic Turkey has been among Armenians. Missionaries do not preach to Moslems or Mohammedans in Turkey, as it is often supposed. Neither do they preach to heathen. Now the Armenians had already accepted Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century as a whole nation, and to this day they have kept Christianity in their national church. But the intercourse with the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, took out the vital element from the church. Now the whole missionary effort is spent to reform the Old Armenian Church; and to a great extent they are successful. I call the work of the missions in Turkey only a reformation, nevertheless a great reformation. The attention of the people has been directed to the Bible itself. The mostimportant and principal doctrines of Christianity have been preached to the souls in a more open and simple way. Sunday schools, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and Christian Endeavor Societies have been formed, which were almost unknown before the mission work. From the ignorant women of Turkey have come out many Hannahs and Monicas. “Jesus, lover of my soul,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and many other hymns which are used so much among you, are also the favorite hymns of these Armenian Evangelical churches. Even the most ignorant woman sings them without having a hymn book in her hand. When you lift up your voices here in America in Christian prayers and songs, be sure that at that moment, four thousand miles beyond in Turkey, many voices have been lifted up with the same spirit towards heaven. Yours and theirs ascend together up to the throne of Almighty God. They have no such magnificent buildings for their churches as you have here. In many churches they have no organ or piano; a poor people. Yet if you should see those Protestant churches, their sincerity, their piety, and their love for the truth of God, you would surely say, “Truly the Gospel is preached to the poor.”The educational work of the missions has been not less successful. The colleges and theological seminaries of the missions among those Protestant churches can be well compared with the many colleges and the theological seminaries of America. And the graduates of these institutions are carrying on the work of the missions. We have there able professors, able preachers and successful revivalists and evangelists. Dr. Daniels,the secretary of the American Board, recently in one of the Congregational churches of Chicago said: “Our missionaries have laid the foundation, but our native preachers and professors are building up the rest.”The congregations are made ready to hear more thoughtful sermons. Don’t think that it will be a very easy matter to preach in those churches. Criticism of sermons is not confined to American and European churches. Even the sermons of the missionaries are not so welcome as before. They are nowadays anxious to hear only the thoughts that come out from thoroughly educated minds. The cities of Marash, Aintab, etc., which are educational centers, are choosing their pastors from those who are educated in the American universities. The ideals of the people are going to be higher and higher. The present colleges and seminaries are being obliged almostevery yearto change their programs, to fit them to the conditions and wants of the people.Missions have awakened an interest among the people in the musical department. Vocal music is taught in every high school. Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., are familiar names to both educated young men and women. The “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel, and many other classic pieces are sung in social meetings. During these last years kindergartens have done much in the education of the young folks. The kindergartens of Smyrna, Cæsarea, Aintab, Marash and Hadjin are very successful. Those children can sing many English songs.“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder, what you are”is one which I have heard many times. Even non-Protestantsare much attracted by this kind of education, and I think this is a good opportunity for missions.The third and last result of the missions which I will mention, is the social improvement among the natives. The poverty of the people has been a hindrance to this. Yet the improvement on this point cannot be denied. An educated young man in Armenia wears the dress of an American gentleman, with this difference, that, the former puts on hisfezinstead of hat. Especially young women of the cities cannot be distinguished by their dress from European or American young women.These are some direct results of the missions. Besides, the missions have done a great deal indirectly. Non-Protestant Armenians also have been awakened to their duties. The preaching of the gospel is becoming more common among them, and I am sure there are hundreds of Armenians, who do not call themselves Protestants, who are in reality Protestants. If so, then have missions been a failure? Mrs. Scott-Stevenson in her book entitled “Our Ride Through Asia Minor,” severely criticises the missions, their aims and their methods. If she should criticise only their methods, I should agree with her in some degree; but to criticise the sacred aim of preaching the Gospel is non-Christian sentiment, and I am sure she must have taken those notes under the influences of the wines of Turkey, which she seems very much delighted with.Let me add one point more. The missionaries succeed better among Armenians than among any Christian sects in Turkey. And why? Simply because they love the truth. The history of the Armenian church proves this. The history of the missions in Turkeyproves this. Because their motto is progress. Forward to a higher spirituality; forward to a higher education; forward to a higher civilization. And no wonder that they accept reformation so readily. They believe that the Kingdom of God brings with itself all that which is necessary for a nation.And we cannot help but mention our hearty gratitude to the American Board. Thanks for their love of humanity; thanks for their liberal gifts; thanks for their prayers, and thanks for their missionaries. Yet there is much to be done. We need more help. The harvest is ready—more reapers! The points thus far mentioned are pledges for a greater success.[The following paper was contributed to the “World’s Congress of Missions,” held at Chicago in 1893. The “Parliament of Religions” will long be remembered as the most remarkable gathering the world has yet seen of the defenders of the Ethnic Faiths of the world. Representative men from the ends of the earth brought to this parliament the best religious thought of their respective faiths. It was the high water mark of that which the best and wisest of men have discovered or that has been revealed concerning God, duty and destiny.]MODERN TRIUMPHS OF THE GOSPEL IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.REV. HENRY H. JESSUP, D. D.To recount the triumphs of the Gospel in the Ottoman Empire would be to write the history of its moral, intellectual and social progress for the past seventy-five years.When Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons sailed for Jerusalemin 1818 the Ottoman Empire was virtually a “terra incognita.” Ruling over thirty-five millions of souls in Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa, of whom twelve millions were Oriental Christians, this great empire had not a school excepting the Koranic medrisehs for boys in the mosques, and its vast populations were in a state of intellectual, moral and religious stagnation. These young Americans were instructed to ascertain “what good could be done for Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Armenia and other adjacent countries.” Fisk died in Beirut in 1826, and by his grave was planted a little cypress tree. Parsons died in Alexandria, and his grave is unknown. They both “died without the sight” of fruit from their labors.Three-quarters of a century have passed, and to-day we are asked, what good has been done to Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in this great empire?The work to be done in 1820 was formidable and the means seemingly contemptible. What could a handful of young men and women accomplish, coming from a distant land whose very existence was discredited, to an empire whose political and religious systems had been fossilized for centuries, where schools, books and Bibles were unknown? For these inexperienced youth from the land of the Pilgrims, reared in the air of civil and religious liberty, trained to hate all despotism, political or ecclesiastical, and to love a free press, free schools, and absolute freedom of conscience, to attempt to change public opinion and renovate society, to reform the Oriental churches and liberalize Islam, seemed a forlorn and desperate venture.Seventy years have passed. Sultans have risen andfallen. Patriarchs and Bishops remain, but Turkey is not what it was in 1820, and can never retrograde to those days of darkness. That little evergreen tree planted by Pliny Fisk’s grave in the suburbs of a town of eight thousand population has grown to be a stately cypress tree in the very center of a city of ninety thousand people. Overlooking it is a female seminary, a large church edifice, a Sunday school hall, a printing house, which sends out more than twenty millions of pages annually. That little iron door to the east opens into a vault containing thirteen thousand electrotype plates of various editions of the Arabic Scriptures. Within a radius of two miles are four Christian colleges, seven female seminaries, sixty boys’ day schools, thirty-one girls’ schools, seventeen printing presses, and four large hospitals. The boys’ and girls’ schools belong to the Protestants, Catholics, Greeks, Muslims and Jews, and sixteen thousand children are under instruction. Scores of Muslim girls are as familiar with the Old Testament prophecies with regard to Christ as are our Sunday school children at home. Bibles, hymn books and Christian literature, as well as scientific, historical and educational works, are scattered over the city and throughout the land. Young Syrian women, formerly shut up in ignorance and illiteracy, now enjoy the instruction of home libraries and useful periodicals, and even carry on discussions in the public press and write books of decided merit....THE OUTCOME.I. The Gospel has triumphed in securing in a great measure to the people of Turkey that most precious treasure, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.In 1820, every Ottoman subject had a right to remain in his own sect and to think as his fathers thought before him. Muslim could remain Muslim, Greek remain Greek, Armenian Armenian, and Maronite Maronite. Each sect was a walled enclosure with gates bolted and barred, and the only possible egress from any was into the fold of Islam.The appearance of an open Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, free schools and open discussion of religious questions threw all things into confusion. Not a few received the Gospel and claimed the right to think for themselves.... Anathemas, the major excommunication, stripes and imprisonment, intimidated some, but drove multitudes out of the Oriental Churches, and as the imperial laws regarded every man outside the traditional sects as an outlaw, exile, death, or recantation seemed their only possible fate.But these storms of persecution developed some of the noblest types of Christian character. True heroic spirits, like Asaad esh Shidiak in Lebanon, preferred death to submission to the doctrines of a priestly hierarchy. The Maronite monastery of Connobîn, near the Cedars of Lebanon, where he was walled up in a cell under the overhanging cliff and starved to death, has become memorable in Syria as the scene of the first martyrdom for the evangelical faith in Turkey in modern times.Scourging, imprisonment and exile have been the lot of multitudes who have stood steadfast amid their sufferings. Mr. Butrus Bistany, a young Maronite scholar, who found the truth as Luther found it, in a monastery, fled for his life to Beirut, and remained concealed for two years in the American Mission, fearing death atthe hands of the spies of the Patriarch. But he was spared to be a pillar in the Protestant Church, a learned Arabic author, the assistant of Eli Smith in Bible translation, and the biographer of Asaad esh Shidiak....Kamil Abdul Messiah, a youthful Syrian convert to Christianity from Islam, who died in Bussorah in June, 1892, seemed baptized by the Holy Spirit and divinely instructed in the Word of God. He grasped the vital truths of the Gospel as by a Heavenly instinct. He was a youth of pure life and lips, of faith and prayer, of courage and zeal, and he was mighty in the Scriptures. In Southern Arabia he preached in the streets of towns, in Arab camps, on the deck of coasting ships, and even in mosques. His journals read like chapters from the Acts. His early death was a loss to the Arab race, but his memory is fragrant with the aroma of a pure and godly life and example.Time would fail us to recount the history of the able writers, the liberal Christian merchants, the faithful pastors and teachers, the godly physicians, the self-denying poor, the patient, loving, and exemplary women, who have been Christ’s witnesses during these years of toil and prayer in Syria.In November, 1847, an Imperial decree recognized native Protestants as an independent community with a civil head.In 1850 the Sultan gave a firman granting to Protestants all the privileges given to other Christian communities, and in 1853 another, declaring Christians before the law equal in all respects to Mohammedans, and the death penalty for apostasy from Islam was abolished. This Magna Charta of Protestant rights is the charter of liberty of conscience to all men in Turkey.The Ottoman Government became to a great extent tolerant, and to-day, as compared with its Northern Muscovite neighbor, it is a model of toleration. There is no open legal persecution for conscience’s sake.The Bible in its various languages is distributed throughout the Empire, with the imperial permit printed on the title page. There is not yet liberty to print controversial books touching the religion of Islam, although Islamic works attacking Christianity are distributed openly, with official approbation. The censorship of the press is rigid, but the existing Christian literature is rarely interfered with.The Sheikh ul Islam in Constantinople recently replied officially to a European convert to Islam who asked his aid in entering the Mohammedan religion, that “religion is a matter between man and God, and that no sheikh or priest or mediator is needed in man’s approach to his Maker.” This is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity,—the difference consisting in this:—that while the Sheikh ul Islam probably meant to exclude even the mediation of Christ, the Gospel claims Christ as the only Mediator.It is also true that if any Christian wishes to become a Mohammedan he must go before the Kadi, who summons the Christian’s religious minister to labor with him and examine his case before he is admitted to Islam.That so much of religious liberty exists is cause for profound gratitude.II. The social triumphs of Gospel work in Turkey appear in the transformation of the family and the elevation of woman.The Mohammedan practice of the veiling and seclusionof woman and her exclusion from all social dignity and responsibilities rested like a blight on womankind among all the sects of the Empire. Even among the women of the non-Muslim sects the veil became a necessary shield from insult.An exploration of the Empire in 1829 failed to discover a single school for girls. American women were the first to break the spell, and after long and patient efforts the first school building for the instruction of girls in the Ottoman Empire was erected in Beirut, in 1834, at the expense of Mrs. Tod, an American lady in Alexandria, and the teacher was Mrs. Sarah L. H. Smith....In 1877, the first Muslim school for girls was opened in Beirut. They now have three girls’ schools in the city, with five hundred pupils. Thus far their girls’ schools are confined to the great cities, and they have shown commendable zeal in erecting neat and commodious buildings.In Syria and Palestine there are now nine thousand and eighty-one girls under Protestant instruction, and there are thousands in the Greek and Papal schools. The effects of female education prosecuted for so many years has been a palpable change in the status and dignity of woman. The light and comfort, the moral and intellectual elevation which have resulted are plain even to the casual observer. The mother is becoming the primary instructor of the children at home, and by precept and example their moral and religious guide.The indifference of the Oriental Christians and the opposition of the Mohammedans to female education has been largely overcome. A Mohammedan Turkish lady in Constantinople, Fatimeh Alia Khanum, daughterof Joudet Pasha, has just published a novelette in Turkish and Arabic to show the superiority of the home life of Turkish Muslim women to that of European Christian women. A Protestant young lady of Northern Syria has taken a prize of $50 for the best original Arabic story illustrating the benefits of female education. Another Protestant young woman has recently published an Arabic book on “Society and Social Customs,” and, on the eve of her departure for the Columbian Exposition, delivered a public lecture on the duty of Ottoman subjects to support their own domestic manufacturers. It was largely attended by Muslim sheikhs, Turkish effendis and the public generally, and at the close a young Jewess, a fellow-graduate with her from the American Female Seminary, arose and made an impromptu address in support of the speaker’s views.Too much cannot be said in admiration of the self-denying and successful labors of the American, English, Scotch and German women who have toiled patiently through long years, and many of whom have sacrificed their lives to the elevation of their sisters in this great Empire. Educated and cultivated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, all over the land, rise up and call them blessed. These happy Oriental homes, neat and well ordered, their high character, their exemplary conduct, their intelligence and interest in the proper training of their own children and the best welfare of society, are among the noblest fruits of a revived Christianity in the East.What is wanted to complete the symmetry of this picture of the intellectual progress of Oriental women is that a deputation of Mohammedan ladies should attendthe great World’s Congress of Women from all the nations, and explain to their sisters from Christian and pagan Empires wherein consists the excellency and glory of the veiling and seclusion of Mohammedan women in harems and zenanas, and the permission to their men to have four legal wives and as many concubines as their right hands may acquire by purchase or capture. They should have the opportunity to explain the superiority of this system to that of Christianity, under which woman is allowed the most complete liberty of action, is trusted and honored, and given the highest place in the great organized enterprises of benevolence, charity, religion and social reform, and in the relief of human suffering at home and abroad.III. To Protestant Missions is due the modern intellectual and educational awakening of the whole Empire. The American schools had been in operation forty years before the Turkish government officially promulgated (in 1869), school laws, and instituted a scheme of governmental education.In 1864 there were twelve thousand five hundred elementary Mosque schools for reading the Koran, in which there were said to be half a million of students. In 1890, according to the recently published Ottoman reports, there were in the Empire forty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine schools of all kinds, of which three thousand are probably Christian and Jewish. As there are thirty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight mosques in the Empire, and each mosque is supposed to have its “medriseh” or school, there would appear to be about four thousand secular government schools not connected with the mosques, independent of ecclesiastical control by mollahs andsheikhs, and belonging to the imperial graded system of public instruction; yet many of the mosque schools have now been absorbed into the government system, so that there may be twenty thousand of these so-called secular government schools....Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.There are now in the Empire eighty hundred and ninety-two Protestant schools, with forty-three thousand and twenty-seven pupils.Schools.Boys.Girls.Total Pupils.In Syria and Palestine3289,7569,08118,837In Egypt1003,2713,0296,300In Asia Minor, etc.46410,0007,89017,890Total89223,02720,00043,027Of these pupils twenty thousand are girls, a fact most potent and eloquent with regard to the future of these interesting peoples.There are thirty-one colleges, seminaries and boarding-schools for girls, of which eleven are taught by English and twenty by American ladies. In some of these schools young women are carried to the higher branches of science. In all of them the Bible is taught as a daily text book.There are six American colleges for young men, the most of them well equipped and manned, taking the lead in academic and scientific training. The medical college in Beirut has pupils from nearly all parts of the Empire.The standard of instruction is kept as high as the circumstances of the different provinces will admit,and the education given is thoroughly Biblical and Christian. And there are no more upright, intelligent, useful, loyal and progressive subjects of the Sultan today than the graduates of these colleges.IV. The fourth evidence of the Gospel’s triumph is the translation of the Bible into all the languages of the Empire, and the publication of a vast mass of religious, educational, historical, and scientific books. The Bible is now printed in eleven languages and made available to all the people of the Empire. About fifteen hundred different books have been published in these various languages, of which nearly seven hundred are from the Arabic press in Beirut. The Arabic Bible is sent to the whole Arabic reading Mohammedan world. The literary, scientific, historical and religious books also have a wide circulation.Seventy years ago there were neither books nor readers. Now the hundreds of thousands of readers can find books in their own tongue, and to suit every taste. There are children’s illustrated books for the school and the fireside, stories and histories for the young, solid historical, theological, and instructive works for the old, and scientific books and periodicals for students. Bunyan, D’Aubigné, Edwards, Alexander, Moody, and Spurgeon are speaking to the Orientals. Richard Newton instructs and delights the children. Eli Smith, Van Dyck, and Post, Meshaka and Bistany, Nofel and Wortabet, instruct the scholarly and educated, while mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine, geology and meteorology carry students on to the higher departmentsof learning. Tracts and Sunday school lesson books abound, and periodical literature supplies the present daily wants of society.The American Arabic Press, founded in Malta in 1822, and in Beirut in 1834, set in motion the forces which have now filled all the great cities of the Empire with presses and newspapers, and awakened the people to a new intellectual life. The Beirut Press alone has printed five hundred millions of pages in Arabic.The Bible and the Koran are now the two religious books of the Empire. The Koran is in one language for one sect, and cannot be translated, and any copy of the Koran found in the possession of a native Christian or a European traveler is confiscated. The Bible is in eleven languages and is freely offered for sale to all. Sixty thousand copies of the Scriptures are sold annually in the Turkish Empire.THE OUTLOOK.1. Russia is straining every nerve to destroy Protestant schools as endangering the political solidarity of the Greek Church and thus hostile to her prestige and future influence in Turkey.2. Republican France, having exiled the Jesuits as intolerable at home, finds them pliant tools of her political schemes abroad and subsidizes them heavily with money and diplomatic support in thwarting Protestant missions.3. The civil policy of the Turkish Government is “Turkey for the Turks.” This means virtually filling all the offices of the Empire with Mohammedans, thus gradually closing every avenue of public official employment and promotion to the six millions of the Christianpopulation, who are far in advance of the Muslims in education and intelligence.We do not here dispute the right or the political sagacity of this new régime. But its natural result is seen in the emigration of thousands of the most energetic and enlightened young men to foreign lands. Protestant schools are endangered by losing their trained teachers, and the churches by losing their best members and the material for their future pastors, and the cause of self-support is gravely imperilled. But though thus threatened Protestantism is secured.1. By the wide distribution of the Scriptures. The hundreds of thousands of Bibles in the hands of the people will make the extinction of Protestantism impossible unless the people themselves are exterminated.2. By the wide diffusion of education and the founding of so many Protestant colleges and seminaries which have come to Turkey to stay.3. By the deep-rooted faith and personal convictions of tens of thousands who believe in the right of individual judgment in religion and in the supremacy of conscience enlightened by the Word of God. Fifty thousand Protestants in the Empire can be depended upon to hold their own, even were all foreign missionaries to be withdrawn.4. By the vast body of Christian literature and the power of the journalistic press, which are inconsistent with a recoil into the domain of priestly tyranny and the stifling of the human conscience.Protestantism as a principle is steadily growing in every sect in the Empire. The Ark of God is safe in this land. Let us work on in patience and good cheer, with gratitude and unquestioning faith.
