The late Rev. Dr. Tracy, a former teacher of the writer and the ex-president of Anatolia College, Marsavan, wrote in 1904:
“During the prosecution of this [mission] work in the Turkish Empire, wise attention has been given all along to the education of the young, both in the common branches with reference to good and intelligent social and family Christian life; and in the more advanced, with reference to the Christian leadership so vitally important in the development of a community. That this principle, discerned by our own American forefathers, as a corner stone in our national structure, is just as applicable to and important in the building of Christian communities in mission lands as at home, has dawned at last upon the minds of all who seriously prosecute this foreign work. The position which Christian education has taken in missions is impregnably strong. Not only does such education improve, inform, enable young men and young women, but it finds out the able and gathers up the natural leaders; it not only educates, but makes educators. It is a means without which no Christian country, community, or enterprise has ever held permanent leadership, or ever can. The day of light is advancing in the East with the rise of the Christian colleges.
“Very great and far-reaching was the influence of that school established in early times by Cyrus Hamlin in the village of Bebek, on the Bosphorus. The first venture, though so small a craft compared with what has followed, made the wake for a whole fleet of mighty vessels coming after—Robert College at Constantinople, the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut, the Central Turkey College at Aintab, Euphrates College at Harpoot, Anadolia College at Marsovan, the American College for Girls at Sculari, the Institute at Samakov in Bulgaria, St. Paul’s Institute at Tarsus, the International College at Smyrna, with leading schools for girls in the interior like those at Marash, Marsovan (Sivas Girls’ High School, and Sivas Teachers’ College, etc.), and elsewhere. Another most important class of institutions took its rise from the same fountain—the theological seminaries at Marash, Marsovan, Harpoot, without which the others would hardly have come into existence. They introduced the gospel widely and educational progress followed. Here we have a dozen or more institutions which are the leaders of thought and makers of character in the empire.”[97]
With one or two exceptions these colleges and high schools are, or were, crowded by the Armenian boys and girls: Sivas Teachers’ College—“This College has occupied a unique position in its training teachers for important positions in the mission and in the government schools. During the last year (1914) there were more pupils than at any time in the past. The exact figures are not obtainable, but the total enrollment for the previous year was over 500.”[2]
St. Paul’s College, Tarsus—“The enrollment was the largest recorded: in the College 118, academy 142; total, 260. Of these, thirty-five were Moslems, the greatest in the history of the school. Nearly two hundred were Armenians, but Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Syrians, were represented in the student body.”[98]
Before the spring of 1915 twenty-five thousand and one hundred and thirty-four pupils were attending and receiving Christian training from the kindergarten schools up to the highest colleges in the land.[99]
3. THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE; another cause of progress of the reformed and evangelical work was and is the necessity of a Christian literature. It has been stated that the Armenian literature is largely of religious and Christian character, but the most and best of it is in the ancient Armenian language. After the translation of the Bible into the modern Armenian a new literature in the same was necessitated. This necessity was gradually being met until the war broke out. “THE AVEDAPER—an Armenian paper, published in weekly and monthly editions. It was the most attractively printed Armenian paper in the empire. It is under efficient Armenian management. There was an encouraging increase in subscriptions until the war conditions interfered with the mails and returns fell off. It was finally decided to discontinue the paper for the present.”[100] Within the last fifty or sixty years a goodly number of useful books have been written and translated into the modern Armenian language; such as school books, commentaries, Sunday School lesson helps, dictionaries, religious treatises, hymn books—“whatever is most necessary for the healthy nourishment of awakening minds in the families, the schools, the communities is published, but with sad insufficiency.”
“The mission press is connected with Central Turkey College (at Aintab). Some of the students are given aid in the printing department and in the book bindery. Besides the regular job work the press prints a monthly religious paper in Armeno-Turkish (Armenian letter in Turkish language) called the New Life. No figures are at hand for the total output, but the usual number of pages printed exceeds 700,000.”[101] If this terrible war had not interfered with the missionary work, the annual output would have been between nine and ten million pages of print.
4. THE MEDICAL WORK. The last but not the least of the causes of the progress of the evangelical work in the East is the medical work or the hospitals. Before the coming of the missionaries into the East, and the medical missionaries following them, there were some native physicians, mostly Armenians, in the country. But their knowledge of the art of healing must naturally have been in a crude state. It is no wonder when we remember the fact, that though the East, especially Western Asia, has been the seat of ancient learning, yet it has been for over five hundred years under the rule of the tyrants, the sultans, who delighted more in injustice, cruelty, and sensuality than in learning. So the reflex light of the Sun of righteousness from the West brought also healings in His wings.
Some churches and missionary organizations have been slow to learn the meaning of Christ when He “sent them (His disciples) to preach the Kingdom of God and heal the sick.” (Luke ix: 2.)