a THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA x-JS ANGELES SSinT' stf"*™ ature. I shall SSSSHIIS ^ \ •^' ■tiifC. ■•p R U-TP JO i i 1 1 / > > 1 1 ! ■1 / i'^ " ^ ') r^ TEN YEAHS ON THE EUPHRATES; i OR, * PEnilTKE MISSIONARY TOLICY ILLUSTRATED. BY REV. C. n. WHEELER, MISSIONARY IN 3SASTEKN TURKEY. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY REV. N. G. CLARK, D.D., COR. SEC. A. B. C. V. M. Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. — Mark xvi. 15. Upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. — Matt, xvi.^8. PtJBLISnED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 1C4 Tkemont St., Boston. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 18G8, by THE AMEKICAN TRACT SOCIETY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. TO MY MOTHER, WHO, FROM MY EARLIEST YEARS, LED ME TO THE PRAYER-MEETING AND THE MONTHLY CONCERT, AND THUS TO CHRLST AND AN INTEREST IN MISSIONS, THEN, IN HER AGE AND WIDOWHOOD, SENT ME TO THE FOREIGN FIELD, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED. 1 Gt G5'--^ INTRODUCTION. The volume liere offered to the Christian public is a record of faith, toil, and success in the mission- ary work. The many who have had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Wheeler will enjoy a more full exhibition of the work in which he has been en- gaged than it was possible for him to give in a sin- gle address. The larger number who have not heard him will gladly welcome from his pen such an account of the actual method pursued and the progress made in the evangelization of eastern Turkey. One of the greatest wants of our churches is a clear, definite notion of the missionary work. To many minds the evangelization of the world is so nearly impossible — impossible at least within any limited period — as to have but slight hold upon their Christian sympathies. To labor for it is a duty, to be sure, because commanded by our Lord, V VI INTR O D UCTION. and its realization some day is a proper object of faitli and prayer, because promised in revelation ; but, as compared with the more immediate calls to Christian effort at home, it is too remote to stir the heart, and prompt to earnest, prayerful labor and sacrifice to brincf it about. This little volume will do much to supply this want. It sets forth by precept and abundant illus- tration the object and method of the missionary enterprise. It is an earnest, practical work, by an earnest, practical man. It presents just those facts which a practical man wants to know, because he is enabled by them to see just what the work is, how it is done, and to be done, in order to the evangelization of the world. No thoughtful man can rise from its perusal without new faith in the power of the gospel, and new hope of its speedy and final triumph. The problem is no longer im- practicable or impossible, or remote of solution. The economy of men and means here illustrated will be a surprise even to most who claim to be familiar with the history of missions ; while the results attained will furnish most unmistakable evidence of the presence and power of our Lord fulfilling the promise coupled with his last com- mand. INTRODUCTION. VU In this view, this volume is a most valuable con- tribution to the current missiouaiy literature of the time. It is a full, faithful exhibition of the apostolic method of conducting missions. It showa that the method of the apostles is the true method for our time; that the object of the missionary en- terprise is not to introduce civilization, to Anglicize or Americanize other nations, not to transfer the entire system of civilization and culture which the gospel has developed among us, but to introduce the gospel itself, as the divinely-appointed means for the regeneration of all nations. It is then to be left to work out its le<2;itimate results in the social and moral elevation of those who receive it, in accordance with their peculiar intellectual and moral endowments. The essential thing to be ac- complished by missionary labor is "to plant the Christian church, and to set its members at work for Cln-ist." "Men from America and England," says our au- thor, " can never do all the Christian work neces- sary to tlie complete evangelization of the heathen world. The churches of Asia, Africa, and the islands of the sea, must, and can, and will do it, if we only establish them with this end in view." "Whatever else we may do, however many in- Vni INTRODUCTION. dividual souls we may save, our missionary worls will be little, if any, better than a failure, if we fail to plant such cliurclies. In saying that the work is a failure, I do not mean that those who give to the different nations the Bible in their own tonijues make a failure. Tins work may be well, nobly done, and much other incidental good be accom- plished.' That Bible may be put into the hands of many persons, and general knowledge of Chris- tian duty be disseminated, which, if wisely directed to its proper ends, would result in still greater good ; but in the failure to secure the great, the sin- gle ultimate aim of missionary efforts, — the plant- ing of an independent, self-sustaining, self-propa- gating Christianity, — these incidental benefits can no more be cited as evidence of success than could the roads made and the canals dug by our armies in the South be adduced as evidence of success, if those armies had failed to put down the rebellion." It is the exhibition of this method in all its practical details, clearly apprehended and steadily pursued through mary trials and difficulties, for a period of ten years, and vindicated at last by re- markable successes, that gives such a value to this volume at the present time. To evangelize a region of country larger than INTRODUCTION. IX the State of Massachusetts, covered with huridrecls of villages and cities, with a population of from four to five hundred thousand souls, speaking three different languages, — this was the work undertaken by three married missionaries, assisted a part of the time by one single lady in a female boarding- school. They entered upon it in humble reliance upon Bible truth, the blessing of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of their great Leader. They made Harpoot the base of their operations ; selected fit centers for influence amid the surrounding villa- ges, set up schools, and put young men of promise upon special training to become preachers and teachers, gathered believers into churches, ordained jiastors over them, and taught the people to sup- port their own Christian institutions, and to engage vigorously in the Avork of home evangelization ; till now, with the addition of the Arabkir field, their work is represented by thirteen churches, — six of them entirely independent, — by sixty-six towns and cities in which the gospel is preaclied, by seventy-eight native preachers and pastors, by thousands of men and women reading the word of God in their own language, and by thousands more of children and youth gathered into schools ; in a word, by the foundations of a Christ! in civilization X INTRODUCTION. laid upon a sure basis in the affections of an ear- nest, self-S!.crificing, Christian community. In a few years, when the gospel shall have been intro- duced into about one-twelfth of the villages and cities of the country, and enough light-centers have been set up to secure, Avith the divine bless- ing, the complete success of the Christian work through the piety and zeal of the native churches, the missionaries may leave this field for the " re- gions beyond." Tlie pecuniary expenditure for the carrying on of this work, for the salaries of missionaries, for aid in the support of native preach- ers and pastors, in church-building, and in schools, including the partial support of pupils in the two seminaries, now numbering about ninety pupils, has been, upon the average, a little short of six thousand dollars a year! Yet here were men enough and money enough for the prosecution of the Avork. Such is the economy, as to men and means, of the apostolic method here revived. In accordance Avitli this method, the eastern Turkey Mission ask for but twelve men, to occupy four centers, in order to the evangelization of a region four times the size of the State of New York, with a population of three millions or more. In accord- anc3 Avitli this method, the advance of the mis- INTRODUCTION. XI siojaiy work during the last ten years in western Asia, mostly in the Armenian Missions, is marked by the following figures : native pastors increased from five to thirty-four; native churches from thirty-four to sixty-seven ; church-members from one thousand one hundred and twenty-seven to three thousand two hundred and forty-eight ; and con- tributions from five hundred dollars to over twelve thousand dollars j)er year. Degraded a'nd giVen over to superstition as the people have been, yet these Missions among nomi- nal Christians have liad a great advantage over those in purely heathen lands, in consequence of the belief in one God and in the Scriptures. The object and the method of missionary eifort are everywhere the same, however, as illustrated by apostolic example, whether in the synagogues of the Jews or amid heathen temples. It is by such a method that the evangelization of the world becomes a possible problem for tlie present generation of Christians. In view of the preparation made during the last fifty years, the acquaintance gained with tlie peculiarities of dif- ferent countries and nations, the languages mas- tered, the Scrijitures translated, tlie prejudices overcome, the transfonning power of the gospel XII INTRODUCTION. illustratecl so widely by the lives of missioiifriea and of native Christians ; and in view of the won- derful providences by which the world is now open to Christian effort, and made one by easy intei*- commnnication, and bound together by commercial intercourse, the lessons of this volume have a spe- cial significance ; they open up to the Christian church the solemn duty and the high pi-ivilege of a world's evangelization. The example of Harpoot maj^ seem to be excep- tional. It may be so to some extent in the pecu- liar character of the men there, working harmoni- ously together, vmlike, but not unequal, supple- mentincf each the others. An interior station has some advantages over those exposed to the de- nioralizing influences of too early contact with civ- ilization without the gospel. It is exceptional, too, in the fact that this station is almost the only one that has had an adequate number of men to carry on the work in its many details, and to exercise the proper superintendence of the native agency. One or two men could not have done it ; and yet it is sad to see how often in the past, and now also, one or two men are left to attempt it j and, if pos- sible, it is yet more sad to see other centei-s of equal promise left unoccupied, when such immense INTR OD UCTION. XIH results to the kingdom of Christ seem in waiting as the reward of missionary labor. But, aside from these general considerations, this work will be of great value and interest to all mis- sionaries, and to all who contemplate engaging in the missionary work. It is rich in suggestions, not only of the true method of labor, but of practical experience in dealing with all classes of persons, and not least with native Christians, — in developing among a people, ground down by political and ec- clesiastical oppression, a spirit of manly indepen- dence, in bringing them to a willing and hearty support of their own institutions, and to engaging in Christian labor for those about them. To such, the chapters on " The Work to be done," " The Na- tive Ministry," " The Seminaries," " The Position of the Churches and Pastors," will be of special inter- est. The whole volume, in short, may well become a "vade mecum" to every missionary candidate, and will hardly fail of furnishing useful hints to the tried veteran in the service. The brief survey of the missions in western Asia, the historical and geographical details of the different fields, will suffice to give the general reader an accurate conception of the condition and prospects of the Christian work in this part of the globe, now the center of so much poUtical interest. XIV INTRODUCTION. The maps and the ilhistrations give increased defi- niteness to the graphic descriptions of the writer. The fresh incidents of missionary life, the occa- sional side references to customs at home, the keen insight into chai'acter, the warm glow of an ear- nest Christian spirit thoroughly devoted to this great work, but, more than all, the record of success, of independent, self-supj^orting Christian churches, of finished work, as the fruit of these ten years of faith and toil, of patient continuance in well-doing amid hoj^es sometimes disappointed, amid the ingratitude and slowness of heart of some, and the loving faith and cheerful sacrifices of others, — all these varied elements combine to make this an attractive volume to all who love the cause of Christ and the progress of his kingdom. Possibly the story of the sacrifices which the native Christians of eastern Turkey are willing to make for Him they have so recently learned to love may quicken the faith of believers at home, inspire new hope, and prompt to greater efibrt to extend the blessings of the gospel to all mankin i. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. MISSIONS IN TURKEY AND PERSIA, Purpose of the book — "American Board" — Annual meeting!? of missions— T/ie Syriq Mission — 'Edncntion — Mission to Central Turkey — Language — Apostolic policy — Mission to Western Tur- ;te(/ — Stations — Languages — The press — Effort to make the churches self-supporting — Dilliculties — 3Iodern crusaders — JVes- tor/a« J//ss;o)i — :Mountain Nestorians — Bader Khan Bey — The Female Seminary- Amadia and Mosul — Missionary graves — Mission to Eastern Turkey — Nineveh — Babylon — Ur of the Chaldees — Mardin — Diarbekir — Mr. Walker's grave — Labors — Bitlis — Van- Erzroom — Harpoot. 15 CHAPTER II. EASTERN TURKEY — DIVISIONS AND RACES — HARPOOT MISSION-FIELD. Geography of the country — Mesopotamia — Assyria — Battle-field — Armenian king Abgar, and Jesus — Gregory the '•Illuminator" — Boundaries of Armenia — Koordistan — Surface, climate, and pro- ductions— Ararat— "A little wine "—Mingled population— Arabs— Yezidees — Ivoords — Kizzlebashes — Dada — I'anthoism — G retks — Hypocrisy — Turks — Cretan war —The "sick man "—Turkish toleration, and Russian and G reek intolerance — Mohammedanism and Mars' Hill— Nominal Christians- Sects — ^rmewjans- Ori- gin _ History — Martyrs — Character — Reverence for the Scrip- tures— l-'itness to be nii.*sionaries— Want of stability — Mission- aries in Harpoot— The field — Eden- Position and scenery of Harpoot — Principal cities of the district— Gospel in advance of roads 38 XV XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. THE WORK TO BE DONE. Little chi)l and heathen mother — Work of missions not alms- giving — Paul — Dangers — Free pills and gospel — Spoiled church and discouraged missionary — "Poor helpers'" salaries — The gospel ministry cheaper than that of false systems — Godliness gain — A "free" gospel not valued — Pastorless church — Harpoot — The subscription-paper — Clamor silenced — The man in search of a "cheap religion " — The deceived man — Professed friends hinder- ing the missionary work — Niggardly Christians poor pillars in the church — Schools and seminaries -not introductory to the gospel, but secured as a fruit of evangelization — The gospel a power of itself — Leaven, not bread — Not a system, but a systematizer — Es- sentials and non-essentials — Missionaries to plant the Christian Church — The rebellion to be put down 68 CHAPTER IV. PASTORS, SELF-SUPPORT, SELF-GOVERNMENT, THE churches' threefold CORD. Apostolic example — Paul, Titus, Timothy — " Ordain elders in every church" — Harpoot church — Seven years' struggle — Missionary pastors not to be found — Not lit — Not supported — Eight of the churches to furnish their own ministry — Each church to choose its mon pastor — The Perch enj "call" — The lot cast — salaries of pas- tors — Missionary aid in supporting — The churches independent — They and their pastors "commended to the Lord" and let alone — Communion etiquette — Faith and practice — Ephesian elders — Cretans — Hard work in Harpoot — 3Iethods of action — Added territory and churches — "Christ sent us not to baptize, but to preach the gospel " — The Malatia church begging the sac- raments — " The pretended cripple " — Missionaries 'strength — to what given 92 CHAPTER V. THE TRUTH READ. First works — Ignorance of the people — Missionary pastors — Paid women whipped into reading — Results — "Little teachers" — Schools — Expense — Statistics — Armenian schools — Book sales — Power of the Bible— "Thief Maghak"—Najaran — The men CONTEXTS. XVH beaten — Korpeli — Osman Bpy and the honest tenant — Kcv<)rk Dashjian and the borrowed Uib'.e — A profligate saved — " You do the preaching, I'll take the beatings " — The enraged choolgee and bis primer — The Perchenj teacher and his Bible — Church formed — Home-missionary society— Hooeli — "O Lord, give us open doors and hearts"— The disobedient mob — Chapel built — Tlie Bible-laden donkey 113 CHAPTER VI. THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. Primitive preachers — Paul's preaching a model for the missionary — " Do you know how to read? " — The missionary a map-making pioneer — Hats and audiences — No broad aisle — "Miserable sin- ner and not ashamed to own it" — " Thou art the man" — The repentant thief— The law preached — No motto-sermons — Order of Sabbath services in Harpoot — Languages — Congregational singing — Chapels — How built — Expense — No pews — Dedi- cated to God — Evangelization there and at home — "Free churches." "'^3 CHAPTER VII. THE NATIVE MINISTRY — HARPOOT SEMINARY. The difficult problem — Churches to furnish their own ministry — Where to be educated — Plan of Harpoot Seminary — Tenrts of admission — Study and labor united — Missionary superintendence in winter — Graduation — Licensure — Ordination — Seminary studies — Systematic theology — I'reaching — What is a good ser- mon? — Care in sseli'ctinrj men — Hirelings rejected — Care in sup- porting men — Salaries — The plot — "Can't you cast that care too on .Jesus? " — "I wonder the earth didn't swallow me up " — Pecuniary matters carried to Jesus — Care in educating men — The Bible as a teacher — Pupils not overeducated — Trained in their own vernacular — No English — Syria High School — Bebek — No smoking — Ministerial dignity overestimated — The cure — Statistics of seminary — Pr;ispective transfer to the care of tlie churches — Garabed I'ilibosian — His letter 1G3 CHAPTER VIII. IIARI'OOT FEMALE SEMINARY. No unmarried niou ordained — Object of the seminary — Nursery — XVIII CONTENTS. The Bible the cliief text-book — The blundering readers —Day pupils — Buyiug tickets and books — The two weeping candidates — Tublic interest excited — Teachers prepared — Girlsas boarding pupils — Terms of admission — I'rotestants at a premium in the matrimonial market — Missionary teachers not fur mere com- mon schools — Statistics of seminary — Graduation — Diplomas — Christian spirit of pupils — Kohar— Her evangelistic labors — "The Lord has been with us all the time" — Sabbath labor of pu- pils in villages — Letter from Miss West — The young widows — The Mardin woman — The " Jlothers' Association " — Bible and theology lessons — "God's plan of employing man" — All made easy — Missionaries agreed — Need of a female seminary in Mar- din — Proposed seminary of the churches — Kohar's contribution — Letter from Miss West — Closing exercises of seminary in 18G7 — " Che\ving the cud " — Christ's " diplomas " — The live foreign missionaries — The gifts — The "reunion" — Singing in five lan- guages— The " good-bye." 186 CHAPTER IX. FRUITS. Arabs, Koords, and Turks — Fanaticism gone — Crescent and cross — Armenians — I'riesthood despised — Monasteries impoverished — Papists and the Bible — Preachers and preaching — The feeble brother — "Send us a senior, if you please" — Moral refirm — The quarrelsome women — Temperance — " Woman's rights " se- cured — " All the missionaries' wives angels " — Converts — Sta- tistics of churches — Churches in prospect — Geghi Kasabah — Sarkis and his Testament — Pala and the twelve women — The "devout and honorable women" of Choonkoosh — Women's plastering-bee — " Harpoot Evangelical Union " organized — Con- stitution — Its work — Education Society — Bible societies — "Why don't you feed your donkey?" — Home missions — The female evangelist of Harpoot — Foreign missions — Young man in search of light — The interesting monthly concert — The impa- tient little boys of Diarbekir 222 CHAPTER X. TITHE-GIVING — REVIVAL. Plan of campaign — Hoh — The donkey's food — The hungry preachet The gospel put upon its own merits— Bhepik — The sluggish CONTENTS. XIX pastor — Blind " John Concordance " — " Bring ye all the tithes " — Deep poverty — The Lord's store-house — i'astor recalled — Meeting of Evangelical Union — Means of securing a revival — Saints in biographies — Discussions — llesolution on tithe-gi viiig — Hulakegh — The arrow in the mark — Collectors dispensed with — The scoured cents — The converted tithe-giver — The windows of heaven opened — The converted infidel — "lam that cursed fig-tree" — Kestitution made — The awakened blasphemer — Tlie cross too heavy — The converted Unitarian — Characteristics of the revival — Work of the "feeble" brethren- The city moved — Prayer-meetings — Ilooeli — The crowded chapel — Scor- ners learning to pray — The Bible adding a story to the houses — The seven aged widows — Pride rebuked and humbled — The im- patient women — The Pharisee converted in answer to prayer — Christians learning to pray — Danger escaped. . . . 248 CHAPTER XI. POSITION OF THE CHURCHES AND PASTORS. The two committees — Independence and self-support united — Un- called-for anxiety — The rejected motion — The loved timber — " Bless the Lord for that word" — The circular — " Subjection to the beneficence of others!" — The Koordish work — "May the Lord give you a hapjiy new year" — Covetousness not yet all gone — Beggars here at homo ! — Enthusiastic liberality not piety — Source of our joy — The day dawning — Ouly one-fourteenth of the cities and villages to be occupied by us — One missionary to one-fourth of a million — Medical missionaries' work — Vase of flowers and banyan tree — Three resolutions — Trouble may come — Hours of discouragement — Causes of gratitude — Noble band of preachers — Pentecostal blessings anticipated — Minot's Ledge light-house — Mist on Harpoot plain — Sun of Righteousness arisen =* ... 283 CHAPTER XII. THE FOUR WANTS. All to help — Popular ignorance of missions — Missionary publica- tions not read — iloiitlily concert neglected — First way of help- ing— Help by prayer — Praying by " substitutes " — God to ba "inquired of" — Tlie " jjrayer-list " — Third mode of helphig — Selfish professors to be set at work — Look out for number one — XX CONTENTS. Sleeping-car religion —Fourth want— Tiie polyglot— " He's not a bit of a gentleman " — " Tray always " — Common sense needed — The fiistidious man — Knowledge of human nature — Courage and firmness of purpose — The victim of conservative timidity — Missionary ditching and changing base — " Consecrated "gener- als — The missionary campaign — "First-class" work — Urgent call for men — The American drawing-room — ( atholicaud lagan invaders — The Chinese to be evangelized a< /.ome-- James, and the Jerusalem pastorate — Laborers to seek work, notplace — Mis- sions not to convert, h\it evangelize the world — Results seen — Missionary engineering — Call for men — Some unable to sing in heaven 306 A few words on the pronunciation of proper names will aid tho reader. a as in father ; e. g., Adana, Harpoot, Van, Marsovan. ^ as a in lady ; i. e., a without the vanish or ee sound which is heard when a is pronounced separately. ias in machine; e.g., Sivas, pronounced See-vas; Shtipik, Shar peek ; Mardin, Mar-deen. fi as 00 ; e. g., Mosul, pronounced Mo-sool. ai as i in fine; e. g., Hain6, Hi-na. eh as k; as, KOrpeh, K6r-pa. a following / is pronounced separately ; e. g., Amadia, A-ma-dee-a; Sophia, So-foe-a ; Malatia, Tila-la-tee-a ; Diarbekir, Dee-ar-bek-eer. eu has the sound of m in further ; e. g., Pashaeunk. gh as a guttural, g hard ; e. g., Aghansi, pronounced A-gan-soe. Gh in Eski Zaghra is silent. g is uniformly hard ; e. g., Egin. ch as in chain, e. g., Chermook, Choonkoosh. hh like the guttural German ch. If the k be silent and the 't pro- nounced with a strong aspiration, it is very nearly correct ; e. g., Khanoos, Ua-noos ; Ivharpoot, Ilar-poot, jud now so spelled. TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. oj«=:o^ CHAPTER I. MISSIOJ^S IN TURKEY AND PERSIA. ^OULD that " mine adversary " might have the weariness, and perhaps also &fQ)a) the reproach, of writing this book, and "^ leave to me the more congenial employ- ment of meeting the friends of Missions face to face, and rehearsing what God, by his Word and Spirit, has been doing in tlie field commit- ted to my associates and myself. But the interest manifested by many audiences in a part of the story, as told by word of mouth, has led me to feel that a more full narration by the pen would be interesting and profitable, especially among that great majority whom no verbal account can reach. Hence this book, 15 16 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. the purpose of which is sufficiently indicated by the title-page. I have not the time, the knowledge, nor the disposition to attempt a history of the missionary work in Turkey, from the day when those noble and honored pioneers, Messrs. Fiske, Parsons, Smith, Dwight, Goodell, and their associates, opened the missionary campaign in Syria and western Turkey. That labor I leave to other and abler liands, and shall confine myself chiefly to tlie more limited district i]i which my im- mediate associates' and myself have labored. A glance at the whole field will, however, give a more definite idea of this particular portion of it and of the work which is going on both there and here. If the pronoun "I" occur quite frequently, it will be remembered that the story is necessarily to a great extent one of personal reminiscences, and that any at- tempt to eliminate this element and to speak in the third person would only result in mak- ing the narration modestly formal, if not dull, in place of being more vivid and lifelike. The mission-field occupied by tlie American MISSIONS /jV turkey AN^D PERSIA. 17 Board * in Turkey *aiul Persia has been geo- graphically divided at different times to suit the convenience of the missionaries occupying the different stations, who, or at least a part of them, are obliged to meet once a year to con- sult upon the plans and measures for the ensu- ing year, and to agree upon the amount of money which shall be asked from the Board for carrying out their plans. Since Turkey, with here and there an unimportant exception, has 110 railroads nor even carriage roads, and loco- motion must be slowly and laboriously effected u[)on the backs of camels, horses, mules, or donkeys, the territory occupied must be quite minutely divided, in order to prevent too great an expenditure of time, money, and strength in reaching the place of annual meeting. At present, the divisions are five. The terri- tory lying along the eastern shore of the Med- iterranean from 33° to 35° north latitude, and embracing the cities Beirut, Sidon, Tripoli, * This term, or the term " Board," wherever used in this volume, applies to the " American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- Bions," whicli is the organ of the Congregational and New School I'resbyterian Churches. 18 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. and others, is called the " Syria Mission." The language used in tliis Mission is Arabic, in which the entire Bible, and other religious books, have been given to the people. It is, however, a discouraging fact that, while this mission-field has been occupied more than two- score years, during which time much has been done for education by establishing numerous schools, and at length a seminary, and a col- lege* of the higliest grade, yet, owing to un- toward circumstances, little, if anything, has been done in the establisliment of independent, living Christian churches ; and the church in Beirut, organized in 1848, is still witliout a pastor of its own. It is, on the other hand, encouraging to know that some of our brethren there are beginning to feel that this state of things must not longer exist. Passing northward, to the territory lying about the gulf of Scanderoon, and embracing the cities of Antioch, Adana, Aintab, Marash, and Oorfa (Ur of the Chaldees), we enter the * This college, which is at Beirut, is not under missi jnary control, nor supported by funds of the American Board. MISSWXS I-V TURKEY IND PERSIA. 19 " Mission to Central Tnrkej," so called from its somewhat central location in the empire. Here our hearts are cheered at meeting a peo- ple, who, exiles from Armenia, tlie home of their fathers, and having for tlie most part lost their national language and adopted the Turk- ish, the language of their Moslem conquerors and oppressors, are in their lonely exile, as were the captive sorrowing Jews in Babylon, more susceptible of religious impressions, and more ready to give heed to divine admonitions, nthan are the haughty Arabic-speaking popula- tions to tlie south of them. Happily, all the missionaries here have given due weight to the example of the first foreign Christian missionaries, who went from Antioch in the southern, to do their missionary work in the north-western, part of this present missionary field, and, in placing the church of God in its completeness foremost, have re- ceived the seal of divine approval in a truly spiritual work, and over the hundreds of con- verts whom the Master has hor.ored them -to gather into churches have had the pleasure of 20 TJiN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. putting pastors who seem to be men chosen of God to be overseers of his flock. It is to be devoutly hoped that, having so far imitated their great exemplar, the chosen apostle to the Gentiles, our brethren will be bold enough to follow him to the end, to " commend to the Lord " the clmrches which they plant, and, ex- cept so far as apostolic counsel may be needed and accepted, to leave them alone to manage their own ecclesiastical affairs in their own way,* looking, as the churches of every land wln'ch are worthy of the name must look, to' Christ alone as their guide and ruler. The territory lying to the north-west of this Central Mission, and including the larger part of Asia Minor, and that portion of Tur- key in Europe lying south of the Balkan Mountains, is called the " Mission to Western Turkey." In this mission, Sophia, Adriauople, Philippopolis, Eski-zaghra, and Constantinople, in European Turkey, and Smyrna, Broosa, Nic- omedia, Marsovan, Sivas, and Caesarea, in Tur- * This expression is used in no denominational sense, since all Protestant churches do this, or at least profess to. MISSIOXS ly TURKEY AND PERSIA. 21 key ill Asia, are occupied by missionaries of the Board. The languages here used are • chiefly three : the Bulgarian, among the peo- ple of that name in the first four cities men- tioned, the Armenian, among a portion of the Armenians, and the Turkish, among the mass of the people, including Armenians and Bulgari- ans, as well as Turks and Greeks and the other numerous races which make up that strange conglomerate, the population of Turkey. From the mission press in Constantinople, Dr. Riggs has given to the Armenians of northern and eastern Turkey an admirable translation of the Bible in their own tongue, and entered upon the same work for the Bulgarians in their lan- guage. Dr. Goodcll, previous to his death, gave to the Armenians of the Central Mis- sion and elsewhere an Armeno-Turkish Bible, that is, in the Turkish language, printed in the Armenian character, and Dr. Schauffler does the same for the Turks, Ijy revising the trans- lation which has been made in their 'ongue, the Arabo-Turkish. From the same press has also been issued 22 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. the Grseco-Tiirkish Bible, and the four gospels in Koormangie Koordish, using the Armenian alphabet. This is probably the only book ever printed in that language, which is used not only by a large portion of the Koords, but also by many thousands of Armenians, Turks, Yez- idees, Jacobites, and Ncstorians in Koordistan, the eastern portion of Turkey in Asia. From this same press have gone forth many thousands of copies of such books as The Saint's Rest, Pilgrim's Progress, Doddridge's Rise and Progress, Flavel on Keeping the Heart, Mary Lothrop, Work of the Holy Spirit, Nelson's Cause and Cure of Infidelity, James's Anxious Inquirer, Tract Primer, Hymn Books, etc., also thousands of tracts in various languages and on various subjects, and semi-monthly papers in Armenian and Armeno-Turkish. An earnest effort, which we hope will also be persistent and successful, is now being made to throw upon the churches in this mission the support of their own pastors, as well as to give pastors to those still without them. In this hard task, made harder by the opposition of MISSIONS ly TURKEY AND PERSIA. 23 certain native preachers, who, having been wrongly educated, and too long supported from the Board's treasury, are now unwilling to de- pend upon their own people for support, our brethren need the hearty support, tlie sympa- thy, and the prayers, of all the friends of mis- sions. While those who' labor in the missionary work at Beirut, Smyrna, Constantinople, and other cities along the coast, where the people come more into contact with the outside world, enjoy one advantage in the greater develop- ment of manly independence among the people, giving greater stability to the purposes and character of converts, this advantage is proba- bly more tlian countcrl)alanccd by the perni- cious influence whicii that same outside world too often exerts, even when it bears the name of Christian, and sometimes even the distinct- ive title of evangelical. It is a sad fact that some Christians, and even some Christian min- isters, who follow the fashionable crowd of crusaders to the Orient and the " Holy Land," sometimes seem to leave their own holiness be- hind tliem quite as really, if not as flagrantly, 24 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. as did some of their knightly predecessors of the middle ages. Though guilty of no positive immorality, they sometimes make the impres- sion upon the people that they are far from being the saintly men they have been supposed to bo, — far, at least, from having that deep, practical interest in the salvation of men, and in the speedy and complete success of the mis- sionary work, which might rightfully be ex- pected. When to the influence of some such as these is added that of the careless pleasure-seekers who visit the Orient because it is fashionable, and because it is a convenient way of spending money and killing time, it can be seen that the missionaries who labor upon the coast not only have a pleasure which we in the interior do not, in seeing travelers from Christian Europe and America, but that, in })lanting truly Chris- tian churches, they meet with some difficulties which are mostly unknown to us. Their posi- tion is specially trying when, as is sometimes the case, travelers lend a ready ear to the com- plaints of dissatisfied helpers and others, and MISSIONS ly TURKEY AND PERSIA. 25 thus increase the existing prejudice against the missionaries both there and at liome. Said one of these travelers to me on board a steamer a few weeks since, " Foreign missions are all a humbug ; and missionaries only go out to have a comfortable time. I've been in China and Japan, and seen for myself, and I know. My friends have been accustomed to give for the cause, but I am going home to persuade them to stop, and to give for home missions." How many visits of such travelers as this would be required to undo the work of a missionary in Jedo, Pckin, or Constantinople ? We, at least, , amid the primitive darkness and sin of our mission-field, far off from the route of mercan- tile and fashionable travel, console ourselves with the thought, that, while deprived of an occasional angel's visit from a warm-hearted Christian brother from the home-land, we are also delivered from those trials with which other comers are sure to sandwich the food which the angels bring. Taking a steamer from Constantinople up the Bosphorus and along the southern shore of the 26 TEN YEAnS ON THE EUPHRATES. Black Sea to Trebizond, and thence making a long overland journey to Oroomiah in Persia, we reach the center of the " Nestorian Mission," whose territory lies partly in Persia and partly in Turkey. The Persian Nestorians live almost entirely upon the rich plain which stretches from north to south between Oroomiah Lake and the mountain range on the west. In the moun- tains, which are mostly within the limits of Turkey, live the mountain Nestorians, inter- mingled with their hereditary enemies, the Koords. Amid these lofty ranges was the home of Bader Khan Bey, that terrible Koor- disli chieftain who in 1846 massacred such num- bers of tlie poor Nestorians. Age after age the fierce hordes of barbarian conquerors swept past from Tartary, and successively overran Asia Minor; but they tried in vain to sxibdue the brave Nestorians, and were only daslicd and broken against the crags of their mountain homes, till Bader Khan Bey first treacherously slaughtered the Nestorians and then was him- self attacked and subdued by the Turks. These now hold precarious sway over all the region * JlJf.SSIOXS /iV TURKEY AND PERSIA. 