"How soon a smile of God can change the world!How we are made for happiness—how workGrows play, adversity a winning fight!"—R. Browning.
"How soon a smile of God can change the world!How we are made for happiness—how workGrows play, adversity a winning fight!"—R. Browning.
"How soon a smile of God can change the world!How we are made for happiness—how workGrows play, adversity a winning fight!"—R. Browning.
"How soon a smile of God can change the world!
How we are made for happiness—how work
Grows play, adversity a winning fight!"
—R. Browning.
It was a bright July morning. After a prosperous voyage, theSemaphorewas steaming in to Southampton Pier. John Grayson stood on the deck, looking at the shores of the native land he had never hoped to see again. Near him, though not speaking, stood Kaspar Hohanian; and a little behind them Artin and Markeret sat together, the sister telling her blind brother all she saw. The three had just been thanking the captain, with full hearts, for many kindnesses shown them during the voyage.
Presently the throbbing pulses of the ocean monster sank into stillness; the double gangway was laid across; and then ensued a frantic rush of eager passengers, laden with every description of the luggage called by courtesy "light." Othersstood on guard beside their boxes, or shouted to the porters, who were rushing still more frantically the other way.
Along with the porters came a tall athletic young parson, in a soft felt hat and clerical undress. With alert and cheerful aspect, he went about among the groups, looking earnestly at all the men, in evident search for some one. He bestowed a rapid glance upon Kaspar Hohanian, but turned away disappointed. Then he almost flung himself upon John Grayson—only to draw off again instantly, much disconcerted. "I beg your pardon," he said.
Jack looked him in the face. It was a good face, and a strong face too—frank, manly, trustful and trustworthy. The young man's complexion, naturally fair, was well bronzed by air and exercise, his eyes were English blue, his hair and beard light brown.
"I beg your pardon," he said to Jack, with the slight, respectful inflection of tone a well-bred young man uses to an elder. "I mistook you for a cousin, who is on board, and whom I have come to meet."
"May I ask the name?"
"Mr. John Grayson. We have not met since we were both schoolboys. So, you see, I am a little puzzled."
"Fred—Fred Pangbourne, don't you know me?" cried Jack, springing forward and seizing both his hands.
"I—I could not have believed it!" Fred ejaculated, horror-stricken. "My poor Jack, what have they done with you?"
Thatquestion could not be answered in a breath. "How is your father? How is every one?" Jack queried, evading it.
"Ah! so you did not get our letters, and have heard nothing. My father went from us years ago. The rest of us are quite well. Now you are coming with me, right away, to Gladescourt."
"To where?"
"My Curacy. At present indeed I may call it my Rectory; since, in the Rector's absence, I live in his house. Where is your luggage?"
"In this handbag."
Fred looked surprised, but only said, "Let us come at once then."
"Stay, Fred; I must look after my friends." He turned to them and spoke in Armenian. "Kaspar, take care of your sister; I will look after Artin."
Fred wondered who these people could be, but was too courteous not to offer his services. He thought the dark-eyed girl remarkably pretty, butfelt provoked at the boy's passivity and want of interest in everything, until Jack whispered, "He is blind."
A few words in the strange tongue were exchanged with them; then Jack enquired, "Do you know about the trains to Manchester, Fred? Can my friends get there to-night?"
"Oh, I dare say. I will find out. But come on shore now. I have ordered breakfast at the Hotel; and," he added, in the warmth of his heart, "will you ask your friends to come with us?"
"You can ask them yourself," said Jack, smiling. "They speak English,—Kaspar very well, the others a little." Then he duly introduced his friend Baron Kaspar Hohanian to his cousin the Rev. Frederick Pangbourne.
A couple of hours later, the three Armenians were safely deposited in the train for London, with full instructions how to change, when they got there, to the Northern Line, while Jack and his cousin were rolling swiftly in a different direction. Conversation, as usual in such cases, was intermittent, incoherent, dealing with trifles near at hand, rather than with the great things each had to tell the other. "Those Armenians astonish me," Fred remarked. "Their manners are perfect. They might take their places, with credit, in any London drawing-room. But then, I suppose, they are ofthe highest rank in their own country. You called the young man 'Baron.'"
"Oh, that is nothing! Baron only means 'Mr.' But I really think, Fred, from what I heard on board, that the English fancy the Armenians are a kind of savages. They are a highly refined and intellectual race, with a civilization older than our own, and a very copious and interesting literature."
"But what a wreck your friend looks! Has he just come out of a great illness?"
"He has come out of what is infinitely worse—a Turkish prison. But, Fred, there are a thousand things I want to know. My poor uncle?"
Frederick Pangbourne told him in many words what may here be compressed into very few. When the tidings of the death of the two Graysons came to their friends at home, Ralph Pangbourne was just dead, and his eldest son was lying dangerously ill in typhoid fever. Young and experienced, and beset by many cares and troubles, the new squire, on his recovery, was quite unable to investigate the story sent to him by the Consul from Aleppo. Indeed, no one thought of doubting it; though all sincerely regretted these near relatives, left to lie in unknown graves in that distant land—
"With none to tell 'them' where we sleep."
