"The word of God," continues Mr. Parsons, "was his constant companion. He was so familiar with it, that he could turn with facility to any passage desired. He walked with God. He was a man of prayer. His happiest moments were seasons of devotion--private, social, and public. I should say, rather, that next to the work of bringing others to Christ, his delight was in prayer and praise. He has rested from his labors, but his works do follow him. Before he died, he could rejoice in a rich harvest from his own sowing, but a greater harvest is yet to be reaped from the seed so widely scattered by his hand. He has gone, a sheaf of the first-fruits of the work in Baghchejuk. He 'came to his grave as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.'" Mr. E. E. Bliss passed through Marsovan on his way to Harpoot, and found that the rampant hostility of eight years before had died out.[1] Instead of the hootings and stonings, which then greeted his arrival, he was met, a long way out, by a goodly company to escort him to his lodgings. On the Sabbath, in place of the little company assembled in a lower room of his own house, he now preached to a good audience, in a large and commodious chapel. [1] See chapter xxiv. "I spent," he says, "a few days at Sivas, where I was eight years ago, and found the small room, where ten or fifteen then met for God's worship, exchanged for a large upper room, filled with an audience of more than a hundred. And as we went onward to places we had never before visited, it was a continual feast to see the extent to which the work of God had spread in the whole country. In almost every place where we stopped for the night, however obscure the village, some would gather around us as brethren in the Lord. They were often coarsely dressed and rude of speech, undistinguishable in appearance from the mass around them; but a few words of conversation would show that their souls had been illuminated by the truth." The annual meeting of the Northern Armenian Mission for 1860, was held at Harpoot, east of the Euphrates, seven hundred and fifty miles from Constantinople. And it was a significant fact, that the delegates from the metropolis were able to communicate with their families over the telegraph wires, destined to connect London with Calcutta. The distance from the capital, and of the stations from each other was so great, as to render it difficult to assemble in the annual meetings, that were indispensable for an effective administration. At this meeting, what had been known as the Northern Mission, was divided into Western and Eastern, and Erzroom, Harpoot, and Arabkir composed the Eastern Mission. The Southern Mission then took the name of the Central; and the stations of the Assyria Mission were united to the Eastern. It will be convenient to use the names Western, Central, and Eastern in designating territory, but we shall, as far as possible, treat the three divisions as constituting one great mission.