27 and that remnant of his people whom, like the Waldenses among the Alps, God for centuries hid in safety and comparative purity of faitli and practice among the craggy mountains, are. in chastisement for their more modern defec- tion and sin, compelled to serve the Turk. Tlie number of the Nestorians has generally been very much overestimated, some writers even talking of hundreds of thousands. They do not probably exceed seventy thousand ; and a recent estimate by one of the younger mission- aries makes those on the plain twenty thousand, and those in the mountains not over thirty-five thousand. It is cause for thankfulness that the labors of the able and devoted band of mission- aries who since 1834 have toiled, and many of them laid down their lives for this people, have been so richly blessed in bringing scores and hundreds to a knowledge of Christ.* It is, at * It is especially gratifying to see the impression which Miss Fisk and Miss Rice, of the Female Seminary, — the former of whom is now ill lioaven, — have made on the women under their training. The graduates of that seminary are evorywliere a distinct class, tlie difl'er- ence in character between them and those around them being ajipar* ont evtui to one who, like myself, can not speak their language. 3 28 TEN YEAnS ON THE EUPHRATES. the same time, painful to know that, owing to a variety of luitoward influences, but little progress has been m'ade in planting Christian institutions supported and controlled by the people, tlie converts still receiving the com- munion from missionary hands. Says one of tlieir missionaries, " The poor people can bear adversity better than prosperity. Wc arc fail- ing in planting the gospel among them in any form that will stand by its own hold. Souls are saved, and not a few, but anything more seems to be a failure." Another of the missionaries describes the monntain Nestori- ans as " lawless, belligerent, predatory, and vagrant," and as " less ready to receive the gos- pel than has been supposed." The fact seems to be that, since, the days of Dr. Grant, and his romantic and heroic efforts for " the lost tribes of Israel," tliese mountains of Koordistan have been clothed by the churches in rainbow-lmes, which a great expense of missionary money and life has hardly yet dissipated, except to the eyes of the practical men on the ground. The plan of occupying and evangelizing those mountains, MTSSIOXS I.y TURKEY AND r ERST A. 29 whose impenetrable snows of winter and mala- rious rice-fields of summer render their fastnes- ses inaccessible or unsafe to the missionary ex- cept during two months of spring and two of autumn, has now been changed, and Amadia is no longer looked to as a prospective station and grave for devoted men and women who are ready to die, but ought, if permitted, to live to labor for Christ. With Amadia passes also Mosul from the list of stations to be occupied permanently by mis- sionaries, since it was as a base of operations for Amadia and the mountain Nestorians that this city was first occupied by missionaries, ratlier than, as now, by a native laborer. As we look upon the scattered graves of Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, Drs. Grant and Lobdell, Mr. Hinsdale, Mrs. Laurie, the first and the second Mrs. 'Wil- liams, and Mrs. Marsh, and think of these lives as the price of a " base for Amadia," we can only call to mind other Christian heroes, wlio fell in impracticable attempts to enter Richmond from a wrong base, and console ourselves with the reflection that God chooses his own time and 30 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. way for taking home those whom he calls from their finished earthly work to higher service in heaven. And now we are on the banks of the Tigris, and within the limits of the fifth and last Mission, — that to "Eastern Tm-key," which was con- stituted by a union of what was formerly known as the " Assyrian Mission " with the eastern sta- tions of what was then called the " Northern Armenian Mission," the remainder of which is now known as the " Mission to Western Tur- key." On the eastern bank of the Tigris, op- posite the city of Mosul, are the mounds which cover the ruins of Nineveh, that " exceedino; great city of three days' journey," whose politi- cal life Jonali was sent to prolong for a brief season. The oriental legend that the fish im- proved the three days in taking tlie propliet around the continent of Africa, and that he at length "vomited him out" upon the banks of the Tigris opposite the city, where God said to him, " Go unto Nineveh and preach," does not so evidently conflict with the text as do some ^fTssloys /iv turkey and Persia. 31 so-called evangelical ways of explaining the story. Some two luuidred miles to the south, upon the banks of the Euphrates, lie the desolations of Babylon, swept, according to the word of the Lord, " with the besom of destruction," and made " a possession for the bittern, and pools of water." To the south-west, west, and north- west stretch away the fertile plains of Mesopo- tamia, now almost entirely desolate, and given up to ranging robber Arabs. Some three hun- dred miles distant, a little north of west, is Oorfa (Ur of the Chaldees), Abraham's city, which is now the most eastern station of the Mission to Central Turkey ; and about one hun- dred miles to the east of Oorfa, and two hun- dred to tlic north-west from Mosul, perched upon the southern face of the mountaiiis of Jcbcl Toor, is the city of Mardin, the most southern station of the Mission to Eastern Tur- key, where, in the absence of its only mission- aries, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, at Harpoot, a newly-organized church, with the pastor of their choice supported by themselves, hold up tho 32 TEN YEAnS OAT THE EUPHRATES. lamp of gospel liglit amid the surrounding Ja- cobite, Papal, and Mohammedan darkness. Mar- din has a population of some twenty thousand, about equally divided between nominal Chris- tians and Mohammedans. The region around, like that around Mosul, where also there is a church partially self-supporting, is, with here and there a faintly-glimmering exception, in the deepest spiritual darkness ; since the call for help for the lone missionary in this Arabic-speak- ing portion of the field has been long sent across the waters in vain. None have yet given heed, and perhaps none will, till the Master compel some other recreant Jonah to heed his command to preach there the preaching which he bids. Sure I am that Mr. and Mrs. Williams will joy- fully welcome almost any agency which shall bring the two men, with their companions, needed to make Mardin one of the four fully manned stations * from which we propose to do the missionary work in eastern Turkey, so far ♦ Tho name "station" is applied to a city occupied by missiona- ries, and " out-station " to a place occupied by native laborers. The four stations above alluded to are Mardin, Erzroom, Harpoot, and Van, in each of whicli it is proposed to have three missionaries. MISSIONS m PERSIA AND TURKEY. 33 a iis it devolves on the American cliurches to do it. About sixty miles to the west of north of Mardin, upon the western bank of the Tigris, lies Diarbekir, a walled city of some fifty thou- sand inhabitants, of whom about two-thirds arc Mohammedans and the rest nominal Christians. Just outside the city walls, upon the southern side, Mr. Walker made his grave, in August, 1866, because, lefi; to labor on alone among a popula- tion of half a million within and around the city, and trying to do double duty to the bodies and the souls of the cholera-smitten population, he liad not liimsclf vital force enough left to [jrofit l)y the medicines which, when promptly administered, had saved others. He was borne to his burial amid hundreds who wept, as over a father dead, for one whom but a few years before tlioy would gladly have driven from their city. Two churches — one in Diarbekir itself and one in the village of Cutturbul, on the opposite side of the Tigris, having a total of one hundred and twenty-eiglit mcml^ers, with a Protestant community in the city, which during 180G con- 34 TEN YEARS ON T IE EUPURATES. tributcd $1150 in gold, supporting all their own institutions and doing some missionary work — are liis epitaph and testimony that he pleased God in his brief missionary life of less than fourteen years, of which one and a half were spent in a visit to his native land. Ex- cept occasionally, in winter, Diarbekir will pro- bably not again be occupied by missionaries, and the great outlying field, chiefly to the east and north-cast in Koordistan, will be divided between the neighboring stations -Mardin and Harpoot. About one hundred and twenty-five miles north of oast from Diarbekir is Bitlis, a city of some twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom about three-fifths are Mohammedans, chicflv Koords, and the rest nominal Christians, among whom the labors of Messrs. Knapp and Burbank, the first of whom removed there in 1858, were blessed in planting a church of seven members and gathering a good congre- gation. Both the missionaries with their wives were compelled by failure of health to return home in 1863, and the church was left in MissfON^s rN PR n fir A and turkey. 35 charge of a native proaclier, who lias since be- come its pastor. About seveiity-fivc miles east from Bitlis, upon the south-eastern shore of a lake bearing the same name, lies Van, with its fourteen thou- sand Armenians and eleven thousand Moham- medans. Scmiramis, wife of the Assyrian monarch Ninus, is said to have built this city centuries before Nebuchadnezzar enlarged and beautified " great Babylon." The walled por- tion of the city is close, and in summer is un- healthy, fever and ague especially prevailing ; but in the gardens on the rising ground out- side of tlie city many healthy locations are found, and in some of these the missionaries who are yet to come to labor for the large Ar- menian and Nestorian and Mohammedan pop- ulation accessible from Van as a center must make their summer home. Passing to the north-west some six, or, in winter, twice as many days' journey, we come to Erzroom, situated upon the high lands about equidistant from Yan on the south-east, Tre- bizond on the Black Sea on the north-west, and 36 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. Harpoot (hitlierto spelled Kliarpoot, and mis- pronounced as Karpoot) on the sontli-west. Situated as it is, upon the great traveled route between Persia and the outside world, and filled with a heterogeneous population of Armenians, Koords, Turks, Greeks, Persians, Circassians, Russians, and renegade Europeans, and having been occupied only feel)ly and fitfully as a mis- sionary station, it is not strange that the mis- sionary work in the city and the vast region depending upon it has made comparatively lit- tle progress. Both of the missionaries recently there, Messrs. Parmlee and Pollard, with their wives, have been compelled to return home, and, in a territory of one hundred and seventy thou- sand square miles, with a population of more than three millions, among wliom Mosul, Mar- din, Diarbekir, Bitlis, Erzroom, Trebizond, Arabkir, and Harpoot have been, and Van ought to be, only Harpoot is, occupied by missionaries. Thus a total of seventy-three out-stations oc- cupied ])y native helpers, who number in all one hundred and seventeen, making one- seventh of all the out-stations, and one -eighth MISSIONS IN TURKEY AND PERSIA. 37 of all the native helpers reported as in the em- ploy of the Board in 1866, with two theological seminaries and one female seminary, and a total of seventy-nine schools, which, though largely supported and cared for by the people themselves, still demand much missionary supervision, — in a word, all of the missionary/ work in this great field, by the departure of missionaries to their homes, either in America or in the " better land," — has been devolved upon Messrs. Allen, Barnum, and Williams, and their wives, at Harpoot, with Miss West at the head of the female seminary there, and Rev. II. S. Barnum and wife, who have recently reached the city a id begun to learn the lan- guage. CHAPTER II. v:astern turkey. — divisions and races. — bar FOOT mission-field. ^^ EFORE speaking of the field and work to IJ^D wliicli special attention will be paid, let ■-^^ us take a hasty view of tlie country at large and its inliabitants. In the south- ern part of tlic territory of the Mission to Eastern Turkey are tlie eastern portion of Mesopotamia and Ancient Assyria, the proper limits of which seem, to have extended as far north as the Taurus Mountains, thougli, in tlieir frequent contests witli the Armenians on the north, the Assyrian monai'chs not infre- quently passed over lluit barrier and overran Armenia, wliich is the northern division. On the eastern ])ank of the Tigris', to the north of Diarbekir, the Armenians still show the plain which they say was often the battle-field of 38 rgJArGT'OA' nirisiONS. 39 their fathers against the invading Assyrians. When the invaders were able to pass the mountain range rnnning sontli of tlie city, Haind, the Armenians regarded their cause as lost until they shouhl be al»le to muster new forces to expel the enemy. A few miles to the north-east from Haine, where one l)ranch of the Tigris rnshes in its power from the base of a mountain, can still be read, cnt deep upon its rocky face, the inscription, " This is the third time that I, Bclshazzar, king of Assyria, have conquered this territory;" to which, perhaps, we may add, " We too are now making its third conquest for Christ ; " since Armenian history declares that the nation has previously been converted twice to Christianity. A na- tional legend says that Abgar, one of their kings, who lived in the days when Christ was upon earth, having heard of his miracles, and being sick, sent messengers praying him to come and heal him ; and that Jesus returned to the king his likeness imprinted upon a hand- kerchief, saying, " This will heal him." Un- luckily, the story loses the handkerchief on tlui 40 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. way, ill consequence of the messengers being attacked by robbers and throwing it into a well ; but the result was that the king and his court and people were baptized by the apostle Thaddcus. Their second conversion, after re- lapsing into idolatry, was about a.d. 319, when Gregory, the " Illuminator," an Arme- nian of royal descent, having himself embraced the Christian faith, induced the king and his people to do the same. The limits of Armenia, like those of Assyria, have differed at different times, as the nation were able to overrun and annex adjacent terri- tory, or were themselves overcome ; and it is from this fact that different writers give con- flicting accounts of its area, which may be somewhat loosely defined as embracing the ter- ritory extending from 38° to 48° east longitude, and from 38° to 41° north latitude. The country is bounded on the north by the Black Sea and Georgia, on the east by the Caspian Sea and Persia, on the south by Mesopotamia* and an- * Armenia is now partitioned between Persia, Russia, and Turkey, the last having the largest portion. DIVISIONS. ^ — - 41 (lent Assyria, and on the west by Asia Mi- nor.* Within the one hundred and seventy thousand square miles embraced in the Mission to Eastern Turkey is found every variety of natural scenery, surface, soil, climate, and pro- ductions. Lofty ranges of sterile mountains, some of whose peaks are upwards of 13,000 feet in higlit, and others of less imposing grandeur, are interspersed with fertile vales, extended plains, and rolling prairie. In many places, peaks which arc covered with snow during half the year look down upon warm and fer- tile vales blooming with the verdure of early spring. The loftier of the twQ peaks of Ara- I'at, in the north-east, where the territories of Persia, Russia, and Turkey touch its base upon the three sides, rises 17,323 feet above the sea, with a summit covered by perpetual ice and * A region of somewhat indnfinite extent in eastern Turkey and western I'ersia, but included mostly within the territory watered by the Tigris and its eastern branches, the Great and the Little Zab, the licdwan, the Batman, and others, and by the head waters of the Euphrates, is linown as Koordi^tan, its territory being really not distinct from that of the other divisions mentioned, but mostly em- braced within the same limits, and faking its name from the Koords, who are a large part of the population. 42' TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. snow, lifted in naked grandeur 14,320 feet above the plain at its base. The valleys and plains are usually extremely fertile. The region has a great diversity of climate, from the intense heat of Mosul, where the mercurv in summer fro- quently reaches 115° and even 120°, to tliat of Ei'zroom, which has a climate resembling that of central Maine. Metals are supposed to abound in the mountains, and co])per and sil- ver are mined in limited quantities.*" Grains of various kinds, chiefly wheat and barley, are raised, with vegetables, the potato having been introduced in some parts by the missionaries. Cotton, tobacco, and many varieties of fmits are produced in some sections, including, in the vicinity of Ilarpoot, as well as some other parts, the greatest abundance of the most de- licious grapes, which, by tlieir low price, often not more than half a cent a pound in summer, furnish not only cheap eating and drinking, but cheap drunkenness* too. Theorizers to * Being once pressed by my host in the city of Peri to say wliether it was wrong to drink "a little wine," and replying, " I'll not say that it is wrong," he added, "I only drink a very little," but in a few hours was " dead drunk," as were scores of others around him on that one Sabbath day of the year devoted to Bacchus. PRINCIPAL UACES. 43 the contrary notwithstanding, the wine-drink- ers of tliat country sometimes get very drunk, though it must be confessed that their drunkon- ncps is less delirious, desperate, and murderous tiiuu that of their defenders and imitators on this side tlie water. The population of the country is, if possible, even more diversified than tlie natural scenery, each outcropping stratum of the blended mass of race, language, and religion — which are sometimes thrown together in inexplicable con- fusion — pointing back to some political up- heaving of a past ago, or telling of some barba- rian avalanche from the East, whence so many conquering hordes have swept over this region toward the West, each one in its turn leaving some fragmentary memorial to increase and still more confuse the already existing accumu- lation. To speak at length of this confused mass of population, thus made up of the debris of suc- cessive centuries, from the days of Nimrod, the " mighty hunter " and conqueror, laying the foundations of Nineveh, down to the time when 4 44: TEN YEARS ON THE EUPlinATES. the Turks conquered the country and fixed tlie population iu substantially its present condi- tion, would fill, volumes instead of pages. A glance at the principal races must therefore suffice. The plains of the soutli are chiefly in posses- sion of the Arabs, who, with their " hand against every man, and every man's hand against them," still vindicate their claim to be descendants of Ishmael. No traveler can safely pass through their territory unprotected l)y a hired guard from one of their tribes ; and even from the sultan himself they levy black- mail for the right of way. In different sections of the southern district, chiefly in the valley of the Tigris, are found the Yezidees, worshipers of the devil, an image of whom they are said to reverence in the form of a peacock. The logic by which they justify their choice of a divinity is substantially that used by their brethren in other lands, except that the latter are generally less consistent than they. " God is good," they say ; " he will not harm us, and therefore we need not trouble PRINCIPAL RACES. 45 ourselves about him ; but that other spirit " — • whose name they are careful never to profane by uttering it—" needs to be propitiated." So tiiey forget God, and yield themselves up to the control of their own hearts' lusts, as do tliou- sands in Christian lands under another name and pretense, real Yezidees alL Of a third class of the population, the KoORDS, I can not speak better tlian in extracts ^Vom a letter upon them by Mr. Allen of Har- poot. " Of their history very little is known. It is said that they are of Persian origin, which seems quite probable. They are most numer- ous as we approach the borders of Persia ; some- what resemble the Persians in form and fea- tures; and, which is a still stronger proof, many words are common to the Persian and Koord- ish languages, so mucli so that one who under- stands the two dialects of the Koordish can, it is said, understand Persian. They do not live exclusively in Koordistan, but are scattered over a great part of Asiatic Turkey. Tlio mountains are their chosen places of abode. Tiiey live in small villages in tlieir mountain 46 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. fastnesses, and seldom, if ever, in the villages of the plains, or in the largo cities. In this they take great pride, looking upon the city- people as weak and effeminate. There are two principal branches of the race, the Koords proper, and the Kdzzlehashes (i. e., ' Red- heads'). Both are divided into many tribes, each having its own chief. The impression that they are all robbers is far from the truth. Many of them, indeed, make robbery tlieir business, but the great majority live quietly in their mountain villages, pursuing lawful occu- pations. They are mostly farmers, cultivating the soil of their hillsides and mountain i-avines to supply merely their own wants. They keep herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats. They make excellent clicesc, and their butter would be good were it not churned in goat- skins, turned hair side in, so as to have too many hairs in it to suit -a fastidious taste. Tliey also have the dishonest practice of mix- ing flour with their butter to sell. Nearly all the cloth they use is of their own manufacture. They also weave carpets from the strong coarse PRINCIPAL RACES. 47 wool of tlieir largo-tailed sheep, which are very diiral)le, lasting from generation to generation. The Koords are Mohammedans, at least iu name, but a great part of them only in name. They have religious rites and ceremonies among them which as yet are little known, but seem to be a strange mixture of Christian, Mohammedan, and heathen rites. The.Koords proper are the most faithful to the ]\Iohamme- dan religion. The otlier branch, the Kuzzle- baslies, have more forms peculiar to them- selves. They generally try to conceal their real belief, from fear of the Turks. One strange doctrine among them is that the Holy Sj)irit dwells in one of their number. This person is called Bada, and is treated with great reverence, everything which he says be- ing regarded as inspired. Many, if not all, of the Kuzzlebashes are pantheists, and in preach- ing to them Christ crucified, we must not be too much encouraged by their receiving him as tlivine, since they also receive every tiling as divine ; Christ and Mohammed as well as 48 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. other men, — animals, trees, and rocks, — all are God to them." The name of the Koords seems to have been derived from that of their ancestors, the Cardiichi, tlirough whose territory Xcnophon led the retreat of the famous "Ten Thousand ;" and to a great degree they retain the bold, un- conquerable spirit of their fatiiers. Many of them are really fine specimens of physical manhood, but intellectually and morally they, as well as the Arabs and the Yezidces, are very far from God. In tliis category we may also include the Greeks, who are found in consideralde num- bers, especially in the north, and along the coast of the Black Sea. " I distrust the Greeks even when they bring gifts," is as just now as in classic days, at least in its application to those of the race in Turkey. That Oriental trait of character which makes almost any man anxious to oblige you by thinking and talking as you do, and especially so when he can gain anything by it, has a more intense de- velopment among certain races ; and what Mr. PRINCIPAL RACES. 49 Barnes somewhere says of certain persons, that tliey are too dishonest to be saved, for they re- fuse to deal honestly even with their own souls, appears to be true of the races just mentioned. God's chosen time for bringing them in will doubtless come, — it may be near, — when by his own methods he will give to his gospel saving power among them. But we should beware of coufiding too hastily in professions of attach- ment to the Christian faith which are prompted mainly, if not entirely, by political motives, by a wish to secure the sympathy and aid of Chris- tian governments against the Turks, or by the hope of personal or national advantage in any form. Of this character, it is to be feared, have been some, if not all, of those professed adhesions to the truth by Koords, and perhaps some others, which have excited high expecta- tions without leading to results equally encour- aiiiu";. As missionaries of the cross we need to 1)0 on our guard against designing hypocrites and cringing sycophants, — to be not only harmless as doves, but also wise as serpents. Of one remaining jmrt of the population of 50 TEN YEARS ON TUK EUPHRATES. the district, the Turks, little needs to be said, except, perhaps, to remove an impression which seems still to exist in some minds, that they are fanatically opposed to Christianity as such. They try to put down the rebellion of their Greek sul)jects in Crete, just as years ago they put down that of Mohammedan subjects in eastern Turkey, and as our own govern- mcut put down that in the Soutli ; but it is little if at all more just to say that the Turks are making war on the Christians of Crete than to say that our own government, or the Congregationalists of the North, made war on the anti-mission Baptists of the South, or any other sect prevailing there. Without entering at all into the question whether the Greek or the Turkish population of Crete should rule, or whether fanatical hate has been excited be- tween the different nationalities in the progress of the war, we should beware of inferring from the existence of the war that the Turks, and especially the Turkish governniont, hato Chris- tianity ; since such an idea once firmly fixed in the public mind might load to p:jlii:ioal dijctor- PRINCIPAL RACES. 51 ing of " the sick man " anything but wise and iK'uUhful, because, having doctored him to death, the physicians might be unable to bury liim. To say nothing of the question, whicli as a jiuliticat one has no place here, whether any otlicr race are yet prepared to supersede the Turks in governing tlie empire, it should not 1)0 forgotten that toleration of the preaching of a pure gospel, and the establishment of in- dependent churches, which has been denied l)y most European governments, and still i-> denied by Greece and Russia, whose govern- ments covet so large a share of tlie "sick man's " possessions, is freely accorded by tlie Turks. We at least in eastern Turkey owe it to truth and justice to say that the Turks and their government have helped rather than liindered our missionary work there. Indeed, very much of the popular talk about Moliammedan hatred of Christianity springs from a mistaken idea of the case. Mohammr"- danism may with truth be said to h.ive been a protest against idohitr}^ in favor of the worshli) 52 TEy^ YEARS ON TIIR EUPHRATES. of tliat God whom tlic self-styled prophet trutli- iully declared to he " One, and a Spirit." In a mistaken way, indeed, and with selfish aims, he really preached over again the sermon of the apostle in the midst of Mars' Hill, that " we ought not to think tliat the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven hy art or man's device." When, then, the Turk, who still hears from the minaret the cry that God is one, and sees ahont him those whom, like all the merely nominal Christians of the land, he re- gards, and not unjustly, as hreakers of the com- mand to worship God alone, al)hors the so-called Christian as an idolater, he only does what we all do. That this is the fact, and that it is not ChristianitT/ as such which is so much disliked, but chiefly its corruptions, is seen from the changed feelings with which the Turks look u])()n tlie Christian system as illustrated by the ])roclamation of a pure Christianity, and the planting of evangelical duirches, that remove from their places of worship the pictures and the relics of the saints, and" put in their placQ the pure word of God. PRINCIPAL RACES. 53 It is tlio highest praise whicli tliey are yet prepared to pay this pure system to say, as one of tliem recently did, " I like you Protestants. Yon arc next door to us." It is an encour- ao-ins; fact that even in the darkest and most fanatical portions of the empire the Turks are buying and reading the Bible, as they are doing in eastern Turkey. The remaining portion of the population of tliis section of country might all bo summarily embraced under the term nominal Chuistians,* of whom there are various sects. The chief of these are the Nestorians, a portion of whom adiicrc to the pope and are called Chaldeans, the Jacobites, the papal Sijrians, one in race with the Jacobites, but adherents of the pope, and the Armenians, some of whom are also ad- herents of the pope. As the missionary lal)ors of my associates and myself have been cliiefly among the Armenians, a few lines will be de- voted to them. * Tlioro are in soitip ?ectiiins a few Jews, who lioro, as pvprywhrre elsf, retail) their national phy-iognoiny and character. Tliey are very numerous in Bagdad, to the sciuth of our iTiis;*!aklng missionaries spoken of in the last part of chapter ninth. 5Q TEN YEARS ON THE EUPURATES. Mohammedans, the last of whom, the Turks, now hold undisputed sway over the western part of the country, the remainder being in sul)jection to the Persians and the Russians. Tiiough still found in greater numbers within the limits of their ancient country, the Armenians, like the Jews, are a nation " scattered and peeled," num- bers of them being found not only in all parts of Turkey, but also in central and southern Asia, in Egypt and the different parts of Europe, and here and there one in the United States, to which hundreds of thousands would gladly come, if able to reach this far-famed refuge of the oppressed. They are a very interesting people, naturally intelligent, enterprising, and ingenious, as is shown by the fact that in Turkey the most skill- ful and successful artisans and the chief mer- chants and bankers are from among them. But the one thing which raises them I may almost say infinitely above all the other races of the East, as hopeful subjects of missionary labor, is the fact, that, amid all their ignorance, sujjer- stition, and degradation, which are especially PUiXCIPAL liACES. £/ great in the central and eastern portions of the country, and while addicted, like those ahout them, to most of the sins which are peculiarly oriental in tlieir character, and pre-eminently to lying, still, huricd beneath all the gathered rub- bish of centuries of oppression and sin, is found a conscience, which the first touch of divine truth is often sufficient to waken to new life and saving energy. To their credit, too, be it said that the standard of moral purity among tlicm is immeasurably above that among i\\Q Turks and some other races, to whom may still be ap- plied the divine declaration that " it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret." One specially encouraging fact is, that, during all these centuries of darkness and superstition, amid all tiieir wide departures from truth and duty, they have retained an almost supersti- tious reverence for the Scriptures. As I have stood in their dark old churches, begrimed with the smoke and soot of centuries, from lamps kept burning even at midday, and seen the white-haired old priest reverently take 58 TEN YE Alts ON THE EUPHRATES. from its recess a timeworn book all covered with silver crosses, and hold it forth from the altar for young and old devoutly to kiss, as for centuries past their fathers have done, though I knew that the contents were alike unintellio:i- bio to him and them, and that the fixing of these crosses upon the sacred cover, in the hope of thereby saving infants that had died without baptism, was but another token of their own deep spiritual darkness, yet the fact, that, by that devout though ignorant act of reverence, the poor people were keeping alive in their hearts the feeling that that book has in it some- tiling more than any and all other books, made me grateful to God that the memory of a liv- ing thougli departed ancestral faith in the Bible has thus been perpetuated even by this its dead and petrified ceremonial form. In this the Armenians differ widely from the other races about them. The Mohammedan accepts the Bible as God's book, but with this abatement, that it has been largely superseded by tlie Koran, and has besides been corrupted by the Christians ; the papist calls for the " ap- pnmciPAL RACES. 59 proved edition," and that to be interpreted " as explained by tlie church ; " but once convince tlie Armenian — a thing not difficult to do — that tlie book which you offer him in his mod- ern and spoken tongue is in meaning the same as that which he learned to kiss at the altar, and he acknowledges the divine force of all which it teaches, and feels too tl'at it is his personal right to read and interpret it. Another encouraging feature in the mission- ary work among the Armenians is the fact that they are thus dispersed among the other races of Turkey and adjacent countries, and that while the dissevered fragments of the nation still cherish to some degree a sentiment of na- tional unity, and are thus prepared to feel the influence of the vitalizing power of the gospel given to any portion of them, at the same time, by their dispersion, they are prepared to be most effective missionaries in bringing the other races to Christ. Their acquaintance with the Tarious languages and dialects of the country },s an advantage of no trifling importance, which no other race has. Those of tlicm in Ilus- 60 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. sian Armenia speak the Russian ; those in Per- sia, the Persian, or the corrupt Turkish in use in western Persia; those in Koordistan, the Koor- dish in its two dialects, the Zaza and the Koor- raangie ; those in the Arabic-speaking portion of the empire, the Arabic, etc. ; while nearly all in northern and central and western Turkey know more 'or less Turkish, which, in some sections, they use to the exclusion of their own national tongue, the Armenian. In giving to them, then, a pure gospel, we are taking the shortest and surest way to give it to all the different races and tribes among whom they are scattered. To all this it must be acknowledged that there is one apparent drawback. As a nation, they appear to lack that stability of character and purpose wliich is needed to make them hold on their way in spite of all interposing difficulties. While they have proved themselves able to endure persecution, as even fickle men may do from that manly pluck which often, even in the absence of firm Christian principle, refuses to worship at another's dictatii^n, yet HARPOOT MISSION-FIELD. 61 there is cause to fear that upon trial they may be found wanting in tliat other quality, nobler, or at least more difficult of acquisition, tlian even the martyr spiiit, wbich leads its i)os- sessor to go quietly, consistently, and persist- ently on in the way of daily duty, making all tbose efforts and sacrifices which, even in tbe absence of external opposition, are demanded in doing the missionary work. It should, how- ever, be said, that it remains yet to be proved that any of the oriental races have this quality to tbat degree in which the Anglo Saxons pos- sess it. A few words must now introduce the reader to the Ilarpoot* mission-field, to which Rev. 0. P. Allen and myself were assigned, in June, 18.37, and followed, in 1859, by Rev. II. N. Barnum, and in which, witb our wives and others, prominent among whom is Miss M. A. West, in the female seminary, we have labored * Harpoot is, by the usual route of travel, about seven hundred miles from Constantinople, from which we go by steamboat to Sam- Boon, a port of the lilack Sea, and then on horseback throe hundred and twenty miles (about sixteen days' journey) through Aniasia, lo- cal, and Sivas. 62 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. together till within a few months, and hope again to do so till the missionary work of tlie Board there is completed. Previous to our going there, Mr. Duumore had spent two years in the city and vicinity, laboring with great success in gaining a knowledge of the country and peo- ple, and awakening attention to evangelical truth.* The field of labor at first committed to lis, but now greatly enlarged, embraced a ter- ritory a little exceeding that of the State of Massachusetts, lying about the head waters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, — the lat-1 tor being the Hiddekel of Gen. ii. 14. If not the area within which, as the people there say, the garden of Eden was, it is at least near enough to be the spot to which Adam and Eve were driven when expelled from the gar- den ; for, learned commentaries on imaginary * It will be remembered that the object in view is not to give a his- tory of the missionary work in eastern Turkey, nor even within the Harpoot field, but only to present some of the most striking facta and principles of that special work which has fallen to my associates and myself. Messrs. Clark, Pollard, and Richardson labored for some years in the Arabkir field, which is now included iu thai, of Harpoot. ITAUPOOT MISSION-FIELD. 