THE OUTCOME.

I. The Gospel has triumphed in securing in a great measure to the people of Turkey that most precious treasure, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

In 1820, every Ottoman subject had a right to remain in his own sect and to think as his fathers thought before him. Muslim could remain Muslim, Greek remain Greek, Armenian Armenian, and Maronite Maronite. Each sect was a walled enclosure with gates bolted and barred, and the only possible egress from any was into the fold of Islam.

The appearance of an open Bible, the preaching of the Gospel, free schools and open discussion of religious questions threw all things into confusion. Not a few received the Gospel and claimed the right to think for themselves.... Anathemas, the major excommunication, stripes and imprisonment, intimidated some, but drove multitudes out of the Oriental Churches, and as the imperial laws regarded every man outside the traditional sects as an outlaw, exile, death, or recantation seemed their only possible fate.

But these storms of persecution developed some of the noblest types of Christian character. True heroic spirits, like Asaad esh Shidiak in Lebanon, preferred death to submission to the doctrines of a priestly hierarchy. The Maronite monastery of Connobîn, near the Cedars of Lebanon, where he was walled up in a cell under the overhanging cliff and starved to death, has become memorable in Syria as the scene of the first martyrdom for the evangelical faith in Turkey in modern times.

Scourging, imprisonment and exile have been the lot of multitudes who have stood steadfast amid their sufferings. Mr. Butrus Bistany, a young Maronite scholar, who found the truth as Luther found it, in a monastery, fled for his life to Beirut, and remained concealed for two years in the American Mission, fearing death at the hands of the spies of the Patriarch. But he was spared to be a pillar in the Protestant Church, a learned Arabic author, the assistant of Eli Smith in Bible translation, and the biographer of Asaad esh Shidiak....

Kamil Abdul Messiah, a youthful Syrian convert to Christianity from Islam, who died in Bussorah in June, 1892, seemed baptized by the Holy Spirit and divinely instructed in the Word of God. He grasped the vital truths of the Gospel as by a Heavenly instinct. He was a youth of pure life and lips, of faith and prayer, of courage and zeal, and he was mighty in the Scriptures. In Southern Arabia he preached in the streets of towns, in Arab camps, on the deck of coasting ships, and even in mosques. His journals read like chapters from the Acts. His early death was a loss to the Arab race, but his memory is fragrant with the aroma of a pure and godly life and example.

Time would fail us to recount the history of the able writers, the liberal Christian merchants, the faithful pastors and teachers, the godly physicians, the self-denying poor, the patient, loving, and exemplary women, who have been Christ’s witnesses during these years of toil and prayer in Syria.

In November, 1847, an Imperial decree recognized native Protestants as an independent community with a civil head.

In 1850 the Sultan gave a firman granting to Protestants all the privileges given to other Christian communities, and in 1853 another, declaring Christians before the law equal in all respects to Mohammedans, and the death penalty for apostasy from Islam was abolished. This Magna Charta of Protestant rights is the charter of liberty of conscience to all men in Turkey.

The Ottoman Government became to a great extent tolerant, and to-day, as compared with its Northern Muscovite neighbor, it is a model of toleration. There is no open legal persecution for conscience’s sake.

The Bible in its various languages is distributed throughout the Empire, with the imperial permit printed on the title page. There is not yet liberty to print controversial books touching the religion of Islam, although Islamic works attacking Christianity are distributed openly, with official approbation. The censorship of the press is rigid, but the existing Christian literature is rarely interfered with.

The Sheikh ul Islam in Constantinople recently replied officially to a European convert to Islam who asked his aid in entering the Mohammedan religion, that “religion is a matter between man and God, and that no sheikh or priest or mediator is needed in man’s approach to his Maker.” This is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity,—the difference consisting in this:—that while the Sheikh ul Islam probably meant to exclude even the mediation of Christ, the Gospel claims Christ as the only Mediator.

It is also true that if any Christian wishes to become a Mohammedan he must go before the Kadi, who summons the Christian’s religious minister to labor with him and examine his case before he is admitted to Islam.

That so much of religious liberty exists is cause for profound gratitude.

II. The social triumphs of Gospel work in Turkey appear in the transformation of the family and the elevation of woman.

The Mohammedan practice of the veiling and seclusion of woman and her exclusion from all social dignity and responsibilities rested like a blight on womankind among all the sects of the Empire. Even among the women of the non-Muslim sects the veil became a necessary shield from insult.

An exploration of the Empire in 1829 failed to discover a single school for girls. American women were the first to break the spell, and after long and patient efforts the first school building for the instruction of girls in the Ottoman Empire was erected in Beirut, in 1834, at the expense of Mrs. Tod, an American lady in Alexandria, and the teacher was Mrs. Sarah L. H. Smith....

In 1877, the first Muslim school for girls was opened in Beirut. They now have three girls’ schools in the city, with five hundred pupils. Thus far their girls’ schools are confined to the great cities, and they have shown commendable zeal in erecting neat and commodious buildings.

In Syria and Palestine there are now nine thousand and eighty-one girls under Protestant instruction, and there are thousands in the Greek and Papal schools. The effects of female education prosecuted for so many years has been a palpable change in the status and dignity of woman. The light and comfort, the moral and intellectual elevation which have resulted are plain even to the casual observer. The mother is becoming the primary instructor of the children at home, and by precept and example their moral and religious guide.

