Читать книгу History of the American Foreign Missions to the Oriental Churches - Rufus Anderson - Страница 16

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1824–1844.

When the missions to the Oriental Churches were commenced, Greece was suffering under the oppression of the Turks, and the people were glad of sympathy from any quarter. In the department of education, they seemed even to welcome Protestant missionaries. They compared favorably with the Roman Catholics, in their reception of the Scriptures, and in the matter of religious toleration. But an unfavorable change came over them after they had achieved their national independence.

Mr. Gridley was the first missionary to labor among the Greeks of Turkey, though he was not sent with special reference to them. He arrived at Smyrna in December, 1826. After acquiring the modern Greek, he visited Cesarea, four hundred miles to the eastward, hoping for better advantages in acquiring the Greco-Turkish language, and also to learn the condition of the Greeks in the interior. He was accompanied by Abraham, his teacher, a well-informed native of Cappadocia, and for two months applied himself to his studies, until admonished of danger by the frequent recurrence of headaches. Finding that these yielded to exercise, he deemed it prudent to execute a purpose he had long cherished of ascending Mount Argeus, from the top of which, according to Strabo, the Black and Mediterranean Seas might both be discerned in a clear day. Outstripping his attendants, Mr. Gridley mounted with great agility till he reached an elevation within three or four hundred feet of the highest summit, when he was prevented from advancing farther by the steepness of the ascent. There, in the region of perpetual snow, he remained a quarter of an hour, but could not discover the objects he had specially in view. The height of the mountain he estimated at thirteen thousand feet. Descending rapidly, he was overpowered with fatigue when he reached his companions, and they were soon after exposed to a violent storm of hail and rain. The headache soon returned with increasing violence, and was followed by fever, so insidious in its progress as at no time to suggest to him his danger. His death occurred on the 27th of September, fifteen days after the ascent, and a year after leaving his native land.

Thus he fell at the age of thirty-one, and at the very commencement of his career. The predominant characteristics of Mr. Gridley were resolution, promptness, and generosity. In all the duties of a Christian missionary, he was indefatigable in no ordinary degree, and his early removal was very trying.

The cause of education naturally became prominent at the outset of a mission among the Greeks. Scio was the seat of their most favored college, and when the people of that ill-fated island fled from the murderous sword of the Turks, some of the families sought refuge in Malta. There were bright youths among them, and six of these, and two from other Greek islands, so interested Messrs. Fisk and Temple, that they obtained permission to send them home, to be educated chiefly at the expense of the Board. This was before the results of the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall had become manifest. Three others arrived in 1826, and one in 1828; and nearly all received a liberal education, either at Amherst or Yale. Evangelinos Sophocles, from Thessaly, who came last, has long held the honorable position of a Professor in Harvard University. Four others—Anastatius Karavelles, Nicholas Petrokokino, Alexander G. Paspati, and Gregory Perdicaris, were useful to the mission at different times after their return to the East. Several young men from the Armenian nation were likewise educated in the United States, and one of these, Hohannes, was until his death, a useful minister of the gospel among his countrymen. But the conclusion on the whole, to which the Board came, both in respect to Greeks and Armenians, was that a native agency must be trained in the country where it is to be employed.

The return of Mr. King to Greece, in 1829, has been mentioned. During the visit of Mr. Smith and myself to the island of Poros, in July of that year, he was united in marriage to a young Smyrniote lady, whose acquaintance he had formed some years before, while detained there on his return from Syria. Though Tenos was one of the more bigoted of the Greek islands, nearly every person of standing in the place called upon the newly married couple. A Greek priest sent a pair of doves, and soon followed with his blessing. It was this marriage which, in the providence of God, kept Mr. King in Greece until the close of his long and useful life.

Mr. King opened a school for girls in Poros, and the chief men sent their daughters to it. The town was noted for a modern church, called the Evangelistria, which, though built during the revolution, was the most showy edifice in Greece. It was the annual resort of hundreds of pilgrims, chiefly the lame, sick, and lunatic, who were brought there to be cured. It was the centre of modern Grecian superstition; as Delos, in full view of the church, had been in ancient times.

