Volume II Part 22 (1/2)
In the summer of 1868, a native preacher was sent to Zeitoon by the home missionary society of Marash, and was allowed to remain unmolested, with ample opportunities for preaching the Word. At the close of the year, Mr. Trowbridge, having removed from Constantinople to Marash, made a visit to Zeitoon, and remained there laboring freely from Thursday till Monday. His guide homeward was a Zeitoon Protestant,--”a tall, gaunt man, past middle life, who has suffered much there for Christ's sake. At one time the people blackened his face with a coal, put him astride of a donkey with his face towards the tail, and thus paraded him through the streets; a crier shouting before him, 'Thus shall it be done to all who reject the wors.h.i.+p of saints, and do not honor the Virgin Mary.' There is now no persecution.”
Hopeful indications once more appeared among the Greeks at Erzroom and Trebizond, and also at Kerasun and Ordo, on the coast of the Black Sea west of Trebizond. Mr. Parmelee visited the two places last named, and put a helper named Harootune at Ordo, around whom the people gathered, earnestly desiring to learn the way of life.
Even the women, who were precluded by their notions of propriety from a.s.sembling with the men, anxiously inquired when the helper would bring his wife, that she might teach them also. Persecution arose, but as usual it was overruled for good.
Dr. William Goodell, after more than forty years of successful missionary service, returned in 1865, in feeble health, to spend the evening of life in his native land. With his wife, who had been his faithful companion from the first, he made his home with his eldest son, a physician in Philadelphia. There, beloved and revered, he lived until February 18, 1867, when he was removed to his heavenly home, at the age of seventy-five.
To the early friends of Dr. Goodell it seemed that his providential call was to be a preacher of the Gospel; and such he really was all through life, and the printed volume of his sermons in Armeno-Turkish, translated also into Armenian and Bulgarian, has had a very extensive circulation.[1] But Divine Providence so ordered the events of his early missionary career, that translating the Scriptures became his princ.i.p.al work. He began at Malta to translate the New Testament from the original into the Armeno-Turkish. That done, he entered upon the Old Testament; and he completed the last revision of the Bible in 1863. It was a great and good work, and will transmit his name for grateful remembrance to future ages.
[1] The report of the Nicomedia station for 1871, contains the following: ”In Diermendere, a basket-maker has learned Turkish, and is supplied with books and tracts in that language for use among the Turks. The book he thinks most of, and which he begs may be put into the Arabic character, is Dr. Goodell's sermons. A Baghchejuk brother, whose business takes him often among the Turks in the vicinity of Armash, always takes these sermons with him. He says that the Turks always listen with interest, and sometimes with tears. He is often requested to read the same sermon over and over again.” The Marsovan report for the same year contains the following: ”At Vizier Keopreu a change in public sentiment has taken place to such a degree, that the Armenian teacher is preaching Dr.
Goodell's sermons to attentive audiences of his own people.”
Dr. Goodell had few equals as an agreeable letter-writer. The author was in official correspondence with him through his whole missionary life, and never ceased admiring his vivacity, humor, and felicity of expression, the aptness of his thoughts, and his very appropriate quotations of Scripture. He had the power, beyond most men, of pa.s.sing at once and by an easy transition, from the merriest laughter to the most serious topics. His addresses to children had a resistless charm, and his power of turning a conversation into channels of his own choice was invaluable, in dealing with conceited disputatious orientals. ”Indomitable in his purpose to do good, affable and courteous in manner, of ready tact, and abounding in resistless pleasantry, he gained access wherever he chose to go, and wielded an influence powerful for good upon all with whom he chose to a.s.sociate. He commanded the respect of foreign amba.s.sadors and travellers, of dignitaries in the Oriental Churches, bankers, and the highest in society, as well as the common people. Even enemies were constrained to honor him. Few possess in so high a degree the admirable faculty of doing good without offense, and of recommending personal religion to the world.”[1]
[1] See _Missionary Herald_ for 1867, pp. 129-133: also 1865, p. 350.
Mr. Herman N. Barnum's account of a tour to Diarbekir, Mardin, Sert, Bitlis, and Moosh, in 1867, brings the Eastern field vividly before us. His new a.s.sociate, Mr. Henry S. Barnum, together with the pastors connected with the Evangelical Union, and nine recent graduates of the Seminary, accompanied him as far as Diarbekir, where they arrived on Sat.u.r.day. There was a union service of the two congregations, on the next day, in the yard of one of the chapels, at which as many as eight hundred were present. The church in Diarbekir, though its pastor had been absent for two and a half years, and there was only one native preacher for the two congregations, yet had maintained the ordinances, and secured frequent accessions to the community. They supported their preacher, and also several schools, sent money to their absent pastor, and supported two students at the Theological Seminary, whom they had sent thither to be educated for the mission in Koordistan. They chose several of their more intelligent members to a.s.sist the preacher in keeping up the services of the two congregations; thus proving their ability to care for themselves under very unfavorable circ.u.mstances.
The Union was in session four days, and its meetings were well attended. The evangelizing of Koordistan received a good deal of attention. The five young men who were preparing for it, had locations a.s.signed them, their salaries fixed, and thus the native pastors were acquiring experience in missionary superintendence.
Seven young men, just graduated from the Seminary, were carefully examined for licensure, especially in their religious experience and their motives for entering the ministry.
The last day of the session was the most interesting, when one of the pastors read an essay upon the ”means of promoting an awakening among the unconverted;” which was followed by remarks from nearly all the pastors present. The interest was greatest when some gave expression to their deep feeling of responsibility, and to the conviction that their own want of earnestness and spirituality was the reason of so much indifference among the unconverted.