63 wonderful geological upturnings to the con- trary, we may suppose that the rivers still found there are essentially the same as before the flood, and that rivers then as now " parted into heads" in the natural way, as we advance up stream and not down, and that, when the united stream of the Euphrates and Tigris docs thus "part into four heads " of prominence, it fixes the location of the garden somewhere in those parts. The territory of Harpoot is, like most of the northern part of eastern Turkey, very broken in its character, two lofty ranges of mountains, the Taurus and the Anti-Taurus, extending across it from cast to west. Standing upon the lofty hill upon which the city of Harpoot is built, and looking across the intervening val- ley.:; on the south, with their scores of villages, to the distant range of the Taurus, and north- ward, over the broken country, across the eastern branch of the Euphrates, seen at the distance of twelve miles, to the still loftier range of the Anti-Taurus, while the distant liorizon to the east and the west also is shut in by lofty raoun- 64 TEN" YEARS O.V THE EUPHRATES tains of various forms and liiglit, we liave a panorama of surpassing beauty and grandeur. A.t certain seasons of the year, this extended area becomes a vast mosaic of intermingled sunshine and cloud and storm rapidly chasing each other from mountain-top to mountain-top, and across the interlying hills and valleys and plains. Within tliis territory, the Koords, who are about a third of the population, mostly in- habit the mountains, and the Turks and Arme- nians the more level country. Tlie chief cities of the region are Harpoot, with perhaps * twen- ty-five thousand inhabitants, Choonkoosh six thousand, Chermook four thousand, Palu eight thousand, Chemishgezek four thousand, Egin eight thousand, Egil five thousand, Geghi-Kas- sabah four thousand. Peri four thousand, Mal- atia forty thousand, Arabkir twenty thousand, Divrik ten thousand, and Bakur-Madcn five thousand, and others ; but the great majority of the people live in villages varying in size from a population of one hundred to thirty-five hun- * " Perhaps " must be preiixed to statistics of population in lup key, where the census is practically unknown. HARPOOT MISSION-FIELD. 65 dred. The number of these villages is very great, upwards of twelve hundred* having al- ready been located by the pocket-compass, and mapped by the missionaries of Diarbekir, Mar- din, and Harpoot, when on tours ; for be it re- membered that while the missionary's family must have a home, a retreat to which he may return to be refreshed and cheered when de- pressed and dispirited by the bodily and men- tal fatigues of outside missionary labor, yet he himself is confined to no one city or village, is the occupant of no one pulpit, is not a local preacher, but an apostolic explorer, to range over and map out the country, and direct oth- ers, whom he shall select and train for the work, where to do the labor of local preaching. It perhaps is unnecessary to add that this mis- sionary touring is all done on horseback, and that, while often wearied by this slow mode of locomotion, we are thankful that neither tlie railroad nor the steamboat, nor even common carriage roads, have entered in advance of the gospel. * The actual number in the districts belonging to these three citioa p"obably exceeds twenty -five hundred. 66 TEN YEARS ON THE EUrURATES. VIEW OF HARPOOT. The accompanying sketch gives a view of the southern part of Harpoot city and the plain, and the Taurus Mountains, some twenty miles distant, as seen from the upper story of the mis- sion house given at the close of chapter eighth. It will be seen that the houses are all flat-roofed. At the time of making this slictch, men were busy adding a second story to the house on the opposite side of the street, which passes in front of the mission premises, and they are seen at their work. The waUs of the houses are of three kinds. (1.) Of unhewn stone laid in mud, since, though limestone abounds, wood has to be brought some two days' journey on the backs of mules or donkeys, and is too costly to allow much to be used for burning lime. (2.) Of sundried bricks of mud mixed with straw, such as were made by tlie Israelites in Egypt. These walls are usually two and a half feet thick. (3.) A wall six inches thick, made by erecting a framework of timber and filling the spaces with sundried brick. The mason in the picture is erecting such a wall, while the water-carrier is bringing a goatskin bottle full of water to make the heap of dirt, which lies upon the roof, into the needed mortar. The roofs are made by laying on rafters, which are covered with sticks or thin boards, and adding a foot or more of earth, which is rolled down hard. The veiled woman at the right is taking a walk upon the house-top, while her neigh- bor, near by, is taking his ease, sitting upon the big bedstead upon which hkaself and family spread their beds to sleep at uight. The main southern road from the city — built largely by men taken from the state prison, and apparently from an impul?g HAItPOOT MISSION-FIELD. 67 given to road-bu'lding by the labor of the theological students mentioned on page 181 — is seen winding its way up the moun- tain-side through the Turkish cemetery, distinguished by its erect stones. Armenian gravestones are Uxid flat on the ground. The houses immediately in front of the mission premises are oc- cupied mostly by Armenians. The houses seen in the distance upon the cliff are inhabited by Turlis, who always seek to arrogate to themselves the clioicest locations. The remainder of the city lies to the east and north- east of the mission jDremises, whicli, fortunately, are in the out- skirts, enabling the missionaries to escape much of the noise and filth which afflict the dwellers in the midst of an oriental town. Our elevation upon the mountain affords an additional advan- tage. The clusters of trees seen here and there on the plain show the locations of a few of the many villages which dot that region. The trees are cultivated for timber by streams of water led from the mountains for the purpose. The village just at the left of the projecting hill which divides the plain about midway is Perchenj, and the one seen beyond in nearly the same direc- tion is Hooeli. In the mountains just to the left of the loftiest peak near the middle of tliat portion of the range seen in the sketch, raised far above the level of tlie plain below, is embosomed a beautiful lake, of about the same size as the Sea of Galilee, which it also resembles in the character of its surrounding scenery, as Mr. Barnum sa s, who has seen both. CHAPTER III. THE WORK TO BE DONE. Tlie kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. — Matt, xiii, 33. 'HE question, " What is the missionaiy work ? what object have Christian men and women in view in forming missionary societies and sustaining them by their con- tributions and prayers ? " is differently answered by different persons. There is doubtless at bot- tom a general feeling that it is for tlie temporal and eternal good of those sitting in darkness ; and yet comparatively few take the trouble to examine and decide how this object is to be at- tained. The little child sees the picture of the heathen mother casting her babe to the croco- diles, or exposing it to beasts of prey, and brings her offering of pennies to teach that mo- 68 THE WORK TO BE DONE. 69 ther to do so no more, and this, for the little child, is enough. But, for those who are to spend those pennies, it is fundamentally impor- tant that they have some more definite idea ; that they look beyond this work of mere out- ward reform to the higher spiritual aims of the missionary work ; since,, if we fail here, if we merely persuade the cruel mother to desist from child-murder, and do not Christianize her and those about her, we may only rescue the body of her little one to destroy its soul. Probably all who take any efficient part in the missionary work assent to this idea, that the ultimate object aimed at is to Christianize those to whom missionaries are sent. And yetr, upon the question what this implies, and how it is to be done, it is to be feared that some persons have very erroneous, and many others, very indefinite ideas. In entering the Harpoot field, my associates and myself discarded the popular notion that the missionary work is a vast system of alms- giving, or even of supporting gospel institu- 70 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPIIJiATES. tions among tlie unenlightened at the expense of Christians at home. Not thus do we find it defined anywhere in the gospel commission, nor in the practical illustrations of that com- mission in the first missionary work. The disciples at Jerusalem did indeed have all things common, but only, as it appears, during a temporary crisis, and then the most generous giver was Barnabas, from that foreign country, Cyprus. Paul and his companions gathered money from their converts in the foreign field for the poor saints in Jerusalem, but we have no evidence that any funds were sent in the contrary direction. Two things need to be re- membered by the missionary, at least in orien- tal lands. (1.) That he is in danger of over- rating the poverty of the people. To one fresh from the thrift, tidiness, and comfort of even the humblest homes here, the best of those in oriental lands appear poor and wretched enough. (2.) While Orientals are generally ready to make almost any professions to secure the good-will of those from whom they expect any temporal advantage, they, at the same time, THE WORK TO BE DONE. 71 look upon the advantage bestowed as a mere trap by which the giver hopes in the end to secure some gain to himself, and are thorel)y prejudiced against any instructions which he may give. Had the physician who dispensed medical advice and medicines gratis to the Moslem crowd, on condition that they would first listen to religious truth, but realized tliat those who crowded his dispensary congratu- lated themselves on tlieir shrewdness in get- ting a real good in a harmless wrapper to be at once thrown away, he would liave counted his patients with less satisfaction. When the kind-hearted missionaiy, instead of tcacliing his converts the grace of Christian liberality, and calling upon them /row the first to give of their substance for Christ, practically treats them as paupers, not only giving them the gos- pel free, but adding, in one form and another, pecuniary help, and thereby increasing the uni- versal oriental greed for " bakshish," he not only harms the mun, Ijut inflicts a greater wrong on t!ie church of which lie is to be a member, by teaching it also to sit and beg. A 72 TEN YE Am OiV THE EUPHRATES. cliurcli made up of such members, persons who have merely learned to adhere to the misnonary, and sit from Sabbath to Sabbath and listen to a free gospel, y,n\h. perhaps the added argu- ment of cheap bread from the missionary's liand during the week, can not be trusted. Says an earnest missionary, who has the mis- fortune to be located where such a church ex- ists, and who, as a beginning in tlie work of reform, is resolutely endeavoring to secure Trom the people one-half of their native preach- er's salary, in place of the whole, which, as he says, " tliey are able to pay," — " What course ouglit we to take ? Shall we ignore this church altogether, and labor on in hope of sometime having material to form a new church, and then ordain a pastor, or shall we now or- dain a pastor over what is little if anything more than a church in name? We can, per- haps, get half of the salary from the people, though it will require a most desperate effort, and it seems sometimes that I can not stay here nuich longer. But I take a little courage when 1 remember the time when thoy thoi gbt tlicy THE WORK TO BE DONE. 73 could do nothing for themselves, and when a member of the church sent me a charg-e for putting up in their chapel a stove which had been presented to them ; and, when I refused to pay it, not only he, but otliers, accused mc of defrauding him. Was wood needed for tlie chapel, it was expected that the missionary would call some Protestant, and say to him, ' Here is the money for you to buy so many loads of wood, and pile it up in such a place ;' and, as a matter of course, the man would afterwards come to the missionary for pay for doing his (the missionary's) work." To tliis the brother might have added, " And the mis- sionary was expected to be grateful to the peo- ple for coming to listen to liis preacliing." For members of anotlier church, which had thus been fed and cared for at the expense of the Board, when the system was changed and they were called upon to do something for tlieraselves, had the cool impudence to accuse the missionaries of ingratitude, and to ask, " What would you have done for an audience if we had not come to the cliapel ? " 74 TEN YEARS ON THE EUrilRATES. But this mistaken sympatliy, which puts con- verts in the place of paupers spiritually, if not pecuniarily, is, if possible, even more dis- astrous in its influence upon those who are em- ployed from among the people as helpers in the missionary work. The " poor men" get a salary altogether out of proportion to the earn- ings of those about them, and which the people are as wholly unable to pay as a poor country parisli would be to support Jin expensive cjty preacher. And these helpers, once accustomed to the prompt and uncomplaining payment of so large salaries, and sure, like all of their class, to spend all they get, can seldom or never be induced to take less, or to depend upon the complaining charity of their own people. It should also be remembered that these high sal-" aries are so much premium upon hypocrisy on the part of the ministry, and thus lay the foundations of the church in spiritual rotten^ ness. The idea that the gospel must be made free of expense to its adherents on foreign mission- ary ground rests in part upon tlie mistaken nO'- THE WORK TO BE DONE. 75 tioD that the cost of supporting Christianity is greater than that of the false systems from which converts are made, and that somehow, also, adherence to the gospel system makes peo- ple poorer, — hoth of which are untrue. The cost of teachers of religion is usually in inverse proportion to the purity of the system taught, so that the ministry of Christianized, enlightened New England costs a far smaller proportion of the earnings of its adherents than does that of heathen countries. And shall it be said that that godliness, which, in lifting heathen or nomi- nally Christian nations from the condition of ignorance and degradation, gives them the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come, sinks them, in evident breach of its blessed promise, into a still deeper slough of wretchedness and dependence ! The material advantages which intelligence has over ignorance, industry over idleness, and virtue over vice, are each so many large sums to bo placed on the creditor side in striking the bal- ance of advantage whicli true Christianity has over all false systems. Observation among tlie 76 TEN YEARS ON THE EUrilRATES. Protestants of the Harpoot field shows, tliat, to say nothing of time and strength lost in former carousals, the saving of money by abstinence from wine-drinking nearly or quite equals what they now pay for supporting gospel institutions. When once laboring to induce a close-fisted merchant in Harpoot to pay five dollars a year for the pastor, I ofiered him five times that sum for the gains which, as a Protestant, he made by his new custom of keeping his shop open on saints' days, and was refused. He well knew that the profits which he made by obeying God rather than ma^i were worth more than that. Feeling, then, that, if we would make the gospel really a blessing to the people, if we would teach them to value it, we must offer it to them in its true character as God's message demanding sacrifice on their part, we put away all false shame, and false sympathy for their pov- erty, and, with the gospel, presented and urged the idea of paying for it. It was hard some- times to resist appeals from " poor " men that we would give them a Bible, and yet we never gave one, and in the few cases in which wo THE WORK TO BE DONE. 77 gave a Testament we had afterwards occasion to regret doing it. Tiie recipients did not value and read it. Tracts were by rule, in former days, to be given away, and the result was tliat nobody cared for them, till we gave out that we should hereafter only lend them, and then, at the people's request, began to sell, and sold thousands of copies. In carrying out the principle of thus putting the gospel upon independent ground, and do manding that all those who profess to adiiere to it should aid in supporting it, we had occasion to call upon the church which had unfortunate- ly, as we believe, been formed in Harpoot city, to select and begin to support a pastor. A man who had been educated in Bebek Seminary, at Constantinople, was there as their preacher, but neither was he willing to be their pastor and look to them for support, nor they to sup- port him. " You missionaries are good enough to preach to us and give us the sacraments," they said, " and we don't need a pastor." To tliis we replied, " Yes, indeed, we are too good — at any rate, we cost the American 78 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. cliur(,hes too much — to stay here in this little city and preach for nothing to you, and thus do you harm. You must have preaching for which you can pay^ To this purpose we ad- hered, going, subscription-paper in hand, from man to man, and calling on each one to prove the reality of his professed love for the gospel by paying for it. Any man who appeared in the cliapel on the Sabbath for the third time was noted, and called upon by one of the mis- sionaries — for no one else would consent to do such work — with " I am glad to see, sir, that you like the gospel and its new preacher, Mar- diros, and I have called to see how much you love them." Some refused to give anything, and such generally disappeared from the chapel ; but those who put down their two cents, or one cent, or half a cent a week, began to feel at home there, and to look upon the preacher as belonging to them. The expected clamor, however, came against " those men who, instead of preaching the gospel, are collecting money from the people ;" to which the only reply was a sermon with 1 Cor. ix. 1- THE WORK TO BE DONE. 79 15, and 2 Cor. xi. iT-lS, and xii. 13-15, for a text, and closing with the declaration of an unflinching purpose to imitate the apostle in try- ing to do them good by teaching them to love and support their preacher, though the more abundantly we thus showed our love to them, the less we should be loved. The public clamor ceased, and the effort to raise the one hundred and ten dollars needed went on, bringing forth its own incidental good fruit, in leading others to say, " We were mistaken. We supposed that people went to the Protestant chapel be- cause they were paid for going, but now they themselves pay." The whole missionary work came to be looked upon by the people in a dif- ferent light, and undoubtedly to the influence which that first struggle had upon both the professed adherents of the gospel and the peo- ple at large is, to a great extent, due the un- looked-for, the truly surprising success which has crowned missionary labors in that field. To the mean, niggardly rich man, who pro- fessed great love for the truth, but, when called upon for four dollars for the pastor, said, " I 80 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. never paid more than sixty cents in the Arme- nian church, and shall pay no more here," we kindly said, " If you are seeking the cheapest religion, sir, you will not find it here. The Turks will 'pay you for turning Turk." The result was that he paid, and, having begun to hear the trutli by the sacrifice of a darling sin, all the sooner felt its saving power, and became, as we hope, a Christian. When the church pleaded for one of its covetous members that we have patience with him, our reply was, " Yes, at your expense, but, if you expect us to wait, and pay his subscription too, you ask too much. Turn him out of the church, and we will pay it." They kept him in, paying his share themselves, and now, after ten years, the poor man gives no evidence of being a real Christian. Once inside the church, with his pet sin of covetousness still in his heart, no mere exhortations can induce him to cast it out. It needs church discipline to wake him up to a sense of his condition and duty, as no doubt it does to benefit and save some THE WO UK TO BE DONE. 81 " idolaters " in the church on this side of the ocean. I have spoken thus at length on this pcint, both because to us it appears to be a fundamen- tal one, and because some who have the reputa- tion of being friends of missions, if not of the American Board and its officers and missiona- ries, hold different views, and in various ways are doing much to hinder the efforts which are made to put the gospel upon its own merits, as not only worth to men all which it costs, but as worth more to those to whom it costs some pecuniary sacrifice. Those wlio talk of the " wrong of taking money from the poor people, which we are so much better able than they to pay," forget that it is taken for their good, and not ours, and that, under the Jewish dispensation, even the poorest were not excused from giving tithes for the service of the sanctuary. They forget that Jesus commended the poor woman who cast all her livmg into the Lord's treasury. They for- get too that word of the Lord Jesus which Paul bade the Ephesian ciders remember, that " it is 82 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. more blessed to give than receive," and that, if we would see the members of the churches " complete in Him who is the head," complete in their graces and sources of Christian enjoy- ment, we must strive to implant in the begin- ning the germs of all those graces, including that of Christian liberality, tlie most difficult of all, and, if neglected at first, possible of devel- opment only to Him to whom all things are pos- sible. I have been a pastor in New England as well as a missionary, and tried both, and I would rather undertake to bring to Clirist and to the completeness of Christian manhood a score of those to whom the story of the cross is new, than to teach one selfish, niggardly Christian, who thinks his title to heaven already sure, to put away his idolatry and selfishness and live for Christ. And with such an experience, added to the teachings of Scripture, warning me to lay well the foundations of the churches, I could never consent to plant churches to be cared for without effort and sacrifice on their part from the beginning. Again, in entering upon the missionary work, THE WORK TO BE DONE. 83 wc remembered that the commission, which we suppose to be no less binding now than when first uttered, and no less sure in its blessed promise, says, "- Go, preach the gospel to every creature," and " Lo, I am with you," It docs not say, " Go, gather together some into schools, hoping that you can educate them into Chris- tianity, but for the older and confirmed sinners there is little hope." The command is plain, the promise equally so : Go, preach the gospel to all. Lo, Jam with you. The gospel is put first and foremost, and the promised power is from Christ's presence, giving efficiency to that. To say nothing of the position, which observa- tion and experience prove to be tenable, that the best way to secure the permanent establish- ment of schools among any people is to intro- duce them as a fruit of evangelization, and at the expense of the people themselves, rather than as a gratuitous agency for securing evan- gelization, it is a ruinous error, sometimes prac- tically if not theoretically committed, to sup- pose that to save men wc must give them schools and seminaries. 84 TEN YEARS ON TUB EUPHRATES. But this error is all the more peniicioua when, as in some cases, more effort seems to he made to get pupils into a missionary seminary with the hope of their conversion than to lead to Christ the perishing mass who can not thus be supported in order to save them. Those who thus make education introductory to the gospel, in their joy at getting a prospec- tive subject of conversion in hand are in dan- ger of forgettin-g God and his grace, and relying upon something else ; while, if the pupils are not really converted, they are by the very pro- cess of education confirmed in impenitency, and made more efficient for evil, by the power which knowledge gives them. But the evil is aggra- vated when, as in some cases, the influence of these schools, seminaries, and colleges, estab- lished among a people who are intellectually self-conceited, and, as among the Arab races, proud of their " unrivaled language," is to withdraw the tlioughts of men still further from the simple gospel to the manner in which it is preached, — to cultivate among the people a fasti- dious taste in regard to the style of their preach- THE W\*RK TO BE DONE. 85 ers. Alas ! when will men learn that the gos- pel of the Son of God no more needs an intro- duction now than it did in the days of the apos- tles, and that, in offering it to the perishing, it must itself be made the essential thing, the one center of thought and love and action ? When will all Cln-istian missionaries learn that by giv- ing tlie simple message, " Behold the Lamb of God," in any sense a secondary place, and es- pecially by Avithdrawing attention from it to mere education, or, as in some cases, to the beauties of language, or, in the words of an- other, to the " mere fine clotlics in wliicli thought is dressed," sinners are sunk in a still surer and deeper destruction ? How many-fold aggravated the second death of those whoso day of prolmtion was thus lost upon things intro- ductory to the gospel, whose attention, in the liour of coming death, but of possible rescue, was thus turned away from the only remedy, to the gilded wrapper in which it was offered ! If any one thing more than any othei in the gospel system has indicated its divine oiigin and power, in distinction from all mere hu- 86 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. manly-devised schemes, it is the fact, that, in spite of human weaknesses on the part of its commissioned teachers, including that weak- ness of faith which has so often led them prac- tically to distrust its divine efficiency, and to offer it as a gratuitous, education-coated pill to men, it has hopefully saved so many. But, while a great work has been done in saving in- dividual souls, it is to be feared, that, by these false methods of presenting it, its power to bless communities by really christianizing them has ' too often been lost. Gospel institutions, sus- tained at foreign expense among a people who have not yet learned to love them by making sacrifices and efforts to secure them, appear- ances to the contrary notwithstanding, must be regarded as at least of doubtful benefit, if not a positive harm, to the mass of the people, since they are thereby educated into regarding Christianity as not worth supporting. But an error which underlies many others in the missionary work, which is at the root of most if not all of the mistaken methods of mis- sionary labor, lies in forgetting what the Sav- THE WORK TO BE DONE. 87 ionr says of Christianity as leaven, and regard- ing and treating it, if I may say so, as itself a leavened loaf, or rather as a complete thanks- giving dinner, to be transported and set down bodily before the famishing crowds in heathen lands. Men take it for granted that whatever good things we enjoy, as a fruit of centuries of Christian culture, are, as a matter of course, adapted also to other nations, and are to be transferred to heathen soil ; or, in other words, that the entire system of education and civili- zation which the Bible has developed among us must go with it to tlie unenlightened. But, to say nothing of the differences of lan- guage, manners, customs, race, etc., as indicat- ing necessary differences in political and educa- tional systems, it should be remembered that many things which are highly beneficial and even necessary to us, because we have been educated up to them, and because, as a fruit of our national culture, they are peculiarly our own, may be not only unsuited to any other people, but, in their peculiar circum- Btauces, positively pernicious in their influence. 88 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. The gospel is not a system, but a sjstematizer, and the more we treat it in its true character, and leave it to develop its own peculiar system, according to the circumstances and character of the people to whom it is given in its simple character as good news of salvation, the better will it be. One of tlie first lessons which a missionary needs to learn, in beginning his labors among a people, is to distinguish between the essentials and the non-essentials of Christianity as he has been accustomed to it, to divest himself as far as possible of all mere prejudice, the result of early education, and to put himself into sym- pathy with his new surroundings, and decide what he is to do in order to christianize the community about him. And does the proposition need proof that the one essential thing to be accomplished by mis- sionary labor is to plant the Christian Church, and to set its members at work for Christ ? Unless we treat Christianity in its true charac- ter, as a leaven to be introduced and left to do THE WOnK 'JO DE DONE. 8& its own work, the world can never lie brought to Christ. Men from America and Enghmd can never do all the Christian work necessary to the com- plete evangelization of the heathen world. The churches of Asia,' Africa, and the islands of the sea, must, and can, and will do it, if we only es- tablish them with this end in view. And we shall do it if we take lessons of the primitive missionaries. Wherever Paul and his companions went, churches sprang into ex- istence ; churches, too, which were a power in the community about them ; churches whose prayers, example, contributions, and efforts were most efficient agencies in carrying on that most remarkable missionary work, which re- sulted in speedily bringing the then known world to the Christian farth. Says the apostle to the Thessalonians, " From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad ; so that we need not to speak anything." Whatever else we may do, however many in- 90 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. dividual souls we may save, our missionary work will be little, if any, better than a failure, if we fail to plant such churches. In saying this I do not mean that the gift of the Bible to the different nations in their own tongues is not desirable. This work may be well, nobly done, and much other incidental good be accom- plished. That Bible may be put into the hand of many persons, and a general knowledge of Christian duty be disseminated, which, if wisely directed to its proper ends, would result in still greater good. But in the failure to secure the great, the single ultimate aim of missionary ef- forts, the establishment of an independent, self- sustaining, self-propagating Christianity, these incidental benefits can no more be cited as evi- dence of success than could the roads made and the canals dug by our armies in the South- ern States be adduced as evidence of success, if those armies had failed to put down the rebel- lion. We may affirm, too, as has been done, and truly, that " no earthly enterprise has such re- sults to show as this of missions, in accessions to THE WORK TO BE DONE. 91 the domain of knowledge, in great moral, social, and political changes ; " but, looked at in the light of tlie one great object, these groat changes are but the canals and roads, the in- ternal improvements, made by the missionary army on the territory of the arch-rebel. Tills may be well done, but if the great, the only really essential work, — that of putting down the rebellion and locating upon the conquered ter- ritory efficient, because loyal, native armies of occupation, in the form of living churches, — be not also done, the help given to the devil, in the form of internal improvements on his territory, enabling him the better to hold it, more than counterbalances the mischief caused to his king- dom by the few occasional captures made from his subjects, especially if the captives are to be employed and paid as missionary helpers upon the soil by funds drawn from abroad. CHAPTER lY. PASTORS, SELF-SUPPORT, SELF-GOVERNMENT,— THE CHURCHES' THREEFOLD CORD. And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed. — Acts Av. 23. HE apostles, then, the first Christian for- eign missionaries, completely organized ev- erj chnrch which they formed. Tliey gave to each from the first its own proper native officers. Tliis is apparent not only in this in- stance, but appears elsewhere as a principle of missionary policy. Says Paul to Titus, " For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou should- est set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed tlice." Tit. i. 5. The apostle could not rest till, with the other " things wanting" for the organization of the Cretan churches, that great- 92 PASTORS. 93 est want of all was supplied, a pastor to cacli one ; and he takes especial pains to instruct the young missionary how to do well the important duty of selecting and ordaining the proper per- sons. To Timothy also he gives special directions for the choice of bishops, showing that ho too was expected to select men and set them apart to the office. The existence of a pastorloss church is nowhere indicated or implied in i\\Q New-Testament history, but, on the contrary, the ini})lication is clear that each cliurch had, from the date of its formation, a bishop of its own. The action of the apostle Paul, at least, is plain; and if any one thing more than any other, next to his all-consuming love for Christ and zeal for his cause, gave him his unrivaled success as a missionary, it was his effort to secure native la- borers and put them into the work. It seems at times as if he regarded it as beneath him to do the work of the local ministry. " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to ])rcach the gospel," said he to the Corinthians. And when we recall the large number of those thrust into the ministry 94 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. who are only incidoutally mentioned, wc can infer something of his wonderful success in raising up a native ministry in the countries in which he labored. Every man, fitted for the office, who came into contact witli him, from his medical traveling-companion, Luke, down to his hired servant, Mark, was transformed into a helper in the missionary work, probably quite as much by his own purpose and magnetic force of character, as by the divine call revealed through him. "Here, then," said we in entering the mis- sionary field, " is an agency no less available now than then in doing the same work ; " and accordingly, right or wrong, in the first letter to Boston it was laid down as a fundamental principle of missionary policy, and one from which we have not in any case departed, to " ORDAIN ELDERS IN EVERY CHURCH." To the lit- tle church already formed in Harpoot, in spite of difficulties many-fold increased by the fact of its formation upon a different basis, wc gave a pastor, and succeeded at length in imbuing them with the feeling whicli churches organized PASTORS. 95 on the apostolic, or rather on the divine plan, have had from the first : namely, that they are a church of Christ, and as such have sometliing to do for him, and not a mere company enlisted in the service of foreigners. That effort cost so much that not till the autumn of 1864 did we dare to form another church. A little more tiian seven years did we, gospel trumpet and subscription-paper in hand, compass the Jericho of oriental inertia and covetousness, before enough of the wall fell down to embolden us to enter and attempt to put a pastor over a church of our own forming. Had not the apostolic example induced us to adhere to this method, we should have adopted it from other'considerations. When Missionary Boards are vainly calling for the few scores of men needed for the proper missionary work of planting churches, it were folly to suppose that hundreds can be found to act as pastors to little groups of converted heathen ; and worse than folly to belittle the popular idea of tlic mission- ary work, and leave the heathon to perish, by using the existing force of laborers for work 9G TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. which can be so much better done, and at far less expense, by pastors chosen from among the people themselves ; for, by manners and cus- toms, hj early education, by modes of thoug-ht and feeling, — in a word, by all which separates man from his fellow, — missionaries arc too far separated from those to whom they go to be able to have that practical, effectual sympathy with them, without which the pastoral relation can no more exist than can the matrimonial. Then, too, if found, and fit for the office, how shall the missionary pastors be supported ? Un- less the missionary with his family adopt the style of living prevalent among the people, and like tliem cut himself off from that intercourse witli tlie home-land whicli is so expensive (a more hopeful way of sinking liimself and family to the people's level than of raising them to his), or unless, as in some cases has been done, he gather into one unwieldy cliurcli the mate- rial of several, and thus disable himself from doing its pastoral la1)or, his support will be a burden too great for them to bear. If, on tlie other hand, he gets his support from the hoiuo SELF-SUPPORT. 