"With none to tell 'them' where we sleep."
"With none to tell 'them' where we sleep."
"With none to tell 'them' where we sleep."
Had one of the young Pangbournes been free to do it, he would gladly have made a pilgrimage (attractive, besides, for the adventure's sake) to the far East, to find the resting-place of his uncle and his cousin. But young Ralph, the squire, was overwhelmed with business; Tom, the second son, was in India, doing well in the Civil Service; and Fred was at Cambridge, preparing for the ministry.
There was another question. What of "the Grayson money," as it was called in the family? It was no secret that, before leaving England, John Grayson had made his will, bequeathing the bulk of his fortune, in case of his son's death without issue, to his nephew and namesake, John Frederick Pangbourne. But though they assumed, as a certain fact, the death of both the father and the son, the Pangbournes felt it would be a difficult matter to prove it in a court of law. Fred, the person principally concerned, entreated his brothers to let the matter rest, at least until the termination of the seven years of absence and silence which the law accepts as equivalent to a proof of death. He had, inwardly, an intense repugnance—a repugnance he could not account for to himself—to the thought of touching the Grayson money. In secret, and unknown to all the rest, he cherished a fancy that his cousin might still be found among the living. When Jack's letter arrived from Aleppo, he exultedopenly and heartily. A post-card which followed it having informed him that Jack was to sail in theSemaphore, he watched daily for news of the vessel; and it was with joy and gladness that he hastened down to Southampton, to be the first to welcome him on English ground. He had set his heart upon carrying him off at once to the sweet Surrey rectory, where his favourite sister, Lucy, kept house for him, and shared the pleasant labours of the rural parish. But he was not prepared to find, instead of a lad five years his junior, a worn, broken, grey-haired man.
He did not tell all, or nearly all, this to Jack, though he told a great many other things. The only reference indeed that he made to money matters was to say, "You must run up to town on Monday, and see Penn & Stamper. They will tell you all about my uncle's affairs. You know, Jack, you are a rich man. Won't they just have a balance worth looking at to hand over to you, after all these years?"
They got out at a little road-side station, and walked over sunny fields to a private door opening into a well-kept pleasure ground. Another minute brought them to the Rectory porch, over which climbed a beautiful wisteria. The whole scene looked the very picture of peace, of "quietness and assurance for ever." Fred stopped a moment,to point out the spire of "our Church," which was seen above the trees at the far side of the house. As they looked at it, a fair girl came running down to the door to welcome her brother. Blue eyes, golden hair, cheeks like a tinted sea-shell, coral lips and the sweetest of smiles, made up for Jack a vision of beauty bewilderingly new and strange. Yet he only felt it touch the surface of his soul.
After dinner, which was early, the two young men walked about together; Fred joyously and proudly showing his cousin the beauties of his home, which, he said, might be his for long enough, as his Rector, for special reasons, was residing abroad.
"It is a home of peace," Jack said. Old, old memories were coming to life every moment. The sound of rooks cawing in the elms, the velvet lawn, the flowers in the trim parterre, the very feel of the air and hue of the sunshine, brought back those old days when his little feet had trotted over just such velvet turf, his little hand clinging to his mother's gown. Ah, ifshewere here! And his father—the father who had been also his hero, brother, comrade, friend. Then a sweet thought brought sudden tears to his eyes. Surely the angels would see to it that Shushan found them out! His heart, bruised and sore with longingsfor what might have been, grew still. His Lily had a fairer home than this—
"Over the river, where the fields are green."
"Over the river, where the fields are green."
"Over the river, where the fields are green."
"Over the river, where the fields are green."
The cousins went back to the house. Lucy poured out tea for them, and asked Jack, lightly and prettily, many questions about the strange places he had been in, and the strange things he must have seen. He answered evasively, with a reserve of manner which she thought very odd, until she hit upon the explanation that this new cousin—who was so young and looked so old—had been so long amongst wild, barbarous people, that on his return to civilization he was actually feeling—shy.
She was not sorry when Fred took him off to his "den," as he called his very comfortable and commodious study. But she said, with a pretty monitorial air, and a careful eye to the sermon for to-morrow—"Remember, Fred, this is Saturday night."
Then the real talk began. Jack, in writing from Aleppo, had simply told of his father's death, and added that he himself had enduredand seenmuch suffering, and that he was coming home to tell the rest. Now he poured forth the whole story into willing and sympathizing ears.
Lucy went up to bed that night wondering ifFred and the new cousin would ever stop talking, and full of anxious thoughts about the neglected sermon. As long as she stayed awake she heard their voices in the room underneath her own; and at last she dropped asleep, with the sermon still upon her mind.
Waking in the early summer morning, she heard steps in the passage outside her door, and words spoken that seemed to echo her thoughts.
"But your sermon?"
"I have got it. Good night—or rather, good morning."