After some months, the trustees of the church became alarmed for their craft, and made vigorous efforts to destroy the school. Some of the scholars were withdrawn, one of the teachers was compelled to leave, and the school-books were denounced as heretical. Through the whole commotion Mr. King held on his way with characteristic calmness, teaching and praying in the school as aforetime, and freely expounding the Scriptures, every Lord's day, to more than fifty of his pupils and a number of their friends. Two of the most prominent inhabitants espoused his cause; and, just in the crisis of the difficulty, he received a box of ancient Greek books from the government, as a present to the school. Soon after, there appeared in the government gazette a commendation of the school and of its course of instruction. From that time, opposition from members of the Greek Church seems to have ceased. A handsome donation of school-books, slates, and pencils was made by the Greek School Committee in New York, and forwarded to the President of Greece, through the American Board. It was gratefully acknowledged by the government.

In the autumn of 1830, Mr. King, anticipating the evacuation of Athens by the Turks, made a visit to that city, then a ruin, and arranged for his future residence. In April of the next year, having resumed his connection with the American Board, he made a second visit, and opened a Lancasterian school for both sexes; placing a Greek, named Nikotoplos, at the head of it, who was author of an epitome of the Gospels. The school was soon filled. He purchased from a Turk, with private funds and at a nominal cost, the ruins of a stone edifice with a garden, and there built himself a home, to which he removed his family. He also purchased for a few hundred dollars, while the city was still in Turkish hands, about an acre of land delightfully situated, on which he subsequently erected a building for a young ladies' school of a high order.

Capodistrias, the President, was assassinated about this time by two men belonging to one of the first families in Greece. The protecting powers required that his successor be a king, and a Bavarian prince named Otho was put upon the throne of the new kingdom in 1833. The Acropolis of Athens was soon after delivered up to its rightful owners, and that event consummated the emancipation of Greece from Turkish rule. A cabinet was formed, of which Tricoupis, a Greek gentleman of patriotic and enlightened views, was the president. Athens became the seat of government in 1834.

The Rev. Elias Riggs arrived as a missionary, with his wife, in January, 1833, and was cordially welcomed not only by his associate, but also by the brethren of the American Episcopal mission. Mr. Riggs had paid much attention to the modern Greek, and was pleased with Dr. King's manner of preaching on the Sabbath, and with his familiar exposition of the Scriptures in his flourishing Hellenic school.¹ There were now two schools, called the "Elementary School" and the "Gymnasium;" the latter having a well-arranged course of study for four years, corresponding, as far as circumstances would permit, with the studies of a New England college. The subsequent removal of the government gymnasium from Ægina to Athens, necessarily interfered with this, but until that removal it was a popular institution, with sixty scholars. An examination was held in 1834 for three days in Ancient Greek, Geography, History, Geometry, Algebra, the Philosophy of Language, and the Holy Scriptures; the King and the bishop of the city being among the persons present.

Mr. Riggs, after visiting the more important places in the Peloponnesus, decided upon commencing a station at Argos, which he did in 1834. The great body of the Greek people at that time, were kindly disposed toward the missionaries and their efforts; but it was becoming evident, that the jealousy of the clergy was on the increase, and that the hierarchy had great facilities for exerting an adverse influence. The Church in Greece, no longer subject to the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople, was under the government of the "Holy Council of the kingdom of Greece;" which was required to guard the clergy and schools against heresy, and report to the government any attempt at proselyting. No school could be established without permission from the government, nor without such permission could any teacher instruct, even in private families. No books could be sold or given away in any place, without obtaining a license for that place, and strong guards were thrown around the press. But whatever the restrictions on schools and the press, the way was open for circulating the Scriptures, and for enforcing repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. In the three years from 1834 to 1836, Dr. King sold and gratuitously distributed nearly nine thousand New Testaments in modern Greek, and eighty-seven thousand school-books and religious tracts.

The "Holy Council" now took decided ground against the version of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, declaring that the Septuagint alone was to be regarded as the canonical translation, to be read in the churches and used for religious instruction. This did not forbid nor prevent the free circulation of the Old Testament in modern Greek among individuals for their private use.