CHAPTERIX.PROGRESS AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.In the following pages have been gathered a few very important papers that will be of permanent value, but necessarily the limits are very narrow, and only a sketch of the beneficent influences of the sweet and holy Gospel of Jesus as it comes into the dark, and cruel and ignorant heart of Moslem heathen, or breathes a new life into the dead forms of the ancient church of Armenia can be given. It may, however, be the less regretted as the great missionary periodicals of every Christian church have given to Christendom for years the ever thrilling and precious story of the victories won by grace. It is to be hoped however that these papers will freshen the interest of the reader and increase his faith in the coming of the kingdom of Christ—the kingdom of peace and good will and righteousness, wherein the terrible evils which prevail under the rule of Islam shall never more be done, but the will of God be sweetly supreme.A CHAPTER OF MISSION HISTORY IN TURKEY.BY REV. H. O. DWIGHT, OF CONSTANTINOPLE.The providential preparation for the opening of the mission of the American Board at Constantinople sixty years ago was sufficiently remarkable to warrant recallingthe story. In the year 1825 a tract by the Rev. Jonas King on the necessity of studying the Scriptures was published in Syria. It was translated into Armenian by Bishop Dionysius at Beirût and sent in manuscript to an influential Armenian at Constantinople. Its convincing words produced an extraordinary effect upon all who read them. Minds largely ignorant of the Bible and its teachings were aroused at once, to see the lacks of the Armenian Church in the matter of Bible knowledge. A school, having for its principal object the education of the clergy, was established at the Armenian Patriarchate at Constantinople, under charge of the eminent teacher Peshtimiljian. A rule limiting ordinations for the priesthood in Constantinople to graduates at this school was adopted, indicating slightly the ignorance which had been prevalent up to that time among the ordinary priesthood. Peshtimiljian, the head master of the new school, was a learned man for his day and was also firm in his conviction that the Bible is the sole standard of Christian life and doctrine.Thus it was that when five or six years later the missionaries of the Board went to reside at Constantinople, there to urge upon the people individual examination of the Bible, their access to Armenians was easy. They found a strong group in the Armenian Church who were already exercised with this question, although it was pathetically evident that they had no idea that any other branch of the Christian Church was equally interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is noteworthy that all the first converts under the labors of the missionaries at Constantinople and many of the later ones received their first impulse towards evangelicalChristianity from the school of Peshtimiljian, and that, perhaps, before a missionary had reached Constantinople.An impressive ceremony in the Armenian Patriarchal Church in Constantinople, held in September, 1833, was part of the fruits of this remarkable movement. It was the first ordination of Armenian priests under the new rule. Fifteen young men, who had completed their studies in the school, were then solemnly set apart for the priest’s office, and the missionaries were specially invited to be present at the ceremony. One of the men ordained on that day, the Rev. Kevork Ardzrouni, had been brought into such relations to the missionaries, that after his ordination Dr. Goodell and Dr. Dwight could call upon him in his cell of retirement. As they were leaving, Der Kevork asked an interest in their prayers. It surely was not without significance in the after life of this priest that there, at the threshold of his church service, he received the benediction of that holy servant of God, Rev. William Goodell, who solemnly invoked upon him the descent of the Holy Spirit as they stood together in the cloisters of the Armenian Patriarchate.Der Kevork’s name appears repeatedly in all the early records of the mission at Constantinople. His early history was inseparably linked with the history of the founding of the mission. He himself, full of years and of good works, died at Constantinople in January 1984, at the age of one hundred and seven. From the first Der Kevork was prominent among the fifteen priests, ordained on that great day in 1833, as a man of learning and of piety. During five or six years after his ordination he was one of the principalteachers in a great Armenian school in Hasskeuy, the religious influence of which he at least helped to make as pure and as strong as that of the mission school. He also spent much time at that early day in visiting from house to house among the people, reading the Scriptures, and exhorting the people to obey the gospel message. Wherever he was there was a quiet but powerful influence for the spread of evangelical ideas.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Then came the reaction against the evangelicals. The more ignorant and bigoted of the clergy looked with terror upon the influx of light among the common people. It seemed to promise only harm to ecclesiastics who had not, and cared not to have, spiritual understanding of the priestly duty. The reactionary party gained the control of the church, they secured the imprisonment and banishment of the evangelical leaders in the Armenian Church, and the excommunication and cruel persecution of all among the laity who persisted in claiming the right to read the Bible and to judge by it of the value of the usages of the ancient church. Der Kevork was one of the pious priests imprisoned in 1839 and banished to a remote part of Asia Minor. The whole hope of reform in the Armenian Church seemed to be destroyed. The Sultan made a proclamation against the Protestants as enemies of the peace of the empire; the ecclesiastics, citing the fact that Dr. Hamlin did not make the sign of the cross or fast, officially asked for his expulsion from Bebek; the American Episcopal missionary added fuel to the flame by translating into Armenian, for the edification of the reactionary party among the clergy, passages from theMissionary Herald, which he claimed showed a purposeto break up the church, and in print and in speech he denounced the missionaries of the Board as infidels and “radicals.” All these circumstances had their influence upon the mind of Der Kevork, and by the time this terrible persecution had led in 1846 to the organization of a separate evangelical church at Constantinople, Der Kevork had decided to make his peace with his own church and to break off relations with the missionaries. In doing this he did violence to his conscience. But his hope that still he might be able to aid in reforming his church from within, offers sufficient justification for charity towards this pious priest.It was long before Der Kevork ventured to renew intimate relations with the missionaries and the evangelical Armenians. I can remember, forty years ago, being taken by my father to see Der Kevork in his home in Hasskeuy. There was evident constraint in their conversation, but the old affection of twenty years before still existed. And when the old man—for his beard even then was white as snow—laid his hand on my head and said, “God bless you, my son, and make you a good man!” it was like a blessing from a man of God.As the conscience of the venerable priest more and more resumed its sway over his life he became more and more earnest in teaching evangelical truth. His great age made it necessary some time ago for him to commit the principal part of his parish duties to an assistant, happily a kindred spirit. But his influence in the Armenian Church, especially during the last fifteen years, has been thoroughly and penetratingly the influence of a simple and pure-minded Gospel Christian. He had a standing order in the Bible House for all new religiouspublications, and to the day of his death he loved to talk with missionaries and pastors of the evangelical church upon the things of the kingdom. His last sermon was preached at Easter, 1892, when he was carried in a chair to the church which he had served for more than half a century. There, supported by loving arms, he preached a most powerful discourse upon the duty of Bible study and of conformity of life thereto in pure and spiritual piety and devotion to Christ.The public life of this aged priest of the Gregorian Armenian Church corresponded with the whole period of the existence of the American Board’s mission among the Armenians. His spiritual life was largely determined by the influence of the fathers of that mission, and the outcome of his work was essentially on the same lines as the work of the mission. It is, then, a suggestive token of the great change which God had already effected in the Armenian Church that Protestants and Armenians joined in mourning his loss, and that both honored in him the same traits of character: a hearty love for the simple gospel and a life conformed to the life of Jesus Christ.HAVE MISSIONS IN TURKEY BEEN A FAILURE?BY A. H. HAIGAZIAN.University of Chicago.It is only a short time that I have been in America; yet my intercourse with American friends has led me to this conclusion, that the people in general do not know what the missions have done in Turkey.So far as I can judge, much has been said on the dark side of the mission work. It seems to me that even the missionaries who return home for a short rest,finding the people more interested with the funny customs of the Old East; they are tempted to forget to tell more about the results of the missions.I thoroughly admit, that the need must be pictured before the eyes of the people as vividly as possible, and for this end the costumes and the beliefs of the natives are to be discussed. This must be done; but on the other hand, the results and the fruits of the sincere prayers and long toils should not be omitted. The former pleases the people but the latter encourages them.Dear American friends, I assure you that the missions in Turkey have not been a failure. Your prayers and best wishes for Turkey have been answered by the Great Master of the work.The mission’s first and most important work has been in the establishment of many strong and evangelical churches in Turkey. At this point you must remember that the main work of the missions in Asiatic Turkey has been among Armenians. Missionaries do not preach to Moslems or Mohammedans in Turkey, as it is often supposed. Neither do they preach to heathen. Now the Armenians had already accepted Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century as a whole nation, and to this day they have kept Christianity in their national church. But the intercourse with the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, took out the vital element from the church. Now the whole missionary effort is spent to reform the Old Armenian Church; and to a great extent they are successful. I call the work of the missions in Turkey only a reformation, nevertheless a great reformation. The attention of the people has been directed to the Bible itself. The mostimportant and principal doctrines of Christianity have been preached to the souls in a more open and simple way. Sunday schools, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and Christian Endeavor Societies have been formed, which were almost unknown before the mission work. From the ignorant women of Turkey have come out many Hannahs and Monicas. “Jesus, lover of my soul,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and many other hymns which are used so much among you, are also the favorite hymns of these Armenian Evangelical churches. Even the most ignorant woman sings them without having a hymn book in her hand. When you lift up your voices here in America in Christian prayers and songs, be sure that at that moment, four thousand miles beyond in Turkey, many voices have been lifted up with the same spirit towards heaven. Yours and theirs ascend together up to the throne of Almighty God. They have no such magnificent buildings for their churches as you have here. In many churches they have no organ or piano; a poor people. Yet if you should see those Protestant churches, their sincerity, their piety, and their love for the truth of God, you would surely say, “Truly the Gospel is preached to the poor.”The educational work of the missions has been not less successful. The colleges and theological seminaries of the missions among those Protestant churches can be well compared with the many colleges and the theological seminaries of America. And the graduates of these institutions are carrying on the work of the missions. We have there able professors, able preachers and successful revivalists and evangelists. Dr. Daniels,the secretary of the American Board, recently in one of the Congregational churches of Chicago said: “Our missionaries have laid the foundation, but our native preachers and professors are building up the rest.”The congregations are made ready to hear more thoughtful sermons. Don’t think that it will be a very easy matter to preach in those churches. Criticism of sermons is not confined to American and European churches. Even the sermons of the missionaries are not so welcome as before. They are nowadays anxious to hear only the thoughts that come out from thoroughly educated minds. The cities of Marash, Aintab, etc., which are educational centers, are choosing their pastors from those who are educated in the American universities. The ideals of the people are going to be higher and higher. The present colleges and seminaries are being obliged almostevery yearto change their programs, to fit them to the conditions and wants of the people.Missions have awakened an interest among the people in the musical department. Vocal music is taught in every high school. Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., are familiar names to both educated young men and women. The “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel, and many other classic pieces are sung in social meetings. During these last years kindergartens have done much in the education of the young folks. The kindergartens of Smyrna, Cæsarea, Aintab, Marash and Hadjin are very successful. Those children can sing many English songs.“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder, what you are”is one which I have heard many times. Even non-Protestantsare much attracted by this kind of education, and I think this is a good opportunity for missions.The third and last result of the missions which I will mention, is the social improvement among the natives. The poverty of the people has been a hindrance to this. Yet the improvement on this point cannot be denied. An educated young man in Armenia wears the dress of an American gentleman, with this difference, that, the former puts on hisfezinstead of hat. Especially young women of the cities cannot be distinguished by their dress from European or American young women.These are some direct results of the missions. Besides, the missions have done a great deal indirectly. Non-Protestant Armenians also have been awakened to their duties. The preaching of the gospel is becoming more common among them, and I am sure there are hundreds of Armenians, who do not call themselves Protestants, who are in reality Protestants. If so, then have missions been a failure? Mrs. Scott-Stevenson in her book entitled “Our Ride Through Asia Minor,” severely criticises the missions, their aims and their methods. If she should criticise only their methods, I should agree with her in some degree; but to criticise the sacred aim of preaching the Gospel is non-Christian sentiment, and I am sure she must have taken those notes under the influences of the wines of Turkey, which she seems very much delighted with.Let me add one point more. The missionaries succeed better among Armenians than among any Christian sects in Turkey. And why? Simply because they love the truth. The history of the Armenian church proves this. The history of the missions in Turkeyproves this. Because their motto is progress. Forward to a higher spirituality; forward to a higher education; forward to a higher civilization. And no wonder that they accept reformation so readily. They believe that the Kingdom of God brings with itself all that which is necessary for a nation.And we cannot help but mention our hearty gratitude to the American Board. Thanks for their love of humanity; thanks for their liberal gifts; thanks for their prayers, and thanks for their missionaries. Yet there is much to be done. We need more help. The harvest is ready—more reapers! The points thus far mentioned are pledges for a greater success.[The following paper was contributed to the “World’s Congress of Missions,” held at Chicago in 1893. The “Parliament of Religions” will long be remembered as the most remarkable gathering the world has yet seen of the defenders of the Ethnic Faiths of the world. Representative men from the ends of the earth brought to this parliament the best religious thought of their respective faiths. It was the high water mark of that which the best and wisest of men have discovered or that has been revealed concerning God, duty and destiny.]MODERN TRIUMPHS OF THE GOSPEL IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.REV. HENRY H. JESSUP, D. D.To recount the triumphs of the Gospel in the Ottoman Empire would be to write the history of its moral, intellectual and social progress for the past seventy-five years.When Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons sailed for Jerusalemin 1818 the Ottoman Empire was virtually a “terra incognita.” Ruling over thirty-five millions of souls in Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa, of whom twelve millions were Oriental Christians, this great empire had not a school excepting the Koranic medrisehs for boys in the mosques, and its vast populations were in a state of intellectual, moral and religious stagnation. These young Americans were instructed to ascertain “what good could be done for Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Armenia and other adjacent countries.” Fisk died in Beirut in 1826, and by his grave was planted a little cypress tree. Parsons died in Alexandria, and his grave is unknown. They both “died without the sight” of fruit from their labors.Three-quarters of a century have passed, and to-day we are asked, what good has been done to Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in this great empire?The work to be done in 1820 was formidable and the means seemingly contemptible. What could a handful of young men and women accomplish, coming from a distant land whose very existence was discredited, to an empire whose political and religious systems had been fossilized for centuries, where schools, books and Bibles were unknown? For these inexperienced youth from the land of the Pilgrims, reared in the air of civil and religious liberty, trained to hate all despotism, political or ecclesiastical, and to love a free press, free schools, and absolute freedom of conscience, to attempt to change public opinion and renovate society, to reform the Oriental churches and liberalize Islam, seemed a forlorn and desperate venture.Seventy years have passed. Sultans have risen andfallen. Patriarchs and Bishops remain, but Turkey is not what it was in 1820, and can never retrograde to those days of darkness. That little evergreen tree planted by Pliny Fisk’s grave in the suburbs of a town of eight thousand population has grown to be a stately cypress tree in the very center of a city of ninety thousand people. Overlooking it is a female seminary, a large church edifice, a Sunday school hall, a printing house, which sends out more than twenty millions of pages annually. That little iron door to the east opens into a vault containing thirteen thousand electrotype plates of various editions of the Arabic Scriptures. Within a radius of two miles are four Christian colleges, seven female seminaries, sixty boys’ day schools, thirty-one girls’ schools, seventeen printing presses, and four large hospitals. The boys’ and girls’ schools belong to the Protestants, Catholics, Greeks, Muslims and Jews, and sixteen thousand children are under instruction. Scores of Muslim girls are as familiar with the Old Testament prophecies with regard to Christ as are our Sunday school children at home. Bibles, hymn books and Christian literature, as well as scientific, historical and educational works, are scattered over the city and throughout the land. Young Syrian women, formerly shut up in ignorance and illiteracy, now enjoy the instruction of home libraries and useful periodicals, and even carry on discussions in the public press and write books of decided merit....THE OUTCOME.I. The Gospel has triumphed in securing in a great measure to the people of Turkey that most precious treasure, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.In 1820, every Ottoman subject had a right to remain in his own sect and to think as his fathers thought before him. Muslim could remain Muslim, Greek remain Greek, Armenian Armenian, and Maronite Maronite. Each sect was a walled enclosure with gates bolted and barred, and the only possible egress from any was into the fold of Islam.The appearance of an open Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, free schools and open discussion of religious questions threw all things into confusion. Not a few received the Gospel and claimed the right to think for themselves.... Anathemas, the major excommunication, stripes and imprisonment, intimidated some, but drove multitudes out of the Oriental Churches, and as the imperial laws regarded every man outside the traditional sects as an outlaw, exile, death, or recantation seemed their only possible fate.But these storms of persecution developed some of the noblest types of Christian character. True heroic spirits, like Asaad esh Shidiak in Lebanon, preferred death to submission to the doctrines of a priestly hierarchy. The Maronite monastery of Connobîn, near the Cedars of Lebanon, where he was walled up in a cell under the overhanging cliff and starved to death, has become memorable in Syria as the scene of the first martyrdom for the evangelical faith in Turkey in modern times.Scourging, imprisonment and exile have been the lot of multitudes who have stood steadfast amid their sufferings. Mr. Butrus Bistany, a young Maronite scholar, who found the truth as Luther found it, in a monastery, fled for his life to Beirut, and remained concealed for two years in the American Mission, fearing death atthe hands of the spies of the Patriarch. But he was spared to be a pillar in the Protestant Church, a learned Arabic author, the assistant of Eli Smith in Bible translation, and the biographer of Asaad esh Shidiak....Kamil Abdul Messiah, a youthful Syrian convert to Christianity from Islam, who died in Bussorah in June, 1892, seemed baptized by the Holy Spirit and divinely instructed in the Word of God. He grasped the vital truths of the Gospel as by a Heavenly instinct. He was a youth of pure life and lips, of faith and prayer, of courage and zeal, and he was mighty in the Scriptures. In Southern Arabia he preached in the streets of towns, in Arab camps, on the deck of coasting ships, and even in mosques. His journals read like chapters from the Acts. His early death was a loss to the Arab race, but his memory is fragrant with the aroma of a pure and godly life and example.Time would fail us to recount the history of the able writers, the liberal Christian merchants, the faithful pastors and teachers, the godly physicians, the self-denying poor, the patient, loving, and exemplary women, who have been Christ’s witnesses during these years of toil and prayer in Syria.In November, 1847, an Imperial decree recognized native Protestants as an independent community with a civil head.In 1850 the Sultan gave a firman granting to Protestants all the privileges given to other Christian communities, and in 1853 another, declaring Christians before the law equal in all respects to Mohammedans, and the death penalty for apostasy from Islam was abolished. This Magna Charta of Protestant rights is the charter of liberty of conscience to all men in Turkey.The Ottoman Government became to a great extent tolerant, and to-day, as compared with its Northern Muscovite neighbor, it is a model of toleration. There is no open legal persecution for conscience’s sake.The Bible in its various languages is distributed throughout the Empire, with the imperial permit printed on the title page. There is not yet liberty to print controversial books touching the religion of Islam, although Islamic works attacking Christianity are distributed openly, with official approbation. The censorship of the press is rigid, but the existing Christian literature is rarely interfered with.The Sheikh ul Islam in Constantinople recently replied officially to a European convert to Islam who asked his aid in entering the Mohammedan religion, that “religion is a matter between man and God, and that no sheikh or priest or mediator is needed in man’s approach to his Maker.” This is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity,—the difference consisting in this:—that while the Sheikh ul Islam probably meant to exclude even the mediation of Christ, the Gospel claims Christ as the only Mediator.It is also true that if any Christian wishes to become a Mohammedan he must go before the Kadi, who summons the Christian’s religious minister to labor with him and examine his case before he is admitted to Islam.That so much of religious liberty exists is cause for profound gratitude.II. The social triumphs of Gospel work in Turkey appear in the transformation of the family and the elevation of woman.The Mohammedan practice of the veiling and seclusionof woman and her exclusion from all social dignity and responsibilities rested like a blight on womankind among all the sects of the Empire. Even among the women of the non-Muslim sects the veil became a necessary shield from insult.An exploration of the Empire in 1829 failed to discover a single school for girls. American women were the first to break the spell, and after long and patient efforts the first school building for the instruction of girls in the Ottoman Empire was erected in Beirut, in 1834, at the expense of Mrs. Tod, an American lady in Alexandria, and the teacher was Mrs. Sarah L. H. Smith....In 1877, the first Muslim school for girls was opened in Beirut. They now have three girls’ schools in the city, with five hundred pupils. Thus far their girls’ schools are confined to the great cities, and they have shown commendable zeal in erecting neat and commodious buildings.In Syria and Palestine there are now nine thousand and eighty-one girls under Protestant instruction, and there are thousands in the Greek and Papal schools. The effects of female education prosecuted for so many years has been a palpable change in the status and dignity of woman. The light and comfort, the moral and intellectual elevation which have resulted are plain even to the casual observer. The mother is becoming the primary instructor of the children at home, and by precept and example their moral and religious guide.The indifference of the Oriental Christians and the opposition of the Mohammedans to female education has been largely overcome. A Mohammedan Turkish lady in Constantinople, Fatimeh Alia Khanum, daughterof Joudet Pasha, has just published a novelette in Turkish and Arabic to show the superiority of the home life of Turkish Muslim women to that of European Christian women. A Protestant young lady of Northern Syria has taken a prize of $50 for the best original Arabic story illustrating the benefits of female education. Another Protestant young woman has recently published an Arabic book on “Society and Social Customs,” and, on the eve of her departure for the Columbian Exposition, delivered a public lecture on the duty of Ottoman subjects to support their own domestic manufacturers. It was largely attended by Muslim sheikhs, Turkish effendis and the public generally, and at the close a young Jewess, a fellow-graduate with her from the American Female Seminary, arose and made an impromptu address in support of the speaker’s views.Too much cannot be said in admiration of the self-denying and successful labors of the American, English, Scotch and German women who have toiled patiently through long years, and many of whom have sacrificed their lives to the elevation of their sisters in this great Empire. Educated and cultivated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, all over the land, rise up and call them blessed. These happy Oriental homes, neat and well ordered, their high character, their exemplary conduct, their intelligence and interest in the proper training of their own children and the best welfare of society, are among the noblest fruits of a revived Christianity in the East.What is wanted to complete the symmetry of this picture of the intellectual progress of Oriental women is that a deputation of Mohammedan ladies should attendthe great World’s Congress of Women from all the nations, and explain to their sisters from Christian and pagan Empires wherein consists the excellency and glory of the veiling and seclusion of Mohammedan women in harems and zenanas, and the permission to their men to have four legal wives and as many concubines as their right hands may acquire by purchase or capture. They should have the opportunity to explain the superiority of this system to that of Christianity, under which woman is allowed the most complete liberty of action, is trusted and honored, and given the highest place in the great organized enterprises of benevolence, charity, religion and social reform, and in the relief of human suffering at home and abroad.III. To Protestant Missions is due the modern intellectual and educational awakening of the whole Empire. The American schools had been in operation forty years before the Turkish government officially promulgated (in 1869), school laws, and instituted a scheme of governmental education.In 1864 there were twelve thousand five hundred elementary Mosque schools for reading the Koran, in which there were said to be half a million of students. In 1890, according to the recently published Ottoman reports, there were in the Empire forty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine schools of all kinds, of which three thousand are probably Christian and Jewish. As there are thirty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight mosques in the Empire, and each mosque is supposed to have its “medriseh” or school, there would appear to be about four thousand secular government schools not connected with the mosques, independent of ecclesiastical control by mollahs andsheikhs, and belonging to the imperial graded system of public instruction; yet many of the mosque schools have now been absorbed into the government system, so that there may be twenty thousand of these so-called secular government schools....Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.There are now in the Empire eighty hundred and ninety-two Protestant schools, with forty-three thousand and twenty-seven pupils.Schools.Boys.Girls.Total Pupils.In Syria and Palestine3289,7569,08118,837In Egypt1003,2713,0296,300In Asia Minor, etc.46410,0007,89017,890Total89223,02720,00043,027Of these pupils twenty thousand are girls, a fact most potent and eloquent with regard to the future of these interesting peoples.There are thirty-one colleges, seminaries and boarding-schools for girls, of which eleven are taught by English and twenty by American ladies. In some of these schools young women are carried to the higher branches of science. In all of them the Bible is taught as a daily text book.There are six American colleges for young men, the most of them well equipped and manned, taking the lead in academic and scientific training. The medical college in Beirut has pupils from nearly all parts of the Empire.The standard of instruction is kept as high as the circumstances of the different provinces will admit,and the education given is thoroughly Biblical and Christian. And there are no more upright, intelligent, useful, loyal and progressive subjects of the Sultan today than the graduates of these colleges.IV. The fourth evidence of the Gospel’s triumph is the translation of the Bible into all the languages of the Empire, and the publication of a vast mass of religious, educational, historical, and scientific books. The Bible is now printed in eleven languages and made available to all the people of the Empire. About fifteen hundred different books have been published in these various languages, of which nearly seven hundred are from the Arabic press in Beirut. The Arabic Bible is sent to the whole Arabic reading Mohammedan world. The literary, scientific, historical and religious books also have a wide circulation.Seventy years ago there were neither books nor readers. Now the hundreds of thousands of readers can find books in their own tongue, and to suit every taste. There are children’s illustrated books for the school and the fireside, stories and histories for the young, solid historical, theological, and instructive works for the old, and scientific books and periodicals for students. Bunyan, D’Aubigné, Edwards, Alexander, Moody, and Spurgeon are speaking to the Orientals. Richard Newton instructs and delights the children. Eli Smith, Van Dyck, and Post, Meshaka and Bistany, Nofel and Wortabet, instruct the scholarly and educated, while mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine, geology and meteorology carry students on to the higher departmentsof learning. Tracts and Sunday school lesson books abound, and periodical literature supplies the present daily wants of society.The American Arabic Press, founded in Malta in 1822, and in Beirut in 1834, set in motion the forces which have now filled all the great cities of the Empire with presses and newspapers, and awakened the people to a new intellectual life. The Beirut Press alone has printed five hundred millions of pages in Arabic.The Bible and the Koran are now the two religious books of the Empire. The Koran is in one language for one sect, and cannot be translated, and any copy of the Koran found in the possession of a native Christian or a European traveler is confiscated. The Bible is in eleven languages and is freely offered for sale to all. Sixty thousand copies of the Scriptures are sold annually in the Turkish Empire.THE OUTLOOK.1. Russia is straining every nerve to destroy Protestant schools as endangering the political solidarity of the Greek Church and thus hostile to her prestige and future influence in Turkey.2. Republican France, having exiled the Jesuits as intolerable at home, finds them pliant tools of her political schemes abroad and subsidizes them heavily with money and diplomatic support in thwarting Protestant missions.3. The civil policy of the Turkish Government is “Turkey for the Turks.” This means virtually filling all the offices of the Empire with Mohammedans, thus gradually closing every avenue of public official employment and promotion to the six millions of the Christianpopulation, who are far in advance of the Muslims in education and intelligence.We do not here dispute the right or the political sagacity of this new régime. But its natural result is seen in the emigration of thousands of the most energetic and enlightened young men to foreign lands. Protestant schools are endangered by losing their trained teachers, and the churches by losing their best members and the material for their future pastors, and the cause of self-support is gravely imperilled. But though thus threatened Protestantism is secured.1. By the wide distribution of the Scriptures. The hundreds of thousands of Bibles in the hands of the people will make the extinction of Protestantism impossible unless the people themselves are exterminated.2. By the wide diffusion of education and the founding of so many Protestant colleges and seminaries which have come to Turkey to stay.3. By the deep-rooted faith and personal convictions of tens of thousands who believe in the right of individual judgment in religion and in the supremacy of conscience enlightened by the Word of God. Fifty thousand Protestants in the Empire can be depended upon to hold their own, even were all foreign missionaries to be withdrawn.4. By the vast body of Christian literature and the power of the journalistic press, which are inconsistent with a recoil into the domain of priestly tyranny and the stifling of the human conscience.Protestantism as a principle is steadily growing in every sect in the Empire. The Ark of God is safe in this land. Let us work on in patience and good cheer, with gratitude and unquestioning faith.
CHAPTERIX.PROGRESS AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.
In the following pages have been gathered a few very important papers that will be of permanent value, but necessarily the limits are very narrow, and only a sketch of the beneficent influences of the sweet and holy Gospel of Jesus as it comes into the dark, and cruel and ignorant heart of Moslem heathen, or breathes a new life into the dead forms of the ancient church of Armenia can be given. It may, however, be the less regretted as the great missionary periodicals of every Christian church have given to Christendom for years the ever thrilling and precious story of the victories won by grace. It is to be hoped however that these papers will freshen the interest of the reader and increase his faith in the coming of the kingdom of Christ—the kingdom of peace and good will and righteousness, wherein the terrible evils which prevail under the rule of Islam shall never more be done, but the will of God be sweetly supreme.A CHAPTER OF MISSION HISTORY IN TURKEY.BY REV. H. O. DWIGHT, OF CONSTANTINOPLE.The providential preparation for the opening of the mission of the American Board at Constantinople sixty years ago was sufficiently remarkable to warrant recallingthe story. In the year 1825 a tract by the Rev. Jonas King on the necessity of studying the Scriptures was published in Syria. It was translated into Armenian by Bishop Dionysius at Beirût and sent in manuscript to an influential Armenian at Constantinople. Its convincing words produced an extraordinary effect upon all who read them. Minds largely ignorant of the Bible and its teachings were aroused at once, to see the lacks of the Armenian Church in the matter of Bible knowledge. A school, having for its principal object the education of the clergy, was established at the Armenian Patriarchate at Constantinople, under charge of the eminent teacher Peshtimiljian. A rule limiting ordinations for the priesthood in Constantinople to graduates at this school was adopted, indicating slightly the ignorance which had been prevalent up to that time among the ordinary priesthood. Peshtimiljian, the head master of the new school, was a learned man for his day and was also firm in his conviction that the Bible is the sole standard of Christian life and doctrine.Thus it was that when five or six years later the missionaries of the Board went to reside at Constantinople, there to urge upon the people individual examination of the Bible, their access to Armenians was easy. They found a strong group in the Armenian Church who were already exercised with this question, although it was pathetically evident that they had no idea that any other branch of the Christian Church was equally interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is noteworthy that all the first converts under the labors of the missionaries at Constantinople and many of the later ones received their first impulse towards evangelicalChristianity from the school of Peshtimiljian, and that, perhaps, before a missionary had reached Constantinople.An impressive ceremony in the Armenian Patriarchal Church in Constantinople, held in September, 1833, was part of the fruits of this remarkable movement. It was the first ordination of Armenian priests under the new rule. Fifteen young men, who had completed their studies in the school, were then solemnly set apart for the priest’s office, and the missionaries were specially invited to be present at the ceremony. One of the men ordained on that day, the Rev. Kevork Ardzrouni, had been brought into such relations to the missionaries, that after his ordination Dr. Goodell and Dr. Dwight could call upon him in his cell of retirement. As they were leaving, Der Kevork asked an interest in their prayers. It surely was not without significance in the after life of this priest that there, at the threshold of his church service, he received the benediction of that holy servant of God, Rev. William Goodell, who solemnly invoked upon him the descent of the Holy Spirit as they stood together in the cloisters of the Armenian Patriarchate.Der Kevork’s name appears repeatedly in all the early records of the mission at Constantinople. His early history was inseparably linked with the history of the founding of the mission. He himself, full of years and of good works, died at Constantinople in January 1984, at the age of one hundred and seven. From the first Der Kevork was prominent among the fifteen priests, ordained on that great day in 1833, as a man of learning and of piety. During five or six years after his ordination he was one of the principalteachers in a great Armenian school in Hasskeuy, the religious influence of which he at least helped to make as pure and as strong as that of the mission school. He also spent much time at that early day in visiting from house to house among the people, reading the Scriptures, and exhorting the people to obey the gospel message. Wherever he was there was a quiet but powerful influence for the spread of evangelical ideas.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Then came the reaction against the evangelicals. The more ignorant and bigoted of the clergy looked with terror upon the influx of light among the common people. It seemed to promise only harm to ecclesiastics who had not, and cared not to have, spiritual understanding of the priestly duty. The reactionary party gained the control of the church, they secured the imprisonment and banishment of the evangelical leaders in the Armenian Church, and the excommunication and cruel persecution of all among the laity who persisted in claiming the right to read the Bible and to judge by it of the value of the usages of the ancient church. Der Kevork was one of the pious priests imprisoned in 1839 and banished to a remote part of Asia Minor. The whole hope of reform in the Armenian Church seemed to be destroyed. The Sultan made a proclamation against the Protestants as enemies of the peace of the empire; the ecclesiastics, citing the fact that Dr. Hamlin did not make the sign of the cross or fast, officially asked for his expulsion from Bebek; the American Episcopal missionary added fuel to the flame by translating into Armenian, for the edification of the reactionary party among the clergy, passages from theMissionary Herald, which he claimed showed a purposeto break up the church, and in print and in speech he denounced the missionaries of the Board as infidels and “radicals.” All these circumstances had their influence upon the mind of Der Kevork, and by the time this terrible persecution had led in 1846 to the organization of a separate evangelical church at Constantinople, Der Kevork had decided to make his peace with his own church and to break off relations with the missionaries. In doing this he did violence to his conscience. But his hope that still he might be able to aid in reforming his church from within, offers sufficient justification for charity towards this pious priest.It was long before Der Kevork ventured to renew intimate relations with the missionaries and the evangelical Armenians. I can remember, forty years ago, being taken by my father to see Der Kevork in his home in Hasskeuy. There was evident constraint in their conversation, but the old affection of twenty years before still existed. And when the old man—for his beard even then was white as snow—laid his hand on my head and said, “God bless you, my son, and make you a good man!” it was like a blessing from a man of God.As the conscience of the venerable priest more and more resumed its sway over his life he became more and more earnest in teaching evangelical truth. His great age made it necessary some time ago for him to commit the principal part of his parish duties to an assistant, happily a kindred spirit. But his influence in the Armenian Church, especially during the last fifteen years, has been thoroughly and penetratingly the influence of a simple and pure-minded Gospel Christian. He had a standing order in the Bible House for all new religiouspublications, and to the day of his death he loved to talk with missionaries and pastors of the evangelical church upon the things of the kingdom. His last sermon was preached at Easter, 1892, when he was carried in a chair to the church which he had served for more than half a century. There, supported by loving arms, he preached a most powerful discourse upon the duty of Bible study and of conformity of life thereto in pure and spiritual piety and devotion to Christ.The public life of this aged priest of the Gregorian Armenian Church corresponded with the whole period of the existence of the American Board’s mission among the Armenians. His spiritual life was largely determined by the influence of the fathers of that mission, and the outcome of his work was essentially on the same lines as the work of the mission. It is, then, a suggestive token of the great change which God had already effected in the Armenian Church that Protestants and Armenians joined in mourning his loss, and that both honored in him the same traits of character: a hearty love for the simple gospel and a life conformed to the life of Jesus Christ.HAVE MISSIONS IN TURKEY BEEN A FAILURE?BY A. H. HAIGAZIAN.University of Chicago.It is only a short time that I have been in America; yet my intercourse with American friends has led me to this conclusion, that the people in general do not know what the missions have done in Turkey.So far as I can judge, much has been said on the dark side of the mission work. It seems to me that even the missionaries who return home for a short rest,finding the people more interested with the funny customs of the Old East; they are tempted to forget to tell more about the results of the missions.I thoroughly admit, that the need must be pictured before the eyes of the people as vividly as possible, and for this end the costumes and the beliefs of the natives are to be discussed. This must be done; but on the other hand, the results and the fruits of the sincere prayers and long toils should not be omitted. The former pleases the people but the latter encourages them.Dear American friends, I assure you that the missions in Turkey have not been a failure. Your prayers and best wishes for Turkey have been answered by the Great Master of the work.The mission’s first and most important work has been in the establishment of many strong and evangelical churches in Turkey. At this point you must remember that the main work of the missions in Asiatic Turkey has been among Armenians. Missionaries do not preach to Moslems or Mohammedans in Turkey, as it is often supposed. Neither do they preach to heathen. Now the Armenians had already accepted Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century as a whole nation, and to this day they have kept Christianity in their national church. But the intercourse with the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, took out the vital element from the church. Now the whole missionary effort is spent to reform the Old Armenian Church; and to a great extent they are successful. I call the work of the missions in Turkey only a reformation, nevertheless a great reformation. The attention of the people has been directed to the Bible itself. The mostimportant and principal doctrines of Christianity have been preached to the souls in a more open and simple way. Sunday schools, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and Christian Endeavor Societies have been formed, which were almost unknown before the mission work. From the ignorant women of Turkey have come out many Hannahs and Monicas. “Jesus, lover of my soul,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and many other hymns which are used so much among you, are also the favorite hymns of these Armenian Evangelical churches. Even the most ignorant woman sings them without having a hymn book in her hand. When you lift up your voices here in America in Christian prayers and songs, be sure that at that moment, four thousand miles beyond in Turkey, many voices have been lifted up with the same spirit towards heaven. Yours and theirs ascend together up to the throne of Almighty God. They have no such magnificent buildings for their churches as you have here. In many churches they have no organ or piano; a poor people. Yet if you should see those Protestant churches, their sincerity, their piety, and their love for the truth of God, you would surely say, “Truly the Gospel is preached to the poor.”The educational work of the missions has been not less successful. The colleges and theological seminaries of the missions among those Protestant churches can be well compared with the many colleges and the theological seminaries of America. And the graduates of these institutions are carrying on the work of the missions. We have there able professors, able preachers and successful revivalists and evangelists. Dr. Daniels,the secretary of the American Board, recently in one of the Congregational churches of Chicago said: “Our missionaries have laid the foundation, but our native preachers and professors are building up the rest.”The congregations are made ready to hear more thoughtful sermons. Don’t think that it will be a very easy matter to preach in those churches. Criticism of sermons is not confined to American and European churches. Even the sermons of the missionaries are not so welcome as before. They are nowadays anxious to hear only the thoughts that come out from thoroughly educated minds. The cities of Marash, Aintab, etc., which are educational centers, are choosing their pastors from those who are educated in the American universities. The ideals of the people are going to be higher and higher. The present colleges and seminaries are being obliged almostevery yearto change their programs, to fit them to the conditions and wants of the people.Missions have awakened an interest among the people in the musical department. Vocal music is taught in every high school. Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., are familiar names to both educated young men and women. The “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel, and many other classic pieces are sung in social meetings. During these last years kindergartens have done much in the education of the young folks. The kindergartens of Smyrna, Cæsarea, Aintab, Marash and Hadjin are very successful. Those children can sing many English songs.“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder, what you are”is one which I have heard many times. Even non-Protestantsare much attracted by this kind of education, and I think this is a good opportunity for missions.The third and last result of the missions which I will mention, is the social improvement among the natives. The poverty of the people has been a hindrance to this. Yet the improvement on this point cannot be denied. An educated young man in Armenia wears the dress of an American gentleman, with this difference, that, the former puts on hisfezinstead of hat. Especially young women of the cities cannot be distinguished by their dress from European or American young women.These are some direct results of the missions. Besides, the missions have done a great deal indirectly. Non-Protestant Armenians also have been awakened to their duties. The preaching of the gospel is becoming more common among them, and I am sure there are hundreds of Armenians, who do not call themselves Protestants, who are in reality Protestants. If so, then have missions been a failure? Mrs. Scott-Stevenson in her book entitled “Our Ride Through Asia Minor,” severely criticises the missions, their aims and their methods. If she should criticise only their methods, I should agree with her in some degree; but to criticise the sacred aim of preaching the Gospel is non-Christian sentiment, and I am sure she must have taken those notes under the influences of the wines of Turkey, which she seems very much delighted with.Let me add one point more. The missionaries succeed better among Armenians than among any Christian sects in Turkey. And why? Simply because they love the truth. The history of the Armenian church proves this. The history of the missions in Turkeyproves this. Because their motto is progress. Forward to a higher spirituality; forward to a higher education; forward to a higher civilization. And no wonder that they accept reformation so readily. They believe that the Kingdom of God brings with itself all that which is necessary for a nation.And we cannot help but mention our hearty gratitude to the American Board. Thanks for their love of humanity; thanks for their liberal gifts; thanks for their prayers, and thanks for their missionaries. Yet there is much to be done. We need more help. The harvest is ready—more reapers! The points thus far mentioned are pledges for a greater success.[The following paper was contributed to the “World’s Congress of Missions,” held at Chicago in 1893. The “Parliament of Religions” will long be remembered as the most remarkable gathering the world has yet seen of the defenders of the Ethnic Faiths of the world. Representative men from the ends of the earth brought to this parliament the best religious thought of their respective faiths. It was the high water mark of that which the best and wisest of men have discovered or that has been revealed concerning God, duty and destiny.]MODERN TRIUMPHS OF THE GOSPEL IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.REV. HENRY H. JESSUP, D. D.To recount the triumphs of the Gospel in the Ottoman Empire would be to write the history of its moral, intellectual and social progress for the past seventy-five years.When Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons sailed for Jerusalemin 1818 the Ottoman Empire was virtually a “terra incognita.” Ruling over thirty-five millions of souls in Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa, of whom twelve millions were Oriental Christians, this great empire had not a school excepting the Koranic medrisehs for boys in the mosques, and its vast populations were in a state of intellectual, moral and religious stagnation. These young Americans were instructed to ascertain “what good could be done for Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Armenia and other adjacent countries.” Fisk died in Beirut in 1826, and by his grave was planted a little cypress tree. Parsons died in Alexandria, and his grave is unknown. They both “died without the sight” of fruit from their labors.Three-quarters of a century have passed, and to-day we are asked, what good has been done to Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in this great empire?The work to be done in 1820 was formidable and the means seemingly contemptible. What could a handful of young men and women accomplish, coming from a distant land whose very existence was discredited, to an empire whose political and religious systems had been fossilized for centuries, where schools, books and Bibles were unknown? For these inexperienced youth from the land of the Pilgrims, reared in the air of civil and religious liberty, trained to hate all despotism, political or ecclesiastical, and to love a free press, free schools, and absolute freedom of conscience, to attempt to change public opinion and renovate society, to reform the Oriental churches and liberalize Islam, seemed a forlorn and desperate venture.Seventy years have passed. Sultans have risen andfallen. Patriarchs and Bishops remain, but Turkey is not what it was in 1820, and can never retrograde to those days of darkness. That little evergreen tree planted by Pliny Fisk’s grave in the suburbs of a town of eight thousand population has grown to be a stately cypress tree in the very center of a city of ninety thousand people. Overlooking it is a female seminary, a large church edifice, a Sunday school hall, a printing house, which sends out more than twenty millions of pages annually. That little iron door to the east opens into a vault containing thirteen thousand electrotype plates of various editions of the Arabic Scriptures. Within a radius of two miles are four Christian colleges, seven female seminaries, sixty boys’ day schools, thirty-one girls’ schools, seventeen printing presses, and four large hospitals. The boys’ and girls’ schools belong to the Protestants, Catholics, Greeks, Muslims and Jews, and sixteen thousand children are under instruction. Scores of Muslim girls are as familiar with the Old Testament prophecies with regard to Christ as are our Sunday school children at home. Bibles, hymn books and Christian literature, as well as scientific, historical and educational works, are scattered over the city and throughout the land. Young Syrian women, formerly shut up in ignorance and illiteracy, now enjoy the instruction of home libraries and useful periodicals, and even carry on discussions in the public press and write books of decided merit....THE OUTCOME.I. The Gospel has triumphed in securing in a great measure to the people of Turkey that most precious treasure, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.In 1820, every Ottoman subject had a right to remain in his own sect and to think as his fathers thought before him. Muslim could remain Muslim, Greek remain Greek, Armenian Armenian, and Maronite Maronite. Each sect was a walled enclosure with gates bolted and barred, and the only possible egress from any was into the fold of Islam.The appearance of an open Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, free schools and open discussion of religious questions threw all things into confusion. Not a few received the Gospel and claimed the right to think for themselves.... Anathemas, the major excommunication, stripes and imprisonment, intimidated some, but drove multitudes out of the Oriental Churches, and as the imperial laws regarded every man outside the traditional sects as an outlaw, exile, death, or recantation seemed their only possible fate.But these storms of persecution developed some of the noblest types of Christian character. True heroic spirits, like Asaad esh Shidiak in Lebanon, preferred death to submission to the doctrines of a priestly hierarchy. The Maronite monastery of Connobîn, near the Cedars of Lebanon, where he was walled up in a cell under the overhanging cliff and starved to death, has become memorable in Syria as the scene of the first martyrdom for the evangelical faith in Turkey in modern times.Scourging, imprisonment and exile have been the lot of multitudes who have stood steadfast amid their sufferings. Mr. Butrus Bistany, a young Maronite scholar, who found the truth as Luther found it, in a monastery, fled for his life to Beirut, and remained concealed for two years in the American Mission, fearing death atthe hands of the spies of the Patriarch. But he was spared to be a pillar in the Protestant Church, a learned Arabic author, the assistant of Eli Smith in Bible translation, and the biographer of Asaad esh Shidiak....Kamil Abdul Messiah, a youthful Syrian convert to Christianity from Islam, who died in Bussorah in June, 1892, seemed baptized by the Holy Spirit and divinely instructed in the Word of God. He grasped the vital truths of the Gospel as by a Heavenly instinct. He was a youth of pure life and lips, of faith and prayer, of courage and zeal, and he was mighty in the Scriptures. In Southern Arabia he preached in the streets of towns, in Arab camps, on the deck of coasting ships, and even in mosques. His journals read like chapters from the Acts. His early death was a loss to the Arab race, but his memory is fragrant with the aroma of a pure and godly life and example.Time would fail us to recount the history of the able writers, the liberal Christian merchants, the faithful pastors and teachers, the godly physicians, the self-denying poor, the patient, loving, and exemplary women, who have been Christ’s witnesses during these years of toil and prayer in Syria.In November, 1847, an Imperial decree recognized native Protestants as an independent community with a civil head.In 1850 the Sultan gave a firman granting to Protestants all the privileges given to other Christian communities, and in 1853 another, declaring Christians before the law equal in all respects to Mohammedans, and the death penalty for apostasy from Islam was abolished. This Magna Charta of Protestant rights is the charter of liberty of conscience to all men in Turkey.The Ottoman Government became to a great extent tolerant, and to-day, as compared with its Northern Muscovite neighbor, it is a model of toleration. There is no open legal persecution for conscience’s sake.The Bible in its various languages is distributed throughout the Empire, with the imperial permit printed on the title page. There is not yet liberty to print controversial books touching the religion of Islam, although Islamic works attacking Christianity are distributed openly, with official approbation. The censorship of the press is rigid, but the existing Christian literature is rarely interfered with.The Sheikh ul Islam in Constantinople recently replied officially to a European convert to Islam who asked his aid in entering the Mohammedan religion, that “religion is a matter between man and God, and that no sheikh or priest or mediator is needed in man’s approach to his Maker.” This is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity,—the difference consisting in this:—that while the Sheikh ul Islam probably meant to exclude even the mediation of Christ, the Gospel claims Christ as the only Mediator.It is also true that if any Christian wishes to become a Mohammedan he must go before the Kadi, who summons the Christian’s religious minister to labor with him and examine his case before he is admitted to Islam.That so much of religious liberty exists is cause for profound gratitude.II. The social triumphs of Gospel work in Turkey appear in the transformation of the family and the elevation of woman.The Mohammedan practice of the veiling and seclusionof woman and her exclusion from all social dignity and responsibilities rested like a blight on womankind among all the sects of the Empire. Even among the women of the non-Muslim sects the veil became a necessary shield from insult.An exploration of the Empire in 1829 failed to discover a single school for girls. American women were the first to break the spell, and after long and patient efforts the first school building for the instruction of girls in the Ottoman Empire was erected in Beirut, in 1834, at the expense of Mrs. Tod, an American lady in Alexandria, and the teacher was Mrs. Sarah L. H. Smith....In 1877, the first Muslim school for girls was opened in Beirut. They now have three girls’ schools in the city, with five hundred pupils. Thus far their girls’ schools are confined to the great cities, and they have shown commendable zeal in erecting neat and commodious buildings.In Syria and Palestine there are now nine thousand and eighty-one girls under Protestant instruction, and there are thousands in the Greek and Papal schools. The effects of female education prosecuted for so many years has been a palpable change in the status and dignity of woman. The light and comfort, the moral and intellectual elevation which have resulted are plain even to the casual observer. The mother is becoming the primary instructor of the children at home, and by precept and example their moral and religious guide.The indifference of the Oriental Christians and the opposition of the Mohammedans to female education has been largely overcome. A Mohammedan Turkish lady in Constantinople, Fatimeh Alia Khanum, daughterof Joudet Pasha, has just published a novelette in Turkish and Arabic to show the superiority of the home life of Turkish Muslim women to that of European Christian women. A Protestant young lady of Northern Syria has taken a prize of $50 for the best original Arabic story illustrating the benefits of female education. Another Protestant young woman has recently published an Arabic book on “Society and Social Customs,” and, on the eve of her departure for the Columbian Exposition, delivered a public lecture on the duty of Ottoman subjects to support their own domestic manufacturers. It was largely attended by Muslim sheikhs, Turkish effendis and the public generally, and at the close a young Jewess, a fellow-graduate with her from the American Female Seminary, arose and made an impromptu address in support of the speaker’s views.Too much cannot be said in admiration of the self-denying and successful labors of the American, English, Scotch and German women who have toiled patiently through long years, and many of whom have sacrificed their lives to the elevation of their sisters in this great Empire. Educated and cultivated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, all over the land, rise up and call them blessed. These happy Oriental homes, neat and well ordered, their high character, their exemplary conduct, their intelligence and interest in the proper training of their own children and the best welfare of society, are among the noblest fruits of a revived Christianity in the East.What is wanted to complete the symmetry of this picture of the intellectual progress of Oriental women is that a deputation of Mohammedan ladies should attendthe great World’s Congress of Women from all the nations, and explain to their sisters from Christian and pagan Empires wherein consists the excellency and glory of the veiling and seclusion of Mohammedan women in harems and zenanas, and the permission to their men to have four legal wives and as many concubines as their right hands may acquire by purchase or capture. They should have the opportunity to explain the superiority of this system to that of Christianity, under which woman is allowed the most complete liberty of action, is trusted and honored, and given the highest place in the great organized enterprises of benevolence, charity, religion and social reform, and in the relief of human suffering at home and abroad.III. To Protestant Missions is due the modern intellectual and educational awakening of the whole Empire. The American schools had been in operation forty years before the Turkish government officially promulgated (in 1869), school laws, and instituted a scheme of governmental education.In 1864 there were twelve thousand five hundred elementary Mosque schools for reading the Koran, in which there were said to be half a million of students. In 1890, according to the recently published Ottoman reports, there were in the Empire forty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine schools of all kinds, of which three thousand are probably Christian and Jewish. As there are thirty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight mosques in the Empire, and each mosque is supposed to have its “medriseh” or school, there would appear to be about four thousand secular government schools not connected with the mosques, independent of ecclesiastical control by mollahs andsheikhs, and belonging to the imperial graded system of public instruction; yet many of the mosque schools have now been absorbed into the government system, so that there may be twenty thousand of these so-called secular government schools....Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.There are now in the Empire eighty hundred and ninety-two Protestant schools, with forty-three thousand and twenty-seven pupils.Schools.Boys.Girls.Total Pupils.In Syria and Palestine3289,7569,08118,837In Egypt1003,2713,0296,300In Asia Minor, etc.46410,0007,89017,890Total89223,02720,00043,027Of these pupils twenty thousand are girls, a fact most potent and eloquent with regard to the future of these interesting peoples.There are thirty-one colleges, seminaries and boarding-schools for girls, of which eleven are taught by English and twenty by American ladies. In some of these schools young women are carried to the higher branches of science. In all of them the Bible is taught as a daily text book.There are six American colleges for young men, the most of them well equipped and manned, taking the lead in academic and scientific training. The medical college in Beirut has pupils from nearly all parts of the Empire.The standard of instruction is kept as high as the circumstances of the different provinces will admit,and the education given is thoroughly Biblical and Christian. And there are no more upright, intelligent, useful, loyal and progressive subjects of the Sultan today than the graduates of these colleges.IV. The fourth evidence of the Gospel’s triumph is the translation of the Bible into all the languages of the Empire, and the publication of a vast mass of religious, educational, historical, and scientific books. The Bible is now printed in eleven languages and made available to all the people of the Empire. About fifteen hundred different books have been published in these various languages, of which nearly seven hundred are from the Arabic press in Beirut. The Arabic Bible is sent to the whole Arabic reading Mohammedan world. The literary, scientific, historical and religious books also have a wide circulation.Seventy years ago there were neither books nor readers. Now the hundreds of thousands of readers can find books in their own tongue, and to suit every taste. There are children’s illustrated books for the school and the fireside, stories and histories for the young, solid historical, theological, and instructive works for the old, and scientific books and periodicals for students. Bunyan, D’Aubigné, Edwards, Alexander, Moody, and Spurgeon are speaking to the Orientals. Richard Newton instructs and delights the children. Eli Smith, Van Dyck, and Post, Meshaka and Bistany, Nofel and Wortabet, instruct the scholarly and educated, while mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine, geology and meteorology carry students on to the higher departmentsof learning. Tracts and Sunday school lesson books abound, and periodical literature supplies the present daily wants of society.The American Arabic Press, founded in Malta in 1822, and in Beirut in 1834, set in motion the forces which have now filled all the great cities of the Empire with presses and newspapers, and awakened the people to a new intellectual life. The Beirut Press alone has printed five hundred millions of pages in Arabic.The Bible and the Koran are now the two religious books of the Empire. The Koran is in one language for one sect, and cannot be translated, and any copy of the Koran found in the possession of a native Christian or a European traveler is confiscated. The Bible is in eleven languages and is freely offered for sale to all. Sixty thousand copies of the Scriptures are sold annually in the Turkish Empire.THE OUTLOOK.1. Russia is straining every nerve to destroy Protestant schools as endangering the political solidarity of the Greek Church and thus hostile to her prestige and future influence in Turkey.2. Republican France, having exiled the Jesuits as intolerable at home, finds them pliant tools of her political schemes abroad and subsidizes them heavily with money and diplomatic support in thwarting Protestant missions.3. The civil policy of the Turkish Government is “Turkey for the Turks.” This means virtually filling all the offices of the Empire with Mohammedans, thus gradually closing every avenue of public official employment and promotion to the six millions of the Christianpopulation, who are far in advance of the Muslims in education and intelligence.We do not here dispute the right or the political sagacity of this new régime. But its natural result is seen in the emigration of thousands of the most energetic and enlightened young men to foreign lands. Protestant schools are endangered by losing their trained teachers, and the churches by losing their best members and the material for their future pastors, and the cause of self-support is gravely imperilled. But though thus threatened Protestantism is secured.1. By the wide distribution of the Scriptures. The hundreds of thousands of Bibles in the hands of the people will make the extinction of Protestantism impossible unless the people themselves are exterminated.2. By the wide diffusion of education and the founding of so many Protestant colleges and seminaries which have come to Turkey to stay.3. By the deep-rooted faith and personal convictions of tens of thousands who believe in the right of individual judgment in religion and in the supremacy of conscience enlightened by the Word of God. Fifty thousand Protestants in the Empire can be depended upon to hold their own, even were all foreign missionaries to be withdrawn.4. By the vast body of Christian literature and the power of the journalistic press, which are inconsistent with a recoil into the domain of priestly tyranny and the stifling of the human conscience.Protestantism as a principle is steadily growing in every sect in the Empire. The Ark of God is safe in this land. Let us work on in patience and good cheer, with gratitude and unquestioning faith.
In the following pages have been gathered a few very important papers that will be of permanent value, but necessarily the limits are very narrow, and only a sketch of the beneficent influences of the sweet and holy Gospel of Jesus as it comes into the dark, and cruel and ignorant heart of Moslem heathen, or breathes a new life into the dead forms of the ancient church of Armenia can be given. It may, however, be the less regretted as the great missionary periodicals of every Christian church have given to Christendom for years the ever thrilling and precious story of the victories won by grace. It is to be hoped however that these papers will freshen the interest of the reader and increase his faith in the coming of the kingdom of Christ—the kingdom of peace and good will and righteousness, wherein the terrible evils which prevail under the rule of Islam shall never more be done, but the will of God be sweetly supreme.