"Thy Father hears the mighty cry of anguish,And gives His answering messages to thee."—C. Pennefather.
"Thy Father hears the mighty cry of anguish,And gives His answering messages to thee."—C. Pennefather.
"Thy Father hears the mighty cry of anguish,And gives His answering messages to thee."—C. Pennefather.
"Thy Father hears the mighty cry of anguish,
And gives His answering messages to thee."
—C. Pennefather.
Brief sleep, if any, had John Grayson that Sunday morning. As so often heretofore he could not sleep for pain or sorrow, now he could not sleepfor rest. The sense of the peace that was all around him was too new, too wonderful. He soon arose from that fair, snow-white English bed, with its pure linen smelling of lavender, to wander out over the dewy lawn, where the morning sun touched everything with glory. The birds sang aloud to welcome the new day—the long, long day—every hour of it to be filled with their innocent joy. One sweet-voiced blackbird lighted on a rose-bush close to him, and sang. They seemed to have no fear. In this happy land fear did not reign. No doubt it was there—often—for England, after all, was earth and not heaven; but it was a shadow lurking in dark places, not aneclipse blotting out the sun, a presence darkening all the joy of life.
But this blessed peace only stamped deeper upon Jack's heart the memory of that far land of agony and blood. "If I forget thee, O Armenia," he said aloud, "let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not thee above my chief joy. My chief joy," he thought again, "lies buried there, and can never live for me upon this earth. But, by that grave, by that dead love, or rather by that love that can never die, I am pledged not to rest in happy England, but to work for sad Armenia, and to wait for my Sabbath keeping until we keep it all together in the Home above."
He did not know how long it was before his cousin came out to summon him to their early Sunday breakfast. Fred's voice had lost the joyful ring it had at their first meeting. He looked like a strong man who had just heard of a great bereavement. Lucy, waiting to receive him in her fresh Sunday dress, with her look of peace and purity, felt vaguely that there was sadness in the air, but her mind was too full of her Sunday-school class to dwell upon that subject.
"Will you come with us to church?" Fred asked his cousin.
Jack looked surprised at the question. "Certainly," he said. "Why not?"
"Because I have to say that which will give you pain—yet I cannot forbear. You have given me my sermon for to-day."
Nevertheless John Grayson joined the stream of church-goers: fathers, and mothers, and little children, old men and old women coming in together, while the rosy-cheeked Sunday scholars took their appointed places. He looked round with strangely mingled feelings on the old country church, which was without elaborate ornament, although seemly and reverent in all its appointments, as befitted a house of God. But what most arrested him was the "fair white cloth" on the Holy Table, showing that the Feast of the Lord was spread that day. He had never yet partaken of it in the Church of his fathers; but he no more doubted his right to come than the child doubts his right to sit down at his father's table, because it is spread in a strange room. It was a joy to look forward to that; it was a joy meanwhile to join once more, though with trembling lips, in the dear, familiar prayers-those prayers "that sound like church bells in the ears of the English child."
And now his cousin stood in the pulpit. In his aspect and bearing there was a deep solemnity,which, young though he was, made him look in truth "as one that pleaded with men." He read his text, "A name which is above every name," and began with an exposition of the context, lucid, thoughtful, and evincing careful study.
Jack's thoughts wandered from the words to the speaker, and from the speaker to the surroundings, once so familiar, now so unwonted and strange to him. Presently however a word arrested him.
"My brethren," said the preacher, leaning over the pulpit in his earnestness, "have you ever thought what a wonderful thing is the love of Christ?"
"Surely," Jack said to himself, "if we have ever thought of Him at all, we have thought of that."
"I do not mean now," the preacher went on, "the love of Christ for us. I use 'love of Christ' as I use 'love of country,' 'love of friends,' to mean—not theirs for us, but ours for them. And I say, that the love of Humanity for Christ is a mystery only less than the grand, supreme mystery of all—the love of Christ for man. And the greater mystery is proved and illustrated by the less. As we may look, in its reflection, on some object too bright to gaze upon directly,—as we may measure a mountain by its shadow, so may we gain some faint conception ofhow'Hefirst loved us,' by the wondering contemplation of how men in all ages have loved Him.
"Consider. The Man called Christ Jesus lived, for three and thirty years, or less, in a little corner of the world, which He never left. Of those years thirty were spent in silence and obscurity; only for two or three did He flash into sudden fame, soon cut short by a violent death. He did not write, He did not organize, He did not rule; He only taught, and lived, and loved. Yet what has His name been in the world ever since? What is it in the world to-day?
"You will say, 'It is the Name of the Founder of our religion, through Whom we approach the Divine Majesty, and as such we hold it in reverence.' It is that; but to thousands upon thousands it is something infinitely more. It is the name of their dearest, most beloved, and most trusted personal Friend—the Name of Him whom it is their deepest joy in life to serve, their sweetest hope in death to see. It was the poet gift of voicing the deepest longings of humanity that inspired the dying song we know so well,—
"'I hope to see my Pilot face to face,When I have crossed the bar.'
