These two widely divergent parties of sixty years ago have now drawn toward each other. There are probably to-day more intelligent evangelical believers within the old Gregorian, Greek and Syrian Churches than comprise the entire Protestant body. Separation no longer takes place in any marked degree. The same men preach occasionally in both Protestant and Gregorian churches. Evangelical teachers are engaged without dissent to teach Gregorian schools, while in many instances there are more Gregorian than Protestant pupils in Protestant schools.
Gregorian young men preparing themselves for orders in their Church are welcomed to the Protestant theological schools where they stand upon precisely the same footing as the Protestant youth with that ministry in view, while missionaries are invited to give lessons in Gregorian theological schools.
The Gregorian Church, as a whole, while yet far from the goal reached by many of its strongest supporters, is making advance towards an intelligent faith and practise. No longer do the leaders believe that there is virtue in the forms of worship or salvation in submission to the demands of the priesthood. They believe that true religion consists in true belief and right living and to this end they strive.
It is also evident that the Mohammedans have been perceptibly affected by reading the New Testament; thousands of copies have been sold them. Whereas heretofore they had interpreted Christianity by the lives of the people among them who bore that name, they are now studying the sources and see that between the two there is a wide gulf. They have been compelled, in self-defense, to search their own religion for fundamental truths of high character in order to prove to the reformed Christians that Islam is not as bad as it appears in the lives of many of its adherents.
In a word, all classes in the empire are learning that religion is a matter of conviction and life, and not of form, and that it manifests its true character in the acts of its followers, and not in the boasted declarations of its leaders.
XXIII. AMERICAN RIGHTS
It has been stated by American officials in 1895 and 1896 that the missionaries, having forced themselves into Turkey against the will of the government, had no legal rights there and no claim to protection. The officials who made these statements must have been wilfully ignoring the facts of recent history. The missionaries were supported and encouraged by the three sultans, Mahmud the strong, Abd-ul-Medjid the weak, and Abd-ul-Aziz the weaker. They stand on a firm basis of treaties, special enactments, and concessions,—a basis in which the present sultan, with all his acuteness and his hatred of mission work, could find no flaw. Had it been possible to argue with a shadow of plausibility that the mission was against the law, or that it was not guaranteed by enactments inviolable even by a sultan protected by the six Powers, the property would have been destroyed and the mission silenced. The attempt was made, but failed; and the action of officials who destroyed mission property at Kharput, etc., was ostensibly disowned.
Further, the action of strong, free American life in Turkey must always tend to strengthen the movement there towards that freer and more elastic order which belongs to all the English speaking peoples. But, though the mission work has, undoubtedly, exerted a great influence on the political situation in Turkey, the mission policy has studiously and consistently been non-political, and has zealously inculcated the doctrine of non-resistance and obedience to the existing government.