I have had occasion to revert to the work of the
accomplished and devoted band of American missionaries
and teachers settled in these districts. In a thousand
ways they are raising the standard of morality, of
intelligence, of education, of material well-being, of
industrial enterprise. Directly or indirectly every
phase of their work is rapidly paving the way for
American commerce. Special stress should be laid upon the
remarkable work of the physicians, ordained or unordained,
who are attached to the various stations. They form a
steadily growing network, dotting the map of Asia Minor at
Cæsarea, Marsovan, Sivas, Adana, Aintab, Mardin, Harpoot,
Bitlis, and Van. At most of these points well-equipped
hospitals are in active operation. From the very nature of
their occupation they come more easily and rapidly into
touch with the Turkish population and quickly gain their
confidence.
Taking all in all, I regard the results following the
foundation of this institution (Euphrates College)
as among the most important and noteworthy secured
by American effort in foreign lands. The whole work
appeals most strongly to one whose chief duty is to
aid and further the entrance of American wares in this
land. I know of no import better adapted to secure the
future commercial supremacy of the United States in
this land of such wonderful potential possibilities
than the introduction of American teachers, of American
educational appliances and books of American methods and ideas.
—PROF. THOMAS H. NORTON, PH. D.,
United States Consul at Harpoot and Smyrna, Turkey.
While those troublous scenes were being enacted, the missionaries
were engaged in preparing and sending out evangelical Christian
literature in the form of the Bible in the vernacular Armenian,
Armeno-Turkish and Greek languages, and by fostering educational
operations. As early as 1836 a school for Armenian girls was opened in
Smyrna. A boarding-school for Armenian boys opened in Bebek in 1840
was so promising that in 1843-44 Secretary Anderson, upon a visit to
Constantinople, recommended that this institution be strengthened. At
that time it was decided to discontinue the special work to the Greeks
and to open a high school for girls at the capital. The purpose of the
seminary at Bebek was to train able and devout young men for the gospel
ministry, that the newly organized churches might have proper leaders.
In 1848 the seminary contained forty-seven students.
In 1847 some Christian literature found its way into Aintab in northern
Syria. During that year and the next, missionary visits were made to
the place. In 1849 Mr. Schneider took up his residence there, and
Aintab became a regular mission station. In the midst of persecution
the work spread with great rapidity. Preachers and colporters were
forbidden by the Armenian primates to visit the neighboring towns, so
evangelical tradesmen began a systematic visitation to outside places,
plying their trade and preaching the gospel. The spirit of intelligent
faith and religious liberty spread in all directions until the entire
region was affected. In 1861 the church in Aintab had nearly three
hundred members and the Sabbath congregation often numbered more than
one thousand souls. The Sabbath-school then had nearly two thousand
members. In 1855 Marash was occupied as a mission station, and these
two places have since been the two central stations of that mission.
For nearly a generation after the separation of the Protestants took
place there was more or less hostile feeling between the two bodies,
although the number of the evangelicals rapidly increased. The
spirit of inquiry was abroad among the Armenians and nothing could
satisfy it but the truth. Travelers into the interior and visitors
to Constantinople from the interior carried this spirit into the
most remote sections of the country. The anathemas which had been
communicated to the churches of the inland towns and cities had
stirred up many questions and aroused alert minds to seek the cause.
On the whole, the evangelical movement was most materially helped
by these rude and bungling endeavors to suppress it by brute force.
Wherever missionaries went they were met by a group of men, naturally
among the most enlightened in all the community, who sought aid in
the interpretation of the Scriptures, and who were eager to receive
literature explaining evangelical truth.
Mission stations all over the country rapidly multiplied, and the
number of Protestant churches increased. In 1860 forty Protestant
churches had been organized, mostly among the Armenians, and twenty-two
stations at which missionaries resided were in full operation. At
nearly all of these stations, schools for boys and, in cases not a few,
schools for girls, had been opened and these were well patronized.
The printing-press was moved from Malta to Smyrna in 1833. The press
always has been and is still one of the most active and effectual
agents for reform in the empire. During the first forty years of the
work, from five to ten million pages of Christian literature were
issued from the press each year, in five different languages.
In no part of the Turkish empire has the work of the missionary been
more difficult than in Syria. Owing to papal supremacy there, which
called to its service both Turkish and French political aid in its
endeavor to thwart the missionaries and the evangelicals, no separate
church of native Christians was organized until 1848 at Beirut, two
years after the formation of the Evangelical Armenian Church at
Constantinople. There was in that field no intellectually and morally
dominant race to receive and extend the gospel as there was in Asia
Minor and the greater part of the Turkish empire, while the races
occupying Syria were for the most part hostile to each other and always
mutually suspicious.
In 1858 direct work for the Bulgarians was begun by opening a station
at Adrianople, which was followed by a station at Philippopolis and
Eski-Zagra within the next two years. The Bulgarians were longing
for political freedom and welcomed the missionaries with their new
literature and education as calculated to strengthen them as a nation.
For fourteen years the work among the Bulgarians was considered a part
of the Armenian mission. In 1872 the European work was set off by
itself as the European Turkey mission, which is almost exclusively for
the Bulgarians. The condition of the old Bulgarian Church was similar
to the Armenian Church, so far as need of reform was concerned.