A CHAPTER OF MISSION HISTORY IN TURKEY.BY REV. H. O. DWIGHT, OF CONSTANTINOPLE.The providential preparation for the opening of the mission of the American Board at Constantinople sixty years ago was sufficiently remarkable to warrant recallingthe story. In the year 1825 a tract by the Rev. Jonas King on the necessity of studying the Scriptures was published in Syria. It was translated into Armenian by Bishop Dionysius at Beirût and sent in manuscript to an influential Armenian at Constantinople. Its convincing words produced an extraordinary effect upon all who read them. Minds largely ignorant of the Bible and its teachings were aroused at once, to see the lacks of the Armenian Church in the matter of Bible knowledge. A school, having for its principal object the education of the clergy, was established at the Armenian Patriarchate at Constantinople, under charge of the eminent teacher Peshtimiljian. A rule limiting ordinations for the priesthood in Constantinople to graduates at this school was adopted, indicating slightly the ignorance which had been prevalent up to that time among the ordinary priesthood. Peshtimiljian, the head master of the new school, was a learned man for his day and was also firm in his conviction that the Bible is the sole standard of Christian life and doctrine.Thus it was that when five or six years later the missionaries of the Board went to reside at Constantinople, there to urge upon the people individual examination of the Bible, their access to Armenians was easy. They found a strong group in the Armenian Church who were already exercised with this question, although it was pathetically evident that they had no idea that any other branch of the Christian Church was equally interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is noteworthy that all the first converts under the labors of the missionaries at Constantinople and many of the later ones received their first impulse towards evangelicalChristianity from the school of Peshtimiljian, and that, perhaps, before a missionary had reached Constantinople.An impressive ceremony in the Armenian Patriarchal Church in Constantinople, held in September, 1833, was part of the fruits of this remarkable movement. It was the first ordination of Armenian priests under the new rule. Fifteen young men, who had completed their studies in the school, were then solemnly set apart for the priest’s office, and the missionaries were specially invited to be present at the ceremony. One of the men ordained on that day, the Rev. Kevork Ardzrouni, had been brought into such relations to the missionaries, that after his ordination Dr. Goodell and Dr. Dwight could call upon him in his cell of retirement. As they were leaving, Der Kevork asked an interest in their prayers. It surely was not without significance in the after life of this priest that there, at the threshold of his church service, he received the benediction of that holy servant of God, Rev. William Goodell, who solemnly invoked upon him the descent of the Holy Spirit as they stood together in the cloisters of the Armenian Patriarchate.Der Kevork’s name appears repeatedly in all the early records of the mission at Constantinople. His early history was inseparably linked with the history of the founding of the mission. He himself, full of years and of good works, died at Constantinople in January 1984, at the age of one hundred and seven. From the first Der Kevork was prominent among the fifteen priests, ordained on that great day in 1833, as a man of learning and of piety. During five or six years after his ordination he was one of the principalteachers in a great Armenian school in Hasskeuy, the religious influence of which he at least helped to make as pure and as strong as that of the mission school. He also spent much time at that early day in visiting from house to house among the people, reading the Scriptures, and exhorting the people to obey the gospel message. Wherever he was there was a quiet but powerful influence for the spread of evangelical ideas.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Then came the reaction against the evangelicals. The more ignorant and bigoted of the clergy looked with terror upon the influx of light among the common people. It seemed to promise only harm to ecclesiastics who had not, and cared not to have, spiritual understanding of the priestly duty. The reactionary party gained the control of the church, they secured the imprisonment and banishment of the evangelical leaders in the Armenian Church, and the excommunication and cruel persecution of all among the laity who persisted in claiming the right to read the Bible and to judge by it of the value of the usages of the ancient church. Der Kevork was one of the pious priests imprisoned in 1839 and banished to a remote part of Asia Minor. The whole hope of reform in the Armenian Church seemed to be destroyed. The Sultan made a proclamation against the Protestants as enemies of the peace of the empire; the ecclesiastics, citing the fact that Dr. Hamlin did not make the sign of the cross or fast, officially asked for his expulsion from Bebek; the American Episcopal missionary added fuel to the flame by translating into Armenian, for the edification of the reactionary party among the clergy, passages from theMissionary Herald, which he claimed showed a purposeto break up the church, and in print and in speech he denounced the missionaries of the Board as infidels and “radicals.” All these circumstances had their influence upon the mind of Der Kevork, and by the time this terrible persecution had led in 1846 to the organization of a separate evangelical church at Constantinople, Der Kevork had decided to make his peace with his own church and to break off relations with the missionaries. In doing this he did violence to his conscience. But his hope that still he might be able to aid in reforming his church from within, offers sufficient justification for charity towards this pious priest.It was long before Der Kevork ventured to renew intimate relations with the missionaries and the evangelical Armenians. I can remember, forty years ago, being taken by my father to see Der Kevork in his home in Hasskeuy. There was evident constraint in their conversation, but the old affection of twenty years before still existed. And when the old man—for his beard even then was white as snow—laid his hand on my head and said, “God bless you, my son, and make you a good man!” it was like a blessing from a man of God.As the conscience of the venerable priest more and more resumed its sway over his life he became more and more earnest in teaching evangelical truth. His great age made it necessary some time ago for him to commit the principal part of his parish duties to an assistant, happily a kindred spirit. But his influence in the Armenian Church, especially during the last fifteen years, has been thoroughly and penetratingly the influence of a simple and pure-minded Gospel Christian. He had a standing order in the Bible House for all new religiouspublications, and to the day of his death he loved to talk with missionaries and pastors of the evangelical church upon the things of the kingdom. His last sermon was preached at Easter, 1892, when he was carried in a chair to the church which he had served for more than half a century. There, supported by loving arms, he preached a most powerful discourse upon the duty of Bible study and of conformity of life thereto in pure and spiritual piety and devotion to Christ.The public life of this aged priest of the Gregorian Armenian Church corresponded with the whole period of the existence of the American Board’s mission among the Armenians. His spiritual life was largely determined by the influence of the fathers of that mission, and the outcome of his work was essentially on the same lines as the work of the mission. It is, then, a suggestive token of the great change which God had already effected in the Armenian Church that Protestants and Armenians joined in mourning his loss, and that both honored in him the same traits of character: a hearty love for the simple gospel and a life conformed to the life of Jesus Christ.
A CHAPTER OF MISSION HISTORY IN TURKEY.BY REV. H. O. DWIGHT, OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
BY REV. H. O. DWIGHT, OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
The providential preparation for the opening of the mission of the American Board at Constantinople sixty years ago was sufficiently remarkable to warrant recallingthe story. In the year 1825 a tract by the Rev. Jonas King on the necessity of studying the Scriptures was published in Syria. It was translated into Armenian by Bishop Dionysius at Beirût and sent in manuscript to an influential Armenian at Constantinople. Its convincing words produced an extraordinary effect upon all who read them. Minds largely ignorant of the Bible and its teachings were aroused at once, to see the lacks of the Armenian Church in the matter of Bible knowledge. A school, having for its principal object the education of the clergy, was established at the Armenian Patriarchate at Constantinople, under charge of the eminent teacher Peshtimiljian. A rule limiting ordinations for the priesthood in Constantinople to graduates at this school was adopted, indicating slightly the ignorance which had been prevalent up to that time among the ordinary priesthood. Peshtimiljian, the head master of the new school, was a learned man for his day and was also firm in his conviction that the Bible is the sole standard of Christian life and doctrine.Thus it was that when five or six years later the missionaries of the Board went to reside at Constantinople, there to urge upon the people individual examination of the Bible, their access to Armenians was easy. They found a strong group in the Armenian Church who were already exercised with this question, although it was pathetically evident that they had no idea that any other branch of the Christian Church was equally interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is noteworthy that all the first converts under the labors of the missionaries at Constantinople and many of the later ones received their first impulse towards evangelicalChristianity from the school of Peshtimiljian, and that, perhaps, before a missionary had reached Constantinople.An impressive ceremony in the Armenian Patriarchal Church in Constantinople, held in September, 1833, was part of the fruits of this remarkable movement. It was the first ordination of Armenian priests under the new rule. Fifteen young men, who had completed their studies in the school, were then solemnly set apart for the priest’s office, and the missionaries were specially invited to be present at the ceremony. One of the men ordained on that day, the Rev. Kevork Ardzrouni, had been brought into such relations to the missionaries, that after his ordination Dr. Goodell and Dr. Dwight could call upon him in his cell of retirement. As they were leaving, Der Kevork asked an interest in their prayers. It surely was not without significance in the after life of this priest that there, at the threshold of his church service, he received the benediction of that holy servant of God, Rev. William Goodell, who solemnly invoked upon him the descent of the Holy Spirit as they stood together in the cloisters of the Armenian Patriarchate.Der Kevork’s name appears repeatedly in all the early records of the mission at Constantinople. His early history was inseparably linked with the history of the founding of the mission. He himself, full of years and of good works, died at Constantinople in January 1984, at the age of one hundred and seven. From the first Der Kevork was prominent among the fifteen priests, ordained on that great day in 1833, as a man of learning and of piety. During five or six years after his ordination he was one of the principalteachers in a great Armenian school in Hasskeuy, the religious influence of which he at least helped to make as pure and as strong as that of the mission school. He also spent much time at that early day in visiting from house to house among the people, reading the Scriptures, and exhorting the people to obey the gospel message. Wherever he was there was a quiet but powerful influence for the spread of evangelical ideas.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Then came the reaction against the evangelicals. The more ignorant and bigoted of the clergy looked with terror upon the influx of light among the common people. It seemed to promise only harm to ecclesiastics who had not, and cared not to have, spiritual understanding of the priestly duty. The reactionary party gained the control of the church, they secured the imprisonment and banishment of the evangelical leaders in the Armenian Church, and the excommunication and cruel persecution of all among the laity who persisted in claiming the right to read the Bible and to judge by it of the value of the usages of the ancient church. Der Kevork was one of the pious priests imprisoned in 1839 and banished to a remote part of Asia Minor. The whole hope of reform in the Armenian Church seemed to be destroyed. The Sultan made a proclamation against the Protestants as enemies of the peace of the empire; the ecclesiastics, citing the fact that Dr. Hamlin did not make the sign of the cross or fast, officially asked for his expulsion from Bebek; the American Episcopal missionary added fuel to the flame by translating into Armenian, for the edification of the reactionary party among the clergy, passages from theMissionary Herald, which he claimed showed a purposeto break up the church, and in print and in speech he denounced the missionaries of the Board as infidels and “radicals.” All these circumstances had their influence upon the mind of Der Kevork, and by the time this terrible persecution had led in 1846 to the organization of a separate evangelical church at Constantinople, Der Kevork had decided to make his peace with his own church and to break off relations with the missionaries. In doing this he did violence to his conscience. But his hope that still he might be able to aid in reforming his church from within, offers sufficient justification for charity towards this pious priest.It was long before Der Kevork ventured to renew intimate relations with the missionaries and the evangelical Armenians. I can remember, forty years ago, being taken by my father to see Der Kevork in his home in Hasskeuy. There was evident constraint in their conversation, but the old affection of twenty years before still existed. And when the old man—for his beard even then was white as snow—laid his hand on my head and said, “God bless you, my son, and make you a good man!” it was like a blessing from a man of God.As the conscience of the venerable priest more and more resumed its sway over his life he became more and more earnest in teaching evangelical truth. His great age made it necessary some time ago for him to commit the principal part of his parish duties to an assistant, happily a kindred spirit. But his influence in the Armenian Church, especially during the last fifteen years, has been thoroughly and penetratingly the influence of a simple and pure-minded Gospel Christian. He had a standing order in the Bible House for all new religiouspublications, and to the day of his death he loved to talk with missionaries and pastors of the evangelical church upon the things of the kingdom. His last sermon was preached at Easter, 1892, when he was carried in a chair to the church which he had served for more than half a century. There, supported by loving arms, he preached a most powerful discourse upon the duty of Bible study and of conformity of life thereto in pure and spiritual piety and devotion to Christ.The public life of this aged priest of the Gregorian Armenian Church corresponded with the whole period of the existence of the American Board’s mission among the Armenians. His spiritual life was largely determined by the influence of the fathers of that mission, and the outcome of his work was essentially on the same lines as the work of the mission. It is, then, a suggestive token of the great change which God had already effected in the Armenian Church that Protestants and Armenians joined in mourning his loss, and that both honored in him the same traits of character: a hearty love for the simple gospel and a life conformed to the life of Jesus Christ.
The providential preparation for the opening of the mission of the American Board at Constantinople sixty years ago was sufficiently remarkable to warrant recallingthe story. In the year 1825 a tract by the Rev. Jonas King on the necessity of studying the Scriptures was published in Syria. It was translated into Armenian by Bishop Dionysius at Beirût and sent in manuscript to an influential Armenian at Constantinople. Its convincing words produced an extraordinary effect upon all who read them. Minds largely ignorant of the Bible and its teachings were aroused at once, to see the lacks of the Armenian Church in the matter of Bible knowledge. A school, having for its principal object the education of the clergy, was established at the Armenian Patriarchate at Constantinople, under charge of the eminent teacher Peshtimiljian. A rule limiting ordinations for the priesthood in Constantinople to graduates at this school was adopted, indicating slightly the ignorance which had been prevalent up to that time among the ordinary priesthood. Peshtimiljian, the head master of the new school, was a learned man for his day and was also firm in his conviction that the Bible is the sole standard of Christian life and doctrine.
Thus it was that when five or six years later the missionaries of the Board went to reside at Constantinople, there to urge upon the people individual examination of the Bible, their access to Armenians was easy. They found a strong group in the Armenian Church who were already exercised with this question, although it was pathetically evident that they had no idea that any other branch of the Christian Church was equally interested in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is noteworthy that all the first converts under the labors of the missionaries at Constantinople and many of the later ones received their first impulse towards evangelicalChristianity from the school of Peshtimiljian, and that, perhaps, before a missionary had reached Constantinople.
An impressive ceremony in the Armenian Patriarchal Church in Constantinople, held in September, 1833, was part of the fruits of this remarkable movement. It was the first ordination of Armenian priests under the new rule. Fifteen young men, who had completed their studies in the school, were then solemnly set apart for the priest’s office, and the missionaries were specially invited to be present at the ceremony. One of the men ordained on that day, the Rev. Kevork Ardzrouni, had been brought into such relations to the missionaries, that after his ordination Dr. Goodell and Dr. Dwight could call upon him in his cell of retirement. As they were leaving, Der Kevork asked an interest in their prayers. It surely was not without significance in the after life of this priest that there, at the threshold of his church service, he received the benediction of that holy servant of God, Rev. William Goodell, who solemnly invoked upon him the descent of the Holy Spirit as they stood together in the cloisters of the Armenian Patriarchate.
Der Kevork’s name appears repeatedly in all the early records of the mission at Constantinople. His early history was inseparably linked with the history of the founding of the mission. He himself, full of years and of good works, died at Constantinople in January 1984, at the age of one hundred and seven. From the first Der Kevork was prominent among the fifteen priests, ordained on that great day in 1833, as a man of learning and of piety. During five or six years after his ordination he was one of the principalteachers in a great Armenian school in Hasskeuy, the religious influence of which he at least helped to make as pure and as strong as that of the mission school. He also spent much time at that early day in visiting from house to house among the people, reading the Scriptures, and exhorting the people to obey the gospel message. Wherever he was there was a quiet but powerful influence for the spread of evangelical ideas.
Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.
Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets.
Then came the reaction against the evangelicals. The more ignorant and bigoted of the clergy looked with terror upon the influx of light among the common people. It seemed to promise only harm to ecclesiastics who had not, and cared not to have, spiritual understanding of the priestly duty. The reactionary party gained the control of the church, they secured the imprisonment and banishment of the evangelical leaders in the Armenian Church, and the excommunication and cruel persecution of all among the laity who persisted in claiming the right to read the Bible and to judge by it of the value of the usages of the ancient church. Der Kevork was one of the pious priests imprisoned in 1839 and banished to a remote part of Asia Minor. The whole hope of reform in the Armenian Church seemed to be destroyed. The Sultan made a proclamation against the Protestants as enemies of the peace of the empire; the ecclesiastics, citing the fact that Dr. Hamlin did not make the sign of the cross or fast, officially asked for his expulsion from Bebek; the American Episcopal missionary added fuel to the flame by translating into Armenian, for the edification of the reactionary party among the clergy, passages from theMissionary Herald, which he claimed showed a purposeto break up the church, and in print and in speech he denounced the missionaries of the Board as infidels and “radicals.” All these circumstances had their influence upon the mind of Der Kevork, and by the time this terrible persecution had led in 1846 to the organization of a separate evangelical church at Constantinople, Der Kevork had decided to make his peace with his own church and to break off relations with the missionaries. In doing this he did violence to his conscience. But his hope that still he might be able to aid in reforming his church from within, offers sufficient justification for charity towards this pious priest.
It was long before Der Kevork ventured to renew intimate relations with the missionaries and the evangelical Armenians. I can remember, forty years ago, being taken by my father to see Der Kevork in his home in Hasskeuy. There was evident constraint in their conversation, but the old affection of twenty years before still existed. And when the old man—for his beard even then was white as snow—laid his hand on my head and said, “God bless you, my son, and make you a good man!” it was like a blessing from a man of God.
As the conscience of the venerable priest more and more resumed its sway over his life he became more and more earnest in teaching evangelical truth. His great age made it necessary some time ago for him to commit the principal part of his parish duties to an assistant, happily a kindred spirit. But his influence in the Armenian Church, especially during the last fifteen years, has been thoroughly and penetratingly the influence of a simple and pure-minded Gospel Christian. He had a standing order in the Bible House for all new religiouspublications, and to the day of his death he loved to talk with missionaries and pastors of the evangelical church upon the things of the kingdom. His last sermon was preached at Easter, 1892, when he was carried in a chair to the church which he had served for more than half a century. There, supported by loving arms, he preached a most powerful discourse upon the duty of Bible study and of conformity of life thereto in pure and spiritual piety and devotion to Christ.
The public life of this aged priest of the Gregorian Armenian Church corresponded with the whole period of the existence of the American Board’s mission among the Armenians. His spiritual life was largely determined by the influence of the fathers of that mission, and the outcome of his work was essentially on the same lines as the work of the mission. It is, then, a suggestive token of the great change which God had already effected in the Armenian Church that Protestants and Armenians joined in mourning his loss, and that both honored in him the same traits of character: a hearty love for the simple gospel and a life conformed to the life of Jesus Christ.
HAVE MISSIONS IN TURKEY BEEN A FAILURE?BY A. H. HAIGAZIAN.University of Chicago.It is only a short time that I have been in America; yet my intercourse with American friends has led me to this conclusion, that the people in general do not know what the missions have done in Turkey.So far as I can judge, much has been said on the dark side of the mission work. It seems to me that even the missionaries who return home for a short rest,finding the people more interested with the funny customs of the Old East; they are tempted to forget to tell more about the results of the missions.I thoroughly admit, that the need must be pictured before the eyes of the people as vividly as possible, and for this end the costumes and the beliefs of the natives are to be discussed. This must be done; but on the other hand, the results and the fruits of the sincere prayers and long toils should not be omitted. The former pleases the people but the latter encourages them.Dear American friends, I assure you that the missions in Turkey have not been a failure. Your prayers and best wishes for Turkey have been answered by the Great Master of the work.The mission’s first and most important work has been in the establishment of many strong and evangelical churches in Turkey. At this point you must remember that the main work of the missions in Asiatic Turkey has been among Armenians. Missionaries do not preach to Moslems or Mohammedans in Turkey, as it is often supposed. Neither do they preach to heathen. Now the Armenians had already accepted Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century as a whole nation, and to this day they have kept Christianity in their national church. But the intercourse with the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, took out the vital element from the church. Now the whole missionary effort is spent to reform the Old Armenian Church; and to a great extent they are successful. I call the work of the missions in Turkey only a reformation, nevertheless a great reformation. The attention of the people has been directed to the Bible itself. The mostimportant and principal doctrines of Christianity have been preached to the souls in a more open and simple way. Sunday schools, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and Christian Endeavor Societies have been formed, which were almost unknown before the mission work. From the ignorant women of Turkey have come out many Hannahs and Monicas. “Jesus, lover of my soul,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and many other hymns which are used so much among you, are also the favorite hymns of these Armenian Evangelical churches. Even the most ignorant woman sings them without having a hymn book in her hand. When you lift up your voices here in America in Christian prayers and songs, be sure that at that moment, four thousand miles beyond in Turkey, many voices have been lifted up with the same spirit towards heaven. Yours and theirs ascend together up to the throne of Almighty God. They have no such magnificent buildings for their churches as you have here. In many churches they have no organ or piano; a poor people. Yet if you should see those Protestant churches, their sincerity, their piety, and their love for the truth of God, you would surely say, “Truly the Gospel is preached to the poor.”The educational work of the missions has been not less successful. The colleges and theological seminaries of the missions among those Protestant churches can be well compared with the many colleges and the theological seminaries of America. And the graduates of these institutions are carrying on the work of the missions. We have there able professors, able preachers and successful revivalists and evangelists. Dr. Daniels,the secretary of the American Board, recently in one of the Congregational churches of Chicago said: “Our missionaries have laid the foundation, but our native preachers and professors are building up the rest.”The congregations are made ready to hear more thoughtful sermons. Don’t think that it will be a very easy matter to preach in those churches. Criticism of sermons is not confined to American and European churches. Even the sermons of the missionaries are not so welcome as before. They are nowadays anxious to hear only the thoughts that come out from thoroughly educated minds. The cities of Marash, Aintab, etc., which are educational centers, are choosing their pastors from those who are educated in the American universities. The ideals of the people are going to be higher and higher. The present colleges and seminaries are being obliged almostevery yearto change their programs, to fit them to the conditions and wants of the people.Missions have awakened an interest among the people in the musical department. Vocal music is taught in every high school. Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., are familiar names to both educated young men and women. The “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel, and many other classic pieces are sung in social meetings. During these last years kindergartens have done much in the education of the young folks. The kindergartens of Smyrna, Cæsarea, Aintab, Marash and Hadjin are very successful. Those children can sing many English songs.“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder, what you are”is one which I have heard many times. Even non-Protestantsare much attracted by this kind of education, and I think this is a good opportunity for missions.The third and last result of the missions which I will mention, is the social improvement among the natives. The poverty of the people has been a hindrance to this. Yet the improvement on this point cannot be denied. An educated young man in Armenia wears the dress of an American gentleman, with this difference, that, the former puts on hisfezinstead of hat. Especially young women of the cities cannot be distinguished by their dress from European or American young women.These are some direct results of the missions. Besides, the missions have done a great deal indirectly. Non-Protestant Armenians also have been awakened to their duties. The preaching of the gospel is becoming more common among them, and I am sure there are hundreds of Armenians, who do not call themselves Protestants, who are in reality Protestants. If so, then have missions been a failure? Mrs. Scott-Stevenson in her book entitled “Our Ride Through Asia Minor,” severely criticises the missions, their aims and their methods. If she should criticise only their methods, I should agree with her in some degree; but to criticise the sacred aim of preaching the Gospel is non-Christian sentiment, and I am sure she must have taken those notes under the influences of the wines of Turkey, which she seems very much delighted with.Let me add one point more. The missionaries succeed better among Armenians than among any Christian sects in Turkey. And why? Simply because they love the truth. The history of the Armenian church proves this. The history of the missions in Turkeyproves this. Because their motto is progress. Forward to a higher spirituality; forward to a higher education; forward to a higher civilization. And no wonder that they accept reformation so readily. They believe that the Kingdom of God brings with itself all that which is necessary for a nation.And we cannot help but mention our hearty gratitude to the American Board. Thanks for their love of humanity; thanks for their liberal gifts; thanks for their prayers, and thanks for their missionaries. Yet there is much to be done. We need more help. The harvest is ready—more reapers! The points thus far mentioned are pledges for a greater success.[The following paper was contributed to the “World’s Congress of Missions,” held at Chicago in 1893. The “Parliament of Religions” will long be remembered as the most remarkable gathering the world has yet seen of the defenders of the Ethnic Faiths of the world. Representative men from the ends of the earth brought to this parliament the best religious thought of their respective faiths. It was the high water mark of that which the best and wisest of men have discovered or that has been revealed concerning God, duty and destiny.]