97 cliurches, he wrongs liis cluirch by making tliem pensioners on the bounty of others, while, at the same time, he misappropriates funds given for missionary purposes. But another and greater wrong is inflicted on the newly-formed churches by depriving tliem of doing and enjoying tliat most blessed duty and privilege of furnishing their own ministry. It is not too much to say that no church can live, deprived of the power or the opportunity to perform this its last and noblest function, of bringing fortli this its richest fruit, in a living ministry for themselves and others. Certain 4t is that, in the alienee of this " seed in it- self," it can have no power of self-perpetua- tion. Another principle adopted, and one which we regard as essential to the effective carrying out of the preceding, was to leave each church to choose and call its own pastor, making its own pecuniary and other arrangements with him, and assuming from tlie first the entire respon- sibility for his support. Eacli little community of hoj)i;ful Christiuiis, previous to tiieir organ- 98 TEN YEARS ON THE EUI-MliATES. ization as a church, fix their eye on some mem- ber of the theological seminary, become ac- quainted with him, and when, after his gradua- tion, they and he agree, are organized as a church, and enter into the relation of pastor and people. No argument surely is needed to prove that this is tlie only way to secure per- manence in that relation. If we chose or sup- ported the pastors, the people would not and could not look upon them as belonging to tliem- selves, and, as a result, pastors would be little if anything more than hired preachers. As it is, the relation is usually one of much mutual affection, and promises to be permanent ; and by this course both people and pastors are educated to act for themselves. A translation of a " call " from one of these little commimities to their proposed pastor may not be uninteresting. It was made by the peo- ])le of Perchcnj, a village six miles south from Ilarpoot, to a young graduate of the theological seminary, who was at the time preaching to another people, who, as a penalty for careless- SELF-SUPPOliT. 99 ness in providing for his support, were con demiied to lose him. " To Baron * Bedros Apkarian, Evangelical Preacher at Maden. " Beloved Brother in the Lord : Wo, the undersigned, believing that your ordination as our pastor will be for the glory of God and the advancement of his kingdom, in this and neigh- boring f villages, therefore entreat you to as- sume this office.- When you have dojic so we promise, (1.) That wo will furnish you a suit- able house to live in. (2.) We will pay you regularly every month two hundred piasters, :|: and more when it shall be necessary. (3.) We will live with you in love and sympathy, honor- ing and caring for you as our spiritual shepherd. Praying that the blessing of God may be poured abundantly upon you and us, * Equivalent to the English " Mr." t The use of this word was not a mere form, as thoy organized tlie first home missionary society, one whicli has done and is doing mucli good. t Tlie value of the piaster varies, but usually aiflers very littln from four cents. 100 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. and tliat your stay among us may be profitable for the salvation of the dwellers in this villaoc and others about it, " We remain, " Yours in Christ Jesus." To this Avere affixed the names of " Pilo-rim * Marsoop," — all who have visited Jerusalem hear this title, — "Pilgrim Jacob," "Brother Adam,"and twenty-live others, with their seals, those who have no seals supplying its place by dipping the end of a finger in ink and imprint- ing it upon the paper. Then follow the names of these twenty-eight principal men, and twenty- nine others, some of them children, with sub- scri[)tions varying from twenty cents to one- fourth of a cent a month, to make up the promised salary. Before giving this call, the people had been divided into two parties, one party contending for a man named Toma Darakjian, and there had Ijeon danger of a quarrel. They met to * All thnse Turks, .also, who have visited Mecca are afterward? ^ cailed ilaji, i. e. 1 iigriju. SELF-SUPPORT. 101 docide tlic case, each party accusing the other of willfulness, and each replying, " We wish oiily to know and do God's will." So, looking to apostolic example, they referred the case to God for decision. Writing in one place " Toma," and in another " Bedros," and upon one piece of paper " Man's choice," and on anotiier " God's clioice," they rolled up and f^liook up the bits of paper, and, having united ill praying, " Thou, Lord, wlio knowest the h'jarts of all men, show whcthor of those two thou hast chosen," laid one piece by Tenia's name and the other by that of Bedros. On unrolling them, " God's clioice" fell to Bedros, and all joyfully united in sending the call to him. It will be seen that the cost of supporting a native pastor is far less than that of a mis- sionary must be ; the usual salary of a village pastor being about one hundred and six dollars in coin, and that of the pastor in Harpoot city about two hundred and twenty dollars. While the churches assnmc the entire " resjionsibility " ol' (licir jnistors' salaries, temporary aid is giaut- 102 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. ed to needy churches, in no case exceeding one- half of the amount. This is promised only for one year, and, if continued, is duninished al least one-fifth each successive year, till at the end of five years it ceases entirely. The cliurches are thus made to feel from the first that the entire responsibility rests on them, and not at all on us. A tlnrd principle is, that in assuming this responsibility, or, in other words, by the act of tlieir organization, the churches are indepen- dent of missionary control, having the same re- lations and duties to Christ and each other as churches at home have. They and their pas- tors are made to understand that they are in no sense subject to us, nor to any man, but only to Christ. This, of course, applied at first only to the individual churches. The pastors had from the first the same rights and duties as those at home, just as if no missionaries had been on the ground. They presided in church-meetings, administered the sacraments, and, with their churcl'.cs, managed all their ov.^n internal af- fairs, roceiving members and regulating church- SELF-GOVERNMENT. 103 discipline as tliGj saw fit. From this it natur- ally follows, that, when the number of churches became large enougli to form an ecclesiastical body of their own, it would bo their right and duty so to do, and to manage all their own ec- clesiastical affairs. This logical result of the idea that a Christian cliurch is, under Christ, to control its own affairs, entering into such rela- tions with sister churches as it chooses, we fear- lessly accepted, without any attempt to retain for ourselves any other than that moral influ- ence, which, as missionaries, we are quite sure to have witli our spiritual children, or at least more likely to have by manifesting confidence in them as followers of Clirist than by distrust- fully trying to retain the ecclesiastical reins in our own hands. Of the results of this course of action I shall hereafter speak, but may here say that so far they jnslify the wisdum of the opinion then formed, that tlio best way to manage missionary churches is that which the first forei<2:n Chris- tian missionaries adopted, of whom it is said, tliat, having " prayed with fasting, they com- 104 TEli YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. mended tliem to the Lord, on whom tlioj be- lieved." It is natural to liave a nervous fear lest, by leaving other hands than our own to drive the cart on wliich the ark of tlie Lord is borne, disaster should come upon it, but tliis fear is often caused by undue anxiety about small matters. When the pastor of the Harpoot church first entered upon liis duties, a ministerial brother from a])road was quite agitated by some trifling breach on his part of our communion etiquette, and aiixiously inquired whether we still pur- posed to leave such matters to him, expressing fear lest, by leaving too much responsibility upon the new pastor, we should bring disaster upon the clmrch and the cause. " Did he not give the bread ? " we asked. " Yes," he re- plied. "Did he give the cup?" "He did." "Did he do it in remembrance of Christ?" "Yes" " Well j those are the only essential things." And, from that day to this, ho, and, after him, other pastors, have given the bread and the wine in the name of Christ ; and if they have at times failed to use a stereotyped form, SEL F-GO VERNMENT. 105 our minds have been so engrossed in the sub- stance, or we liave become so orientalized, as not to be annoyed by it. And, better still, they have succeeded in managing the more weighty affairs of tlie churches more successfully, I be- lieve, than we missionaries could have done, or at least better than some missionaries who have tried it have succeeded in raanaQ;infi- their churches. ]f we wish the native preachers to feel and act like men, we must trust and treat them as such, and not as children ; or rather we must trust the Master, whose servants they and we are. But it is not so much mere externals, as the weigliticr matters of faitli and practice, about wliich we sliould be solicitous in putting men into the ministry. Here, too, we must be fear- less, using our own careful judgment in select- ing and training the men, and prayerfully trust- ing God for the rest. I3y no amount of timid liesitation and delay sliall we bo able to avoid all mistakes. Offonsos must needs come. Sonic of those set apart by the inspired apostle to the 106 TEN YEAns ON THE EUPIIllATES. Gentiles proved unworthy, and he expected they would. He assured the Ephesiau elders that from among themselves should men arise speak- ing perverse things to draw away disciples after them ; and when he left Titus to ordain elders ill every city of tlio " slow-bellied, lying Cre- tans," he doubtless expected that some of the " evil beasts" would be put into oiHices of which they were unworthy, but he nevertheless went on. If ever there was a case calling for delay and extra caution, one in which either no churches should have been formed, or the mis- sionary should have put his own hand to the work of guiding them, this of such a people as the Cretans was one ; and yet Paul's policy was, " Rebuke them sharply, but go on with the work of forming churches and ordaining pas- tors, and leave the result to the God of mis- sions :" and why may not we safely and .profit- ably do the same ? If not, if we arc timidly to keep the churches on missionary ground, and their preachers in leading-strings, the sooner we take consistent ground and declare ourselves their spiritual THE CHURCHES' THREEFOLD CORD. 107 rulers, the better, and proceed to ordain an infe- rior clergy, whose natural position will be that now held by so many of the native ministry on missionary ground. Lot no one suppose that it was easy for us to take and hold our position in Harpoot. It is one of the misfortunes of missionary labor that it almost inevitably impresses the people willi tlie idea that those who send missionaries to them have a great amount of wealtli, for whicli they care little except to find some easy way of spending it. If not, why should wo use so large sums for purposes which bring in no gain ? While, then, the inevitable impression that tlio missionary is rich gives him greater influence among tlie people, and thus enables him to do more good, his money at the same time excites their greed, and, unless lie use great shrewdness in money matters, taking care to aid the churches no more tlian is absolutely necessary, ho will cultivate among them a habit of reliance on foreign aid fatal to real independence. Wo ourselves erred at fust in under-estimating (he ability of the Harpoot people ; but our funda- 108 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. mental ideas of missionary policy soon corrected this, and brought them up to a higher standard of giving. By holding fast to the idea that the inde- pendence of the chnrclies is inseparable from self-support, and tlien making every possible appeal to their manhood and their Christian feeling, we at length succeeded in gaining for the idea a permanent lodgment, as we hope, in the minds of both people and pastors ; but no one, who has not done the difficult work, can realize at what expense of effort and nervous energy it was accomplished. It required line upon line, and precept upon precept, repeated sometimes till the brain and the tongue wearied with the tiresome repetition. Sometimes we labored privately with them which were of rep- utation, urging them, as Paul did the Corin- tliians (2 Cor. ix. 1-4), so to behave as to jus- tify our good opinion of them ; and, again, wo rebuked before all some niggardly giver. When sometimes we dwelt too much, as the people thought, on remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, " It is more blessed THE CHURCHES' THREEFOLD CORD. 109 to give than to receive," we replied, " Seek and enjoy this blessing, that we may stop talk- ing to you about it." When once asked wliether it was not a shame to talk on such a sul)ject from the pulpit, we replied, " Yes, it is a shame to i/ou that by your covetousness you malie it necessary." AVliile we paid a part of the salary of tlie Harpoot city pastor, we were accustomed to occupy the pulpit during the same proportion of tlie time, leaving him to preach elsewhere. When once, in a pet at our faithfulness, the people sent a committee to re- quest that their pastor should preach all the time, we replied, " If you wish to hear your pas- tor you must make him yours by supporting him, and when you do this we mean that you shall hear him ;"* and, true to our intention, we left the pulpit to liim from the time that the church began to pay his entire salary, — from January, 1866. That one church cost far more effort to make it independent than did the next three, formed • Should any one ask, " Was not this infringing on tlie right of the church to control its own pulpit ? " I reply, " No ; for that jilace of worship was ours, not theirs." 110 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. in 1864 and 1865 ; but we were working on pa- tiently, encouraged by the hope of having no other such church to care for and bring up to its duty, when, in 1835, by the addition of neigliboring territory to our mission-field, live other dependent, pastorless churclies, a sixth, with a pastor supported by the Board, and a seventh, which half supported its pastor, were thrown upon our hands. It was as if an army almost exhausted in a conflict should sec a host of fresh foes coming to snatch away the victory. Tlic story of these seven churclies can not be told liere. Suffice it to say that we took bolder, higher ground with them tlian we had ventured to take with the Harpoot church. With " Christ sent us not to baptize, Init to prcacli tlic gos- pel," as our guide, and aided by the noble little band of young pastors from our own proper field, we went to work, refusing to recognize as a church * any company of professed be- * That is, we declined to administor tho sacraments to them. The church in Malatia, thus left without communion and baptism, ap- pealed to us to send a pastor from some other church, to which we replied, "The pastors arc not our servants ; ask one yourselves." At theii ••equost, the Uulakegh pastor went and gave them the com- THE CHURCHES' THREEFOLD CORD. Ill lievers who should not wake up and go to work for the Master ; and, in a brief time, three of the five pastorless churches had pas- tor^, paying half or more of their salaries, a fourth pays two-fifths of its preacher's salary, and will soon have him for pastor, while a fifth is practically dead ; the church with the Board's pastor made him theirs by supporting liim, and the one which had paid one-half of the expense of its pastor and schools now pays all. With one community, the one least willing to pay, and whose wrath was kindled against the new- comers, with our new gospel of " Give, give," we labored in vain, till, by comparing them to a healthy, strong man, who should lie down by the roadside to beg, crying out, " Help a poor cripple ! " and saying to them, " We are the men, who, instead of wronging by feeding you, have come in love, with the rod of God in our hands, to smite you, and say, " Get up, muuion. A few days after, they came, saying, " Is it not a shamo for us of the big city of Malatia to beg tlie sacraiaonts from a poor village church?" To which we replied, "It is no shame to bog when per- eons are too poor to do otherwl-se." "We are not too poor," they replied, and within a month they had a pastor. 112 TEN YEAns Oy THE EUPHRATES. you pretended cripples, and prove by walking that yon have feet ! " we at first relaxed their sullen faces in mirth, and then gave them forty dollars to aid in supporting the pastor of their choice. Let no one from these incidents infer that ours was merely a gospel of independence and self-support. Tiiat sort of preaching would not convert men ; and, to seciire churches to be independent by self-support, two other things are necessary : converts, persons who truly love tlie Lord Jesus, to become members of those churches, and properly trained pas- tors and pastors' wives to be leaders in them. To securing these by the faithful use of the divinely -appointed instrumentality, and to training chosen men and women to feed the flocks over which the Holy Ghost shor.ld make them overseers, our strength has been given. CHAPTER y. THE TRUTH READ. Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. — John v. 39. IBLE truth is the instrument to use for converting men. I have already alluded to the fact that the Armenians have the Scriptures in their ancient language, for which, thougli unintelligible to them, the people have a superstitous reverence, and that Dr. Riggs has given them a translation of it in their spoken language. The first thing to do, then, in entering upon the missionary work among the Armenians, is to convince them that the new volume which we bring is really the same in meaning with that which they and their fathers have venerated for more than fourteen centuries, and then to teach them to read it. The first is, happily, very easily done, indeed has 113 114 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. been done* and the majority acknowledge lliat the " Protestant Bible," as it is called, is sub- stantially one with their own ancient volume. But, unhappily, in the Ilarpoot field the great mass of the people were sunk in the deepest ignorance. The Turkish officials aside, proba- bly not one in a hundred could read. Multi- tudes even of the Armenian priests, taught only to mumble the prayers and forms of the church in the ancient tongue, were unable to read the modern Bible intelligently. Our first effort, then, was to rouse all whom we met to a sense of the importance of learning this art, and of possessing a Bible. Much on the same princi- ple as posters are put in public places, we en- deavored to attract the public attention l)y ask- ing every man we met, " Do you know how to read ? " It was sometimes amusing to witness the wonder and incredulity with which our as- sertion was received, that an adult man, and even a woman, can learn to do this. Then too the idea cf doing it, even if possible, was to some ludicrous enough. " What ! Am I to become a priest," exclaimed many a man, THE TUUril READ. 115 " that I should learu to read ! " But when, at length, a few here and there were persuaded to break over the feeling that priests only should read, and especially when others heard the new learners read of the wonderful things of God from the newly-purchased book, the popular feeling changed, and now a man is rarely to be found, wlio has come in contact with missiona- ries or witli native helpers, who does not at the least acknowledge that it is a good thing for every one, including even women, to learn to read; and that, though but a few years ago this was regarded as sufficient to unsex a wo- man. Sometimes, in their new-born zeal to have their wives learn, the men use peculiarily orien- tal ways of bringing it about. Finding in the city of Palu, on the Euphrates, some forty miles east from Harpoot, twelve men at oui place of worship, but no woman, I inquired, " Where are your wives ? " To this they re- plied, and with trutli, "They are very bittei against tliis })lace. Tl ey will not come." At the same time, they confessed that they had 116 TEN YEAIiS ON THE EUPHRATES. made no effort eitlier to bring tliem there or to induce them to learn to read. Quoting to them, " If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel," and adding, " So you see that you, in- stead of becoming better by coming here, are worse than the infidel Turks about you," I went on my way. Visiting the city a few weeks later, what was my surprise to find all the women present, each witli a primer in hand ! Asking how this strange event had come to pass, I re- ceived the reply, " You told us that it was our duty to bring our wives in, and as they wouldn't come, we whipped them and made them come." Whether the women were whipped or not, one thing is sure : having got a good start in the beginning, in the way of Christian knowledge, they have to this day kept in advance of the wo- men in other places. They study their Bibles and catechisms, and write, and some of them cipher. Five of them have opened in their own houses free schools, to which they receive their neighbors' girls, and give them daily lessons, in THE TltUTH READ. 117 the intervals of housework. Several of tliera have become Christians, and of the twelve pro- posed members of the church to be planted th'ere, thej are the most zealous in the service of Christ. Having by various methods thus awakened a popular feeling in favor of education, it remains for us to provide the means to gratify it. One means has been already indicated. The Palu women gathering and teaching girls are but carrying out a principle of action which we try to impress on all, namely, that, having themselves found the fountain, it is their duty to guide others to it, — to teach others also to read. Many learn in this way. A second method is to send " little teachers," as they are called, little boys from the schools, who go from house to house and shop to shop, teach- ing adults to read, and receiving from us, when paid at all, about one-fourth of a cent for each daily lesson of twenty minutes. As a third means, we use schools, wh'icli are, however, supported by us only long enough to teach ihc first-comers to read, and to give them 118 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. a taste of the sweets of a knowledge of tlia Bible. The popular tide being thus partially turned in the right direction, we either wholly or in part withdraw our support from the scliool, and throw its expense on the people. In exceptional cases of giving aid for a longer time, it is done as an encouragement to a church to support their pastor, and at the same time relieve him of tlie labor of teaching, — in whicli some engage without compensation, — and leave him free to do more pastoral and missionary labor. Thus we have a standing rule allowing us to pay for any village church half of the salary of a teacher five months of the year, his salary not exceeding three dollars per month. During the twelve years of mis- sionary labor in Harpoot, previous to 1867, the sum of 8-3,501 * was expended for common * The fjllowing are the items of expenditure by the Board for aU objects in the station and out-stations during the same time. Theological Seminary, seven years, .... $7,470 Female Seminary, four " .... 2,140 Aid in chapel building, 4,392 Common schools, 3,501 Salaries of helpers, rent, and aid to churches, &c , 28,106 Salaries of missionaries, 17,032 $62,641 THE TRUTH READ. ' 11& schools in the city and its out-stations. It will, of course, be understood that every pieacher or helper in any form is ever ready to teach the people, young and old, to read the Bible. In- deed, the great labor of a helper on entering a new village is to urge the people to buy a primer and a Bible and learn to read them, ho himself teaching them. As I do not propose to speak further of this department, 1 here group the chief items of interest relating to it. During the winter of 18GG-67, in the city of Harpoot and the fifty-four out-stations under our care, 1,129 boys, 573 girls, and 885 adults, men and women, making a total of 2,587 per- sons, were under instruction in the different ways above specified. But our efforts, and those of the Protestant churches and communities, have likewise awakened the public spirit of the remaining Armenians, and the fears of their ecclesiastics, lest we get away all their adherents, so they too open schools, and in other ways teach the peo- ple. iVs neai-ly as 1 could ascertain, in tJie 120 TEN^ YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. fifty-five cities and villages spoken of above, there were under instruction among them, dur- ing the winter of 1866-67, a total of 4,980 per- sons, made up of 3,764 boys, 609 girls, and 607 adults. Most of the schools sustained by the Armenians may fairly be put to missionary credit, since, to sa}"- nothing of the fact that their opening schools at all is owing to mission- ary influence, the great majority of them are now kept open merely in opposition to Protes- tant schools, and would be closed if these were to cease. Thousands, probably tens of thou- sands, have thus learned to read, and attention has been given to writing and other branches, where but a few years ago popular education was unknown ; and our hope is that the result will be to lead the entire population to feel tho importance of education, and to use the means to secure it. But it must be borne in mind that the end aimed at is not pojjular education, — which, as we feel, would do harm rather than good, if in advance of the planting of living churches, • — but to put the Bible into the hands of the THE TRUTH HEAD. 121 people, and induce them to study and obey it. This is uniformly done by sale, since to give an Oriental a book would lead him to value it lightly. Other volumes have also been trans- lated into the different languages used, — • whicli in Harpoot itself are the Armenian and the Turkish, — or prepared in them, and of some of these the sales have been considerable. I have not the statistics for the two years pre- ceding our location there, but, during the " ton years," a total of 35,091 volumes, besides many tracts, were sold from the book deposi- tory in Harpoot. Among these were copies of the Scriptures, and parts of same, 11,607 ; Hymn-Books, 2,758 ; Cliurch Members' Guide, 231 ; Abbott's Mother at Home, 609 ; Way- land's Moral Philosophy, 270 ; Primers, 7,315 ; Doddridge's Rise and Progress, 196 ; Mary Lothrop, 333 ; Pilgrim's Progress, 316 ; Saint's Rest, 258 ; Commentary on Matthew, 547 ; James's Anxious Inquirer, 251 ; CatSchisms, 1,488 ; of a book of Prayers for various classes, 2,072; and 1,700 copies of an excel- lent little book, a sort of " Call to the Uncon- 122 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. verted," prepared by the pastor of the cit^ church. The comparative smallness of these sales ia accounted for by the fact, that, almost without exception, those who bought the books were first taught to read them. And this sowing of tiie good seed of the Word has, in many cases, been followed by a rich spiritual harvest. A few from among many striking incidents are given, sliowiug that the best way to m iko men acquainted with that eternal life whicli is in the Son of God is to induce them to search the Scriptures, which testify of him. In the village of Bizmishcn, some nine miles west from Harpoot, was a man by the name of Magliak, a manufacturer and j)eddler of sesame oil, who was so notorious for his shrewdness in cheating his customers tliat he was known throughout all the region by the nickname, " Tiiief Maghak." He was per- suaded to buy a Bible and a primer, and began from that to be known as " Protc Maghak," which was then a term of even greater re- THE TIWTH READ. 123 proacli ; lor, besides being an abbreviation of the word Protestant, " Prote," with an almost imperceptible change of tone, is made to mean a leper, and is used with this double meaning. Taking a lesson from every reader whom he met, Tliief Maghak in time learned to read his Bible, and to feel its power. He became an honest man, so much so as to be as noted for his honestv as he had been for his cheating. The Turkish owner of the soil which he cultivates now never measures his share of the crop which Magliak brings him. He knows that it is right. Better still, he became a humble, earnest, consistent Chri£*tian, and such has been his influence in his native village tliat " Prote " no longer means there a leper, but an honest man. Others, including his two brothers and all the members of his own household, have learned to read and to love the Bible. As one fruit of his efforts, the people of the village, with a little aid from us, built during 186G a good chapel, in which an audience worship averaging seventy the past year, and increasing in numl)cr. They pay one-third of their preacher's salary, and 124 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPTfRATES. hope soon to have him for pastor, some twelve persons in the village being liopefnl Christians. Meanwhile, he has not been idle as a Chris- tian in his oil-peddling tours. Some four years ago, he succeeded in selling a Bible to a man in Najaran, an Armenian village forty miles dis- tant from Bizmishen, in the Koordish Moun- tains east from Harpoot. Tliere, as before in Bizmishen, the one Bible remained, and did its silent work. Its one reader found three com- panions to listen ; but, as Najaran is in a wild region little frequented by us, we knew nothing of the Bible or its readers, except as report said tlicrc was a " Prote " in Najaran. But, in the winter of 1836-67, the native helper in a village in the district went with several companions to visit the place. To his and their surprise, the villagers met them on the outskirts of the place, and gave them a severe beating, leaving the helper senseless on the snow, for dead. This was the way these wild men took to pre- vent outside sympathy from reaching and en- couraging the little band of Bible men inside. They then returned to them, saying, " Now THE TRUTH BEAD. 125 comes your turn to be beaten. You invited these 'Protes' to our village." Two of tho four were beaten, one fled, and one, a man of some influence, intimidated the crowd by daring them to touch him. They, with the helper, then came to Harpoot, saying, " We do not wish our abusers pun- ished. We have set down the beating to our ac- count with the Lord 'Jesus, and we only ask that you give us a preacher." We gave them the only one available, an uneducated man, a member of the city church. He went. The mob drove him out. We appealed to the pasha, the Turkish ruler of Harpoot, who sent the helper back again. Again the mob drove him out, and again the pasha put him back ; and this time the mob desisted from vio- lence, saying, " These Protes are sure to con- quer. 'Tis said they never give up." The four Bible men then bought an old house at an expensS of about thirty dollars, wliicli they paid tliemselves, and appealed to us for the one hundred dollars additional needed to make it a suitable place of worship. 126 TEN YEAnS ON THE EUPHRATES. Wc conlJ not aid them so mucli ; and mean- while an audience of thirty men, women, and children began to meet in another place to heai the Bible read and explained, and to endure persecution as " Protes." And now a letter from Harpoot tells of other fruit from that Bible in the hands of Maghak. Six miles north-west from the city is Korpeh, a large Armenian village, where for ten years we tried in vain to gain entrance for , the truth. The people were exceedingly bitter in their hostility, using violence to keep out persons who went there to talk with them. The Turkish owner of the soil, Osman Bey, recently complained to the missionaries of the attempts of the Protestants to enter a place where the people did not wish tliem. But this man has land in Bizmishen also, and just after making this complaint he was visited by Astadoor, one of his tenants and a neighbor of Maghak, and who, like him, had learned to be honest, and who returned to the Turk some grain, saying, " Tiie seed has overrun. This belongs to you." " I wish I had more tenants like you," said Os- THE TRUTH READ. 127 man Eey ; " this is tlie first timo I have had seed brought back." Astadoor, pulling out his Testament from his bosom, where all the Pro- testants are accustomed to carry it, replied, " The secret of this is not in me, but in this book. I never did such a thing till I read this." The result was that the Turk ordered his agent in Korpeh to rent a house for a Pro- testant preacher to go there and teach the gos- . pel of honesty to his tenants. Some years since, a man in the city of Har- poot, named Kevork Dashjian,* seeing a Bi- ble lying neglected upon a shelf in the house of the careless owner, borrowed it, and, being able to read, soon became interested in its con- tents. But meanwhile the owner called for tlie . book. Kevork, who was poor, was thinking what he should do, when unexpectedly a man paid him upon an old debt one dollar and sixty cents, just the price of a Bible. " This, >> * Kevork is " George," and Dashjian denotes his business -of stone- cutting. He is, tlien, " George Stone," and, as Protestantism is (ixiiig tlie habit of rotaiuing family naiiios, his children, wliatover their pur- Buits, will be known as Stone. We thus sec going on about us that process wliicli, in earlier ages, fixed family names in English. 128 TEN TEARS ON TUE EUPHRATES. said he, " is God's voice telling me to buy a Bible." He did so, read it, and soon appeared in our meetings, a serious-minded inquirer. He became a true Christian and an intelligent, useful member of the church, together with seven other members of his large family.* Neighbor to him lived a man reputed to be the vilest person in the city ; one who, though an Armenian, was addicted to crimes regarded as peculiarly Turkish, or rather heathenish. He was one of those of whom the apostle says " that it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret." He not only did the same, but had pleasure in them that did them. He was so notoriously vile that even the Armenians regarded their church as polluted by his presence. All efforts to reach and save him were vain, till one day he met a poor old man, a member of the city church, one who found the Saviour when past the allotted threescore years and ten, and who, in his age and infirmity, often says to us, " I have one * The patriarchal custom of all the sons' remaining at homo, sub* ject, with their children, to their father, is still continued. THE TRUTH READ. 129 foot ill the grave now, and the other will soon be there. When you bury me, be sure to sing, ' Joyfully, joyfully onward we move, Bound to the realms of bright spirits above.' " r Meeting the wretched man in the street, and pulling a copy of the Psalms from his bosom, tlie old man persuaded him to buy it. He already knew how to read, and the little book soon awakened his slumbering conscience. Go- ing on business to a city a week's journey dis- tant, he accidentally left the little volume at home, but, happening to mention some of its wonderful words to the Turks with whom he was doing business, they sent a man to get it, and had it read. Meanwhile, burdened with a sense of sin, he returned home, and soon, to the sur- prise of all, found his way to a Protestant prayer-meeting, and rose begging them to pray for liim. " Oil," said he, " I have been a dread- ful sinner ! Satan has bound me hand and foot. Pray for me that I may be set free ! " For some time lie continued in the deepest distress, uiit at last found peace, wondoi'ing at the love loO TEN^ YEARS ON THE EUPIIUATES. which could save such as ho. Ho was indeed in the condition of the prodigal son. His vices had reduced him to extreme poverty. lie had not money enough to buy the Bible which he needed and desired, but wlien, in a prayer- meeting, it was mentioned that "a poor brother" needed a Bible, all but the twenty cents whicli it was thouglit best that ho should pay was at once laid upon the desk. With his new-born love for the Saviour, he went to tlie Kevork before mentioned, saying, " Come, brotlier, I don't know anything, but you do ; come with me to the villages. You do the preaching and I'll take the beatings." Tlicy went first to the Korpeh mentioned, and he re- ceived from the people the expected beating. Again he went, and again was driven away ; but the third time one of his companions, a burlj blacksmith from the city, said to the people, " If you stone us, we shall-continue to come, till all the Protestants in the city will pour into your village ; but let us alone, and only two will come to talk, and you can, if you wish, shut your ears against them." Tlie people heeded THE TRUTH READ. 131 his advice, and in a short time, as before re- lated, the Turkish owner of the soil, Osman Bej, ordered his agent there to lease the Pro- testants a house. Thus on the one hand the Bizmishen Bible, and on the other the Harpoot copy of the Psalms, have made a breach in the walls of darkness, superstition, and hatred, wliich, for so many years, have shut in the be- nighted inhabitants of Korpeh. Some sixty miles to the south from Harpoot, in the wildest part of the Taurus Mountains, is the city of Chermook, inhabited partly by Armenians, many of whom differ little from the wild Koords about them. Among these was one named Harootune (" Resurrection"). His rage against the " Protes " knew no bounds. He was a very Saul of Tarsus in his hate against them. He was a choolgee, or maker of donkey-saddles, and one day, seeing the Protestant native helper enter a sliop near his own, he stabbed his big knife into the saddle in liand, exclaiming, " Would that this were a Pr(jte ! " Not long after, he began to suspect that all was not true that had been told him, 132 TEN YEARS ON TUE EUPUIIATES. and, big knife still in hand, lie went to tlie Armenian school to inquire of the teacher. Not getting the straightforward replies wliicli he expected, in his wrath he seized the teacher by the hair, saying, " Sir, I'll cut off your liead ! " and, suiting the action to the word, be- gan to use his knife on the back of the poor man's neck. The children ran screaming from the room, and help came and saved the teacher from his hands. Determined to examine for himself, he bought a primer from our helper, put it in his bosom, where the Orientals carry all their treasures, and begged every reader wliom he met to give him a lesson. With thorough earnestness, making each lesson his own, he soon passed over the preliminary pa- ges, and came to brief sentences. One of tlie first of these is from Prov. xxiii. 