"'I hope to see my Pilot face to face,When I have crossed the bar.'
"'I hope to see my Pilot face to face,When I have crossed the bar.'
"'I hope to see my Pilot face to face,
When I have crossed the bar.'
"There is one test of love, usually accounted supreme. 'Greater love hath no man than this,that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Freely and joyfully has Humanity poured forth her best blood for the Name of Christ. Those who have given Him this supreme proof of love we call His martyrs, or His witnesses. Other names, other religions, other causes, have had their martyrs too. Indeed, I think the word is true that all great causes have their martyrs. And I dare to think too that the wine of self-sacrificing love, though we may count it vainly spilled, cannot sink into the earth beyond His power to gather up who takes care of lost things. But I think also—nay, I know—that the martyrs of Christ stand apart from all the rest, in their immense multitude, in the joy and peace they had in suffering and in death, and in the sustaining, animating power of their love to Him for whom they died.
"I have spoken to you, sometimes, of the martyrs of past days. I could not help it; their memory is very dear to me, and the records of their faith and their patience have touched and thrilled my own heart since childhood. But I never dreamed or guessed that even while I spoke,—now, in the end of this nineteenth century, this age of science and enlightenment, this age of pity and compassion, a new legion was marching on, through blood and fire, to join the noble army of martyrs before the throne of God."
Here the grey head, which had rested bowed and motionless in that seat below the pulpit, was raised up suddenly, and the eyes that had witnessed so much agony sent a look into the preacher's face that almost stopped his words. But, after a scarcely perceptible pause, he went on,—
"It has been, to some of us, a pain all the greater because of our utter helplessness to read even the meagre accounts that have come to us of the massacres in Armenia. Now that I have heard from the lips of an eye-witness, who is here present amongst you this day, the details ofonesuch massacre, I am bound to tell you solemnly that the pain should have been greater still. The most awful, the most lurid accounts we have had, fall short of the terrible reality. The half has not been told us."
Then he gave briefly, and as calmly as he could, the story of the massacre of Urfa, and of the burning of the cathedral, as John Grayson had told it to him.
"I refrain," he continued, "from recounting horrors which would needlessly wring your hearts. I speak of death; I do not speak of torture. I tell you a little of what men, our brothers, have suffered. But oh, my brothers,—oh, my sisters, and theirs!—I have no words to tell the worseagonies of your helpless sisters. I dare not tell—I dare not even hint at the things I know—and which they have had to suffer! Only, thank God on your knees to-night that He has made you Englishwomen!
"And, remember, I have told of Urfa, but Urfa is only one town of many in Armenia. Like things have been done in Sassoun, in Marash, in Diarbekir, in Melatia, in Kharpoot, in Van, in Erzeroum,—in hundreds of towns and villages with strange names we have never heard. The land, which for fertility and for beauty might be a very Garden of Eden, is fast becoming a desolate wilderness.
"But, you will say, all this agony does not make martyrs. For that is needed, not suffering only, but witness-bearing. True; though in a loose, general fashion all those who lose their lives in any way on account of their religion are often called martyrs. But even the most stringent application of this name of honour must include all those who have,voluntarily, so laid down their lives. He who has been offered life on the condition of apostasy, and has refused it, has won his crown, and no man may take it from him. Armenians without number have stood the test, and made the grand refusal. In some places the utterance of the Moslem symbol of faith, in othersthe lifting up of one finger, was all that was required, yet men and women, and children even, have endured death and torture rather than say those words or make that sign. Shall I give you instances? Shall I tell you of the venerable archbishop of the ancient Armenian Church, who had first his hands, and then his arms hewn off, but no agony could separate him from his Saviour, and at last he died repeating the creed? Shall I tell you of the student of theology, who answered his tempters with a steadfast 'No, for I have come to this hour in God's will and appointment, and I will not change,' and was slowly cut in pieces? Shall I tell you of the little girl, the child of twelve, who said to the Moslem, 'I believe in Jesus Christ. He is my Saviour. I love Him. I cannot do as you wish even if you kill me'? Shall I tell you of another girl and her young brother who, when the murderers came, embraced one another, their faces radiant with joy? 'We are going to Christ!' they said. 'We shall see Him just now.' Time would fail me indeed to tell of these, and of the many like them in faith and patience. But one thing is as true of those who suffer for the Name of Christ to-day as of those who suffered for that Name in the first century, or the sixteenth, or any century between—there walks with them in the furnace One like unto the Son of God."
There was a pause, and then the preacher resumed. "But there are two questions our hearts are asking, in the face of all this suffering: 'What is Christ doing?' and 'What shall we do?' There is no use in saying that the first of these questions is one which we ought not to ask at all. There are times when there is little use even in telling our passionate, aching human hearts that we ought to be satisfied with what we know and believe of His spiritual presence with His faithful people. Thank God, He did not forbid the questionings of His tried servant the prophet, who flung himself at His feet with the half-despairing cry, 'Righteous art Thou, O Lord, when I plead with Thee: yet let me talk with Thee of Thy judgments.' Nor of that other who pleaded, 'Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest Thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest Thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?' Indeed, I dare to think that, if wedothrow ourselves at His feet—the feet pierced for us—there is no question we may not ask Him there.
