Dr. King and Mr. Benjamin were the only remaining members of the mission in Greece in 1842, and they were residing at Athens. Though for some time without schools, the missionaries were usefully employed. The former preached regularly to a congregation of from thirty to one hundred attentive hearers, with a ready command of the Greek language, and in the manner of the most effective preaching in this country. He preached, also, by the wayside, at the same time distributing books and tracts. Writing in 1843, after stating that fifteen hundred young men, from all parts of Greece and Turkey, were in the schools and university of Athens, Dr. King adds: "And yet God, in his wonderful providence, has permitted me to stand here, and preach in the plainest manner, even to the present hour, without let or hindrance, and that, too, in the midst of a dreadful strife of tongues. I have heard it remarked by Greeks, how truly wonderful it is that my preaching should never have been attacked. I see many students and others, and converse with the greatest plainness, and I think some are persuaded of the truth." Mr. Benjamin was also doing much good in the department of Christian literature. The books prepared by himself and Dr. King were printed at Athens, and were more acceptable and influential for that reason, than if printed elsewhere and by mission presses. The number of copies printed previous to 1843, was 118,465, and of pages, 6,525,500.
The relinquishment of the station at Ariopolis was regarded by the Greeks as a public testimony against the errors of the Greek Church, and as an honest and consistent movement. Mr. Benjamin took the place of Dr. King in his absence, as a preacher, and found unexpected facility in so doing. It was a tribute to the Greek mind, that Mr. Benjamin commenced translating Butler's "Analogy" into the modern language.
In Turkey, Mr. Temple, Mr. Schneider, Mr. Riggs, and Mr. Ladd continued to labor mainly in the modern Greek language. Mr. Temple had charge of the press, with the efficient aid of Mr. Riggs in the Greek and Greco-Turkish. Mr. Van Lennep divided his time between the Greek and the Turkish. Mr. Temple edited the Greek "Monthly Magazine," aided by Mr. Petrokokino, one of the young men educated by the Board, to whose taste, talent, and zeal much of its popularity and usefulness were to be attributed. The periodical nearly paid for itself. The amount of printing in modern Greek will be fully stated at the close of these histories. In 1843, it was one million five hundred and fifty-six thousand pages. Several of the schools in Western Turkey were more or less open to Greek youth of both sexes. Mr. Schneider was able to preach with great facility and propriety in the modern language.
In the year 1844, the author made an official visit to Athens, accompanied by Dr. Joel Hawes, and a week was spent by them in free conference with Messrs. King and Benjamin. The conclusion was reached, that Mr. Benjamin should seek a wider sphere of usefulness among the Armenians of Turkey.
As the result of subsequent discussions with the missionaries residing at Smyrna, Broosa, and Constantinople, it was decided to cease in great measure from labor among the Greeks; but that Dr. King ought to remain at Athens, his position and relations being peculiar, as will appear in the subsequent history. From that time, Dr. King was the only missionary of the Board in Greece, until his lamented death in the year 1869.1 Messrs. Temple, Riggs, and Calhoun at Smyrna, and Messrs. Schneider and Ladd at Broosa, had made the Greek language their principal medium of intercourse with the people. Mr. Riggs having a rare aptitude for acquiring languages, had begun to edit works in the Bulgarian, Armenian, and Turkish languages.
1 During nearly the whole of Dr. King's life in Athens, Dr. Hill, an American Episcopal missionary, was resident there.
The American Baptist Missionary Union placed two missionaries at Patras, on the Gulf of Corinth, in 1838. That station was discontinued in 1845, when Mr. Buel removed to the Piræus, the port of Athens, where he labored, in the most friendly relations with Dr. King, until 1855 or 1856, when the unsatisfactory results of the mission led to its discontinuance.
A like result had been practically reached by both the London and Church Missionary Societies of England. A deplorable change had come over the Greeks, both in Greece and Turkey, since the freedom of Greece from Turkish rule; and money, time, and labor could be more profitably expended on other equally needy populations in that part of the world. The old ambition for the recovery of Constantinople and the restoration of the Eastern Empire, had been quickened into life; and the unity of the Greek Church as a means to this end, was craftily kept before the minds of the people by Russian agency, and had a wonderful influence, especially among the higher classes. The national pride of the Greeks had also created an aversion to foreigners, and made it difficult for such to gain their confidence, or awaken their gratitude by acts of benevolence. Then there were the arrogant assumptions of the Greek Church, more exclusive than the Roman, claiming for her clergy the only apostolical succession, and that her trine immersion, performed by her clergy, was the only baptism, while all not thus baptized were beyond the hope of salvation. Of course all Protestant preachers, whether episcopal or non-episcopal, were regarded by the Greeks as unbaptized heretics. The Greek Church held the worst errors of Popery, such as transubstantiation, worshipping the Virgin Mary, praying to saints, baptismal regeneration, and the inherent efficacy of ordinances to save the soul. The power of excommunication in the hands of the priests, was regarded by the people with extreme dread, as sealing the soul over to perdition; and believing, as they did, that salvation is certain in the Church, and nowhere else, they regarded every attempt at innovation as an attack upon their dearest interests, and resisted it with persecution, or turned away with disgust and scorn. There were persons both among the ecclesiastics and laymen, to whom this would not apply; but the inflexible opposition of the hierarchy, as a body, to all efforts for propagating the evangelical religion, was matter for profound lamentation.
Yet labors in Greece had not been expended in vain. There had been very few hopeful conversions; but as many as two hundred thousand copies of the New Testament and parts of the Old had been put in circulation in the modern Greek language; a million copies of books and tracts had been scattered, by different missionary societies, broad-cast over the Greek community; perhaps a score of Greek young men had been liberally educated by benevolent societies and individuals in America and England; and more than ten thousand Greek youths had received instruction in Greece and Turkey, at the schools of various missions. Of the good seed thus sown, though not often on good ground, there may yet be a harvest to gladden future generations. The labor had not been fruitless. The Greek government was not what it would have been, and the same may be said of the social state. Nor were the same old ideas prevalent among the people as to the authority of councils and of the ancient fathers, and the authority of God's Word stood higher than before. The same low estimate was no longer put upon knowledge and education, nor upon religious tolerance, nor were there the same impressions concerning Protestantism, and Protestant nations, and the Christian world at large. In all these respects, there had been progress. Infidelity had received a check, and so had its influence on surrounding peoples. The Word of God, printed in the spoken language, was in very many habitations of the people; and the elements of their intellectual, moral, and social being were not, and can never again be, as if missionaries had not been among them.
The efforts made by Dr. King in Greece, for nearly a quarter of a century after this time, to secure freedom in the worship of God and in the preaching of the Gospel, will form the subject of future chapters. And in the histories of the Syrian and Armenian missions, the reader will occasionally notice hopeful outbreaks of the spirit of religious inquiry among the people bearing the Grecian name.