Volume II Part 13 (1/2)
Social meetings for the study of the Scriptures were found to be so influential for good in the Harpoot district, that the Armenian ecclesiastics of the Old Church sought to counteract their influence by the same expedient; but the result disappointed their hopes. In Malatia, they appointed a meeting for such readings every evening in the week, in each of the twenty-four wards of their part of the city. Their intention was to have the Scriptures and the church books read in the ancient language; but the people insisted on having the Bible alone read, and read in the spoken language. So every night the Word of G.o.d, in the vernacular, was read and commented on in twenty-four a.s.semblies of from forty to sixty persons.
Of more significance was the fact, that many of the local communities, besides the one at Harpoot, were taking upon themselves the support of their pastors and preachers, and were beginning to relieve the Board of the expense of their schools. A missionary spirit was also springing up. The churches in the cities were beginning to care for the villages. Missionary societies were formed. In one of the out-stations of Harpoot, the school boys had an evangelical society. On Sat.u.r.days they met and had prayers, singing, and the reading of a tract; and the next day they went out, two and two, to the houses of such Armenians as did not come to the Protestant place of wors.h.i.+p, and asked the privilege of reading from the New Testament. Being children, they often found a hearing where older persons could not. A boys' missionary society in Diarbekir bore the expense of a scripture reader in a large Armenian village nine miles distant. A like a.s.sociation of men paid seven eighths of the salary of a helper in another village. Subsequently, a door being found open in an unhopeful village near the city, the native brethren hired a house, and each Sabbath sent one of their own number to spend the day as a scripture reader. A similar zeal was manifested at Bitlis by a number of young men, who were studying at their own charges.
But there were trials. Some of the young men in the Harpoot Seminary refused to exercise the self-denial necessary to live on the means allowed for their support, and returned to their homes; and a few of the graduating cla.s.s preferred to enter secular business, rather than accept the salary offered. This was not without its uses, as it confirmed a wholesome principle, and was the means of bringing some men, after a time, into the service under a more just apprehension of the true value of the ministry.
The Eastern Turkey Mission was painfully afflicted in 1865 and 1866.
The three families at Harpoot each lost two children; and Mrs.
Williams was called to her rest, depriving the mission of a highly valued and beloved member, and leaving her husband alone, in the sole charge of a difficult station. Mr. and Mrs. Richardson were obliged by illness to visit their native land, and the Arabkir field was placed under the permanent care of the Harpoot station.
The Eastern mission had now ten missionaries, with as many female a.s.sistant missionaries, six native pastors, seventeen licensed native preachers, twenty-five native teachers, and thirty-two other helpers. The out-stations had increased to forty-seven, eighteen of which were connected with Harpoot. The average attendance at the regular religious services was over two thousand and two hundred; and many more heard the informal preaching of colporters and other a.s.sistants. Twenty-two Sabbath-schools embraced one thousand and four hundred pupils. There were sixteen churches, with a members.h.i.+p of four hundred and fifty, of whom sixty-eight were admitted on profession of faith in 1864, and one hundred and twenty were women.
The number of registered Protestants was three thousand five hundred and thirty. Besides four hundred adults receiving instruction, there were one thousand five hundred children in fifty common schools, of whom more than five hundred were girls. The girls' boarding-school at Harpoot had forty-two pupils. The Misses West and Fritcher, from Marsovan, had been very usefully connected for a time with this school, in consequence of the return home of Miss Babc.o.c.k. Miss Clarissa C. Pond was now connected with the school, and early succeeded in gaining the language. The mission was much encouraged by a growing interest in education, especially among the women.
Parents who, a few years before, thought it wholly unnecessary, if not a disgrace, for their daughters to read, and who could hardly be induced to allow them to attend school, now gladly paid considerable sums for their tuition. This advancing spirit of intelligence was seen, not only among those who were brought directly under the influence of missionary labor, but also among the Armenians generally, compelling their ecclesiastics, in some places, to open schools of their own. So, also, to keep the people away from the Protestant chapels, extra services were established in Armenian churches, in which the Bible was read and explained, and prayer was offered in the modern or spoken language. In the village of Ichme, they even went so far as to open an opposition prayer-meeting, a female prayer-meeting, and an evening meeting; and societies were formed in several places professedly to carry the Gospel to neighboring villages.