The churches which were organized in 1846, among those cast out from
the old Gregorian Church, were severely plain and simple in their form
and ritual, as well as in their articles of faith. In the reaction from
the rigid ritualism of the Church from which they had been driven,
these evangelical Christians went to the other extreme, putting the
emphasis of the service upon the sermon. Prevailing conditions demanded
direct positive instruction in Christian living rather than new forms
of worship. Had these people not been rudely excommunicated from the
Church there is no doubt that they would have clung fondly to much if
not all of the rich service of the old Church. Much place was also
given to the reading of the Scriptures in the modern spoken language
of the people and to congregational singing. The people were so eager
for the sermon, and especially in the expository form, that large
numbers who repudiated the name of evangelical, and who were among the
persecutors of the Protestants began to demand that the priests of
the old Church also expound the Scriptures. Few of them were able to
accomplish this with any degree of success. Dr. Goodell published a
volume of sermons in Armenian which were eagerly bought by the priests
and preached by them to their people. Although the evangelicals had
been violently thrust out of the Church, the spirit of reform in
considerable measure remained.
During the first bitter years, when feelings were stirred up and
controversy was rife, there was a wide breach between the Gregorian and
Protestant Churches. After discussions all over the country, extending
to nearly every village of importance, had settled the question that
the modern version of the Bible in the vernacular was the unquestioned
Word of God, there was actually no ground for continued separate
existence. All Armenians accepted the modern Scriptures as the
revelation of God to men and an infallible guide to faith and practise.
Neither did they have any scruples against the Bible being put into the
hands of the people. Hence, as one might expect, the breach between
the old and the new began gradually to heal. The spirit of bitterness,
little by little, passed away until now it does not exist upon the old
grounds which led to the separation.
In many places the Protestant pastors are now asked to speak in the old
churches, and the children of both Gregorian and Protestant parents
meet in the same Christian schools and upon exactly the same footing.
In the theological seminaries of the missions there have been and
now are students who are not Protestants and who are preparing for
ordination as priests in the old Church. Many ecclesiastics of the
Gregorian Church received the major part of their training for that
service in the mission schools. During the last twenty years there
has been little separation from the old Church. The missionaries have
generally exerted their influence against it. Some Gregorians have
tried to keep the controversy alive by claiming that the Protestants
are not loyal to the race, but that charge has been so fully proven
untrue that it is now little used.
In no instance have the missionaries for any length of time been the
pastors of the native churches. At the first the policy was clearly
settled that the only true and effective pastor of an Armenian church
is an Armenian. The missionaries preach, and they have always been
preachers, and some of them of great power, but this is quite different
from being the settled pastor of a church. The rapid increase in the
number of evangelical churches, each one of which demanded its own
native pastor, compelled the missionaries to redouble their efforts to
raise up and train an adequate number of worthy young men for these
high offices. The seminary at Bebek produced men who have left the
stamp of their piety, earnestness and ability upon the reform movement
in Turkey. Some of these men came from the far interior of the country,
and returning became the leaders in the new movement.
This seminary was ultimately moved to Marsovan, while other similar
institutions sprang up at Marash and at Harpoot, in the eastern part
of the country. A similar training-school became necessary also at
Mardin, where the spoken language is Arabic, while in Beirut, Syria, a
large training-school flourished. A whole educational system grew up
out of the necessities of the work. This will be considered later when
discussing the work of education in the empire.
The evangelical Churches were not denominational in any ordinary sense
of that word. Their creed was the Bible in the language of the people
and this was taken as the guide of their life. While the missionaries,
because of their superior knowledge and experience in such matters,
were constantly sought for advice, they did not exercise ecclesiastical
control. These Churches were early advised to form themselves into
Associations or _Unions_, as they were more generally called, for the
purpose of mutual help. One such union was formed in the vicinity of
Constantinople, and later one in Aintab and vicinity and at Harpoot and
elsewhere. In these organizations missionaries could be only honorary
members without a vote. They were composed of pastors and delegates
from the churches, and held an annual meeting, with more frequent
meetings of standing committees with varying functions. In some parts
of the country these unions ordain to the gospel ministry and examine
worthy candidates and grant them licenses to preach. It is not a
Congregational system, neither is it Presbyterian, but it has worked
well in developing native talent and directing it into right channels
of action.
The development and strength in the evangelistic work in Turkey is
due perhaps more to the leadership of a few individuals who seem to
have been sent into the empire at a time most opportune. Dr. William
Goodell, the first missionary of the Board to Constantinople, lived and
labored there for forty-three years, or until 1865. With rare wisdom,
patience and firmness did he direct the work through the period of
fiery persecution and of organization of the Church and the Protestant
community. Men are now there in the work, both missionaries and others,
who were colaborers with him and who have helped to carry out the wise
measures devised by him for the true reform of that people. Time would
fail us to speak of Schneider, Dwight, Thompson and Riggs, of Post and
the Blisses, of Wheeler, Farnsworth and a great multitude besides who
gave their lives to build in the Turkish empire the pure, intelligent
Church of Jesus Christ, to say nothing of the equally faithful and able
company who are still there among perils and difficulties not less
severe, but who know they are doing the Lord’s work, and that they are
in the place where he has called them.
At the present time the nearly two hundred evangelical Protestant
churches in the empire, with some twenty thousand church-members, do
not begin to tell the tale of what has been accomplished. The story
is written in the awakened intellect of all classes and races, in new
conceptions of what Christianity demands of its followers, and in a
changed atmosphere affecting the life and character of nearly all the
youth born in the last generation, and is destined to affect the empire
still more vitally as the years go on. The seed of intelligent belief
and of right living has been sown and it is finding soil in which to
germinate. The fruit thereof shall be for the healing of the nation.