I have had occasion to revert to the work of the accomplished and devoted band of American missionaries and teachers settled in these districts. In a thousand ways they are raising the standard of morality, of intelligence, of education, of material well-being, of industrial enterprise. Directly or indirectly every phase of their work is rapidly paving the way for American commerce. Special stress should be laid upon the remarkable work of the physicians, ordained or unordained, who are attached to the various stations. They form a steadily growing network, dotting the map of Asia Minor at Cæsarea, Marsovan, Sivas, Adana, Aintab, Mardin, Harpoot, Bitlis, and Van. At most of these points well-equipped hospitals are in active operation. From the very nature of their occupation they come more easily and rapidly into touch with the Turkish population and quickly gain their confidence.

Taking all in all, I regard the results following the foundation of this institution (Euphrates College) as among the most important and noteworthy secured by American effort in foreign lands. The whole work appeals most strongly to one whose chief duty is to aid and further the entrance of American wares in this land. I know of no import better adapted to secure the future commercial supremacy of the United States in this land of such wonderful potential possibilities than the introduction of American teachers, of American educational appliances and books of American methods and ideas.

—Prof. Thomas H. Norton, Ph. D.,
United States Consul at Harpoot and Smyrna, Turkey.

[Pg 171]

While those troublous scenes were being enacted, the missionaries were engaged in preparing and sending out evangelical Christian literature in the form of the Bible in the vernacular Armenian, Armeno-Turkish and Greek languages, and by fostering educational operations. As early as 1836 a school for Armenian girls was opened in Smyrna. A boarding-school for Armenian boys opened in Bebek in 1840 was so promising that in 1843-44 Secretary Anderson, upon a visit to Constantinople, recommended that this institution be strengthened. At that time it was decided to discontinue the special work to the Greeks and to open a high school for girls at the capital. The purpose of the seminary at Bebek was to train able and devout young men for the gospel ministry, that the newly organized churches might have proper leaders. In 1848 the seminary contained forty-seven students.

In 1847 some Christian literature found its way into Aintab in northern Syria. During that year and the next, missionary visits were made to the place. In 1849 Mr. Schneider took up his residence there, and Aintab became a regular mission station. In the midst of persecution the work spread with great rapidity. Preachers and colporters were forbidden by the Armenian primates to visit the neighboring towns, so evangelical tradesmen began a systematic visitation to outside places, plying their trade and preaching the gospel. The spirit of intelligent faith and religious liberty spread in all directions until the entire [Pg 172] region was affected. In 1861 the church in Aintab had nearly three hundred members and the Sabbath congregation often numbered more than one thousand souls. The Sabbath-school then had nearly two thousand members. In 1855 Marash was occupied as a mission station, and these two places have since been the two central stations of that mission.

For nearly a generation after the separation of the Protestants took place there was more or less hostile feeling between the two bodies, although the number of the evangelicals rapidly increased. The spirit of inquiry was abroad among the Armenians and nothing could satisfy it but the truth. Travelers into the interior and visitors to Constantinople from the interior carried this spirit into the most remote sections of the country. The anathemas which had been communicated to the churches of the inland towns and cities had stirred up many questions and aroused alert minds to seek the cause. On the whole, the evangelical movement was most materially helped by these rude and bungling endeavors to suppress it by brute force. Wherever missionaries went they were met by a group of men, naturally among the most enlightened in all the community, who sought aid in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and who were eager to receive literature explaining evangelical truth.

Mission stations all over the country rapidly multiplied, and the number of Protestant churches increased. In 1860 forty Protestant churches had been organized, mostly among the Armenians, and twenty-two stations at which missionaries resided were in full operation. At nearly all of these stations, schools for boys and, in cases not a few, schools for girls, had been opened and these were well patronized. The printing-press was moved from Malta to Smyrna in 1833. The press always [Pg 173] has been and is still one of the most active and effectual agents for reform in the empire. During the first forty years of the work, from five to ten million pages of Christian literature were issued from the press each year, in five different languages.

In no part of the Turkish empire has the work of the missionary been more difficult than in Syria. Owing to papal supremacy there, which called to its service both Turkish and French political aid in its endeavor to thwart the missionaries and the evangelicals, no separate church of native Christians was organized until 1848 at Beirut, two years after the formation of the Evangelical Armenian Church at Constantinople. There was in that field no intellectually and morally dominant race to receive and extend the gospel as there was in Asia Minor and the greater part of the Turkish empire, while the races occupying Syria were for the most part hostile to each other and always mutually suspicious.

In 1858 direct work for the Bulgarians was begun by opening a station at Adrianople, which was followed by a station at Philippopolis and Eski-Zagra within the next two years. The Bulgarians were longing for political freedom and welcomed the missionaries with their new literature and education as calculated to strengthen them as a nation. For fourteen years the work among the Bulgarians was considered a part of the Armenian mission. In 1872 the European work was set off by itself as the European Turkey mission, which is almost exclusively for the Bulgarians. The condition of the old Bulgarian Church was similar to the Armenian Church, so far as need of reform was concerned.

The churches which were organized in 1846, among those cast out from [Pg 174] the old Gregorian Church, were severely plain and simple in their form and ritual, as well as in their articles of faith. In the reaction from the rigid ritualism of the Church from which they had been driven, these evangelical Christians went to the other extreme, putting the emphasis of the service upon the sermon. Prevailing conditions demanded direct positive instruction in Christian living rather than new forms............