“I do not believe that in the whole history of missions; I do not believe that in the history of diplomacy, or in the history of any negotiations carried on between man and man, we can find anything to equal the wisdom, the soundness, and the pure evangelical truth of the body of men who constitute the American mission. I have said it twenty times before, and I will say it again—for the expression appropriately conveys my meaning—that ‘they are a marvelous combination of common sense and piety.’ Every man who comes in contact with these missionaries speaks in praise of them. Persons in authority, and persons in subjection, all speak in their favor; travelers speak well of them; and I know of no man who has ever been able to bring against that body a single valid objection. There they stand, tested by years, tried by their works, and exemplified by their fruits; and I believe it will be found that these American missionaries have done more toward upholding the truth and spreading the gospel of Christ in the East, than any other body of men in this or in any other age.” Mr. William T. Stead once said, “How many American citizens, I wonder, are aware that from the slopes of Mount Ararat all the way to the shores of the Blue Ægean Sea, American missionaries have scattered broadcast over all the distressful land the seed of American principles. When General Mosseloff, the director of foreign faiths within the Russian empire, visited Etchmiadzin the Armenian patriarch spread before him the map of Asia Minor, which was marked all over with American colleges, American churches, American schools, American missions. They (the American missionaries) are busy everywhere, teaching, preaching, begetting new life in these Asiatic races.” —From “Memoirs of William Goodell.” Industrially Turkey was ages behind even at the beginning of the last century. Practically nothing modern had entered the country from without and found acceptance there. The agricultural implements in use were of the same primitive character as those of two thousand or more years before. The plow of Abraham’s day, made of the branch of a tree and only scratching the surface of the soil, was the only plow known, and it is not by any means extinct. The winds of the plains winnowed the grain, and the old threshing instruments with teeth still performed its ancient service upon the threshing-floors of earth. In some respects the people were more jealous to guard their methods of work than they were their beliefs. It was found, however, that when a man had enlarged the horizon of his thinking, he was far more susceptible to suggestions as to his method of living and working.