History of the Missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the Oriental | Page 6

missionaries from America must also have the same privilege.
Here we may properly pause, and consider what God had wrought, not alone through the agency of the churches, but with the co?peration of the great powers of the earth. Twenty years before, Messrs. Smith and Dwight did not find a single clear case of conversion in their extended travels through the Turkish empire. How many and great the subsequent changes! First came the national charter of rights, given by the Sultan in 1840; which, among its other results, destroyed the persecuting power of the Armenian aristocracy. Next came the abolition of the death penalty, in 1843, and the Sultan's pledge, that men should no more be persecuted for their religious opinions. Then, after three years, came the unthought of application of this pledge to the Armenian Protestants, when persecuted by their own hierarchy. In the next year followed the recognition of the Protestants as an independent community. Finally, in 1850, came the charter, signed by the Grand Sultan himself, placing the Protestants on the same national basis with the other Christian communities of the empire.
How wonderful this progression of events! So far as the central government was concerned, missionaries might print, gather schools, form churches, ordain pastors, and send forth other laborers, wherever they pleased. Attention had been awakened, and there was a disposition to inquire, renounce errors, and embrace gospel truths. There was a progressive change in fundamental ideas; a gradual reconstruction of the social system; a spiritual reformation. At least fifty places were known, scattered over Asiatic Turkey, in all of which souls had been converted through the truth, and where churches might be gathered. Ten churches had been formed already, and in part supplied with pastors. Aintab, scarcely known by name five years before, numbered more Protestants than even the metropolis, and was becoming one of the most interesting missionary stations in the world.
In this remarkable series of results we recognize the hand of God, who makes all earthly agencies subservient to the great work of redemption; so that secular agencies come as legitimately into the history of the republication of the Gospel in Bible lands, as do the labors of the missionaries. They were among the ordained means; and the leading agents cannot fail to command our grateful admiration.
The danger at this time was, that the reformation so auspiciously begun, would pass its grand crisis before the central lights had grown bright enough, and a knowledge of the Gospel been sufficiently diffused in the empire. There was everywhere a curiosity to know what Protestantism was, and to hear what the missionaries had to say; but this curiosity, regarded as a national feeling, was in danger of dying out. In the year 1851, the President of the National Council of the Armenians said to Mr. Dwight: "Now is the time for you to work for the Armenian people. Such an opportunity as you now enjoy may soon pass away, and never more return. You should greatly enlarge your operations. Where you have one missionary, you should have ten; and where you have one book, you should put ten in circulation." Constantinople, Smyrna, Broosa, Trebizond, Erzroom, and Aintab, were already occupied as stations. It was proposed at once to occupy Sivas, Arabkir, Diarbekir, and Aleppo. Mr. Adger, after a laborious and most useful service in the literary department of the mission, was constrained, by his health, in 1847, to retire from the field.
The statement of Lord Stratford, that three years were allowed to pass before the Sultan's firman was transmitted to the provinces, will account in part for the fact that persecution did not cease. In general, whenever evangelical views entered for the first time into a place, a battle was to be fought, and the first recipients of these views were sure to suffer more or less from the hands of their former co-religionists. But relief was almost sure to come on an appeal to the capital; and thus there was a gradual progress towards the full protection of the Protestants as a distinct community.
The accession of missionaries during the time now under review, was as follows: Joel S. Everett, in 1845; Isaac G. Bliss, in 1847; Oliver Crane, in 1849; Joseph W. Sutphen, in 1852--who died before the close of the year; Wilson A. Farnsworth, William Clark, Andrew T. Pratt, M. D.; George B. Nutting, Fayette Jewett, M. D., and Jasper N. Ball, in 1853; Albert G. Beebe, George A. Perkins, Sanford Richardson, Edwin Goodell, and Benjamin Parsons, in 1854; and Alexander R. Plumer, and Ira T. Pettibone, in 1855. All these were married men, except Mr. Pettibone. Mary and Isabella, daughters of Dr. Goodell, returned to the mission within the last two years.
In June, 1848, Pera was again ravaged by fire, and Messrs. Dwight, Homes, and