Dark intrigues were employed to arouse the popular feeling. A letter against "the Americans," as all missionaries were called, purporting to have been written from Syra, was printed in pamphlet form at Paris and sent to Greece, where it attracted much attention. This was followed by repeated attacks from a newspaper edited by one Germanos. Pretended revelations and miracles at Naxos inflamed the zeal of the ignorant and superstitious. Professed eye-witnesses circulated absurd stories, of girls in the school at Syra being made "Americans" by sealing them on the arm; that one of them refused to be sealed, and two horns grew out of her head; and of a boy taken into a dark room to catechize him, where he saw the devil, and was frightened out of his senses. It was said, moreover, that the object of the missionaries was to change the religion of the country, while they hypocritically professed the contrary; though neither word nor deed of any missionary of the Board was made the pretext for any of these accusations. By such means mobs were raised, and the schools of Syra were, for a time, broken up. Yet the local authorities were generally prompt in putting down riots, and Germanos was arrested, and sent to a distant monastery. Dr. King's congregation on the Sabbath, gradually increased, and there was never a time when he disposed of more New Testaments, school-books, and tracts.

In 1835, a station was commenced by the Rev. Samuel R. Houston on the island of Scio. He found the people friendly, and the island slowly recovering from its ruins. Professor Bambas subsequently expressed the opinion to Dr. King, that Samos was a more desirable place, since the better class of Sciotes would never return to Scio to live under Turkish rule. The station was not continued. In 1837, Mr. Houston, with the Rev. George W. Leyburn, who had been sent out to join him, made a tour of observation in Máne, the ancient Sparta, to see if a station ought not to be formed there, in compliance with repeated solicitations from Petron Bey, the hereditary chief in that region. Indeed, in view of causes beyond the control of missionary societies, the Prudential Committee began to feel themselves compelled to pass by the Grecian Islands in great measure, and concentrate their efforts on the main lands.

The station at Argos was strengthened in 1836, by the arrival of Rev. Nathan Benjamin and wife. The two girls' schools in that place contained from seventy to one hundred pupils. In the following year, as Argos was declining in population and intelligence in consequence of the removal of the seat of government from Napoli, it was decided that Mr. Benjamin should remove to Athens, and Mr. Riggs to Smyrna.

The district, which the brethren from Scio had specially in view, was exceedingly uninviting to an observer from the sea; where it seemed to be only a mass of rocky cliffs and mountains, gradually rising from the sea to St. Elias, the highest peak of Taygetus. Yet among these rocks were upwards of a hundred villages, containing from thirty to forty thousand souls. Many of these were probably of true Spartan descent, and they had always maintained a degree of independence. The old Bey of Máne had prepared the way for the two brethren by letters from Athens, where he then resided, and they were gladly received, and soon decided on removing their families to Ariopolis; situated on the western slope of the mountain ridge, and the chief town of the province of Laconia. The two families arrived in May, 1837, and were soon joined by Dr. Gallatti, who had been a faithful friend and helper at Scio. A large house was immediately erected for a Lancasterian school; but no teacher for such a school could be found, since no one was allowed to teach in Greece, except in Ancient Greek, without a diploma from the government; and all was under the superintendent of public schools, who would allow no one to serve the mission. Yet there were hundreds of boys playing about in the streets, who at a moment's notice would have rushed in for instruction, and whose parents would have rejoiced to see them there. A teacher was not obtained until October, 1839, and then only with the aid of Mr. Perdicaris, the American consul; but before the end of the year, the pupils numbered one hundred and seventy, filling the house. Among them was a youth named Kalopothakes, a native of the place, who afterwards became the bold friend and efficient helper of Dr. King. A school for teaching ancient Greek with thirty scholars, had been in operation a year or more. King Otho visited the place early in 1838, and commended the school. The descendants of the ancient Spartans boasted that he was the first monarch they had ever permitted to tread their soil.

Mrs. Houston being threatened with consumption, her husband took her to Alexandria, and afterwards to Cairo, where she died peacefully, on the 24th of November, 1839. After depositing her remains in the Protestant burying-ground at Alexandria, the bereaved husband and father returned, with his child, to his station in Greece, and in the following year visited his native land.