From Diarbekir the missionaries and six of the pastors went to Mardin, whence, after ordaining one pastor, they went a journey of five days to Sert. There they took part in another ordination, and the formation of a church. Elias, the new pastor, had labored long and faithfully in this place, and refused a most pressing call from Mardin, though in worldly things it was much more desirable. He believed he could be more useful where the poor and oppressed looked to him as their spiritual father. Out of seven persons who offered themselves as candidates for church-members.h.i.+p, six were organized into a church. The congregation was small and poor, but a long series of persecutions had wonderfully purged them of selfishness.
They had paid largely for their house of wors.h.i.+p, had provided the pastor elect with a new suit of clothes for the ordination, and, considering their deep poverty, had made extraordinary subscriptions towards the required half of his salary. They now adopted the system of t.i.thes cheerfully, which had been so successfully advocated by John Concordance.
From Sert Mr. Williams proceeded to Mosul, and the rest to Bitlis.
There the congregation had long desired for their pastor Baron Simon, who received ordination as an evangelist years before at Constantinople. He has been repeatedly mentioned as Pastor Simon, and was a man of experience and sterling worth. There were no missionaries then at Bitlis. From hence they pa.s.sed on to Moosh. The plain on which the town is situated, is sixty miles long and ten or twelve wide, and contains about seventy nominally Christian villages. The travellers were exposed to a snow-storm while crossing the plain. ”It was genuine winter weather,” writes Mr. Barnum, ”yet I think I never saw anywhere else, not even in the warm suns.h.i.+ne of Egypt, so much nakedness, total or partial. Adults of course had the semblance of clothing, though it was often a ma.s.s of rags, sewed or tied together; but the poor children! It makes my heart ache to think of them. Some had a tolerably whole s.h.i.+rt and drawers, some had no drawers, and what was once a s.h.i.+rt was now a few shreds, hanging from the shoulders. Many had merely a rag, as a sort of jacket, with holes to put the arms through, and others had not a thread upon their bodies. The people seem to be almost bedless.
Wherever we went, we found that the beds were a piece of carpet, or felt, or only a little straw, with a piece of carpet as a covering.
In the six or seven villages visited by us, we did not notice a woman, or a child, who had either stockings or shoes. They walked about in the snow, and over the frozen ground, with bare feet. The soil is fertile, and the people own the land themselves,--not the Turkish Aghas, as is the case in many other parts of the country,--so that it must be mere thriftlessness, rather than any stern necessity, which makes them so dest.i.tute. They have not learned to raise cotton, and consequently do not have on hand the material for making clothes, except some kinds of woolen garments; and as they do not like to pay money for cotton cloth, they live in this truly barbarous state. Our pastors had never seen any dest.i.tution like this among their Christian brethren, and it made a deep impression upon them.”
Mr. Barnum adds: ”The spiritual condition of the people is as bad as the physical. In the three or four monasteries surrounding the plain, there are said to be fifty vartabeds--men of more or less education. What a work they might do in these seventy villages, in improving the condition of the people, if they only had the heart for it. They are in a great measure responsible for this state of things. They come down periodically from their haunts of dissipation, and gather up and carry off whatever the people can spare; and this has helped to discourage enterprise. The great want now is the pure Gospel. This will not only save their souls, it will give them true civilization and refinement. To us it seemed that the people were ripe for the reception of the truth, for they are growing tired of their present condition. The pastors turned away from Moosh plain with the determination to induce the Evangelical Union, if consistent with the work undertaken in Koordistan, to do something for these people.”
This journey of five hundred and fifty miles occupied thirty-eight days, and was too much for the new missionary, who reached home ”jaded and worn,” and had a serious illness. Before his recovery, and probably in consequence of her care of her husband, Mrs. Barnum was prostrated by typhus fever, which proved fatal on the 31st of December, 1867, a little more than three months after her arrival at Harpoot. But even in so short a time she had greatly endeared herself to her a.s.sociates.[1]
[1] _Missionary Herald_ for 1868, p. 136.
North of the territory traversed by Mr. Barnum, is the Erzroom district. Of the sixty thousand inhabitants of the city of Erzroom in 1868, fifteen thousand were Armenians. The hundred villages scattered over its plain are smaller and more scattered than those on the plain of Harpoot. But then the territory connected with Erzroom is nearly as large as New England west of Maine, and has a population of half a million, two thirds of whom are Armenians.
Touring in this territory is easy, as compared with the Harpoot district; since the roads, almost everywhere, admit of the use of wheels, and on the public thoroughfares the khans are comparatively good. A wagon road was then in a sluggish process of construction from Trebizond across the mountains.
The church in Diarbekir continued to grow, even during the three or four years' absence of the pastor. They were active in communicating the truth to their neighbors, and were especially interested in securing the introduction of the Gospel into the surrounding villages, and into Koordistan. But since then, the energy bestowed upon these outside enterprises has been turned toward the building of a large church, by means of funds collected by the pastor chiefly in England, and to strictly home affairs.
The young men sent on the mission to Koordistan addressed themselves chiefly to the Armenians and Jacobites, without neglecting the Moslems, Koords, and Yezidees. These sects, in their social intercourse, used only the Koordish language; but in their prayers, the Armenians used the ancient Armenian, the Jacobites the ancient Syriac, and the Koords the Arabic, all wholly unintelligible to them. And it was a new thought to them, that G.o.d could be addressed in the Koordish language.
A company of native missionaries was sent from Harpoot, in the summer of 1868, to the benighted region of Moosh. This was a result of the tour just described, and was a self-denying enterprise, but the sacrifice was cheerfully made.
The two Seminaries at Harpoot were now full. Including the students brought thither for a time from Mardin, and the Koordish students, there were fifty in each Seminary; and these, with their children, made a colony of one hundred and fifty.