The second cause of the continuance of the Ottoman dominion has been less accidental. Like the early caliphs, and indeed all able Mussulman dynasties except the Persian, the ruling house of Turkey has for all these centuries maintained unbroken the principle that, apart from creed, ability is the only qualification for the highest service. Outside the navy, a Turkish grandee must be a Mussulman; but that granted, there is no obstacle of birth, or cultivation, or position standing in any man’s path. Even slavery is no barrier. Over and over again, a sultan apparently at the end of his resources has stooped among the crowd, clutched a soldier, a slipper-bearer, a tobacconist, a renegade, given him his own limitless power, and asking of him nothing but success, has secured it in full measure. Equality within the faith, which is a dogma of Islam, and next to its belief in a “sultan of the sky,” its grand attraction to inferior races, has in Turkey been a reality as it has been in no other empire on earth, and has provided its sovereigns—who, be it remembered, fear no rival unless he be a kinsman, an Arab, or a “prophet”—with an endless supply of the kind of ability they need. The history of the grand viziers of Turkey, were it ever written, would be the history of men who have risen by sheer force of ability—that is, by success in war or by statesmanship, or, in fewer instances, by that art of mastering an Asiatic sovereign and his seraglio in which fools do not succeed. The sultans have rarely promoted, rarely even used, men of their own house,—which is the Persian dynastic policy,—have hated, and at last destroyed, the few nobles of their empire; and capricious and cruel as they have been, have often shown a power of steadily upholding a great servant such as we all attribute to the founder of the new German empire. This equality, this chance of a career of great opportunities, great renown, and great luxury, brings to Constantinople a crowd of intriguers, some of them matchless villains; but it also brings a great crowd of able and unscrupulous men, who understand how to “govern” in the Turkish sense, and who have constantly succeeded in restoring a dominion which seemed hopelessly broken up. Every pasha is a despot, an able despot is soon felt, and he has in carrying out the method of Turkish government, which is simply the old Tartar method of stamping out resistance, an advantage over Europeans which is the third cause of the continuance of the Ottoman empire. He is tormented with no hesitations in applying force as a cure for all things. The man who resists is to die, or purchase life by submission.

—Meredith Townsend
in “Asia and Europe.”

[Pg 101]

The moral and religious condition of the people of Turkey, especially the non-Moslems, was, and still is, without a parallel in any country in the world.

Since Mohammedanism never encourages progress and education, and since the principles of Moslem rule in all countries and in all times have been based upon force, ignorance and fanaticism, it is not difficult to judge of the condition of these subject peoples, especially after many generations of oppression.

The most of the races that refused to embrace Islam and elected to pay a regular tribute for the privilege of continuing to live, were Christians, such as the Copts of Egypt, the Syrian Christians of Syria, the Jacobites of Mesopotamia, the Armenians of Armenia and sections of northern Syria and Asia Minor, the Greeks of Asia Minor, and the Bulgarians of European Turkey. While all these were Christians by profession, they had no ecclesiastical relations with each other. Each race and Church stood by itself, entirely independent of all the rest, fostering no sympathy the one with the other except in a common cause against a dominant race.

Under Moslem rule all education among the so called Rayas was discouraged, and some of the Moslem customs, like the veiling of their women, were adopted. The low estimate placed upon womanhood by the conquerors was accepted in a measure by these races, and some of the worst of the vices of the Moslems became common among the Christians. [Pg 102]

With these surroundings, the Christianity of the earlier days so deteriorated that little remained except the name and the outward observances of the Church. Because of the absence of modern literature and general education, the spoken language of the common people changed to such a degree that the Bible and the rituals of the Church in the ancient language in which they were written became an unknown tongue to the masses. Their religion became a religion of form, and the Bible a closed and sealed book. Surrounded as they were by all the vices of a Moslem society, dominated by Moslem rulers, the character of the Christianity among them did not attract their Mohammedan neighbors, while there was no hope for reform from within.

Jealousies and discords sprang up between the Christians of various sects whenever they came into contact, like that between the Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia, and the Greeks and Armenians in Asia Minor, and the Syrians and Armenians in northern Syria. The reigning sultans have not been slow to note these jealousies and to take advantage of them in dealing with the various sects. Had the Christians of Turkey during the last century been united, they might have accomplished much by way of securing privileges for themselves. But even the people of a single national Church have not been able to agree upon many important questions, so that the sultan and his subordinates have not found it hard to control these superior races, superior in themselves in many respects to their masters. If any one seemed to be giving more trouble than usual, methods were found to divide still more, and so weaken and subdue them. The same methods have been constantly employed with the various religious bodies of his empire that have been successfully used [Pg 103] with the European nations who have caused him trouble by interfering with his peculiar views of government or unjust methods of administration. He has usually succeeded in playing off the jealousies and cupidity of one against another so that concerted action became impossible and he has been left to work his own will in his own way. While the sultan has learned cunning by these conditions and gained no little advantage to himself, neither the subject Christian races of his empire nor the European nations outside have seemed to learn a lesson which is of service to them in changing existing conditions.

Under these circumstances, religion to most of the people of the country became but a form and a mark of nationality. No conversion, in the ordinary sense of the word, was required for admission to the Greek, Armenian, Bulgarian, or any of the Oriental Churches. All children were baptized in infancy and so grew up within the Church, with no religious instruction except as to fast and feast days and the proper forms to be employed in the ritual observed in the Churches. In all services the language used was no more understood by the people as a whole than Latin would be comprehended by an ordinary country audience in England or America. There was no educational or moral test for the priests except that they should be able to pronounce the words of the regular Church services and find the proper places from which to read. The writer once asked an Armenian priest where he studied. He said he was a baker and when he decided to become a priest he went to a monastery and studied for forty days. That comprised all of his schooling, except that he knew how to read simple narrative when he began. I asked him if he understood the ritual and the Scriptures that he read. He replied, “How should I know? This is the ancient Armenian.” [Pg 104] Even as late as fifteen years ago it would have been difficult to find a Christian priest of any kind or class in the interior districts who clearly understood the ritual of the Church or the Scripture read in the service. Ordinarily the selection of priests was not based upon special ability, education, or moral worth. There were, of course, noble exceptions to this most general rule.

The priests being such, and some of them most grossly ignorant and unfit, and there being in the Churches no religious instruction, it is easy to understand how the moral tone of these Oriental Churches sank rapidly under the rule of the Turk, with no power in themselves to rise above these conditions and institute a reform. A Church without a Bible, with an ignorant priesthood, with a ritual beautiful in itself but dead to the people, with no religious instruction and............