The Greek mission was always affected more or less by the changes of political parties. The missionaries carefully refrained from intermeddling with politics, but every political party had more or less of a religious basis, having something to do with the question, whether a religious reform should be permitted. Early in 1840 the government discovered the existence of a secret association, called the "Philorthodox," one object of which was to preserve unchanged all the formality and superstition which had crept into the Greek Church. It had both a civil and a military head, and was believed to be hostile to the existing government, and on the eve of attempting a religious revolution, by which all reform should be excluded. Several of the leaders were arrested; and the Russian Ambassador and Russian Secretary of Legation were both recalled, because of their connection with it. The leaders were brought to trial, but the society had influence enough to procure their acquittal. Its civil head was banished, and its military head was sent to Ægina for a military trial. The king then changed most of the members of the Synod, and more liberal ideas seemed to be gaining the ascendency.²

This reform was only partial and temporary. An order was issued by the government in the next year, requiring the Catechism of the Greek Church to be taught in all the Hellenic schools, and Mr. Leyburn was informed that this order applied to his school. The catechism inculcates the worship of pictures and similar practices, and the missionary decided, that he could not teach it himself, nor allow others to teach it in his school. A long negotiation followed, principally conducted by Dr. King. It was proposed that the government employ catechists to teach the catechism to the pupils in the church. The government assented on condition, that no religious instruction should be given in the school, meaning thereby to exclude even the reading of the New Testament; but the missionaries would neither consent to teach what they did not believe, nor to maintain a school from which religious instruction must be excluded. The school was therefore closed, and the station abandoned. It should be noted, that the school was not supported by the government, but by the friends of Greece in the United States, and that no impropriety was alleged on the part of the resident missionary.

As Mr. Leyburn must now leave Greece, and had not health to learn one of the languages of Western Asia, he returned home, with the consent of the Prudential Committee. His former associate, Mr. Houston, was then preparing to join the mission to the Nestorians in Persia, but the sudden failure of his wife's health prevented, and the two brethren afterwards became successful ministers of the Gospel in the Southern States, from which they had gone forth.

A station was commenced among the Greeks on the island of Cyprus in 1834, a year earlier than that on Scio. The Greek population of the island was reckoned at sixty thousand, and the pioneer missionary was the Rev. Lorenzo W. Pease, who arrived, with his wife, in the last month of the year. As it was proposed to make this a branch of the Syrian mission, Mr. Thomson came over from Beirût, and with Mr. Pease explored the island. They found no serious obstacles in the way of distributing the Scriptures and diffusing a knowledge of the Gospel, except in the unhealthiness of the climate. The most healthful location seemed to be Lapithos, a large village on the northwestern shore, two days' journey from Larnica. The village had a charming location, rising from the base of the mountain, and ascending the steep declivity a thousand feet. From thence perpendicular precipices arose, which sheltered it from the hot south winds. The coast of Caramania was in full view on the north, and refreshing breezes crossed the narrow channel which separated Cyprus from the main land. A magnificent fountain burst from the precipices above, the stream from which foamed through the village, and found its way across the narrow but fertile plain to the sea. This stream turned a number of mills in its descent, and a portion of it was distributed through the gardens, and there, tumbling from terrace to terrace, formed numerous beautiful and refreshing cascades.³

The Archbishop of Cyprus being independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the encyclical letter against Protestant missions known to have been received from the metropolis, produced no decided hostility. The mission was reinforced in 1836 by the arrival of Rev. Daniel Ladd and wife, and Rev. James L. Thompson. A Lancasterian school had been opened at Larnica with seventy pupils, and a school for educating teachers with fourteen. There was very great need of schools, it being ascertained that, in thirty-six villages between Larnica and Limasol, containing more than a thousand families and a population of more than five thousand, only sixty-seven, besides the priests, could read at all, and the priests not fluently. Among the reasons assigned for this were the burdensome taxes imposed upon the people, and especially on boys at the early age of twelve years, and the general poverty of the parents, constraining them to employ their sons on their farms, or in their oil-mills or wine-presses. Considering that not a place had yet been found, which was salubrious all the year round, and that the people were scattered in eight or nine villages, the missionaries began to despair of a vigorous concentration of their labors, and came to the conclusion, in the year 1837, that it was expedient to go to some more manageable field. The opposition from Constantinople made it expedient to disconnect the schools from the mission. There was, however, from the beginning, a friendly intercourse between the people, including the ecclesiastics, and the missionaries and books and tracts were received without hesitation. This with other considerations induced the missionaries to delay their departure. The funeral of a child of Mr. Pease was attended in one of the Greek churches, and the Greek priests led the way in the procession, chanting the funeral dirge, in which there was nothing exceptionable; leaving at home, out of deference to the father, the cross, the cherubim, and the incense.