"What thenisChrist doing? He sits in His glory at the right hand of the Father; He sees all this agony, and Helets it still go on. He sustains the sufferers; He strengthens and comfortsthem often; but—Helets it still go on. 'How can He bear it?' our hearts cry out sometimes. I think the answer is, that Heisbearing it. He suffered for the sufferers; that is not all—He sufferswiththem. That is yet not all; He suffersinthem. They are not His people only, but His members; of His flesh and of His bones. For reasons inscrutable to us, His agony must go on still in them—still He cries to the oppressor, 'Why persecutest thou Me?' But one day He and they, and we also, shall see the end. Then shall we know the secret of the Lord; then shall the mystery of God be finished.
"Meanwhile, with the martyrs it is well. 'Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple, and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.' Butallare not yet there, beyond the agony. For the thousands upon thousands of sufferers, bereaved, tortured, famine-stricken, dying slowly in Turkish prisons, or, deepest horror of all, in Turkish harems, what shall we say? Is the burden laid on our hearts for them too heavy to be borne? Remember, Christ bears itwith us, as, in a deeper sense than we can fathom, Christ bears itin them.
"I think this answers our second question, What shall we do?
'It is MY SAVIOUR struggling there in those poor limbs I see.'
'It is MY SAVIOUR struggling there in those poor limbs I see.'
'It is MY SAVIOUR struggling there in those poor limbs I see.'
'It is MY SAVIOUR struggling there in those poor limbs I see.'
Friends, if He is there indeed, in His members, what sacrifice would we not make, what treasure would we not pour out with joy, to come to His help?
"But perhaps you say, 'Whatcanwe do?' I am not speaking to those who can influence the councils of our rulers, except by prayer, and by the formation and expression of that intelligent opinion which does, in the end, make its power felt. Therefore it is beside the question to ask what they should have done, or what they should do now. We have to find out whatweshould do, each one ofus.
"There are thousands of little children, fatherless and motherless because their fathers and mothers have gone to God, often through the gate of martyrdom. They are wandering in the streets, homeless and destitute. They die, or haply they are taken by Moslems, and taught to hate the faith their parents died for.We can rescue these.
"There are thousands of widows, desolate in heart and home, each with her tale of anguish, longing, it may be, to lay down her weary head and join her loved ones in the grave, yet forced to struggle on for the daily bread of those still dependent on her.We can succour these.
"There are thousands of ruined men, who have lost home, occupation, health, and whose hearts are well-nigh desperate with the things they have seen and suffered.We can give back hope to these.
"One word more, brethren. We have spoken of the power of the name of Christ. That Name, which we teach our little ones to lisp,—that Name, which sanctifies our daily prayers,—that Name, which our beloved ones whispered to us with failing breath as their feet drew near the dark valley, that Name, which yet—oh, strange mystery!—is dearer to our hearts than even theirs—that Name was on the lips of each one of the slaughtered multitude whose blood is crying to heaven—that Name is still on the lips of the suffering remnant that are left. It is in that Name that they ask our sympathy, our help.
"I have spoken of our dead, our dear dead who lie out yonder, where God's blessed sun is shining on the graves in which we laid them to their rest. We turned sadly away; we thought our hearts were breaking because wehadto lay them there. What of our brothers and our sisters, to whom it is joy past telling, the only joy they can look for now, to know their beloved ones are dead—and safe? In that land of sorrow they weep not for the dead, neither bemoan them; it is for the living that they weep. Nor are there graves toweep over, even if they fain would do it. The dead—and, remember, they are the Christian dead,—lie unburied in the open fields, or are heaped together in trenches which the earth can scarcely cover.
"Known unto God the Father, known unto Christ the Redeemer, is each atom of this undistinguished dust. Into His keeping He has taken the dead, but to us He leaves the remnants that survive, and that it is possible still to save. Will you take them to your hearts, for HisName'ssake?"
The preacher gave the usual benediction, descended from the pulpit, and began in due course to read the beautiful prayer "for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth." Very solemnly, in a voice of suppressed emotion, he read on, till he came to the words, "And we most humbly beseech Thee of Thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all them who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity." Here his voice faltered, but he went resolutely on, "And we also bless Thy holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear." Then the rush of feeling overwhelmed him, and he did that fatal thing to do in an assembly charged with emotion—he stopped. A sob broke from one, then fromanother, and yet another still, until a wave of weeping passed over the whole, like the wind over a field of corn.
It was but a few moments; the reader recovered himself, and continued the Service. Nearly all the congregation remained, and gathered round the Table of their Lord that day; and it may be they felt, as they had never done before, the bond of communion with the scattered and suffering members of the Lord Christ.
