The seminary at Bebek was begun just as the persecution of the evangelicals at the capital was becoming acute. Early in his career Dr. Hamlin was impressed with the fact that the school must succeed in the face of direct opposition from Russia. During his first year in the mission, while he was learning the Armenian language, his teacher was suddenly seized at the order of the Russian ambassador and deported to Siberia. Dr. Hamlin and Dr. Schauffler repaired to the Russian embassy and protested against the high-handed proceeding. The ambassador haughtily replied, “My master, the emperor of Russia, will never allow Protestantism to set its foot in Turkey.” Dr. Schauffler, bowing low to the ambassador, gave the reply which has become historic, “Your excellency, the kingdom of Christ, who is my Master, will never ask the emperor of all the Russias where it may set its foot.” From that day to this, the covert as well as open opposition of Russia to missionary work in Turkey and, most especially, to all educational work, has been unremittingly experienced. Consistently has Russia adhered to the policy thus outlined and the opposition from that source to-day is as bitter as at any other period. Dr. Hamlin threw himself into the work of the seminary with all his intense and resourceful energy. Thwarted at a hundred points, he immediately changed his plans and appeared even to his persecutors to have gained the victory. For twenty years the work proceeded with emphasis upon industries when industrial persecutions were crushing the people, but always strenuous, and always supremely Christian and evangelical. He saw that a vernacular training was not sufficient for the full equipment of the young men under his care to prepare them for positions of largest leadership. The Jesuit schools taught their pupils French so that all their graduates knew a European language. As yet the Armenian literature was very circumscribed and most inadequate to meet the intellectual and spiritual requirements of intelligent directors of a great national reform movement. This was the opinion of Dr. Hamlin, shared, as he felt, by the great mass of the Armenian people. But he was not fully sustained in it by his colleagues in the mission. The American Board, under the leadership of its secretary, Dr. Anderson, had declared as its policy that mission schools should not teach English or any other language than the vernacular to their pupils. To Dr. Hamlin this seemed such a backward step that he resigned from the Board and began to work and plan for higher education among young men. The story of the building of the now famous Robert College under an imperial _irade_ from the sultan, and upon the most commanding site along the entire length of the Bosporus, is now so well known that it need not be repeated.