You ask with reference to the situation in Turkey. We have but very
little definite information. Our missionaries of Marsovan have just
come out under compulsion by the Turkish Government and all of the
mission property in Marsoval is in the hands of the Government; also
the same is true of Sivas, except that Miss Graffam and Miss Fowle
were allowed to remain, and in Talas they have taken possession of the
public buildings, but the missionaries at last reports were there,
hoping to be allowed to remain....
Very faithfully yours,
JAMES L. BARTON.
One of the hindrances to the work of still greater progress of
reformation was, and is, the poverty of the Protestant community. The
condition of the Protestant Armenians was very much like that of a
young man falling in love with a pure, virtuous, and noble yet poor
girl. The rash youth, disregarding the opposition of his parents,
married the woman he loved, and on account of this he has been
disinherited. Those who espoused the cause of reformation were driven
out, not only from their homes and employments, but also from the use
of the churches and school-houses, and even were not allowed to bury
their dead in the old cemeteries. It was not very difficult for the
American Board to meet some of the needs of the Protestant community,
while that community was small and its needs few. But by the increase
of the community its needs also multiplied. However, knowing the people
as we do, their poverty was not a great hindrance. For the generous
poor man is richer than the rich miser.
“Many a poor Armenian in the Koodish mountains, many a tattered
villager on the Harpoot plains, used to the suffering of robbery
and inured to want, brings for the support and propagation of the
gospel his poor pittance, more munificent, measured by the sacrificing
devotion of it, than the gifts of princes sounding aloud as they fall
into the treasury. In other parts of the country there are those so
humble that the dwelling of the family would hardly be valued at $25,
who yet bring $25 to help build the house of worship, where they and
their poor neighbors may hear the sound of the gospel.”[103]
The most prolific source of all evil influences and hindrances against
the progress of reformation in the East is the Mohammedan Government.
Prof. Vambery’s words might have been heeded twenty-five or thirty
years ago, and many hundred thousands of lives would have been saved:
“The conviction is inevitable that until the power of Islamism is
broken the true reformation of this land is an impossibility. At whose
door shall we lay the blame of cherishing such a viper? That the
solution of the vexed question of the political _status_ of Turkey
involves great difficulties cannot be denied. But those [the European
powers] that are pleased to preserve the existing state of things,
as a barrier for themselves against the encroachments of an already
overgrown European power, ought to take into consideration the result
of encouraging the continuance of a power at once _so poisonous and so
suicidal_ as that of the waning crescent.”