That evening John Grayson said to his cousin, "Of course you know that I am going back again,—with only a change of name."
"I am going with you," Frederick Pangbourne answered quietly.
"You!" Jack's heart gave a sudden leap.
"Why not? There are plenty to work here, and I have often thought of the mission field. Is there any field more urgent than this?"
Jack was silent, grave with a solemn joy. What might not they two accomplish, shoulder to shoulder, the fortune he had already resolved to share with Fred all consecrated to the work!
Fred continued, "Do you remember that cry that rose from ten thousand hearts, when Peter the Hermit called upon all Christendom to rescue the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of the Moslem—'Dieu le veut?'—'God wills it'? Is itnot as much a war of the Cross to rescue from them, not His empty sepulchre, but even a few of His living, suffering members? We can say—you and I to-day—'God wills it.'"
The greatest care has been taken to make the foregoing pages absolutely true to fact. All that has been told of the massacres and their attendant circumstances has been taken either from thoroughly reliable published sources, or from the narratives of trustworthy eye-witnesses. In the story of the massacre of Urfa and the burning of the Cathedral the official report of Vice-Consul Fitzmaurice has been largely used, and only supplemented by the additional details furnished by those on the spot.
In one respect particularly the truth has been strictly adhered to. Every instance given ofmartyrdom, properly so-called, or of courage, faith, patience, or devotion, is entirely authentic. The stories of Stepanian, of Thomassian and his wife, of the Selferians, of Anna Hanum, of Gabriel, of Vahanian, etc., are all perfectly true, the names only have been altered.
This alteration of names was rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case. But every one at all acquainted with the subject will recognise the heroic lady I have ventured to call Miss Celandine. To the very remarkable character of the martyred Pastor Stepanian I have, I fear, done imperfect justice. The particulars of his death and of the fate of his children are given quite accurately, and the ideas attributed to him, and even the illustrations used, are really his own. The only slight departure from known fact has been the assumption that the quick and painless death—for which those who loved him thanked God—(to onesuch it brought thefirst tearsshe was able to shed) came from the hand of a friendly Turk.
For one other departure from fact I have to apologise. I have ignored the existence in Biridjik, during the time embraced by the story, of a Protestant Church and pastor; and this although the sufferings of the pastor and his family in the massacre there would form, in themselves, a thrilling narrative. But I desired to show something of the Gregorian Church and the Armenian people, as they existed apart from any contact with foreigners. Throughout I have tried to give the impression, which is the true one, that Gregorians and Protestants have suffered and died, with equal heroism and equal willingness, for the name of Christ.
There is, nevertheless, one important sense in which facts havenotbeen truly represented. It has been absolutely impossible to depict the worst features of these horrible crimes. To tellallwe know would be simply to defeat the end for which we write—no one would read the pages. It has been necessary to cover tortures—the most ingenious, the most hideous, and the most excruciating—with a veil of general expressions, and outrages yet more terrible than any torture with a still denser veil of reticence. Of what has been endured by unnumbered multitudes of our helpless sisters, it is agony to speak; but is it not also sin and cowardice to keep silence?
An attempt has been made in the foregoing pages so to speak and so to keep silence, and especially so to subordinate the horror of cruelty to the glory of martyrdom, that the most sensitive and tender heart may not be too painfully wrung. There is indeed much excuse for the tenderhearted when they say, as they often do, "We will not read about this subject; we will not think of it. It is too horrible. Our lives are full already of cares and duties, perhaps even of Christian work. We cannot take up this burden in addition to the rest. It would sink us."
That is intelligible and natural, sometimes even right. But it isnotright that those who thus decline to examine the case should at the same time prejudge it, should dismiss with scorn, or incredulity, or carelessness, the testimony of those who, having gone down into that depth of horror, have come back burdened with an anguish which can only find relief in the effort to help the surviving sufferers. One of two things people surely ought to do—they ought to examine the evidence for themselves; or, declining this, and possibly with good reason, they ought to accept the conclusions of those who have.
In the earlier stages of the tragedy many were misled, and not inexcusably, by reports that came from official sources in Turkey. Here is a specimen—a message sent by the Sultan to the Ambassador of England, in February, 1896, when the unprovoked slaughter of the unarmed and defenceless thousands of Urfa was still reeking to Heaven:—"That the Armenians have everywhere and always been the aggressors, that the Mussulmans have been attacked in their mosques during their prayers, that they have suffered nameless atrocities from the Armenians, for the latter had Martini guns, dynamite, and bombs, while, to defend themselves, the Mussulmans had only old, superseded fire-arms."
Were Pascal amongst us now, he would scarcely devote to the confusion of the Jesuits his celebrated "Mentiris Impudentissime!"
