“You translate the Bible into all living languages, not excluding the
Turkish idiom, and you distribute the holy volumes to the shopkeeper of
Constantinople, and to the shepherd who tends his camels amidst the ruins
of Ephesus. We are not as laborious propagators of the faith; but yet we
would fain intercede in favour of the Turk when your copy of the Bible has
converted him to the Christian faith, and who, by the law of the land,
must have his head cut off for this transgression. Mark that the
obligation is much more binding on us than it is on you, and not the less
binding from the job having been begun by yourselves. The Turks are spread
amongst the Greeks and surrounded by them. There are ten thousand chances
to one, that if the Moslem be converted at all, it is to that creed of
which the church stands in his immediate eye, and that creed is ours. But,
strange to say, it is because of that very chance that we are to be
prohibited from meddling in the matter. With the French and with the
English the case is far different. They, indeed, we are told, claim the
right of protection only over thousands; but you claim that same right
over millions, and, therefore, you shall not have it. The question you
may, however, say, is not fairly put, for should a Turk be converted, and
on the point of losing his head, we are ready to interpose with our
authority, even though it be to the Greek Church that he should have
turned. Well! but place yourselves for a moment in our situation. Are we
to leave to you the work which has been done in our vineyard, and not
stand up for those who have embraced the cross, merely because there are
millions in that realm who embrace it? The case stands equally the same
with regard to the far greater number of human beings who are born and
have grown up in the profession of our faith. Without attempting to prove
that they are exposed to constant cruelty and oppression, a fact which has
been strenuously denied without the denial having ever been proved, it is
abundantly known, and an indisputable fact, that the Greeks are in a state
of continual bondage, deprived of the dearest rights of men, condemned, in
a religious point of view, to a state of thraldom such as exists in no
other part of the world, inasmuch as the supreme head of their church is
installed in his dignity, maintained in the same, or deposed by a
sovereign professing a faith hostile to his own. Is such a state of things
to be tolerated by those who are its victims? and is not this in itself a
hardship greater than any other that can be imagined? The English have
given us, in a period, it is true, of greater zeal for their faith, an
example of active sympathy manifested by them towards their brothers in
belief, subjects of a neighbouring and powerful sovereign. The case was
not as urgent as the one to which I compare it, inasmuch as the Huguenots
of France were not the subjects of a Mussulman sovereign. But this,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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