women's prayer-meetings, a Sunday-school, and two flourishing dayschools; and it has an average audience at its Sunday services of from four hundred to six hundred persons." An address of thanks to the Protestants for their protection of the society's work closes thus: "Respected brethren, that there may be good-will among all men, with one thought, one faith, let us beseech God that the gospel of Jesus Christ may be preached freely, and that his peace may speedily be spread through all the world. Amen." -The Central Turkey Girls' College, at Marash, reports: "On the Sabbath of June 14th, a congregation of not less than fifteen hundred listened to the baccalaureate sermon preached by Rev. Simon Terzeyan to our graduates, in the yard of the Third Church, from the text found in Psalm cxliv. 12. The following Friday, June 19th, was devoted to the closing exercises of our school. Four hours of the morning were given to recitations in which the senior class had special opportunity given for review of their recent studies,— algebra, 'Evidences of Christianity,' and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Their essays in the afternoon, the presentation of the diplomas to the class of four, the pleasing and instructive remarks of our visitors, - all were of the peculiar interest ever connected with the first graduates of a college. We trust that the blessings of the present may continue, and a widening influence for good extend through the future of the Central Turkey Girls' College.' The report says: "We believe that all our girls have begun the Christian life." -The Aintab Girls' Seminary, under the care of Misses Pierce and West, reports the graduation last year of a class of nine, six of whom were professing Christians. There has been a spiritual awakening during the year, and nearly if not quite all the girls in the first and second classes are hoping in Christ. The government opposition to the erection of new buildings has been finally withdrawn, and the work of construction has gone on. The tragico-comic hindrances to female education in Turkey are spiritedly presented. "During the week we found, to our disgust, that girls whom we thought eligible for the school were also upon the matrimonial market.' They had, many of them, been at our school the previous year, and learned to read and write and add a little, and had memorized a few Bible stories and learned how to sew a little or do fancy work, and so thought themselves quite learned. Their mothers, utterly ignorant of books, thought them quite oracular, and inquired if we wished to make priests' of their children. Some were 'too large to be seen in the streets,' some were 'engaged,' or just going to be: that is to say, the doting father was negotiating with some unprincipled youth, offering various sums of money as dowry, to get him willing to take his dear daughter already too old to be sought in marriage,' having spent fifteen or sixteen years in this weary world! Perhaps at that very moment the tender mother was expressing her attachment to her beloved offspring by conferring with some neighboring woman anxious to get a young bride into the house to do her washing, scrubbing, and other drudgery. The relation of the young bride to the mother-in-law is that of a menial to an exacting mistress." This is at Adana, where missionary labor is beginning. Here is what Miss Tucker says of Marash, where, at the outset, things were no better. "I came to address the women of the three congregations in the First Church on Sunday. There was a congregation of about five or six hundred women present, and a more appreciative audience it would be hard to find. It is comforting and encouraging to see the bright, earnest, intelligent faces of so many women, the result of twenty years of hard missionary work. Last week they had an open meeting of a native missionary society that Miss Spencer helped in forming. Three of the married women read essays that would have done credit to women in similar circumstances in America. The homes here in Marash are far superior to those of any other city,' town, or village that I have seen in Turkey. The Girls' College here is an ideal institution." - At Smyrna the Greeks, though jealous of Protestantism, seem to have fallen upon an honorable and commendable way of expressing the fact. George Constantine writes: "We are still watched with a jealous eye; our audiences are closely scanned and dealt with in private; everything that can be done, without open violence, is done to destroy our influence. The archbishop is preaching every Sunday and fête day; also the Archbishop of Caesarea, who is visiting here, preaches every Sunday. Two other bishops, who were here awhile ago, were also pressed into the service of preaching. A lady in the neighborhood has opened a Sunday-school, and a high-school teacher is doing the same, while a society of over two hundred members has been formed in order to provide regular preaching in the city. So that you see some good comes even from the opposition. Our services also are well attended, and cases of personal interest are not wanting." - C. C. Tracy, at Marsovan, referring to former friction, says: "You can imagine how happy we are in the righted relations now existing between us and our native brethren." -F. T. Shepard, M. D., writes from Aintab. "The most interesting occasion of the week of annual meeting was the celebration of the Lord's Supper, upon Sunday, June 28th, in the First Church, the Aintab churches uniting in the service. Mr. Christie preached the sermon. There were, by a careful estimate, nearly 1,000 communicants present, and the hour was a very precious one to us all. My heart has not been so uplifted since I came to Turkey." -The Missionary Herald" for November has a map and geographical notices of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, from which we learn that of the ten millions of the upper Principality, sixty-seven per cent. are found by the last census to be Bulgarians, and twenty-five per cent. Turks. The area is 24,000 square miles; that of Eastern Roumelia 14,000. The united Bulgaria would therefore be almost as large as Ohio. Eastern Roumelia has a very small relative population, only 850,000, of whom nearly three fourths are Bulgarians. The American Board has a station at Samokov in Bulgaria, Philippolis in Eastern Roumelia, and Monastir in Macedonia. But "between the hammer and the anvil" as the three provinces are now, it is to be feared that inter arma silebit evangelium.