PREFACE.
The problem of Armenia and the Turkish atrocities there, is in the very forefront of the world’s burning questions at the present time. In every civilized land it is ranked alongside their own pressing local issues; everywhere there is not only sympathy and indignation, but a feeling of real responsibility. We are a group of Christian nations, and the first Christian nation is being exterminated. Within a few months the unspeakable Turks and barbarous Kurds destroyed more than a thousand villages and towns, murdered a hundred thousand Armenian Christians,—men, women, and innocent children,—and left 500,000 others without homes, clothing, or food, thousands of women shamefully defiled, and thousands of men put to horrible tortures. Dying in the streets, in the fields, on the mountains; dying of hunger, of cold, of storm, and of diseases bred of all these; dying of broken hearts and despair, even more, of shame and mental torture. Yet all these Armenians who thus suffered and were driven forth to starve and die like deserted animals, were absolutely peaceable,—indeed, they were totally unarmed and could not have been otherwise if they wished,—perfectly respectable, most of them comfortably off, and some of them rich. One who was last week a banker is to-day a beggar; yesterday a merchant, to-day a tramp. Why? For the main reason that he is a Christian, and the Sultan has resolved to have no more Christians in his dominion; the doom of Islamism is hanging over their heads. “If you accept Islam,” they are told, “well and good; if you do not, you shall be killed—or worse—as your fellows have been.”
These are all facts, proved to superfluity, though the Sultan denies them and instructs his ministers everywhere to deny them. How often has the Turkish minister in Washington, Mavroyeni Beg, officially (?) declared the Armenian atrocities to be fiction, giving the papers lying statements (which come from the Sublime Porte), and asserted that the Armenians were the aggressors! It is precisely as though one should account for a devastated sheepfold, with the wolves raging about in it, by alleging that the lambs had wantonly assailed and slain the wolves first. Some pretended to believe this rubbish; but most people, to their credit, are only the more angered and disgusted by it. The Turkish proverbs, occasionally good, are generally evil,—a significant index to the race; one of the commonest is this: “Yalan yigitin kullesi dir” (A lie is the fortress of the brave). Kill, plunder, ravish, and then deny it; not simply deny it, but charge those very things to your enemy, and make them an excuse for all you do to him or his. Such are the principles of the Sultan, the false successor of the false prophet of Arabia. At the very time when noble American and European Christians are sending help to the survivors of his massacres, to the half-million homeless, naked, starving, heart-broken beggars he has made from prosperous citizens, he coolly denies that anything has happened but the putting down of a few local riots. He writes to Queen Victoria sympathizing with her expressions of humane sentiment, but declaring that the reports were invented by evil-disposed persons; that on the exact contrary, it was the Turks who were first attacked while praying in the mosques. He assures the Queen that his measures have succeeded in restoring order.
And this same Sultan a few months ago, before the greatest of the recent massacres, wrote to Lord Salisbury as follows:—“Take the words of my honor, I will make reforms in Armenia. I will keep before me every article of the desired reforms, and will order the governors of the provinces to carry them into effect.” He at once began to put this pledge of his “honor” into effect, by sending orders from Yildiz Kiosk to the provincial governors in Armenia to root out or convert the accursed infidels. Since that promise of his “honor” months have passed away; and during the time at least eighty thousand more Armenian Christians have been killed, and even death has been the most merciful “reform” he has bestowed on the land. The word in his mouth means beggaring, burning, ravaging, violating, mutilating, torturing, and assassinating. When all the leading Armenians are slain and their helpless families forced to become Mohammedans, after the women have been dishonored,—in a word, when all the Armenian Christians are exterminated, then Armenia will have been reformed. A special chapter is devoted to the person and doings of this eminent reformer.
THE AUTHOR.
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND BIRTHPLACE.
I was born January 20, 1853, in a suburb of Antioch; twelfth child and youngest son of a family of nine boys and four girls, and therefore considered the Joseph of the family, and as a small boy went to a missionary school with my elder brothers. My father was a banker and merchant. His partner in the former business was Mr. Edward Barker, English consul at Aleppo; in the latter a Greek, Jabra Antaki, their traffic being in raw silk, for which and for silk-worms Antioch is a great center. Millions of dollars passed through his hands, and he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the city. A common saying was, “If you can drain the Mediterranean dry, you can drain Filian’s money dry.” This saying roused the cupidity of the local governor; he imprisoned my father, and proposed to torture and kill him, and confiscate his property. Americans would relish living under this sort of government. His partner, the consul, saved him, however, and won his undying gratitude; and when Mr. Barker died, my father gave his son a part of his own orchard for a burial ground. The son erected a beautiful $25,000 monument there, which still stands, the ground being owned by my brother, Moses Filian.