Happily, the truth is known now. It may be briefly summed up in the words of Victor Bérard, an eminent Frenchman well acquainted with the East, who has devoted himself to the careful investigation of the whole question, and published the results in "La Politique du Sultan." "In the opinion and the language of all, Christians and Mussulmans, 'young' and 'old Turks,' Greeks and Bulgarians, natives and strangers, he (the Sultan) remains the promoter and arranger of all that has been done within the last two years.Every one knows and every one says, 'He has wished it, he has ordained it. The Master has permitted us to kill the Armenians.' This permission has cost the lives of more thanThree Hundred Thousandhuman beings. For, besides the public butcheries, the 'fusillades en masse,' and the massacres with spear and sword, how many stabbings with knives, assassinations, and private murders! Besides those who were murdered, how many women, children, and old people perishing in the fields left uncultivated, in the villages infested with the odour of corpses, in that epidemic of plague and cholera which, since 1895, has desolated Turkish Armenia! Putting all exaggeration aside, we may make the following calculation. Since the 1st of July, 1894, more than 500 Armenian communities have been stricken or suppressed. Some, like those of Constantinople or Sassoun, have had more than 5,000 dead. The figure of 3,000, as at Malatia, Diarbekr, Arabkir, has often been reached. That of 1,000 is common, and the minimum of 300 has been everywhere exceeded. Van, with 10,000, seems to hold the first rank. Taking then an average of 500 dead, we remain much under the truth, and this average, for the 500 communities stricken, gives 250,000 corpses. How, in a time of unbroken peace, could a man conceive such an enterprise, and how, under the eyes of Europe, could he bring it to pass?"
It need only be added, that those on the spot consider the above figures indeedmuch under the truth.
A common way of dismissing the subject with a phrase is to say "The Armenians are as bad as the Turks." This may be understood in either of two senses: the first originators probably meaning it in one, while those who repeat it commonly take it in the other. It may mean, "The Turk at bottom is as good as the Armenian,—The Armenian at bottom is as bad as the Turk." Whether this be true or no, it does not affect the present question. If we see a manbeing murdered, we do not stay to enquire into his character and antecedents before coming to his aid. Were the Armenians the most degraded race in the world, and the Turks (originally) the noblest, that is no reason why humanity should allow the Turks to torture and outrage and slay the Armenians.
But, if the meaning is that the Armenians are as much to blame for these troubles, as much in fault with respect to them, as the Turks, it might be relevant, if it were true. True, however, it emphatically is not. Hear the testimony of Dr. Lepsius, who has made an exhaustive study of the whole question. "The Armenians are not to blame. It would certainly have been no wonder if the Armenian people, who for years, by a systematic policy of annihilation on the part of the Porte, had been given over defenceless to every kind of injustice at the hands of Turkish officials, to every sort of violence on the part of their Kourdish lords, to extortion by the commissioners of taxes, and to the utter illegality of the law courts, had risen up in a last desperate struggle against the iron yoke of tyranny. But as a matter of fact it was impossible to think of a national rising. To begin with, the Armenians, though large districts are thickly populated with them, are by no means everywhere in a majority in the provinces in question, and by the law which forbids Christians to carry arms, while allowing them to Mahometans, they are absolutely defenceless. In fact, no one in Armenia has ever thought of demanding anything like autonomy. All that was hoped for was that the Reforms should be carried out which eighteen years before had been guaranteed by the Christian Powers, and which seemed to promise to the Armenians an existence at least bearable. Through the entire district of the massacre we have not been able to discover, notwithstanding the fulness of our information, any movement (except that in Zeitoun) which could be considered to be of the nature of a revolt. The commissioners in theirreport were not even able to establish any act of provocation on the part of the Armenians; and when such were alleged by the Turkish authorities, the official report has proved it to be untrue. This is what occurred in Zeitoun. The Armenian mountaineers of the Anti-Taurus, being terrified by the news of the massacres in the neighbouring provinces, fled in thousands for protection to Zeitoun, a natural fortress among the mountains. In the neighbourhood of this town there are more than a hundred villages inhabited exclusively by Armenians, who also pressed into Zeitoun. Near the town there was a Turkish citadel, with a garrison of about 600 men. The Armenians received news that this garrison was about to be considerably reinforced, and that an attack was designed on the defenceless people in Zeitoun. The Armenians decided to forestall it; they armed themselves as well as they could,[5]stormed the citadel, and forced the garrison to surrender before reinforcements arrived. They then fortified themselves in Zeitoun, and held it the whole winter against an army of 80,000 men, who, from time to time, were sent against them. The result of the struggle has justified the Armenians of Zeitoun, if indeed we are prepared to recognise the right of self-defence." For the European Consuls intervened, and obtained for the brave Zeitounlis honourable terms of peace, and an amnesty. It ought to be added, however, that the promises made by the Turks were shamelessly violated, and 3,720 of the Zeitounlis put to the sword.
