Volume II Part 17 (1/2)
These and other distractions seriously hindered the spiritual growth of the churches in the winter of 1869 and 1870. But in the spring, a very thorough work of grace was enjoyed at Degala, and it was believed that there were more than twenty genuine conversions, mostly among the aged and middle-aged. The church in that place paid half the salary of its pastor, and was expected soon to pay the whole. Mar Yooseph, the young bishop at Bootan, wrote that his congregation had increased to one hundred and fifty, and that, for much of the time, Christ and his salvation formed the only theme of conversation. He had hopes concerning considerably more than a score of new converts. Deacon Toma, who had spent a year in the Seminary, was with him as a helper, and promised to become another Deacon Guwergis.
The immediate foreign mission field of the Nestorians, is among the Armenians in Russia, and the same people at Tabriz, Hamadan (the ancient Ecbatana), Teheran, and Ispahan in Persia, with the numerous villages in the intervening regions; descendants, to a great extent, of Armenians carried captive, in the year 1605, from the regions of Ararat by Shah Abbas the Great. They furnish the field providentially offered to the Nestorians, as the Koords do for the Armenians in Turkey. Hamadan is about three hundred miles southeast of Oroomiah, on the great caravan road between Tabriz and Bagdad. On the 28th of May, 1870, the mission resolved, that they considered it a duty urged upon them to embrace at once within their efforts the Armenians and the Mussulman sects of Central Persia, by planting a station at Hamadan; and they expressed the hope that the Board would heartily endorse this action, and help them to carry it out without delay, and also to occupy Tabriz.
The members of the mission, in the spring of 1870, were the Rev.
Messrs. Coan, Labaree, Cochran, and Shedd, and Dr. Van Norden, with their wives, and Miss Dean, princ.i.p.al of the female seminary. The mission was now known as the ”Mission to Persia,” in view of plans to reach the entire population of the country. To Mr. Cochran was a.s.signed the superintendence of twenty out-stations in Oroomiah, Sooldooz, and Tergawer, and the field outlying these, together with the male Seminary, To Mr. Coan was committed the press, the editing of the ”Rays of Light,” care of the treasury, and the oversight of the city church, and of two out-stations. To Messrs. Shedd and Labaree, jointly, was given the care of twenty out-stations in Oroomiah and Salmas, besides Tabriz and Hamadan, with the Armenian work in general; and, separately, to Mr. Shedd the mountain field, and to Mr. Labaree the Mussulman work. Dr. Van Norden was to carry on his medical department, and to translate the Gospel of John into Turkish.
In the autumn of this year the Mission to Persia was formally transferred to the care of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions; reserving, however, the Armenian work in the northern portion of the field, from its intimate connection with the mission to the Armenians of Turkey.
It remains only to speak of the honored founder of the mission.
Dr. Perkins lived through the entire connection of the mission with the American Board, and died at Chicopee, Ma.s.sachusetts, on the 31st of December, 1869, when he had nearly attained the age of sixty-five; having been born on the 12th of March, 1805. He graduated at Amherst College in 1829, taught the next year in Amherst Academy; spent the two following years in Andover Seminary; and was tutor in his Alma Mater for the greater part of another year. The engagement last named was shortened by his call to commence the mission among the Nestorians. His life, from the time of his sailing from Boston, with Mrs. Perkins, in September, 1833, for six-and-thirty years, is largely the history of the Nestorian mission.
The careful reader of this history will not need a portraiture of his character. He was evidently made for the position he so long occupied. He was an acknowledged leader in the Lord's host; a Moses and a Joshua, with traits of character resembling those both of Elijah, and of the Apostle Paul. To idleness, vagrancy, and drunkenness, besetting sins of the Nestorians, he was the old prophet; and in his longing desire to make them savingly acquainted with the gospel, he was the apostle. Their spoken language he reduced to a written form, and gave them, in their vernacular, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; with a commentary on Genesis and on Daniel. Is it too much to p.r.o.nounce him the Apostle to the Nestorians? He came to his end as a shock of corn fully ripe; and glorious results of his self denying, and in some respects suffering mission, he will a.s.suredly behold in the heavenly world.
Where in his native land could he have labored, with the prospect of so large a spiritual harvest, taking no account of the widely reacting influence of his labors on the churches at home? And we might propose the same inquiry with respect to the departed Stoddard, and Rhea, and Grant, and Fidelia Fiske, and others, both among the dead, and the living.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
SYRIA.
1857-1860.
Dr. Eli Smith, whose name has an honorable place among the translators of the Scriptures, died at Beirt, Sabbath morning, January 11th, 1857.[1] Thirty years had elapsed since his first arrival in Syria, and he had before been connected for several months with the press at Malta. In 1829, he made an exploring visit, with the author, to the Ionian Islands, the Morea, and the Grecian Archipelago; and the next year, he and Dr. Dwight explored Armenia, and a part of the Nestorian country. The other more important events of his life are so far known to the reader, that they need not be repeated.
[1] Dr. Smith expressed a decided opinion, in his last sickness, that no memoir of his life and labors should be published, since he had never kept a journal, and there were not sufficient materials.
In this he was probably correct, considering what the public would have expected. A well written obituary, somewhat extended for that publication, may be found in the Missionary Herald for 1857, pp.
224-229. See, also, pp. 123-125.