17, " Be thou in the fear of tlie Lord all the day long." He must needs understand all as far as he goes, and inquires, " What is the fear of the Lord ? Why should we have it ? What does he do to us ? When shall I begin to have this fear, and how get if ? " etc., etc. Reading the sentence, THE TRUTH READ. 133 " Avoid sin and fear God, and your soul will be safe in his hands," he exclaimed, " Oh that God would take ray soul wholly into his hands, and hold it fast ! " To use his own expression, he " loved his primer as his eyes," and ap- pealed to it on all occasions, saying, " Doesn't my primer say so ? " " Oh, when shall I be able to read my Bible ! " he often exclaimed. He forsook the Armenian church entirely, and became a constant attendant at the Protestant chapel, and, by his zeal for the truth, became a standing, or rather a moving rebuke to all for- mal, cold-hearted Protestants, He rebuked one who attended chapel but half a day on the Sabljath, inquiring whether it was not well to meet with God's people all day. To another, who drank a glass of wine, and, by way of excuse, asked, " Didn't God make grapes?" he indignantly exclaimed, "God made dogs, — go eat some dog carcass! He made poisons too, — go eat them and kill your- self!" When summoned bef)rc the bishop to an- swer why lie went to the chapel, his reply was, 134 TEN YE Alts ON THE EUPURATES. " To learn to read, and for the salvation of my soul." One of his first acts was to call for tho Protpstant subscription-paper and put down his name for a share of the expenses. "While all this occurred so recently that he has not, lilce " Thief IMaghak," been tried l)y time, our hope is, that, having thus begun to run well, he will hold out to tlie end. But one more of many examples will bo given, in which we have seen illustrated the power of the holy Scriptures to make their readers wise unto salvation. About seven miles south from the city of Harpoot, but in full view of it, among the many villages whicli dot the wide-extended plain, lies Pcrchenj, having a population of one thou- sand Armenians, and fifteen hundred Turks. The entire population were ignorant of the truth till, in 1858 or 1859, an Armenian, named Garabed Torosian, honored with the title, Var- jabed ("Teacher"), because he could read, wlien at work in a neighboring village bough.t a Bible and took it home. The first we knew of it was when, in the winter of 1859-60, a THE TRUTH READ. 135 colporter, who spent a night in the village, reported to us that he found seventy men as- sembled in a stable* listening to the "teach- er," who was reading his Bible. The result was the awakening of a spirit of inquiry which led Mr. Barnum and myself to visit the place with a view to spend the Sab- bath. Nearly all of Saturday night did the crowd continue asking, not the usual questions, " Why don't you Protestants make the sign of the cross? "Why don't you keep the fasts? Why don't you have feet-washing ? " etc. ; but, " Wliat does Jesus mean when he says, " Ex- cept a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God ' ? " " What does Paul mean when he says, ' I beseech you therefore, breth- ren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God ' ? " etc., etc Mr. B and I were filled with surprise and delight to see that the * stables are common places of resort in winter for crowds, both because they are large, and because the animals supply the places of stoves, which were unknown till very recently. When on missionary tours, a usual place of stopping is in a stable^ a raised spot in the corner of which is the usual village guest-room. 136 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. " teacher " had sought out such passages to read, and that the people, none of whom could read, remembered them so well. With tlie crowd constantly around us, by bad air, bad food, excitement, and an over-amount of this joyful work, Mr. B and myself were both made sick and obliged to leave, but at their request we sent a man to instruct them. The result was that scores at once learned to read, and bought and began to study the Bible. The Lord did not let his word return to him void. In the spring of 1865, a little church of ten members — increased in 1866 to forty-one, and twenty other hopeful converts — was formed tliere, and a pastor placed over them, — Bedros Apkarian, a translation of whose " call " was given in chapter fourth, and who is now sup- ported entirely by them, they also, first among the village communities, having decided, with- out aid from us, to support a school the year I'ound. Opposed and persecuted by their Turk- ish neighbors, — some of whom do not wisli to see a Protestant chapel erected, — they hav^e, the past summer, erected a really fine chapel THE THUTfT HEAD. 137 and parsonage, at an expense of seven hundred dollars or more, of which one hundred and thkty-seven dollars is a " grant in aid " from us. But the story of that one Bible is not yet finished. Its readers had read, "Freely ye have received, freely give," and, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," and felt that the message was for tliem. Two years before the church was formed there, they, self-moved, or rather Bible-moved, organized themselves into a missionary society, to go two and two on Sabbaths to neighboring villages to read and explain the Bible, and per- suade others to buy and read it. Three or four miles to the south is Hooeli, with a population of twenty-five hundred Arme- nians, and a dozen families of Turks. In tliis central and important village we had for years tried in vain to gain a foothold for tlie truth. One year we paid a Turk twenty dollars for the use of a room in which we put a man who used every possiole means to do them good. It was all in vain. A few persons bought copies of the 138 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. New Testament, and one man a Bible, but tliey seemed to get no benefit from them, and we sent the helper to another place, and left them alone. Afterwards we made another attemj)t to reach them by sending members of the theo- logical seminary to visit them occasionally, but to no purpose. They uniformly returned, saying, " It is wrong to spend money to hire donkeys to ride to that village," So, thougli, at my first visit to the village in 1857, observing great a{)parent zeal for their own superstitions, I had made note, " Zealous in their own faith, they will be so for the truth," and with that hope we had tried thus hard to win them to the truth, we were obliged to yield, and leave them alone again. But not so Perchenj, whose Bible readers had just formed the mis- sionary society. The first village visited was Hooeli, to whicli two men went, Bible in hand, praying as they went, " Lord, give us open doors and hearts!" They found both, and, as a result, the people soon came to us for a man to go and open a Protestant school among them. We had none ; so they chose one of VHE TRUTH READ. 139 their own number, who had learned to read, called lum " teacher," and opened a " Protestant school," putting our primers and New Testa- ments into the hands of the pupils, who — as the art of reading in Armenian is very easy to acquire — soon began to read in their own tongue the wonderful Works of God. The fol- lowing winter, in 1864-65, they furnished a house, fuel, and lights, to a pupil of the semin- ary, who went to remain with them during the vacation of five months. Tlie devil stirred up his servants to come with a mob and pitch the helper and all his effects into the street, or rather they foolishly and disobediently came of themselves, in opposition to his will, for surely tlic enemy of all good must be shrewd enough to liave known that such a course would harm, not help his cause. At any rate, when we beard it, we said, and wisely, as the result has shown, " Praise the Lord for this ! Now he is beginning to do a good work in Iloocli." A work had already been begun by the copies of the Scriptures which had been sold tliere, by scores, by the Percliciij missionary society. 10 140 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. The little room chosen for a chapel was soon full to overflowing. The following summer, a few earnest men, with eighty-eight dollars, aid from us, erected a place of worship to seat three hundred persons ; but tliat proved too small, and during the past summer, having re- modeled that into a parsonage and a school- room for women, they have, with a little aid from us, erected on another spot a two-story building, the lower story having a school-room for boys and one for girls, and the upper, a chapel to seat live hundred people. During the winter of 1866-67, seventy boys, forty-two girls, and two hundred adults were under Prot- estant instruction there, and ten boys, fifty girls, and one hundred and sixty adults were taught by Armenian teachers ; and such was the popular feeling in favor of education and read- ing the Bible, that a priest among them declared in public in their church, " No man can be a Christian who does not read tlie Bible." In this opinion, understood literally, he is in ad- vance of us, for there are many blind and very aged people who can nut Icaru to road, except TUB TRUTH READ. 141 with tlieir fingers, Avhich some already do, with the third chapter of John and two Psahns put into blhid men's Armenian for them. I must not forget to mention the Bible Society which, in imitation of Perchenj and other Protestant communities, these people formed, but in which they surpassed all their teacliers in zeal and efficiency. Their stout little donkey, Av^ith two large coarse bags for hooks suspended across his saddle, came oftener to the city Bible Depository than the " agent" of any other society ; and many hundreds of copies of the Scriptures and other religious books were sold there and in the neighboring villages, for they too formed a missionary society, and entered into a contest of kindly emulation with Percbenj, to see which should do the most good. So much for the external work in Hooeli. The more recent joyfnl spiritual results will be spoken of in another place. I have thus tried to illustrate more vividly by examples than I could by mere formal state- 112 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. merit, what Bible-selling, the first instrumen- tality used by us in the missionary work, is doing in turning the minds and hearts of men to the truth, whose reception is to save them. CHAPTER YI. THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. They . . . went everywhere preaching the word. — Acts viii. 4 -J* HEY did so because then, as now, it please i J God by the foolishness of preaching to save men ; but these home missionaries, thus driven out by Saul to do among the Jews of Palestine and Cyprus that work of preaching which he was himself to do among the Gentiles, took with them no well-worn manuscripts, nor did they "everywhere" find pulpits waiting for them. Preaching was not tlicn the formal af- fair it has now too generally come to be. And when Paul began to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, he did it in no formal way of time or place or method. Now he tries to win to the faith the Cyprian deputy, and again proclaims the word 143 144 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. in some synagogue of the Jews. Now we find him clisputing publicly in the market-place of Athens, and now communicating the gospel pri- vately to those of reputation in Jerusalem. Now he is pointing the Philippian jailer to the Saviour, now sitting with the crowd of women by the river-side in Philippi, now standing in the midst of Mars' Hill quoting poetry and de- claring the unknown God to the cultivated Grecian philosophers, and yet again running in among the rude and excited crowd at tlie gate of Lystra to turn them, by arguments of another sort, from their heathen vanities to the only living God ; and doing it all without a manuscript. The missionary of the present time, too, must lay aside all stereotyped styles of preach- ing, and adapt himself to the circumstances in which he is placed, and the number and charac- ter of those to whom he is to make known the truth. He will often find no room for a formal text, and a " Firstly, Secondly, Thirdly," but, seizing the first pretext for talking which comes to hand, must, with Him who so often spoke to THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. 145 the people by parables, meet the ignorant, and perhaps prejndiced and hostile, crowd upon their own ground and with their own weapons.* We, at least, decided to call any sort of talk- ing preaching, in the scripture sense, which should, in any way, turn the attention of men to gospel truth, or, by gaining their good-will to ourselves, prepare them to receive our instruc- tions. With this latter end in view, we aim to pre- sent a constructive rather than destructive gos- Dcl, making no direct attacks upon the fasts and feasts and ceremonies of the church. Avoid- ing all discussion upon non-essential points,f * As when, in a hostile village, the missionary's spyglass, having drawn the curious crowd to look at a village on the distant moun- tains, made them willing to listen to a sermon on faith as revealinff things unseen. t Those not conversant with oriental modes of thought can not re- alize the need of Paul's charge to Timothy, " Charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit ;" " But shun profane and vain babblings;" " But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strife." Usually the first desire of an Oriental is to discuss the fasts, the feasts, feet-washing, making the sign of the cross, or some such frivolous thing; and it requires all our strength of purpose to avoid such discussions and induce ou,r helpers to avoid them. Sometimes we are obliged to dismiss from service a man who is in- 146 TEN YEAns ON THE EVPHUATES. "we try to present Christ and him crucified, as made known in his word. Efforts made to induce the people to learn to read the Bible have already been mentioned. The first ser- mon to every man and community usually cen- ters here, and the 'practical " application " of the sermon is usually, at the close, to gather from the crowd all those who can be persuaded to buy a primer and begin to put in practice the truth heard by learning from the preacher a few letters of their alpliabet. Never sliall I forget an " application " of this sort in Perchenj, the village spoken of in chap- ter fifth. At the close of a service, the ques- tion, " Gartal Jcedes, ycgpire ? " " Do you know how to read, brother ? " having been put to each one present, thirteen men — no women were present — were thus seated by tliemselves to test the question whether the sermon on " Search the Scriptures " had had any force. Among them were two aged men, who, in reply curaoly addicted to this habit, for now, as in the days of the apostle, such strifes only subvert the hearers and "increase unto more UQ godliness." THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. 147 to the request that thej should each pay tlirce piasters, — twelve cents, — take a primer, and begin to learn to read, pointed to their white hair and beard with as much incredulity as if they had been called upon to fly. They had Dut themselves amoncr tliose who were to " search" by hearing the Scriptures; but when in a few moments they had actually learned to recognize several letters and call tliera by name, and were assured, that, by keeping on, they would soon ]jc able to read, their incredulity vanished. They, with the rest, bought the book, in a short time learned to read, and now are pillars in the churcli in that village. This is a specimen of one style of preaching, in wliich perhaps more than any other, or, at any rate, as a preface to all other, we employ ourselves. Any person, who is not one of the blind crowd who so abound in the Orient, or who is not in some way disabled from- learning to read, is regarded as not liaving taken the first step in the right direction before beginning to read and buying a copy of the Scriptures. It will of course be understood that much, 148 TEN YEAnS ON THE EUPHRATES. indeed most of the missionaries' preaching, is not done to the churches, nor, indeed, in churches, nor to stable congregations in any one place. Ours is pioneer, or rather apostolic work, — that of leading oif, of niai)ping out the country, deciding what are the most eligible locations for native preachers, and stirring up the people to receive them. When this is done, and, by the blessing of God, a church is planted, our loork in that place is regarded as done* ex- cept as we endeavor to guide and aid that church in their efforts to do missionary work. This definiteness of aim gives great definite- ness to the preliminary efforts. While endeav- oring to do good to all men as we liave oppor- tunity, we do not go hither and thither, preach- ing now in this village and now in that, scat- tering a little good seed here and a little there in the wild wilderness of sin, and leaving it to be trampled under foot, or choked by the growth of weeds ; but, having selected certain places for tin prospective location of helpers, we devote * The work has thus been completed iu Harpoot and Arabldr cities, and several villages. THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNO. 149 our ctforts mainly to them. Wherever we go, ail audience, larger or smaller, is always at hand. The appearance of our hats* in any new vil- lage is sufficient to draw a crowd at first, whom we must hold and profit, if at all, by the simple, forcible presentation of truth in its application to themselves. It hardly needs to be said that our preaching, and largely also that of tlie na- tive ministry, as we hope, is of the plainest and most practical kind. We preach the trutli as we think the hearers need it, without any fear of giving offense. The broad aisle has not yet learned to dictate to the pulpit tlicro. In fact, it does not exist, all the people sitting promis- cuously upon the floor, the men on one side, and the women on the other. The time will doubt- less come there, as it already has come in Chris- tian lands, when tlie preacher will be regarded more as the hired servant of the people, who, with itching ears, will seek teachers after their own lusts, and refuse to endure sound doctrine ; ♦ The people all wear the fez, a cap fitting closely to the head. This, with a eash or shawl wound about it, forms tlic oriental tur- ban. 150 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. but at present, whatever truth can be established from the Bible is patiently heard, cut where it may. The mass of the people are in the con- dition of the artless man who confessed himself a " miserable sinner, and not ashamed to own it;^^ or, rather, I may compare them to the publicans and sinners in the days of Christ, who were so well convinced of their guilty, lost condition as to bear rebuke better than the proud and self- righteous Pharisees. Sin there, if not here at home, comes out with too bold and unblushing a front for tlie preacher to be mealy-mouthed in speaking of it. Things iiiust be called by their right names. No gentle insinuations against sins of sinners unhappily absent, or supposed to be so, will serve the purpose there, if it will elsewhere. " Thou art the man," " I am speaking to you, wlio are here present," must be plainly inferred, if not said.* Accord- ingly, in a community all of whose members, with one exception, were given to lying, a ser- * Were we to talk there of the "great enemy of souls," instead of giving his name, many would wonder at which of the wicked Turks around them we were casting stones. THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. 151 inon«oii " I hate and abhor lying" was safclj and profitably applied by " Now yon know that all of you, except brother Sarkis, who sits over there with his feet down in the oven,* ail^e ad- dicted to lying, and God means you, when he says, ' All liars shall have their part in tlie lake which burnetii with fire and brimstone.' If, then, you hope to be saved from 'the second death,' cease lying, and speak the truth to each other and to all about you." This home appli- cation had the effect to bring many to the pulpit, at the close of service, with confession of wrong-doing and promise of amendment, whicli was apparently kept, by efforts on the part of some to put away the sin which had been indulged in from early childhood. In another place, a plain sermon on " Everyman tliat hath this hope in him purificth himself, even as he is purb," brought two hearers to the preacher, with a confession of great sins, witli the ques- tion, " What shall I do ? " and, better still, led * Their ovens are deep circular holes in the floor of earth, lined Kith pottery. Now, as in primitive days, to save fuel, the grass which to-day is, to-morrow is cast into ovens, to heat them. This grass ia biniply weeds pulled up by the roots and dried. Id2 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. the only one wlio could repair the wrong done to restore the four hundred and forty dollars wliicli lie had stolen. Out preaching, besides being soundly doc- trinal, presenting clearly and frequently the great underlying facts and truths of the gospel, is generally concrete rather than abstract, pre- senting truth and duty more in connection with examples and positive commands and prohilji- tions. A remark of Prof. Shepard of Bangor, Me., needs often to be heeded in the Orient. " Young men," said lie, " preach the duties. Often recur to the tables of the law, and dwell upon ' Thou slialt, and thou shalt not,' lest you fill the churches with converted scoundrels." With the single exception of " This do in re- membrance of me," which some would gladly put first on the list, and come at once to the sacramental table, all duties are enjoined alike upon those in the church and those out of it ; and a result is that some who are not yet re- ceived to the church are as consistent in main- taining family and secret prayer, and making TUB TRUTH TRE ACHED AND SUNG. 153 effoi ts and sacrifices to extend the kingdom of Christ, as are church-members. Another characteristic of the preaching of both the missionaries and the native ministry is, tliat it is very largely biblical. Tlie people would hardly endure mere motto-sermons, finely-written essays, taking their occasion from a text which disappears with the reading. Many of them go to the sanctuary. Scriptures in hand, and demand tliat a " Thus saith the Lord" support what is said from the pul])it. The prevalent order of Sabbath service in Ilar- poot is, first, a prayer-meeting, in which all the people meet to ask God's blessing on tlie ser- vices of the day. Second, a Bil)le-class, in which the preacher and people, .Bilde in hand, unite for an hour in full and free conference on a previously-selected passage. In these exercises all the men present usually take part by asking or answering questions, and a very deep in- terest is often excited. The preacher takes the leading part, and in this way, by having the peo- ple share with him the work of investigation, and following up the exercise with specifying 154 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. tliG moral lessons wliicli arc to be learned from the passage and the discussion had uj)on it, he' YQ^Wj preaches more effectually than he could by continuously talking to mere hearers. The third exercise is a Sabbath school, in which all, young and old, of both sexes, unite, and in which the Bible and the Assembly's Shorter Catechism have been the text-books, the smaller children also repeating hymns. The fourth service, with a sermon, immedi- ately follows the Sabbath school. When a missionary officiates, the exercises arc sometimes in Turkish, which is the language used l»y Mr. Barnum, and sometimes in Ar- menian, which Mr. Allen and myself and the native preachers in Harpoot generally use ; or they are in Arabic for that portion of the stu- dents and their families who have come with Mr. Williams from Mardin, and for those few people in Harpoot who use that language.* To this has recently been added another tongue, * Isot infrequently, in the same service different persons sing in icveral languages. An instance is given at the close of chapter Hghth. THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. 155 the Koormangie Koordish, which is to be used by the churches in doing their foreign mission- ary work in Koordistan. By thus infusing the Bible element so largely into the exercises of the sanctuary, making it so prominent and influential, the people be- come more thoroughly grounded in Christian truth than they could be in any other way, and the power of the ministry is made to depend more upon their soundness and their ability to present Bible truth than upon their power to preach finely-written sermons. The results hereafter to be spoken of will show that God's word thus sent forth has not returned to him void, but has been to many souls a savor of life unto life. I must not fail to notice a third instrumen- tality used in bringing men to the truth, — con- gregational singing. Thanks to Dr. Riggs and some others, many of the sweetest and most ■precious hymns of the churches at home are doing their blessed work of teaching and sav- ing the different races of Turkey. 11 156 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHIiATES. " Rock of ages, cleft for me; " " Oh ! happy day, that fixed my choice On thee, my Saviour and my God;" " My faith loolis up to thee ;" " Just as I am, without one plea. But that thy blood was shed for me," and others, lift up the voices and the hearts of thousands, in expression of affectionate and joyous trust, to the only Saviour of men. Thousands, young and old, commit these precious hymns to memory, and, by the very exercise of singing them, bring their souls into sympathy witli the sentiments of penitence, faith, and tender love, whicli they express. Wit- nessing, as we do, the influence exerted upon the people in the sanctuary by their participa- ting so largely in the services, and specially by their uniform and hearty participation in this service of sacred song as a religious act, and not an artistic performance, under no circum- stances would we allow a choir, and least of all a quartette of mere opera performers, to de- prive them of this precious privilege. And if anything were needed to confirm tins opinion and feeling, it would suMce to observe the THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. ]57 usual effect produced upon the hearers — for such merely they almost always appear to bo — ■ of those musical acliievements which uot in- frequently form one of the chief, as well as most expensive, attractions of a fasliionable city church at home. These precious hymns, with their accompa- nying tunes, usually the same as those used in their English dress, are rapidly making for themselves a place in the homes and hearts, as well as the sanctuaries of the people, and exert- ing a power as a means of grace, of which we could not consent to be deprived in our efforts to bring the perishing to a saving knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. In a word, reading, preaching, singing, the Bible, the voice of the living preacher, and the hymn-book, — or rather the. Bible read and studied, the Bible talked over and preached, and the Bible sung, — these are the instrumentalities used for bringing men to Christ, for securing those converts who arc essential to doing the missionary work of })lanting Christian church- es. These gained, it only remains to chooso 158 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. from among them tlio persons to be their spir- itual guides, and train them for their office. A word in regard to tlie places of worship may not be amiss. They are erected by the people themselves, we giving such " grants in aid " as are necessary. They are of the plain- •est and cheapest form, erected with tliick walls of unhewn stone laid in mud and plastered with the same, or with sun-dried l)ricl<., sucli as were made by the Israelites in Egypt. Witli few exceptions, they have windows covered with oiled paper in place of glass, and are witliout even the luxury of a board floor. The roofs are composed of earth rolled hard, and needing re- rolling after each rain-storm, and inclined only enough for the water to run off tlirough a Avooden spout projecting from tlie eaves. The expense of the common village chapels varies from one hundred to four hundred dollars, which sum is, of course, increased when, as is often done, a parsonage is united with the chapel. A drawing of one of these rude temples may not be uninteresting. (See page 161.) The people sit, in primitive style, upon tho THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. 159 floor, as do tlie Armenians in tlieir own churches, and the Turks in their mosques. The idea that the gospel necessarily takes with it chairs, pews, pantaloons, and dresses, for those who hear it, is a mistaken one. Remov- ing the end wall of a chapel gives the reader a view of an audience listening to a sermon. The women are seated on the left, and the men on the right. (See page 161.) All will take it for granted that these primi- tive temples, with no divisions except tliat of the low railing which separates the sexes, are really dedicated to God, and free in every part to all comers, and not portioned off for sale to human owners. To ask the ignorant and per- ishing crowd to hire a seat, or accept one as a favor from the owner, would repel rather than win the in. No one would justify us in doing this. Bnt in what essential particular does the work of evangelization there and in Christian lands differ ? Is not the prevailing custom of pew- selling hero hindering the work of evangeliza- ti(jn by separating the masses farther and far- 160 TEN YE Alls ON THE EUPHRATES. tlicr in feeling and sympathy from God's honse and people ? I do not plead for a "free" gospel, wliicli, as really as on missionary ground, would be a bane and not a boon to the people. The custom of opening free churches for the poor appears to be even more objectionable, since it separates society into classes before God, seating the rich man in his luxuriously-cushioned pew in a splendid church, and his neighbor in the poor man's chapel. On missionary ground we feel that it is better to open God's house to all, and then to press upon all the duty of giving money to support Christian institutions as a personal one to God, and not as a mere business transaction with men, in the shape of a pew-tax. In this way, all are made to feel at home in every part of their Father's house as such, and in every church wherever they go, and not merely in some cue pew of a single church, in which, from the custom of occupying it, they have learned to feel at home. ARMEXIAX CHAPEL, INTERIOR. ARMEXIA\ CHAPEL, EXTERIOR. THE TRUTH PREACHED AND SUNG. 161 HOUSES OF WORSHIP, The manner of erecting these usually very humble temples ia given on page 66, they being commonly of sundried bricks, with a foundation of unhewn stone laid in mud. They accommodate between two and three times as many people as do churches of the same size in this country, the usual estimate being one com- fortakle sitting to each three square feet in the area of the floor, including that of the pulpit. The occasion often demands much closer packing. In the Armenian churches, the women usually occupy a gal- lery, where they are wholly concealed from the men, but in the Protestant places of worship they are separated from the other sex by a low railing. On entering, all leave their shoes at the door, usually upon shelves arranged for the purpose, that the mats upon which they sit may be kept clean. In their care to keep their places of worship free from dirt they might we.l be imitated by some people who sit m costlier chiu'ches on tU's side the water. 11 4» CHAPTER VII. THE NATIVE MINISTRY. HARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. How shall they hear without a preacher ? And how shall they preach except they be sent? — Kom. x. 14, 15. HE question of providing for the cliurclies a suitable ministry, of selecting and train- %M ing the right men to be efficient pastors, cost us more anxious thought and inquiry than any, indeed, I may truly say, than all others connected with the work. For reasons which will appear as we go on, it was apparent from the first that we could not rely for suit- able men upon the missionary seminary in Be- bek, Constantinople. We took it for granted that the churches were not only to have pas- tors, but that, as a body, they were themselves to furnish them from their own ranks. But to separate the men cliosen for this ofBcc frcnn their 102 THE NATIVE MINISTRY. 163 friends and the simplicity of tlieir rural homes, — even the cities in eastern Turkey being mostly rural cities, — and send them a month's journey away to spend the period of their edu- cation amidst the excitements and temptations of the capital, were to lose time, and spoil the choice convej-ts by tempting them above what they are able to bear. The men for pastors must, then, be trained for their work on the ground. With that view, Mr. Dunmore, wlio remained in Harpoot a year after our arrival, spent six months of the time in instructing a class of the most promising men. In 1859, the pres- ent theological seminary Avas establislied, with Mr. Allen at its head, assisted, in certain de- partments, by Mr. Barnum and myself. The course of study continues through four years, seven and a half months of each year being devoted to study, and the rest to labor for Christ in the "out-stations" of Harpoot and other mission stations from which the pupils come. A glance at the course pursued with 1G4 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. any single pupil will give a definite idea of the plan of action in the seminary. Any man not under eighteen years of age, and who has given satisfactory evidence of Ciu'istian character and earnestness of pur- pose, and who feels a strong desire to prepare himself to preach,* if he can read and write and cipher a little, and has a good knowledge of the gospel story, is admitted for the first seven and a half months, and, at the close, sent, as are all the pupils, to labor in some city or village, doing the work of an evangelist, teaching people to read, persuading them -to buy and study the Scriptures, holding meet- ings, &c., — in a word, doing all he can to lead men to Christ. During this vacation, which is in the winter, because then, more than in summer, the peo- ple are at home, we missionaries go from place to place, observing the pupils and the charac- ter of their labors. If any one is idle or inef- * In exceptional cases, persons not Christians, who wish to pre pare themselves for teaching, are permitted to enjoy, for two years, the privileges of tlif seminary at 'heir own expense. EARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 165 ficient, if he seems to be proud and lifted up l)j his " little learning," if he is more given to discussion ahout the non-essential matters, on which the people usually love best to talk, than t ) efforts to teach them the way of life, if he seems to be unfitted to get at and win men, if, in a word, for any reason he seems to be an unsuitable man to make a minister of, we send liim back to his farm or his trade, saying, " It were a pity to spoil a good farmer or shoe- maker to make a poor preacher. It is your duty to serve Christ in some other way." Sometimes this prompt dismissal, which has several times occurred, is sufficient to cure the man of a curable fault, and to secure his re-ad- mission at a later day. Those who promise to make useful men are, after this winter's labor, re- called to the seminary, and, at the close of tbe next period of study, are again sent forth for another winter's labor. If, at the close of the second year, from want of ability, or any other tause, it appears that any one will make a good teacher or common lu;Ii)cr, l)ut not a good preacher or pastor, be is frankly informed of IGG TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. tlu! fact, and dismissed with a diploma as " Teacher," which gives him character and in- fluence as such among tlie people. Those who complete the prescribed course of four years with honor, tlien graduate, receiving a diploma. They were tlien formerly examined by the missionaries, and, if deemed suitable persons, licensed as " preacliers," and called as candidates for the pastoral office by any com niunlty desiring their services. This licensing is now done by the native body of pastors and delegates of tlie churches, of whose "Union" some account will be given in a future chapter. When the licentiate has won the hearts of some community where there are converted persons enough to form a church, and has fixed with them the terms on wliich he is willing to be- come their pastor, they unite in calling the " Union of Pastors and Delegates," who assem- ble, and, if they see lit, organize a church, and ordain him as their pastor. During the seven and a half months of study each year, the stu- dents go, usually once in two weeks to somcj ncigbboL-ing village for Sabbath work. This is EARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMmART. 