No one was more competent than Dr. Dwight to testify concerning the state of religious opinions among the Armenians of the metropolis. Writing in February, 1860, he said it would be hard to find an intelligent Armenian in Constantinople, unless among the ecclesiastics, who did not acknowledge that there were many errors in the Armenian Church, and that the evangelical system was the best.
About the game time, he found a great change for the better at Rodosto, on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmora. The evangelical brethren had suffered many indignities from the Armenians, but now even the magnates were disposed to cultivate friendly relations with them. This he attributed, in great measure, to the wise and yet firm demeanor of Apraham, the native preacher, who afterwards became pastor of the Rodosto church. He was a native of the place, and was once a deacon in the old Armenian Church, and a candidate for the offices of vartabed and bishop. His first knowledge of the truth was gained while in the Armenian monastery at Jerusalem. From thence he came to Bebek, where he studied theology. He was an exception to the rule, that a prophet has no honor in his own country, for without compromising the truth, he had gained the respect of all. He showed his missionary friend a list of eighty families, upon which he called in regular order. Though most of them belonged to the old Armenian Church, they received him kindly. The missionary called with him upon two of these families prominent in the Armenian community, in one of which they spent an entire evening. A copy of the Bible, in the modern language, was in the house, and was brought forward, read, and commented upon, just as if this had been a Protestant family.
Dr. Dwight attended the examination of the Protestant school at Rodosto. More than half of the pupils were from non-Protestant families; and an audience of two hundred and fifty expressed very general satisfaction with the attainments of the pupils. On the Sabbath he administered the Lord's Supper. A large number not connected with the church, were present, and gave close attention to the preaching. Many must have come from mere curiosity, but the missionary never preached with greater certainty that he had the sympathies of his audience.
In the following July, events showed that the new influences had in some way reached all classes of Armenians in the metropolis. An aged Protestant died and his body was borne by his friends to an Armenian cemetery, which hitherto had been open to all bearing the Christian name. Now, however, a mob, composed of the very lowest class of Armenians, seized the coffin, and forcibly carried it out of the burying-ground, where it remained four days. The mob increased to thousands, and kept possession of the ground day and night. The American and English Ambassadors were at length roused, and remonstrated with the Porte and the Patriarch. The burial was assented to, and the Seraskier, or Minister of War, came with several hundred troops. A place was selected for the grave within the cemetery, but the mob, at the first blow of the pickaxe, rushed forward with a savage yell. The troops were ordered to resist, but not to fire. After twenty or thirty had been wounded, the mob fell back. The Patriarch and other dignitaries of the Armenian Church now came upon the ground, and gave their sanction to the spot selected for the burial, and the grave was dug. Just then the Seraskier, for some unexplained reason, ordered the grave to be filled, and another to be dug outside of the cemetery, in the middle of the public highway. The Protestants declined taking part in the burial in such a spot, though entreated to do so by the Seraskier, but remained and looked on in silence, while Mussulmans dug the grave, put the coffin into it, and filled it up. As soon as this was done, the mob rushed forward and trampled spitefully upon it, in the presence of the Pasha and Patriarch. The representatives of the Protestant powers now united in a strong remonstrance to the government; and Stepan Effendi, the civil head of the Protestants, was speedily notified, that ground would be given them for cemeteries wherever Protestants were found.
A native assistant died at Baghchejuk, near Nicomedia, early in the year, who had from the beginning been intimately connected with the work in that place, and was called the "prince of colporters," on account of his success in distributing the Scriptures. Being by nature an earnest man, when converted he became zealous in disseminating the truth. As he was respected through all the region, there was great anxiety among the Armenians to regain him, and an ex-Patriarch visited Baghchejuk, in the hope of bringing him back. Promises and threats were equally vain, and the storm of persecution finally burst upon him. His vineyards and mulberry orchards were cut down, and much of his property was wrested from him. He was beaten and stoned, and his name cast out as vile. When they were building the church he brought a basket full of stones and brick-bats, which had been thrown through his windows, to be incorporated in the foundation wall. He described the effect of persecution in his own case, thus: "The truth in my heart was like a stake slightly driven into soft ground, easily swayed, and in danger of falling before the wind; but by the sledge-hammer of persecution God drove it in till it became immovable." "His working power," says Mr. Parsons, the resident missionary, "like everything else in his possession, was consecrated to Christ. With great self-denial on his part, two hundred piasters a month (about eight dollars) enabled him to give all his time to street preaching, and the sale of the Scriptures. As a bookseller he was eminently faithful and successful. Not contented with sitting in the book-stall waiting for purchasers, he used to shoulder a basket of books, and go through the streets and lanes of town and city, offering for sale the 'Holy Book;' the 'Book that would not lie;' the 'Infallible Guide;' and proclaiming, in a loud voice, its divine origin, man's need of it, and its light-and-life-giving power. This he did as time and strength permitted, from Broosa to Angora, and from Bilijik to the Black Sea. He everywhere either carried with him, or had near at hand, a supply of Bibles in the Turkish, Armenian, Greek, and Jewish languages. Probably not less than one hundred thousand persons have heard from him the proffer of the word of life."
"The word of God," continues Mr. Parsons, "was his constant companion. He was so familiar with it, that he could turn with facility to any passage desired. He walked with God. He was a man of prayer. His happiest moments were seasons of devotion—private, social, and public. I should say, rather, that next to the work of bringing others to Christ, his delight was in prayer and praise. He has rested from his labors, but his works do follow him. Before he died, he could rejoice in a rich harvest from his own sowing, but a greater harvest is yet to be reaped from the seed so widely scattered by his hand. He has gone, a sheaf of the first-fruits of the work in Baghchejuk. He 'came to his grave as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.'"
Mr. E. E. Bliss passed through Marsovan on his way to Harpoot, and found that the rampant hostility of eight years before had died out.[1] Instead of the hootings and stonings, which then greeted his arrival, he was met, a long way out, by a goodly company to escort him to his lodgings. On the Sabbath, in place of the little company assembled in a lower room of his own house, he now preached to a good audience, in a large and commodious chapel.
[1] See chapter xxiv.
"I spent," he says, "a few days at Sivas, where I was eight years ago, and found the small room, where ten or fifteen then met for God's worship, exchanged for a large upper room, filled with an audience of more than a hundred. And as we went onward to places we had never before visited, it was a continual feast to see the extent to which the work of God had spread in the whole country. In almost every place where we stopped for the night, however obscure the village, some would gather around us as brethren in the Lord. They were often coarsely dressed and rude of speech, undistinguishable in appearance from the mass around them; but a few words of conversation would show that their souls had been illuminated by the truth."
The annual meeting of the Northern Armenian Mission for 1860, was held at Harpoot, east of the Euphrates, seven hundred and fifty miles from Constantinople. And it was a significant fact, that the delegates from the metropolis were able to communicate with their families over the telegraph wires, destined to connect London with Calcutta.