HEROISM OF MISSIONARIES.
The missionaries of the American Board throughout Anatolia declined to follow the advice of minister Terrell and seek a place of safety, feeling it to be their duty to care for the property of the Boards, to preserve the schools from being scattered and destroyed, and by their presence restrain the impulses of fanatical Moslems and make safer the conditions of native Christians. “If we fall martyrs to our desire to prevent horrible massacres so be it. God has plenty of workers to take our places.”
Nobly did they stand in their places protecting lives and property as far as possible.
At Oorfa there were but two lady teachers Miss Shattuck and Miss Mellinger. They were four days’ journey from any other American missionaries. But when the massacre began they threw open the mission premises and through all that reign of horror they preserved two hundred and forty-six women and children from assault and death.
More than three thousand men, women and children, who had fled to the Armenian church suffered most horrible cruelties before the church was set on fire: most of them were burned alive. Some sixty or a hundred escaped by secret stairs. This large stone church, now purified, is used as a hospital for some eight hundred Armenians and these two women have sole care of them. What heroism!
But more than that the Sublime Porte had learned the temper of our government and knew that damages would have to be paid for all mission property destroyed, hence the Governor of the city sent a double guard of soldiers to protect the premises from fire or assault. The mob was never so desperate as not to realize that they must obey orders. This fact makes the responsibility of the Powers the more fearful as the pressure of an ultimatum at Constantinople backed by a war fleet would have been instantly felt to the extremity of the remotest vilayet.
At Harpoot the bullets fell thick around the missionaries, but they were divinely protected, and saved the lives of many of their scholars; at Marash, the lady missionaries stood bravely in front of their students in the college, ready to die, if the call came; but they were unharmed. “I thought our time had come,” wrote one worthy missionary, afterward, and he added, “and if we were to lay down our lives there, we felt that we would not have chosen it otherwise.” But they were preserved for still further duty in the Lord’s vineyard, and it is largely due to their humane efforts to-day that any relief work is being done in Armenia at all.
Not one of the American missionaries deserted his post, not even one of the women missionaries. Never has there been a time in the history of Turkey when a brave and faithful missionary counted for so much, and never has the power of the United States counted for as much.
The presence of these Christian men and women has been a comfort and protection to thousands of those afflicted, frightened and smitten people. Many a martyr has been strengthened to bear the awful agonies of torture by their devotion in the midst of most terrible scenes. Alone has some noble American woman dragged from the hands of a mob a young girl screaming for life. Mr. Wingate and Miss Burrage were alone in the city of Cæsarea on that fearful 30th of November and nobly did they defend the persecuted, saving many lives. Mr. Wingate took a policeman, went to a Turkish house and demanded a bride and a daughter, who had been carried off and got them both. The people in all that region are ready to kiss his feet.
But time would fail to tell you of the noble deeds wrought by brave, devoted women at Sivas, Hadjin, Adana, Oorfa and among the villages of Mesopotamia. Only the recording angels at the last day can fully recite their deeds of heroism. At the great crisis in their life’s work, nobly did they fulfill their highest, holiest duty.