HAVE MISSIONS IN TURKEY BEEN A FAILURE?BY A. H. HAIGAZIAN.
BY A. H. HAIGAZIAN.
University of Chicago.It is only a short time that I have been in America; yet my intercourse with American friends has led me to this conclusion, that the people in general do not know what the missions have done in Turkey.So far as I can judge, much has been said on the dark side of the mission work. It seems to me that even the missionaries who return home for a short rest,finding the people more interested with the funny customs of the Old East; they are tempted to forget to tell more about the results of the missions.I thoroughly admit, that the need must be pictured before the eyes of the people as vividly as possible, and for this end the costumes and the beliefs of the natives are to be discussed. This must be done; but on the other hand, the results and the fruits of the sincere prayers and long toils should not be omitted. The former pleases the people but the latter encourages them.Dear American friends, I assure you that the missions in Turkey have not been a failure. Your prayers and best wishes for Turkey have been answered by the Great Master of the work.The mission’s first and most important work has been in the establishment of many strong and evangelical churches in Turkey. At this point you must remember that the main work of the missions in Asiatic Turkey has been among Armenians. Missionaries do not preach to Moslems or Mohammedans in Turkey, as it is often supposed. Neither do they preach to heathen. Now the Armenians had already accepted Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century as a whole nation, and to this day they have kept Christianity in their national church. But the intercourse with the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, took out the vital element from the church. Now the whole missionary effort is spent to reform the Old Armenian Church; and to a great extent they are successful. I call the work of the missions in Turkey only a reformation, nevertheless a great reformation. The attention of the people has been directed to the Bible itself. The mostimportant and principal doctrines of Christianity have been preached to the souls in a more open and simple way. Sunday schools, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and Christian Endeavor Societies have been formed, which were almost unknown before the mission work. From the ignorant women of Turkey have come out many Hannahs and Monicas. “Jesus, lover of my soul,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and many other hymns which are used so much among you, are also the favorite hymns of these Armenian Evangelical churches. Even the most ignorant woman sings them without having a hymn book in her hand. When you lift up your voices here in America in Christian prayers and songs, be sure that at that moment, four thousand miles beyond in Turkey, many voices have been lifted up with the same spirit towards heaven. Yours and theirs ascend together up to the throne of Almighty God. They have no such magnificent buildings for their churches as you have here. In many churches they have no organ or piano; a poor people. Yet if you should see those Protestant churches, their sincerity, their piety, and their love for the truth of God, you would surely say, “Truly the Gospel is preached to the poor.”The educational work of the missions has been not less successful. The colleges and theological seminaries of the missions among those Protestant churches can be well compared with the many colleges and the theological seminaries of America. And the graduates of these institutions are carrying on the work of the missions. We have there able professors, able preachers and successful revivalists and evangelists. Dr. Daniels,the secretary of the American Board, recently in one of the Congregational churches of Chicago said: “Our missionaries have laid the foundation, but our native preachers and professors are building up the rest.”The congregations are made ready to hear more thoughtful sermons. Don’t think that it will be a very easy matter to preach in those churches. Criticism of sermons is not confined to American and European churches. Even the sermons of the missionaries are not so welcome as before. They are nowadays anxious to hear only the thoughts that come out from thoroughly educated minds. The cities of Marash, Aintab, etc., which are educational centers, are choosing their pastors from those who are educated in the American universities. The ideals of the people are going to be higher and higher. The present colleges and seminaries are being obliged almostevery yearto change their programs, to fit them to the conditions and wants of the people.Missions have awakened an interest among the people in the musical department. Vocal music is taught in every high school. Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., are familiar names to both educated young men and women. The “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel, and many other classic pieces are sung in social meetings. During these last years kindergartens have done much in the education of the young folks. The kindergartens of Smyrna, Cæsarea, Aintab, Marash and Hadjin are very successful. Those children can sing many English songs.“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder, what you are”is one which I have heard many times. Even non-Protestantsare much attracted by this kind of education, and I think this is a good opportunity for missions.The third and last result of the missions which I will mention, is the social improvement among the natives. The poverty of the people has been a hindrance to this. Yet the improvement on this point cannot be denied. An educated young man in Armenia wears the dress of an American gentleman, with this difference, that, the former puts on hisfezinstead of hat. Especially young women of the cities cannot be distinguished by their dress from European or American young women.These are some direct results of the missions. Besides, the missions have done a great deal indirectly. Non-Protestant Armenians also have been awakened to their duties. The preaching of the gospel is becoming more common among them, and I am sure there are hundreds of Armenians, who do not call themselves Protestants, who are in reality Protestants. If so, then have missions been a failure? Mrs. Scott-Stevenson in her book entitled “Our Ride Through Asia Minor,” severely criticises the missions, their aims and their methods. If she should criticise only their methods, I should agree with her in some degree; but to criticise the sacred aim of preaching the Gospel is non-Christian sentiment, and I am sure she must have taken those notes under the influences of the wines of Turkey, which she seems very much delighted with.Let me add one point more. The missionaries succeed better among Armenians than among any Christian sects in Turkey. And why? Simply because they love the truth. The history of the Armenian church proves this. The history of the missions in Turkeyproves this. Because their motto is progress. Forward to a higher spirituality; forward to a higher education; forward to a higher civilization. And no wonder that they accept reformation so readily. They believe that the Kingdom of God brings with itself all that which is necessary for a nation.And we cannot help but mention our hearty gratitude to the American Board. Thanks for their love of humanity; thanks for their liberal gifts; thanks for their prayers, and thanks for their missionaries. Yet there is much to be done. We need more help. The harvest is ready—more reapers! The points thus far mentioned are pledges for a greater success.[The following paper was contributed to the “World’s Congress of Missions,” held at Chicago in 1893. The “Parliament of Religions” will long be remembered as the most remarkable gathering the world has yet seen of the defenders of the Ethnic Faiths of the world. Representative men from the ends of the earth brought to this parliament the best religious thought of their respective faiths. It was the high water mark of that which the best and wisest of men have discovered or that has been revealed concerning God, duty and destiny.]
University of Chicago.
It is only a short time that I have been in America; yet my intercourse with American friends has led me to this conclusion, that the people in general do not know what the missions have done in Turkey.
So far as I can judge, much has been said on the dark side of the mission work. It seems to me that even the missionaries who return home for a short rest,finding the people more interested with the funny customs of the Old East; they are tempted to forget to tell more about the results of the missions.
I thoroughly admit, that the need must be pictured before the eyes of the people as vividly as possible, and for this end the costumes and the beliefs of the natives are to be discussed. This must be done; but on the other hand, the results and the fruits of the sincere prayers and long toils should not be omitted. The former pleases the people but the latter encourages them.
Dear American friends, I assure you that the missions in Turkey have not been a failure. Your prayers and best wishes for Turkey have been answered by the Great Master of the work.
The mission’s first and most important work has been in the establishment of many strong and evangelical churches in Turkey. At this point you must remember that the main work of the missions in Asiatic Turkey has been among Armenians. Missionaries do not preach to Moslems or Mohammedans in Turkey, as it is often supposed. Neither do they preach to heathen. Now the Armenians had already accepted Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century as a whole nation, and to this day they have kept Christianity in their national church. But the intercourse with the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, took out the vital element from the church. Now the whole missionary effort is spent to reform the Old Armenian Church; and to a great extent they are successful. I call the work of the missions in Turkey only a reformation, nevertheless a great reformation. The attention of the people has been directed to the Bible itself. The mostimportant and principal doctrines of Christianity have been preached to the souls in a more open and simple way. Sunday schools, Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations and Christian Endeavor Societies have been formed, which were almost unknown before the mission work. From the ignorant women of Turkey have come out many Hannahs and Monicas. “Jesus, lover of my soul,” “My faith looks up to Thee,” “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and many other hymns which are used so much among you, are also the favorite hymns of these Armenian Evangelical churches. Even the most ignorant woman sings them without having a hymn book in her hand. When you lift up your voices here in America in Christian prayers and songs, be sure that at that moment, four thousand miles beyond in Turkey, many voices have been lifted up with the same spirit towards heaven. Yours and theirs ascend together up to the throne of Almighty God. They have no such magnificent buildings for their churches as you have here. In many churches they have no organ or piano; a poor people. Yet if you should see those Protestant churches, their sincerity, their piety, and their love for the truth of God, you would surely say, “Truly the Gospel is preached to the poor.”
The educational work of the missions has been not less successful. The colleges and theological seminaries of the missions among those Protestant churches can be well compared with the many colleges and the theological seminaries of America. And the graduates of these institutions are carrying on the work of the missions. We have there able professors, able preachers and successful revivalists and evangelists. Dr. Daniels,the secretary of the American Board, recently in one of the Congregational churches of Chicago said: “Our missionaries have laid the foundation, but our native preachers and professors are building up the rest.”
The congregations are made ready to hear more thoughtful sermons. Don’t think that it will be a very easy matter to preach in those churches. Criticism of sermons is not confined to American and European churches. Even the sermons of the missionaries are not so welcome as before. They are nowadays anxious to hear only the thoughts that come out from thoroughly educated minds. The cities of Marash, Aintab, etc., which are educational centers, are choosing their pastors from those who are educated in the American universities. The ideals of the people are going to be higher and higher. The present colleges and seminaries are being obliged almostevery yearto change their programs, to fit them to the conditions and wants of the people.
Missions have awakened an interest among the people in the musical department. Vocal music is taught in every high school. Haydn, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., are familiar names to both educated young men and women. The “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel, and many other classic pieces are sung in social meetings. During these last years kindergartens have done much in the education of the young folks. The kindergartens of Smyrna, Cæsarea, Aintab, Marash and Hadjin are very successful. Those children can sing many English songs.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,How I wonder, what you are”
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder, what you are”
is one which I have heard many times. Even non-Protestantsare much attracted by this kind of education, and I think this is a good opportunity for missions.
The third and last result of the missions which I will mention, is the social improvement among the natives. The poverty of the people has been a hindrance to this. Yet the improvement on this point cannot be denied. An educated young man in Armenia wears the dress of an American gentleman, with this difference, that, the former puts on hisfezinstead of hat. Especially young women of the cities cannot be distinguished by their dress from European or American young women.
These are some direct results of the missions. Besides, the missions have done a great deal indirectly. Non-Protestant Armenians also have been awakened to their duties. The preaching of the gospel is becoming more common among them, and I am sure there are hundreds of Armenians, who do not call themselves Protestants, who are in reality Protestants. If so, then have missions been a failure? Mrs. Scott-Stevenson in her book entitled “Our Ride Through Asia Minor,” severely criticises the missions, their aims and their methods. If she should criticise only their methods, I should agree with her in some degree; but to criticise the sacred aim of preaching the Gospel is non-Christian sentiment, and I am sure she must have taken those notes under the influences of the wines of Turkey, which she seems very much delighted with.
Let me add one point more. The missionaries succeed better among Armenians than among any Christian sects in Turkey. And why? Simply because they love the truth. The history of the Armenian church proves this. The history of the missions in Turkeyproves this. Because their motto is progress. Forward to a higher spirituality; forward to a higher education; forward to a higher civilization. And no wonder that they accept reformation so readily. They believe that the Kingdom of God brings with itself all that which is necessary for a nation.
And we cannot help but mention our hearty gratitude to the American Board. Thanks for their love of humanity; thanks for their liberal gifts; thanks for their prayers, and thanks for their missionaries. Yet there is much to be done. We need more help. The harvest is ready—more reapers! The points thus far mentioned are pledges for a greater success.
[The following paper was contributed to the “World’s Congress of Missions,” held at Chicago in 1893. The “Parliament of Religions” will long be remembered as the most remarkable gathering the world has yet seen of the defenders of the Ethnic Faiths of the world. Representative men from the ends of the earth brought to this parliament the best religious thought of their respective faiths. It was the high water mark of that which the best and wisest of men have discovered or that has been revealed concerning God, duty and destiny.]
MODERN TRIUMPHS OF THE GOSPEL IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.REV. HENRY H. JESSUP, D. D.To recount the triumphs of the Gospel in the Ottoman Empire would be to write the history of its moral, intellectual and social progress for the past seventy-five years.When Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons sailed for Jerusalemin 1818 the Ottoman Empire was virtually a “terra incognita.” Ruling over thirty-five millions of souls in Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa, of whom twelve millions were Oriental Christians, this great empire had not a school excepting the Koranic medrisehs for boys in the mosques, and its vast populations were in a state of intellectual, moral and religious stagnation. These young Americans were instructed to ascertain “what good could be done for Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Armenia and other adjacent countries.” Fisk died in Beirut in 1826, and by his grave was planted a little cypress tree. Parsons died in Alexandria, and his grave is unknown. They both “died without the sight” of fruit from their labors.Three-quarters of a century have passed, and to-day we are asked, what good has been done to Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in this great empire?The work to be done in 1820 was formidable and the means seemingly contemptible. What could a handful of young men and women accomplish, coming from a distant land whose very existence was discredited, to an empire whose political and religious systems had been fossilized for centuries, where schools, books and Bibles were unknown? For these inexperienced youth from the land of the Pilgrims, reared in the air of civil and religious liberty, trained to hate all despotism, political or ecclesiastical, and to love a free press, free schools, and absolute freedom of conscience, to attempt to change public opinion and renovate society, to reform the Oriental churches and liberalize Islam, seemed a forlorn and desperate venture.Seventy years have passed. Sultans have risen andfallen. Patriarchs and Bishops remain, but Turkey is not what it was in 1820, and can never retrograde to those days of darkness. That little evergreen tree planted by Pliny Fisk’s grave in the suburbs of a town of eight thousand population has grown to be a stately cypress tree in the very center of a city of ninety thousand people. Overlooking it is a female seminary, a large church edifice, a Sunday school hall, a printing house, which sends out more than twenty millions of pages annually. That little iron door to the east opens into a vault containing thirteen thousand electrotype plates of various editions of the Arabic Scriptures. Within a radius of two miles are four Christian colleges, seven female seminaries, sixty boys’ day schools, thirty-one girls’ schools, seventeen printing presses, and four large hospitals. The boys’ and girls’ schools belong to the Protestants, Catholics, Greeks, Muslims and Jews, and sixteen thousand children are under instruction. Scores of Muslim girls are as familiar with the Old Testament prophecies with regard to Christ as are our Sunday school children at home. Bibles, hymn books and Christian literature, as well as scientific, historical and educational works, are scattered over the city and throughout the land. Young Syrian women, formerly shut up in ignorance and illiteracy, now enjoy the instruction of home libraries and useful periodicals, and even carry on discussions in the public press and write books of decided merit....
MODERN TRIUMPHS OF THE GOSPEL IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.REV. HENRY H. JESSUP, D. D.
REV. HENRY H. JESSUP, D. D.
To recount the triumphs of the Gospel in the Ottoman Empire would be to write the history of its moral, intellectual and social progress for the past seventy-five years.When Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons sailed for Jerusalemin 1818 the Ottoman Empire was virtually a “terra incognita.” Ruling over thirty-five millions of souls in Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa, of whom twelve millions were Oriental Christians, this great empire had not a school excepting the Koranic medrisehs for boys in the mosques, and its vast populations were in a state of intellectual, moral and religious stagnation. These young Americans were instructed to ascertain “what good could be done for Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Armenia and other adjacent countries.” Fisk died in Beirut in 1826, and by his grave was planted a little cypress tree. Parsons died in Alexandria, and his grave is unknown. They both “died without the sight” of fruit from their labors.Three-quarters of a century have passed, and to-day we are asked, what good has been done to Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in this great empire?The work to be done in 1820 was formidable and the means seemingly contemptible. What could a handful of young men and women accomplish, coming from a distant land whose very existence was discredited, to an empire whose political and religious systems had been fossilized for centuries, where schools, books and Bibles were unknown? For these inexperienced youth from the land of the Pilgrims, reared in the air of civil and religious liberty, trained to hate all despotism, political or ecclesiastical, and to love a free press, free schools, and absolute freedom of conscience, to attempt to change public opinion and renovate society, to reform the Oriental churches and liberalize Islam, seemed a forlorn and desperate venture.Seventy years have passed. Sultans have risen andfallen. Patriarchs and Bishops remain, but Turkey is not what it was in 1820, and can never retrograde to those days of darkness. That little evergreen tree planted by Pliny Fisk’s grave in the suburbs of a town of eight thousand population has grown to be a stately cypress tree in the very center of a city of ninety thousand people. Overlooking it is a female seminary, a large church edifice, a Sunday school hall, a printing house, which sends out more than twenty millions of pages annually. That little iron door to the east opens into a vault containing thirteen thousand electrotype plates of various editions of the Arabic Scriptures. Within a radius of two miles are four Christian colleges, seven female seminaries, sixty boys’ day schools, thirty-one girls’ schools, seventeen printing presses, and four large hospitals. The boys’ and girls’ schools belong to the Protestants, Catholics, Greeks, Muslims and Jews, and sixteen thousand children are under instruction. Scores of Muslim girls are as familiar with the Old Testament prophecies with regard to Christ as are our Sunday school children at home. Bibles, hymn books and Christian literature, as well as scientific, historical and educational works, are scattered over the city and throughout the land. Young Syrian women, formerly shut up in ignorance and illiteracy, now enjoy the instruction of home libraries and useful periodicals, and even carry on discussions in the public press and write books of decided merit....
To recount the triumphs of the Gospel in the Ottoman Empire would be to write the history of its moral, intellectual and social progress for the past seventy-five years.
When Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons sailed for Jerusalemin 1818 the Ottoman Empire was virtually a “terra incognita.” Ruling over thirty-five millions of souls in Southeastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa, of whom twelve millions were Oriental Christians, this great empire had not a school excepting the Koranic medrisehs for boys in the mosques, and its vast populations were in a state of intellectual, moral and religious stagnation. These young Americans were instructed to ascertain “what good could be done for Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Armenia and other adjacent countries.” Fisk died in Beirut in 1826, and by his grave was planted a little cypress tree. Parsons died in Alexandria, and his grave is unknown. They both “died without the sight” of fruit from their labors.
Three-quarters of a century have passed, and to-day we are asked, what good has been done to Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans and Christians in this great empire?
The work to be done in 1820 was formidable and the means seemingly contemptible. What could a handful of young men and women accomplish, coming from a distant land whose very existence was discredited, to an empire whose political and religious systems had been fossilized for centuries, where schools, books and Bibles were unknown? For these inexperienced youth from the land of the Pilgrims, reared in the air of civil and religious liberty, trained to hate all despotism, political or ecclesiastical, and to love a free press, free schools, and absolute freedom of conscience, to attempt to change public opinion and renovate society, to reform the Oriental churches and liberalize Islam, seemed a forlorn and desperate venture.
Seventy years have passed. Sultans have risen andfallen. Patriarchs and Bishops remain, but Turkey is not what it was in 1820, and can never retrograde to those days of darkness. That little evergreen tree planted by Pliny Fisk’s grave in the suburbs of a town of eight thousand population has grown to be a stately cypress tree in the very center of a city of ninety thousand people. Overlooking it is a female seminary, a large church edifice, a Sunday school hall, a printing house, which sends out more than twenty millions of pages annually. That little iron door to the east opens into a vault containing thirteen thousand electrotype plates of various editions of the Arabic Scriptures. Within a radius of two miles are four Christian colleges, seven female seminaries, sixty boys’ day schools, thirty-one girls’ schools, seventeen printing presses, and four large hospitals. The boys’ and girls’ schools belong to the Protestants, Catholics, Greeks, Muslims and Jews, and sixteen thousand children are under instruction. Scores of Muslim girls are as familiar with the Old Testament prophecies with regard to Christ as are our Sunday school children at home. Bibles, hymn books and Christian literature, as well as scientific, historical and educational works, are scattered over the city and throughout the land. Young Syrian women, formerly shut up in ignorance and illiteracy, now enjoy the instruction of home libraries and useful periodicals, and even carry on discussions in the public press and write books of decided merit....
THE OUTCOME.I. The Gospel has triumphed in securing in a great measure to the people of Turkey that most precious treasure, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.In 1820, every Ottoman subject had a right to remain in his own sect and to think as his fathers thought before him. Muslim could remain Muslim, Greek remain Greek, Armenian Armenian, and Maronite Maronite. Each sect was a walled enclosure with gates bolted and barred, and the only possible egress from any was into the fold of Islam.The appearance of an open Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, free schools and open discussion of religious questions threw all things into confusion. Not a few received the Gospel and claimed the right to think for themselves.... Anathemas, the major excommunication, stripes and imprisonment, intimidated some, but drove multitudes out of the Oriental Churches, and as the imperial laws regarded every man outside the traditional sects as an outlaw, exile, death, or recantation seemed their only possible fate.But these storms of persecution developed some of the noblest types of Christian character. True heroic spirits, like Asaad esh Shidiak in Lebanon, preferred death to submission to the doctrines of a priestly hierarchy. The Maronite monastery of Connobîn, near the Cedars of Lebanon, where he was walled up in a cell under the overhanging cliff and starved to death, has become memorable in Syria as the scene of the first martyrdom for the evangelical faith in Turkey in modern times.Scourging, imprisonment and exile have been the lot of multitudes who have stood steadfast amid their sufferings. Mr. Butrus Bistany, a young Maronite scholar, who found the truth as Luther found it, in a monastery, fled for his life to Beirut, and remained concealed for two years in the American Mission, fearing death atthe hands of the spies of the Patriarch. But he was spared to be a pillar in the Protestant Church, a learned Arabic author, the assistant of Eli Smith in Bible translation, and the biographer of Asaad esh Shidiak....Kamil Abdul Messiah, a youthful Syrian convert to Christianity from Islam, who died in Bussorah in June, 1892, seemed baptized by the Holy Spirit and divinely instructed in the Word of God. He grasped the vital truths of the Gospel as by a Heavenly instinct. He was a youth of pure life and lips, of faith and prayer, of courage and zeal, and he was mighty in the Scriptures. In Southern Arabia he preached in the streets of towns, in Arab camps, on the deck of coasting ships, and even in mosques. His journals read like chapters from the Acts. His early death was a loss to the Arab race, but his memory is fragrant with the aroma of a pure and godly life and example.Time would fail us to recount the history of the able writers, the liberal Christian merchants, the faithful pastors and teachers, the godly physicians, the self-denying poor, the patient, loving, and exemplary women, who have been Christ’s witnesses during these years of toil and prayer in Syria.In November, 1847, an Imperial decree recognized native Protestants as an independent community with a civil head.In 1850 the Sultan gave a firman granting to Protestants all the privileges given to other Christian communities, and in 1853 another, declaring Christians before the law equal in all respects to Mohammedans, and the death penalty for apostasy from Islam was abolished. This Magna Charta of Protestant rights is the charter of liberty of conscience to all men in Turkey.The Ottoman Government became to a great extent tolerant, and to-day, as compared with its Northern Muscovite neighbor, it is a model of toleration. There is no open legal persecution for conscience’s sake.The Bible in its various languages is distributed throughout the Empire, with the imperial permit printed on the title page. There is not yet liberty to print controversial books touching the religion of Islam, although Islamic works attacking Christianity are distributed openly, with official approbation. The censorship of the press is rigid, but the existing Christian literature is rarely interfered with.The Sheikh ul Islam in Constantinople recently replied officially to a European convert to Islam who asked his aid in entering the Mohammedan religion, that “religion is a matter between man and God, and that no sheikh or priest or mediator is needed in man’s approach to his Maker.” This is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity,—the difference consisting in this:—that while the Sheikh ul Islam probably meant to exclude even the mediation of Christ, the Gospel claims Christ as the only Mediator.It is also true that if any Christian wishes to become a Mohammedan he must go before the Kadi, who summons the Christian’s religious minister to labor with him and examine his case before he is admitted to Islam.That so much of religious liberty exists is cause for profound gratitude.II. The social triumphs of Gospel work in Turkey appear in the transformation of the family and the elevation of woman.The Mohammedan practice of the veiling and seclusionof woman and her exclusion from all social dignity and responsibilities rested like a blight on womankind among all the sects of the Empire. Even among the women of the non-Muslim sects the veil became a necessary shield from insult.An exploration of the Empire in 1829 failed to discover a single school for girls. American women were the first to break the spell, and after long and patient efforts the first school building for the instruction of girls in the Ottoman Empire was erected in Beirut, in 1834, at the expense of Mrs. Tod, an American lady in Alexandria, and the teacher was Mrs. Sarah L. H. Smith....In 1877, the first Muslim school for girls was opened in Beirut. They now have three girls’ schools in the city, with five hundred pupils. Thus far their girls’ schools are confined to the great cities, and they have shown commendable zeal in erecting neat and commodious buildings.In Syria and Palestine there are now nine thousand and eighty-one girls under Protestant instruction, and there are thousands in the Greek and Papal schools. The effects of female education prosecuted for so many years has been a palpable change in the status and dignity of woman. The light and comfort, the moral and intellectual elevation which have resulted are plain even to the casual observer. The mother is becoming the primary instructor of the children at home, and by precept and example their moral and religious guide.The indifference of the Oriental Christians and the opposition of the Mohammedans to female education has been largely overcome. A Mohammedan Turkish lady in Constantinople, Fatimeh Alia Khanum, daughterof Joudet Pasha, has just published a novelette in Turkish and Arabic to show the superiority of the home life of Turkish Muslim women to that of European Christian women. A Protestant young lady of Northern Syria has taken a prize of $50 for the best original Arabic story illustrating the benefits of female education. Another Protestant young woman has recently published an Arabic book on “Society and Social Customs,” and, on the eve of her departure for the Columbian Exposition, delivered a public lecture on the duty of Ottoman subjects to support their own domestic manufacturers. It was largely attended by Muslim sheikhs, Turkish effendis and the public generally, and at the close a young Jewess, a fellow-graduate with her from the American Female Seminary, arose and made an impromptu address in support of the speaker’s views.Too much cannot be said in admiration of the self-denying and successful labors of the American, English, Scotch and German women who have toiled patiently through long years, and many of whom have sacrificed their lives to the elevation of their sisters in this great Empire. Educated and cultivated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, all over the land, rise up and call them blessed. These happy Oriental homes, neat and well ordered, their high character, their exemplary conduct, their intelligence and interest in the proper training of their own children and the best welfare of society, are among the noblest fruits of a revived Christianity in the East.What is wanted to complete the symmetry of this picture of the intellectual progress of Oriental women is that a deputation of Mohammedan ladies should attendthe great World’s Congress of Women from all the nations, and explain to their sisters from Christian and pagan Empires wherein consists the excellency and glory of the veiling and seclusion of Mohammedan women in harems and zenanas, and the permission to their men to have four legal wives and as many concubines as their right hands may acquire by purchase or capture. They should have the opportunity to explain the superiority of this system to that of Christianity, under which woman is allowed the most complete liberty of action, is trusted and honored, and given the highest place in the great organized enterprises of benevolence, charity, religion and social reform, and in the relief of human suffering at home and abroad.III. To Protestant Missions is due the modern intellectual and educational awakening of the whole Empire. The American schools had been in operation forty years before the Turkish government officially promulgated (in 1869), school laws, and instituted a scheme of governmental education.In 1864 there were twelve thousand five hundred elementary Mosque schools for reading the Koran, in which there were said to be half a million of students. In 1890, according to the recently published Ottoman reports, there were in the Empire forty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine schools of all kinds, of which three thousand are probably Christian and Jewish. As there are thirty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight mosques in the Empire, and each mosque is supposed to have its “medriseh” or school, there would appear to be about four thousand secular government schools not connected with the mosques, independent of ecclesiastical control by mollahs andsheikhs, and belonging to the imperial graded system of public instruction; yet many of the mosque schools have now been absorbed into the government system, so that there may be twenty thousand of these so-called secular government schools....Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.There are now in the Empire eighty hundred and ninety-two Protestant schools, with forty-three thousand and twenty-seven pupils.Schools.Boys.Girls.Total Pupils.In Syria and Palestine3289,7569,08118,837In Egypt1003,2713,0296,300In Asia Minor, etc.46410,0007,89017,890Total89223,02720,00043,027Of these pupils twenty thousand are girls, a fact most potent and eloquent with regard to the future of these interesting peoples.There are thirty-one colleges, seminaries and boarding-schools for girls, of which eleven are taught by English and twenty by American ladies. In some of these schools young women are carried to the higher branches of science. In all of them the Bible is taught as a daily text book.There are six American colleges for young men, the most of them well equipped and manned, taking the lead in academic and scientific training. The medical college in Beirut has pupils from nearly all parts of the Empire.The standard of instruction is kept as high as the circumstances of the different provinces will admit,and the education given is thoroughly Biblical and Christian. And there are no more upright, intelligent, useful, loyal and progressive subjects of the Sultan today than the graduates of these colleges.IV. The fourth evidence of the Gospel’s triumph is the translation of the Bible into all the languages of the Empire, and the publication of a vast mass of religious, educational, historical, and scientific books. The Bible is now printed in eleven languages and made available to all the people of the Empire. About fifteen hundred different books have been published in these various languages, of which nearly seven hundred are from the Arabic press in Beirut. The Arabic Bible is sent to the whole Arabic reading Mohammedan world. The literary, scientific, historical and religious books also have a wide circulation.Seventy years ago there were neither books nor readers. Now the hundreds of thousands of readers can find books in their own tongue, and to suit every taste. There are children’s illustrated books for the school and the fireside, stories and histories for the young, solid historical, theological, and instructive works for the old, and scientific books and periodicals for students. Bunyan, D’Aubigné, Edwards, Alexander, Moody, and Spurgeon are speaking to the Orientals. Richard Newton instructs and delights the children. Eli Smith, Van Dyck, and Post, Meshaka and Bistany, Nofel and Wortabet, instruct the scholarly and educated, while mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine, geology and meteorology carry students on to the higher departmentsof learning. Tracts and Sunday school lesson books abound, and periodical literature supplies the present daily wants of society.The American Arabic Press, founded in Malta in 1822, and in Beirut in 1834, set in motion the forces which have now filled all the great cities of the Empire with presses and newspapers, and awakened the people to a new intellectual life. The Beirut Press alone has printed five hundred millions of pages in Arabic.The Bible and the Koran are now the two religious books of the Empire. The Koran is in one language for one sect, and cannot be translated, and any copy of the Koran found in the possession of a native Christian or a European traveler is confiscated. The Bible is in eleven languages and is freely offered for sale to all. Sixty thousand copies of the Scriptures are sold annually in the Turkish Empire.
THE OUTCOME.
I. The Gospel has triumphed in securing in a great measure to the people of Turkey that most precious treasure, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.In 1820, every Ottoman subject had a right to remain in his own sect and to think as his fathers thought before him. Muslim could remain Muslim, Greek remain Greek, Armenian Armenian, and Maronite Maronite. Each sect was a walled enclosure with gates bolted and barred, and the only possible egress from any was into the fold of Islam.The appearance of an open Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, free schools and open discussion of religious questions threw all things into confusion. Not a few received the Gospel and claimed the right to think for themselves.... Anathemas, the major excommunication, stripes and imprisonment, intimidated some, but drove multitudes out of the Oriental Churches, and as the imperial laws regarded every man outside the traditional sects as an outlaw, exile, death, or recantation seemed their only possible fate.But these storms of persecution developed some of the noblest types of Christian character. True heroic spirits, like Asaad esh Shidiak in Lebanon, preferred death to submission to the doctrines of a priestly hierarchy. The Maronite monastery of Connobîn, near the Cedars of Lebanon, where he was walled up in a cell under the overhanging cliff and starved to death, has become memorable in Syria as the scene of the first martyrdom for the evangelical faith in Turkey in modern times.Scourging, imprisonment and exile have been the lot of multitudes who have stood steadfast amid their sufferings. Mr. Butrus Bistany, a young Maronite scholar, who found the truth as Luther found it, in a monastery, fled for his life to Beirut, and remained concealed for two years in the American Mission, fearing death atthe hands of the spies of the Patriarch. But he was spared to be a pillar in the Protestant Church, a learned Arabic author, the assistant of Eli Smith in Bible translation, and the biographer of Asaad esh Shidiak....Kamil Abdul Messiah, a youthful Syrian convert to Christianity from Islam, who died in Bussorah in June, 1892, seemed baptized by the Holy Spirit and divinely instructed in the Word of God. He grasped the vital truths of the Gospel as by a Heavenly instinct. He was a youth of pure life and lips, of faith and prayer, of courage and zeal, and he was mighty in the Scriptures. In Southern Arabia he preached in the streets of towns, in Arab camps, on the deck of coasting ships, and even in mosques. His journals read like chapters from the Acts. His early death was a loss to the Arab race, but his memory is fragrant with the aroma of a pure and godly life and example.Time would fail us to recount the history of the able writers, the liberal Christian merchants, the faithful pastors and teachers, the godly physicians, the self-denying poor, the patient, loving, and exemplary women, who have been Christ’s witnesses during these years of toil and prayer in Syria.In November, 1847, an Imperial decree recognized native Protestants as an independent community with a civil head.In 1850 the Sultan gave a firman granting to Protestants all the privileges given to other Christian communities, and in 1853 another, declaring Christians before the law equal in all respects to Mohammedans, and the death penalty for apostasy from Islam was abolished. This Magna Charta of Protestant rights is the charter of liberty of conscience to all men in Turkey.The Ottoman Government became to a great extent tolerant, and to-day, as compared with its Northern Muscovite neighbor, it is a model of toleration. There is no open legal persecution for conscience’s sake.The Bible in its various languages is distributed throughout the Empire, with the imperial permit printed on the title page. There is not yet liberty to print controversial books touching the religion of Islam, although Islamic works attacking Christianity are distributed openly, with official approbation. The censorship of the press is rigid, but the existing Christian literature is rarely interfered with.The Sheikh ul Islam in Constantinople recently replied officially to a European convert to Islam who asked his aid in entering the Mohammedan religion, that “religion is a matter between man and God, and that no sheikh or priest or mediator is needed in man’s approach to his Maker.” This is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity,—the difference consisting in this:—that while the Sheikh ul Islam probably meant to exclude even the mediation of Christ, the Gospel claims Christ as the only Mediator.It is also true that if any Christian wishes to become a Mohammedan he must go before the Kadi, who summons the Christian’s religious minister to labor with him and examine his case before he is admitted to Islam.That so much of religious liberty exists is cause for profound gratitude.II. The social triumphs of Gospel work in Turkey appear in the transformation of the family and the elevation of woman.The Mohammedan practice of the veiling and seclusionof woman and her exclusion from all social dignity and responsibilities rested like a blight on womankind among all the sects of the Empire. Even among the women of the non-Muslim sects the veil became a necessary shield from insult.An exploration of the Empire in 1829 failed to discover a single school for girls. American women were the first to break the spell, and after long and patient efforts the first school building for the instruction of girls in the Ottoman Empire was erected in Beirut, in 1834, at the expense of Mrs. Tod, an American lady in Alexandria, and the teacher was Mrs. Sarah L. H. Smith....In 1877, the first Muslim school for girls was opened in Beirut. They now have three girls’ schools in the city, with five hundred pupils. Thus far their girls’ schools are confined to the great cities, and they have shown commendable zeal in erecting neat and commodious buildings.In Syria and Palestine there are now nine thousand and eighty-one girls under Protestant instruction, and there are thousands in the Greek and Papal schools. The effects of female education prosecuted for so many years has been a palpable change in the status and dignity of woman. The light and comfort, the moral and intellectual elevation which have resulted are plain even to the casual observer. The mother is becoming the primary instructor of the children at home, and by precept and example their moral and religious guide.The indifference of the Oriental Christians and the opposition of the Mohammedans to female education has been largely overcome. A Mohammedan Turkish lady in Constantinople, Fatimeh Alia Khanum, daughterof Joudet Pasha, has just published a novelette in Turkish and Arabic to show the superiority of the home life of Turkish Muslim women to that of European Christian women. A Protestant young lady of Northern Syria has taken a prize of $50 for the best original Arabic story illustrating the benefits of female education. Another Protestant young woman has recently published an Arabic book on “Society and Social Customs,” and, on the eve of her departure for the Columbian Exposition, delivered a public lecture on the duty of Ottoman subjects to support their own domestic manufacturers. It was largely attended by Muslim sheikhs, Turkish effendis and the public generally, and at the close a young Jewess, a fellow-graduate with her from the American Female Seminary, arose and made an impromptu address in support of the speaker’s views.Too much cannot be said in admiration of the self-denying and successful labors of the American, English, Scotch and German women who have toiled patiently through long years, and many of whom have sacrificed their lives to the elevation of their sisters in this great Empire. Educated and cultivated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, all over the land, rise up and call them blessed. These happy Oriental homes, neat and well ordered, their high character, their exemplary conduct, their intelligence and interest in the proper training of their own children and the best welfare of society, are among the noblest fruits of a revived Christianity in the East.What is wanted to complete the symmetry of this picture of the intellectual progress of Oriental women is that a deputation of Mohammedan ladies should attendthe great World’s Congress of Women from all the nations, and explain to their sisters from Christian and pagan Empires wherein consists the excellency and glory of the veiling and seclusion of Mohammedan women in harems and zenanas, and the permission to their men to have four legal wives and as many concubines as their right hands may acquire by purchase or capture. They should have the opportunity to explain the superiority of this system to that of Christianity, under which woman is allowed the most complete liberty of action, is trusted and honored, and given the highest place in the great organized enterprises of benevolence, charity, religion and social reform, and in the relief of human suffering at home and abroad.III. To Protestant Missions is due the modern intellectual and educational awakening of the whole Empire. The American schools had been in operation forty years before the Turkish government officially promulgated (in 1869), school laws, and instituted a scheme of governmental education.In 1864 there were twelve thousand five hundred elementary Mosque schools for reading the Koran, in which there were said to be half a million of students. In 1890, according to the recently published Ottoman reports, there were in the Empire forty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine schools of all kinds, of which three thousand are probably Christian and Jewish. As there are thirty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight mosques in the Empire, and each mosque is supposed to have its “medriseh” or school, there would appear to be about four thousand secular government schools not connected with the mosques, independent of ecclesiastical control by mollahs andsheikhs, and belonging to the imperial graded system of public instruction; yet many of the mosque schools have now been absorbed into the government system, so that there may be twenty thousand of these so-called secular government schools....Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.There are now in the Empire eighty hundred and ninety-two Protestant schools, with forty-three thousand and twenty-seven pupils.Schools.Boys.Girls.Total Pupils.In Syria and Palestine3289,7569,08118,837In Egypt1003,2713,0296,300In Asia Minor, etc.46410,0007,89017,890Total89223,02720,00043,027Of these pupils twenty thousand are girls, a fact most potent and eloquent with regard to the future of these interesting peoples.There are thirty-one colleges, seminaries and boarding-schools for girls, of which eleven are taught by English and twenty by American ladies. In some of these schools young women are carried to the higher branches of science. In all of them the Bible is taught as a daily text book.There are six American colleges for young men, the most of them well equipped and manned, taking the lead in academic and scientific training. The medical college in Beirut has pupils from nearly all parts of the Empire.The standard of instruction is kept as high as the circumstances of the different provinces will admit,and the education given is thoroughly Biblical and Christian. And there are no more upright, intelligent, useful, loyal and progressive subjects of the Sultan today than the graduates of these colleges.IV. The fourth evidence of the Gospel’s triumph is the translation of the Bible into all the languages of the Empire, and the publication of a vast mass of religious, educational, historical, and scientific books. The Bible is now printed in eleven languages and made available to all the people of the Empire. About fifteen hundred different books have been published in these various languages, of which nearly seven hundred are from the Arabic press in Beirut. The Arabic Bible is sent to the whole Arabic reading Mohammedan world. The literary, scientific, historical and religious books also have a wide circulation.Seventy years ago there were neither books nor readers. Now the hundreds of thousands of readers can find books in their own tongue, and to suit every taste. There are children’s illustrated books for the school and the fireside, stories and histories for the young, solid historical, theological, and instructive works for the old, and scientific books and periodicals for students. Bunyan, D’Aubigné, Edwards, Alexander, Moody, and Spurgeon are speaking to the Orientals. Richard Newton instructs and delights the children. Eli Smith, Van Dyck, and Post, Meshaka and Bistany, Nofel and Wortabet, instruct the scholarly and educated, while mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine, geology and meteorology carry students on to the higher departmentsof learning. Tracts and Sunday school lesson books abound, and periodical literature supplies the present daily wants of society.The American Arabic Press, founded in Malta in 1822, and in Beirut in 1834, set in motion the forces which have now filled all the great cities of the Empire with presses and newspapers, and awakened the people to a new intellectual life. The Beirut Press alone has printed five hundred millions of pages in Arabic.The Bible and the Koran are now the two religious books of the Empire. The Koran is in one language for one sect, and cannot be translated, and any copy of the Koran found in the possession of a native Christian or a European traveler is confiscated. The Bible is in eleven languages and is freely offered for sale to all. Sixty thousand copies of the Scriptures are sold annually in the Turkish Empire.
