Peshtimaljian, the head of the school, was an uncommon man. His inquisitive mind was ever gaining knowledge, and what he acquired his memory retained. He was a critical and accurate scholar in the language and literature of his nation, and made himself familiar with the theology and history of the Eastern and Romish Churches, and with the general history of the Church from the earliest ages. He was able to quote from the Scriptures with wonderful facility and accuracy. His confidence in the Bible, as the true Word of God and the only standard of faith, had indeed been shaken for a while by his disgust with the superstitions of his Church, and by the low character of many of its clergy, but he had recovered from this. Though timid and cautious to a fault, like Erasmus, and sometimes open to the charge of time-serving, he gradually led his pupils into new paths of inquiry, until they came to believe that the Church not only may err, but that it had actually erred in many of its teachings. Peshtimaljian became convinced at length, that his pupils were consistently carrying out the principles they had learned from him, and he strongly, though still privately, encouraged them in their labors for the spiritual good of their countrymen. Until his death, which occurred in 1837, he was the friend of the missionaries, and had much intercourse with them; though he never acquired the courage distinctly to avow himself an evangelical man. Up to that time, however, there had been no open persecution of the followers of Christ, and consequently no formal separation of the evangelical brethren from the Armenian community. All the first converts in Constantinople, and many of the later ones, were from his school. There can be no doubt that, owing to these and other less apparent causes, there was a preparation in the Armenian mind of Turkey for the reception of divine truth, before the arrival of the American missionaries. Though more evident at the capital than in the provinces, there seems to have been some degree of this preparation wherever Armenians were found. In this respect, there was a marked difference among that people, as compared with Jews and Greeks. The common people, where not intimidated by the clergy, almost everywhere heard the Word with gladness; and it was so with many of the parochial priests, when not dreading the wrath of their superiors. In all this we should gratefully acknowledge an overruling Providence in the ordering of events, and the divine agency of the Holy Spirit, making it apparent that the "fullness of time" had come for the entering in of evangelical missionaries.