1G7 done that thoj may grow by teacliiiig as well as by being taught, but especially that they may keep ever in mind tlie object for which they have come to the seminary, and may keep their hearts warm and their spiritual appetite and digestion good by Christian labor. In the course of study the Bible is in constant use as a test-book, from the first day to the last. They must, of course, study the grammar of their own language, and go through a brief course of matliematics, must study geography enough, at least, to know — what the mass of the people did not — that " America is larger than Constantinople," must enlarge and elevate their minds by some acquaintance with astron- omy, and gain some knowledge of cliomistry, natural, mental, and moral philosopliy, and church history. The third year is devoted chiefly to the study of systematic theology, and the fourth to preparing and delivering sermons, a part of whicli are written, that tlie authors may le?rn to thhik pen in hand, and not to be merely fluent, "tonguey" men, offering the people, as we say in oriental phrase, " mere 1G8 TEN YEARS ON TUB EUPHRATES. hot water in place of soup ; " and a part urv' written^ that they may not, like too many learned, " deep " preachers in Christian lands, ho mere pen-and-iulc thinkers, hetter fitted to sit in tlieir closets and make hoohs to he read than to stand in the pulpit and preach sermons to he heard and felt. They are taught that a really " good ser- mon" is one which proposes and attains a good ohject, and that no sermon, however full of learning and eloquence it may he, is worth a farthing, if it does not lodge some thought and purpose of good in the minds and hearts of the hearers. To preparation for tlie delivery of such sermons, and the faithful performance of their pastoral duties and missionary lahor among the perishing outside, the four years of seminary training are given. With a view to success in this ohject, and to "ivino; to the churches the pastors they need, as well as securing efficient helpers in the an- tecedent missionary work, attention has been given mainly to three things : First, — . "? UARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 169 CAEE IN SELECTING MEN. The seminary is not regarded as an agency for converting men, nor for converting igno- rant but hireling Christians into ministers, but simply as a helper to those who seem to feel, as did the apostle, that necessity is laid upon them to preach the gospel. Tlie least evidence that a student has a hire- ling spirit, that he is laboring not for Christ, but for us and for pay, is sufficient to secure his instant dismissal ; for we feel — as do also the people now — that the introduction of one merely mercenary man into the sacred office would entail untold disaster upon the churches. In selecting students, no display of zeal in any direction is allowed to atone for the want of spirituality, tlie apparent possession of a heart warm with love to Christ ; but, at the same time, no one is accepted whose ])rofessed love has not been manifested by some effort and sacrifice made for the good of others. Mere words of piety'are very, very cheap in the Ori- ent, and more worthless than cheap. The second point is — 170 TEN YEARS OiV THE EUPHRATES. CARE IN SUPPORTING MEN. While ill the seminary, those unmarried men who are too poor to support themselves receive a sum equal to sixty-four cents a week as a gratuity, increased a few cents in a way to be hereafter mentioned, and, while in our employ as helpers, they generally receive less than they could earn in other pursuits. The mar- ried men receive a dollar and twelve cents a week. We do not profess poverty and inabil- ity to give them more, but frankly tell them that our object is to secure men who are wil- ling and expect to make sacrifice for Christ, and have faith enough in him, and in their personal call to the ministry, to trust his prom- ise to care for those who serve him in his ap- pointed way. " If he really has called you to the ministry," we say to them, " ho will care for you in it. And if he really starves you out of it, that is his voice, saying, ' You have run before you were sent.' We are not his ^only treasurers, and, if we don't give you enough, he can send, if he choose, even the ravens to feed you." When the preachers become pas- HAItPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 171 tors, the people support them better, a dollar or more per month being added to their sala- ries, which, as preachers, vary from five dollars to eight dollars per month. And we have seen the good efifect of inflexi- ble adherence to this mode of exercising care, not only in turning aside some unworthy men who succeeded in getting through our outer gate, but, better still, in cultivating among the really worthy men a spirit of self-denial and affectionate reliance on Christ. Through the influence of two or three discontented persons, a very general dissatisfaction with the support given them was at one time excited among the students, and we were told that " all had com- bined to strike for higher wages," during the then coming winter. To tliis piece of news, given to the missionaries in hope of clianging our purpose, and opening the Board's purse a lit- tle more, the reply was, " We know of at least one man who is not talking about wages. Krikore never talks about his bread and butter. He has left all tbat care to the Master." Goin<'' to him and asking him whether it was true that 12 172 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. the students were talking about their support, we received the reply, " Yes, ive are " This was almost too much, and seeing our surprise and pain, he continued, " Don't say anything to me. I'm not talking about the amount of my salary. My only fear is that I shall not get the soven hundred and fifty piasters which you have put upon the people this year. Do you recollect that last year you were obliged to take me away from the people to compel them to pay one- third as much ? " Our only re- ply — we could make no other — was, " Brother Krikore, can't you cast that care, too, on Jesus ? " To the assembled students, who rightfully pleaded increased prices as a reason for their desire for more pay, we said, " We thank God that he has sent high prices to test you. Had we a box full of gold given us by some Turk, with a request that we should distribute it, wo would not add a piaster to the support of one of you, for now it will be apparent who has placed his hopes of support on our money, and who on the Lord Jesus." Not one of the Harpoot men inn r GOT theological seminary. 173 left the service. The next day we went with Krikore to Ichmeh, the village where he was to labor. The people assembled, and we said to them, " Last year you paid ten dollars, but this year your share, if you wish K., will be thirty dollars." To this they replied, " Twenty- four is ready, and the rest will be easy to get." " You succeeded in casting that care on Jesus, it appears," said we to Krikore, who is now the beloved and well-supported pastor of a church formed there, the women of the congre- gation having taken off their gold and silver ornaments, during the year past, and sold them for upwards of one hundred dollars towards paying for a chapel and a parsonage for him to occupy. And when that really lovely young man, in whose Christian character we had, for years, had implicit confidence, was examiued for ordination, he persisted in fixing the date of liis conversion at the time when the question, " Can't you cast that care, too, on Jesus ? " compelled him to settle the question, on whom he really was depending to care for him. Three years later, as I was about to return home, 174 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. Krikore rose in a largo meeting, in which were present most of tliose who, with him, had been troubled about support, and said, " I can not let the missionary go without making a confession." Then, after repeating the story of that day of talking about salary, he added, " Thus, with brazen front, I stood and replied to Mr. W . Oil, I wonder the earth didn't open her mouth and swallow me up!" Had ho had anything to hope from such an expres- sion, it might be set down to that ; but when, as the independent pastor of an independent church, ho thus spoke, he furnished proof that he — as have also many others — had re- ceived benefit from the discipline of the mis- sionaries' " care in supporting men." In other cases, a similar advantage has been gained among the people, who, seeing the pov- erty and hardships of students or helpers, have generously aided them from their own purses or granaries. It is a great advantage gained, — this giving to the churches, and to those who labor as helpers, a feeling of manly Christian inde- P'^ndence of the missionaries, and of mutual HARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 175 dependence on Christ. But this advantage can not ha gained unless all be taught to look to him in pecuniary matters as well as others ; the students casting upon him, rather than upon the missionaries, the care of their support, and the people feeling their obligation, as stewards of Christ, to care as they are able for those of their number who arc laboring for him. The third point is — CARE IN EDUCATING MEN. We take care, of course, to educate them in a thoroughly Christian way. As before said, the Bible is a daily text-book, constant effort being made to imbue their minds with the spirit of the great Teacher, and of the prophets and apos- tles. Map in hand, they travel with Jesus over Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, and listen to his teachings, and then go with Paul and his com- panions over Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy, and with him do the work of preach- ing and planting churches, and try to enter into the meaning and spirit of his epistles to them, till, catching his spirit, they feci that they too 176 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. havG a missionary work to do. To this daily study of the Bible, and effort to realize its scenes and character, is due, perhaps more than to anything else, that peculiarly Christian and ear- nest spirit which we are privileged to see most of the students of the seminary possess. Next to this, our greatest care has been not to edu- cate tliem too much., so as to raise them too far above their own people, and destroy their sym- pathy witli them. It is hard for one accustomed to New-Eng- land institutions to rid himself of tlie idea that- men who are to be put into the pastoral office must have a good degree of education and cul- ture. It was difficult for us to feel that thirty months of literary training could prepare for the gospel ministry a man knowing little more than how to read and write ; but the experiment of trying to give thorouglily-cducated pastors to churches in the condition of ignorance in which are most of those in Turkey, has proved a failure.* To say nothing cff the fact that * As the mass of the people become better educated, those who are to become pastors must, of course, have more education ; and already HARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 177 these more lilglilj educated men become too expensive for the churches to support, thoy at the same time too often lose their own moral , balance. Unlike those who have lived from childhood in the midst of an intcllitiient, educated com- munity, and become accustomed to regard knowledge as a necessary thing, they are, by its possession in a community such as are most of those on heathen or nominally Christian soil, so singled out from and lifted above the mass into a foreign class, that tlie ship seldom has bal- last enough for carrying so much deck-load and sail. It is impossible to educate them into the position and feeling of educated men in en- lightened communities ; and the attempt to do so only fills them with conceit, which is all the worse because acquired at foreign expense. They almost uniformly become unfit to preach the simple gospel needed by their perishing coun- Buch is the progress in that direction that an additional year will pro- bably soon be add(!d to the course of study. Those who have become pastors have been taught the necessity of increasing in kn wledge, and growing with their people. 178 TEN TEAIiS ON THE EUPHRATES. trymon. We believed, too, and have acted upon the belief, that the necessary training should be given in their own vernacular, and not in a for- eign tongue. Notwitlistanding the earnest de- siro of the students to acquire the English lan- guage, no instruction in it has been given in the seminary, and we have felt that to teach it would do harm rather tlian good.* Besides consuming time whicli can be more usefully de- voted to other things, it would expose them to greater temptations. When an ambitious young student once asked, " Why do you oppose our learning English ? " I replied, " Because I pray, ' Lead me not into temptation,' and believe that I am to do to oth- ers as T would have tliera do to me. Do you liot know that the English consul in your na- tive city would gladly pay you twice as much for serving him as the churches can in the ministry ? " " Are we not Christians ! " he ex- claimed. " I hope you are, but you are weak * Now that a number are settled in the ministry, we propose to aid them to learn to read — not speak — English well enoi gh to use sim- ply-written commentaries in that language. HARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 179 ones, not yet able to bear English," was ray re- ply. Yet that " Christian," as I hope he really is, managed to pick up English enough to wan- der about for two years in foreign parts before he saw his folly and sin, and returned to work for Christ. The Rev. T. Laurie, in giving a sketch of the Syria Mission, says, " In 183G, a high -school was established at Beirut. The number of pupils rose as high as forty-four, and its prospects were flattering, but their knowl- edge of English rendered the puj)ils so useful to the English officers in Beirut, in 1840, that they became completely demoralized, and the school was given up ; " to which we may add, " And English has, as a rule, borne the same fruit in other missionary seminaries." I have been informed that, during the Crimean war, but one student remained in the seminary at Bebek, and he was the man who is now pastor of the church in Harpoot city. .But not all the training in the Harpoot Sem- inary has been merely Uteranj. Convinced that the inveterate oriental luiljit ol'smoking* should * That viler habit of chewing is yet unknown there. 180 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. not be supported by " widows' mites," and be- ing also annoyed by tbo smoke and the stencil of the rooms, we announced to the students, that, as it was our intention to furnish only money enough. for food, we should cut off a piaster a week from the allowance of each smoker. Some laughed at this small reduction, and were quite sure they could stand it, till they discovered, at the close of the second week of smoking, that one piaster a week reduction meant " keep on cutting off till we find out just how much will suffice for food witliout tobacco." One man's *' teeth ached when he didn't smoke." " Pull them out," we replied ; " tbe rule can't be modified to suit special cases." The result at last was a rule forbidding smoking by the stu- dents while in the seminary. A missionary was one day engaged in a piece of work, and needed aid, for which he called upon the students. To his surprise, but two came, of whom the Krikore before men- tioned was one. The result was the discovery of the cause, in the idea that manual labor was beneath men who were in process f f education HAUPOOT THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 181 for the high office of the ministry, and another result a cutting down of their eighty-four cents per week allowance to sixty-four, with leave to earn three cents daily by working an hour with a missionary, in making a much-needed road around the mountain-side. At first, few came, but in the end appetite proved stronger than prejudice, and all learned that men of dignity can dignify labor, and gained, besides, a keener appetite for their food, and more power for study. Now the man who should hold that old idea would be looked upon as showing a lack of self-respect by such over- anxiety aboiit his dignity. The total number of pupils — not including the Koordish department of six Koordish-speak- ing pupils added by the '• Harpoot Evangelical Union " the past year, nor the Arabic-speaking nine brouglit by Mr. Williams from Mardin — I as been eighty-one, who spent, previous to 18G7, a total of one hundred and ninety-two years in study, twenty-four of which, or one- eightli of the whole, were at their own expense. Of these eigl»ty-one students, Ibrty-sevcn were 182 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. married men, and thirty-four unmarried. In- cluding incidental" expenses, the support of a married man and his family, each seven and a half niontlis, has cost forty-two dollars and thirty-three cents, and that of a single man twentj^-two dollars and twelve cents, in coin. The total expense of the seminary to the Board, previous to 1807, was seven thousand four hun- dred and seventy dollars. Eighteen pupils graduated in 1863, seven in 1865, and eleven in 1867, of whom thirty-two are in service either as pastors, preachers, or helpers, and two have died. Ten students, who spent a total of nineteen years in study at the Board's expense, are now, for different reasons, not engaged in " Christian work," while eight, who supported themselves, and who speiit a total of fourteen years in study, have proved themselves worthy, and are thus engaged. Striking the balance between these, we have a loss of less than three per cent, on the money invested by the American churches in the seminary. It should be said, however, that of the ten HARPOOT THEOLOGICAL SKMmART. 183 reckoned as " lost" to the work, because not engaged as nominal " helpers," several are among the best members of the churches ; one being an earnest, efficient deacon in the Har- poot city church, and others pillars — not 2:>il- lowB — in village churches. But three or four have proved themselves unworthy. It is our hope, ere many years, to commit the larger part of this seminary work to the churches. At a meeting in April, 1867, the pastors and preachers pledged each one-tenth of his salary to support suitable native teachers to take charge of the more common studies, and an excellent young man, named Garabed Pilibosian (Garabed tlic son of Pilibos), a graduate of the class of 1863, — one who, at ten years of age, wrote and signed a " covenant to be the Lord's," and has from that day lived an earnest, consistent Christian life, — has been chosen " Union teacher." Would that we could rescue him from that early death by con- sumption with which he is threatened ! * He * A translation of an extract from a letter of his just received may not be uninteresting. "My health is as wlion you last saw mo. I never forget that wqrd of my loved Saviour, ' As many as I love 1 ro 184 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPIIliATEH. has previously been in our employ as assistant teacher. Thus the first step has been taken for transferring to the churches the work of training their own pastors ; a work, however, in whose higher departments they will for some time need our aid. buke and chasten,' and that ' He scourgeth every son whom he re- ceiveth.' I am also sure that all things work together for good to them that love God. Having, then, such a Lord and God, I have committed myself wholly to him. No leaf of a tree moves without his command. All things which happen upon the earth come to pass by his all-wise and good providence, and especially those things which happen to his servants. Therefore, with a satisfied and thank- ful heart, I can say, ' Let his blessed will be done ; so it has seemed good in his sight.'" For more in regard to this young man, see chapter tenth. ■!!ill!!l|!'SI|!!!'!!!||Mi;iffi|i^!y|l! Im4 HAUPOOT TIIEOLOaiCAL SEMTNARY. 185 THEOLOGICAL SEmXARY AND CHAPEL. The accompanying sketch gives a good idea of the western portion of the mission premises in Harjjoot city, as seen from the south. The house at the left was built mostly at the ex- pense of liis people for the pastor of the church. Of the four hundred and forty-one dollars which it cost, we paid one hun- di'ed and thirty-eiglit dollars. It was in regard to the erection of this house that the committee called, as mentioned on page 287. In the lower story of the central building is a chapel, and in the upper story the rooms of the theological seminary, •which are eight in number, four being used for school and re- citation-rooms, and four as lodging-rooms by the unmarried students, who cook their own food in the low kitchen seen in the rear of the main building. The married pupils, with their wives, occupy rooms in the city rented for the purpose. At the right of the chapel the crowd met for worshiiJ in April, 1867, as mentioned on page 302. Mr. Williams, who was a practi- cal engineer before he became a missionary, by the aid of the students, at three cents an hour (see page 181) , has since graded the area and pre^oared it to accommodate — with scats on the ground, of course — some twenty-five hundred persons. At the left of the chapel, and in its rear, is the Protestant graveyard. The single gravestone seen is that of "Pilgrim Hagop," a sketch of whose history will be given at another time. Upon the right is the house of Rev. II. N. Barnum, and in the rear of it is seen the little missionary cemetery, in wliich lie the remains of Mrs. Williams, and ten of our " little ones," whom Jesus has taken to himself. The continuation of the missionary premises towards the east is given at tlic close of chapter eighth. CHAPTER VIII. HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. A bishop, then, must be blameless, the husband of one wife.— ITiM. iii.2. ^^^^HE native ecclesiastical body, composed of the pastors and delegates of the churcli- es, interpret this rule literally, ordaining only married men. They say, " Old bach- elors have no real sympathy with women, else they would marry ; nor with cliildren, for they think these should bo whipped into silence. So, to these two classes, who constitute three- fourths of the community, bachelors can not be pastors at all. And, as one-half of the cares, joys, and sorrows of the remaining fourth, the adult males, are connected with their family re- lations, unmarried men can only have half sympathy with them, so that they become half pastors to one-fourth of their people, being 18G ITAIiPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 187 each only an eighth of a pastor." No one is ordained who does not become a pastor. It has ah'cadj been seen that a majority of the prospective bishops in eastern Turkey have wives before entering upon their course of study. In a country where the divine ordi- nance of marriage is not onlv better obeyed than in New England, but where it is re- garded as a parental duty to provide each son with a wife, few reach manhood unmarried. If, then, we would not practically " put asunder what God hath joined together," by educating one party and leaving the other in ignorance, we must educate the wives of the students. The next step, therefore, after opening the the- ological seminary, was to open one also for the students' wives. The women keep house for their husbands in rooms which we provide for them in the city, and attend school about seven hours a day on five days of the week. Some of them are mothers of several chil- dren, and one, at forty years of age, is a grand- mother. So the united seminaries have a nur- sery, where the younger children are committed 13 188 TEN YE Alts ON THE EUI'IIiiATES. to the care of a woman employed for the pur- pose, while the older ones go to one of the city schools, and their mothers to the female semi- nary. Here every effort is made to improve their minds and hearts, and, indeed, their bodies too, for in tliat land of houses witli eartli roofs continually sifting down dust upon tlie occu- pants, the scriptural injunction to " cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of tlio flesh " has new force. Some of the women are at first exceedingly uninteresting and uninterested. They come, not because they desire knowledge, but in obe- dience to their husbands and our rule requir- mg each student to bring liis wife. Many of them are not Christians, but it is a pleasing fact, that, of the ninety-four pupils connected with the seminary previous to 1867, forty-one were hopefully converted wliile in it, and many of them are still pupils. As in the other seminary, here also the chief text-book is the Bible, which is put, on the first day, into the hands of even those who can not road ; a primer being added, with, " This is the key to HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 189 God's treasure-house of knowledge, and your first duty is to learn to use it." The one point constantly aimed at is to teach them to read this book intelligibly to the women of the communities in which they spend the winters with their husbands. Miss West, the teacher, is obliged, at times, to resort to extra forcible appeals to wake up some slug- gish mind to a sense of the importance of read- ing correctly ; as when, at one time, in the usual morning devotions, she told the Lord of her fear that some of her careless pupils would, by their blundering reading of his word, be blind leaders of the blind, and destroy instead of saving souls. A responsive groan from the guilty ones told that they began to feel. Oth- ers, again, make very gratifying progress, and are not only able to read intelligently, and to write and cipher and learn lessons in geogra- phy and astronomy, but, what is better still, they become really intelligent students and ex- pounders of the Bible, and, with hearts warm with love to Christ, are wise and efficient iu winning souls to him. 19) TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. Formerly, though not now, a few day pupils, girls and women, were received from Harpoot city, upon payment of tuition, which we re- quired from the first, and, by doing so, made the people feel, not that they were doing ws a favor in sending pupils, but we one to them in receiving them. When the seminary was about to be opened, and a day was fixed for examining applicants for admission, we waited with some anxiety to see what would be tlie effect of our rule that each accepted applicant should at once buy and pay for all the books to be used during the year, adding also one dollar and sixty cents for a ticket of admission. The result justified our hopes ; and we were obliged to send some girls away in tears who were not qualified to enter. Among those not received were two girls, whose parents a short time before had declined to buy a book needed for preparatory study. But that preparatory school was//-ee, while en- trance to the seminary was to be paid for, and that fact made the parents willing to give a much larger sura for the books to be used in it. HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 191 The influence of sending away those girls was greater in gaining attention to the seminary, and arousing popular feeling in favor of educa- tion, than that of ten years of free admission to any school would have been. In opening the seminary, we had two objects in mind, besides educating the students' wives. First, to excite public attention to the sul)ject of female education. With this view, months beforehand, we gave notice of our intention to open the sciiool, and of our purpose to admit only those girls who should study hard to pre- pare themselves, and, unless too poor, have the money ready to pay for a ticket of admission. The other object was to prepare educators ; per- sons who, as pastors' and preachers' and teach- ers' wives,* should teach schools in the places where they should be located. The seminary was thus to prepare a leaven to be cast into tlie different communities. But the unmarried students would also need • J say " as wives," because, such are the customs of oriental soci- ety, that young women seldom remain unmairiod long to teacli Bchool, even if the attempt to have them do so were safe. 192 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. educated wives. Indeed, their efforts to secure even uneducated companions threatened, at one time, to be in vain. The almost universal purpose of parents to give their daughters in marriage only in their own immediate neigh- borhood forbade giving them to those who, like preachers, were liable to go to the ends of the land, "We had seen an intelligent graduate of an- other seminary obliged by this feeling to marry a girl, wlio, besides being unable to read, did not eveji know her husband's native tongue ! If, then, we would not sec the work hindered by this popular prejudice, we must in some way remove it. AVitli this view we received fifteen girls from places outside of Harpoot, who were admitted upon the condition, to which they and then' parents assented, that, either married or un- married, they should aid in the missionary work. Their matrimonial arrans-ements re- mained where they were before, in their hands and those of their parents ; but, without our leave, they were not to marry one not em- HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 193 ployed 111 " Christian work " as a pastor, preacher, or teacher. If any one should ask, " Was not that undue meddling?" I reply, Not at all. We only made a condition, to which all concerned freely assented, that those educated by us at the cost of the Lord's treasury should marry, if at all, " only in the Lord," and, in so doing, provided for them far better husbands than they would otherwise have found. Now not only Protestant preachers, but even common Protestants, command a higli premi- um ill tlic matrimonial market of Harpoot, so much so that one of the bitterest enemies of the truth in the city recently had her daughter taught to read, and gave notice that she would give her in marriage to a Protestant ; " for," said she, " they treat tlieir wives well." Then, too, it was our right and duty to take good care, that, by the marriage of the pupils of the seminary to common persons, instead of tlicir assuming positions of influence in carry- ing on the missionary work, tlie missionary teachers sccjLirod from America, at so great sac- 194 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. rifice and expense on their part and that of their friends and the churches at home, should not become mere teachers of common schools, in- stead of being teachers of effective laborers for Christ. The traveling expenses of these fifteen boarding pupils, as well as that for clothes and books, — sold by us to them at half the usual price, — and most other incidental expenses, are paid by their friends, some of whom also bear a part of the expense of board, which for seven and a lialf months is about twenty dol- lars, in coin. There have been in all ninety-four pupils, thirty-four of whom have been boarders, ten of these last having paid their own board in part. Twenty-nine women and girls have graduated, having completed the course of study, which is three years for girls, — who are better fitted at entering, — and four for the married women, their first year being regarded as preparatory. A number of others, having spent one or two years in the seminary, have been married to pastors, preacher's, or other helpers. At grad- uation each one receives fV diploma, of vyliich HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 195 there are two kinds. For those who complete all the studies, the form is, — "This certifies that tlio bearer" — giving licr name — " has for three years been a mem- ber of the Harpoot Seminary, and that, by her progress in study, and by her good behavior, she has given pleasure to licr tcacliers, and they hope that she will be useful in the work of the Lord." Tlie diploma for those who are unable to complete all the studies has a some- what different prefiice, but tlie same close. The one great object of the school is not to educate so many persons, but, by a tliree years' course of Christian training, to prepare tliem to be laborers for Ciirist. And it is pleasing to see how the efforts thus made have beeii blessed, and how much of the spirit of Christ some of the pupils have. Prominent among them is one who is now as- sistant teacher, Kohar by name, which moans "Jewel," and such she is, though deformed in body. Years ago, the first of her father's family, of a so:)re or more of persons, slie lioard and learned to love the truth, and, being sorely por- 196 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. scented ill her native village, Shepik, fled for ))i'o( action to the missionary's house in Arabkir. Her friends pursued, and led her back by her hair, and she followed the missionary's advice, to endeavor by Christian patience to win them to Clirist, till they all became friends of the truth. When the Harpoot seminary was opened, they consented to her coming, and, as pupil and assistant teacher, she has remained there till now. The four and a half months of vacation in winter she spends in evangelistic labors among the women of the villages about the city, often having from one hundred to two hundred pre- sent at her daily meeting. When she has spent a week or more in one village, those of the next come for her, and, mounting her on a donkey, take her to their village for a similar series of meetings. Her sincere and earnest j)iety exerts a powerful influence upon the mem- bers of the school. In a letter just received fi'om her, giving some account of the closing' ex- ercises of the last school year, she speaks of her joy in seeing the improvement whicli the pu- pils have made during the year, especially iu HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 197 cai-efuUy obeying all the rules of the school. " I am sure," says she, " that the Lord has been with us all the time, the pupils have so con- scientiously kept the rules as they learned them last year, not waiting for Miss West to repeat them." But what gives her special joy is that five of tlieir nunil)er have hopefully found tlie Saviour. She then mentions the different places to which tlie girls have gone to spend the win- ter in teaching ; for they too, like the pupils of the other seminary, pass their vacation in Chris- tian labor, receiving salaries of about tlireo dollars per month, out of which tlicy pay their board. During the year past, Koliar and some of the pupils were accustomed to go, two and two, ac- companied by some trusty man, to spend the Sabbath in Christian labor in villages near the city, and great was their joy in the employment. Says Miss West, in a letter just received from her,^ " I mentioned in my last the new, or ratlier increased mhsionanj spirit in the school, * It is due to Miss West to say that none of her letters which are quoted were written for tlie public eye. 198 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. « in connection with labor at the villages on the Sabbath. Kohar and Marine * spent the next Sabbath at Hulakegh and Bizmishen. The next afternoon we took half an lionr to hear their story, and that of others who had also gone ont. At Hulakegh, one hundred women came to Ko- liar's meeting, and ten or twelve to that of Mar- ine for clnirch-members, at tlie same time. They had a most interesting story to tell. At Bizmislien they met thirty-five women, besides some isolated cases by the wayside. Sooltan told of her visit to Yeghcki, and Tonia Iludhcrsha of lier Sabbath in Ichme. I can not describe to you the glow of soul with which this good woman told lier story in broken Armenian."}" She had labored with thirty-five women in a tongue not her own, and really seemed to have come back renewed in soul and body too. Our half hour's talk turned into a prayer-meeting, * A young widow from Malatia, who sold all the jewels given her by her husband and friends, to get the means of coming to the semi- nary in spite of those friends. There are also two other young wid- ows among tlie lifteen boarding pupils. t Shi^ came, with her husband, from Mardin, and her native tongus is Arabic. HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 199 and used up part of the afternoon, but the effoot upon us all was most blessed. " Soon after, Loosintak, of Bitlis, Marta, of Arabkir, and Manoosh, of Diarbekir, came beg- guig most earnestly that I would let them go with the older sisters and teach the children. I shall never forget their touching earnestness. A new baptism seemed to descend upon the whole school, and the voice of prayer ascended morning, noon, and night." In another part of her letter. Miss West says : " I proposed a ' Mothers' Association ' t'j the women of tlie school. ' Thirty-nine at- tended the meeting, who have fifty children now living;' so the secretary's record says. We organized, and chose a committee of four, to plan and conduct meetings in turn, semi- monthly. We have had two meetings. The children who are old enough come with their mothers to every other meeting. On Wednes- day last, twenty-four children came, briglit and clean. Toma * Sarkisian conducted the first * Toma is also Uie naino of one of tlie young preach(!rs wanted la Terchenj (chapter fourth), but 'jis name is in another language. 200 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. part admirably ; read tlie first verses of llio sixth chapter of Ephesiaus, and talked to the mothers most earnestly and appropriately, illustrating her remarks. Then she turned to the children, and oh, my heart was cheered ! Then two earnest prayers, after which I cate- chised the little ones, and heard them recite their hymns and Scripture passages. Every child, however small, had something ready; the Arabic children in Arabic. 'Twas a sight to make one glad. And how those mothers' faces shone ! I had Mr. Allen's melodeon down, and we sang many pieces. One boy repeated the 13th of 1 Corinthians. When he said, so man- like, — 'When I was a child I spake as a child,' &c., ' but when I became a man I put away childish things,' it made us all laugh, and him too. Our girls were greatly interested, and stood up most of the time, as they were behind the rest. When we closed, all seemed very happy ; and as they passed out they dropped their free-will offerings into the box. Many a mother hold up her child with the ( opper in its little hand. Let no one believe that this IIAIiPOOr FEMALE SEMINARY. 