There was much suffering from poverty, this year having been one of special trial in this respect, but there was great liberality on the part of the churches. In the Harpoot district, ”there was a promptness in paying their pastors, preachers, and teachers,” says the report of that station, ”which would put to shame some richer and more enlightened communities, even in Christian America. The sums paid by the people for the support of pastors, schools, chapel building, the poor, and for other benevolent objects, amounted during the year to $1,224 (in gold), and would have been larger had not the ma.s.s of the people been unusually poor, even for them.” Two things are noted that were especially cheering in regard to them: ”First; so soon as they become interested in the truth, they earnestly desire a pastor of their own, and, _when necessary_, are willing to pay according to their ability for his support. Secondly; they are easily pleased, and are not fickle minded; do not desire, but rather oppose change. The preacher who has once been given to them, almost without exception they learn to love; and having learned this, they do not wish to part with him.”
Mr. Williams was at Diarbekir in February, and found the church in great prosperity under the pastorate of the Rev. Tomas Boyajian. For a year the station had had no missionary; and it was a year of high prices, almost a famine, and great stagnation in business throughout Eastern Turkey. At the same time, owing to the trouble in Constantinople, the Turkish officials were more averse to Protestants than ever before. Sickness, too, had prevailed, thirty-three having been buried at Diarbekir from the congregation over which the young pastor was settled. ”Yet,” says Mr. Williams, ”the city work is in advance of any _one_ thing at Harpoot. The congregation at the Sabbath-school, three fourths of whom are adults, numbered three hundred and thirty-nine, and I wish those whose contributions have aided in planting this vine, could have looked upon the cl.u.s.ters of faces which were studying the Book of Life, and heard the hum of voices asking and answering questions!
They would have felt that there are some places where the missionary work is _not_ a failure. The figures I have not by me, but since Mr.
Walker has been absent, the church has increased, the congregation has increased; and that it is not an idle increase is shown by the fact, that this one congregation has, in the year of the missionary's absence, contributed four hundred dollars for the support and spread of the Gospel; for schools, two hundred and forty; for the poor (a year of high prices and great want), two hundred and seventy-five; and for the national head at Constantinople, forty.”
The year 1865 was signalized by the death of two very useful missionaries,--Rev. Edward Mills Dodd, and Rev. Homer Bartlett Morgan. Mr. Dodd died of cholera at Marsovan, on the 19th of August.
He was a native of New Jersey, and his first labors were among the Jews of Salonica, commencing in April, 1849. In 1863, he was transferred from Smyrna to Marsovan. Mr. Barnum, of Harpoot, who was there at the time of his death, speaks of him as a sincere Christian and an earnest missionary, working up to and often quite beyond the strength of his feeble const.i.tution. ”His first missionary language was Hebrew-Spanish, of which, I have been told, he had a fine command. When he was transferred to the Armenian work he learned the Turkish, which he used with much more than ordinary correctness; and some of the best sermons which I have heard in that language were from him. He devoted considerable attention to Turkish hymnology, and many of the best of the Turkish hymns now in use were contributed by him.”[1]
[1] See _Missionary Herald_, 1865, pp. 380-383.
Mr. Morgan died at Smyrna on the 25th of August, at the age of forty-one. He was from the State of New York, and obtained his education at Hamilton College, and at the Union and Auburn Theological Seminaries. He joined the mission to the Jews at Salonica in 1852. After that mission was relinquished, he removed, in 1856, to Antioch. Seven of the remaining nine years of his life were spent in that place, whence the great Apostle went forth on his first foreign mission; and the last two at Kessab, in a perfectly successful effort to restore unity to a divided church. The failing health of Mrs. Morgan rendered a visit to her native land imperative. Being detained ten days in the malarious atmosphere of Alexandretta by the non-arrival of their expected steamer, Mr.
