My purpose is twofold: first to show the American people
the kind of work in which the missionaries in Turkey
are engaged, and second to assure them from personal
observation that these missionaries do not encourage
revolutionists or the revolutionary spirit. I am surer of
nothing than I am of this. If you could see them at their
somewhat thankless tasks you would regard them as the most
consecrated men and women on the planet, as far removed
from fostering rebellion as heaven is from earth, making
the sacrifice of life and of all social and even domestic
relations, and doing it with a cheerfulness which must
command not only our respect but also our admiration.
The price to be paid for the enlightenment of the nation
is very heavy, but these noble men and saintly women are
willing to pay it, and I, for one, feel that my poor life
amounts to nothing in comparison; so with a full heart, a
heart with a big ache in it, I cry, “God bless them!”
The missionaries are the Sir Knights of modern times,
their weapons are no longer swords, but ideas. They
are to be found in all quarters of the globe, and they
are always surrounded by ambushed perils. They are the
representatives of a high civilization and of the best
religious thought of the age, and are the little “leaven”
which in good time is to “leaven the whole lump.” I do not
hesitate to say that they are doing more for the Turkey of
to-day than all the European Powers combined.
—GEORGE H. HEPWORTH in
“Through Armenia on Horseback.”
At the beginning of work in Turkey all classes were suspicious of
the missionaries. Experience with the representatives of the Roman
Catholic and Greek Churches had led the Mohammedans and others to
fear that their errand was not wholly religious. At the same time, it
was impossible for one brought up in the atmosphere of Turkey not to
confound religion with nationality. The American missionaries had one
great advantage, for few even of the educated in Turkey ever heard of
the United States. So there was not much alarm at the prospects of
missionaries from the United States gaining political supremacy in
Turkey. So far as the Turks understood, the country back of them was
without strength or repute. This fact allayed the otherwise inevitable
suspicion that they were political agents.
It required more than fifty years of residence in that country,
accompanied by a life of constant devotion to the interests of the
people, to remove the impression that the missionaries were there for
what they could make out of it. The following conversation, which
actually took place, illustrates fairly well the attitude of inquiry
and doubt. The parties to it were a missionary and an intelligent
Armenian in the interior of the country:
“You must receive a pretty large salary to lead you to leave your home
and friends in America and endure here among us the hardships of this
country.”
“Quite the contrary,” replied the missionary; “I receive what all
American missionaries receive and no more, that is my bare living with
no surplus.”
“Then,” the Armenian quickly replied, “you must expect, after you have
learned the language, to receive some government appointment at a large
salary.”
The missionary answered, “Few missionaries have ever given up
missionary work for a government appointment, and I have never seen
one who would consider such an appointment, or who would remain in the
country at all for diplomatic or consular service.”
“There can be little doubt, then,” said the questioner, “that in your
country the missionary is held in high honor by all the people, so
much so that it is worth all it costs to win it by a period of severe
hardship in a land like this.”
“You are wrong again, my friend,” said the missionary, “for most of the
people in the United States think a missionary is a fool to throw his
life away in a strange and hostile land; and, besides, the missionaries
enter upon the work for life; therefore they have no time left to go
home and enjoy the honors that an admiring people might wish to thrust
upon them.”
“What are you out here for, anyway?” asked the discouraged guesser.
“We missionaries have come out here only to help the people of this
country to establish worthy Christian institutions and to become better
men and women.”
“Surely there is some other reason,” said the man as he walked away.
“Who would ever bring upon himself such hardship and trouble for that?”
The true Christian motive that considers others’ needs ahead of
self-interest was little understood, and it required generations of
missionary labors to bring the people to begin to understand it.
Times of great national distress like war, massacres, famine, and
plague, had given the missionaries unusual opportunity to prove to the
people that they were there, not for their own personal comfort but to
bind up the broken heart and give cheer to the downcast and the dying.
Every added missionary grave, and they dot the country from Arabia to
the Black Sea and from Persia to Salonica, was an added argument which
no Oriental could answer, that the missionaries were there to minister
and not to be ministered unto, and to give even their lives for others.
Through many vicissitudes and misunderstandings and misconceptions the
missionaries have quietly continued their labors until, without doubt,
it would be hard to find an intelligent man of any race or creed in the
empire who does not believe them to be earnest, sincere, altruistic in
their life and work. All classes have learned that in times of trouble
the missionary is their best friend, no matter how much they may have
abused him in times of prosperity. They know that he will always do
what he believes to be for their best good, even though there may be a
difference of judgment as to what is the best good.
In the midst of Oriental duplicity, the missionaries have established
the reputation for speaking the truth. At first this was one of the
severest puzzles to the Turks in the dealings of the missionaries
with the government. They could conceive of no reason for telling
the truth under such circumstances, so they were completely misled.