201 people can not be taught to give. It is latent in their hearts." The more advanced pupils in the school man- ifested the deepest interest in the books of John and Hebrews, and in theological topics upon which stated lessons were given. Says Miss West, " Most blessed have been the Bible and theology lessons to pupils and teacher. The savor of those last chapters of John remains with us still. It seems to hallow tlie rela- tion of teacher and pupil ; we sit together in ' heavenly places,' and feel that we are one in Him . " We one day spent nearly two hours on the close of the eleventh and the first verses of the twelfth chapter of Hebrews ; not so much in exegesis as in earnest talk about Grod's plan of employing man in labor for the salvation of man, — how he shrinks not from suffering his most faithful and beloved servants to be ' af- flicted and tormented,' in want, ' destitute,' to wander about the earth homeless, to endure tribulation even to tiie end. And then we re- called how he ' spared not his own Son,' and 202 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES!. how Jesus said to liis disciples, when about to leave them, ' Remembor the word that I said unto you. The servant is not greater than his Lord.' I entered into the subject more fully, because the husbands of two of the women in the class had said to Mr. Barnum that they could not live on their monthly stipend, and he had said to them, ' Go back, tlien, to your trade.' When we touched the tender spot, — without personal allusion, of course, — these and one or two other women winced and began to excuse such complaints. This gave more force and point to the su1)ject, and we had a solemn time when we came up at last to the great day of accounts, and the reward the Mas- ter will give his own faithful, self-denying co- workers. One of the good women summed it all up when she said, ' If the heart is full of love to Christ, everything which we do and suffer for him will come easy.' " I have made this quotation because it both shows the kind of instruction given, and that the influence* of the seminary is fully in har- mor y with the efforts in other departments to HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 203 make all the helpers and the churches feel that their relations are with Christ, and their de- pendence must be on him, and not on us. If any human instrumentality, more than others, has given success to missionary efforts in Harpoot, it has been this entire agreement of all the missionaries, male and female, in carry- ing out this, which we I'egard as an essential idea of missionary policy ; dne which relieves missionaries from all undue anxiety, from all temptation to make use of compromises and expedients, and enables them to go fearlessly forward upon a uniform line of action. We have all felt that the foundation of God stand- etli sure, having this seal, " The Lord knoweth them that are his," and that those who are his will be most benefited by faithfully and kindly pointing out to them their duties to him, and leaving them to do those duties, or bear the penalty of not doing them. It is one of the most encouraging facts in re- gard to this seminary, that so many of its pu- pils have so much practical faith iu Ciirist, and tliat, by daily contact with liiljlo truth, their 14 204 TEN YE Alts ON THE EUPHRATES. minds are becoming constantly more and more elevated and eimobled. Twenty-three of tlieir number were, during the year past, instructed by Miss West in theo- logical topics, and, on examination-day, bore a creditable examination upon such points as the assembled pastors and preachers chose to bring up, among which were the trinity and the atonement. Among them were some from the Arabic part of the field, wlio have, within a short time, acquired not only new ideas of truth, but a new language, the Armenian, in which to teach thera to others ; and one of the most touching incidents of the school-year was the effort of these women to do missionary work in their newly-acquired tongue. The effort has been made to unite the differ- ent races, with their different languages, in this one seminary ; but the trial shows more and more the need of a similar school in the Arabic- speaking portion of the field, to share with the Arabic theological seminary, under the care of Mr. Williams, in Mardin, the labor of training in their native tongue, and giving to the rising HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 20/) clnirclies of tliat region also, the laborers needed. The Board has accordingly decided to send out two ladies to take charge of such «\ seminary. It has been the misfortune of the Harpoot seminary to have frequent changes of teachers, the first teacher having remained but a year, Misses Fritcher and Pond (now Mrs. Williams) a year each, — the former having left her own seminary in Marsovan during that time, — and Miss "West still remaining. It is to be hoped that Misses Seymour and Warfield, who have now gone to take charge of the school, will be enabled to complete its work and establish an- other of a similar character elsewhere. In what has been said it is implied that we pro- pose to open such schools only in connection with theological seminaries, and for raising up Christian educators. The care of establishing and sustaining schools, to do directly the work of educating the masses, we leave to the churches, who have already taken some steps towards opening a boarding-school in Tlarpoot ; Kohar, the assistant teaoher in the missionary 206 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. seminary, having made the first contribution towards it by giving four dollars and forty cents from lier annual salary of twenty-four dollars. This school will need from America only contributions of prayers, unless some kind friend give a little aid toward erecting the needed buildings. I add as a postscript portions of a private let- ter received from Miss AYest since the preceding was written. The notes are mine. "After the lapse of several weeks, I take up the thi'ead of my long narrative where I dropped it, at the closing exercises of our school-examination. "Pastor Mardiros, of Ilarpoot, presented the diplomas to our graduating class, of fifteen women and gh'ls. His remarks were very impressive, j^mong other things, he said he well knew that each one would take with her one or more evil spirits. One would say, 'Now you are somebody; you have been educated, and are able to do what others can not do,' etc., thus puffing her up with pride and Belf-couceit ; another would whisper, 'After all, what has your time spent in school amounted to? You have only made ^beginning ; you know but very HAllPOOT FEMALE SEMINAJiY. 207 little, and are not fit to set yourself up as a leader to others!' Hp warned them of the danjrers that lay in these two extremes, and exhorted them to keep close to the great Teacher in the simplicity of faith, saying to the first suggestion, 'By the grace of God I am what I am, and only througli Christ can I do any good ; ' to the second, ' Sa- tan, get thee behind me ! I am in the place God designed fpr me ; that is the best place for me, and what he has taught me I will, with his help, teach to others.' " I wish you could have seen that class, as each one stepped forward and received her diploma from the hand of the good pastor ; some of them so gracefully. Pastors Ilagop, of Ilulakegh, Mardiros, of Malatia, and Simon, of Bitlis, followed in excel- lent addresses to the class. Their hearts seemed to ovci-flow with joy over what they had seen and heard ; and yet they felt that much danger lay in the future. Said Pastor Simon, ' Our joy is not yet fulL We shall Avait to see your future course, — what you will actually do when you go out into the world again. It may be some of you will cause us to hang our heads for shamC ; you may so con- 208 TEN TEARS ON THE EUrilRATES. duct US to make your teachers say, ' Would they had never entered this school ! ' " His allusion m the good work one of our grad- uates is accomjjlishing in Bitlis was encouraging.* " Our missionary brethren then spoke ; Mr. Wil- liams, through Mr. H. N. Barnum, — one of his char- acteristic and telUng speeches. The pith of it lay in 'chewing the cud' of Bible truth every day and all day ; meditation on the morning reading, be it never so small a portion ; alluding to the ru- minating of cows and buffaloes. " The homely illustration will cause it to stick ! I think no one present will ever forget it; and many may practice this sj^iritual rumination in con- sequence. Our new brother, H. S. Barnum, made a brief and pleasant speech by the aid of his name- sake's tongue. Meanwhile, many of the people had come into the evening meeting, and it was decided to go right on and unite the two exercises. "Rev. H. N. Barnum gave a most solemn and thrilling turn to his closing address by pointing to the last great ' Examination ' awaiting us all, when * A widow named Mariam, who went from Harpoot, has for two years beeu teaching a school in Bitlis, about eight days' journe y east from liar poet, where Simon is pastor of a church. HAIiPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 209 the Master woiilcl present his fliplomas, in the words, ' Well done, good and faithful servant, en- ter thou into the joy of thy Lord ! ' I never knew Mr. B to rise to such a strain of eloquence (I perfectly understood his Turkish), and the effect was electrical. Two or three earnest prayers were offered, and the exercises closed. "Thus ended the day. The next morning, Friday, the school assembled for a ' farewell meet- ing.' The graduates were seated by themselves. I read portions of Scripture, which I wished them to mark and read often, and then made my fare- well speech, reviewing the past three years, and looking forward to their future, and to eternity. It was a solemn season. We all wept together. Then Kohar spoke of our pleasant relations, and what a joy and comfort some of those dear women had been to her ; and, as I had addressed her as my ' faithful fellow-worker, without whose influence to aid much of my labor would have been lost,' she said I had been ' a mother, more than a mother to her,' &c. &c. Then Eva* addressed the school. She told them how great had been her desire to gee tlie Harpoot school, and now that God had * Tlie Arabic-speaking assistant teacher. 210 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. brought her here to take a part in it, how great was her joy to see its prosperity. She gaA'e theni some excellent words of advice, and then led us to the mercy-seat in a fervent prayer. " Toma, of Diarbekir, followed in such an out- pouring of soul in supplication, thanksgiving, and praise as could only come from the indwelling of the Spirit. I was amazed, humbled, and rejoiced ! We then sang a hymn, and descended from that holy mount of heavenly communion. Misses Sey- mour and Warfield were present, and each said a few sweet words through me to the school, asking their prayers for success in the study of the lan- guage during the winter. I followed them in a few remarks about Miss W.'s mother and Miss Sey- mour's friends, — what it is to leave all for Christ. "After they were dismissed, I saw the good Pastor Simon surrounded by a group of our girls, in earnest and apparently solemn talk with them. He soon after wai*ds wished to see me, and then asked if there was one of our scholars who would be willing to go and labor in Moosh.* I thought I would test them all, and, going down-stairs, said, ' Pastor Simon wishes to know if any of our schol- » See pnge 208. HAUPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 211 ars are ready to go and work for Christ in the dark reo-ions bn'ond.' The word ilcw from room to room, and five answered to the call, with such beaming foces you would have thought some great joy had come to them, — Marind, of Malatia, Ma- riam, of Maden, Marta, of Arabkir, Manoosh, of Diarbekir, and Badaskhan, of Shepik * " They almost ran to meet the pastor. It was no idle enthusiasm. They had counted the cost, and received this call as a direct answer to prayer. It made me think of Dr. Anderson or Dr. Clark going to South Hadley for missionary teachti-s. Most kindly and faithfully did B. Simon lay the whole undertaking before them, portraying the tri- als they would have to endure among a people so low, degraded, and ignorant. He told them of his wife's experience in Khanoos, where Loosintak, their first child, was born in a stable; liow the water leaked from the earth above, and was kept from her bed by a shelving board. That stable was partly under ground, dark and dirty. Then he gave thera encouragement to hope that seed sown would sometime spring up. " Our girls will never, I trust, lose the benefit of • These places are !"oun(l f ii the accompanying map. 212 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. tliat long niul intei-esting visit with this godly man. It makes me realize the importance of keeping alive the bond of sympathy between our scholars and the native pastors. " Saturday morning I was requested by Mrs. Allen to come to her parlor, as some persons were wishing to see me there. I found there assembled the class of graduates, who greeted me most cor- dially and gave me a seat of honor.* After a few moments, Toma, of Diarbekir, advanced, and in be- half of the class j^resented me with a handsome silver back-comb, suitably inscribed, as a testimo- nial of their grateful affection.f She added, as the tears started to her eyes, ' We owe you more than words or gifts can tell ! ' The whole class looked so joyful, and all requested that I would ' wear it every day.' " It was a perfect surprise. I had no thought of their attempting anything cf the kind. I told them so, and that I did not seek theirs but them ; that I had received, during the summer, proof of aifec- * This distinction between the chief seat and others is still, on all occasions, regarded in the Orient. t The class got this up entirely among themselves, no one beside knowing of it. They took a comb of horn to the silversmith and had him try till he succeeded. BAltPOOT FEM iLE SEMINARY. 213 tion, in words and actions, of love and sympathy., which 1 prized more than treasures of gold and sil- ver. I could say in all sincerity that I loved them tenderly, and it had been very sweet to teach them, this year especially ; the parting with them would be very hard, were it not for the hope of a meeting beyond, when our work is all done. "They also presented Kohar with a silver pen- liolder, prettily inscribed, and she made a speech in return. I then invited them to come, with their companions, to the reunion in the school-room that eveninor. Finding that there would be no social gathering of graduates this year, I concluded to attempt a general ' sociable ' myself Removing the desks, &c., from the school-room, and spread- ing carpets and rugs, quite changed its ajipearance. Mr. Allen's melodeon was brought down, and placed near one of the posts in the center, a row of chairs was left around the wall, two or three small tables in the corners, and lamps hung on the posts and walls, and our arrangements were com- plete. The recitation-room was also fitted up for use if necessary. '^We procured a liberal supply of bread and grapes, Pilibos made a large quantity of cookies, 214 TEN YE. Ills ON THE E UP URATES. Buch as they like, and others sent native sweets, oi sugars and nuts. A cup of tea, sweetened in boil- ing, and without milk, finished our entertainment. The guests came early, just after sunset, at the ringing of the chapel bell. The students of both schools, Arabs, Koords, and all, man-ied and un- married ! * pastors, preachers who were in the city, and their wives, besides two or three others con- nected with our scholars, — these, with the mission- ary families, made up a company of about one hun- dred and eighty souls. Music was the principal entertainment of the evening. We sang most of the new songs which all so much admire, — ' Love at home,' ' Come, come away,' &c. &c., also a few of the old ones which were called for. There was no formality. All seemed at home, and there was plenty of pleasant conversation among all present, but nothing rude or boisterous. It pleased me much to see our dear new sisters, ' Hattie and Mary,'t mingling with the crowd, who sat on the floor, and endeavoring to talk with them, I saw * Why this exclamation point ? Because to allow unmarrred men, ei 2n theological students, thus to meet the girls of the female sem- inary, is a thing so unusual in the Orient as to call for a mark at •'wonder and surprise." t Misses Seymour and Warfield. HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 215 Marine Uglitl}' touch Pastor Marcliros, of Malntia, and heard her say to Miss Seymour, ' This is my pastor^ That look and word had a whole ser- mon in it to my mind. It spoke volumes for the endearing relation of pastor and people. " I saw Mr. "Williams, who entered most heartily into the spirit of the ^evening, trying to converse with Bai'on Simon, (Jf Bitlls. He asked me to ask him how he thought he would enjoy that rela- tion,* and when the good man said he had been thinking much since he came here, and he felt now that it was the will of God, and he should hold out no longer, Mr. Williams exclaimed, ' Glory to God!' and through me said to him, 'There is no more blessed work on earth than that of a loving and beloved pastor of a loving people. Your beard is still black ; you may yet bring hundreds of souls into the kingdom.' In the course of the even- ing, 'Come to Jesus' was sung by the six Koords supported by the ' Union,' Soon the Arabic stu- * It will be remembered tbat Baron Simon knowa only Armenian and Turkish, while Jir. Williams uses Arabic. Baron Simon had, preuous to this visit to Harpoot, refused to become pastor of th church in Bit'is, and it was this new resolution which gave Mr. Wil- liams so much joy. Some cf the native pastors of ilarpoot rchirned with him to B and put him into the pastorate. 216 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPIltATES. dents joined in, with Mr. Williams, in Arabic, then the Armenians in their tongue, and so on, till we were all singing in Jioe languages ! * "Pastor Mardiros, of Malatia, closed the evening with devotional exercises, directing our thoughts to the great company of the redeemed, by a chap- ter of Revelation. He said. he could think of noth- ing but heaven all the evening ; and, in a few words, he caused us to look forward to that reun- ion in the presence of our Lord and Master. We sang 'Joyfully, joyfully onward we move,' and then united with him in prayer. It was only half-past ten when all had departed. As each one left, they came to me, and with a cordial grasp of the hand thanked me for the pleasure they had enjoyed. Their faces showed that it was genuine. Eva said it had been 'a sweet evening;' our Pastor Mardi- ros said afterwards, ' It was a delightful scene ; ' and others remarked that it was the pleasantest evening they ever enjoyed ; they should never for- get it. Our missionaries voted it a ' success ; ' and I * The "Koords" are the Koordish-spealdng Armenians and Syrians, whom tlie churches are supporting and educating to be their missionaries in Koordistan. The live lang lages were Armenian, Arabic, Koordish, English, and Turkish, the last being used by Mr. H. N. Barnum. SARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 217 was more than satisfied, so happy that I did not sleep all night for very joy ! Sabbath day was most blessed. The anniversary sermon by Pastor Hagop of riulakegh was good, and full of the apos- tolic spirit. It was a precious communion season that afternoon. " I was much impressed with the closing prayer by Baron Simon. He prayed that they miglit iA\ 'grow gray in the service of Christ, bearing hard- ness like good soldiers.' " Monday there was a constant succession of call ers to bid good-bye. In the afternoon, three of the pastors came to my room, with one or two laymen, to examine five of our girls for admission to the church, " The examination was most thorough and test- ing. Baron Simon had been anxious that Loosin- tak should be examined here, where she had pro- fessed to meet with a change of heart, and others wished to be examined with her, — Marta, Manoosh, Mariam, of Maden, and Heropsima, of Malatia. I was much gratified with the appearance of the girls, and I doubt if the pastors ever before re- ceived so intelligent and prompt replies from this class of candidates. They seemed quite touched 218 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. by their answci-s in two or three instances. Marta, especially, has wonderfully changed since you saw her. Her mind has undergone a transformation by the working of the Holy Spirit. I can attribute to nothing else such a waking up of intellect. They pressed her much to know why she was so anxious to go and labor in distant and dark regions; why she could not work for Christ in Arabkir. At last she could say no more, she had gone as far as she could properly ; then Mariam said, very discreetly, *Marta's reason is one she can not well state; she has seen other girls there turned aside from the work, and she fears it will be the same with her, if she goes home to labor.' This sent a few quiet drops from Marta's eyes. The pastors looked very sympathizing, and said, ' Ah, we understand it.' Strangely enough, I had failed to see her dif- ficulty, and helped probe her all the closer, not thinking of the danger of their marrying her to somebody in common life. Have I told you of a pleasant little conversation with Loosintak ? I was talking with her one day of her future. After a pause, she timidly said, 'It is a joy to think I shall meet you in heaven. Last Sabbath Marta and I were talking, and she said, 'If you or I should die, HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 219 and go to heaven before Miss "West does, we will go and find her mother,* and say. Your daughter led us to Christ.' Her eyes filled as she spoke This bit of comfort seemed so direct from the Lord that it quite touched my heart." * Miss "W.'s mother died May 23, 1867, aged seventy-six. An obitu ary notice of her was given in the Missionary Herald for August, 1867. 15 220 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHHATES. MISSIONARY PREMISES IN HARPOOT. This sketch represents the eastern portion of the missionary; premises in Harpoot, as seen from the soutli, the buildings in front, as seen in the slietch at tlie close of chapter second, being unrepresented. W ith the exception of a portion on the right, these buildings were not erected by us, but bought from an Armenian, who, like some in this land, having a sudden run of iirosperity, built a bigger house than he could support, and then sold it for two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars, which was probably less than half its cost. Tlie upper story of the large building is divided into three parts, Mr. Allen occupying the left, I the mid- dle, and the teachers of the female seminary the right, while the lower story is devoted to the jDupils. The room on the ex treme right, over the gate, is a Bible depository, — now in pro- cess of building, — and the laden donkey issuing from the front gate is supposed to be the one mentioned on page 242, At the left is seen a stable, between which and the house is the play-yard of the seminary pupils. The walled and terraced space in the rear of the buildings, though dignified with the name of " garden," is, with the exception of the few trees which are kept alive by a weekly goatskin bottle of water in the rainless summer, a mere rocky, gravely waste, as ai'e all the mountain- tops and sides. Upon the hill-top in the rear is seen a part of a Turkish ceme- tery, which extends far to the north and east, covering many hundreds of acres. Indeed, the city is nearly encircled by tliese graveyards, which, during the many centuries since Hari^oot began to be, have received to their often re-opened graves the successive generations of its population. O O 1-3 HARPOOT FEMALE SEMINARY. 221 Upon the outside of the roof of the large house is seen a sort of railing, or "battlement," such as God bade the Israelites build around their houses. Deut. xxii. 8. Persons sometimes fall from the roofs which have no such protection, and die. We can see how readily one can, like Peter (Acts x. 9), go upon the house-top to pray. The "battlement" upon one side of this house is of boards, and so close and high as to form a place of real retirement, where, in the heat of summer, we sometimes sleep at night. The house is built upon the mountain-side, by digging into it, so that while the front portion of the roof is some thirty feet above the road, the back portion is level with the terrace of the " garden." Just to the right of the female seminary is the outer gate, or door, of the house-yard ; such a one, perhaps, as in Acts xii. 13 is called the " door of the gate." Sometimes these outer gates have inserted in them a smaller door, through which a single person may pass without opening the larger and heavier gate, ■which must of course be opened for beasts of burden. Some say that one of the gates of Jerusalem had such a small door inserted in or by it, called the " needle's eye," and that to this the Saviour referred when he said, "It is easier for a camel to go thi'ough a needle's eye than for a rich man to en'er into the kingdom of God." Luke xviii. 25. CHAPTER IX. FRUITS. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void. — Isa. Iv. 11. fl^E have thus far looked chiefly at the Ipj work to be done, and the means and mode of doing it. We come now to the question of results. What has been the effect of these various methods of present- ing divine truth to the ignorant and supersti- tious population of this mission-field ? And first, among the Mohammedans, who are the Arabs, the Koords, and the Turks. Among the first no work has been done, and among the second little besides calling their attention to the Christian system, and, among that por- tion of them known as Kuzzlebashes, awaken- ing a spirit of intellectual inquiry, wliich will in the end lead to good results, but is so per- 222 FRUITS. 223 verted by their pantheistic notions^ as to prom* ise little immediate good. Much greater benefit has been conferred npon the Turks of the district. Many copies of the Scriptures have been sold to them, by the read- ing of which, as well as by listening occasion- ally to preaching, and oftener still to informal talk upon Christian doctrine, but especially by their seeing real Christianity illustrated in the worship and the lives of its Protestant profes- sors, the mass of them have been intellectually enlightened, and now look upon the Christian svstem witii feelings far different from those cherished years ago. By this, as well as by the softening, enervating influence of age upon Mohammedanism itself, the old spirit of fanati- cism has largely departed. Here and there among them a man avows a belief of Chris- tianity, which, however, he fails to prove sin- cere by a Christian life ; while very many of them despairingly anticipate the day when the crescent shall give place to the cross, consulnig tliemsclves with the hope that with their faith will also pass away those political evilrf and 224 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. burdens, which they ignorantly attribute to the sultan and his ministers, instead of the people, of whose character such rulers are the only fit- ting rei)resentatives. The chief " results " have been among the nominal Cliristians, mainly the Armenians, of whom mention was made in chapter second. Some of these results have been already inci- dentally mentioned, such as waking up popular feeling in favor of education, both among those who adhere to the missionaries and are called Protestants, and those who do not. One eifect of the intellectual awakening, fol- lowed as it is so largely by studying the Bible, has been to bring the priesthood into contempt. The influence they formerly had over the su- perstitious people, so that the fear of being cursed by a priest was sufficient to turn multi- tudes away from seeking the truth, is now comparatively unknown. As a result of this, the swarms of priests who formerly preyed upon and domineered over the people are fast passing away. In ITarpoot city and its fifty- four out-stations, in which years ago were two FRUITS. 225 hundred and fifty-six priests, there are at pres- ent but one hundred and forty-five. It is now difficult to persuade any except the lowest of the people to become priests. It is a common feeling that the influence and honor of the office have departed. The woman who was spoken of in the last chapter, as offering to give her daughter in marriage to a Protestant, lias a son-in-law in a village near, who was about to be ordained as priest. When her consent was asked, she made inquiry, and, learning that a Protestant teacher had gone there, said, " Then all the people will become Protestants. Why should he be a priest to be left alone? " In earlier days, she might have hoped that he too would turn Protestant, ana be employed as a missionary helper, but our rule not to employ priests, however soundly converted, is well known. Another effect of this awakened public spirit is to cut off the support of the Armenian mo- nasteries, with which the country is filled, no less than thirteen being in the Harpoot field. 226 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. But their revenues, and with them their glory and power, are passing away. The monastery of Hulakegh, which formerly collected upwards of three hundred measures of wheat from that village and Bizmishen, ob- tained, in 1866, but eighteen measures ; and from some monasteries the crowd of hungry " vartaheds''^ * have departed elsewhere for food. It is a fact of interest that while, at one time, in Harpoot and its fifty-four out-stations there were nine hundred and fifty-three fami- lies of Armenian papists, there are now but two hundred and thirty-tliree. The word of God has proved too strong for tlie man of sin, backed, as he has been, by the influence of a French consul. In Harpoot city, where at one time they made a great show, there is not now a papist. But a more encouraging result of this intel- lectual awakening is seen in the public feel- ing of the community in regard to preaching. Formerly, anybody who could talk was accept- * An order of unmarried ecclesiastics. The priests marry, bir only once, for so they interpret 1 Tim. iii. 2. FRUITS. 227 al'le alike in Armenian church and Protestant "jhapel, whether he talked sense or nonsense. It was to us, at one time, a painful question what to do to cure the people of the notion that any sort of a man with a tongue would do for a preacher. The popular prejudice was as inveterate as its twin feeling " on the part of some in the churches at home, — that almost anybody will do for a foreign missionary. The opening of the theological seminary made the impression among the Protestants that preach- ers should come from that. But to liave en- tered its doors was enough, just as witli some more intelligent communities the D. D. at- tached to a man's name is sometimes a suffi- cient guarantee to give weight to wordy empti- ness. A very feeble but good brother from Perchcnj having been received, one who had not previously been able even to lead a prayer- meeting, we were amused by a special request that he should come the first Sabbath and oc- cupy their pulpit. They wished to see 'he wonderful change which a few lessons in the seminary hud made in him. 228 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. But all that is changed now. By degrees flic more intelligent, discerning people of the villages began to distinguish between the mem- bers of the junior and the senior classes, and, in applying for men, to say, " Send us a sen- ior, if you please ; " adding sometimes, " Our people are becoming critical. They say that the man you sent us last week couldn't preach." Later still, they began to discern the differ- ence between members of the same class, and now many of them are as sharp critics on ser- mons and preachers as congregations here in New England, only in a different way from some of them. No amount of ability and elo- quence will suffice, if the preacher fail to im- part clearly some thought from the Bible worth carrying home, and in such a form that they can carry it. We had purposely endeavored, as far as wo dared, to awaken this popular feeling, in order to use it as a spur to quicken the steps of oriental indolence and inertia in the seminary. Tiie people arc now in danger of passing the goal, and wo have begun to put on the brakes, FRUITS. 229 or rather the Master is doing it, in a way wliich is naentioned in chapter tenth, in speakhig of Hooeli. Another good- result has been secured, in an increasing demand, on the part of the Armenians, that the gospel in their spoken tongue sliould be read and preached in their churches ; and, in thirty-three of these, either regular or occasional services have been held, aside from the established church service. But this influence of reading and Bible study has not been merely intellectual, — under which name I might mention an increasing spirit of awakened enterprise, rousing the people from their condition of sluggishness, and urging them on iu the path of civilization. It lias also been moral, and has done much to elevate the standard of morality among the people at large. In Aghansi, a Turkish and Armenian village, a Turk asked in surprise what had hap- pened to three profane, quarrelsome women, that he heard their profanity and wrangling no more. He understood the cause, when told that a Protestant helper had come with the l]il)lc a few weeks before. Tlie same influence 230 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. has told 'so powerfully upon popular sentiment tliat to lie or cheat is sufficient now to make the detected man blush, which was not the case years ago. The cause of temperance too is advanced. Those who take the Bible as their guide at once leave off wine-drinking, and that without ai y special instruction from us. Another effect which appears on every hand, hut specially among those who are called Pro- testants, is the elevation of woman from a con- dition little better than slavery, to her true place as the loved and honored companion of her husband. Pages might be filled with statements and incidents illustrating the grad- ual process by which this civilizing, elevating work goes on among both sexes. Never shall I forget the amazement manifested by the peo- ple when first seeing the respect shown by the missionaries to our wives. " What, a woman enter a door before a man !'^ Then, convinced that our ladies deserved the honor shown tliem, they lamented their own hard lot in not having such wiv )s. " IIow FRUITS. 231 happens it," said a man to me one day, " that all the missionaries' wives are ano;cls ? " But now some of them have angels too for com- panions. Step by step have the wives risen in intelli- gence and worth, and step by step have the husbands too advanced, till there are many family circles where mutual respect and love make the twain really one flesh. But all these results are merely incidental to the one great aim of bringing men to Christ, and organizing Christian churches. It is by this, by seeing the gospel become the savor of life unto life to scores and hundreds, that our hearts have been made truly glad. In Harpoot city and its fifty-four out-stations, during the winter of 1866-67, usually about four thousand persons heard the gospel on the Sabbath, and, including one hundred and sixty-nine members of the seven churches previously spoken of as put in our charge by the enlargement of our mission-field, there were, in April, 1867, thir- teen churclies, with four hundred and tliree members, and nearly three hundred other hope* 232 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. fill Christians, waiting to be received to exist- ing churches, or to be organized into new ones.* About two hundred of these last were new con- verts, fruits of a revival with which several communities were blessed in the winter of 18(36-67. Of the eleven pastors of these churches, six are wholly supported by their own people. The two churches formed in 1867 receive aid from us equal to half of their pastor's salary, and the other three a less amount. While, however, the total salary of these eleven pas- tors amounts to but about $1300, the churches and congregations paid, during the year 1866, for support of pastors, chapels, schools, mis- sionary work, etc., $3,969, in gold. The work of forming churches, which we did not begin till 1864, will now go on more ra}> idly, and it is hoped that, within the coming year, six others will be organized, one of which will assume the entire support of its pastor from the first. Notwithstanding our rule, * It will be borne in mind that this does not include the churches In Diarbekir, Mardin, and other places outside of the Harpoot field. FRUITS. 233 allowing us, when necessary, to aid a cliurch in a decreasing ratio {ot jive years, all of those formed by us previous to 1867 now pay all their own expenses, including schools. It may be interesting to take a glance at some of the places where churches are soon to be formed, Tiio first is in the eastern part of Harpoot city, where already a chapel has been built, the people paying four hundred and forty- one dollars of the seven hundred and twenty dollars expense. A separate service is sus- tained here with the hope of soon forming a second church and settling a pastor. In Geghi Kasabah, among the mountains, four days' journey north-east from Harpoot, a man named Sarkis years ago became possessed of a Testament, which he then could not read, but had some one read it to him. The book was taken away and ])urncd, and Sarkis cast into prison. But a fire was kindled which could not be put out. In 1858, we visited the place, and found a little company of sixteen men bold enough to call themselves our friends. It was to them and others, that, at a later day, 234 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. the sermon on lying spoken of in chapter sixth was preached ; and now we hope that enough persons have been converted, and learned to watch against their besetting sin, to form a church. A graduate of the seminary in 1867, a " first-class " man, one who was much sought after, and had a call to Husenik, his native village, chose to accept a call from this wild region, because there he can bear more hard- ships for Christ, and he feared that it might be difficult to find a man able and willing to go. The little company of believers are sorely per- secuted by both Armenians and Turks, but we hope that, with such a leader, they will have much of the martyr spirit, and be a bright light in the midst of those mountains. Two days' journey east from Harpoot, on the northern bank of the Euphrates, is Palu, also in the midst of a wild region. Here the twelve women mentioned in chapter fifth were whipped into reading, and some of them are zealous workers for Christ. We hope that of the eighty persons who usually attend meetings there, twelve are Christians. A young gradu- FRUITS. 