— From the review of the last twenty-five years, in the "Missionary Herald" for November, we learn that since 1860 the number of Protestant churches gathered by American missionaries in Turkey (and Persia) has increased from 49 to 149; the membership from 1,696 to 11,263. The high-school pupils have increased from 216 to 2,500; the commonschool pupils from 6,000 to about 20,000. - Mr. Tracy, at Marsovan, gives one of those little sketches of innermost Christian worth which it is worth whole years of labor to be able to report. "Sunday we buried one of the excellent of the earth, the mother of a large and prominent family. She had no education, made no pretensions, never wore an ornament, was always seen at the prayer meetings, had a little private income, the whole of which she gave to the poor, of whom she thought far more than of herself. When she prepared provision for her household, she always prepared a portion for the poor also; when she made grape sugar, she made some for her poor neighbors; when she made sweetmeats, she set aside a part for such as are too poor to taste sweets. She always took the lowest place, but her sons and grandchildren instinctively rose up whenever she entered. She never said a smart thing, but the street could hardly contain the crowd that came to her funeral. She had not accomplishments nor beauty, yet the city weeps over her grave. Her children kept each a memento, and gave all the rest of her things to the poor. How beautiful!" President Wheeler, of Harpoot, under date of July 30th, makes the following cheering report from the College: "I am glad to say that the year just closed has been a more successful one than any preceding year, not only in the number of the pupils, but financially and intellectually, and I may add also religiously. The male department has had 42 primary, 62 intermediate, 48 high-school, 38 college, and 6 theological students a total of 196; and the female department, 48 primary, 35 intermediate, 23 high-school, and 21 college students, a total of 127; giving in both departments a total of 323. . . . Of the classes of thirteen young men and three young women who were graduated July 9th, all but three being apparently followers of Christ, nearly all go at once into active service in our own or in neighboring mission fields, one having gone to Salmas, in Persia, taking with him over 700 volumes from our College press, to begin a school among the Armenians on that plain. One of the young men has gone to open a high school in Kurdistan. . . . The classes to be graduated during the next two years are much smaller. Next year we shall graduate a small class from the theological department." - At the seventy-sixth annual meeting of the Board, the Committee on the Missions in the Turkish Empire, Rev. W. H. Ward, D. D., chairman, presented a report containing the following remarks: "Turkey is peopled by races of great physical and intellectual force, and the possibility, nay, the certainty, of a great empire lies in that land. . . . There is needed only just that religious education which we are giving Turkey, and out of which states are now being born in European Turkey and shall be born south of the Bosphorus. . . . We are glad to find the relation between the missionaries and the Protestant communities of Constantinople considerably improved by the happy results of the commission. sent there two years ago. .. During the year, our churches have been somewhat distracted, if not weakened, by the schismatic efforts of Baptist and Disciple preachers. Our thanks are due to our noble sister, the Baptist Missionary Union, for honorably discouraging this invasion. . . Robert College has made a self-governed Bulgaria possible. Who will venture to divine what similarly equipped institutions in Aintab, Harpoot, Marsovan, Mardin, and Midyat... may not do for the Turkish, Armenian, Arabic, and Syriac-speaking peoples of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia? . . . The work of the Board in Turkey, with its tremendous import for one of the future great Christian empires of the world, calls not for retrenchment, but for efficient enterprise and great enlargement. We add that great outrages, murders and robberies and other impositions have been committed upon our missionaries in Turkey, which have never been properly atoned by the Turkish government, and for which our own government has never properly sought redress. We wish to ex ... press our serious judgment that a much more energetic policy is required, we do not say for the protection of the missionaries, but for the honor of the country." Dr. Elias Riggs, on account of the increasing feebleness of his wife, has felt obliged to remove from Constantinople to Aintab, where she may have the more immediate care of her daughter, Mrs. Trowbridge. As Dr. Wood says: "What a missionary career has that of Dr. and Mrs. Riggs been! Six years in Greece, twenty-three (including a visit to the United States) in Smyrna, and twenty-seven in Constantinople, fifty-three years of patient, steady work in these lands, with only one vacation for a season to Dr. Riggs in his native land! ... It is cheering to know that, though Constantinople is the field of special adaptation to Dr. Riggs's high qualifications for literary labors, he will be able to be greatly useful, as his strength may allow, with the pen, and by instruction of students, in the sphere to which divine Providence has removed him.". Rev. George A. Ford writes from Sidon, October 4th: "The Sultan is now putting forth his hand to vex certain of our schools, in pursuance of the policy whereby he hopes to break up all foreign missions in his empire, in hope to save his prestige. . . . The days of consular