The missionaries applied to the government, in an interior city, for
permission to erect a schoolhouse. All school buildings were at that
time opposed by the Turkish officials. The governor asked, “For what
is the building to be used?” “A school,” replied the missionary. “What
are you going to keep in it?” asked the governor. “Scholars and
teachers,” was the reply. “Why do you want so large a building?” was
the next question. “Because we are going to have many teachers and
many pupils,” said the missionary. “What are you going to manufacture
there when it is done?” was asked. “Scholars,” was the answer. The
missionary was dismissed and for hours the council discussed the
question. Not a man present believed that the proposed building was to
be a school. They said, “Surely if he were building a school he would
not have acknowledged it; it must indeed be something else.” It was
afterwards learned that they thought the building was to be an armory
for manufacturing guns.
When Dr. Hepworth of the New York Herald took his famous journey
through Armenia in 1896, he was given, by a Turkish governor, a
letter of introduction to one of the American missionaries, Dr. H. N.
Barnum at Harpoot, with the added statement, “He knows more about the
conditions of the interior of Turkey than any living man, and you can
depend absolutely upon what he says.”
There is no class of people so trusted by the Armenians in Turkey,
as well as by all other races, as are the American missionaries. Men
who have been hostile to missionary work bring their daughters to the
missionary boarding-school because, they say, “We know they will be
safe here.” All classes take the word of a missionary as absolutely
true and without question. Money is put into their hands by the people
for safe-keeping or for transmission to some other part of the country
or out of it, without hesitation and without asking for a receipt.
There is no doubt that the Turkish officials, even though for reasons
known to themselves they may oppose the erection of buildings for
school or hospital purposes and hamper the missionaries in their
general evangelistic work, have long since ceased to regard them in
any other light than as men and women of unquestioned integrity and
purity of life. Much testimony might be adduced to show the confidence
that officials repose in individual missionaries. They may not like
the higher educational institutions the missionaries have established
there, which are leading an increasing percentage of the people to
think for themselves, yet they do not now attempt to destroy them or
their influence by making personal charges against the missionaries
themselves.
Many Turkish officials of high rank have, in times of special stress,
sought the counsel of missionaries, who had resided in the country many
years, and who were generally reputed to have a wide knowledge of local
affairs. It is interesting to note that in many instances the counsel
obtained was acted upon, and later sincere gratitude was expressed.
After the Armenian massacre in 1895-96 the Armenian patriarch
at Constantinople called the treasurer of the American Board at
Constantinople and asked him to take complete charge of a considerable
sum of money collected for relief. “For,” said he, “I have no means of
distributing this fund with assurance that it will, in any large part,
reach the needy people, but I know that through the missionaries every
dollar will go to the suffering poor.”
The absolute integrity of the life and dealing of the missionaries
with the people has done perhaps as much in that land of deceit and
dishonesty to commend the simple gospel of Jesus Christ to all classes
as any other single phase of the missionary work. It has come to be
believed that a Christian of the missionary type must be true, honest,
upright, and pure. This has great significance in a land like Turkey.
While Turkey has suffered but little from general famine or from
plagues that have been sweeping in their character, still the
missionaries have been compelled to devote much time and strength
to the distribution of help to the starving and homeless, owing to
oft-repeated political disasters amounting occasionally to open
massacres. These began in 1822 at the time of the Greco-Turkish war
when in Chios it was reported that fully fifty thousand lives were
lost. The next great movement of the kind occurred in the Nestorian
mountains when some ten thousand Armenians and Nestorians were said
to have been put to death. In 1860 in the Lebanon and at Damascus
about the same number of Maronites and Syrians were destroyed by the
Turks and Druses. In 1876 occurred the well remembered Bulgarian
massacres where some ten thousand Bulgarians were reported to have
lost their lives. The last great and concerted movement of this kind
occurred, as we all remember, in 1895-96, which extended from Persia to
Constantinople and in which it is impossible to state with accuracy how
many thousands of Armenians were massacred. The number has been placed
at one hundred thousand, though this is undoubtedly too high.
In addition to these marked cases of violence and murder, the same
process has gone on upon a much smaller scale for the last thirty
years, causing terror, distress, and poverty, and calling for comfort
and assistance. In the last three instances of general massacres
reported above, the missionaries were upon the ground, facing no little
of the peril and hardship with the people, and afterwards acted as
agents for the distribution of relief to those who were left in abject
destitution. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have passed through
their hands for this purpose. With this money they have procured and
distributed food and clothing to the starving and naked, while many
lines of industry were opened to afford means of prolonged self-help.
The missionaries in Turkey have taken the lead in the application of
principles by which, in the distribution of charity, much more can be
accomplished, without impoverishing the recipients, by devising means
whereby the aid received can be earned, at least in part. This same
principle has been also carried out in the support of the large number
of orphans saved from the massacres of 1895.
They have purchased and distributed seed for planting when famine
conditions had exhausted the supply. In severer cases when their cattle
had died or had been taken from them, missionaries have purchased oxen
and loaned them to the farmers for putting in their crops. The policy
of aid practised at all times has been to help the people to help
themselves.
The missionaries in these and other lines of eleemosynary operations
have demonstrated that they are the friends of all without reference
to creed or religion. While these disasters have been terrible to
contemplate and have brought immeasurable hardship and care upon the
missionaries, they have yet opened new opportunities of approach to the
people and have revealed the sincere desire to relieve them in their
supreme distress. All classes have learned to trust the missionaries,
and in times of trouble, all races appeal to them for assistance.