History of the missions of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions to the oriental churches, Volume II.Anderson, Rufus
Religion
History of the missions of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions to the oriental churches, Volume II.
Anderson, Rufus
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; Missions -- Eastern churches
How wonderful this progression of events! So far as the central
government was concerned, missionaries might print, gather schools,
form churches, ordain pastors, and send forth other laborers,
wherever they pleased. Attention had been awakened, and there was a
disposition to inquire, renounce errors, and embrace gospel truths.
There was a progressive change in fundamental ideas; a gradual
reconstruction of the social system; a spiritual reformation. At
least fifty places were known, scattered over Asiatic Turkey, in all
of which souls had been converted through the truth, and where
churches might be gathered. Ten churches had been formed already,
and in part supplied with pastors. Aintab, scarcely known by name
five years before, numbered more Protestants than even the
metropolis, and was becoming one of the most interesting missionary
stations in the world.
In this remarkable series of results we recognize the hand of God,
who makes all earthly agencies subservient to the great work of
redemption; so that secular agencies come as legitimately into the
history of the republication of the Gospel in Bible lands, as do the
labors of the missionaries. They were among the ordained means; and
the leading agents cannot fail to command our grateful admiration.
The danger at this time was, that the reformation so auspiciously
begun, would pass its grand crisis before the central lights had
grown bright enough, and a knowledge of the Gospel been sufficiently
diffused in the empire. There was everywhere a curiosity to know
what Protestantism was, and to hear what the missionaries had to
say; but this curiosity, regarded as a national feeling, was in
danger of dying out. In the year 1851, the President of the National
Council of the Armenians said to Mr. Dwight: "Now is the time for
you to work for the Armenian people. Such an opportunity as you now
enjoy may soon pass away, and never more return. You should greatly
enlarge your operations. Where you have one missionary, you should
have ten; and where you have one book, you should put ten in
circulation." Constantinople, Smyrna, Broosa, Trebizond, Erzroom,
and Aintab, were already occupied as stations. It was proposed at
once to occupy Sivas, Arabkir, Diarbekir, and Aleppo. Mr. Adger,
after a laborious and most useful service in the literary department
of the mission, was constrained, by his health, in 1847, to retire
from the field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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