influence, for the protection of missionary interests, are past in Syria.... We would record with gratitude that with the five governors. whose seats are within our district we stand on pleasant terms, so that our dealings with them are comparatively easy." Mr. Ford says that the rights of the people are much better secured, and robbery very much more rigorously suppressed than formerly, though unhappily taxes have become heavier. Dr. Jessup writes, in March, that the government had closed four of their schools in the Hasson district of the Tripoli field. In another letter Dr. Jessup throws additional light on the unfavorable change in the temper of the Turkish government. "The missionary work in Turkey is passing through a critical period. The reactionary party among the Turkish public men is at length thoroughly alarmed. Men everywhere are beginning to think, and thinking men do not suit despotisms. They do not like the independent American way of doing things. They are even suppressing native literary societies, formed by young men of different sects for mutual improvement. In Constantinople the authorities have forbidden Bible colportage, and on what ground? On the ground that the authorities have so great reverence for the Bible that they cannot bear to see it hawked about as if it were merchandise." -A striking commentary on one aspect of missionary influence in Syria is given in the words of the Mohammedan husband of a Mohammedan wife who had been taught by a native Christian woman. He called on her to thank her for having trained his wife so well. Said he to the husband: "I wish to tell you that I am a rough man; have been in all kinds of iniquity. When I married I expected to beat and abuse my wife, and then to divorce her. But, sir, this girl won my love. Our three children are the best behaved in the neighborhood. I have no other wife." Indeed, of all the numerous Moslem girls thus taught not one has been divorced, and, so far as known, each one has remained the sole wife. - Elder Ibrahim Sarkis, of the church at Beirut, who died during the year, is known as a writer of choice Arabic hymns. "He was respected and beloved to an extraordinary degree, and all sects Protestants, Greeks, Maronites, Moslems - mourned his death and gathered at his funeral to honor his memory.' Rome certainly owes an account to the world of her stewardship over the little church of the Maronites. A party of them lately appeared in the Protestant church at Tripoli, Syria, of whom some "had never so much as heard of Christ.” — Dr. H. H. Jessup says: "From the prime minister downward, the policy is reac tionary and fanatical. And yet, with all this, Turkey is more liberal than Russia, and less repressive than Austria." - Dr. Thomson (says the "Foreign Missionary "), secretary of the British Foreign Bible Society at Constantinople, notes it as an encouraging fact that when Dr. Somerville was in Constantinople, at every succeeding meeting the number of his Mussulman hearers went on increasing, until on one occasion there were as many as fifty, and most of them hodjas, or authorized teachers of the faith. The fact is, that, in the capital, more Scriptures are sold to Mohammedans than to any other class of the population." No wonder, then, that the auguries as to the future drawn by Dr. Van Dyck and Dr. W. H. Ward and Sir Wilfrid Blunt are gloomily reëchoed in the mind of the Constantinopolitan Caliph.It is fortunate, in view of this increasing sale of the Scriptures among the Turks, that "a greatly needed and most opportune revision of the Turkish Bible" has been completed. Great pains have been taken with this, both as to substance and as to style. "More than ever is there arising and deepening an interest in books and reading among the Turks. The possession of an attractive, intelligible, interesting book is in itself an object of their desire." - The "Herald" for February, 1886, calls attention to the various ways in which the freedom of conscience promised by the hatti humayoun of 1856 and the Berlin declaration of 1878 is violated. One is that the pagan Nusirayehs of Syria, many of whom are now Christianized, are all registered as Moslems, and restrained, in the army, from Christian worship. In Asia Minor, Mehmed Effendi, who, with his fifteen pupils, had embraced the gospel, was, with them, forced into the army, contrary to the privileges of the literary class. What has become of them no Christian is allowed to know. The Protestant civil community, whose vekil or civil head resigned two years ago, has not since been permitted to elect one, and is thus deprived of its effective organization. The rights of Protestant education, and, finally, of Protestant worship, have, even in the pettiest villages, been denied, except on condition of direct authorizations from the Porte; all in thorough accord with what is said above of the determination of Abdul Hamid to magnify the religious side of his sovereignty. The "Foreign Missionary" remarks that the earnest spirit of the Syrophoenician woman still lingers around "the coasts of Tyre and Sidon." At Joon the largest contribution to the church was made this year by a female servant, who gave fifteen hundred piastres. At Mejdel and Ain Kunyeh the school buildings were violently closed by the government, and the latter is still closed. The "Foreign Missionary" also speaks of "the rapidly growing hatred of the government for foreign influences, and Moslem jealousy of Christian education. These illegal interferences begin at points far removed from consular observation; do not originate with the local authorities, but are the result of pressure from Constantinople. This is the great shadow, every year gathering blackness, which now overhangs our whole mission work in Syria." - PERSIA. - The native Christians have received from the Shah a contribution of eight hundred dollars towards the building of a new church. -The missionaries of the Presbyterian Board testify warmly to the zeal of the Hon. S. G. W. Benjamin, lately our Minister to Persia, in the maintenance of their rights as United States citizens. No doubt his suc |