In August, 1839, in consequence of remaining too long at Larnica, Mr. Pease was suddenly prostrated by fever, and soon closed his earthly career, at the early age of twenty-nine. He had made great proficiency in the modern Greek language, and looked forward with delight to its use in proclaiming the Gospel to the Greek people. Every month had raised him in the estimation of his brethren, and given new promise of his usefulness. Mrs. Pease returned to the United States, with her two children, in the spring of 1841. Mr. Thompson also returned at the close of the same year. Mr. and Mrs. Ladd were transferred to Broosa, in Turkey, where a large number of people spoke the Greek language.

Dr. King and Mr. Benjamin were the only remaining members of the mission in Greece in 1842, and they were residing at Athens. Though for some time without schools, the missionaries were usefully employed. The former preached regularly to a congregation of from thirty to one hundred attentive hearers, with a ready command of the Greek language, and in the manner of the most effective preaching in this country. He preached, also, by the wayside, at the same time distributing books and tracts. Writing in 1843, after stating that fifteen hundred young men, from all parts of Greece and Turkey, were in the schools and university of Athens, Dr. King adds: "And yet God, in his wonderful providence, has permitted me to stand here, and preach in the plainest manner, even to the present hour, without let or hindrance, and that, too, in the midst of a dreadful strife of tongues. I have heard it remarked by Greeks, how truly wonderful it is that my preaching should never have been attacked. I see many students and others, and converse with the greatest plainness, and I think some are persuaded of the truth." Mr. Benjamin was also doing much good in the department of Christian literature. The books prepared by himself and Dr. King were printed at Athens, and were more acceptable and influential for that reason, than if printed elsewhere and by mission presses. The number of copies printed previous to 1843, was 118,465, and of pages, 6,525,500.

The relinquishment of the station at Ariopolis was regarded by the Greeks as a public testimony against the errors of the Greek Church, and as an honest and consistent movement. Mr. Benjamin took the place of Dr. King in his absence, as a preacher, and found unexpected facility in so doing. It was a tribute to the Greek mind, that Mr. Benjamin commenced translating Butler's "Analogy" into the modern language.

In Turkey, Mr. Temple, Mr. Schneider, Mr. Riggs, and Mr. Ladd continued to labor mainly in the modern Greek language. Mr. Temple had charge of the press, with the efficient aid of Mr. Riggs in the Greek and Greco-Turkish. Mr. Van Lennep divided his time between the Greek and the Turkish. Mr. Temple edited the Greek "Monthly Magazine," aided by Mr. Petrokokino, one of the young men educated by the Board, to whose taste, talent, and zeal much of its popularity and usefulness were to be attributed. The periodical nearly paid for itself. The amount of printing in modern Greek will be fully stated at the close of these histories. In 1843, it was one million five hundred and fifty-six thousand pages. Several of the schools in Western Turkey were more or less open to Greek youth of both sexes. Mr. Schneider was able to preach with great facility and propriety in the modern language.

In the year 1844, the author made an official visit to Athens, accompanied by Dr. Joel Hawes, and a week was spent by them in free conference with Messrs. King and Benjamin. The conclusion was reached, that Mr. Benjamin should seek a wider sphere of usefulness among the Armenians of Turkey.

As the result of subsequent discussions with the missionaries residing at Smyrna, Broosa, and Constantinople, it was decided to cease in great measure from labor among the Greeks; but that Dr. King ought to remain at Athens, his position and relations being peculiar, as will appear in the subsequent history. From that time, Dr. King was the only missionary of the Board in Greece, until his lamented death in the year 1869.⁴ Messrs. Temple, Riggs, and Calhoun at Smyrna, and Messrs. Schneider and Ladd at Broosa, had made the Greek language their principal medium of intercourse with the people. Mr. Riggs having a rare aptitude for acquiring languages, had begun to edit works in the Bulgarian, Armenian, and Turkish languages.

