I had occasion some years ago to visit a considerable part of Turkey, from Constantinople and Beirut to Mosul and Bagdad, and everywhere I paid particular attention to missionary conditions and the influence of mission work upon the people. This is a land assigned almost wholly to American Missionary Boards, and the influence is everywhere marked and excellent. The late Premier Stviloff told me in Sofia that but for young men educated by American teachers in Constantinople, Bulgaria when it became independent would have had to depend on Russians for administrative officers. He was himself, like so many other distinguished Bulgarians, a graduate of Robert College. In Syria a native physician, graduated at the Syrian Protestant College, said to me, “We say, ‘After God, van Dyke.’” In the interior cities, such as Marash, Aintab, Urfa, Mardin and Diarbekr, the American schools and the large self-supporting churches were evidences of the new evangelic spirit and culture which had put new heart into those ancient seats of intellectual decay. About Harpoot there were thousands who had learned English, and hundreds have come from there to this country believing it to be a very paradise. The contrast was sad enough when I came into the towns south from Mosul where American missionary influence had not reached, and scarce any signs of intellectual or material improvement were to be found. I am convinced that the work of devoted, intelligent, broad-minded missionaries is far more effective in lifting a people out of ignorance and social decay into enlightened civilization, than all the influences of commerce or mere governmental policy. Our missionaries bring the motive of faith as the example of unselfish service which nothing else can supply.

—William Hayes Ward, LL. D.,
Editor “New York Independent.”

[Pg 149]

During the first generation of missionary operations in Turkey there were few tangible results except among the Armenians. The Mohammedans were by no means entirely hostile and revealed much friendliness and often open sympathy. The Jews presented almost a solid wall of stolid opposition to the effort for reform among them, while the Syrians and Greeks, under the leadership of the Roman Catholics, were often violent in their open attacks and secret plottings to thwart every attempt of the missionaries to gain a foothold in the country. The people in all the empire who seemed to have been especially prepared to receive and profit by evangelical teaching were the Armenians, who were not distinctly in mind when mission work in Turkey was first contemplated. In fact, almost nothing was then known of these people in the world at large and among the Christians of the United States who were supporting the cause of foreign missions.

While the American Board contemplated extending its missions in the Levant to the shores of the Black Sea and especially into Armenia, no mention whatever seems to have been made of the Armenians in connection with the beginning of the first “mission to Palestine.”

Not long after Rev. Levi Parsons arrived at Jerusalem in 1821 and upon his first visit there, he came into contact with some Armenian pilgrims with whom he had conversation upon the subject of missions to their people and country. These expressed themselves as eager to have missionaries sent to them. Mr. Fisk at about the same time, writing to [Pg 150] Boston from Smyrna, recommended the appointment of missionaries to Armenia. From this time the idea of work among the Armenians enlarged and deepened, although the “mission to the Jews” was kept persistently at the front.

There had been a vast deal of preparation of the Armenian people for a work of reform, emanating from sources quite outside of the Board and, in fact, considerably anterior to its organization. Somewhere about 1760, an Armenian priest, who was burning with the desire to reform the Armenian Church, appeared in Constantinople. He saw and deeply felt the gross errors of the Gregorian Church, and wrote a book exposing them. He was an educated man and seems to have been more or less familiar with the work of Martin Luther, of whose Reformation he heartily approved. He constantly referred to the Bible and to this high standard he mercilessly brought his Church and its clergy. The inconsistent life of the priests and bishops, and the gross superstitions of the people at large, greatly troubled him. He lacked, however, true spiritual enlightenment and power, and failed to see divine truth in its breadth and purity. His book was never printed, but copies were kept in various places which were brought to light and repeatedly referred to later. This effort had wide influence in revealing the errors of the Armenian Church, and did much to prepare the way for the genuine reformatory movement.

In 1813, six years before the American Board appointed its first missionary to Palestine, the British and Russian Bible Societies made strenuous efforts to provide for the Armenian people a Bible in their own tongue. An edition of an old fourth century Armenian version of the entire Bible was commenced in that year at St. Petersburg by the [Pg 151] Russian Bible Society, and at about the same time another edition of the same Bible was put on the press by the Calcutta Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The Russian edition of five thousand copies was out in 1815, and the British edition of two thousand copies appeared two years later. The Russian Society issued a separate edition of two thousand copies of the Ancient Armenian New Testament.

In their report of 1814 the British and Foreign Bible Society said that the printing of the Armenian Testament had aroused much interest among the Armenians, especially those in Russi............