1836-1840.
The two missionaries and priest Abraham narrowly escaped assassination by ruffians of a class called Lootee, while on a visit to the village of Mar Joseph. Walking quietly through the village they encountered three of these fellows, in a narrow path lined by a hedge, with a horse placed across to obstruct their progress. Priest Abraham stepped forward, and was mildly requesting them to allow his party to pass, when one raised his dagger to strike him. Seeing the defenseless priest in peril, Mr. Perkins instinctively sprang forward, and the assassin turned upon him. Nothing but his fall at the moment the weapon struck him, saved him from instant death. As it was, the dagger cut through his clothes, and punctured his side. Seeing his associates thus hard beset, Dr. Grant, who was behind, ran up and brought his riding whip with such force across the villain's eyes, as to confuse him for the moment, and in the confusion the party ran into a house and barred the doors. The priest received a cut in the head, but Mr. Perkins was not seriously wounded. Through the efforts of the British ambassador, the Lootee received so severe a chastisement from the Persian authorities, as made them careful, ever after, how they injured any member of the mission.
A printing establishment was much needed; and a press was sent with the Rev. Albert L. Holliday and Mr. William R. Stocking, who sailed from Boston in January, 1837. At Trebizond, the press was found too unwieldy to be carried overland, and was accordingly sent back to Constantinople and sold to the Armenians, for their high-school at Scutari. The new missionaries were met at Erzroom by Mr. Perkins and Mar Yohannan, and reached their destination in June. Mr. Holliday found the encouragement to labor quite as great as had been represented by the brethren first in the field.
The extreme poverty of the Nestorians had the same effect on the first missionaries, that like causes have had in some other portions of the unevangelized world. It caused the whole expense of schools and of the agency employed to be thrown upon the Christian public at home. The board of the fifty scholars in the seminary was paid by the mission, and people in the villages thought they could not afford to send their children to the village schools, unless each of them was paid two or three cents a day to buy their bread. They said their children could earn as much by weeding the cotton, or driving the oxen; and the brethren naturally rejoiced in being able to afford this aid. Among the students of the seminary at this time, were two bishops, three priests, and four deacons, who of course were adults. Pupils in the first rudiments of their own language received twelve and a half cents a week for their support, and the more advanced received twenty-five cents. Experience was as needful to discover the best methods of missionary labor, as of any other untried undertaking.
The mission now had eight native helpers, among whom were three bishops and two priests, all, except one, residing with the mission. That one was the venerable Mar Elias, the oldest bishop in the province, who superintended one of the schools. He had adopted the practice of translating portions of the Epistles, which he read statedly in his church. Some of the people were much delighted with the innovation; but others, and a profligate priest among them, complained that he annoyed them with the precepts of "Paul, Paul, Paul," of whom they had scarcely ever heard before. But the good bishop did not regard the opposition.
Mrs. Grant was the first member of the mission, called away by death. She had been thoroughly educated, and the two bishops in her family wondered to see a woman learning Syriac through the Latin language. Nor was their wonder less when she turned to the Greek for the meaning of some difficult passage in the New Testament. Finding the prejudices of the people too strong to permit her to begin a girls' school at once, she taught her own female domestics to read, and then sought to interest mothers in the education of their daughters. At length she succeeded in collecting a small school of girls, of which she was the first teacher. When too sick to leave her chamber, she had the pupils assemble there. This was the beginning of the Female Seminary, which afterwards became so noted under Miss Fiske. It was commenced March 12, 1838, with four pupils, but the number soon increased, and Mrs. Perkins rendered valuable aid. Mrs. Grant readily learned to speak the Turkish, and to read the ancient Syriac. The modern Syriac she was able both to read and write, and the French she could speak before leaving home. But, cultured and refined as she was, she declared the time spent in the mission field among that rude people, to have been the happiest part of her life. The aid she rendered her husband in his medical practice, added not a little to her usefulness. She had great aptness and skill in the sick chamber, and like her divine Master went about doing good; yet without neglecting her household affairs. Her death occurred on the 14th of January, 1839, at the age of twenty-five. She was greatly lamented by the Nestorians. The bishops said to the afflicted husband, "We will bury her in the church, where none but holy men are buried;" and her death produced a subdued and tender spirit throughout the large circle of her acquaintance. This better state of feeling continued through the year, especially in the seminary.
Priest Dunka, from one of the independent tribes, gave indications of piety. He had learned the alphabet in his childhood, while tending his father's flocks on the mountains, and became a reader without farther instruction. At Oroomiah he was now both a learner and helper. Three months of the summer he spent among his native mountains, preaching the Gospel in the villages around his home. Little of the truth had been heard there for ages, except in the unknown language of the liturgy, but the people were eager to listen.
In September, Robert Glen, son of the Rev. William Glen of Tabriz, was hopefully converted while at Oroomiah on a visit. He was born at Astrakhan, where his father labored seventeen years as a missionary, and was now employed as a teacher in a small school of Moslem young men. The mission at this time had twelve schools in as many villages, containing two hundred and seventy-two males, with twenty-two females; and seventeen pupils in the female boarding-school, and fifty-five in the seminary, which was taught by a priest and deacon, under the supervision of Mr. Stocking.
The scarcity of copies of the Holy Scriptures among the Nestorian people would be remarkable, in view of their receiving them as their rule of faith and practice, if we did not remember how sorely they had been persecuted in the past, and how much they still suffered from Moslem oppression. Excepting the Psalms, which entered largely into the prescribed form of worship, they had but one copy of the Old Testament, and that was in a number of volumes, the property of several individuals. The British and Foreign Bible Society had printed the Gospels in the Nestorian character; but they had scarcely more than a single copy of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, and none of the Book of Revelation, in their own character. Of course all was in the ancient language.
Dr. Grant had been suffering for some time before the death of his wife, from the climate of the plain; and he was now instructed by his Committee to commence a station, if possible, among the Nestorians on the western side of the Koordish mountains. Incapable of fear, he had vainly sought the consent of his brethren to penetrate the mountains directly from the plain. It was the belief of the Committee that, with his medical skill and his courage and address, he could do this with safety; but the brethren of the mission had been so impressed by the murder of Mr. Schultz, on that route, that they could not consent; and the opinions of brethren on the ground were not to be disregarded. He was, however, authorized to enter the mountains from the west, in the belief that, once established there, he would soon find his way opened on every side.