The indifference of the Oriental Christians and the opposition of the Mohammedans to female education has been largely overcome. A Mohammedan Turkish lady in Constantinople, Fatimeh Alia Khanum, daughter of Joudet Pasha, has just published a novelette in Turkish and Arabic to show the superiority of the home life of Turkish Muslim women to that of European Christian women. A Protestant young lady of Northern Syria has taken a prize of $50 for the best original Arabic story illustrating the benefits of female education. Another Protestant young woman has recently published an Arabic book on “Society and Social Customs,” and, on the eve of her departure for the Columbian Exposition, delivered a public lecture on the duty of Ottoman subjects to support their own domestic manufacturers. It was largely attended by Muslim sheikhs, Turkish effendis and the public generally, and at the close a young Jewess, a fellow-graduate with her from the American Female Seminary, arose and made an impromptu address in support of the speaker’s views.

Too much cannot be said in admiration of the self-denying and successful labors of the American, English, Scotch and German women who have toiled patiently through long years, and many of whom have sacrificed their lives to the elevation of their sisters in this great Empire. Educated and cultivated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, all over the land, rise up and call them blessed. These happy Oriental homes, neat and well ordered, their high character, their exemplary conduct, their intelligence and interest in the proper training of their own children and the best welfare of society, are among the noblest fruits of a revived Christianity in the East.

What is wanted to complete the symmetry of this picture of the intellectual progress of Oriental women is that a deputation of Mohammedan ladies should attend the great World’s Congress of Women from all the nations, and explain to their sisters from Christian and pagan Empires wherein consists the excellency and glory of the veiling and seclusion of Mohammedan women in harems and zenanas, and the permission to their men to have four legal wives and as many concubines as their right hands may acquire by purchase or capture. They should have the opportunity to explain the superiority of this system to that of Christianity, under which woman is allowed the most complete liberty of action, is trusted and honored, and given the highest place in the great organized enterprises of benevolence, charity, religion and social reform, and in the relief of human suffering at home and abroad.

III. To Protestant Missions is due the modern intellectual and educational awakening of the whole Empire. The American schools had been in operation forty years before the Turkish government officially promulgated (in 1869), school laws, and instituted a scheme of governmental education.

In 1864 there were twelve thousand five hundred elementary Mosque schools for reading the Koran, in which there were said to be half a million of students. In 1890, according to the recently published Ottoman reports, there were in the Empire forty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-nine schools of all kinds, of which three thousand are probably Christian and Jewish. As there are thirty-five thousand five hundred and ninety-eight mosques in the Empire, and each mosque is supposed to have its “medriseh” or school, there would appear to be about four thousand secular government schools not connected with the mosques, independent of ecclesiastical control by mollahs and sheikhs, and belonging to the imperial graded system of public instruction; yet many of the mosque schools have now been absorbed into the government system, so that there may be twenty thousand of these so-called secular government schools....

Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia.

There are now in the Empire eighty hundred and ninety-two Protestant schools, with forty-three thousand and twenty-seven pupils.

Schools.Boys.Girls.Total Pupils.
In Syria and Palestine3289,7569,08118,837
In Egypt1003,2713,0296,300
In Asia Minor, etc.46410,0007,89017,890
Total89223,02720,00043,027

Of these pupils twenty thousand are girls, a fact most potent and eloquent with regard to the future of these interesting peoples.

There are thirty-one colleges, seminaries and boarding-schools for girls, of which eleven are taught by English and twenty by American ladies. In some of these schools young women are carried to the higher branches of science. In all of them the Bible is taught as a daily text book.

There are six American colleges for young men, the most of them well equipped and manned, taking the lead in academic and scientific training. The medical college in Beirut has pupils from nearly all parts of the Empire.

The standard of instruction is kept as high as the circumstances of the different provinces will admit, and the education given is thoroughly Biblical and Christian. And there are no more upright, intelligent, useful, loyal and progressive subjects of the Sultan today than the graduates of these colleges.

IV. The fourth evidence of the Gospel’s triumph is the translation of the Bible into all the languages of the Empire, and the publication of a vast mass of religious, educational, historical, and scientific books. The Bible is now printed in eleven languages and made available to all the people of the Empire. About fifteen hundred different books have been published in these various languages, of which nearly seven hundred are from the Arabic press in Beirut. The Arabic Bible is sent to the whole Arabic reading Mohammedan world. The literary, scientific, historical and religious books also have a wide circulation.

Seventy years ago there were neither books nor readers. Now the hundreds of thousands of readers can find books in their own tongue, and to suit every taste. There are children’s illustrated books for the school and the fireside, stories and histories for the young, solid historical, theological, and instructive works for the old, and scientific books and periodicals for students. Bunyan, D’Aubigné, Edwards, Alexander, Moody, and Spurgeon are speaking to the Orientals. Richard Newton instructs and delights the children. Eli Smith, Van Dyck, and Post, Meshaka and Bistany, Nofel and Wortabet, instruct the scholarly and educated, while mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine, geology and meteorology carry students on to the higher departments of learning. Tracts and Sunday school lesson books abound, and periodical literature supplies the present daily wants of society.

The American Arabic Press, founded in Malta in 1822, and in Beirut in 1834, set in motion the forces which have now filled all the great cities of the Empire with presses and newspapers, and awakened the people to a new intellectual life. The Beirut Press alone has printed five hundred millions of pages in Arabic.

The Bible and the Koran are now the two religious books of the Empire. The Koran is in one language for one sect, and cannot be translated, and any copy of the Koran found in the possession of a native Christian or a European traveler is confiscated. The Bible is in eleven languages and is freely offered for sale to all. Sixty thousand copies of the Scriptures are sold annually in the Turkish Empire.