Daybreak in Turkey / Second Edition

by James L. Barton

The true Christian motive that considers others’ needs ahead of self-interest was little understood, and it required generations of missionary labors to bring the people to begin to understand it.

Times of great national distress like war, massacres, famine, and plague, had given the missionaries unusual opportunity to prove to the people that they were there, not for their own personal comfort but to bind up the broken heart and give cheer to the downcast and the dying. Every added missionary grave, and they dot the country from Arabia to the Black Sea and from Persia to Salonica, was an added argument which no Oriental could answer, that the missionaries were there to minister and not to be ministered unto, and to give even their lives for others.

Through many vicissitudes and misunderstandings and misconceptions the missionaries have quietly continued their labors until, without doubt, it would be hard to find an intelligent man of any race or creed in the empire who does not believe them to be earnest, sincere, altruistic in their life and work. All classes have learned that in times of trouble the missionary is their best friend, no matter how much they may have abused him in times of prosperity. They know that he will always do what he believes to be for their best good, even though there may be a difference of judgment as to what is the best good.

In the midst of Oriental duplicity, the missionaries have established the reputation for speaking the truth. At first this was one of the severest puzzles to the Turks in the dealings of the missionaries with the government. They could conceive of no reason for telling the truth under such circumstances, so they were completely misled. The missionaries applied to the government, in an interior city, for permission to erect a schoolhouse. All school buildings were at that time opposed by the Turkish officials. The governor asked, “For what is the building to be used?” “A school,” replied the missionary. “What are you going to keep in it?” asked the governor. “Scholars and teachers,” was the reply. “Why do you want so large a building?” was the next question. “Because we are going to have many teachers and many pupils,” said the missionary. “What are you going to manufacture there when it is done?” was asked. “Scholars,” was the answer. The missionary was dismissed and for hours the council discussed the question. Not a man present believed that the proposed building was to be a school. They said, “Surely if he were building a school he would not have acknowledged it; it must indeed be something else.” It was afterwards learned that they thought the building was to be an armory for manufacturing guns.

When Dr. Hepworth of the New York Herald took his famous journey through Armenia in 1896, he was given, by a Turkish governor, a letter of introduction to one of the American missionaries, Dr. H. N. Barnum at Harpoot, with the added statement, “He knows more about the conditions of the interior of Turkey than any living man, and you can depend absolutely upon what he says.”

There is no class of people so trusted by the Armenians in Turkey, as well as by all other races, as are the American missionaries. Men who have been hostile to missionary work bring their daughters to the missionary boarding-school because, they say, “We know they will be safe here.” All classes take the word of a missionary as absolutely true and without question. Money is put into their hands by the people for safe-keeping or for transmission to some other part of the country or out of it, without hesitation and without asking for a receipt.

There is no doubt that the Turkish officials, even though for reasons known to themselves they may oppose the erection of buildings for school or hospital purposes and hamper the missionaries in their general evangelistic work, have long since ceased to regard them in any other light than as men and women of unquestioned integrity and purity of life. Much testimony might be adduced to show the confidence that officials repose in individual missionaries. They may not like the higher educational institutions the missionaries have established there, which are leading an increasing percentage of the people to think for themselves, yet they do not now attempt to destroy them or their influence by making personal charges against the missionaries themselves.

Many Turkish officials of high rank have, in times of special stress, sought the counsel of missionaries, who had resided in the country many years, and who were generally reputed to have a wide knowledge of local affairs. It is interesting to note that in many instances the counsel obtained was acted upon, and later sincere gratitude was expressed.

After the Armenian massacre in 1895-96 the Armenian patriarch at Constantinople called the treasurer of the American Board at Constantinople and asked him to take complete charge of a considerable sum of money collected for relief. “For,” said he, “I have no means of distributing this fund with assurance that it will, in any large part, reach the needy people, but I know that through the missionaries every dollar will go to the suffering poor.”

The absolute integrity of the life and dealing of the missionaries with the people has done perhaps as much in that land of deceit and dishonesty to commend the simple gospel of Jesus Christ to all classes as any other single phase of the missionary work. It has come to be believed that a Christian of the missionary type must be true, honest, upright, and pure. This has great significance in a land like Turkey.