The mind of Dr. Smith was rich in general principles, and in well-considered applications of them to the missionary work; though, in this latter respect, he was restricted more than his brethren among the Armenians, by the less pliable nature of the materials on which he was called to operate. After having explored countries which others were to occupy; after contributing largely to the accuracy, variety, and value of Dr. Robinson's ”Biblical Researches”; and after securing the formation of type that would be acceptable to the most fastidious Arab; he set himself to prepare a new translation of the Bible into the Arabic language. With this in view, he pursued the study of Arabic and kindred languages to a greater extent than was necessary to become either a good speaker, or a good preacher. His learning was both extensive and accurate, and he was continually adding to his stores by a wide range of judicious reading. To a good knowledge of the ancient cla.s.sics, he added an acquaintance, more or less perfect, with the French, Italian, German, and Turkish languages. With the Hebrew he was familiar; and the Arabic, by far the most difficult of all, was to him a second vernacular.
Dr. Smith was eminently a man of business, and was accustomed to give attention to the minutest details. He spent much time in superintending the cutting, casting, and perfecting of the various fonts of type, made from models that he had accurately drawn from the best specimens of Arabic caligraphy.[1] For many years he read the proof-sheets of nearly every work that was printed at the mission press; and he bestowed much thought and labor upon the mechanical apparatus and fixtures of that establishment.
[1] See. vol. i. p. 233.
To him every pursuit was subsidiary to a faithful translation of the Word of G.o.d into the Arabic language. Yet he did not neglect the regular preaching of the gospel, which he regarded as the first duty of every missionary; and having early become a fluent speaker in the Arabic, this was ever his delight. ”Almost as a matter of course, his preaching was expository and didactic. In clear, lucid, logical exposition of divine truth, he had few equals. His language, though select and grammatical, was always simple, and within the comprehension of the humblest of his hearers. In regard to matter, his discourses were eminently Biblical, sound, and evangelical. In form and costume, his theology was that of Edwards, and Dwight, and Woods,--the theology of the Puritan fathers of New England. Upon this system of divine truth his own hopes of eternal life rested, and it was this which he earnestly labored, for thirty years, to infuse into the Arabic literature, and transplant into the hard and stony soil of Syria's moral desert.”
The author, having had the best opportunities for knowing Dr. Smith, bears testimony to his excellent judgment, and to the great value of his correspondence with the executive officers of the Board, in the forming period of the missionary work.
It did not please the Lord to grant the earnest desire of Dr. Smith to live and complete his translation of the Scriptures; and it must be admitted, that his ideal of perfection in the work was such, that it is doubtful whether he ever could have been satisfied that his entire translation was ready for publication. Only Genesis, Exodus, and the first sixteen chapters of Matthew, had received his final revision, and were acknowledged by him as complete. But, with the help of Mr. Bistany, his a.s.sistant translator, he had put into Arabic the entire New Testament, the Pentateuch, the Historical Books of the Old Testament, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, and Nahum.
He had revised, and nearly prepared for the press, the whole of the New Testament, and all except Jeremiah, Lamentations, and the last fourteen chapters of Isaiah, of the books named in the Old Testament. With these finished specimens, and with so large a portion of the remainder translated and carefully revised, together with the helps to translation which he had acc.u.mulated, his brethren believed that he had laid the foundation for one of the best versions of the sacred Scriptures to be found in any language.
Dr. Van Dyck had been connected with the mission since 1840, and very soon made himself master of the spoken Arabic, in which he greatly excelled as a preacher. It soon appeared, that he was the man to succeed Dr. Smith as translator of the Scriptures, and the mission arranged his removal, for that purpose, from Sidon to Beirt; so that in due time he was enabled to bring the great work to successful completion.[1]
[1] See chapter xl.
Mr. Aiken had joined Mr. Wilson at Hums, a new station north of Damascus, where he was bereaved of his wife before she had been six months in the field. The arrangement for 1857 was that Beirt should be occupied by Messrs. Van Dyck and Ford, and Mr. Hurter, the printer; Abeih by Messrs. Calhoun and Bliss; Sidon by Mr. Eddy; Deir el Komr by Mr. Bird; Bhamdn by Mr. Benton; Tripoli by Messrs.
Jessup and Lyons; and Hums by Mr. Wilson. Dr. Thomson and Mr. Aiken were in the United States; the latter with health so impaired as to forbid his resuming his mission. He had previously married Miss Cheney. In the following year, Miss Jane E. Johnson and Miss Amelia C. Temple arrived to take the care of a girls' boarding-school at Sk el Ghurb, on Mount Lebanon; but the former was soon found unable to endure the climate. Dr. Thomson, while in this country, published a valuable work on Biblical literature, in two volumes, ent.i.tled ”The Land and the Book.” Dr. and Mrs. De Forest had come to this country in the hope of a restoration of his health; but on the 24th of November, 1858, this excellent missionary was released from long and severe physical sufferings by a peaceful death.
The health of Mrs. Wilson made it necessary, for a time, to leave Hums without a resident missionary. The princ.i.p.al operations, both here and at Deir el-Komr, were through schools for both s.e.xes, which had been embarra.s.sed by Syrian and Greek opposers, but in no case suppressed. The female department of the school at Deir el-Komr commenced with a dozen pupils, but in six months the attendance exceeded fifty. When Mr. Bird came to that place, he thought there were not six females in the nominally Christian population, who could read; but a year had not pa.s.sed before half the pupils in his girls' school could read their Bibles. There were other mountain schools under the care of the station, and in one there were more than sixty pupils.