Then came the reaction against the evangelicals. The more ignorant and bigoted of the clergy looked with terror upon the influx of light among the common people. It seemed to promise only harm to ecclesiastics who had not, and cared not to have, spiritual understanding of the priestly duty. The reactionary party gained the control of the church, they secured the imprisonment and banishment of the evangelical leaders in the Armenian Church, and the excommunication and cruel persecution of all among the laity who persisted in claiming the right to read the Bible and to judge by it of the value of the usages of the ancient church. Der Kevork was one of the pious priests imprisoned in 1839 and banished to a remote part of Asia Minor. The whole hope of reform in the Armenian Church seemed to be destroyed. The Sultan made a proclamation against the Protestants as enemies of the peace of the empire; the ecclesiastics, citing the fact that Dr. Hamlin did not make the sign of the cross or fast, officially asked for his expulsion from Bebek; the American Episcopal missionary added fuel to the flame by translating into Armenian, for the edification of the reactionary party among the clergy, passages from the Missionary Herald, which he claimed showed a purpose to break up the church, and in print and in speech he denounced the missionaries of the Board as infidels and "radicals." All these circumstances had their influence upon the mind of Der Kevork, and by the time this terrible persecution had led in 1846 to the organization of a separate evangelical church at Constantinople, Der Kevork had decided to make his peace with his own church and to break off relations with the missionaries. In doing this he did violence to his conscience. But his hope that still he might be able to aid in reforming his church from within, offers sufficient justification for charity towards this pious priest. It was long before Der Kevork ventured to renew intimate relations with the missionaries and the evangelical Armenians. I can remember, forty years ago, being taken by my father to see Der Kevork in his home in Hasskeuy. There was evident constraint in their conversation, but the old affection of twenty years before still existed. And when the old man--for his beard even then was white as snow--laid his hand on my head and said, "God bless you, my son, and make you a good man!" it was like a blessing from a man of God.