Much has also been accomplished in the line of self-propagation and aggressive Christian work. Various organizations of native Christian leaders, like the Bithynia Union of Western Turkey, organized in 1864, the Harpoot Evangelical Union organized in 1865, the Cilicia Union of Central Turkey, and similar organizations in Marsovan and in Bulgaria, as well as in other places, have rendered loyal service in the work of evangelization. These Unions have cooperated with the missionaries in aggressive operations as well as in the direction and supervision of the churches already organized. Their annual meetings have been marked events in the history of the churches. In these the missionaries are only honorary members, the native brethren taking the burden of responsibility. In some of the Unions, as at Harpoot in Eastern Turkey, a committee is annually appointed to cooperate during the year with the missionaries in looking after and directing work in the churches and schools as well as in planning and executing general evangelistic movements.
What the native churches are doing in the line of expansion is best exhibited in the Koordistan Missionary Society which had its beginning nearly forty years ago in the Harpoot Evangelical Union. This society was formed for the purpose of carrying the gospel and the advantages of a Christian education to the Koordish speaking Armenians who dwelt in the heart of Koordistan between the Harpoot, Mardin, and Bitlis stations of the Board. Funds were collected, visitations made, and promising Koordish speaking students from that country were brought to Harpoot and educated at the expense of that society and later returned to their people as teachers and preachers. As the work enlarged, evangelical churches in other parts of the country joined in the enterprise until it has come to be recognized as a work belonging to evangelical Armenians wherever found. Many Armenians in the United States have liberally contributed to sustain this society. The Armenians give freely for any Christian work that appeals to their national pride or that takes hold upon their sympathies.
In more recent times the alumni and students of Euphrates College who have gone to England or come to this country have contributed for providing scholarships in that institution for the education of poor but deserving students. While some are endowing scholarships, others propose to provide permanent professorships in the college. All this is additional evidence that, the Armenians once assured of safety to life and property, the Christian educational work in Turkey will speedily become largely, if not entirely, self-supporting. The Greeks, among whom much less work is carried on, would not fall behind in self-support.
XXII. INDUSTRIAL AND RELIGIOUS
CHANGES
In the year 1860, in a public address in the city of London, the Earl of Shaftesbury paid the following tribute to the character of the American missionaries in Turkey:—
“I do not believe that in the whole history of missions; I do not believe that in the history of diplomacy, or in the history of any negotiations carried on between man and man, we can find anything to equal the wisdom, the soundness, and the pure evangelical truth of the body of men who constitute the American mission. I have said it twenty times before, and I will say it again—for the expression appropriately conveys my meaning—that ‘they are a marvelous combination of common sense and piety.’ Every man who comes in contact with these missionaries speaks in praise of them. Persons in authority, and persons in subjection, all speak in their favor; travelers speak well of them; and I know of no man who has ever been able to bring against that body a single valid objection. There they stand, tested by years, tried by their works, and exemplified by their fruits; and I believe it will be found that these American missionaries have done more toward upholding the truth and spreading the gospel of Christ in the East, than any other body of men in this or in any other age.”
Mr. William T. Stead once said, “How many American citizens, I wonder, are aware that from the slopes of Mount Ararat all the way to the shores of the Blue Ægean Sea, American missionaries have scattered broadcast over all the distressful land the seed of American principles. When General Mosseloff, the director of foreign faiths within the Russian empire, visited Etchmiadzin the Armenian patriarch spread before him the map of Asia Minor, which was marked all over with American colleges, American churches, American schools, American missions. They (the American missionaries) are busy everywhere, teaching, preaching, begetting new life in these Asiatic races.”
—From “Memoirs of William Goodell.”