The American Baptist Missionary Union placed two missionaries at Patras, on the Gulf of Corinth, in 1838. That station was discontinued in 1845, when Mr. Buel removed to the Piræus, the port of Athens, where he labored, in the most friendly relations with Dr. King, until 1855 or 1856, when the unsatisfactory results of the mission led to its discontinuance.

A like result had been practically reached by both the London and Church Missionary Societies of England. A deplorable change had come over the Greeks, both in Greece and Turkey, since the freedom of Greece from Turkish rule; and money, time, and labor could be more profitably expended on other equally needy populations in that part of the world. The old ambition for the recovery of Constantinople and the restoration of the Eastern Empire, had been quickened into life; and the unity of the Greek Church as a means to this end, was craftily kept before the minds of the people by Russian agency, and had a wonderful influence, especially among the higher classes. The national pride of the Greeks had also created an aversion to foreigners, and made it difficult for such to gain their confidence, or awaken their gratitude by acts of benevolence. Then there were the arrogant assumptions of the Greek Church, more exclusive than the Roman, claiming for her clergy the only apostolical succession, and that her trine immersion, performed by her clergy, was the only baptism, while all not thus baptized were beyond the hope of salvation. Of course all Protestant preachers, whether episcopal or non-episcopal, were regarded by the Greeks as unbaptized heretics. The Greek Church held the worst errors of Popery, such as transubstantiation, worshipping the Virgin Mary, praying to saints, baptismal regeneration, and the inherent efficacy of ordinances to save the soul. The power of excommunication in the hands of the priests, was regarded by the people with extreme dread, as sealing the soul over to perdition; and believing, as they did, that salvation is certain in the Church, and nowhere else, they regarded every attempt at innovation as an attack upon their dearest interests, and resisted it with persecution, or turned away with disgust and scorn. There were persons both among the ecclesiastics and laymen, to whom this would not apply; but the inflexible opposition of the hierarchy, as a body, to all efforts for propagating the evangelical religion, was matter for profound lamentation.

Yet labors in Greece had not been expended in vain. There had been very few hopeful conversions; but as many as two hundred thousand copies of the New Testament and parts of the Old had been put in circulation in the modern Greek language; a million copies of books and tracts had been scattered, by different missionary societies, broad-cast over the Greek community; perhaps a score of Greek young men had been liberally educated by benevolent societies and individuals in America and England; and more than ten thousand Greek youths had received instruction in Greece and Turkey, at the schools of various missions. Of the good seed thus sown, though not often on good ground, there may yet be a harvest to gladden future generations. The labor had not been fruitless. The Greek government was not what it would have been, and the same may be said of the social state. Nor were the same old ideas prevalent among the people as to the authority of councils and of the ancient fathers, and the authority of God's Word stood higher than before. The same low estimate was no longer put upon knowledge and education, nor upon religious tolerance, nor were there the same impressions concerning Protestantism, and Protestant nations, and the Christian world at large. In all these respects, there had been progress. Infidelity had received a check, and so had its influence on surrounding peoples. The Word of God, printed in the spoken language, was in very many habitations of the people; and the elements of their intellectual, moral, and social being were not, and can never again be, as if missionaries had not been among them.

The efforts made by Dr. King in Greece, for nearly a quarter of a century after this time, to secure freedom in the worship of God and in the preaching of the Gospel, will form the subject of future chapters. And in the histories of the Syrian and Armenian missions, the reader will occasionally notice hopeful outbreaks of the spirit of religious inquiry among the people bearing the Grecian name.

¹ Nassau College, in Princeton, N. J., had conferred the degree of D. D. on Mr. King.

² Tracy's History, p. 414.

³ For the extended journal of Messrs. Thomson and Pease, see Missionary Herald for 1835, pp. 398–408, 446–452.

⁴ During nearly the whole of Dr. King's life in Athens, Dr. Hill, an American Episcopal missionary, was resident there.