Yours most sincerely Geo. H. Filian.
When I was fourteen or fifteen, my father lost all his money through the failure of others, became hopelessly bankrupt, and was too old to regain his position, and sank into a poor and broken-hearted old man: his Mediterranean was not inexhaustible. He often patted me and said, “My dear boy, I am sorry—I helped your brothers and gave them good educations, and I meant to do the same by you; but I cannot, for I am too poor. You will have to make your own way.” He was a devoted friend of education, himself highly educated, master of three languages,—Armenian, Arabic, and Turkish,—and of strong reasoning powers, logical, imaginative, profound, and far-sighted. Moreover, he was a zealous Christian, greatly respected and liked. In person he was tall, and very stout, with large, bright eyes, and full, rosy cheeks; built like my great-grandfather, from whose elephantine figure the family took its surname. Filian means “Son of an elephant,” and his descendants—about 150 in all, one of the largest single families in the Orient—have been mostly large-framed men and women.
At about fifteen I had to go to work. One of my brothers being a weaver, I learned that trade from him, and kept at it for three years, weaving both cotton and silk, and not only supporting myself, but helping support my father. Then I took up shoemaking, which paid better, but neither my father nor myself was satisfied to have me remain a common workman. He wanted me to become a banker and merchant, as he had been, and his old friends, who respected him, would have given me a chance to start; but I had always been devout from a little boy, and felt that I had a call to be a minister. While making shoes, I prayed the Lord to open the way. I often thought, “Suppose I become the richest shoemaker or even the richest banker in Antioch, what then? Shall I ever be happy? No. Then Lord, what is my call?” I believed I heard the answering voice of God in my soul saying, “I have created thee to become a minister of the gospel.” So I went to a missionary of the American Board in Antioch, and consulted him; by his encouragement I went to the Theological Seminary at Marash, in Armenia Minor, and studied there three years in the preparatory course.
Before taking my theological lessons I was sent by the missionaries to Caesarea (Kayserieh) to teach in a town near by. On reaching the city the pastor of the Protestant Church invited me to preach to his congregation the following Sunday morning. I did so; the missionaries heard me, changed their minds, said I was better fitted for a preacher than a teacher, and sent me to preach at a village named Chomakli, near Mt. Argaeus. The Lord seemed to fill me with eloquence, and crowds flocked to hear me. Then the missionaries called me to a larger field, Talas, their central town; the same fortune attended me there, and steadily followed me in the other places to which I went. I will not make a long story of it. Enough to say that I always felt utterly helpless before preaching, empty of matter and words; I went to my room and cried to my Heavenly Father, and always overflowed with things to say when the time came. There was no limit to my imagination; illustrations thronged upon me by hundreds; I felt inspired from Heaven. I never wrote a sermon before preaching it, but wrote it down literally as soon as I had finished.—I wrote every Monday.—And they are all ready to be published in both Armenian and Turkish.
I was a successful preacher, but I had no theological education (though I studied my Bible hard), and felt that I needed one. I decided to go to America for it, but the missionaries opposed the plan bitterly. One of the ladies told me plainly it was a sin; that I had no right to give up a successful and useful ministry to go there. I replied that giving up the ministry would be a sin, but not going away to prepare for higher usefulness, and coming back to carry it out. Then she said I had no money to go, and did not understand English. I answered that I had faith that God would create the means. She laughingly bade me give her best regards to her friends when I came. She meant it for a joke, but I carried it out in earnest.
How I finally came to this country would take too long to tell. I will only say that I crossed the ocean by faith. When I reached New York in July, 1879, I had only 15 cents in my pocket. I worked hard day and night in a rag felt factory in the Bowery, and slept on the rags on the floor, covering myself with a piece of flannel. But the Lord opened the way. I went to Oberlin, Ohio, and studied there, supporting myself by sawing wood for the professors of the Theological Seminary. In six months I could talk English well enough to lecture, and after that time I supported myself by lecturing. Finally I was sent to Nebraska as a home missionary during the summer vacation. On my return I entered the Chicago Theological Seminary, and graduated there in 1882, after which I lectured rather widely through the country. Then I went home, and for a time was pastor of the Constantinople Evangelical Armenian Church. Later I had a call from Marsovan, accepted it, and had so large a congregation there that a church with a capacity of 2,000 was needed. I returned to this country, raised the money, left it in a Chicago bank (where it still lies in trust), and went back to build the church. That very success aroused the jealousy of some wicked men, and they falsely charged me with being the leader of the revolutionary societies in Turkey. On this charge I was banished, and now I am here again,—free and happy with my family, but full of sorrow for my dear people daily martyred by the Turks.