Morgan took the fever. Supposing it to be only an intermittent, they embarked for Ma.r.s.eilles, but on reaching Smyrna he was too ill to proceed farther. There, in a missionary family, he had the best of attendance, and after a week of delirious wanderings, he finished his earthly course, and was laid to rest in the cemetery of the Dutch hospital. His first wife was taken from him at Salonica, his first-born at Antioch, a second child at Bitias, and a third at Kessab; and the father sleeps in Smyrna, his old home.
”Far from thee Thy kindred and their graves may be,-- And yet it is a blessed sleep, From which none ever wakes to weep.”
Repeated bereavements chastened the strong and decided character of Mr. Morgan. He grew in the grace of patience, and in spirituality and self-abnegation. He was an indefatigable worker, and was fitted to exert, as he did, a commanding influence on the policy of the mission. He soon made himself familiar with the Turkish language, and never wearied of studying its beautiful structure, and wrote some of the best Turkish hymns. The well known hymn,--”Not all the blood of beasts”--he clothed with not a little of the strength and power of the original.[1]
[1] See _Missionary Herald_, 1865, pp. 383-385.
The year was also signalized by the death of Rev. Hohannes Der Sahagyan, pastor of the church in Nicomedia, and widely known as one of the two young men who first attached themselves to the teaching of the missionaries in Constantinople, also for his consistent piety, earnest zeal, and the severe persecutions which he suffered at different periods, as a follower of the Lord Jesus.
A scene at the ordination of a native pastor at Perchenj, a village two hours from Harpoot, graphically described by Mr. Williams, has its chronological place here. It was in a large garden, with the pulpit under the wide-spreading branches of a mulberry-tree, and mats and carpets spread out in front. ”Around the pulpit sat the council,--lay and clerical delegates, representing most of the evangelical ministry in this part of Turkey; then the regular Protestants of Perchenj, Harpoot, and the villages about, to whom it was a 'festa,' as was evident from their dress. Outside these were the partially committed ones, who, though they did not 'dress up'
for the occasion, seemed to have taken the day for it; and again, outside that company, were men drawn in by the interest of the occasion from their work, with their field dresses on, tools in hand, leaning on their long handled spades, bending forward to catch question and answer, wholly unconscious of the picturesque finish they gave to the scene.
”In the afternoon exercises, the pastor of Ichme and the pastor of Harpoot took prominent parts. The same was expected also of the pastors from Arabkir and Shapik, but unfortunately they were not present. The sermon was by Mr. Allen, and was moving and effective.
It was very difficult to count the audience, at least from where I was. If I could have exchanged places with some of the boys, and hung myself among the mulberries, perhaps I could have succeeded better. Nothing in all the exercises seemed so American as the natural way in which the boys took to the trees. We judged there were, in the forenoon, about seven or eight hundred, and in the afternoon, six or seven hundred. To the last, everything was quiet, and all went off pleasantly. As you know, the community furnish half the pastor's salary from the start.”
In October, four months later, there was an ordination of much interest at Cesarea, where the churches in Constantinople, Marsovan, Sivas, and Yozgat were represented. It was in one of the most important centres of influence. Gregory the Illuminator was ordained in Cesarea, and he went forth from that place to his great work of Christianizing the Armenian nation nearly sixteen hundred years ago.
There were born the great church teachers of Cappadocia, Basil of Cesarea and his brother Gregory of Nyssa. In the middle of the third century, the bishop of Cesarea protested against the usurpations of the bishop of Rome.
”Wednesday morning the council met and organized. The whole day was given to the examination of the candidate, which was held in the church, and was attended by from two to three hundred persons. The candidate occupied three fourths of an hour with a statement of personal experience and reasons for entering the ministry. This he made in a manner so clear, forcible, and satisfactory, that the council felt the need of asking scarcely a question. To the congregation it was especially impressive, showing how far removed from the religion of forms, to which they have so long been bound, is that faith which works by love. Three hours were then devoted to an examination of his theological views, and he gave unmistakable evidence of being a man accustomed to think for himself,--one who has well-defined opinions, and is prepared to defend them.”[1]