Although a decree issued in November, 1850, proclaimed the Protestants equal in the eye of the law, and accorded to them protection from persecutions, yet the condition of the brethren was very miserable. Many of the younger brethren were disinherited by their parents, and thrown out of employment by their employers, for their espousal of the cause of reformation. The anathemas of the patriarch upon “the heretics” and those who would have any dealings with them, shut out the Protestants from the society of, and the business intercourses with, the people. Many, therefore, had to sell and sacrifice their properties for the necessities of life, and fell into abject poverty and had almost reached the verge of starvation.
Russia’s desire and demand to establish a protectorate over the Greek Christians in the Turkish empire, and the latter government’s refusal, led these two powers into, what is generally known in history, as the Crimean war. England and France were the allies of the Turk in that war, 1853. This Crimean war also greatly added to the misery of the Protestant community and threatened the existence of the little flock. But the ingenuity of the Rev. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the noble missionary, did ameliorate the condition of the Protestants. He established industries, especially the mill and bakery, where he found sufficient work for them to do; he also was able to build a few churches, in which these brethren might worship. These churches were greatly needed, and he had some balance left in hand after building them.[90]
Some good people thought that “the Crimean war was overruled for the furtherance of the Gospel by becoming the occasion, if not the actual means, for securing another concession from the Turkish government on the subject of religious liberty, a new Magna Charter for the Christian subjects of the Porte.” Some regarded this edict (the Hatti Humayaun) as a complete grant of freedom to all Christians or Mohammedans, to follow the dictates of their consciences without any molestation whatever. A few high-sounding sentences from it will show what great contentment it would have given to the subjects of the Porte if it had been meant to be fulfilled:
“Every distinction or designation tending to make any class whatever of the subjects of my empire inferior to another class on account of their religion, language, or race, shall be forever effaced from the administrative protocol.
“As all forms of religion are and shall be freely professed in my dominions, no subject of my empire shall be hindered in the exercise of the religion that he professes, nor shall be in any way annoyed on this account. NO ONE SHALL BE COMPELLED TO CHANGE HIS RELIGION.”
It is, however, nothing uncommon with the sultans and other officials of the Turkish government to promise a good deal, with the full determination not to fulfill the least.
“By the terms of the treaty of 1856 (signed at Paris), Turkey was bound in the face of the world to redress the inveterate evils and abuses of her government, and to extend to all her subjects the blessings of civil and religious freedom. There was accordingly promulgated the Hatt-y-Humayoun of 1856, in which the principles of reform embodied in the Tanzimat were renewed and extended, but the edict, like those which preceded it, remained in effect null and void. The grievances and wrongs endured since that time, especially by the Christian population, the perversion of justice, the gross administrative corruption, furnish a sufficient commentary of the futility of the attempted or promised reform of the Porte.”[91]
Had public opinion in Great Britain not been outraged by the Bulgarian massacre, the Conservative government of Lord Beaconsfield would have given armed support to the Turks even in 1877, in spite of “the perversion of justice, the gross administrative corruption” of the Turkish government, and “the grievances and wrongs endured since that time, especially by the Christian population” of the Porte.[92]
The number of the reformed churches in ten years increased to thirty, organized at different places in the empire. And it was only twenty-one years after the organization of the first Reformed Armenian Church, that the late Rev. Dr. H. J. Van Lennep reported, before the Evangelical Alliance at Amsterdam, Holland:
“There were now (1867) fifty-six churches, with two thousand adherents.” And he adds, “The use of such means [for reformation] soon produced a marked effect not so much upon the volatile Greek as upon the sober-minded Armenian, and evangelical doctrines were soon spreading among the latter with amazing power and rapidity. Providence raised from among the people men of eloquence, power, and influence, whose labors were wonderfully blessed; and great numbers soon rejoiced in the precious doctrine ‘Christ crucified.’ The young converts, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, went about lighting the torch of truth and salvation throughout the land.”