But are there not Armenian Revolutionary Committees, and Armenian Revolutionaries, who elaborate dark designs in secret, and throw bombs, and do other desperate things? "Certainly there were some Revolutionaries," Dr. Lepsius says again, "and in some foreign towns there are stillRevolutionary Committees. Human nature must have changed if there are not, and one can only wonder that their number is so small and their action so unimportant. At any rate the Turkish Government is under obligation to them for existing, and is satisfied that they should not die out; for who would then supply the sparrows to be shot at with the cannon prepared? The editor of theChristliche Welt, Dr. Rade, has already shown up the nonsense that is put into European newspapers about Armenian "Revolutionary Committees," etc., and has passed a just judgment on the boundless credulity of our newspapers and their readers." (It must be remembered that Dr. Lepsius writes in German and for Germans.)
In fact, the Armenians and their friends would be glad to know what course of action they could possibly pursue which would commend them to the sympathies of Europe? If people are attacked, they must either submit, or resist, or run away. Run away the Armenians cannot, they are strictly forbidden to leave the country; and those who have succeeded in doing so have done it in spite of the Government. If they resist, they are rebels, revolutionaries, and the Sultan in killing them is only "exercising his undoubted right of punishing his revolted subjects." If they submit, which is what, except in the case of the Zeitounlis, they have almost always done, they are cowards, unworthy on that account of our sympathies.Cowards!The sands of the Colisseum and the gardens of Nero in old Rome were strewn with the bones or the ashes of just such cowards, but that is not the name by which we call them now.
"Still," it is sometimes said, "the Armenians did not suffer as Christians, but as Armenians. Other Christians, subjects of the Porte, have not been molested." That, even if true, is but half the truth. Christians who were not Armenians were not killed; Armenians who were not Christians (that is to say, who renounced Christianity) werenot killed. Therefore the Armenians suffered, not as Armenians alone, and not as Christians alone, but asArmenian Christians. And those Armenians who need not have suffered if they would have ceased to be Christians, suffered definitelyas Christians.
But how did the Armenians concentrate upon themselves all this furious hatred? Why should they be massacred rather than Greeks or Syrians? There are several reasons. The Greeks enjoy the protection of a foreign Government, somewhat in the same way as do the Americans and the English. The Syrians, besides being less numerous, are much more under the observation and the patronage of foreigners. "The Armenians happen to be the most numerous of the Christian races in Turkey; therefore they bear the brunt of the Crusade. The Jacobites, the Chaldeans and the Nestorians have their proportionate share."
But some say the Armenians have made themselves particularly obnoxious to the Mussulmans as money lenders and usurers; that they have shown themselves rapacious and exacting, and greedy of dishonest gain. The same accusations were brought against the Jews in the Middle Ages, and against the Russian Jews in our own day. There is, perhaps, the same amount of truth in them. Put a clever, industrious, ambitious race under the heel of an indolent, unprogressive one, and the former is sure to seize eagerly, and not to use too scrupulously, the only power within its reach, the power of the purse. As for usury, was not 33 per cent. considered a fair demand in the Dark Ages, in view of the lender's standing an even chance of getting nothing at all, or of getting something very undesirable in the shape of the rack or the dungeon? Insecurity is the parent of usury.
But, granted that the Armenians in other parts of the Turkish Empire, and even occasionally in Armenia itself, may have earned some popular hatred in this or in other ways, the vast majority of the victims have been,—not usurers,not wealthy merchants,—but industrious artisans, small shopkeepers, cultivators of the soil, with an admixture of the more educated classes, the most envenomed hatred being directed against those in any way connected with religion, whether as Gregorian priests or as Protestant pastors. Skilled craftsmen, who abounded amongst the Armenians, have been so nearly exterminated that some towns are left without a mason, a carpenter, or a shoemaker; in others the Turks have saved a few of these artificers alive, to supply them with the conveniences which they are unable or unwilling to make for themselves.
The Armenian character cannot be dismissed with a few hasty generalities. It is doubtful thatanynational character can be so dismissed; and the higher we rise in the scale of organic development, the more variety we find. "Ab uno disce omnes" is an indifferent rule even for the Fijian or the Samoan, but who would apply it to the Englishman or the Frenchman? The Armenian, heir of an old civilization, stands on a plane with the latter, not with the former. The worst Armenians—and naturally they are those oftenest found in foreign countries—show just the faults sure to be engendered in any race, and especially in an astute, intelligent, enterprising race, by centuries of oppression. These are, want of truthfulness and honesty, and greediness of gain. Against these, which may be called the national faults, there are great national virtues to set off—moral purity, sobriety, strong domestic affections, gratitude, fidelity to conviction, industry, and a very remarkable love of learning. The best Armenians—men like Pastor Stepanian—who have cast off the national faults and retain the national virtues, develop a very noble and singularly attractive character; and are besides, in the fullest sense of the word,gentlemen. "The wood is fine in grain, and takes the polish easily."
This deeply suffering race is not faultless—what race everwas, or is, or will be?—but it is emphaticallyworth saving. And it isSTILLin our power to save very many,—starving men,—desolate and hopeless women,—and helpless little children. Should any reader of the foregoing pages desire to bear a hand in this good work—and even those who have little to give may save, or help to save,onewoman oronechild—they may learn how to do it by communicating with the Association of "Friends of Armenia," 47, Victoria Street, Westminster.