I. The Gospel has triumphed in securing in a great measure to the people of Turkey that most precious treasure, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
In 1820, every Ottoman subject had a right to remain in his own sect and to think as his fathers thought before him. Muslim could remain Muslim, Greek remain Greek, Armenian Armenian, and Maronite Maronite. Each sect was a walled enclosure with gates bolted and barred, and the only possible egress from any was into the fold of Islam.
The appearance of an open Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, free schools and open discussion of religious questions threw all things into confusion. Not a few received the Gospel and claimed the right to think for themselves.... Anathemas, the major excommunication, stripes and imprisonment, intimidated some, but drove multitudes out of the Oriental Churches, and as the imperial laws regarded every man outside the traditional sects as an outlaw, exile, death, or recantation seemed their only possible fate.
But these storms of persecution developed some of the noblest types of Christian character. True heroic spirits, like Asaad esh Shidiak in Lebanon, preferred death to submission to the doctrines of a priestly hierarchy. The Maronite monastery of Connobîn, near the Cedars of Lebanon, where he was walled up in a cell under the overhanging cliff and starved to death, has become memorable in Syria as the scene of the first martyrdom for the evangelical faith in Turkey in modern times.
Scourging, imprisonment and exile have been the lot of multitudes who have stood steadfast amid their sufferings. Mr. Butrus Bistany, a young Maronite scholar, who found the truth as Luther found it, in a monastery, fled for his life to Beirut, and remained concealed for two years in the American Mission, fearing death atthe hands of the spies of the Patriarch. But he was spared to be a pillar in the Protestant Church, a learned Arabic author, the assistant of Eli Smith in Bible translation, and the biographer of Asaad esh Shidiak....
Kamil Abdul Messiah, a youthful Syrian convert to Christianity from Islam, who died in Bussorah in June, 1892, seemed baptized by the Holy Spirit and divinely instructed in the Word of God. He grasped the vital truths of the Gospel as by a Heavenly instinct. He was a youth of pure life and lips, of faith and prayer, of courage and zeal, and he was mighty in the Scriptures. In Southern Arabia he preached in the streets of towns, in Arab camps, on the deck of coasting ships, and even in mosques. His journals read like chapters from the Acts. His early death was a loss to the Arab race, but his memory is fragrant with the aroma of a pure and godly life and example.
Time would fail us to recount the history of the able writers, the liberal Christian merchants, the faithful pastors and teachers, the godly physicians, the self-denying poor, the patient, loving, and exemplary women, who have been Christ’s witnesses during these years of toil and prayer in Syria.
In November, 1847, an Imperial decree recognized native Protestants as an independent community with a civil head.
In 1850 the Sultan gave a firman granting to Protestants all the privileges given to other Christian communities, and in 1853 another, declaring Christians before the law equal in all respects to Mohammedans, and the death penalty for apostasy from Islam was abolished. This Magna Charta of Protestant rights is the charter of liberty of conscience to all men in Turkey.
The Ottoman Government became to a great extent tolerant, and to-day, as compared with its Northern Muscovite neighbor, it is a model of toleration. There is no open legal persecution for conscience’s sake.
The Bible in its various languages is distributed throughout the Empire, with the imperial permit printed on the title page. There is not yet liberty to print controversial books touching the religion of Islam, although Islamic works attacking Christianity are distributed openly, with official approbation. The censorship of the press is rigid, but the existing Christian literature is rarely interfered with.
The Sheikh ul Islam in Constantinople recently replied officially to a European convert to Islam who asked his aid in entering the Mohammedan religion, that “religion is a matter between man and God, and that no sheikh or priest or mediator is needed in man’s approach to his Maker.” This is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity,—the difference consisting in this:—that while the Sheikh ul Islam probably meant to exclude even the mediation of Christ, the Gospel claims Christ as the only Mediator.
It is also true that if any Christian wishes to become a Mohammedan he must go before the Kadi, who summons the Christian’s religious minister to labor with him and examine his case before he is admitted to Islam.
That so much of religious liberty exists is cause for profound gratitude.
II. The social triumphs of Gospel work in Turkey appear in the transformation of the family and the elevation of woman.
The Mohammedan practice of the veiling and seclusionof woman and her exclusion from all social dignity and responsibilities rested like a blight on womankind among all the sects of the Empire. Even among the women of the non-Muslim sects the veil became a necessary shield from insult.
An exploration of the Empire in 1829 failed to discover a single school for girls. American women were the first to break the spell, and after long and patient efforts the first school building for the instruction of girls in the Ottoman Empire was erected in Beirut, in 1834, at the expense of Mrs. Tod, an American lady in Alexandria, and the teacher was Mrs. Sarah L. H. Smith....
In 1877, the first Muslim school for girls was opened in Beirut. They now have three girls’ schools in the city, with five hundred pupils. Thus far their girls’ schools are confined to the great cities, and they have shown commendable zeal in erecting neat and commodious buildings.
In Syria and Palestine there are now nine thousand and eighty-one girls under Protestant instruction, and there are thousands in the Greek and Papal schools. The effects of female education prosecuted for so many years has been a palpable change in the status and dignity of woman. The light and comfort, the moral and intellectual elevation which have resulted are plain even to the casual observer. The mother is becoming the primary instructor of the children at home, and by precept and example their moral and religious guide.
The indifference of the Oriental Christians and the opposition of the Mohammedans to female education has been largely overcome. A Mohammedan Turkish lady in Constantinople, Fatimeh Alia Khanum, daughterof Joudet Pasha, has just published a novelette in Turkish and Arabic to show the superiority of the home life of Turkish Muslim women to that of European Christian women. A Protestant young lady of Northern Syria has taken a prize of $50 for the best original Arabic story illustrating the benefits of female education. Another Protestant young woman has recently published an Arabic book on “Society and Social Customs,” and, on the eve of her departure for the Columbian Exposition, delivered a public lecture on the duty of Ottoman subjects to support their own domestic manufacturers. It was largely attended by Muslim sheikhs, Turkish effendis and the public generally, and at the close a young Jewess, a fellow-graduate with her from the American Female Seminary, arose and made an impromptu address in support of the speaker’s views.
Too much cannot be said in admiration of the self-denying and successful labors of the American, English, Scotch and German women who have toiled patiently through long years, and many of whom have sacrificed their lives to the elevation of their sisters in this great Empire. Educated and cultivated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, all over the land, rise up and call them blessed. These happy Oriental homes, neat and well ordered, their high character, their exemplary conduct, their intelligence and interest in the proper training of their own children and the best welfare of society, are among the noblest fruits of a revived Christianity in the East.
What is wanted to complete the symmetry of this picture of the intellectual progress of Oriental women is that a deputation of Mohammedan ladies should attendthe great World’s Congress of Women from all the nations, and explain to their sisters from Christian and pagan Empires wherein consists the excellency and glory of the veiling and seclusion of Mohammedan women in harems and zenanas, and the permission to their men to have four legal wives and as many concubines as their right hands may acquire by purchase or capture. They should have the opportunity to explain the superiority of this system to that of Christianity, under which woman is allowed the most complete liberty of action, is trusted and honored, and given the highest place in the great organized enterprises of benevolence, charity, religion and social reform, and in the relief of human suffering at home and abroad.
III. To Protestant Missions is due the modern intellectual and educational awakening of the whole Empire. The American schools had been in operation forty years before the Turkish government officially promulgated (in 1869), school laws, and instituted a scheme of governmental education.
In 1864 there were twelve thousand five hundred elementary Mosque schools for reading the Koran, in which there were said to be half a million of students. In 1890, according to the recently published Ottoman reports, there were in the Empire forty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine schools of all kinds, of which three thousand are probably Christian and Jewish. As there are thirty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight mosques in the Empire, and each mosque is supposed to have its “medriseh” or school, there would appear to be about four thousand secular government schools not connected with the mosques, independent of ecclesiastical control by mollahs andsheikhs, and belonging to the imperial graded system of public instruction; yet many of the mosque schools have now been absorbed into the government system, so that there may be twenty thousand of these so-called secular government schools....
Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.
Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.
There are now in the Empire eighty hundred and ninety-two Protestant schools, with forty-three thousand and twenty-seven pupils.
Schools.Boys.Girls.Total Pupils.In Syria and Palestine3289,7569,08118,837In Egypt1003,2713,0296,300In Asia Minor, etc.46410,0007,89017,890Total89223,02720,00043,027
Of these pupils twenty thousand are girls, a fact most potent and eloquent with regard to the future of these interesting peoples.
There are thirty-one colleges, seminaries and boarding-schools for girls, of which eleven are taught by English and twenty by American ladies. In some of these schools young women are carried to the higher branches of science. In all of them the Bible is taught as a daily text book.
There are six American colleges for young men, the most of them well equipped and manned, taking the lead in academic and scientific training. The medical college in Beirut has pupils from nearly all parts of the Empire.
The standard of instruction is kept as high as the circumstances of the different provinces will admit,and the education given is thoroughly Biblical and Christian. And there are no more upright, intelligent, useful, loyal and progressive subjects of the Sultan today than the graduates of these colleges.
IV. The fourth evidence of the Gospel’s triumph is the translation of the Bible into all the languages of the Empire, and the publication of a vast mass of religious, educational, historical, and scientific books. The Bible is now printed in eleven languages and made available to all the people of the Empire. About fifteen hundred different books have been published in these various languages, of which nearly seven hundred are from the Arabic press in Beirut. The Arabic Bible is sent to the whole Arabic reading Mohammedan world. The literary, scientific, historical and religious books also have a wide circulation.
Seventy years ago there were neither books nor readers. Now the hundreds of thousands of readers can find books in their own tongue, and to suit every taste. There are children’s illustrated books for the school and the fireside, stories and histories for the young, solid historical, theological, and instructive works for the old, and scientific books and periodicals for students. Bunyan, D’Aubigné, Edwards, Alexander, Moody, and Spurgeon are speaking to the Orientals. Richard Newton instructs and delights the children. Eli Smith, Van Dyck, and Post, Meshaka and Bistany, Nofel and Wortabet, instruct the scholarly and educated, while mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine, geology and meteorology carry students on to the higher departmentsof learning. Tracts and Sunday school lesson books abound, and periodical literature supplies the present daily wants of society.
The American Arabic Press, founded in Malta in 1822, and in Beirut in 1834, set in motion the forces which have now filled all the great cities of the Empire with presses and newspapers, and awakened the people to a new intellectual life. The Beirut Press alone has printed five hundred millions of pages in Arabic.
The Bible and the Koran are now the two religious books of the Empire. The Koran is in one language for one sect, and cannot be translated, and any copy of the Koran found in the possession of a native Christian or a European traveler is confiscated. The Bible is in eleven languages and is freely offered for sale to all. Sixty thousand copies of the Scriptures are sold annually in the Turkish Empire.
THE OUTLOOK.1. Russia is straining every nerve to destroy Protestant schools as endangering the political solidarity of the Greek Church and thus hostile to her prestige and future influence in Turkey.2. Republican France, having exiled the Jesuits as intolerable at home, finds them pliant tools of her political schemes abroad and subsidizes them heavily with money and diplomatic support in thwarting Protestant missions.3. The civil policy of the Turkish Government is “Turkey for the Turks.” This means virtually filling all the offices of the Empire with Mohammedans, thus gradually closing every avenue of public official employment and promotion to the six millions of the Christianpopulation, who are far in advance of the Muslims in education and intelligence.We do not here dispute the right or the political sagacity of this new régime. But its natural result is seen in the emigration of thousands of the most energetic and enlightened young men to foreign lands. Protestant schools are endangered by losing their trained teachers, and the churches by losing their best members and the material for their future pastors, and the cause of self-support is gravely imperilled. But though thus threatened Protestantism is secured.1. By the wide distribution of the Scriptures. The hundreds of thousands of Bibles in the hands of the people will make the extinction of Protestantism impossible unless the people themselves are exterminated.2. By the wide diffusion of education and the founding of so many Protestant colleges and seminaries which have come to Turkey to stay.3. By the deep-rooted faith and personal convictions of tens of thousands who believe in the right of individual judgment in religion and in the supremacy of conscience enlightened by the Word of God. Fifty thousand Protestants in the Empire can be depended upon to hold their own, even were all foreign missionaries to be withdrawn.4. By the vast body of Christian literature and the power of the journalistic press, which are inconsistent with a recoil into the domain of priestly tyranny and the stifling of the human conscience.Protestantism as a principle is steadily growing in every sect in the Empire. The Ark of God is safe in this land. Let us work on in patience and good cheer, with gratitude and unquestioning faith.
THE OUTLOOK.
1. Russia is straining every nerve to destroy Protestant schools as endangering the political solidarity of the Greek Church and thus hostile to her prestige and future influence in Turkey.2. Republican France, having exiled the Jesuits as intolerable at home, finds them pliant tools of her political schemes abroad and subsidizes them heavily with money and diplomatic support in thwarting Protestant missions.3. The civil policy of the Turkish Government is “Turkey for the Turks.” This means virtually filling all the offices of the Empire with Mohammedans, thus gradually closing every avenue of public official employment and promotion to the six millions of the Christianpopulation, who are far in advance of the Muslims in education and intelligence.We do not here dispute the right or the political sagacity of this new régime. But its natural result is seen in the emigration of thousands of the most energetic and enlightened young men to foreign lands. Protestant schools are endangered by losing their trained teachers, and the churches by losing their best members and the material for their future pastors, and the cause of self-support is gravely imperilled. But though thus threatened Protestantism is secured.1. By the wide distribution of the Scriptures. The hundreds of thousands of Bibles in the hands of the people will make the extinction of Protestantism impossible unless the people themselves are exterminated.2. By the wide diffusion of education and the founding of so many Protestant colleges and seminaries which have come to Turkey to stay.3. By the deep-rooted faith and personal convictions of tens of thousands who believe in the right of individual judgment in religion and in the supremacy of conscience enlightened by the Word of God. Fifty thousand Protestants in the Empire can be depended upon to hold their own, even were all foreign missionaries to be withdrawn.4. By the vast body of Christian literature and the power of the journalistic press, which are inconsistent with a recoil into the domain of priestly tyranny and the stifling of the human conscience.Protestantism as a principle is steadily growing in every sect in the Empire. The Ark of God is safe in this land. Let us work on in patience and good cheer, with gratitude and unquestioning faith.
1. Russia is straining every nerve to destroy Protestant schools as endangering the political solidarity of the Greek Church and thus hostile to her prestige and future influence in Turkey.
2. Republican France, having exiled the Jesuits as intolerable at home, finds them pliant tools of her political schemes abroad and subsidizes them heavily with money and diplomatic support in thwarting Protestant missions.
3. The civil policy of the Turkish Government is “Turkey for the Turks.” This means virtually filling all the offices of the Empire with Mohammedans, thus gradually closing every avenue of public official employment and promotion to the six millions of the Christianpopulation, who are far in advance of the Muslims in education and intelligence.
We do not here dispute the right or the political sagacity of this new régime. But its natural result is seen in the emigration of thousands of the most energetic and enlightened young men to foreign lands. Protestant schools are endangered by losing their trained teachers, and the churches by losing their best members and the material for their future pastors, and the cause of self-support is gravely imperilled. But though thus threatened Protestantism is secured.
1. By the wide distribution of the Scriptures. The hundreds of thousands of Bibles in the hands of the people will make the extinction of Protestantism impossible unless the people themselves are exterminated.
2. By the wide diffusion of education and the founding of so many Protestant colleges and seminaries which have come to Turkey to stay.
3. By the deep-rooted faith and personal convictions of tens of thousands who believe in the right of individual judgment in religion and in the supremacy of conscience enlightened by the Word of God. Fifty thousand Protestants in the Empire can be depended upon to hold their own, even were all foreign missionaries to be withdrawn.
4. By the vast body of Christian literature and the power of the journalistic press, which are inconsistent with a recoil into the domain of priestly tyranny and the stifling of the human conscience.
Protestantism as a principle is steadily growing in every sect in the Empire. The Ark of God is safe in this land. Let us work on in patience and good cheer, with gratitude and unquestioning faith.