After some months, the trustees of the church became alarmed for their craft, and made vigorous efforts to destroy the school. Some of the scholars were withdrawn, one of the teachers was compelled to leave, and the school-books were denounced as heretical. Through the whole commotion Mr. King held on his way with characteristic calmness, teaching and praying in the school as aforetime, and freely expounding the Scriptures, every Lord's day, to more than fifty of his pupils and a number of their friends. Two of the most prominent inhabitants espoused his cause; and, just in the crisis of the difficulty, he received a box of ancient Greek books from the government, as a present to the school. Soon after, there appeared in the government gazette a commendation of the school and of its course of instruction. From that time, opposition from members of the Greek Church seems to have ceased. A handsome donation of school-books, slates, and pencils was made by the Greek School Committee in New York, and forwarded to the President of Greece, through the American Board. It was gratefully acknowledged by the government.
In the autumn of 1830, Mr. King, anticipating the evacuation of Athens by the Turks, made a visit to that city, then a ruin, and arranged for his future residence. In April of the next year, having resumed his connection with the American Board, he made a second visit, and opened a Lancasterian school for both sexes; placing a Greek, named Nikotoplos, at the head of it, who was author of an epitome of the Gospels. The school was soon filled. He purchased from a Turk, with private funds and at a nominal cost, the ruins of a stone edifice with a garden, and there built himself a home, to which he removed his family. He also purchased for a few hundred dollars, while the city was still in Turkish hands, about an acre of land delightfully situated, on which he subsequently erected a building for a young ladies' school of a high order.
Capodistrias, the President, was assassinated about this time by two men belonging to one of the first families in Greece. The protecting powers required that his successor be a king, and a Bavarian prince named Otho was put upon the throne of the new kingdom in 1833. The Acropolis of Athens was soon after delivered up to its rightful owners, and that event consummated the emancipation of Greece from Turkish rule. A cabinet was formed, of which Tricoupis, a Greek gentleman of patriotic and enlightened views, was the president. Athens became the seat of government in 1834.
The Rev. Elias Riggs arrived as a missionary, with his wife, in January, 1833, and was cordially welcomed not only by his associate, but also by the brethren of the American Episcopal mission. Mr. Riggs had paid much attention to the modern Greek, and was pleased with Dr. King's manner of preaching on the Sabbath, and with his familiar exposition of the Scriptures in his flourishing Hellenic school.1 There were now two schools, called the "Elementary School" and the "Gymnasium;" the latter having a well-arranged course of study for four years, corresponding, as far as circumstances would permit, with the studies of a New England college. The subsequent removal of the government gymnasium from Ægina to Athens, necessarily interfered with this, but until that removal it was a popular institution, with sixty scholars. An examination was held in 1834 for three days in Ancient Greek, Geography, History, Geometry, Algebra, the Philosophy of Language, and the Holy Scriptures; the King and the bishop of the city being among the persons present.
1 Nassau College, in Princeton, N. J., had conferred the degree of D. D. on Mr. King.
Mr. Riggs, after visiting the more important places in the Peloponnesus, decided upon commencing a station at Argos, which he did in 1834. The great body of the Greek people at that time, were kindly disposed toward the missionaries and their efforts; but it was becoming evident, that the jealousy of the clergy was on the increase, and that the hierarchy had great facilities for exerting an adverse influence. The Church in Greece, no longer subject to the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople, was under the government of the "Holy Council of the kingdom of Greece;" which was required to guard the clergy and schools against heresy, and report to the government any attempt at proselyting. No school could be established without permission from the government, nor without such permission could any teacher instruct, even in private families. No books could be sold or given away in any place, without obtaining a license for that place, and strong guards were thrown around the press. But whatever the restrictions on schools and the press, the way was open for circulating the Scriptures, and for enforcing repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. In the three years from 1834 to 1836, Dr. King sold and gratuitously distributed nearly nine thousand New Testaments in modern Greek, and eighty-seven thousand school-books and religious tracts.
The "Holy Council" now took decided ground against the version of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, declaring that the Septuagint alone was to be regarded as the canonical translation, to be read in the churches and used for religious instruction. This did not forbid nor prevent the free circulation of the Old Testament in modern Greek among individuals for their private use.
Dark intrigues were employed to arouse the popular feeling. A letter against "the Americans," as all missionaries were called, purporting to have been written from Syra, was printed in pamphlet form at Paris and sent to Greece, where it attracted much attention. This was followed by repeated attacks from a newspaper edited by one Germanos. Pretended revelations and miracles at Naxos inflamed the zeal of the ignorant and superstitious. Professed eye-witnesses circulated absurd stories, of girls in the school at Syra being made "Americans" by sealing them on the arm; that one of them refused to be sealed, and two horns grew out of her head; and of a boy taken into a dark room to catechize him, where he saw the devil, and was frightened out of his senses. It was said, moreover, that the object of the missionaries was to change the religion of the country, while they hypocritically professed the contrary; though neither word nor deed of any missionary of the Board was made the pretext for any of these accusations. By such means mobs were raised, and the schools of Syra were, for a time, broken up. Yet the local authorities were generally prompt in putting down riots, and Germanos was arrested, and sent to a distant monastery. Dr. King's congregation on the Sabbath, gradually increased, and there was never a time when he disposed of more New Testaments, school-books, and tracts.
In 1835, a station was commenced by the Rev. Samuel R. Houston on the island of Scio. He found the people friendly, and the island slowly recovering from its ruins. Professor Bambas subsequently expressed the opinion to Dr. King, that Samos was a more desirable place, since the better class of Sciotes would never return to Scio to live under Turkish rule. The station was not continued. In 1837, Mr. Houston, with the Rev. George W. Leyburn, who had been sent out to join him, made a tour of observation in Máne, the ancient Sparta, to see if a station ought not to be formed there, in compliance with repeated solicitations from Petron Bey, the hereditary chief in that region. Indeed, in view of causes beyond the control of missionary societies, the Prudential Committee began to feel themselves compelled to pass by the Grecian Islands in great measure, and concentrate their efforts on the main lands.
The station at Argos was strengthened in 1836, by the arrival of Rev. Nathan Benjamin and wife. The two girls' schools in that place contained from seventy to one hundred pupils. In the following year, as Argos was declining in population and intelligence in consequence of the removal of the seat of government from Napoli, it was decided that Mr. Benjamin should remove to Athens, and Mr. Riggs to Smyrna.