235 ate of the seminary has just gone there as a candidate, and, if a certain Diotrephes, named Stepan, does not get the desired pre-eminence, we hope he will be settled as pastor. Some fifty miles south from Ilarpoot, in the Taurus Mountains, is Choonkoosh, a city of some six thousand inhabitants, Turks and Ar- menians. I made my first visit there in 1857, with Mr. Dunmore, when, after several hours' effort, and by the aid of the Turkish governor, we secured a lodging-place, only to be driven out by a wild mob composed largely of women.* When they had thrust us out into the rain and pitchy darkness, the Xanthippe who owned the house consented to let us go back on two con- ditions : (1.) That we should accept a meaner room ; (2.) That we should leave at daylight. We consented, and ere we could see the day- light, her shrill cry, " Up, and begone ! " woke • Probably most readers of Acts xiii. 60 do not think wliy tho Jews stirred up the " devout and lionorable women " against I'aul and Barnabas. No doubt then, as now, it was because they hoped that women would escape punishment for an act which men could not safely do. A mob of deviiut women stirred up by their husbands, for thin reason, once gave me a good stoning in the city of Harpoot. 16 236 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. US from sleep, and sent us forth to seek a new place for that Sabbath's rest. The wild people seemed ready to kill us, and the next day we left. The following year we sent out a helper there, but a mob drove him from the place, and he was put back and retained there only by the pasha's power. Many copies of the Scriptures were sold, and the good seed took root. When, in the autumn of 1866, we missionaries, with the members of the Harpoot Evangelical Union, took this route to Diarbckir, what a different scene met our eyes ! In place of a mob of wo- men to drive us out, urged on by a fierce crowd of men, the " brethren " led us to a prominent ihree-story building, which, with its massive walls of stone three feet thick, and bound to- gether by timber, seemed built to stand for ever. It was erected upon the mountain-side, and had less room in the lower story ; but in that was a stable, and a school-room for one hundred children. The second story was divided into rooms for a pastor, and in the upper story was a room to seat five hundred or moxe persons. Around the walls were standing ladders with a FRUITS. 237 pile of mud at tlie foot of each, and a woman making little balls and rapidly tossing them up to another woman at the top of the ladder, who quickly spread them on the wall for plastering. And this was a women's plas- tering-bee, for the more speedy completion of the chapel, that tiie missionaries miglit preach to them. The stone and timber they and tiieir husbands had brought, the latter from a long distance ; and, with four hundred dollars aid from us, had erected a building which would cost probably fifteen hundred dollars. Of the two hundred and eighty persons who are usually present at meetings there, we trust that at least fifteen are real Christians, and these we hope ere long to see organized into a church with a pastor of tlieir own, whom all the congregation will aid in supporting. I say, " We hope to see a church organ- ized," for, in accordance with the principle that the churches are to manage their own affairs, they, by their pastors and delegates, met in Ilurpoot, Oct. 17th, 18G5, to consult to- gether about some form of ecclesiastical union. 238 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. With a spirit of manly earnestness and of Christian feeling which surprised and gratified us, they, after much prayer and consultation, adopted a constitution, of which the following is a translation : — "We thank God that evamjelical churches have been planted in this land by the missionaries of the American Board ; and, though it is the right of the missionaries still to jirosecute their special work independently, and we still need their aid, yet, feeling that it is the duty of the native pastor^ and churches to undertake this work themselves, and knowing that this can be done only by imited action, we, therefore, the pastors and churches of the Harpoot pashalic, agree to form a union by adopting the following — • CON^STITUTION. I. The name of thjs body shall be the Evangel- ical Union of Harpoot. II. Those evangelical churches and pastors that give their assent to its rules may be members of the Union. . ' III. Its meetings shall be composed of the pas- tors and one delegate from each church. Mission- Fit u ITS. 239 arief) of the American Board, pastors from other places, and licensed preachers within our own bounds, may be members without the right of vot- ing ; but no one shall be a member who does not unhesitatingly receive all the teachings of the IJible, and specially those fundamental doctrines w^hich are briefly expressed in the Assembly's Shorter Catechism. IV. To attain the object of our Union we will strive (a.) To promote the soundness of faith, peace, purity, activity, and increase of all the churches, (b.) To plant new churches in places » where desirable, (c.) To seek out, educate, and set apart to their work, men suited to be pastors, preachers, or teachers, and, (d.) To unite all the churches in a strong bond of Christian fellowship, and in earnest and self-denying efforts to extend, the kingdom of Christ, and especially, 1. By giv- their sons and daughters to the work of Christ wherever needed. 2. By aiding to support poor persons preparing to labor for Christ. 3. By aiding feeble churches to support their pastors and teach- ers. 4. By supporting preachers and. teachers in unevangelized places. 6. By erecting suitable chujjels and school-houses wherever needed. 6. By 240 TEN YEARS OiV THE EUPHtATES. establishing, in all the cities anrl villages of ouf bounds, good schools, whose chief object shall be to make their pupils intelligent students of the Bible ; and, T. By supplying every person with the entire Bible, and inducing hira to study it. V. It shall be the duty of the Union to deprive unworthy pastors or preachers of their office ; and, when it is exceedingly necessary, a pastor may be dismissed with honor from his connection with one church to be the pastor of another. Whenever any members of a church appeal to the Union against any decision of their church, their appeal must be made known to the President in writing at least a month before its consideration, that he may make it known to the members. VI. There shall be one regular meeting some- time during the autumn of each year, and with the ajiproval of two churches the President can call a special meeting at any time. Not less than five members shall be a quorum in any meeting. VII. The officers of the Union shall be a Pres- ident, a Scribe, a Treasurer, and an Examining Committee of three, who sh^.ll be chosen annually by ballot. VIII. The President shall preside in the meet« FltUITS. 241 Jngs, and in his absence anojier shall be chosen to take his place. The Scribe shall keep a record of all the doiniis of the Union. The Treasurer shall once a year make a written report of all receipts and expenditures. The Examining Committee, or one of their number, shall once a year visit each one of the churches and report their condition to the Union, When a church are in fault, it shall be the duty of the Union to try to bring them to re- pentance ; and any church which shall fail to heed Buch efforts shall be expelled from the body." Articles ninth and tenth I omit as not of interest to the reader. It will be seen that here is a pretty extended plan of Christian work to be done, — Bible distribution, an educa- tion society in the largest sense of the name, home and foreign missions, and church erec- tion. And upon all these labors they have en- tered with greater or less zeal and effect. I have already spoken of our early throwing the care and expense of schools upon tliQ peo- ple. They are doing nobly in assuming them, and are beginning to do something in support- ing poor men preparing for the ministry. 242 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. Chiircli eniction is entirely in their hands, we only giving " grants in aid " where we think the people need thera. They talce the entire responsibility and build, we giving a fixed amount, which is usually not more than from one-fourth to one-third of the estimated expense. Not only every church, but every community also where there is no church, has a Bible so- ciety, which buys from us at wholesale, at twenty per cent, discount from the retail price. The books are carried from the city depository in bags on the backs of donkeys, which, in win- ter, are often seen standing at the missionary's door. " Has your donkey given out ? " or, " Why don't you feed your donkey ? " is the phrase for stirring up a negligent Bible society, and one well understood, and, I am sorry to say, too often called into use, though twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars' worth, in gold, were sold from the depository in 1866. The home missionary work is largely done by the personal efforts of individuals, who go singly, or two and two, from each community FRUITS. 243 to neighboring villages, especially on the Sab- bath, to read the Bible and explain its contents to any who are willing to hear. At times, dur- ing the winter, persons spend days and wecivs in thus going from place to place as unpaid laborers for Christ, except as the Master pays them ; and it is chiefly by such efforts that gos- pel light has been so generally shed abroad in the region of Harpoot. At one time, thirty-five members of the city community thus went abroad, some of them spending weeks, and go- ing to places three days' journey distant. When asked to do so, we furnish a horse or donkey for such persons to ride. Harpoot city church has furnished twenty-four men for Christian work permanently, of whom two are Dastors, five licensed preachers, and seven stu- dents in the seminary ; three have died in the service, and the rest arc employed as helpers and teachers. The women, too, do their part as they are able. One woman deserves particular mention. She is connected with a circle of wealthy friends in the city, and was so bitter an enemy to the 244 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. truth, or rather the delusions of the Protestants, as she supposed, that she threatened to burn her husband's Bible if he brought it home from his place of business, which he did not dare to do. He came begging the missionary ladies to call upon his wife, saying, " I know she will be pleased with the honor of a call from you, and perhaps you can persuade her to learn to read." They called, and, to their surprise, she con- sented to have a favorite teacher, the " Union teacher," Garabed, spoken of at the close of chapter seventh, come to her house and give her lessons. In a few weeks she could read intelligently, and the scales fell from her eyes. She at once took up the cross of shame and came to the Protestant chapel, and became a Christian before her husband, who is the man mentioned in chapter third as desiring a cheap religion. Though in feeble health, she is an earnest and very efficient laborer, and often goes to villages from three to ten miles distant to hold meetings among the women, whom she has remarkable skill and success in persuading to accept the truth. FRUITS. ,245 The so-called " foreign missionary work," as undertaken, is to be done in the central por tions of Koordistan, in a district extending from four to twenty days' journey to the south- east from Harpoot. In this work they are united with the churches of Diarbckir and Mardin. The language of the district is mostly Koormangie Koordish, which none of the peo- ple of Harpoot, and but a few of those of Diar- bekir, know. In tlie autumn of 186G, it was my privilege, with Messrs. Allen and Williams, and some members of the " Evangelical Union," to spend a month in touring in those wild re- gions, and to see the condition of deep degrada- tion of the mingled mass of Armenians, Koords, Turks, and Yezidecs. The way in which the churches were led to undertake this work was strikingly providential. Into a meeting of the Union, held in Diarbckir, strayed a young man who knew but a few words of Armenian, but the pastor of the Harpoot clmrch was born and had lived iij Koordistan, and knew the language perfectly. The young man's story, as given to him, and 246 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. afterward proved to bo true, was that a man in Redwaii, some four days' journey to the east, had given liim money to come to the west and find, if he could, the men who teach the gospel, and gain a knowledge of it, and return and teach his countrymen. The pastors and delegates present at once decided to adopt him as a beneficiary of their churches. The American churches had, tliey said, sent the gospel to them, and it was their duty to give it to these perishing ones. Three other men were found, and at once taken tc Harpoot to be educated under the care of the city pastor, whose early knowledge of the Koor- dish was thus made of use. As a result of his earnest labors in teaching them Christian doc- trine, the four were hopefully converted during the precious revival which followed. Never have I been in a more interesting monthly concert than was that in Harpoot, when these four men rose in turn, and, in their native Koordish, translated by the pastor, told of their own and their people's wretclied condition, and begged the prayers of God's people. Two FRUITS. 247 otluBrs have been added to their number, and with them, and the wives and children of the married ones, and a few other persons who know the Koordish, a meeting, probably the first ever held in that tongue, was recently held, in which not only the prayers and the remarks, but also the Scripture reading and the hymns, were in Koordish, the last having been trans- lated from the Armenian by one of their num- ber, who has learned enough of that language to do it. The little boys of Mr. Walker's con- gregation in Diarbekir, too impatient to wait for these men to be educated to go, themselves selected a man, put their pennies together to support him, and sent him to Redwan to preach the gospel to the Armenian, Assyrian, Turkish, and Yezidee population of that wretched town. I anticipate it as my own richest source of future joy in the missionary work to learn the Koordish tongue, and lead on to the regions beyond these foreign missionaries of the newly* planted churches. CHAPTER X. TITHE-GIVING RE VIVAL. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat In mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. — Mal. iii. 10. HAVE already spoken, in chapter third, of the obstacles which the covetousness i^ of the people, and their false ideas of the missionary work, threw in the way of ef- forts to make the churches self-supporting, and of our unyielding purpose to carry on the cam- paign from this base, accepting no man as a convert, and especially no one as a helper in the missionary work, who did not seem to ad- here to Christ instead of us, and to be ready to make effort and sacrifice for him. . A single illustration of the way in which the professed desire of a community for the gospel was some- 248 TITIIE-GI VING RE VI VAL. 249 times tested will put the principle in a clearer light. Some twelve miles south from Harpoot, but in full view of the city, upon the face of the Taurus range, is Hoh, a village with some eight hundred Armenian and eight hundred Turkish inhabitants. By much effort, during a vacation of the seminary some years ago, we succeeded in rent- ing a room and locating a student there for the winter. The only apparent result of his fout months' labor was a softening of the prejudices of the people, teaching a few persons to read, and selling a few copies of the Scriptures. The following winter we did not occupy the place, but those copies of the Scriptures were doing their work, and the succeeding year a man came to ask that some one might come to " ex- plain the Scriptures, as the student used to do." Accordingly, for several successive weeks, we sent a student on Saturday to spend the Sabbath there, and return on Monday to his studies. But, as they left him to pay ten cents each time for his donkey's barley, we stopped his going, when again some of the people camo 250 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRAiTES. to inquire why their preaclicr didn't come. " You Avish him to come," said we, " and com- pel him to pay for his donkey's food ! " " If that is all, we will give it," they replied ; and the preacher resumed his visits. As the time for the student's graduation approaclied, they ap])lied to have him come and remain with them. " We would gladly have him do so," we replied, " but he can not remain in the Afreet." They provided a room at their own expense, and he took up his abode with them. A few weeks later, the people of another place came for a preacher. " Tlierc is a hungry one in Hoh, whom you can have," Ave replied. They went to call him, and he came to Har- poot with some of his parishioners, who in- quired why we were taking away their preach- er. " You arc sending him away," we replied. To their surprised inquiry, "How?" we an- swered, " You have starved hini' out. Why don't you give him something to eat?" We were thinking of doing it," they replied, " and will pay him twenty piasters (eighty cents) a month." He returned with them, and had re- TITHE- OiriNG REVIVAL. 251 maincd about a year, wlien lie notified as that their share of his salary was two months in arrear, and that they said, that, owing to the absence of some of their number, they could pay only two hundred instead of two hundred and forty piasters during the ensuing year. A brief note directing him to come to Harpoot secured the prompt payment of the sum due, and the promise of the two hundred and forty pi- asters. Tliey then made up a subscription for two thousand piasters, and requested from us a " grant in aid " of the erection of a chapel and parsonage. Thus, during the early stages of the work in Iloh, we disciplined them to honesty and promptness in dealing with their preacher. Might not some parishes in this land, some, too, of which single members could buy out any of our oriental communities entire, profitably bo subjected to the same discipline ? Thus we put the gospel upon its own merits with its professed friends, always so conducting as to make them feel that the truth is sent from God to them, and that, if they receive it, they 17 252 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. do SO for themselves and their children, and not for the missionaries and American Chris- tians. But it remained for a poor blind graduate of the seminary to strike the blow which bids fair to set many free from this bondage to selfish- ness and covetousness, and enrich them with the blessing which God bestows on the cheerful giver. This young man, whose name is IIo- liannes, " John," is so ready in quoting Scrip- ture that he has been surnamed Uamapapar, " Concordance." In the north-western section of our mission- field, near the city of Arabkir, is Shepik, the villa".ris- tian work." There is a vast deal of sleeping- car religion of men who seem to suppose they have a free pass to heaven, who present them- selves regularly at the religious services of the Sabbath, and who say to their souls, as they leave the house of God, " Soul, thou hast much righteousness laid up for the ensuing week ; take thine case, eat, drink, and be mer- ry, as the world does, till the coming Sabbath." Such persons need first conversion to Christ, and then to the cause of missions ; and what the churches need is, that all those who aro en- 314 TEN TEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. rolled ill their books become living, effective members, walking with Christ and working for him. When this is done, the wants of the missionary work will be all supplied. The fourth and last want is more missionaries. And here a few words in regard to the kind of men needed. There is a great deal of misap- prehension on this point, even on the part of some who attempt to direct others, which, if shared by the candidates for the foreign field, would keep some at home who ought to go abroad, and send some abroad who ought to stay at home. A prominent newspaper, not long since, gave remarkable linguistic power as one quality neces- sary to a missionary, setting forth tlie imaginary necessity laid upon the poor polyglot to use many languages, and, in so doing, painted that one man needed, among scores of preaching mis- sionaries, who is to do the work of a Dr. Riggs, in giving to different nations the Bible in their own tongue. Very few missionaries are able to preach in more than one tongue ; and the man who can nse his native tongue correctly TUE FOUR WANTS. 315 and easily can, iu all ordinary circumstan- ces, acquire another in which to preach in a foreign field. No halting, stumbling, stutter- ing speaker, surely, — no man who can not ex- press his ideas clearly and intelligibly in his native tongue, — should go abroad ; but if one fitted for the work in other respects has the gift of utterance at home, let no polyglot ghost fiighten him from going abroad. The first few days in the country will ordi- narily give a man tongue enough to begin to do good by winning the hearts of the people by saying " Good-morning," " Good-evening," if no more ; and, in eastern Turkey, less than a year iisually suffices to enable one to begin to preach written if not cxtomporc sermons. Another missionary qualification of our news- paper friend was politeness ; and the poor man was sent to sliine in courts, to meet and con- verse with embassadors, etc. For that portrait sat the late Dr. D wight, of Constantinople, who, besides being an admirable missionary, was able thus to sliine among the great. But some of us, who Ikivo s|)cnl hali" a score of years in ihe 21 316 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. field, have not seen any embassador yet, except our own, who are usually plain, common-sense republicans like ourselves. If obliged to sit for that newspaper portrait, not only a majority of the missionaries, but perhaps some embassadors with them, would be obliged to come home. More necessary to the missionary than this polish of tlie gentleman is that trait which made a good old woman say of her pastor, — "He's not a bit of a gentleman. - Why, he can come in and sit down by the wash-tub of such as me ! " This ability to feel at home, as an em- bassador of King Jesus, with the humblest of his disciples, is infinitely better than any mere external polish, which may or may not be a help in the missionary work, in which kind feeling, with the power of manifesting it, is the essential thing, so far as winning men is con- serned. Wrote a missionary, years ago, — "Let no man come to India who can not spend three hours daily in heavenly meditation and prayer, and enjoy it." To which we may reply. Lot no one call himself a disciple of Clirist, at all, THE FOUR WANTS. 317 who wouldn't " enjoy " lieavenlj meditation all day long, if allowable, and who doesn't love to " pray always." Wo may add, too, Let no man come to eastern Turkey wlio, with the constant call for active Clu-istian labor pressing upon him, could find leisure to spend so much time in devotional exercises. Before coming, let him take lessons from the Master, and learn to be at times so "beside himself" with cora- l)assionate zeal for preaching the word to the ])erishing multitudes as to deprive himself of his meals to do it, and find the needed oppor- tunity for prayer only by night. Let him learn to i)ray while at work, as well as before and after it. In this way, that larger portion of time, whicli must be spent among men in ciforts to do them good, will not do his own soul harm by separating it from his Saviour, wlio'm he met in the closet, but rather will do him good by tliat actual experience of his pres- ence and aid wliich was there souglit. One quality, not specified by tlie n( wspapcr before alluded to, as necessary to the mission- ary, but which can not bo dispensed with, is 318 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. CO nmon sense, as opposed on one side to all mere dreaming, and on the other to tliat un- practical make which is ever preventing some imfortunatcs from calling things l)y their right names, and taking them by the handle. It hardly need be said that a brief experience of actual missionary life will be a sufficient cure for any amount of school-girl romancing. It is also true that a mere student of theory ratlier than practice — • one wlio is ever trying to see things, not as they are, but as they should be — were far better employed in liis study or studio at home than amid the sometimes intensely practical realities of missionary experience. There must be, too, none of that scrupulous precision, that sensitive and fastidious nicety of taste, which, if not incompatible with common sense, is seldom found in union with it. To speak of nothing else, the man who has this can never gain a practical knowledge of the language of the people. The inevitable pros- pect of using a word now and then in some other than the approved sense, and sometimes of exciting the risil)ilities of his hearers, would TUE FOUR WANTS. 319 make the fastidious man, unless he bo a liu- guistic prodigy, so slow in acquiring the ase of tlioir tongue as to leave the heathen to perish before he could speak to them of Jeiius. If under the term common sense is not in- cluded that knowledge of human nature which is another essential missionary qualification, it may at least be said that the Avant of this knowledge seems often to be a result of that unpractical theorizing which dooms a man to be the victim of each new deceiver, because, instead of looking at tilings and men as they are, and he has seen them to be, he persists in accepting each new-comer's statement of them. If the poor man has in the abstract a knowl- edge of human nature, and the power to read character, he is seldom able to use his reading in a practical way, and thus, while knowing men, he is as if he knew them not. The mis- sionary who, by a want of this necessary gift of discerning spirits, should gain among the peo- ple a reputation as wanting in practif al shrewd- ness, would soon be the victim of a sorry lot of converts. 320 TEN YEAUS ON THE EUPHRATES. It is hardly nejessary to say that two otlicr qualities needed are courage and firmness of purpose. Without the former, the missionary would often lack the power to meet the emer- gencies which arise in the radical work of un- dermining old institutions and estahlishing new ones, which he is sent to do, and would settle down into that most unfortunate of misplaced men, — a missionary victim of conservative timidity. Without firmness, or, I may rather say, with- out inflexible adhesion of purpose in essentials, enabling him to fix upon a j)lan of campaign, and, come what may, to carry it out in all es- sential particulars, the missionary might dis- play talent at ditching, and changing base, bnt could never capture the strongholds of the en- emy. The way to these can be opened only by a stubborn and courageous adhesion to the gos- pel base and plan of campaign. It can not be denied, that, in deciding wliat persons should go to the foreign field, multi- tudes look at the question from a wrong stand- point. Some have felt that every man should THE FOUR WANTS. 321 go wlio desires to consecrate himself lo the work. As well might we say, that, in carrying on that other campaign against the powers of evil, President Lincoln should have appointed as general any one who felt called to consecrate himself to the labors of that office. If, indeed, a too common idea of the mission- ary work were the right one, — if missionaries were men called to do the comparatively small work of the pastorate among little companies of converted heathen, — then might almost any one consecrate himself to it; ll\eu miglit the churches give to this work those supposed to be unequal to the demands of the home fielc'. But, since this is not the case, since men ere wanted, not to be mere captains of companies in the Lord's host, and that too where there are plenty of people to set them right when going wrong, but rather men able to go alone and win back revolted subjects of King Jesus to their allegiance, teach them to be soldiers in his service, choose, appoint, and train the captains and other officers, and, having thus prepared and d'sciplined an army loyal to Christ, to lead 322 TEN YEARS ON THE FAJ I'iJIlA J'lCS. it on to conflict, and, liaving won t'fic victory, and put down the rebellion, to do tlio work of reconstruction upon the basis of Christian loy- alty ; in other words, since the missionary work is a campaign^ and that an apostolic one, then is the call riglitfully made upon the church to consecrate to it her choicest sons and daugh- ters, the men and the women whose absence will be felt at home, and felt ahroad too in the accession of strength which they bring to the missionary force. The men who " can be spared " are not the ones wanted on missionary ground ; l>ut the demand is that the church make the missionary work her " first-class " work, giving to it her choicest men. Not necessarily those who are the greatest scholars, — such are often scholars merely, good only for accumulating stores of learning, — but the men who, with warm, lov- ing Christian hearts, have the power to make their thoughts and feelings known to others ; men who can communicate ; men of earnest purpose and magnetic force of character, who THE FOUR WANTS. 'Vl^ can not liclp making their influence felt by those with whom they come in contact. Never before was the call so loud as now foi such men to enter the foreign field ; and, not- withstanding the home call so often pleaded as an excuse for staying here, it can not be doubted that the marching orders to " go " are still in force for all who are fitted for the for- eign field. It is a fatal error which takes it for granted that all are to stay who are not in some special way called to go. At bottom of this lies that other idea, iinsustained alike by reason and revelation, that God proposes to finish up his work in America before beginning it elsewhere. Some good people, in their over- weening estimate of tlie importance of our country, seem to suppose that God has decided to make his home here, to expend here the efforts and contributions of the churches in fitting up a drawing-room, with its costly array of furniture, and in wdiicli they, poor, selfish souls, propose to enjoy themselves, at the ex- pense of the perishing, to whom the Master bids us give his gospel. Already has he begun 324 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPIIIiATES. to dissipate these visions of pious and luxuri- ous selfislmess, and compel us to see tliat the best way to prepare to receive him is to labor to save those for whom he shed his blood. As if it were not enough that the man of sin has invaded and threatens to subdue our country and rule it for himself, a highway has been opened across the ocean to neglected China, and thousands of her idolatrous population, soon to be increased to millions, are bringing their temples and gods to invade the land, and to possess it too, unless tlie tardy, sleeping church awake to the'duty of meeting the enemy on his own ground. They are much mistaken who suppose that the work of evangelizing the Chinese can be best done lierc on our own soil. It should be remembered, that, whatever they may do in the future, they do not now, like the Irish, come to make their homes here ; but, with all their home associations and attacliments still fresh and strong, come prepared to cling, in their temporary exile, with still greater tena- city to their ancestral faith, and — having seen, not the excellencies of our Christian system, THE FOUR WANTS. 325 but rather tlie vices which, in spite of it, still dishonor our land -to go back more inaccessi- ble than before to Christian influence. Wlien in Turkey we meet a man who has traveled in Christian countries, we find one who is almost surely so prejudiced against the truth, or its professed adlierents, as to be inaccessible to us ; and we may expect tliat the same will be true in China. If, tlien, we would evangelize that land, we must sow the good seed in its own soil. Not irai)robal)ly, the apostle James, by some such course of reasoning, justified himself in settling down in the home work, accepting a call to the Jerusalem pastorate, when the Mas- ter had told him and his fellows only to " tarry there till they should be endued with power from on high " for the missionary work. lie hoped, doubtless, to exert a great influence for good over the Jews, and others who crowded animallyfrom foreign lands to the mother city. But, instead, we find that " certain came from James," and entangled Peter and l>ariiabas in the net of tl eir Jewish com[)romiscs, wliilc his 326 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. cliurch-members everywlicro dogged Paul's steps, in tlie interest of the ceremonial law ; and at length the influential home pastor persuades even the great apostle to the Gentiles himself into a politic compromise to secure peace, which results in sending him a prisoner from Jerusalem to Csesarea, and thence to Rome, and in closing the Acts of the Apostles. How much different might have been the history of James and of the Christian church, had he gone elsewhere to do the work which the Master gave him ! And may we not say. How much different would be the "history of the church of this age, and of some Jameses and Jonahs in it, if, instead of clingino- to tlie liome altars and firesides, and seeking for jjlace liere, in what is too largely a conflict between Chris- tians of different names, — if, instead of waiting for calls to city pulpits and professorial chairs here at home, they would heed the Master's command to go and give his gospel to the mil- lions who have not yet heard his name, and plant his church among them. If the views presented in these pages are TUE FOUR WANTS. 327 correct, the work of foreign missions differs in some important particulars from what it is commonly supposed to be. Its aim is not to convert the world, but to evangelize it ; not to finish Christian work on missionary ground, but to hogln it under such conditions as, by the divine blessing, will insure its progress and ulti- mate triumph. The work of the missionary is a primary, fundamental one. He is to deposit the germs of Christian institutions for future development, to set in operation forces wliicl. will go on ever repeating and enlarging them- selves through successive generations, till tlie millennial day sliall come, in the universal and perfect development of the Christian system. Nor is the work one of mere ftxitli. These pages have shown that great results may be speedily seen. While, then, the work affords opportunity for more foresight, for a greater scope of thought and effort, than is generally supposed, it gives, also, promise of richer and more speedy fruits than arc commonly articipated. Not many years of labor are demanded for a 328 TEN YEARS ON THE EUPHRATES. man, by use of native agency, to repeat and increase his influence many fold. One result of missionary effort in the Harpoot field has been to put seventy-eight persons at work in different departments of Christian labor, and the number is rapidly increasing, all busy in effective efforts to elevate and save the commu- nity. The number of native helpers thus at work in the mission to eastern Turkey is one hundred and seventeen. The mechanics of Chicago have shown us how a city may be lifted from its place to a higher level ; entire granite blocks, with all their Ijusy hum of industry undisturbed, rising slowly and almost imperceptildy into the air. Unseen beneath all, the engineer has bedded liis thousands of screws, which, at his whistle's shrill signal, are turned together to lift the weighty pile surely to its place. The mission- ary who does merely a personal, pastoral work turns a single screw, and by it may break off and raise a fragment of society ; but he who follows the apostolic plan ))ccomes a master workman, one who fixes and niiuis liis multi- THE FOUR WANTS. 329 |.lied forces beneath all the social fabric, and, at the signal of the gospel trumpet, puts them all at work, slowly but surely doing their appoint- ed task of lifting the mass about him, from the depths of ignorance and spiritual deatli, to in- telligence and Christian life, with all their kin- dred blessings. In chapters ninth and tenth I have partially shown how this work of intellectual, moral, and religious elevation is going on in tlie Har- poot mission-field. It is for a similar but greater work in other stations of this and other missions that workmen are wanted. Shall they be had, or shall the call for re- cruits to take the places of those who have fallen at their posts in such service still be made in vain ? " Shall we, whose souls are lighted By wisiiom from on high, Shall we to men bt^nighted The \ixm\i of life deny ? Salvation! oh, salvation ! The joyful sound proclaim, Till earth's remotest nation Has learned McHKiah's name." 330 TEN YF.AUS ON THE EUPHRATES. May it not be that, when the millennial day sliall come, all the glorified saints in heaven will unite with Bisliop Heber in singing the " Missionary Hymn " in some such form as this? — " From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand. Where Afric's sunny fountains Rolled down their golden sand; From many an ancient river. From many a palmy jDlain, They called us to deliver Their land from error's chain. " Then we, whose souls were lighted By wisdom from on high. Did not to men benighted The lamp of life deny. Salvation ! oh, salvation ! The joyful sound proclaim. For earth's remotest nation Has learned Messiah's name." If indeed it be thus sung, will not some voices be silent then ? THE END. <-. 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