Since the entrance of the Turks into Western Asia the ancient centers of learning have been lying in ruins; the photophobic malady of Mohammedanism and its fanatic devotees had extinguished the numerous lights which have been burning for centuries on the altars of learning. These wild beasts of mankind had broken in upon these countries, once so glorious and famous for their happy estate of civilization and culture, who had given religion and laws to the world, but now, through ignorance, superstition, and vice had become the most deplorable spectacle of extreme misery. The barbarous tyrants--the sultans of the Ottoman empire--who gloried in cruelty and aimed only at the height of greatness through sensuality, had reduced so great and goodly a part of the world to that lamentable distress and servitude under which it now faints and groans. “The true religion discountenanced and oppressed (insulted); no light of learning permitted, nor virtue cherished, violence and rapine exulting over all and leaving no security, save to an abject mind and unlooked-on poverty.” The above description of an eye-witness was uttered two centuries before the coming of the missionaries, who have found it literally true when they came into the East. They also found in this unhappy empire “a noble race”--the Armenians--“the Anglo-Saxons of the East,” whose “standard of moral purity is also said to be immeasurably above that of the Turks around them, and they have a conscience which can be touched and roused.” Their higher standard of moral purity and superior intelligence are due to their religion--Christianity--and to their better education. For as far back as the middle of the seventeenth century, the Armenian press was in full activity in Constantinople. It was no wonder that the Armenians had welcomed the missionaries and had they been left alone they would not have attempted to prevent the work of reformation at all. “When the missionaries came to Turkey they were kindly received by the patriarch and clergymen, who showed great hospitality and favor to them, and encouraged them to build up schools, which they promised to support by sending their young men and priests to be educated. But afterwards the Jesuits, who are ever the uncompromising enemies of Protestantism, secretly stirred up the Armenian and Greek leaders against the missionaries and their work, whom they now began to regard with suspicion and envy. Even among the Armenian priests and college-men were those who, though they at first persecuted the Protestants, became not only their stanchest friends, but also earnest workers for the cause of Christ.” The above quotation from a native writer is well supported by the following statement of an American writer, a returned missionary of the American Board: