See other formats

Full text of "Constantinople and its problems : its peoples, customs, religions and progress"

mmgggmm^gmmM 



■ ' ■■■■.- 






(Thornton & So 
Booksellers. 



7^ CTW*«~WhJJJL^ C^\Xjl^JI K*-W»'Tr^oVA--«^> 1 ^- 



CONSTANTINOPLE 




O 

K 

< 

X 

w 
H 



Constantinople and 
its Problems 



ITS PEOPLES, CUSTOMS, 
RELIGIONS AND PROGRESS 



BY 



Henry Otis D wight, LL.D. 



ILLUSTRATED 




LONDON AND EDINBURGH 

OEIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER 

1901 




1 UK REVELL PRESS 
UNITED STATES 
AMERICA 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 9 

I 

THE CITY AS THE CENTRE OF A WORLD. 

Beauty and imnortance of the site — Domi- 
nating influence of the city in Western Asia — 
Illustrations from missionary experience — The 
ebb and flow of population between the city and 
the provinces — Power to elevate the people of 
the land 15 

II 

THE MOHAMMEDAN QUESTION. 

Unfilled promises of strength a characteristic 
of Islam — Illustrations from life in the city — 
The question thus raised — Mohammedan creed 
as presented by its chief doctor — Strength of 
Islam; the truth that it teaches — Its weak- 
ness; the belief that God's mercy provides 
for self-indulgence — Power of pure Christian 
character to move Muslims .... 47 

III 

THE WOMAN QUESTION. 

Woman Asia's bulwark against reform — The 
Turkish woman — Her charms — Her tongue and 

5 



6 Contents 

PAGE 

its uses— Her ignorance and heathenism— Her 
influence over men — Education a step toward 
the solution of the woman question . . 86 

IV 

THE EASTERN CHURCH. 

The natural channel for evangelization of Tur- 
key — A thousand years of stagnation — Reasons 
for this — The Church a political club — The 
laity not the clergy lead growth — Incapacity 
for elevating the general populace — Claims of 
this Church to the sympathy of Christen- 
dom — No growth for Turkey but through in- 
fluence from outside — This Church the place 
to begin efforts for uplifting the people of the 
country 126 

V 

THE MEETING OF EAST AND WEST. 

Susceptibility of Orientals to outside influences 
— Common ground in commerce and amuse- 
ments — Turkish tastes in amusements — Interest 
in European social life — Injury wrought by a 
soulless civilization — Commercial civilization 
not elevating in its influence — Vanity of hope 
that civilization alone will lift the people to 
better life 159 

VI 

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL TEACHERS. 

Respect of Turks for learning — Rank among 
Mohammedan clergy rests upon learning alone 



Contents 7 

PAGE 

— Does not imply any scientific knowledge — 
The Mohammedan school system — Its extension 
by desire for having children read — Its limita- 
tion through dread of the effects of knowledge 
— The Turkish teacher — Moral state of schools 
— Armenian and Greek schools — Moral philoso- 
phy that justifies lying — Roman Catholic and 
other Western schools in Turkey — Robert Col- 
lege — American College for Girls — Education 
without religious principle cannot uplift . . 199 

VII 

A HALF FORGOTTEN AGENCY. 

The ancient bookwriters' guild of Constantino- 
ple and the possibilities of the press — Awakened 
taste for reading — The American mission and 
its entrance into the inner life of the people — 
The press and its power — City missions — 
Women as missionaries and their work — Better 
use of Constantinople essential to success of this 
enterprise — The waiting Christ in St. Sophia 244 






ILLUSTRATIONS 



In the Harbor Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 



Mosque of St. Sophia .... 
Turkish Version of " The Man with the Hoe 
Turkish Women and Fortune Teller 
Group of Greek Clergy 
The Bosphorus as a Highway (Russian 

on the way to China) 
The Cart of Asia Minor . 
Geuk Sou (Family parties out for the day) 
In a Coffee Shop .... 

Robert College 

American College for Girls 

The Bible House .... 



transport 



72 
118 
118 
134 

162 
162 
176 
176 
236 
242 
260 



INTRODUCTION 

TRAVELLERS who visit Constantinople see 
it as a historical relic or an archaeological 
centre, or as a place for observing the dress and 
behaviour of various races, or merely as a place 
for tasting some flavour of the Orient during a 
brief vacation. But they seldom consider the rela- 
tion of that magnificent site to the life of the peo- 
ple to whom it is an inheritance, and still less do 
they question what influence the city has upon 
the surrounding regions, and the development of 
their populations. Such matters are left to the 
missionary with his optimistic views on the possi- 
bility of bringing forward backward peoples 
with advantage to themselves and the world. 

Certain peculiarities of the life of the people of 
the city thrust themselves upon the stranger. 
Looking at the throngs of men and women, in 
picturesque and many coloured dress, who fill the 
streets of Constantinople, a salient point for atten- 
tion is the discomfort to which they seem to have 
accustomed themselves. The bedraggled and un- 
kempt appearance of a large part of the people; 
the impossible pavements of the streets ; the pack- 
horses, donkeys, and perhaps even camels, which 
thrust the saunterer to the wall, forcing him to 

9 



io Introduction 

stand in a strained attitude of respectful atten- 
tion while eaeli procession of burden-bearers goes 
by; the use of men instead of beasts and trucks 
and drays, that they may, as the saying is, " earn 
an olive or two to put in their mouths by carrying 
a hogshead on their backs "; and the lazy toler- 
ance of the cringing dogs which slouch along the 
street or occupy for rest or for family duties the 
dry and sunny side of the way, all show the people 
of the city to be at a point of civilization a century 
or two behind the age. Yet Constantinople was 
once, and by very many of these people is sup- 
posed to be now, a very Paris in leading the civ- 
ilization of the world. The missionary will en- 
quire why such an arrest of progress has occurred. 

Another curious characteristic of the people 
the stranger begins to learn from the moment that 
his foot is fairly on the shore. The frauds of 
greed never destroy social standing in this city. 
Official dignity persists though dragged through 
consecutive quagmires of embezzlement. The 
consequence is that in lay circles a man will per- 
haps kill one who suggests that he is ungodly, 
but will smile benignly when called a liar and a 
thief. As to the church, whomsoever a man may 
select on occasion to entrust with money for safe- 
keeping, he will never entrust money to his parish 
priest or his imam or his rabbi or his bishop. 

Once more, the stranger in Constantinople 
learns to suppress his surprise at the fondness of 
the people for imitation. He finds that there is 



Introduction n 

progress in Turkey, but that much which appears 
to be such is mere mimicry. Imitation may be a 
valuable homage to superiority, but in observing 
this city a distinction is necessary between the 
imitation which marks a trend, and that which 
merely apes a result. 

Such matters are commonplaces to the mission- 
ary in Constantinople. But the use which he 
makes of his observation depends upon his man- 
ner of regarding the peculiarities of the people. 
All will agree, that a missionary enterprise is not 
reasonable before God or man which aims merely 
to propagate a sect. For no folly of Christian 
bigotry so injures the interests of the race as that 
which undermines without knowledge the relig- 
ious beliefs of others, as though the words of the 
Christian creed were a sort of shibboleth of salva- 
tion. The missionary who truly continues the 
work of Jesus Christ in this world may not live a 
life apart, in the study, from Which he emerges 
to deliver a sermon and to which he then returns 
to prepare another. He studies the life more than 
the written creeds of the people. For, whether at 
home or abroad, men belong to one of three 
classes with reference to possession of their birth- 
right of manly power. We all know these classes. 
In every land we see men in pagan darkness, fol- 
lowing impulse tempered by experience as their 
sole guide to aspiration and conduct. Others we 
know who admit that Jesus Christ is the safe 
guide, but still follow their own whims unblush- 



11 Introduction 

ingly. Another class we know who have changed, 
or painfully arc changing, the centre of gravity of 
thrir lives from self to the self-sacrificing Christ. 
The missionary has to class those whom he would 
help to come up out of passive endurance of fate 
into command of the elements of power. His 
message to men comes from an ardent desire to 
influence wisely their lives, and the message is 
that there is no other name under heaven whereby 
they may be saved from themselves than that of 
Jesus Christ. He has to present this message as 
Jesus Christ presented it in the form of a scheme 
of life which clearly has immediate and practical 
value to every one. 

The intimate relation which this line of study 
cultivates between the missionary and the people 
among whom he lives, is one rarely attained by 
other foreign residents. As a result of it, the 
thoughts and motives of the people furnish the 
colour for the missionary's views of Constanti- 
nople. Such a view of the city may easily be of 
general interest. It comprises a background as 
well as a foreground. For the background there is 
a beauty of site unexcelled, a political and com- 
mercial importance unrivalled, and a controlling 
potency of influence over a great portion of West- 
ern Asia. And still farther away in the distant 
horizon looms a shadowy memory of the ancient 
Christian Church of that place, with its vain 
prayers and its broken hopes that this city might 
be the visible centre of the power of Christ in the 



Introduction 13 

world. As to the foreground of this view, we 
have to discover its details as we saunter through 
those busy streets. The endless surprises of 
such a quest all have bearing upon the justness of 
the missionary's theories of duty, test the wisdom 
of his methods of action, and perhaps more than 
all show the complicated nature of problems which 
are vital issues for the future of the people, to say 
nothing of the rest of the world now increasingly 
forced for its own peace to reckon up and gauge 
their peculiarities. 

To offer a picture of life in Constantinople at 
all complete in detail would require a number of 
volumes of this size. The incidents given in the 
following pages, then, should not be supposed to 
exclude facts of contrary tendency. They are 
merely illustrations of some of the problems of 
life in the city, chosen as typical out of a mass of 
notes, by one who desires to be just to the good 
qualities of a people whom he lovts, even while 
criticising less pleasing characteristics. 

It is proper to add that the author has in a few 
cases quoted from descriptions in letters of his 
own published in the New York " Tribune " and 
the Chicago " Interior." Such quotations are 
few, but should be acknowledged. 



CONSTANTINOPLE 



THE CITY AS THE CENTRE OF A WORLD 

ALL night long the steamer had been churn- 
ing with rythmical blows the waters of the 
sea of Marmora, the most placid of inland seas. 
This sea is sheltered from serious turmoil of 
storm, by the friendly approach to each other of 
the two continents of Europe and Asia. The 
measured stroke of the propeller helps one to sleep 
in peace, after the first strangeness has worn off. 
It is like the " All's well ! " of the watchman of 
old. If not heard there is reason for instant wak- 
ing. As it pounds out its beats at half ^peed, there 
appears in the dreams a half-consciousness that it 
is beating time to music. Finally, a persistent mo- 
notony of musical impressions destroys the power 
of sleep ; the senses gain control and re-establish 
connections between the various ganglia, and then 
the beating of the propeller is found to be accom- 
panied in actual fact by a singular wailing chant. 
One has to go on deck to learn the meaning of the 
strange and mournful sound. 

By the cool, limpid light of early dawn, the 
deck passengers, Greeks, Turks and Albanians, 

15 



1 6 Constantinople 

have spied the landmarks of the approach to Con- 
stantinople, and have let their emotion break forth 
in song. West and East differ in temperament 
and in habits of thought and expression, and never 
more so than in their music. Even with words of 
joy the music of Turkey is always in the minor 
key ; as though the people had not yet felt joy 
real and irrepressible. The minor strains of the 
song of the passengers clustered at the bow of the. 
ship, might seem to imply sorrow. But to them 
their song is a sweet brooding of reminiscence, 
like " Home, Sweet Home." It is the tribute of 
their hearts to the greatness of the city to which 
they are drawing nigh. 

The sun was soon to rise from behind the blue 
mountains of Asia, and had already kindled a 
rosy glow amid the haze along their crests. The 
glassy sea, which near at hand is blue as no other 
sea is blue, paled into a silver sheet where its level 
surface passed into the distance and reflected in 
strange tints the overhanging hills. Up-~n the 
sea, twenty miles away to the right, lay the 
rounded knolls of the Princes' Islands. Still 
farther to the right, and some distance behind the 
coast hills of Asia, was the lofty Bythinian Olym- 
pus, a white pile cold as an iceberg and pure as the 
Jungfrau in springtime. On the left, but close 
at hand, lay the bare brown hills of Europe, ris- 
ing from a shore dotted with groups of houses 
and gardens, and churches, and white-steepled 
mosques. 



The City as the Centre of a World 17 

Suddenly the sun arose. The haze of the dis- 
tant hills blazed with a golden glory. Europe 
reddened at the greeting of the rays, while the 
mighty curve with which Asia swept around to 
meet the Western lands, was still dark under the 
lingering shadows of the hills. A shout went up 
from the motley crowd at the bulwarks of the 
bows. " There it is ! There it is ! Stamboul, 
Oh, Stamboul ! " 

Having been absorbed with the graces of sea 
and sky, we had not before looked straight ahead, 
where the bowsprit was thrust out toward the 
crown of all this beauty. But now, at the point 
where the two continents stood close together in 
interchange of morning greetings, we saw all 
imaginable splendours of form and colour poured 
forth to delight our eyes. The sun, slowly climb- 
ing above the screen of the Asiatic hills, without 
breaking upon their heavy shadows of umber and 
purple and green, flung masses of ruddy browns 
at Europe and then softened them by a delicious, 
rosy haze. The silent sea had its deep and its 
pale blues, its silver whites, and then its gleams 
of gold and its orange reds. And squarely in 
front of us, where but a thin thread of water held 
the continents apart, we dimly saw pompous white 
buildings in long array. 

As the steamer advanced point by point, we 
could see at the right of this central group, a 
close packed mass of houses half hidden in foliage 
upon the water line of Asia. And on the left too, 



1 8 Constantinople 

of the narrow strait, stretching for miles toward 
us along the shores of Europe were buildings tier 
on tier, with domes and slender white spires 
tossed high upon the skyline, and gleaming and 
blushing at the caresses of the sun. Below this 
fantastic horizon, on the very edge of the sea, we 
could soon see the dusky towers of a massive wall ; 
reflected in full detail, by and by, in the silver at 
their feet: towers which had stood a stalwart 
barrier for centuries against attack, before as 
now, they were left to be the toy of time and 
storm. Thus standing upon two continents and 
two seas, glorious in sunrise light, but illusive in 
the glamour of the summer haze, was first pre- 
sented to our eyes the Queen City of the East. 

The importance is not less than the beauty of 
the site of Constantinople. So narrow are the 
approaches to the city by land, that fifty thousand 
men could hold it against any army. The depth 
(measured not in feet but in scores of fathoms) 
of its land-locked water space, offers safe harbour 
where battle ships might moor by the hundred. 
The markets and bazaars of the city are a place of 
exchange for merchants of all nations and all 
tongues ; for to this place the two continents have 
always brought " merchandise of gold and silver 
and precious stones, and of pearls and fine linen 
and purple and silk and scarlet, and all manner of 
vessels of ivory, of most precious wood, and of 
brass and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and 
odours, and ointments, and frankincense and 



The City as the Centre of a World 19 

wine and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts 
and sheep, and horses and chariots and slaves and 
souls of men." 

Twenty-two hundred years ago Demosthenes 
saw the importance of this site as one which 
would control the destinies of all surrounding re- 
gions. He besought the Athenians to bar the 
ambition of Philip of Macedon by seizing Byzan- 
tium. But not until six centuries later, when 
Constantine made it New Rome, the Eastern 
Capital of the Roman Empire, did the site begin 
to do its proper work as the place for Europe to 
meet and control the hordes of Asia. Long after 
the dissolution of the Western Empire this peer- 
less fortress was the bulwark of Europe against 
incursions from the East. During 900 years the 
successors of the Prophet of Mecca doggedly 
clung to their dream of conquering the world. 
And during 800 years of this time, while Europe 
was still too feeble to hold its own, sturdy Chris- 
tian soldiers, upon these battered old walls made 
the city a rock upon which successive waves of 
invasion broke into powerless fragments. Con- 
stantinople saved Europe from becoming Mo- 
hammedan territory. 

When Constantine, 1500 years ago, was mark- 
ing out lines of fortification for his new capital, 
some of his couriers, surprised at the greatness of 
the included space, asked " How far are you going 
to carry the lines ? " ' Until he stops who goes 
before me," was the answer of the Emperor. He 



io Constantinople 

deemed the city to belong: to Jesus Christ; a token 
of the triumph of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ 
over the heathen world. To emphasize this idea, 
Justinian in reconstructing the Cathedral of St. 
Sophia, tore from the temples of Jupiter, and 
Venus, and Diana, and Baal, and Astarte, and 
Isis, and Osiris through all the region of the 
Eastern Mediterranean, their finest marbles and 
most noble columns. And the gracious majesty 
of that venerable monument to the overthrow of 
paganism still draws visitors from all parts of the 
world. 

The church is now a Mohammedan mosque. 
The name of Mohammed gleaming in letters of 
gold by the side of the name of God above the 
place where the Christian altar used to be, testi- 
fies to the failure and downfall of Oriental Chris- 
tianity in that place, and makes this ancient Ca- 
thedral a monument to warn men of the doom 
awaiting political Christianity everywhere. 
Knowing by experience, ourselves, the blinding 
splendour of the temptation when the devil insidi- 
ously offers to satisfy all cravings of selfishness 
in return for some small concession — the King- 
doms of the earth in return for admission that the 
glory of such possession will content our cravings 
— we may not judge too harshly the fall of the 
early Church into this snare. But thus it was 
that this Church, after celebrating here in the 
fourth century the triumph of Christianity over 
the pagan world, became itself in the tenth century 



The City as the Centre of a World 1 1 

an object lesson in the capacity of the old pagan 
covetousness and lust for power to deaden dis- 
interested devotion to Jesus Christ, so that in the 
fifteenth century the Lord " removed its candle- 
stick out of its place." 

By the time that Islam finally crushed the East- 
ern Roman Empire, the name of Constantinople 
had long been synonymous in Western Asia with 
Imperial power. The Arabs to this day give it 
the dreadful name of Imperial Rome (Roum) 
and know its sovereign as the Sultan of Rome. 
To the people of the whole region between Bok- 
hara and Afghanistan and the Mediterranean this 
city is the wonderful place where might and 
wealth and knowledge take their source. As for 
the Turkish Empire the whole mass of doleful, 
disheartened territory is a mere appendage to 
Constantinople. Throughout its whole extent not 
a church nor a school, nor a factory nor a saw- 
mill nor a village road nor a bridge over a rivulet 
can be built, not a book or newspaper can be 
printed nor a printing press set up, not a single 
petty official can take office without examination 
of the question at Constantinople. To this city 
young men in all Turkey look for their career, 
merchants for their goods, farmers for their 
market, mechanics for a field for their skill, and 
day-labourers for unlimited employment. The 
whole male population of the Empire has for its 
ideal of success in life the opportunity to spend 
some years in Constantinople, and a large part of 



11 Constantinople 

each successive generation attains to this ideal 
and is thus more or less Formed by the influences 
of the greal city. The eyes of all religious de- 
nominations too, instinctively turn to Constanti- 
nople for instruction in doctrine and polity and 
for the crown of successful effort. There lives 
the great head of Mohammedanism in all the 
world. There the Ecumenical Patriarch of the 
Orthodox Church still sits in the chair of Chry- 
sostom, unmoved by the vain and restless curi- 
osity respecting - the nature of truth which first 
drove the Western Church into schism, and then 
tore the wandering schismatics of Rome into sep- 
arate and discordant sects of many names. 

In the Armenian Patriarchate of Constanti- 
nople is temporal and spiritual guidance for all 
the Armenians of the Empire. From these eter- 
nal hills of New Rome the Legate of the Pope 
issues edicts of control for all Roman Catholics 
of Western Asia. There is the Grand Rabbi of 
the Jews of the Spanish emigration ; there is the 
Exarch of the Bulgarian Church, and there too is 
the civil chief to whom the Protestant subjects 
of the Sultan look for obtaining both the instruc- 
tions and the favour of their sovereign. Turkey 
has not been able to free itself from the ancient 
notion that the common people must be controlled 
through chief men of their own, who by necessity 
of their ability must live near the Sovereign. 
Hence its system of Government emphasizes the 
unique importance of this city to all in the Em- 



The City as the Centre of a World 23 

pire who would be or do anything whatever. 
Lapse of years has not ended, nor can it ever end 
the sway of this marvellous city over millions 
of Asiatics to whom during many centuries it has 
been known as the dominant point of the universe. 
The influence of Constantinople can never cease 
so long as the peoples of Western Asia persist 
in their ancient custom of coming periodically to 
this city, like the flow of a tidal wave, in order to 
carry back with its ebb to distant hamlets the 
impressions and other gains which the city has 
given them. Under these circumstances Con- 
stantinople may be called the throbbing heart of 
Turkey. When beneficent principles of life once 
more govern the lives of its population, this city 
will once more become as of old an efficient chan- 
nel for the influence of Europe to control Wes- 
tern Asia ; this time, let us hope, with effect to 
lead the imaginative continent into voluntary and 
permanent abnegation of the views which have 
made it hitherto the bitter enemy of its own de- 
velopment and of true civilization. 

Perhaps the best way of putting the reader in 
touch with this peculiarity of Constantinople as 
the centre of a world of its own, and with the 
relation of this peculiarity to the efforts of the 
missionary stationed there, will be to mention a 
few by-ways of missionary experience in this city 
of broad issues. At least those at a distance may 
thus have better understanding of the people for 
whom the missionary is working and of their at- 



24 Constantinople 

titude toward him. And if these experiences re- 
veal the existence of humours in the life of the 
missionary, it will be but one more case where 
life alternates between situations at which men 
laugh and those at which they weep. One point 
which should be particularly borne in mind is 
the wide region of country from which the parties 
to these experiences came or to which their 
influence extended. 

An application like that made to me one day by 
a man whom we will call Ahmed Bey, is typical 
of many made to missionaries at Constantinople 
by people who theoretically ought to be their 
enemies. Ahmed Bey was a handsome young 
Mohammedan from a city in Bulgaria, and an 
officer in the Turkish navy. He came to me in 
great distress. A certain Turkish Admiral of 
some importance so far as influence goes, had a 
daughter of comparative youth only, and afflicted 
like Leah with some trouble of the eyes which 
made her helpless much of the time, with injury 
to her prospects of matrimony. This Admiral 
had unhappily seen the handsome young officer 
and wished to marry him to his daughter. When 
the officer declined the honour with thanks, the 
Admiral, Laban-like, said that marry her he 
must. Otherwise he would order the young man 
to the naval station at Bussora, on the Persian 
Gulf, for three years. To be sent to Bussora is 
like being sent to Cuba in yellow fever time. The 
young man came to me asking " Must I marry 



The City as the Centre of a World 25 

this sore-eyed girl?" I could not help him. 
The order for his exile to Bussora was actually 
issued, and only overruled by the appeal at my 
suggestion of the weeping mother of my friend 
to a Pasha of high rank who was a native of 
the same city in Bulgaria as Ahmed Bey, and 
who had access to the ear of the Sultan. 

Such applications to a missionary for friendly 
assistance oftentimes result in help in the un- 
expected direction of culture of the moral sense. 
One day a lawyer, who like a great part of the 
active business men of Constantinople was not a 
permanent resident there, came into my room 
with a curious request. He asked the privilege of 
laying upon my desk a thousand dollars in gold ; 
saying that if I would allow it to remain there, a 
Turk would come after a time and take it away. 

" Will the Turk have an order for the money ? " 
I asked. 

" No ; only the right man will know that the 
money is here." 

The part I was expected to play, then, was 
merely to let the gold lie on the desk until some 
one came to take it away. The simplicity of this 
proposal led me to insist on further explanations. 

"Will the man receipt for the gold?" 

" Oh, no ; he will take it and go." 

" But how will I know that the right man gets 
it?" 

" That is my look out ? No one but the right 
man will know that the gold is there." 



a6 Constantinople 

'• Mow will you know that I do not pocket the 
gold myself? " 

"1 know you; that is enough!" 

I told the lawyer thai I would not allow the 
gold to be left there without understanding the 
meaning of this extraordinary proceeding. He 
then told me that he had charge of a case in 
the High Court. The case was won, but the 
judgment would not be given unless his client 
paid a present of a thousand dollars to the Presi- 
dent of the Court. The payment of this money 
was a difficult problem. It would not do for 
the Judge's man to receive the money from the 
lawyer's man, nor in fact to receive money from 
anv one. The simple plan w 7 as therefore devised 
of putting the money in a safe place, where the 
Judge's man would be allowed to find it, like a 
stray windfall. 

It is needless to say that the lawyer was invited 
to choose some other desk than mine for this pur- 
pose. Possibly, however, both he and the judge 
learned a lesson in morality through the 
transaction. 

Such incidents show more emphatically than 
analysis of religious doctrine the inward barren- 
ness of the practice of making forms of worship 
stand for the whole of religion. A similar in- 
stance of moral obliquity put me in a position 
to thwart a proposed fraud on the United States 
Government. A very wealthy man, a member in 
good and regular standing in one of the Oriental 



The City as the Centre of a World ij 

Churches, and a Turkish subject of prominence 
in Government circles, came one day to ask me 
about the value of an American passport obtained 
without going through the process of naturaliza- 
tion. Assurances that it was impossible to get 
a passport on those terms did no good. Ex- 
planation that the proposal was a proposal to 
engage in fraud had not the least weight. Proof 
that it would be an admission of fraud for a 
prominent Turkish subject like himself suddenly 
to wave an American passport in the faces of 
the Turkish officials with whom he was engaged 
in a quarrel, only led him to express the opinion 
that the United States Legation never allows the 
American passport to be impotent to defend its 
holder. 

This was a dozen years ago, and all the parties 
to the affair are now dead. But the man assured 
me that a certain lawyer in Galata had the means 
of getting him an American passport for the 
modest sum of $3,000, and the point on which 
the man wished assistance from the missionary 
was the question of securing a hold on the lawyer, 
to whom the money must be paid in advance. I 
never knew whether the lesson in common 
honesty which this man received did him any 
good. But he sadly abandoned the scheme of 
buying American citizenship for $3,000, and went 
into the Turkish prison in default of the Ameri- 
can protection which he had fondly hoped to 
gain. 



iS Constantinople 

The applications of the people to the mission- 
aries for help in their political and religious 
quarrels with their superiors make quite a list in 
the course of a year. One day a fine looking man 
with a magnificent hlack beard, with the eye of 
an eagle and the bearing of a Grand Duke, came 
to call. He was the chief of a tribe, half Arab, 
half Canaanite, living in Syria. Conversation in 
Turkey is farther advanced than in some Western 
countries, from the artistic point of view. The 
preliminaries are not necessarily weather com- 
ments taken from the Bureau Reports. They are 
rather expressions of high regard which imply 
that one is of world-wide fame, so that although 
but just introduced for the first time, the emo- 
tions on meeting are those of a gratified desire. 

After these preliminaries had been handled 
with no less dignity than skill, my visitor ex- 
plained his object in calling. It was the wish to 
bring his people, numbering some fifty thousand 
Mohammedans, to increase the ranks of the 
Protestant Community. To the chief, the propo- 
sition was a reasonable one. Our Protestant 
friends are few in Turkey, hence such an acces- 
sion to their ranks would be a matter for any 
missionary to consider. He was astounded be- 
yond measure on learning that conversion from 
Mohammedanism to Christianity is not a thing 
for any one to accomplish for another, and that 
if his people wished to be Christians, all that 
was necessary was for each individual to yield up 



The City as the Centre of a World 19 

his heart to Jesus Christ. After long and vain 
efforts to lead us to see how grand a result we 
could boast if his people were to join us, he went 
sorrowfully away. In actual fact the proposal of 
this man contained the possibility of the complete 
destruction of the whole missionary enterprise in 
Turkey. He had some quarrel with Turkish 
officials, and he hoped that by the bait of a 
wholesale conversion of his people to nominal 
Christianity, we would espouse his cause. This 
he imagined would bring to him and his tribe the 
support of the United States Government. 

In no other city in Turkey than Constantinople 
can missionaries be sure that they understand the 
purposes and wishes of the Turkish Govern- 
ment. Without this knowledge they fail to un- 
derstand the bearing of many edicts and regula- 
tions that affect their work, and may easily fall 
under suspicion or even seem to disregard the 
laws. The every-day happenings of the period 
of the Armenian troubles, in 1895 and 1896 gave 
illustrations of the dominant place occupied by 
Constantinople and of the necessity of remem- 
bering this quality of the city in any scheme 
of missionary operations in Turkey. The time 
came during that anxious period when the ques- 
tion was a burning one of the right of mission- 
aries to risk life by staying in the midst of a 
troubled region. United States officials seemed 
early to reach the conclusion that missionaries 
ought to leave the country, instead of causing 



3<D Constantinople 

to the representatives of the United States 
anxiety and embarrassment by remaining where 
they might easily become victims of massacre. 
Yet the missionaries throughout Turkey wished 
to remain at their posts in order to do what good 
thev might to the suffering people. They had 
not what some officials professed to see in them 
— an ardent desire to get killed for the purpose of 
adding to the burdens of the official class. But 
the missionaries in the interior of the country 
told us at Constantinople that we must give them 
timely warning when they ought to flee rather 
than stay, and that they would rely upon our 
judgment. The responsibility of our position 
toward these associates was tremendous, for it 
implied prophetic foresight of new disturbances, 
through keeping the hand as it were upon the 
pulse of the Turks to detect each new symptom. 
Those were days when we dared not take a single 
step without prayer for guidance. And I believe 
we had it. 

One of the most terribly solemn decisions of a 
lifetime had to be made just after the massacre 
in Constantinople in August, 1896, when this 
question again came up for instant settlement. 
It was on a Sunday. On the previous Wednes- 
day and Thursday six thousand people had been 
killed in the streets of Constantinople, their 
bodies being collected like rubbish by the munici- 
pal scavenger carts and their houses and shops 
being pillaged to the last straw on the floor. 



The City as the Centre of a World 31 

All business was suspended. The city was full 
of rumours of impending events yet more terrible. 
A large number of English residents had taken 
refuge on a steamer in the harbour chartered for 
the purpose by the British Government, and 
other Europeans were fleeing from the city in 
flocks. About noon on that Sunday an official 
connected with the foreign Diplomatic Corps 
came in a steam launch to the foot of the hill on 
which the old Castle of Europe stands, and in- 
vited two of us to come to the landing where he 
awaited us in the launch. He communicated to 
us, confidentially, information which he said was 
positive and trustworthy, that upon the next day, 
Monday, the Armenian revolutionists would fire 
the citv in revenge for the massacre, devoting 
their attention chiefly to the Mohammedan 
quarters. 

The Mohammedans, who outnumber Chris- 
tians in Constantinople about three to one, had 
decided that in case the Armenians attempted this 
crime, they would have their revenge by killing 
every Christian in the city, of whatever national- 
ity. Our informant used the strongest possible 
language to show us the duty which must rest 
upon us, at least to send away the women and 
children. He said : " If you men choose to stay 
and get your throats cut, I have nothing to say 
more than 1 have said, but you have no right to 
sacrifice the twenty or thirty American women 
and children here who depend on your common 



32 Constantinople 

sense for their safety. Say the word and a 
steamer can be hired and they can go on board 
this evening and escape. If you leave it until 
to-morrow none of you will live through the 
day." 

Consider the burden laid upon us by these 
grave words. The question must be decided at 
once, and it must be decided by us two alone. 
Both of us had separately studied the situation 
by mingling every day with the people to ascer- 
tain the temper and intentions of Turks and 
Armenians. We did not believe in the accuracy 
of the official's information, but we might be 
mistaken. The error might be the destruction of 
the families who trusted us to see to their pro- 
tection. It was a frightful responsibility which 
we took upon ourselves, but we told him, thank- 
ing him for his kindly intention, that we did not 
deem it necessary to take the course which he 
suggested. The event justified our action. Mon- 
day passed away in quiet, nor was the massacre 
afterwards renewed. The simple fact was that 
our friend had been misled by false information, 
doubtless furnished him with a purpose. 

After mentioning this error of judgment I 
ought in fairness to tell how this same official 
saved a town from destruction about the same 
time. The storm of massacre had swept over the 
country but this town had been spared. The 
Governor of the place seemed to regret this and 
appeared determined to stir up strife between 



The City as the Centre of a World 23 

the Mohammedans and their Armenian neigh- 
bours. In the town were three American ladies 
with about four hundred pupils in their schools. 
The nearest missionary man was distant from 
them about three days' journey. We had been 
informed by letter of the danger which threat- 
ened them and when a day later a telegram said, 
" Danger pressing " it became necessary to seek 
instantly reinforcements for the orders already 
secured. 

The first appeal was to one of the Embassies 
which has the right to interfere in behalf of 
Armenians. The acting Ambassador was asked 
to tell the Turkish Government that if a massacre 
occurred at this place, the Governor would have 
to answer for it in person. He did not like to 
take this stand respecting the Governor, on his 
own responsibility, but he cordially promised the 
strongest representations to the Sublime Porte 
in order to prevent a massacre. The same request 
as to the Governor was presented to the friendly 
official referred to above. He took a carriage 
and drove to the office of the Turkish Pasha 
under whose care such questions fell. To him 

he said, " Your Governor in is a rascal. He 

is trying to get up a massacre there. Three 
American ladies live there with four hundred 
pupils, and if a massacre happens, and a hair of 
the head of one of these defenceless ones is hurt, 
we shall demand the head of that Governor, and 
what is more we shall get it." The pasha was 



34 Constantinople 

rather astonished at this unaccustomed warmth in 
diplomatic language, but there was no massacre 
in that town. By this one impulsive act which 
saved an innocent and defenceless population 
from destruction this gentleman disarmed criti- 
cism of any errors of judgment elsewhere. 

Every one of such side issues in a missionary's 
experience tells for the advancement of his in- 
fluence among the people whose friend he would 
be. This can be seen by any who have mastered 
the fact that in a country like Turkey there is 
much preparatory work to be done in the line 
of personal influence through intercourse which 
conquers prejudice. In Constantinople this sort 
of intercourse tells upon the interests of the 
missionary enterprise in the whole empire be- 
cause new men, who have never come in contact 
with the missionaries are often elevated to official 
position in the place of those who perhaps may 
have learned to rate them more justly. The 
old questions then have to be answered anew, the 
usual suspicions exploded once more, the innate 
enmity softened if possible. Else the effect of 
such changes in high places will be felt in mission- 
ary stations of the interior through a sudden in- 
crease of official interference with every mission- 
ary establishment. So far as any remedy exists 
it has to be sought in the direction of patient 
plodding effort at personal intercourse with offi- 
cials at Constantinople. A Pasha at Constanti- 



The City as the Centre of a World 35 

nople soon after his elevation to power was con- 
fronted with such an incomprehensible fact as a 
social reception. 

A missionary recently returned from America 
was invited one evening to a church sociable 
where the members of the congregation might 
meet and welcome him. There was quite a 
gathering of people, and they had a good deal 
of talking, some light refreshments, a little music 
and some complimentary addresses which were 
applauded by vigorous clapping of hands. A day 
or two after this I was called upon by an official 
with a message from the great Pasha. He asked 
what the evening gathering meant. He said " I 
know that you have some curious customs. You 
meet in the evening for prayer. I make no ob- 
jection to that, although no other Christians do 
it. I know too that when you pray you use a 
piano, and I make no objection to that although I 
cannot see what a piano has to do with prayer. 
But it has been reported that on that evening you 
also had clapping of hands. The Sultan's orders 
are precise to learn what that clapping of the 
hands signified. That gathering must have been 
for a purpose hostile to the interests of the Gov- 
ernment for people do not clap hands when they 
pray. We do not interfere with your religious 
freedom, with your meeting in the evening, with 
your praying, your singing, or your piano play- 
ing. But what was the clapping of the hands ? I 



36 Constantinople 

am bound to tell you that if it is repeated we 
shall arrest every man, woman and child who 
niters that house in the evening." 

Of course all necessary explanations were made 
with a grave countenance, for the affair was 
very grave, and after these explanations we heard 
no more of the complaint. 

A similarly patient, courteous influence has to 
be exerted to remove the suspicions excited by 
the books of the missionaries or even by the 
pictures with which the books are illustrated. 

In publishing a hymn book recently, after 
the hymns had been carefully examined and ap- 
proved for use, the permit to issue the book 
was delayed some weeks while the board of 
censors had the music played over and analyzed 
in order to make sure that the hymn tunes were 
not of a heretical nature in politics. Not long 
ago a decorative cover was prepared for the 
Turkish version of Dr. Henry Van Dyke's story 
of " The Other Wise Man." It represented the 
wise man gazing at the Star of the East. The 
book cover has now been modified by the Turk- 
ish censor who has cut out the star in the picture 
leaving the man standing upon his housetop like 
a watchman who is to answer the question 
"What of the night?" A star symbolizes hope, 
and in Turkey hope is held necessarily to have 
political import. But we may depend upon it 
that the man who cut out that star, learned by the 



The City as the Centre of a World 3J 

act to admit to himself that some things in 
Turkey are below standard values. 

In one of the books published by the mission 
last year, in connection with remarks on sincerity 
in Christian esteem, the verse was quoted which 
says " If a man say I love God and hateth his 
brother, he is a liar." The censor erased this 
verse. He said it was an insult to Mohammedan- 
ism. Not being able to quite get the censor's 
point of view we argued the case. The censor 
showed that even in a work on Christian ethics 
this text might call to mind the massacres where 
Turks were charged with killing their Armenian 
brethren. In this relation the verse would imply 
that Turks are liars because they also claim to 
love God. We insisted on our right to quote 
Scripture for legitimate ends. Then the censor 
proposed a compromise. He said that the words 
of St. John might be made unobjectionable by a 
very slight modification. " Let the verse read," 
said he, " ' If a man say I love God and hateth his 
sister, he is a liar.' " Women were not commonly 
killed in the massacres ! Appeal to a higher offi- 
cial overruled the man who thus distinguished 
himself and the class to which he belongs. But 
while we smile at his folly, let us not forget to 
mark its true meaning. It was the outward sign 
of inward turmoil of conscience unexpectedly 
educated by his encounter with that text. 

Allusion was made above to the power which 



38 Constantinople 

the missionary has to wreck his whole enterprise 
permanently by a single ill-considered act. The 
need of clear vision on the part of missionaries, 
and also of keeping aloof from political schemes 
was vividly illustrated at Constantinople during 
the years 1895 and 1896. A missionary, of all 
people, must be clear from suspicion of political 
aims. In those two years the wild storm of vio- 
lence and carnage swept over the Turkish Em- 
pire because the Mohammedans believed that the 
Armenians everywhere were plotting revolution. 
Public safety therefore demanded that they 
should be crippled before their plans could ripen. 
In this the Turks simply followed out the world's 
version of the Golden Rule according to David 
Harum : ' Do unto others as you think they're 
goin' to do unto you, and be sure and do it fust." 
Armenian revolutionists existed in Turkey but 
they were few in number. In any case the Ar- 
menians in Turkey are about one million in 
twenty, and had there been no religious hate for 
Christians, the Government would have dealt with 
them as it deals with disaffected Mohammedans, 
reducing them to impotence by a few judicious 
arrests. Since the missionary in Turkey labours 
largely among the Armenians, the Turkish Gov- 
ernment professed to suspect the missionaries, 
quite as much as any of the Armenians. It closely 
watched their actions in search of grounds for ex- 
pelling them from the country. At the same time 
the Armenian revolutionists felt and resented the 



The City as the Centre of a World 39 

influence of the missionaries as being against their 
foolish schemes of sedition. They even went so 
far as to notify three missionaries that they had 
been condemned to death as enemies to Armenian 
interests. 

In this delicate situation one day we were offi- 
cially notified that the Turkish Government 
wished to expel from the country the " director 
of the Bible House Mission " whom an English 
newspaper had declared on authority of the 
mayor of an English city, to have stated that the 
Sultan ordered the massacres. Who was meant 
was not clear. There is no mission in Constanti- 
nople known as the Bible House Mission, and the 
mission of the American Board is under no di- 
rector in Constantinople. But it fell to me to try 
to arrange the affair. I did not know, and did 
not wish to know whether any missionary had 
been careless enough to say to the English mayor 
what he could not possibly prove. Bu L the news- 
paper paragraph might be understood to point 
toward one of our most efficient missionaries, to 
lose whom from the work would be a disaster. I 
proposed to draw up a card for publication in 
the London newspaper where the paragraph ap- 
peared, remarking on the uncertain identity of the 
person whose statements were given this weight, 
but adding that the American Board's Mission, 
whose offices are in the Bible House deemed it 
proper to say that it had never felt called upon 
to formulate its views upon the matter in ques- 



40 Constantinople 

tion, nor had it authorized any one to speak for it 
upon the subject. The American Legation agreed 
that such a card would be a sufficient satisfaction 
to the Turkish Government. But well informed 
friends objected that if I signed the card 1 would 
certainly be shot by the revolutionists as too 
friendly to the Turks. On the other hand the 
card would be worthless unless signed, and the 
missionary supposed to be implicated must be 
saved at all hazards. So the card was signed 
on the spot, the Turks accepted it as a satisfac- 
tory statement, the missionary was neither ques- 
tioned nor molested, — and I was not shot. 

Perhaps the contact with gross defects of moral 
character which results from holding familiar 
intercourse with people in no way interested in 
Christian truth may be regarded as a reason for 
advising the missionary to keep aloof from such 
friendships. Yet that missionary must know the 
people about him to the utmost or he cannot find 
a remedy for their ills. Moreover some of these 
chance friendships, merely because the mission- 
ary deals with natives as other foreigners at Con- 
stantinople do not in thus patiently seeking to 
know them, have resulted in lasting benefit to 
both parties. 

An incident which deeply moved my sympathy 
while illustrating this point was in the course of 
a somewhat intimate acquaintance with a dis- 
tinguished Mohammedan religious teacher, who 
was believed to have the power of working mira- 



The City as the Centre of a World 41 

cles, and who was the guest of the Sultan at 
Constantinople for some time, on the principle 
common in Turkey of controlling a people by con- 
trolling their leader. For this man was the ac- 
knowledged leader of more than a million people 
in the Eastern part of Turkey. After a time 
this gentleman asked a Mohammedan, also a mu- 
tual friend, to help him solve a doubt. The Arabs 
say that fools are of two kinds, " simple " and 
" complex." A man who does not know every- 
thing and knows that he does not know, is a 
simple fool, while the man who does not know, 
and does not know that he does not know, is a 
complex fool. " Of course I know," said he, 
" that this American regards me as a good deal 
of an ignoramus. But I wish you could find out 
whether he thinks me a simple or a complex fool. 
Try at all events to let him know that I am not a 
complex fool, for I know that I do not know 
much." This man was a warm and sturdy 
friend to the day of his death. 

Such friends of American missionaries in 
Turkey are not a few among Turkish officials. 
Sometimes they are made friendlv by opportunity 
of studying the character and work of the mis- 
sionary, sometimes by the very efforts of hostility. 
One official, who has rendered important services 
to missionaries, commenced his acquaintance by 
trying to blackmail them. By such means offi- 
cials often reach the point of helping the mission- 
aries in getting permits for their schools or in 



42 Constantinople 

building churches or in suggesting means of 
guarding against unjust suspicions excited by 
some innocent act. 

These incidents give some impression of the 
prejudice and misunderstanding which hamper 
missionaries in Turkey. Sometimes there are 
incidents of another character. A ragged and 
besmudged specimen of the genus printer's boy, 
used to bring proof sheets to my room during 
the noon lunch time. He came then because at 
other times he was the steam engine of the print- 
ing office ; for he turned the wheel that furnished 
the power. In that country man-power is cheaper 
than steam. 

We were always on friendly enough terms, but 
I knew little about him beyond his faithful per- 
formance of duty. One day this man came to 
me with clean face and hands. Not a trace of 
printing ink remained about his person. He said 
he was going to his native village in the far east 
of the Empire. But first he wished to ask a 
favour. Then this poor day-labourer told me how 
he had been taught during these five years by at- 
tending the chapel in the Bible House and hear- 
ing the sermons of the pastor. Now he was 
going back to his village and he wanted prayer to 
follow him. Said he " 1 have got to tell my 
neighbours what I have learned here. I have 
learned to know Jesus Christ, and I want them to 
know Him. I don't know much and I want your 
prayers that I may be helped when I try to tell 



The City as the Centre of a World 43 

my people what He is to me." There was an ex- 
perience that amid the host of daily cares was 
like entertaining an angel unawares. 

By this time it is probably clear to the reader's 
mind that the work of the missionary at Con- 
stantinople should be understood as a many- 
sided work. Formal preaching of the Gospel is 
no more the only serious work of the missionary, 
than fighting is the occupation which solely em- 
ploys the powers of the soldier in time of war. 
Jesus Christ, the great missionary, is the model 
of all who seek to save and elevate men. But 
little of formal doctrinal preaching is noted in 
His life in Judea and Galilee, in comparison with 
the indirect methods used by Him to disarm sus- 
picion, overthrow prejudice and plant germs of 
truth in the heart. He used His power, now as a 
healer, now as a teacher, now as a conversational- 
ist. He became the servant of all needy ones. 
Yet when He dealt with a man or woman His 
words changed a life. That father whose son 
the disciples could not heal at the foot of the 
Mount of Transfiguration, never again, we may 
be sure, qualified the petitions of a prayer by the 
phrase " If Thou canst." At Simon's feast the 
Magdalen of the alabaster box learned in a way 
that required no reinforcement, how boundless 
devotion on her part was demanded by boundless 
forgiving love. He warned His disciples that their 
work would bring disturbance into society and 
would cause them to be brought before Governors 



44 Constantinople 

and magistrates. It was because they must be 
prepared to use side issues in every direction. 
spending time and strength in living the Gospel 
into people, as well as in the formal work of the 
preacher. 

The same conditions exist to-day wherever at- 
tempts are made in non-Christian countries to 
lead men to see Jesus. The missionary who goes 
out thinking that his chief work is to preach is 
turned aside, so to speak, by unexpected incidents 
which show the vast resisting power of prejudice 
and superstition. But wherever we can see the 
texture of these obstacles and the curious calls to 
indirection which they make upon the mission- 
ary we also see the obstacles become a means of 
preparing the hearts of men to accept the gospel 
message. 

This profound principle of mission work adds 
enormous importance to the missionary centre at 
Constantinople, where are the threads of influence 
that reach to all parts of Turkey, and where the 
foreigner touches elbows with multitudes of peo- 
ple from every part of Western Asia who would 
not tolerate him in their own towns and villages, 
but are proud to be treated as his friends in this 
metropolis. The applications of such people to the 
missionary for help may be as wearisome as 
quaint and curious. But it is a sure token that 
the teachings of the pulpit are supported bv the 
dealings in the street and the social gathering 



The City as the Centre of a World 45 

when strangers in need of advice go instinctively 
to the nearest missionary. Among the Turks 
a man who is thus a recourse in difficulty is play- 
fully called, " The scratching post of the herd." 
The title is a compliment, but it is also a promise. 
Still some may remind us that mere relaxation 
of hostility is but a poor foundation on which 
to build a temple of jubilant praise. These by- 
experiences of a missionary at Constantinople 
are given merely to enforce the deduction respect- 
ing the tremendous importance of Constantinople 
as a centre for missionary operations which 
naturally follows examination of the position and 
history of the city. Few will deny that such ex- 
periences weigh in that direction. As for the 
question of rash optimism, the remark of a Euro- 
pean is pertinent who is in no wise biassed in 
favour of American missions in Turkey. This 
gentleman, who was secretary of one of the Euro- 
pean Embassies at Constantinople maae a long 
tour in Asiatic Turkey some two or three years 
ago. On his return, I said to him, " You have 
seen the American missionaries in all parts of this 
country and have had opportunity to examine 
their methods of work. You know also the diffi- 
cult position in which they are sometimes placed 
through the suspicions of Government officials. 
Can you suggest any changes of policy or method 
which might somewhat forestall such sus- 
picions? " 



46 Constantinople 

The Secretary was a Roman Catholic, and 
perhaps for this reason he visibly hesitated before 
giving his reply. But what he said was this: 

" 1 sometimes remember in our official rela- 
tions with Turkey a Turkish proverb. I think 
you may console yourselves also with this proverb, 
even in the delicate position which you some- 
times occupy. Yes on the whole it applies to 

your case also: 'The dogs run out and bark, 
but still the caravan goes on ! ' " 



II 



THE MOHAMMEDAN QUESTION 

STANDING at the top of one of the two Fire 
Towers of Constantinople one notes a 
curious peculiarity in the structure of the 
city. There are several considerable groups of 
light coloured buildings of more or less modern 
aspect and of solid structure. Surrounding these 
groups as a great sea surrounds small islands, 
and stretching away into the distance on all sides 
is the vast dingy mass of old and shapeless 
houses. Although there are many and increasing 
exceptions to the rule, the solid and light coloured 
buildings, generally speaking, are in the districts 
where Christians live, while the great dull col- 
oured mass represents the quarters inhabited by 
Muslims. 

The question inevitably rises to the lips why 
are not the Mohammedans more generally drawn 
to build and live in, instead of building for Chris- 
tians to live in, houses attractive and solid? And 
on examining the social organization of a Mo- 
hammedan country like Turkey, this question is 
broadened by discovery of strange facts. The 
Muslim inhabitants of Asiatic Turkey are sturdy, 

47 



48 Constantinople 

simple minded, and often honest and industrious 
peasants, working the soil and making their 
squalid living out of it. But they are far behind 
the people of European Turkey in their appliances 
for work. 

The degree of intellect which these people pos- 
sess is shown by their farming apparatus. Being 
farmers, their crops must be got to market or 
they will starve. But they do not know this fact, 
for no one has told them that it is a fact. The 
cart of the Turk of Asia Minor, is the highest 
evolution of brain that he has ever seen ; but do 
not think that he invented it. It has not a par- 
ticle of iron about it except the iron tires of its 
narrow footed wheels. The wagon builder takes 
two long poles and lays them side by side. At one 
end he fastens the two poles together with a 
wooden peg, and at the other end he spaces the 
poles apart by a wooden stretcher about two feet 
long. The small end of the triangle thus formed 
is the tongue to which the long straight bar which 
answers for the yoke is lashed by thongs of raw 
hide. The broad end of the triangle is the body 
of the cart, and is filled by a rough network of 
rope. About three and a half feet from the broad 
end of the triangle a crescent shaped block of 
wood is pinned to the under side of each pole, 
the concave surface resting upon the axle, and 
holding it in place by means of guide pins on each 
side of the curve of the crescent. The axle is a 
rough log of wood about six inches in diameter 



The Mohammedan Question 49 

carefully rounded and smoothed at the place 
where the crescent shaped blocks rest upon it. 
The rest of the axle is roughly hewn into shape 
and its ends are carefully squared and fitted into 
the solid wooden disks which form the wheels 
of the cart. Wheels and axle revolve together 
like carwheels. As they revolve they give forth 
unearthly shrieks and groans. A caravan of 
these carts carrying produce to the coast enlivens 
the mountain sides with weirdly ringing music, 
and yet no one seems to have thought of dimin- 
ishing the friction and ending the din by use of a 
little grease. 

The cart will carry about fifteen bushels of 
wheat in sacks, and when used in the carrying 
trade, drawn by two buffaloes and driven by the 
owner, it will bring the man as much as thirty-five 
cents a day. The grief of the carter, however, is 
the behaviour of his two solid wooden wheels. 
They object to both wet weather and dry, and he 
has to try to maintain a medium state by bathing 
them at every stream and sheltering them from 
the sun at every halt under his coarse, brown 
overcoat. Six hundred years of experience and 
dire necessity have not suggested to any one the 
need or the possibility of improvement. 

The farmer's cart of northern Asia Minor still 
closely follows the type of the two wheeled chariot 
of the ancient Phrygian warriors. Left to himself 
the Mohammedan peasant of Turkey improves 
neither his tools, his stock, his produce, nor the 



50 Constantinople 

soil of his fields, even though he may hccome ahle 
to put on the airs and graces of a landed pro- 
prietor. The case is but little different in the 
cities. One meets there Mohammedans who are 
dignified and commonly courteous officials and 
shrewd diplomatists. One admires there many 
patient and brave soldiers. But the Muslim 
masses are hewers of wood and drawers of water ; 
they are bearers of burdens ; they are donkey 
drivers ; they are the smallest of small traders, 
they are artisans whose hands compete with their 
tools in clumsiness. 

Closer acquaintance reveals the fact that from 
the beginning of Turkish history very many of 
the greatest men of the Empire have been of 
Christian origin — men who took Mohammedan 
names and the Mohammedan religion as stepping 
stones to greatness. To-day the army depends 
on foreign Christians for its organization as well 
as for its arms and ammunition, and to a consid- 
erable degree for the instruction of its officers. 
The Treasury would go to pieces if Christian 
counsellors were not at the side of the Minister of 
Finance. Rarely does a wealthy Turk venture to 
keep up an establishment without a Christian to 
manage his accounts. A Mohammedan banking 
house is almost unthinkable. The most import- 
ant book publishing houses for Mohammedan 
literature, are owned and operated by Christians, 
and the most influential Mohammedan news- 
papers are Christian property. No Muslim ma- 



The Mohammedan Question 51 

chinist succeeds unless he has a Christian for 
chief. The architect who builds the mosque is a 
Christian. Turkish steamers are bought abroad, 
or if built at great expense in Turkey the man 
who makes the plan and the builder who follows it 
are both Christians. The steamers are rarely 
trusted to Muslim captains, and when they are, 
they can be recognized as far as they can be seen 
by their dilapidation and disorder. Why are the 
positions of trust, and of manual skill and finan- 
cial responsibility in a Mohammedan country 
not filled by Mohammedans ? Why is there an in- 
completeness in the Mohammedan's equipment for 
life which is more notable than that of the Chris- 
tian or Jew brought up under the same environ- 
ment ? 

But the same question instinctively leaps to 
the lips on noticing the Mohammedan religious 
observances in this city of magnificent mosques. 

The first impressions of Islam in Constanti- 
nople are commonly gained from seeing its wor- 
ship and hearing the beautiful sentences in which 
it voices its praise of God. Mohammedans often 
describe Constantinople as a forest of minarets. 
These slender spires, inspiring both in numbers 
and in grace, enter into any view of the city. 
And in the quiet of sunset or of the evening, the 
visitor's soul is stirred again and again by the 
solemn song of the muezzin calling all men to 
worship the one Almighty God. At certain times 
in the year, the muezzin returns to the minaret 



52 Constantinople 

after the last service of the evening, when the 
city turmoil is stilled, to voice for the pious na- 
tion its praise of the most High. High in the 
little halcony of the minaret he stands like a pre- 
centor leading the hymns of the people ; and the 
temple in which he has taken his stand is limited 
by the starry dome of heaven alone. The prac- 
tice is beautiful. Muslims often call attention 
to it with pride, for thus Islam makes the wide 
world resound with God's praises, and the hearts 
of the people say, Amen. 

The Christian listener cannot fail to find his 
heart lifted up by the beautiful words ringing 
out upon the stillness and darkness of the night 
from the lips of the worshipper upon the slender 
tower above the mosque. " Oh Mighty God ! 
Oh Glorious God ! Thou art peculiar for great- 
ness and graciousness. Thou dost not slumber 
while thy servants sleep ! Wonderful the watch 
which thou dost ever keep ! Oh slumbering serv- 
ants of God! I am amazed at you who slumber 
while God wakes ! How long will you sleep ? 
How can you sleep before the God who keeps 
watch ? Awake from sleep, be up and praise ! " 

It is indeed God's praise echoing abroad 
through the wide earth from the lips of a pious 
nation! But the pious chant is drowned by a 
shout from other pious Muslims nearer than that 
lofty minaret to the practical affairs of life, who 
have not enough respect for the idea of a nation 
of worshipers to await the end of the anthem be- 



The Mohammedan Question 53 

fore breaking in upon it with their song which 
also rises to the starry dome : 

" Red lips so near 
The way is clear 
There's none to chide 
Sweet lips come near 
There's no more fear 
When once you've tried ! " 

Then the visitor experiences a revulsion of 
feeling. He faces the depressing question, Which 
is the true Islam? And perplexity is no whit 
lessened by knowing that the singer on the street 
cannot understand the thrilling Arabic words of 
the singer on the minaret who claims to be the 
spokesman of the nation. 

Wherever Mohammedan worshipers are found 
the same situation is met — the mass seeming truly 
devoted to God's worship, the individual seeming 
unmoved by the Presence. Why does the same 
incompleteness of endowment seen in the ma- 
terial life of the Muslim dwarf his spiritual facul- 
ties also ? The Mohammedan believes in God ; 
he uses Psalms of praise derived from the Hebrew 
Hymnal ; he promulgates a code of morals vir- 
tually the same as that of Sinai ; he admits the 
miraculous birth and the unique character of 
Jesus Christ. Why is this noble promise of 
strength everywhere coupled with weakness and 
ghastly failure? This is the Mohammedan ques- 
tion to the missionary. 



54 Constantinople 

Thomas Carlvlc makes an inquiry which goes 
to the roots of one element of this puzzle. He 
says " Islam triumphed by the sword. But where 
did it get its sword?' The answer to Carlyle's 
question and the secret of the strength of Islam 
is bound up with the conviction which made Mo- 
hammed a teacher of the worship of God. The 
great truth which burned in the heart of Mo- 
hammed until it made him a prophet was the 
truth that God is one God, slow to anger and 
plenteous in mercy. 

The folly as well as the crime of idolatry is 
now so clearly seen by every Muslim that a frenzy 
of contempt and indignation possesses him when- 
ever he meets it. To this day in Muslim lands no 
man will allow a picture to hang in his house. 
Texts of Scripture artistically written and care- 
fully framed decorate the walls. Graceful inter- 
lacings of the Arabic letters beautify his drap- 
eries and furniture, while conventionalized leaves 
or simple geometrical forms make the scheme of 
ornament for his carpets and utensils. The use 
by Christians of pictures and crosses in worship, 
or of pictures for decoration, which are ignorantly 
supposed to be worshiped in the houses, arouses 
bitter and ever renewed hatred among the 
Mohammedans. 

A Turk once told me that a friend advised 
him to hear foreign Christians preach, for their 
words were good. He followed a foreign clergy- 
man into a chapel one Sunday. But he could 



The Mohammedan Question 55 

not find words to express his indignation on find- 
ing the congregation kneeling before a picture of 
the Virgin Mary placed over an altar covered 
with candles. The experience weaned him from 
all desire to hear foreign Christians preach. A 
Turkish officer visiting a Greek church saw in 
the dome the figure of an old, old man, represent- 
ing God. The priest wished to hurry him to the 
other side of the church, but the Turk said " Stay, 
What is the picture in the dome? " " Oh, that is 
nothing," said the Greek ; " Come over here and 
see our books." " Now," said the officer in telling 
me the story, " the priest knew it was wrong to 
make that picture, for he was ashamed to have me 
see it. But in his infamous hypocrisy he teaches 
his people to kneel to it, while to escape my blame 
he calls his God nothing, and that is his 
religion ! " 

Islam got its sword where Israel got its mighty 
weapon for hewing a place among the nations. 
Islam got its sword through championship of the 
truth of God's being when the world had well- 
nigh forgotten Him. Mohammed welded this 
truth with such heat upon the minds of his hearers 
that no crevice is left for a hair's breadth of doubt 
respecting the truth of the whole accompanying 
doctrine. To this day Islam has power to con- 
vert pagans because it uses this same truth with 
similar heat. Where, then, is room for weakness 
to creep in? Let us review the essentials of 
Muslim doctrine. 



56 Constantinople 

Esaad Effendi, while Sheikh ul Islam, or chief 
religious Doctor at Constantinople, wrote for a 
foreigner who wished to become a Mohammedan, 
a careful statement of the fundamental teachings 
of Islam. As being a straightforward and at- 
tractive statement of doctrine, he had it published 
in all the papers of Constantinople. It is based 
throughout on the teachings of the Koran, and 
will give one more completely than any other 
summary within my knowledge the essentials of 
Mohammedan belief. Somewhat condensed, but 
in actual words of the Sheikh ul Islam it is as 
follows : 

" God is one God ; a spirit, who begets not 
neither is begotten. He is merciful ; He is just, 
and He is Supreme Creator and Almighty Ruler. 
Hence to His providence must be attributed the 
origin of all good and all evil in the world. 

" Man is created that he may adore the Creator. 
Adoration is summed up in two phrases ; to hon- 
our God's commands and to have compassion on 
God's creatures. 

" Man cannot know the form of worship 
worthy of God's glory, hence God has appointed 
prophets and has sent to them, by His angels, in- 
spiration and written books. Mohammed is the 
last and greatest of the prophets. The next great- 
est is Jesus and the third is Moses. After them 
rank Abraham, Noah and Adam. The full num- 
ber of the prophets is known to God alone. 



The Mohammedan Question 57 

" The final revelation of God to man is the 
Koran. It is holy, eternal and unchangeable. It 
has been preserved as precious from the first day 
and will endure until the last day. 

" What makes a man one of the Submitted 
people (Musliman*) is faith in God, in His an- 
gels, in His books, in His prophets, in the last 
Judgment, with attribution to God's providence 
of both good and evil. 

" The child of the Submitted people is also a 
Submitted one (Muslim) through his birth, and 
requires no human intermediation to make him 
such. But the unsubmitted man becomes one of 
the Submitted by faith ; that is by fixing in his 
heart and proclaiming in words " There is no God 
but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God," 
which is in Arabic, La ilaha W Allah, Mohammed 
Rcsonl Ullah: By that act he has become sub- 
mitted (Muslim) and has found Divine grace. 
But no human being can be intermediary between 
man and God. This transaction is one in which 
men or priests have no part. 

u Belief annuls all sin. The unbeliever who 
accepts Mohammedanism becomes by conversion 
as innocent as on the day of his birth, except that 
his neighbours' rights cannot be annulled ; he 

* The word Muslim means Submitted (to God) and 
is the most usual name which Mohammedans apply to 
themselves. The plural of this word is Musliman and is 
the source of the English word Mussulman. 



58 Constantinople 

must make reparation in the judgment day to 
every person whom he has oppressed or injured. 

" Nevertheless, to be a perfect believer a Mo- 
hammedan must perform obligatory duties, pray 
to God, and avoid sins like murder, theft, adul- 
tery and sodomy. 

" The duties obligatory upon Mohammedans are, 
1. To pray five times a day. 2. To give alms 
to the poor to the extent of one-fortieth of one's 
goods every year. 3. To fast during the whole 
month of Ramazan, and 4. To make once a pil- 
grimage to Mecca. 

" If a believer does not obey the commands of 
God, he does not by this means become an unbe- 
liever. He has gone astray. He remains at the 
Divine disposal. God either pardons him or con- 
demns him to pass in hell a time proportionate to 
his sins. A sinner who repents and asks in per- 
son from God forgiveness of his sins, obtains the 
Divine pardon, always excepting the restoration 
of the rights of a neighbour whom he has injured. 
The only way of escape from responsibility for 
injustice to others is by obtaining a full quittance 
from the injured party. 

" All men will rise at the Day of Judgment to 
be questioned as to their deeds, one by one. The 
only exceptions to this questioning are those who 
died while fighting unbelievers, and are therefore 
martyrs. All such pass without inquiry into 
Paradise. Soldiers who fight in the Holy War 
are not excepted, although all the acts of such, 



The Mohammedan Question 59 

even acts done in sleep, are considered acts of 
worship. At the Judgment Day God will compel 
every man who has injured his neighbour to re- 
store to him his due.* Even martyrs then have 
to restore what they have wrongfully taken from 
any man, for God is just. After the Judgment 
the elect pass into Paradise and the damned into 
hell. 

" In one word, every man must learn the pre- 
cepts revealed by God through His prophets, and 
must conform thereto. And there is never any 
intermediary between man and God. Still, cer- 
tain religious ceremonies, such as the special 
pravers of Friday and of some feasts, cannot be 
performed save by order of the Sultan as Caliph 
(successor) of the Prophet. Obedience to his or- 
ders, therefore, is one of the most important of 
religious duties. 

" Furthermore one of the things to which every 
Muslim should be very attentive is uprightnesss 
in character. Pride, presumption, egotism and 
harshness are not becoming in a Mussulman. To 
revere the great and pity the small is a Moham- 
medan precept." 

Many persons on reading this statement will 
think it about what any reasonable man would 

* I once refused to pay a livery man in Constantinople 
a sum which he asked in excess of the sum agreed upon 
for a horse. For weeks afterwards this man did not fail, 
on meeting me to call out, " I shall get it from you on 
the Judgment Day ! " 



60 Constantinople 

approve in his neighbour in the way of religious 
principle. Throughout the Koran pages of 
phrases exist which exalt virtue and condemn 
vice. Such injunctions seem to run in many- 
cases very near to Christian moral teaching. But 
when we come to seek the meaning attached by 
the Koran and its followers to these words, we 
meet a surprise. In travelling in Turkey I once 
fell in with a Pasha, a governor of one of the 
provinces of Asia Minor. A Turk must not be 
deemed a necessarily disagreeable companion. 
This Pasha was a most agreeable and even at- 
tractive man, and during a voyage which lasted 
several days, we talked on almost every conceiv- 
able subject of interest to plain and decent men. 
The fine qualities of this Turk might serve as a 
capital text on the impertinence of molesting the 
religious system of a people already so cultured. 
The Pasha had some very good ideas. 

One day a wealthy Turkish family was pre- 
paring to leave the ship. The daughter, a bright 
little girl of twelve, appeared dressed in her 
silken finery with diamonds in her hair, diamond 
rings on her fingers, and a long string of gold 
coins passing over her shoulder to sustain a 
golden belt at her waist. She was like some beau- 
tiful barbarian princess. The Pasha said to me, 
" What a pity to have our girls taught to rely 
upon ornaments for decoration ! Just listen now 
and see me make that little girl ashamed of her- 



The Mohammedan Question 61 

self." So he called her to him and said, " See 
here, Emine, do you know what makes a woman 
beautiful, no matter how poorly she is dressed? 
It is the beauty of her heart and her life." The 
girl looked at him a moment and then discon- 
certed the Pasha, and stopped his intended sermon 
by the answer, " I know what you think. You 
think I wear these things because I am rich and 
want to show off. It is not so at all. I wear 
these things just because they are pretty. I don't 
put on airs ! " 

This incident placed tbe little girl and the great 
Pasha in quite a pleasing light. But this sensible 
and well-meaning man showed me another side 
of his character at evening at table in the cabin. 
He asked me to take a glass of wine with him. I 
declined. Then the Pasha said, " You may think 
it strange that I, a Mohammedan, should ask you, 
a Christian and a missionary, to drink with me 
when wine drinking is forbidden by our religion. 
I will tell you how I dare do this thing." He 
filled his glass, and held it up looking at the beau- 
tiful colour of it, and said, " Now if I say that it is 
right to drink this wine, I deny God's commands 
to men, and He would punish me in hell for the 
blasphemy. But I take up this glass, admitting 
that God has commanded me not to drink it, and 
that I sin in drinking it. Then I drink it off, so, 
casting myself on the mercy of God. For our 
religion lets me know that God is too merciful to 



62 Constantinople 

punish mc for doing a thing which I wish to do, 
when I humbly admit that to do it breaks His 
commandments." 

The Pasha's curious idea that God is too merci- 
ful to condemn failures in self-restraint throws a 
new light on the statement of religious require- 
ments made by Esaad Effendi the Sheikh id 
Islam. For that idea applies in the mind of the 
Muslim to all requirements of the moral law. 
The case of wine drinking is merely an accidental 
illustration of the working of the theory. A 
pious Mohammedan of Constantinople, who com- 
bines the vocation of defending the superiority of 
Islam as a moral force in the world with that of 
writing novels in the field of Zola, carries this 
theory of God's toleration of man's self-gratifica- 
tions to its logical result. In one of his rather 
brilliant books,* after lauding the provision which 
lets a man follow his changing whims to the ex- 
tent of taking four different wives, he frankly 
cites this liberty as proof of the Divine origin of 
Islam. For, since God knows the natural tend- 
encies of man, a permission like this exalts the 
mercy and compassion of God. 

If, in the light of this notion of God's attitude 
toward self-indulgence we now read again the 
statement of Mohammedan doctrine given above, 
we shall see that the Shiekh ul Islam makes a clear 

* Kari Koja Masali, a book on marriage. 



The Mohammedan Question 63 

distinction between commands of God which must 
be obeyed — which are duties obligatory upon 
every man — and requirements to which great 
attention must be paid. The duties which he 
deems obligatory upon man as commands of God 
all belong to ritual and the formal observances 
of worship, while the requirements to which 
" great attention " must be paid are moral pre- 
cepts. That these moral precepts are not essen- 
tial parts of the religious demands of Islam is 
clear from the declaration that moral turpitude 
cannot deprive a man of his quality as a " sub- 
mitted one," nor of his share in the Muslim's 
paradise. The inverted importance thus given to 
observances of ritual compared with moral vir- 
tues affects the whole body of Mohammedan reli- 
gious teaching. 

The litany of Islam contains fourteen short 
sentences of praise, varied on great occasions by 
the addition of certain Glorias from the Koran. 
Few of them contain anything a Christian may 
not say. These sentences of adoration, recited 
inaudibly with the proper genuflections, constitute 
one " turn " (rikat) of worship. A specified num- 
ber of " turns " form the requirement for each of 
the five daily prayers. But the order and number 
of repetitions of these pious ejaculations are of 
overmastering importance. A mistake in the 
order in which they are spoken, or in using while 
standing one which belongs to the bowing post- 



64 Constantinople 

ure, or in making four repetitions instead of three, 
spoils the whole worship. It then has to be done 
over more carefully from the beginning. 

As if to emphasize the importance of the form, 
the doctors of theology have added their testi- 
mony (which sounds a little like the Talmud) that 
the knees and the forehead show the effect of use 
in worship by failing to brown like the rest of the 
body when exposed to the flames of hell. Thus 
Mohammedans who have suffered the appointed 
penalty for their sins, can readily be recognized 
when it is desired to withdraw them from the 
place of torment, by the colour of their foreheads 
and their knees. The emphasis on form is re- 
peated many times in the acts of the Prophet Mo- 
hammed. He was one day in the midst of his 
ablutions when a passing tribesman gave him the 
usual salutation. Instead of returning it with the 
usual answer, " Glory to God ! " the Prophet re- 
mained silent, and the other man was abashed. 
When the Prophet had finished his ablutions, he 
spoke to the man kindly, explaining that he did 
not answer the salutation because he could not 
" utter the name of God with unclean lips." 

One of the Muslim traditions of Moses carries 
the idea of the Divine commendation of forms 
still farther ; Moses the man of God, one day 
prayed to God, saying: " Oh merciful God show 
to me the most wicked man in the city." And 
God said to him : " Stand by the gate and he that 
cometh in last at night is the most wicked man in 



The Mohammedan Question 65 

the city." So Moses stood by the gate and noted 
who was the last to come in, and the gates were 
shut. And Moses prayed again, saying: "Oh 
merciful God, show me, I pray Thee the most 
holy man in the city." And God answered him 
saying: " Stand by the gate in the morning and 
the first man to go out, he is the most holy man in 
the city." So Moses stood at the gate in the 
morning and when the gates were opened, behold 
the first to go out was the same who was last to 
come in at night and whom he had noted as the 
wickedest man ; and lo ! he was now the most 
holy. And Moses was troubled and he prayed 
again, saying: "Oh Most Merciful God, why 
hast Thou dealt thus with Thy servant, and said 
of the same man he is most wicked and he is 
most holy?" And the Lord answered, "When 
that man came in he was unclean, but since then 
he has performed ablution, so that none in the 
city is so pure as he." 

The natural result of giving to ritual this 
unique position as the first obligation of man is 
to leave him free in his quest for self-gratifica- 
tion. Let it not be supposed that there is no rec- 
ognition of sin in Islam. It is everywhere de- 
nounced. But it is everywhere treated as calling 
for retribution, not reform. Repentance is simply 
regret for the punishment of sin. And when 
the Mohammedan sinner has suffered in hell the 
penalty appropriate to his case he is fit for admis- 
sion to blessedness in God's eternal favour with- 



66 Constantinople 

out change of character. So thoroughly is this 
idea of God's tolerance of sin wrought into the 
intellect of the Mohammedan, that one of the 
Mohammedan censors of the Press at Constanti- 
nople, when confronted with the phrase in a 
Christian hook " Jesus Christ came into the world 
to save sinners," insisted that the statement must 
be changed to read " Jesus Christ came into the 
world to save Christian sinners." Mohammedans 
are not placed in jeopardy by sin and need no 
Saviour. But in these teachings, besides the su- 
preme importance of forms, the importance of 
self and of the interests of self are everywhere 
presupposed. 

Throughout the Mohammedan rules for 
worship along with injunctions whose words re- 
mind one of the demand of the Old Testament 
for heart-service of God, attention to self-interest 
is everywhere emphasized. The daily praying 
and ablutions must be repeated five times a day, 
but in deference to personal convenience, permis- 
sion is given to do the prayers all at once with 
one ablution provided careful tally is kept of the 
number of times of repetition which this accumu- 
lation of dues in worship implies. 

The rigid fast by day during the month of 
Ramazan, the Koran says, will secure forgiveness 
of sin, but as the Koran instructs the people to eat 
by night instead of by day in that month, the fast 
becomes a mere change of time for eating. In 
actual fact Mohammedans eat more and live more 



The Mohammedan Question 67 

luxuriously in their month of fast than in or- 
dinary times. And in the giving of alms, the 
directions are precise as to the number of ani- 
mals the farmer must give out of his herds. It 
is an act of worship and he must respect it as 
such. But the man, while forbidden to give his 
poorest animals, since he himself would not ac- 
cept such an offering, is told he need not give 
his best for this act of worship, but should rather 
choose a medium animal. When the people are 
told to offer animals in sacrifice to God, too, the 
Koran goes half way to meet the reluctant wor- 
shiper by showing how benevolently the demand 
avoids self-denial. He has had the use of the 
animal before sacrifice, and has the use of it after 
sacrifice, being allowed to eat its flesh himself. 
Men are commanded to regard other Muslims 
as brothers, and to avoid harsh or overbearing 
conduct. Yet here again the Koran comes to the 
rescue of the natural passions by definitely in- 
structing its followers to take vengeance equal to 
the injury, upon any who harm them, adding that 
in case the work of retaliation proves difficult, 
" verily God will assist you, for God is merciful 
and ready to forgive." And this by the side of 
instructions to " pay great attention " to kind- 
ness and compassion. 

Again, the law about alms-giving as an act 
of worship specifically mentions that these alms 
must not be given to any poor who are not Mo- 
hammedans. It is one of the multitude of in- 



68 Constantinople 

junctions which feed hatred toward all fellow 
men who are outside of the Muslim faith. The 
sure encouragement of the worst of selfish pas- 
sions which such injunctions are bound to pro- 
duce seems quite overlooked. But the climax 
of this series of provisions for the service of God 
without self-abnegation is reached in the nature 
of the reward promised in Paradise to the 
faithful. 

The pictures placed by the Koran in this con- 
nection before the gloating eye of the believer, 
and urged upon his study and meditation, are 
familiar to all. The nature of the minute details 
given is such as to prevent any claim that these 
pictures are merely figurative and spiritual sym- 
bols. Again and again the Koran reverts to those 
luxuries now classed as forbidden — the silken 
robes, the golden ornaments, the numerous 
women perfected in beauty who are provided for 
each believer, the savoury delicacies of the table, 
with appetite instantly renewed for longer delight 
in eating, and with wine liberally poured out to 
make up for abstention in this world. Our Pasha 
permitting himself to satisfy his craving for wine 
while believing it to be forbidden him bv God, 
only followed the teaching of the Koran.* 
" God is minded to make your religion light unto 
you, for man was created weak." For the effect on 

* Frankly stated in the 4th Sura in connection with 
the permission for polygamy. 



The Mohammedan Question 69 

the mind of attempts to follow this teaching is to 
make religion a form, self-indulgence a privilege, 
and a self-centred life in man an object of the 
benevolent solicitude of God. To an outside ob- 
server the doctrine may even seem designed to 
secure the coddling of the flesh, by implanting in- 
delibly in the heart the idea that self-gratification 
is the highest good, and that man has Divine 
permission to serve both God and Mammon. 

But it is to the profound effect on the daily life 
of such a theory that we have to direct our at- 
tention. One effect is that it abolishes any 
essential connection between religion and moral 
conduct. 

Attendance at an evening service in the mosque 
of St. Sophia does much to sweep away prejudice 
against the Mohammedan religion. Being an un- 
believer one has to go into the unused galleries ; 
entering the mosque by the narrow da^k passage 
and cavernous side gateway assigned to women 
in Greek times, and to other inferior classes in 
these days. A winding way, which is an inclined 
plane made for the comfort of the wives of Jus- 
tinian's Romans, leads up and up to the gallery 
above. At last the dim light of the vaulted 
passage suddenly brightens, and another turn of 
the way brings to view a lofty, splendid marble 
gateway which is full of light. Not that there 
is a lamp there. The light is in the atmosphere. 

Sixty feet beyond the gateway is a group of 
noble columns joined by many a gracious sweep 



"jo Constantinople 

of arch. Beyond them is the blazing glory of 

light which has penetrated to the end of the 
winding passage. No lamps are to be seen ; noth- 
ing but the penetrating golden glow against which 
columns, arches and parapet are black as ink. It 
is like coming out of the depths of a mountain 
cavern to see through its yawning mouth the 
noontide glory of June where sky and clouds 
alone as yet limit the view. In an instant, of 
course, the sense of perspective returns. The 
black columns and parapet and arches are not 
black. Their shaded surface is rich with deli- 
cate traceries and mellow tints, and there is the 
glitter of gold where the glow from beyond 
strikes the under edge of the arches ; and upon 
the darkness of the opposite gallery other arches 
and other columns stand forth bathed in a dead 
gold colour, while the columns and arches of the 
foreground on either hand are seen to stretch 
away in unnumbered succession. The shock of 
the first impression of an infinite glory, holds 
one on the threshold of the marble portal. The 
second, more sentient glance draws one quickly 
to the parapet of the wide gallery, that the 
mystery may be solved of the glory of light 
without visible source, and of the columns and 
arches which do not confine one within walls. 

Far below are hundreds of tiny lamps hanging 
in huge clusters in invisible connection with the 
dome equally far above the level of the gallery. 



The Mohammedan Question 71 

In long lines upon the cornices, and even around 
the base of the dome, hundreds and thousands of 
tiny lamps glitter before the eyes. The ruling 
tint of the walls and of the wonderful dome above 
is the dull gold of mosaics a thousand years old ; 
exactly the colour of the light from the little 
lamps. Thus it comes to pass that the impression 
from the dark gateway is of softly gleaming light 
unlimited in depth. 

And now, sitting upon the rough benches pro- 
vided for the discomfort of foreign visitors, one 
can begin to realize the grandeur of the idea which 
ruled the building of this temple. Glitter was not 
the purpose of the architect of St. Sophia, al- 
though originally the church was almost one 
continuous sheet of gold. Religiosity aroused by 
light dimly penetrating through arches was not 
his thought, but infinite glory. When he devised 
that vast interior without visible support for the 
majestic sweep of its mighty dome his heart was 
lifted in awe to the footstool of the Most High. 
He would fain lift the hearts of the people to 
feel His presence too. Looking up into the great 
dome we may see that the Mohammedan con- 
queror has also grasped this idea ; for at the very 
apex he has made a circle of intricate tracery of 
letters which form Arabic words from the Koran : 
" God is the light of Heaven and earth ; the 
similitude of His light is as a niche in which is a 
lamp and the lamp within glass; and the glass 



J2 Constantinople 

shines as it were a star. It is lighted from a 
blessed tree ; an olive neither of the East nor of 
the West." 

Four or five thousand people are ranged in 
long lines side to side upon the matted floor of 
the mosque. A white turhaned old man is seated 
in front of this congregation facing the mihrab * 
a little to the right of the centre of the apse. 
Suddenly a shrill cry from the gallery of the choir 
rings through the great building. Before one 
comprehends what is happening the awe aroused 
by the place of worship is deepened by the awe 
of worship itself. The congregation below is so 
far away as to seem in another world. Standing 
there before God are old and young, rich and 
poor, flaxen-haired Slav, rotund Turk, and 
swarthy Arab, all differences of age, race, and 
social rank melted away by approach to the throne 
of the Almighty God. 

As the evening worship commences, it is clear 
that the great assembly is absorbed in exalting 
Him who is the one true God. " God is most 
Great, God is most Great ! " shrilly proclaims the 
monotone of the Imam from the distant altar- 
place of the apse. Like the rustling of leaves in 
a wind-tossed forest is the rustle of the multitude 
muttering, " God is most Great," while all to- 
gether as one man bring their foreheads to the 
ground in adoration. Again the congregation 

* The niche which marks the direction of Mecca. 



The Mohammedan Question 73 

rise and stand with inaudible utterance, following 
the Imam and the choir through the noble prayer 
which forms the first chapter of the Koran: " In 
the name of God the merciful and the compas- 
sionate ! Praise God the Lord of all creatures, 
the merciful, the King of the Day of Judgment. 
Thee do we worship ; of Thee do we ask assist- 
ance. Lead us in the right way, in the way of 
those to whom Thou hast been gracious ; not of 
those with whom Thou art wroth nor of those 
who wander from Thee." 

While the sentences of the Muslim litany are 
uttered, all the people together reverently bow, 
then kneel, and then bring their foreheads to the 
ground in utter prostration before God. The 
solemn fitness of the words of adoration, the si- 
lence of the mass of people following the words 
of the white-haired leader, the absolute union of 
the long lines of men shoulder to shoulder in 
their bowings, kneelings and prostrations, fairly 
compels admission that that stately building is 
now quite as much the house of God as when it 
echoed with the chant of the Greek liturgy. 

And then some one touches your elbow. The 
broad shouldered Softa * who brought you up to 
the gallery, and whose flowing robes, and snow- 
white turban, and finely molded features, and 
flowing gray beard, and dignified bearing you 



* Softa is the title colloquially applied to the lower 
grades of the religious hierarchy and especially to the 
students of the mosque schools described in chapter VI. 



74 Constantinople 

have not failed to admire, whispers in your ear 
the dismal word "Bakshish." 'Why do you 
want Bakshish?" " I, too, am one of the Sub- 
mitted people (Muslim). I ought to be there," 
pointing with his thumb toward the luminous 
abyss beyond the parapet, whence the Imam's 
penetrating cry " God is most Great " is again 
rising. ' For your sake I have stayed away from 
worship. It is a sin. Much bakshish you should 
give one who has sinned for your sake." 

The lugubrious whine of the old rascal breaks 
the spell ! There is then such a thing as insensi- 
bility to the impressive worship of this great 
sanctuary ! Giving the man a quarter in uncon- 
cealed disgust, you plunge into the dark tunnel 
of descent and actually flee from the place. 

Now the idea of religion which underlies such 
an act by one of its teachers is that it is solely 
an outward affair. The man who wanted to be 
paid for sinning had no inkling of such a thing 
as the building up of character, nor of the 
effects of self-indulgence or the desire for it in 
preventing improvement. It should not be sup- 
posed that there is no self-denial in Islam. Mo- 
hammedans rightly claim that the minute atten- 
tion demanded by the rites and forms of worship 
trains men in self-denial and self-control. But 
this self-denial and self-control enforced in one 
direction only, necessarily comes to be regarded 
as a temporary burden. It has small effect on the 



The Mohammedan Question 75 

character or on man's relations to his fellow men. 
In fact it actually removes from questions of 
moral conduct the impelling force of a desire to 
please God. To please God it is enough to follow 
carefully the prescribed observances. 

In America we are optimistic enough to be- 
lieve that professions of religion which bear no 
trade-mark of good deeds will sooner or later 
receive their just dues from the community in 
which they appear. In the Orient, however, no 
such popular punishment of a divorce of morals 
from religion occurs. One may often see in Asia 
a man who hesitates no more before committing 
robbery than before picking a ripe plum from the 
tree, a man who can kill a neighbour of another 
faith with as clear a conscience as if he were 
wishing him " Good morning," a man whose ex- 
perience enables him to tell to a hair the number 
of blows with a sand-bag which will kill and the 
number that will merely stun, a man who will 
as a matter of course take advantage of a woman 
accidentally left unprotected within his reach, and 
who nevertheless can wax eloquent over' the 
beauty of love to God, and suffer from scruples 
about eating mutton that is not known to have 
been slaughtered in the canonical manner. Any 
vocabulary of religious terms thus comes to have 
meanings which are entirely different from those 
given by Christians to the same elementary terms 
of religious experience. We have already seen 



76 Constantinople 

how different from the Christian understanding 
of the word is the Muslim idea of " purity " in 
a religious sense. 

Such a new meaning of " repentance " appears 
as is implied by a saying of Mohammed respect- 
ing a man stoned to death for adultery. " Bury 
him " said the Prophet " as a good Muslim ; for 
he has repented with such a repentance that if it 
were divided among the whole human race it 
would suffice for all." Again, the phrase " The 
fear of God " is used in the literal sense as a de- 
terrent from sin. " The knowledge of God " is 
a sort of auto-hypnotic state, to which a man is 
brought by turning his tongue back to his palate, 
holding his breath and repeating " There is no 
God but God " as many times as possible before 
a new respiration is taken. 

" Spiritual Food " is any literature that arouses 
strong emotion, even though it be Swinburne or 
Walt Whitman. " Holiness " is the condition of 
the man, who after fulfilling the prescribed forms 
of worship, performs extra supererogatory genu- 
flections and ablutions and fastings through desire 
of merit. Such definitions of Mohammedan re- 
ligious terms are popular rather than theological, 
but they are the accepted definitions, and have 
their origin in the peculiarities of the system 
whose essentials are given by the Sheikh ul Islam. 

A more subtile effect of the justification of self- 
seeking by these doctrines is the progressive nar- 
rowing of the circle of the sympathies. We find 



The Mohammedan Question 77 

among the Mohammedans in Constantinople 
many examples of kindly and even beautiful gen- 
erosity. But we also discover that more than any 
other class of the people of the city the Mo- 
hammedans tend to group themselves in little 
circles which are exclusive and have no emotion 
for these outside. A few years ago an English 
steamer loaded with wheat was sunk by collision 
in passing through the Bosphorus, and fifteen 
men went down with the ship in fifty fathoms 
of water. The comment of the Mohammedan 
papers of the city was lamentation over the loss of 
so much good wheat ! 

Constantinople under fair skies is matchless ; 
deluged with mud it is without a rival ; but 
clogged with snow, it is a spectacle of helpless 
misery which is outside of the range of descrip- 
tion. The Constantinoplitan makes no forecast of 
his needs as winter approaches for he knows that 
three winters out of five are nearly free from 
snow. He has no incitement to prepare for win- 
ter when he may hope that the Lord will spare 
him this winter also. Then when the snow storms 
come down on the city they find the people hope- 
lessly dazed. At one such time I remember see- 
ing a man step upon a pile of snow in the street. 
A yell came forth from the snow pile which re- 
vealed the presence of a man. He had lain down 
in the street from which the very dogs had fled, 
and he was sheltering under his cloak two little 
shivering girls. He was a war refugee whom 



78 Constantinople 

the police had turned out of the old ruined house 
which had served as shelter for him and his two 
little girls. The police had selected the height of 
the snow storm as the fitting moment to do this. 
The aged Mohammedan had walked the streets 
of this Mohammedan city looking for shelter in 
vain until the little girls could go no farther and 
were whimpering with hunger and cold. Then 
he crouched upon the pavement, and took them 
under his cloak where they spent the night be- 
cause in all the city there was no one to attend 
to their need. A peculiarity of Mohammedan 
charity is that it is ostentatious but takes small 
pains to see that it relieves the really needy. 
Even when men were dying of starvation in Asia 
Minor, wealthy Muslims rarely gave help to the 
peasantry. 

The same effect of the doctrine appears in the 
lack of business solidarity between dealer and 
customer seen among the Mohammedans of the 
city. You go into a shop in the Bazaars to buy a 
rug. The pious owner of the shop is engaged 
in prayer upon the low platform which takes the 
place of a counter. When he has finished his 
prayers, he sells you a rug, demanding three 
times the regular price for it. If you leave it to 
him to send home, he will send you a poorer arti- 
cle, and will insist that this was the one which 
you bought. On being remonstrated with for 
this conduct the man will say, " This is Con- 
stantinople. You say that I shall lose my custom- 



The Mohammedan Question 79 

ers by displeasing them. I tell you that if you 
cease to trade with me, I shall find ten new- 
customers who have just come to the city, and so 
I shall not miss you." 

The narrowness which prevents community of 
interest appears also in church affairs. The 
mosques of Constantinople are supported by great 
endowment funds, the gifts of the faithful who 
have passed away. But if you talk with the 
keepers of the mosques about the funds set apart 
for this purpose, they will tell you that every- 
body tries to get a portion for private uses. Rich 
Pashas have their infant children appointed to 
positions as mosque servants that carry with them 
pensions out of the mosque funds. Administra- 
tors of the funds manage to have a good per- 
centage cling to their fingers ; and the mosques 
are suffered to fall into dilapidation or are left 
in dim obscurity in the evening services because 
the vergers and higher precentors combine with 
the pastor (Imam) to divide the revenues or to 
sell the olive oil assigned to the mosque for 
sacred uses. 

Another result of the system profoundly affects 
the influence of the spiritual suggestions of the 
Koran upon its followers. The concentration of 
attention upon self during worship ensures that 
the worshiper shall not be led by his religious ex- 
ercises into growth in spirituality. He would 
forget the count or confuse the order, or mistake 
the posture belonging to each sentence, and 



80 Constantinople 

would so spoil tlie whole service, were he to 
permit his thoughts to rise in aspiration after 
God with the noble words which he utters. But 
on the other hand when the prescribed ritual has 
been accurately performed, the worshiper carries 
away an impression of perfect obedience to God 
which is as gratefully soothing to conscience in 
the Mohammedan as it is rare in the religious 
experience of the Christian. 

It is due to the importance placed upon form 
that the Mohammedan teacher of ethics has not 
within the scope of his vision the fact that self- 
seeking and self-indulgence attack fundamental 
laws of existence and separate man from God as 
well as from his fellow men. Thus Islam has 
missed appreciation of righteousness as an irredu- 
cible element. Sin is no more than disobedience to 
a decree. Vice is made such by Divine command. 
When God chooses, His decree can make vice 
virtue, as in the offer to Muslims, as their reward 
in the future life, of things branded as sins in 
this world. The cloud of mist which thus ob- 
scures the nature of righteousness acts as a veil 
upon the heart of the Mohammedan. If he feels 
drawings toward improvement of his ideals and 
his conduct, his conscience is confirmed in a 
contented silence by three principles of his re- 
ligion: First, God is too merciful to reject any 
believer for yielding to the impulses of his nature ; 
Second, the moral law is too severe in its require- 



The Mohammedan Question 81 

ments for man to attempt to keep it.* and Third, 
ritual forms and observances constitute the 
obedience required of a Mohammedan by God. 
Far-seeing purpose to thwart the essential aim of 
Divine love could hardly more effectively have 
fortified the ground against influences which 
emanate from the Gospel of salvation and new- 
creation in Jesus Christ. 

In the support to self-will given by these three 
points of doctrine are shown the radical opposi- 
tion between Islam and Christianity, and the 
reason for the failure of Mohammedans to pro- 
gress in lines of effort which make for prosperity 
and benefit the world. Illustrations swarm on 
every side to-day of the effect of these deeply 
rooted principles in destroying confidence and 
consideration between man and man just as his- 
tory abounds with illustrations of their past action 
in the same direction wherever Mohammedanism 
has ruled. In fact the failure of Islam to con- 
quer the world may be traced to those doctrines 
through the selfishness which bred faction when 
patiently unswerving submission to the collective 
interest was essential to success. Here centres 
the weakness of Islam. The man who is under 
dominion of these principles cannot deny himself 

* The Koran says that in the beginning God proposed 
to all created things in turn that they try to keep His 
law. All in turn refused to be bound by it because it is 
too terribly stringent. But man was foolish enough to 
promise to keep the law and so fell under sin. 



82 Constantinople 

for the public good, any more than he can com- 
pete in practical affairs with men whose ideals 
score self-seeking as the lowest instead of the 
highest of motives. Here is the explanation of 
the battered old houses, the dilapidated steamers, 
and the squalid swarms of incompetent labourers 
found in this city until the skill of non-Moham- 
medans is brought in to supply their lacks. 

Islam has truth glorious and convincing in its 
fundamental doctrine of one God, eternal, al- 
mighty and all-wise. It has truth also in its claim 
that this doctrine of God was the glory of Israel 
and the basis of the message of Jesus. But the 
power of this truth is constantly denied and op- 
posed by its defence and even exaltation of self- 
seeking. Irresistibly the system brings to mind 
as a fit emblem the image of Nebuchadnezzar's 
vision, with head of gold and feet part of iron and 
part of miry clay. 

Among Mohammedan thinkers in this city one 
often meets with telling admissions of the injury 
which may be expected from such ethics. They, 
as well as we, have observed that with the exalta- 
tion of self-seeking goes the sure companion of its 
ill-gotten gains, — indulgence of the animal ap- 
petites ; and they, as well as we, know that from 
the days of Sodom down a people which has 
given itself over to license has prepared its own 
destruction. But they attribute these evils to the 
natural perversity of man, and look for a remedy 
in some method of repressing by force the tend- 



The Mohammedan Question 83 

encies which they are taught to believe cannot be 
reformed, or seek relief in the Buddhistic notion 
of so filling the mind with the perfections of God 
that room shall not be left for desiring any 
earthly good. 

The Dervish orders, the Babis of Persia, and 
the Wahabis of Arabia have all wrestled with this 
question, and thousands still wrestle with it, 
sometimes reading the Christian Bible as an aid 
to feeling after God if haply they might find 
Him. But such men often patronizingly praise 
the godly and unblemished lives of pious Chris- 
tians. They intimate that where so angelic a tem- 
perament exists its possessor will reach God's 
grace if he will only believe in Mohammed, so 
as to learn the need of ablutions and genuflections 
and all the rest. But when the Christian, moved 
by sympathy for such gropers after God would 
offer them the hand of help, he meets with a 
cold repulse. The repellent attitude is taken 
partly because the Mohammedan has to believe 
the assertion of the Koran that Christians are 
polytheists. But it is mainly due to the attack 
upon the Mohammedan idea of God which is 
made by the appeal of the Christian. The Chris- 
tian call to repentance and change of the heart's 
desires implies that character is not fixed by the 
decrees of omnipotence, while the need of such a 
change cannot exist where God's gracious pur- 
pose is founded in limitless compassion. Over- 
tures which seem to belittle the power and the 



84 Constantinople 

mercy of God can only be repelled with horror 
and wrath. 

But the spectacle of pure and disinterested 
qualities seen in the daily life of Christians must 
ever be overwhelmingly impressive to Moham- 
medans because of their belief that predestination 
makes the development of a noble character im- 
possible. If the confidence of Mohammedans 
is ever won by Christian sympathy to listen to the 
Christian gospel, it must be through observation 
of such qualities. 

In a city like Constantinople, therefore, mer- 
chants and professional men are under special 
responsibility for their influence upon Muslims. 
And in a city like this too, the effect of consistent 
and Christian conduct is wider and more weighty 
than we are wont to think. The point in the char- 
acter of a Western business man which always 
moves Muslims to astonishment and admiration 
is the consecration of a busy secular life to God 
with joyful acceptance of His will as necessarily 
man's best good. 

There is where the effect of keeping a strong 
missionary force in this city will ultimately tell, 
although its efforts be directed to persuading 
Christians in name to be such in fact and in life. 
If the circle can be widened in the native churches 
of this city of those devout worshippers who 
shrink from wrong-doing as horrible in itself and 
as separating man from God, the spectacle will 
arouse among Mussulmans, first, interest, then 



The Mohammedan Question 85 

curiosity, and then inquiry. The whole secret 
of gaining the respect and approval of Moham- 
medans for Christianity is contained in the one 
phrase, — Show them Character. Christian char- 
acter known through experience, will actually do 
what controversy cannot, what argument is 
powerless to accomplish and what mere exposition 
of doctrine will go far to prevent. For, as Bishop 
Westcott has said respecting the world in general, 
it is clear that for Muslims the proof of Christian- 
ity prepared of God, and appealing for its effect- 
ive use to the consciences of all Christians who 
come in contact with them, is " a society truly 
Christian, that is filled with the Holy Spirit re- 
vealing Himself through righteousness and 
through love." Such a society it is the duty of 
the Christian church to use every means to build 
up as soon as possible at Constantinople. 



Ill 

THE WOMAN QUESTION 

TURKISH ladies have a recognized artistic 
and ornamental value in pictures of Con- 
stantinople. The visitor to the city has numer- 
ous memories of these ladies met singly or 
in groups on the streets or the Bosphorus steam- 
ers. The white veiled heads, the balloon-like 
form of the silken drapery which hides every 
outline of the person, the high colour that dis- 
tinguishes each individual, and the parasol which 
inevitably accompanies street dress, give a tone 
peculiar to itself to the city street. The visitor 
has memories, too, of fair faces made illusive by 
gauzy veils, or openly revealed to the bystander 
by sudden withdrawal of the veil which summer 
heat has made unendurable. But the reminiscence 
which clings to the memory as a part of the land- 
scape itself is the closely packed mass of reds and 
yellows and blues and purples and browns where 
the ladies sit by the waterside upon a holiday. 
Happy the man who has not also some memory 
connected with such groups of a sudden onset of 
police, or of a battered and ruined hand-camera 
which has served as an object lesson on the folly 

86 



The Woman Question 87 

of curiosity concerning the details of the gor- 
geous blotches of colour which stand for Turkish 
women in the distant view. 

Furtive glances from passing men are not re- 
sented. At most they lead the ladies to screen 
their beauty with their parasols, as fair Spaniards 
do with their fans. Loitering steps and deliberate 
interest, only, violate the proprieties and bring 
upon the inconsiderate spectator sharp reminder 
of his fault. In fact the purpose of the ladies 
in forming these great masses on the banks of 
Geuk Sou or by the shore of the Bosphorus, is to 
secure the protection of numbers while they 
watch the passing crowds of men. 

I found myself once in a vast crowd assembled 
to see the Sultan pass in Stamboul. By the side 
of the street was a low terrace upon whose safe 
isolation a thousand or so of Turkish women had 
placed themselves upon the ground in close array. 
An eddy of the throng in the street carried me 
close to this terrace of the women. There was a 
rustle of silken drapery behind me and some deft 
hand pushed my straw hat down upon my nose. 
Still struggling on I restored the hat to its 
proper place but instantly another touch upon its 
stiff brim behind sent it over my face again. 
Smiling at what seemed to be an odd bit of play- 
fulness, I turned to look at my tormentor. But a 
broad expanse of parasols covered every woman. 
The turning of my head, however, gave one of 
the ladies in front of my path her opportunity, 



88 Constantinople 

and my hat went down over my right ear. It was 
vain to look in that direction. Solemn umbrellas 
covered the whole front line. Only the more dis- 
tant ranks of ladies were visible, and as my hat 
again popped over my eyes, under a more vig- 
ourous impulse from behind, these distant ladies 
were shaking with laughter. Discretion was the 
better part of valour in that great streetful of 
Turks, and I elbowed a desperate retreat into the 
centre of the crowd, out of reach of those fair 
and playful hands. When sure that I was 
out of reach, the umbrellas were raised, and the 
whole line of ladies were giggling over the dis- 
comfiture of their victim. The little adventure 
showed that Turkish ladies are human enough to 
enjoy a practical joke. 

But the thing most noteworthy to me was the 
fact that those women were not the school chil- 
dren whom one might expect to engage in such 
a prank, but demure wives and matrons. Their 
frank, child-like enjoyment of their successful 
attack upon a man and a foreigner was character- 
istic; for before everything else Turkish women 
are childish in tastes and thoughts and feelings. 
Children, however, are the most hide-bound of 
conservatives. Their turbulent resistance to 
changes of family customs which touch their 
rights, their determined opposition to new articles 
of food, and their clinging affection for the most 
ancient of their battered dolls are merely ex- 



The Woman Question 89 

pressions of their political principles. Turkish 
women follow children also in this trait. They 
are conservative of all that they have known in 
the way of custom, and they resist with a bitter 
resistance all that is new and untried. This blind 
and childish opposition to the new and equally 
childish devotion to what is old, is one chief ele- 
ment of the Woman Question in Turkey. 

In that passage of the book of Genesis which 
relates the hopeless corruption of mankind, a 
cause of this corruption is stated to be that " the 
sons of God saw the daughters of men that they 
were fair ; and they took them wives of all which 
they chose." This curious passage has been cited 
to support arguments that when the sons of 
Adam were turned loose in that most con- 
servative of continents, it was the fair daughters 
of pre-existing Asiatics who wrought their down- 
fall. However this may be, the historic fact re- 
mains that whenever a nobler and sturdier type 
of manhood has tried to establish itself upon that 
continent, Asia has relied upon her women to 
crush the attempt. The story of the Amazons 
withstanding Hellenic civilization is not alto- 
gether a myth. Israel's experience at Baal Peor 
is but one incident of a series. Not that Balaams 
arise to offer curses definite and direct or policies 
which shall insidiously blight the new hope. 
Schemes of improvement or reform as well as the 
sacred principles of their champions are auto- 
matically overcome in the homes of the people. 



9<D Constantinople 

Women in Asia have always furnished both the 
initiative and the ingenious store of means for 
obstructing anything like progress. Turkey is 
no exception to this rule. 

Another element of the Woman Question at 
Constantinople opens with discussion of the 
object of the existence of woman. 

An eminent American Professor, in an after- 
dinner chat once told of a recent experience of 
his with a young lady of archaeological tastes. 
She was pursuing her fad in Athens. She per- 
vaded an entire room of the Museum there. All 
the staff of the establishment had to wait upon 
her because she was an American, a woman, and 
an " archaeologist." She was about to take a 
" squeeze " of an inscription there. So momen- 
tous an event, which she evidently thought would 
fix her renown on the loftiest pinnacles of fame, 
required not only her own graceful efforts during 
the best part of a forenoon, but absorbed the time 
and attention of several scientists including prob- 
ably our professor. One had to hold the sponge, 
one the basin of water, one the duster, one the 
brush, one the sheets of paper. The rest of the 
force afforded the necessary moral support. 

When the work was done and the pervasive 
presence was eliminated from the museum, the 
assembled gentlemen looked at one another in 
a foolish way and retired to their respective 
tasks, questioning the real acquisition to science 
represented by American girls who study 



The Woman Question 91 

archaeology. And the learned professor made the 
following reflections upon the general subject: 
" The girl scientist throws all the enthusiasm of 
an emotional nature into the first tottering steps 
toward original work. She makes an end of 
what is only the means, and clamours for applause 
of her attainments. Not receiving it in the ex- 
pected degree she gets some man to explain what 
she lacks, and plunges madly into another stage 
of progress. By this time she is tired out and 
near to nervous prostration. Then she suddenly 
becomes engaged to be married and drops the 
whole business. At last she has found her 
vocation in life ! " 

Curiously enough the learned Professor from 
America gave a view of woman in principle much 
like that which any moderately civilized Oriental 
would give ; woman is a creature whom it does 
not pay to educate highly because the end of her 
existence so far as usefulness to the world is 
concerned is the same whether she is educated or 
not ; she marries. So the Turk has invented a 
proverb for fathers which dismisses such prob- 
lems, and which until very recently was a history 
as well as an apothegm. ' Either marry off" your 
daughter at sixteen or bury her." 

The subject of the qualities and the condition 
of womankind in Turkey is complex and not 
easily grasped. The best that can be done is to 
group together a few pictures from three points 
of view — that of the man as an individual, of 



92 Constantinople 

the man as organized in society, making laws 
for woman, and that of the woman revealing 
herself by her words and her acts. 

The Oriental, be he Muslim or Christian, has a 
very high appreciation for beauty. The Turk of 
the city will say that the distinguishing charm 
of the women is their clear complexion, the 
satin-like texture of their skin, and their black 
eyes large and limpid like the fish-pools of Hesh- 
bon, with mysterious depths which promise untold 
happiness to him on whom they turn in love. No 
heavy work ever gives harshness to the curves of 
the city bred girl's form, and the sun is never 
given opportunity to mar the natural perfection 
of the skin. 

The Turk also shows considerable respect to 
women. The bearing of a burly soldier in the 
street when an angry woman attacks him is to 
the point. For centuries the same titles of honour 
were given to women as to men. Years ago the 
title used to be Agha, which means lord. Old 
Tamerlane the Turkish freebooter who captured 
the Sultan Bajazet and nearly upset the Turkish 
Empire in the fourteenth century, had for his 
wife one Toumar Agha. Later on, men of the 
commonest class aspired to use this title, and 
its use by women came to an end. But women 
were then called Beg, or Bey, a title still used 
like Agha by men. but meaning Prince rather 
than Lord. As applied to women it was in the 
form Beyim or Begiin, which means my prince. 



The Woman Question 93 

This use of the word persists in India in the form 
Begum as a title of ladies of high rank. When 
the title Bey also was vulgarized by being seized 
by all classes of men, a still higher title Khanum, 
my Sovereign, was applied to the women and is 
in use to-day as Westerns would use Madam. 
Only it follows instead of preceding the name 
of the woman. As to the word Efcndim (my 
lord), used as we use " Sir," it is applied in ad- 
dress to men and women alike. The Turk insists 
upon these points as proof of his deep respect 
for his womankind. 

In expressing his emotions an Oriental uses 
the same laudation of the beloved one as is found 
in the most advanced nations. This may be 
judged from a single example of a love-song: 

LOVE SONG, BY RIFAAT BEY 

Your smile awakes my smile, my joy completing; 
Your love, my love ; still warmer love entreating. 
Your hand controls my heart — except its beating ; 
Your love, my love, still warmer love entreating. 

Your locks' sweet tanglement for aye has bound me. 
For tryst with you, you meet this day have found me 
And ended isolation's sway around me. 
Your love, my love, still warmer love entreating. 

O fairy none can match ! my winsome maiden ! 
Your arms alone are bonds which cannot sadden ; 
Your beauty sunlight is to me with healing laden ; 
Your love, my love, still warmer love entreating. 

But when we seek to know the mature judg- 
ment of men who have experienced life, they 
give their frank opinion that women have no 



94 Constantinople 

wits, and that they have so much innate deprav- 
ity as to make their education a sin, and a danger 
to the community. The views of Yusuf Bey, a 
learned Turk whom I chanced to meet on a 
journey in Turkey, I will give as nearly as possi- 
ble in his own words: 

" They say," said Yusuf Bey, " that European 
women have mind." 

" Yes, our women have mind and sometimes a 
good deal of it." 

" All right. But in this country women have 
no mind ; and until I see it I cannot believe that 
in any country they have more than an old hen. 
Every young man expects that he at least, will 
find a woman who has sense ; but in the end he 
has to sit, like the cat of a cook shop, and satisfy 
himself with expecting." 

We now overtook a herd of buffaloes driven 
by a stalwart Turk and his two wives. The 
horny-handed, hard-featured women were ful- 
filling the object for which they were created by 
bearing on their backs the household goods of 
the trio. 

" There ! " said the Bey, " look at the faces of 
those women and tell me if they have anything 
which can be called mind ! " 

" Perhaps they would have been different if 
they had been born after the Sultan began to 
open schools for your girls." 

" You know nothing about women ; you who 
live where the people are few and where women 



The Woman Question 95 

have at least been taught conscience. In great 
countries like this, where many women get into 
every house, they are the curse of life ! May they 
get their deserts ! " 

" But you must have women to take care of 
your houses." 

" A wife is a remedy for some diseases, and 
like amputation in surgery, the remedy is gen- 
erally worse than the disease." 

"Ah, I see! You are a bachelor. Try mar- 
ried life and you will see how a wife will brighten 
your house." 

"A bachelor is a king; but a married man — 
ugh ! Perhaps women in your country are more 
able to take care of the houses ; if so, would that 
I had known it before I was born into such a 
land as this ! The worst of it is that I knew all 
about the troubles of married life before I was 
married ; who does not who has had a father 
and mother. But an old uncle of mine once told 
me that if I would seek out a wife who had 
nothing, she would be grateful to me and give 
me no trouble. So I looked about until I came 
across a good looking girl whose possessions 
were those of a new born babe ; she had not a 
rag to her back. I married her; and just as 
soon as I had given her clothes to cover herself, 
she began to ask for more. It has been ask, ask, 
ask. ever since. She wants new clothes ; she 
wants rich food; she wants jewelry; she wants 
everything and keeps up the cry all the time. I 



g6 Constantinople 

explain to her that this Government of onrs 
gives me only three months' pay in a year and \ 
try to make her understand that T am not a ma- 
gician to make money out of straw. But her 
only answer is ' J want it.' And when I tell 
her that if she can't understand reason she can at 
least he still, she just gathers up her children 
into the corner of the sofa and cries because they 
might as well have no father ! I wanted a wife 
who would be quiet and get my shoes, and light 
my pipe, and then keep out of the way, as a wife 
should, until she is called. But I have got a 
wife who is like a slave-driver. My house is like 
a judgment hall every minute. I have to live in 
the coffee-shop; I leave my house at daybreak 
and go back for my dinner at dark ! " 

Another characteristic of the view of woman 
taken by the Oriental man is that she is regarded 
like property to be disposed of when she is left 
a burden on the hands of a man. In some country 
districts the Armenian Christians even, have the 
custom of selling their daughters in marriage. 
The money paid by the bridegroom is not at all a 
present or a token of friendship to the family 
of the girl. The sum to be paid is a matter of 
regular bargain. The father reckons the worth 
of each girl just as he reckons the value of the 
donkey in his stable. Her price is much or little 
according as she is capable of doing much or 
little work. The daughter of a widow brings 
more than other girls because the suitor judges 



The Woman Question 97 

that she has had more hard work to do at home. 
The bargaining is long and tedious, but if the 
suitor refuses to pay the upset price he is shown 
the door at once. 

Naturally parents who regard their daughters 
in this light are not anxious to have them edu- 
cated. The father who has set his heart on 
getting a thousand piastres for a particular 
daughter knows that the more she resembles a 
beast of burden in her capabilities the more sure 
he is of securing the price at which he has rated 
her. 

This curious readiness to confuse free women 
with slaves must be taken into account in reckon- 
ing up the various facts which make up the 
Woman Question in Turkey. I asked my friend 
Yusuf Bey about the reputed influence of the 
Mohammedan harem system upon the quality of 
officials in that country. He then told me the 
following story: 

" Some ten years ago a candle-maker in this 
city who worked in a greasy little shop near 
Yemish, found a woman who was a widow with 
a chance of remarriage. The obstacle to her new 
venture in matrimony was her daughter, a pretty 
little child of six or seven years. The candle- 
maker Ahmed Agha bought the little girl of her 
mother for fifty pounds and the mother flew to 
her second husband's house. 

" Ahmed Agha was a man of shrewd prudence 
and had a definite plan for making this invest- 



98 Constantinople 

ment pay good interest. He took little Sabiye 
home to his poor little house in Sari Guzel and 
handed her over to his wife. Her name was 
changed to Gulsum,* but she was treated like a 
daughter. The child helped the woman in the 
kitchen, she brought wood and carried water, 
she ran errands and played with the other chil- 
dren of the quarter, and for a certain part of the 
day she went to the parish school. 

As Gulsum grew she was fond of her studies 
and she grew fond of her kind foster parents, 
and they were delighted to see her growing more 
and more pretty. Ahmed Agha felt sure that his 
fifty pounds was a good investment. What more 
natural than that he should wish her to have every 
advantage. 

There was a Roman Catholic nunnery in Pera 
where he learned that girls were taught many 
useful things without charge. Ahmed Agha took 
her to the nuns and asked them to receive her as a 
free boarder, which they consented to do on 
condition that she should stay at least four 
years going home only once in each year during 
that time. Ahmed agreed to these rather hard 
terms, saying he had learned to admire the work 
of the French sisters in the education of women, 
and that he wished his daughter to have all the 
accomplishments of a French lady of refinement. 

* Free women in Turkey have as a rule Arabic 
names. Slaves have names given them by their owners 
which are generally Turkish or Persian. 



The Woman Question 99 

At the end of four years, Gulsum, a most beau- 
tiful girl of seventeen, could read, write and 
speak French ; could embroider and could play 
the piano fairly well. Then she went back with 
many tears to the candle-maker's little house in 
Sari Guzel where there were no books, no music 
and no French-speaking girls of her own age. 
It was a bitter experience. 

One day Ahmed Agha had a plain talk with 
Gulsum. He admitted that she was educated 
above her station, but he said : " All that you 
have you owe to me. I rescued you as an orphan, 
I made you like a daughter, I gave you this edu- 
cation. I am now going to take you to a very 
great house where you will have everything that 
you can want. But you must not forget us and 
your obligation to me for all that you enjoy." 

" The next day he took Gulsum to the palace 
of the Sultan's mother, to whom he presented 
the girl as a token of the loyal devotion of a 
humble subject of his Majesty. The Sultan's 
mother looked at the girl, heard her play the piano 
and deigned to accept the gift. And a week 
later she sent Ahmed Agha a fine silver snuff 
box full of gold coins. Gulsum was in demand 
evening after evening to sing, to play Chopin or 
Beethoven, and to amuse the ladies of the Court 
with her sprightly wit. Finally a day came when 
the Sultan visited his mother, and saw this bril- 
liant slave who had the graces of a European 
with the advantage of ability to speak choice 



ioo Constantinople 

Turkish. His Majesty was pleased, his Maj- 
esty's mother presented the slave to him as a 
token of a mother's affection, and Gulsum's for- 
tune was made. 

" Again one day Ahmed Agha called at the 
Palace as the father of the new favourite. He 
was allowed to see her and before he left he had 
reminded her that she owed her wealth and 
power to him, and that he was poor. The next 
week Ahmed Agha the candle-maker, received a 
diploma as Doctor of Theology and Professor of 
a grade to which a life-salary is attached." 

" That," said Yusuf Bey bitterly, " is the con- 
nection between the harem system and the qual- 
ity of our great men. The officials, from the 
highest to the lowest, will give any man any va- 
cant office within their gift, at the demand of their 
women. If any one hesitates, a few tears will 
settle it. So we have men among the Professors 
who know nothing. Debased teachers mean de- 
basement of the taught, and moreover the rally 
of all these low fellows against the educated men 
who comment or speak of reform." 

The impression of woman in Turkey derived 
from the restrictions which society — that is to 
say, men as an organic body — puts upon her does 
not at all relieve the impression of her position 
derived from her treatment by individuals. 

In the city there is a marked difference between 
Christian women and Muslim women in point of 
freedom of action. This difference is less in the 



The Woman Question 101 

country. Islam has ruled so long as to influence 
its Christian subjects in many directions and 
particularly in the view of womankind taken by 
the people at large. 

Among Muslims, women are kept in seclusion. 
The woman exists for the sake of the man alone. 
The man believes her to be of scant sense and of 
less honesty of purpose. To restrain her evil 
tendencies therefore he encloses her within lat- 
tices and throws such barriers about the house as 
he can devise. Public opinion requires this. It 
is not a precept of religion as is sometimes sup- 
posed. Public opinion also requires the man of 
the house to alleviate the seclusion of the wife 
by letting her go on the streets whenever she 
chooses to get other women to go with her. 

At home she is supplied with ornaments in pro- 
fusion, and with all the cosmetics she wishes for 
increasing her attractions. With this she is ex- 
pected to be satisfied. The choice of servants 
and the management of household expenses rest 
with the husband. Even his wife's dresses he 
selects himself if he wishes to be particularly 
attentive. What he selects the wife must wear 
out of compliment to her husband's taste and 
there is never any question of fit. The several 
wives in a multiple household call each other 
" Partner " and they generally try to conceal any 
jealousies which might disgust the husband. In 
fact with the wife everything bends to her need 
to win and keep the favour of the husband. Even 



ioa Constantinople 

when she grows old she does not despair, but 
sends to Mecca for a plant called Sergui which 
she boils to make a tea that shall cause her to 
look twenty or thirty years younger than she is. 
The laws cf society respecting courtship and 
marriage heighten this impression. As to court- 
ship in Turkey neither Muslims nor Christians 
permit anything of the sort. Turkish dictionaries 
define " flirtation " as " a species of disreputable 
conduct sometimes practiced by young women." 
The police have been set upon women in Con- 
stantinople more than once to prevent their ap- 
pearance in thin veils or to force them to aban- 
don drives in their carriages in case they are de- 
tected in exchange of glances with young gentle- 
men on the streets. 

Among both Muslims and Christians a young 
man would be deemed to have disgraced himself 
who should speak to a young woman about love. 
The whole theory of the place of woman in 
society is unhealthy and opposed to the dignity 
of womanhood. The ceremonies attending mar- 
riage reveal the same fact. The bridegroom 
may attend the marriage ceremony if he wishes ; 
the bride, never. The actual marriage is merely 
the signing of a contract that fixes the dowry 
and the alimony in case of divorce. It is signed 
by the legal representatives of the couple and is 
binding as though they themselves had been pres- 
ent. But the law permits the representative of 
the bride to declare that she assents even though 



The Woman Question 103 

she has refused to answer, and even in some cir- 
cumstances though she has objected to the match. 
As if to cap the climax of society's degrading 
view of woman the Mohammedan law provides 
that the husband must discipline his wife for bad 
conduct, and must see that she says her prayers at 
proper intervals. For this purpose he is instruc- 
ted to give his wife not less than three nor more 
than thirty lashes for each offence. Clearly so- 
ciety regards woman as a mere animal to be dis- 
posed of at will within certain limits. The more 
closely she can be led to follow merely animal 
instincts, the less she will perplex men by the 
problem of her control. The argument which led 
to the prohibition of the admission of women 
doctors to practice in Turkey was " If women 
doctors are allowed, they will enter the harems, 
first the American Republican and then the Rus- 
sian Nihilist. Then where will our peace be?" 

Woman, thus degraded, applies herself to de- 
velopment as a mere animal. It is a revenge of 
which she has no means of knowing the measure. 
Ideas of the place which women in Turkey claim 
for themselves can be gained in a fragmentary 
way from their words and acts. Fatima Aliye 
Khanum, the one Turkish woman whose name as 
a writer has been heard outside the Empire, 
gently boasts of the position of Mohammedan 
women at Constantinople: 

" We do not mix in the society of the men," 
says she, "but then they do not mix in our 



104 Constantinople 

society, and the loss is entirely on their side. 
Women have as much liberty to move about as 
the men. Woman is treated by all men with re- 
spect, for when she speaks to a man in a public 
place, he does not raise his eyes from the ground. 
Her property is her own. A husband labours to 
make a fortune, a wife labours to spend it only. 
The wife shares the dignity of her husband and 
with far more splendour of ostentation. The 
woman of high rank is courted by women of low 
degree because she absolutely controls the patron- 
age belonging to the official position of her hus- 
band. But chiefly marriages with us are happy 
because the wife knows when her husband is 
out of her sight, that, whatever he may be doing, 
the seclusion of women makes it certain that at 
least he is not bowing and smiling at other 
women." 

This lady has wide fame in Turkey as a writer 
of novels on Turkish family life. The pictures 
of the sorrows of Turkish women which might 
be culled from her novels surpass anything in 
that line that have come under my notice in real 
life. She has written a book also in defence of 
polygamy which has some controversial value. 
The picture which she gives in the paragraph just 
quoted carries an impression not unpleasing of 
the position of her sex in Constantinople. But at 
least three of the points which she puts forward 
need to be emphasized in order to appreciate the 
position of the Turkish woman. First will be no- 



V 



The Woman Question 105 

ticed approval of that peculiarly degrading view 
of woman which forces a man to feel that he is 
compromising himself in speaking to a woman in 
public ; so that he becomes a pitiable object, red 
in the face, shifty in bearing, and afraid even 
to look at her lest some one give his name to 
the gossips because this woman asked him the 
way to the Bridge. Second, Aliye Khanum points 
out as a matter of boasting the absence of com- 
munity of interest between husband and wife. 
The wife's interest in her husband's affairs is 
merely to get the most out of him for herself that 
she can induce him to give. And third we can- 
not overlook the statement that sees not whereto 
the admission leads respecting the control of 
women over the public influence of their hus- 
bands. This is a phase of the Woman Question 
to which attention will shortly be given. 

The father of this lady during his lifetime was 
a well-known Pasha, a Minister of the Govern- 
ment, and a writer of renown. Yet the reason 
why this well-bred lady rejoices in the blessings 
of the Turkish woman's life is that she has no ink- 
ling of what others understand by " home " and 
no idea of the position given to woman in coun- 
tries where they are shown true respect. 

The languages of Turkey belong to the class 
which possess no word for " home." An ex- 
planation appears in the merest sketch plan of a 
Turkish house. The family is divided, the 
women living their whole existence apart from 



106 Constantinople 

the men. When anv man living in a house wishes 
to pass through a hall or a staircase where women 
other than his wife or blood relations may chance 
to be, he has to shout, " Clear the way ! " before 
he shows himself. One sometimes wonders on 
learning how readily the Turkish courts lay in- 
junctions upon the building of a house, in case 
a neighbour objects that its windows overlook his 
garden. One of the marvels of the city is the 
height — sometimes fifty or sixty feet — of garden 
walls, where the garden lies in a valley and hills 
half a mile away are covered with houses. An 
English merchant in Constantinople bought a 
house on a hillside a few years ago. Instantly 
the Turk who owned the next house on the slope 
below elevated on his garden wall a wooden 
screen twenty feet high and seventy-five feet 
long. The hideous structure quite ruined the 
view from the Englishman's windows. Wonder 
at such facts ceases on noticing in the garden of 
a Turk one of his ladies picking roses barefoot, 
the legs bare to the knee, and the upper garment 
open to the waist. During the whole time that 
the women are occupied with household duties, 
they wear their night-clothes only, presenting a 
spectacle of unkempt carelessness which would 
scare any self-respecting man from the place even 
if custom did not send him from the house at the 
earliest possible hour. 

It should not be supposed, however, that ladies 
of rich families who have plenty of servants make 



The Woman Question 107 

themselves quite such guys in the hours hefore 
custom requires them to dress for the afternoon. 
But the circumstance that they may wander about 
the premises unprepared for observation of 
others, is what makes the Turk fortify his house 
against outside eyes by truly ingenious contriv- 
ances. When they are dressed, Turkish ladies 
are richly dressed. In the street what one sees 
is a voluminous silken sheet thrown over the 
head and falling to the feet. This gives the 
woman the form of an inflated pillow tied in the 
middle with a string. But, in Constantinople at 
least, the lady after she has entered the house and 
has thrown off her outer shell is quite a different 
creature. True she sometimes still inclines to 
wear her hair cut straight across at the nape 
of the neck. She loves big figures and start- 
ling colour schemes in her dress. She has not 
yet found her taste oppressed by ihe jostling 
of scarlet and magenta which she uses in the same 
costume. But in the main her dress is cut after 
Western patterns when at last she dresses herself 
for the social functions of the afternoon. 

But neither the tardy dressing, nor the social 
function which is like a Western Woman's Club, 
nor the house that she lives in makes a home for 
the woman of Constantinople. A wealthy Turk's 
best house is commonly a showy palace on the 
Bosphorus. Its front, after the fashion of Vene- 
tian palaces, is lapped by the water of the sea. 
Behind it delicious groves and brilliant gardens 



108 Constantinople 

rise terrace on terrace in magnificent spacious- 
ness. Both land and placid sea promise sweet 
content to all who enjoy the privileges of the 
place. To the men, so long as they pursue their 
separate pleasure in their part of the premises, 
the promise may be fulfilled. But rarely to the 
women. In one such house of which I know, 
there are sixty women. Place as wife or favourite 
or servant is assigned to each. Each has abund- 
ant food and clothing, with jewels and other 
adornments befitting her special station. The 
great rooms of the house are divided among the 
women according to their rank. Housekeeping 
arrangements and responsibilities rest upon serv- 
ants alone. The ladies have time enough on their 
hands to make the finding of ways to get rid of 
it a tax upon their ingenuity. Books, papers, pic- 
tures there are not. Musical instruments there 
are, singers there are, and one can kill time with 
these for a while. One can dress oneself up in 
new costumes, and admire the effect in splendid 
mirrors, and then undress and don some new 
combination of costly robes. But this disposes 
of but an hour or two. One may lounge by the 
window and watch passing steamers and sailing 
vessels and fishing craft and caiques, and wonder 
how much Bessim Bey paid for his new boat, 
and note the handsome boatmen that Nazli 
Khanum has picked up somewhere. If a steamer 
passes very near the shore, the distress of the 
caiques thrashed about in its wake gives momen- 



The Woman Question 109 

tary excitement. But the wish for power to 
make the long days go faster — the longing for 
something to do, is the burden of life to every 
lady in that house. Quarreling with the other 
ladies is the sure recourse under such circum- 
stances. When a quarrel begins it may last for 
days and develop into a feud that ranges the 
whole household — mistress or maid — in factions. 

Another diversion which makes time fly is the 
advent of the master of the house. He is a 
noble looking gray-bearded man who has a past 
but not much future. He spends most of his 
time on the other side of the high stone wall 
which separates the house of the men from that 
of the women. Announcement of his arrival 
makes a wild flurry of excitement. There is a 
general rush to provide for his entertainment. 
There is visible expectancy of being permitted 
to receive him or at least of being called to hear 
a kind word from him. And then there is the 
bitter, inconsolable disappointment of the un- 
lucky ones. But all these emotions serve after 
all to cause the time to pass. 

One of the ladies in this house has a daughter, 
who is petted like a princess by the retainers of 
the mother, and snarled at and jeered at by all the 
other factions. This young lady used to have an 
English governess, and took lessons in language 
and music whenever she could be persuaded to do 
so. One of the first duties laid upon the gov- 
erness was that of keeping watch with others to 



iio Constantinople 

see that the child did not cat anything from the 
hands of certain women who were pointed out 
to her. They belonged to the faction of a rival 
wife and the danger was that the little girl might 
be poisoned through spite. 

When the governess used her rare permission 
to go out for a few hours, servants from the house 
dogged her steps following her through long 
miles and persistently hanging about the street 
corners when she stopped. At the house on her 
return she was always expected to explain every 
item of the observation of the spies. ' Why did 
you go to that house? Who lives there? Are 
there any men there ? What took you to the Post 
Office? To whom did you write? Why do you 
write letters to people? What did you pay for 
that cloth that you bought in Pera? " Such ques- 
tions made the Englishwoman more than once in- 
cline to forfeit the bond which she had given to 
stay in that place a year. But the inquisition to 
which she was subjected was as nothing com- 
pared with that applied to the ladies of the family 
when they went abroad with their retinue. Sus- 
picion is the rule of the life in Constantinople, and 
oddly enough it is rarely resented. When a lady 
of the family went out, even though she were the 
favourite wife, the women to go with her were 
chosen for her. There was always sure to be 
one personal enemy among the number. In no 
other way could the family be sure that the lady's 
doings would be fully reported. The sharp and 



The Woman Question 1 1 1 

searching cross examination on her return was 
humiliating to the last degree. Perhaps a reason 
begins to appear why there is no word for 
" home " in the Turkish language. 

Danger always exists, in treating such a com- 
plex subject, of giving an impression out of which 
unfair generalizations spring in the mind of the 
readers. While such a description as that just 
given of the environment of the Turkish woman 
at home is a fair average view, exceptions abound. 
I never saw anywhere a better illustration of a 
happy home life than a glimpse it was once my 
fortune to have of a Turkish gentleman's home 
life in Constantinople. The surroundings were 
characteristic. The room was wide and long. 
Around the sides were brilliantly upholstered 
chairs and highly decorative tables bearing gay 
vases of artificial flowers, marvellous French 
clocks and the like. But all these appurtenances 
of state were neglected. On the floor in the 
midst of the room was a low stand bearing a 
large lamp and near this stand were arranged 
pillows and cushions. Comfortably resting on 
these cushions sat the gentleman of the house 
robed in a loose and flowing gown. He was 
reading aloud to his wife, a thoroughly intelligent 
woman to whom he turned now and then for com- 
ment and discussion of what he read. There 
was mutual understanding, there was wide-awake 
intelligence, and more than all there was the un- 
mistakable confidence of affection in that picture. 



in Constantinople 

Two or three times it has been my fortune in 
calling upon European ladies in Constantinople 
to learn that Turkish women were visiting them 
and later to be asked to meet the visitors, who 
wished to speak on some matter of business. 
In each case on entering the room where they 
were the Turkish ladies were closely veiled, as 
custom requires them to be when in the presence 
of men. But in each case, after a short prelimi- 
nary scrutiny during the opening phrases of con- 
versation, the ladies removed and laid aside their 
veils and still preserved their poise and dignity. 
The act was the most delicate form possible of 
courteously expressing confidence in the man 
with whom they were talking. The effect was the 
more startling since they could not by any manner 
of means have been led to unveil in the pres- 
ence of a Turk who was not of their own family. 
Such exceptions to general rules must be held in 
mind and given full weight while noting less 
agreeable exhibitions of the Turkish woman's 
character and attainments. 

One morning the wife of a Mohammedan 
neighbour of ours came out of her door dressed 
for the street in silk cloak and well laundered 
white veil. Another woman in a latticed window 
called to her : 

" Good morning Lefter Khanum, how are you 
doing?" 

" Glory to God." 

"Where are you going?" 



The Woman Question 113 

" If God please I shall go to town to-day." 
" May God keep you. Are you going to stay 
long?" 

" I have not intended to stay, but if God wills, 
I may stay to-night." 

" God give you safety. God give you peace." 
This little exchange of civilities made a pleas- 
ing impression. But an evening or two later the 
whole neighbourhood rang with the shrill voice of 
this pious woman berating her husband, who 
could not match her in vituperation. She called 
him a bear and a dog and a hog, and finally 
screamed out " Misbeliever, go to the bottom of 
hell ! " Even after he had fled from the house 
the woman hurled foul epithets after him in the 
wild fierceness of her wrath. The violence of the 
language of the Turkish woman is proverbial. 

I was walking in Stamboul one afternoon 
when I accidentally called out a sample of 
woman's prowess in this direction. One of the 
slouching coarse haired street dogs saw a piece 
of bread come rolling along the cobble-stones, 
and sprang to pick up the windfall. He was in the 
very act of grasping it when a black and white cat 
who had been sunning herself on a doorstep was 
by the dog's nose at one spring. She struck out 
wildly with her fore-paws and as the astonished 
dog winced under the sharp stab of her claws, 
and shrank back to measure the quality of so 
painful an attack, the cat seized the bread and 
sprang back to her doorstep. There she stood 



1 14 Constantinople 

with arched back and enlarged tail, offering the 
dog more of the same kind of scratches if he 
wished to dispute her possession. The dog 
sneaked away after a single whining bark of 
protest. The proceeding was so amusing that I 
looked with an instinctive fellowship at the other 
witnesses to this victory of the cat. These were 
two white veiled women. My smiling eyes had 
no sooner encountered the black and lustrous 
eyes of the lady than she cried out " Fellow, 
what are you looking at? Keep your eyes to 
yourself, you infidel hog. He looks at my face! 
May his eyes become blind and his mother be- 
come infamous ! The dog and the son of a dog ! 
May a Russian infidel dishonour his household 
of swinish brats ! " 

The violence of the words was really less ex- 
pressive of passion than the vehemence of their 
flow ; and two or three men in the neighbouring 
coffee shop began to look at me as a plotter 
against the morals of the community unveiled 
to the light of day. Without power to resist or 
reply I decamped at once and as I passed the 
black and white cat sunning herself calmly in the 
doorway, as though ignoring her own position as 
the cause of all this trouble, I could not help 
reflecting that in the eyes of the beast and of the 
men of the coffee shop, I was in the same position 
as the slouching dog whose self-complacency had 
been annihilated by this same unassuming cat. 
One curious trait revealed by women in Con- 



The Woman Question 115 

stantinople who know the power of their tongues 
is that they sometimes hire themselves out as 
experts in vituperation to gain for others what 
could be gained in no other way. 

After the ceremonies of a great Muslim festi- 
val in Constantinople the Minister of Finance 
was deep in pleasant converse with some visitors 
at his official residence when a huge crowd of 
women invaded the street clamouring for money 
to buy bread. The Ministry was beset on all 
sides, and the clamour was of a kind which al- 
ways strikes terror to the Muslim official's heart. 
The women shouted ' ' They have paid no sal- 
aries for months and our children are in actual 
starvation." The police could do nothing with 
this soft and high-voiced mob. Soldiers were 
useless as a means of control ; for no Turkish sol- 
dier dares to raise his hand against a Turkish 
woman. Moreover, the slippers of a dozen 
women, or even their blood-curdling yells will 
cause a regiment to flee. So the poor Minister, 
gold lace, tinkling medals, sword, and all, had 
to beat a precipitate retreat by servants' stair- 
cases and unobtrusive back-doors. Only thus 
could be save himself from those haggard-eyed 
women. 

The incident loses some of its pathos in view 
of the circumstance that the mob was largely 
made up of professionals hired to make a dis- 
turbance. When officials are in need of cash and 
salaries are delayed, the officials sometimes be- 



1 1 6 Constantinople 

take themselves to the professional collectors, 
who are women, and who receive a small per- 
centage on the fruits of these extreme measures. 
The women herd together in mobs to cry in 
public, watering the pavements with their tears 
and deluging the palace officials with statements 
of their wretched condition, until the thing be- 
comes a scandal. Then an Imperial order issues 
for some small payment of salaries. At the ap- 
pointed time these women armed with the neces- 
sary powers occupy the corridors of the Ministry 
and repulse every unhappy male creature who 
attempts to get his pay, until they have drawn the 
last penny which they can extract from the hard- 
hearted cashiers. 

It has been hinted that the Mbhammedan 
women are quite religious. They are one of the 
strong bulwarks of Islam ; keeping their hus- 
bands to religious duty by talking all over the 
city of any laxness in practice or remissness in 
faith on the part of their men. But this does 
not imply any deep convictions. The prevalent 
idea respecting religious exercises is that along 
with various other forms of words they are use- 
ful to ward off ill-luck. The women generally 
are under the sway of superstitions of ancient 
paganism, looking at worship as a means of pla- 
cating evil spirits. No one has thought it worth 
while to free them from belief in demons and 
local genii and fairies and the evil eye. 

A European lady desiring to be friendly with 



The Woman Question 117 

a Mohammedan woman will sometimes speak of 
the beauty of the little child tugging at its 
mother's skirts. It is a most terrible mistake 
and is regarded as almost an act of enmity. Its 
dire consequences can only be averted by spitting 
in the child's face at once so as to imply to the 
watchful demons of the house that the child is 
not highly valued. If a child is sick, the mother 
will not call a doctor, but will seek some old 
man or old woman who knows what to recite 
over it in order to counteract evil influences. Or 
she will go herself to the tomb of some saint, or 
to the holy resort of Muslim, Christian, or 
Jewish neigbbours, and there mutter formulas of 
prayer that promise effective results. 

On the top of one of the hills of the Bosphorus 
which overlooks the Black Sea is a very ancient 
tomb some forty feet long. Tradition makes 
it the tomb of Bebryces, King of Bythinia, who 
was killed in a boxing bout by Castor and Pollux 
at the time of the Argonautic Expedition after 
the Golden Fleece. With characteristic willing- 
ness to take possession of good things — " even 
though found in China " the Turks have adopted 
this grave as a shrine. A tablet in the mosque 
which they have erected at this place says that 
the tomb is that of Joshua the son of Nun, " Who 
defeated the Romans with great slaughter by the 
power of God, and if any doubts let him read the 
sacred books of the Christians." The wire net- 
ting which surrounds the head of this tomb is 



1 1 8 Constantinople 

covered with small bits of rag tied into the wire 
by Turkish women who have painfully toiled up 
that great hill in order to present at that tomb 
some dire need which they hope to keep in the 
memory of the spirits of the place by the bit of 
rag tied on the wire in a secure knot. Moham- 
medans believe that the events of every life are 
foreseen from eternity and are written on the 
' Reserved Tablets " laid up under the Throne 
of God. Yet their women maintain the gypsies 
who foretell the coming storm or sunshine of life 
from a bag of beans. It is upon the women that 
those dervishes rely who make a fat living out of 
their reputed ability to cure the sick by a touch, 
or to compound a philter for any emergency 
which will secure the desired result especially 
if accompanied by a charm written with ink in 
which ambergris is an ingredient. 

A few years ago one of these dervishes discov- 
ered a new method of wider influence in making 
his wife a member of the dervish order and ad- 
vancing her to as high a rank as himself. From 
that moment his fortune was made. The man 
in a room full of men, and the wife in a room 
full of women, exercised the gift of healing by 
reciting intricate formulas over the heads of pa- 
tients, and by blowing in their faces. A single 
breath from one of these workers of magic was 
held to be worth a whole drug store full of mere 
medicine, and the pair received two or three hun- 
dred dollars at a sitting. Even Armenian and 







V. 

< 

V, 



'X 

X 




— 


C! 




" 


H 








l-pt 


U 


( 


*-* 






| 1 


_i 
















M 


y, 


3 


<, 


H 






ni 




w 












- 





The Woman Question 119 

Greek women came in numbers to partake of the 
benefits of this combination, and swell its 
revenues. 

It is the women of the country who hold to 
such remedies for the nervous fears of child- 
hood as this : The cause of the fear is that a 
demon has secretly shown himself to the child. 
The remedy is to take a bullet which has been 
fired from a gun, to melt it, and to pour the 
melted lead into a basin of water in which the 
child has been washed after being prepared by 
reciting over it appropriate verses of Scripture. 
The lead must be poured out in three portions, 
and then the remnant poured into the water will 
assume the form and appearance of the offend- 
ing demon. If the lead last poured into the 
water is carefully preserved and hung about the 
neck of the child, the demon will recognize his 
likeness and fearing to be interfered with now 
that he is found out, he will show himself no 
more in the neighbourhood of the child. It is the 
women, too, who insist at the time of a confla- 
gration, that after the fire is extinguished a 
sheep must be killed and its blood mixed with 
the water of the fire-engine so that it may be 
thrown " for good luck " over the house at which 
the fire was stayed. The men may or may not 
believe in these follies, but they are as wax in 
the hands of the wives, who always find means to 
bring them to assist in the most heathenish 
incantations. 



120 Constantinople 

Another element of this Woman Question is 
this. The women, notwithstanding all this ig- 
norance and unfitness to guide others, hold ulti- 
mate sway over the conduct of the men. The 
tangled intrigues for place and power which 
centre in the harem form the key to many vicis- 
situdes of Turkish history. 

In the reign of Sultan Mohammed IV., Turkey 
became involved in war with Poland as a result 
of a war of the Harem. One of the Sultan's 
wives was jealous of the influence of the Sul- 
tan's mother. To secure the downfall of that 
lady, the wife thought it a small thing to invite 
the King of Poland to invade Turkey which 
seemed unprepared for war, to stain vast regions 
with blood, and to hope that the army upon the 
first defeat would depose the Sultan, her own 
husband. In order to carry out this precious 
scheme the woman had first made the Grand 
Vezir her devoted slave. But the Sultan unex- 
pectedly defeated the Polish army in battle, cap- 
tured the treasonable correspondence of his wife 
and unearthed the whole plot. So the Sultan's 
mother had the grim pleasure of seeing the head 
of her rival carried out of the palace in the same 
basket with those of the Grand Vezir and the 
other conspirators. 

Sultan Ahmed 1. picked up a Greek girl some- 
where, named Kiusen. She was not beautiful, 
but she ruled the Sultan by her bright and pleas- 
ing wit. Kiusen, after securing the aid of a 



The Woman Question 121 

man whom she caused to be appointed Grand 
Vezir in reward for his services, devoted her 
life to the advancement of her sons to the throne 
of Turkey in place of older princes, the children 
of less keen-witted wives. She succeeded in 
making and unmaking Sultans as well as Prime 
Ministers, and at last, when in the seventieth 
year of her age she was strangled in order to end 
her jealous intrigues, she had ruled the Empire 
through the reign of four successive Sultans — ■ 
her husband, her two sons, and her grandson — 
while her quarrels with the mother of the last 
of these four had brought the Turkish Empire to 
the verge of disruption and had destroyed sev- 
eral of its ablest statesmen. One cannot but feel 
sympathy with the feeling that gives to such 
women their power on reading the reply of Sul- 
tan Abd ul Mejid, the father of the present Sul- 
tan Abd ul Hamid, to Lord Stratfoid de Red- 
eliffe when that great Ambassador hinted that a 
little less subservience on the part of the Sover- 
eign to the wishes of the Sultan's mother would 
be advantageous to Turkey. Said the Sultan : 
" I have a thousand servants and wives and de- 
pendents and grovelling courtiers in my palace, 
but I have only one true friend ; and that is my 
mother." 

The Woman Question in Turkey then, is the 
question of changing the character and the di- 
rection of the influence of the women of the 
country — a class in all essentials of different aim 



ill Constantinople 

and interest from the men, in mental power far 
less cultured than the men, in religion still domi- 
nated by heathen notions which have lost their 
hold on the men, in knowledge centuries behind 
standards attained by the best of the men — a 
class, even to some extent among the Christians 
of the country, still walled in against influences 
from outside, and yet having in their hands con- 
trol of the nation during its early years, as well 
as the ultimate direction of the acts and the con- 
sciences of the men through the same means by 
which women everywhere influence the conduct 
and aspirations of their husbands. Ignorance, 
superstition and crude selfishness have their 
citadel of refuge in Turkey among the women, 
and this citadel is well nigh cut off from approach. 
Yet if the plane of life of this people is to be 
elevated, access to this well defended citadel 
must be found. The key to success in such an 
enterprise is held by the women of the country, 
for the men see them, that they are fair to look 
upon, and at once they do their bidding.. 

Some Mohammedans have painfully wrestled 
with this problem and long to secure change that 
will modify the character and influence of their 
women-folk. The missionary bystander neces- 
sarily asks himself how such men may be helped 
to gain their wish. Real comprehension of the 
condition of women among the millions of Asia 
will lead any one who has a trace of good will 
toward submerged humanity to feel sympathetic 



The Woman Question 123 

yearning that those women may be led to a better 
use of life. Perhaps some able to lend them a 
hand may find it hard to escape responsibility if 
the help is not given. 

Some will answer that we have the best author- 
ity for leaving the dead to bury their dead. But 
that phrase was not uttered for the consolation 
of those who wish to escape the burden of acting 
the good Samaritan. The use of it in a case like 
this is short-sighted as well as cruel. Recent 
experience in China shows that penalty can reach 
even to us for neglect of effort to humanize the 
backward races. Furthermore the history of the 
siege of the Peking Compound has revealed a re- 
ward which we actually gained for taking a juster 
view. For I opine that if all the money were 
reckoned up which missions to China have cost 
during the last twenty years of effort, and if those 
few hundred of Chinese diggers and ditchers at 
the Legation who thus learned to be men were set 
down as the whole result of the expenditure, the 
humble part taken by those Christian Chinese in 
preventing the horrible catastrophe which we 
feared was not dearly bought. There is self- 
interest as well as duty in studying what we can 
do toward solving this Woman Question which 
looms so large at Constantinople. 

The whole force of Oriental logic and philoso- 
phy is directed against culture of womankind as 
a class. To prevent her use of her mind woman 
is forced into marriage in childhood, becoming 



124 Constantinople 

a mother often at fifteen. For this end the dwarf- 
ing effect of premature encounter with the heav- 
iest perplexities of life is derided as proof (if 
mental deficiency. For this end the moral con- 
sequences of lack of training are rated as evi- 
dence that woman is so essentially vicious as 
to make her education a crime. The man of the 
East knows that if the woman is allowed to read 
and to think, facilities for gratifying his own 
tastes will be greatly diminished. So he obstructs 
efforts to open her mind, pointing out that any 
large view of education for women will teach her 
to sew instead. All this shows that custom and 
prejudice in Asia fear attacks made at this point. 
Hence the line of effort which promises effective 
results on the Woman Question in Turkey is the 
line of education for women. Before we saw 
how the reactionary Turk dreads education for 
woman, we all knew that she must be brought 
out of the depths to the level of the century in 
which she lives before she can take her due share 
in the work of stimulating its progress. 

Since the first point to be gained is to bring 
woman up out of the gloom where she has been 
left by centuries of ignorance and neglect, the 
touch upon her of Western civilization in any 
shape is an ally not to be lightly rated. At Con- 
stantinople as at no other place in Turkey West- 
ern civilization touches Eastern women. There 
they see and try to copy the dress of their West- 
ern sisters, although their taste is still such as to 



The Woman Question 125 

make the Constantinople market the sink into 
which fall all the rejected monstrosities of 
fashion which dealers in other cities would fain 
put out of the way. There too, the women are 
quick to discover and appreciate the freedom of 
the Western order of society, although having 
none to teach them they are apt to regard free- 
dom as license, and to seek to emulate it in ways 
original with themselves. Not much can such 
vague movements stir enthusiasm of hope for 
these poor women. Yet one cannot avoid seeing 
that what the women of Constantinople get into 
their minds from abroad, slowly filters through 
the surrounding regions to affect the ideas and 
the life of distant towns. And one cannot fail to 
see too that a tendency to look Westward for 
light opens a door to women of the West who 
wish well to the women of the East. Because 
they come from the West they can win their 
confidence and help them to grow. The work of 
lifting the women of Asia into the place which 
their Creator designed them to occupy is a work 
which can be done by the women of Christendom. 
Let the piti fulness of the condition of Eastern 
women and the difficulty of reaching them com- 
bine with the grandeur of the possible success to 
lead the women of Christendom to see that this 
work is done. 



IV 



THE EASTERN CHURCH 



ON visiting the cathedral attached to the 
Greek Patriarchate at Constantinople, 
the traveller is shown the throne occupied 
by the Patriarch on certain high feast days. 
It is a massive arm chair of some heavy wood 
richly coloured by age. The Greeks declare this 
to be the veritable throne used by St. Chrysostom 
when he was Bishop of Constantinople; a relic 
marvellously preserved for the comfort of the 
faithful through the vicissitudes of fifteen hun- 
dred years. Without committing one's self to 
the claims of this comfortless seat, one may well 
admit their power to stir enthusiasm for a Church 
whose history includes the possibility of the truth 
of such a pedigree for this throne. 

The Eastern Church has actually had bishops 
upon the Episcopal throne of the city, from 
Chrysostom down, in long and unbroken suc- 
cession. Feuds of mingled political and theologi- 
cal origin shook the throne of the Byzantine em- 
pire long before it fell, but they could not shake 
the Church, for such feuds are mere incidents of 

126 



The Eastern Church 127 

its unbroken story. Turmoil and dissensions and 
anarchy have many times made the streets about 
St. Sophia slippery with the blood of priest and 
statesman ; the great dome itself has echoed with 
the clash of arms and the angry shouts of zealous 
Christians ; struggling mobs have swarmed over 
surrounding buildings and have taken possession 
of the leads of the holy place itself in order to 
hurl epithets and missiles, or to ply cudgel and 
knife in discussions of such questions of popu- 
lar interest as the natures of Jesus Christ, the 
title of Mother of God for the Virgin Mary, and 
the propriety of using pictures or images in 
worship; bishops and Patriarchs unfortunate 
enough to poll a minority of the votes have been 
dragged from the place by the hair of the head, 
but through all of this noise and strife, orthodoxy 
has not been rent asunder nor lost its hold upon 
the people. To-day, as fifteen centuries ago, the 
Patriarch of Constantinople is the " Ecumenical 
Patriarch of the Orthodox* Church," if a creed 
is what feeds life. For his congregation is the 
lineal descendant of that of the Apostles. It is 
the one which was the convener of the great 
councils of all Christendom. Its liturgies and its 
theological writings are the veritable, untrans- 
lated words of the ancient Fathers of Chris- 
tendom. Its care preserved to the world the 
principal codices of the New Testament, although 
to-day its clergy have to journey to St. Peters- 



ia8 Constantinople 

burs' or Paris or London or Rome in order to 

o 

look at tbese early tokens of the patient fidelity 
of its pious scribes. 

Secession from this body made the Western 
Churches schismatic, and to this day deprives 
them of the illustrious name of Christian in the 
usage of the Eastern clergy ; the schism having 
been the more intolerable because the earliest 
bishops and the first popes of Rome were mem- 
bers of the Greek hierarchy. 

To the Eastern Church Germany owes its 
earliest knowledge of the Bible in the Gothic 
version made in the sixth century by Ul- 
philas of Constantinople. In the ninth cen- 
tury, notwithstanding its ceaseless theological 
dissensions the Eastern Church had enough 
of vital force to respond to an appeal for 
instruction from the hairy limbed Scythians 
of the north ; and the labours of its missionaries 
Cyril and Methodius so fixed its Scriptures and 
its doctrines in the uncouth language of those 
barbarous tribes as to make them one ; and now, 
after ten centuries, modern Russia, with its un- 
swerving loyalty to the Eastern creed is the great 
trophy of its missionary zeal and the link which 
binds it to the life of the restless West. Nor can 
the Eastern clergy ever forget that in the fif- 
teenth century when the learned men of Con- 
stantinople were dispersed before the rushing 
onset of the Mohammedan Turk their high cul- 
ture was the beginning of intellectual life in much 



The Eastern Church 129 

of Europe, teaching the roystering barons of the 
Western nations the meaning of scholarship and 
literature. Not only the hoary antiquity and 
profound learning, but the magnificent propor- 
tions of the Eastern Church with its one hundred 
millions of adherents in Europe, Asia, and 
America claim for it preeminent right to work 
for the reform of the multitudes of unbelievers 
who live in contact with it. 

So firmly is this ancient body established upon 
its venerable foundations that it must withstand 
any attempt to overthrow it. It is impossible to 
stand at Constantinople, amid such historical sur- 
roundings without a conviction that the uplifting 
of the people of that region must depend upon 
the faithfulness of the Eastern Church to its 
obligations to its Master. Secure in its traditions 
and its position in history it has a righ^ to regard 
as arrogance beyond forgiveness the enterprise of 
Western Christians who go to Jerusalem and 
Antioch and Constantinople with thought to 
teach the doctrines of Jesus Christ to a body from 
which the savage ancestors of these would-be 
teachers derived what knowledge they possessed 
of the Gospel. Its adherents as a mass, will never 
become Protestant in the Western sense of the 
word. 

Nevertheless one who expects from either 
branch of the Eastern Church as seen in Turkey, 
efforts to benefit the world, is discouraged by 
the silence of history upon this point during a 



130 Constantinople 

thousand years. Even as to that characteristic 
of the Church of Christ which reveals itself in 
strenuous anxiety for the spiritual state of its 
own members, the clergy of the East differ from 
the clergy of all Western Churches. From Patri- 
arch to deacon all seem blind to the rule that the 
state of individual members fixes the state of the 
church. Anxiety seems to be concentrated on 
the pursuit of power and influence for them- 
selves. When a bishop here and there urges 
his flock to study the Bible for their instruction, 
and even when such a pious bishop preaches the 
Gospel, the surprise of the onlooker almost ex- 
ceeds his pleasure in the discovery. Yet a church 
must show other grounds than the musty history 
of past ages if it is to direct the progress of men 
instead of being dragged along like a hampering 
mass by the march of progress. Like the men 
who compose it the Church must be doing, if it 
would live. 

The cause of the peculiarities of Eastern 
Christianity has been stated by a careful student 
as a radical singularity in habit of thought. He 
says, " The Eastern Church deals with theory, 
the Western, with practice. The Eastern Church 
enacts creeds, the Western, discipline. The 
Eastern Church makes the first decree of its 
council determine the relations of the God-head, 
while the first decree of a pope of Rome forbids 
the marriage of the clergy." 

But this shrewd analysis gives the facts in 



.The Eastern Church 131 

partial record only. Wc in this day find it hard 
to realize how deep and persistent was the expec- 
tation of the world-power revealed in the fre- 
quent inquiry of the disciples of Jesus Christ 
respecting the establishment of His Kingdom. 
Even at the moment of the Ascension they were 
fretted by this question of the restoration of the 
Kingdom, and their early converts did not lose 
the expectation. 

No branch of Western Christendom, with its 
small areas of unruly kingdoms was so intoxi- 
cated by the possession of power as was the 
Eastern Church when it captured the Imperial 
throne of the Roman Empire with sway over 
vast regions in the East. It was as a supreme 
political power that it had to lay down principles 
of world-wide scope which Emperors had com- 
manded it to define. It fell into theory to the 
neglect of practical affairs because of its respon- 
sibility to fix principles which underlie the ruling 
of a world. The flavour of uncounted wealth and 
unlimited power then tasted by the clergy, has 
ever remained in memory as a type of the kind of 
success toward which Christian pastors must 
bend their efforts. Under guise of a laudable 
desire to establish the Kingdom of Jesus Christ 
upon a proper foundation, Imperialism then sup- 
planted Christ as the central figure of the Church. 
To this day the Eastern Church has never lost 
its dream of supremacy in actual combination 
with the civil and political forces of the world. 



132 Constantinople 

Its prelates still confuse Church and State in an 
inextricable medley of aspirations such as marked 
the later Byzantine history. And from a political 
rather than a religious point of view they deal 
with the questions which our modern life brings 
within reach of their somewhat limited vision. 

The dealings of the Eastern Church with 
Islam, under the virile energy of which it fell 
into servitude, illustrates its development as a 
political power. When Islam became a danger 
to the Christian world the theologians of the 
East accepted Mohammed at his own valuation, 
as a believer in the religion revealed to Moses 
and to Jesus. They did not see in his doctrines a 
new religion. They regarded the prophet of 
Mecca as a Christian gone astray like the 
Gnostics of earlier periods. Mohammedan his- 
torians even assert that the Emperor Heraclius 
and many chief men of his time were convinced 
of the Divine Mission of Mohammed because the 
morals which he enforced were superior to those 
in vogue at Constantinople. In this estimate of 
the new religion there was ground for the alli- 
ances, matrimonial and otherwise, which mark 
the relations of the Eastern Empire to the Turk- 
ish Power during its earlier years. All questions 
at issue were political and the Church was asso- 
ciated with the Imperial Government in them all. 

When the Turks took Constantinople, the Sul- 
tan quickly and shrewdly declared a policy which 
continued in a certain degree the partnership 



The Eastern Church 133 

between Church and Government. The Patri- 
arch of Constantinople was maintained as the 
supreme ruler of his people, and the office of 
Grand Logothcte, the official charged under the 
Greek Empire with conveying- the requirements of 
the Church to the Emperor, was continued as the 
channel of communication between Patriarch and 
Sultan. To this day the Greek Patriarchate has 
its " Grand Logothete " at the Sublime Porte 
and its imposing guard of Turkish soldiers to 
attend the Patriarch when he rides abroad. The 
essence of such an alliance between the Mo- 
hammedan Sultan and the Christian Patriarch 
must be political. Its unspoken but irrevocable 
condition must be the consent of Christianity to 
remain a political organization, without the at- 
tributes of spiritual aggressiveness placed by 
Christ upon the conscience of his followers. 
Neither Sultan nor Patriarch at the time of this 
compact took into their thought for an instant 
any possibility that Christians might attempt to 
win Mohammedans to Christ. Christian liberty 
of propaganda was surrendered for the sake of 
political power. The two elements of the East- 
ern Question of our day were then established; 
a ruling Mohammedan power which openly de- 
mands universal political supremacy, and a sub- 
ject organization equally claiming universal su- 
premacy as a political power, and equally striv- 
ing, though secretly, to forward that claim. This 
dream of supremacy has never been lost by the 



134 Constantinople 

hierarchy which views itself as heir to those dis- 
ciples of Christ who demanded dignity in a politi- 
cal organization for the glory of the Lord. 

A single illustration of the stand-point of the 
clergy of the Greek Church will tend to make 
these statements more clear. A quarrel a few 
years ago with the Bulgarian Church in Mace- 
donia formed the occasion for the adoption by the 
Greek Holy Synod at Constantinople of a meas- 
ure intended to force the Turkish Government to 
grant the wishes of the Greek Patriarch. The 
bishops of the Holy Synod ordered the closing 
of all Greek churches throughout the country, 
and then told their astounded parishioners that 
the measure had been forced upon them by the 
Turkish Government. 

The fact of the case was that because the Turk- 
ish Government refused to restore the Macedo- 
nian Bulgarians, by force, as if literally sheep, 
to the fold of the Greek shepherds, the Greek 
Patriarch resigned. Since in theory Greek priests 
exercise their functions by warrants from the 
Patriarch, on the resignation of the Patriarch the 
bishops might say that no one could authorize 
church services. Their declaration to the people 
that the closing of the churches was forced by 
the Turkish Government rested upon their claim 
that the resignation of the Patriarch was required 
by the refusal of the Turks to coerce the 
Bulgarians. 

The closing of the churches was merely a poli- 



The Eastern Church 135 

tician's stratagem, expected to goad the people 
into violent outbreak, by leading them to sup- 
pose that the Turks had committed the crown- 
ing oppression of denying the Greeks their re- 
ligious privileges. Such outbreaks, or the fear 
of them, would drive the Turkish Government 
into granting the demands of the clergy. It 
seems not to have occurred to the bishops that the 
Turks can endure in placid unconcern the sus- 
pension of religious services by Christians quite 
as long as the Greeks themselves can. What the 
Turkish Government did was to issue an indig- 
nant denial of the imputation that it had in any 
way interfered with freedom of worship, renew- 
ing at the same time the declaration that this is 
an inalienable right of all classes of the Sultan's 
subjects. This explanation prevented outbreaks 
on the part of the Greek rabble, who turned their 
wrath against the priests for refusing to perform 
marriages, administer baptism, or officiate in 
canonicals at funerals — whimsically making 
their own people suffer all the pains of an ecclesi- 
astical ban. 

The ignoring by the Greek higher clergy of the 
spiritual needs of the people is significant of their 
view of religion. Through their acts hundreds of 
thousands were deprived during many weeks of 
all opportunity for public worship and spiritual 
instruction. But the whole discussion of the out- 
rage centred upon the value of the measure as a 
political expedient. The people commented upon 



136 Constantinople 

it freely. Some praised the astuteness of the 
bishops, many ridiculed their folly, but absolutely 
none made outcry of horror at the cold blooded 
sacrifice of the spiritual interests of the masses 
for the sake of political schemes dear to the 
Synod. The people know too well that their 
interests require politics to outweigh religion in 
the councils of their leaders. Yet those leaders 
are high ecclesiastics who are grieved when 
Americans urge pure religion upon Greek be- 
lievers in Jesus Christ, and whose patronizing 
smile is precious to Western admirers of the 
spectacle of an unbroken succession of hands, 
passing on by physical contact the heritage re- 
ceived from the Apostles. Such an incident is 
but one of innumerable illustrations that this 
physical succession may -become a thing as repel- 
lent as is that prized among the Armenians, who 
still use the mummied hand of their great saint, 
Gregory the Illuminator, in the consecration of 
their chief Bishop. 

Our interest now is in the value of the Eastern 
Church as a factor in elevating the lives of the 
vast mass of people who have made Turkey what 
it is. It has had influence upon modern Mo- 
hammedanism without doubt. The use of many 
Christian forms of pious expression by Muslims 
shows this, and so does the ambition of Muslims 
to make the celebration of the birthday of their 
Prophet as important as any Christmas festivity, 
or to ascribe to Mohammed characteristics be- 



The Eastern Church 137 

longing to Jesus Christ as mediator and as the 
cause of the creation of the world. Some Mus- 
lims even go so far as to hint at application to 
the mother of Mohammed of a doctrine of im- 
maculate conception. But the effect of such an 
incident as the closing of the churches is far 
deeper upon the Mohammedan mind. 

The spectacle of the largest of the Christian 
Churches of Turkey sportively suspending Divine 
worship for weeks, as a political measure, proves 
to every Mohammedan beyond cavil that Chris- 
tianity is a lie and a folly beneath contempt. In 
this incident the influence of the Church was 
thrown directly against that commendation of 
Christianity to the approval of Mohammedans 
which is our desire. Such facts must give em- 
phasis to the happily chosen language of Dean 
Stanley respecting the whole late history of this 
church : " Eastern Christianity must be treated 
as a temporary halting place of the great spiritual 
migration which from the day that Abraham 
turned his face away from the rising sun, has 
been steadily stepping Westward." 

We have spoken of the Eastern Church in the 
singular number because there is really no essen- 
tial difference between the Greek Church and 
any of its smaller off-shoots. As to vital force 
from the Christian point of view, all are on a 
level of arrested development. With all of them 
belief that possession of political power can 
enable a bishop to regulate the lives of his flock 



138 Constantinople 

has been the ignis fatiuis to lure them into those 
marshes of stagnation in which the whole East- 
ern Church is resting. All of them show in 
practical life how a scheme of moral conduct 
which makes self-seeking its central principle, 
like a garment contaminated with the plague 
virus, poisons and prostrates and paralyzes the 
wretch who thinks to profit by it. For all of the 
branches of the Eastern Church have had dinned 
into their ears daily during twelve centuries the 
message of Islam to the world, " There is no 
God but God, and to honour Him with the lips 
is the acceptable service of God." 

The Armenian Church is the largest of these 
off-shoots from the Eastern Church. Until some 
time after it w T as declared heretical it copied or 
translated the most of its theological text books 
from the Greek. Those points of heresy which 
ancient orthodoxy most severely stigmatized in 
it do not clearly appear in modern Armenian 
creeds. One of the chief peculiarities of this 
Church is the presence of two books in its Old 
Testament canon and two in the New, which are 
found in no other Bible. There are differences 
in practice between Armenian and Greek, but 
these offer no reason for classing the Armenians 
by themselves in any cursory view of the situ- 
ation of the Church of Christ in Western Asia. 
Their separation from the Greeks seems to have 
been due to the circumstance that the Armenian 
delegates to the Council of Chalcedon were de- 



The Eastern Church 139 

layed by the chances of a long, painful journey. 
They arrived after all was over; and the decrees 
of the council were rejected by the Armenians be- 
cause there was no one to explain to them the 
precise bearing of a form of words which was 
distasteful. The schism which began with this 
incident, has widened through distance, difficulty 
of intercourse, and especially through difference 
of language. 

Some idea of the state of the Armenian Church 
may be drawn from the description, given by an 
Armenian writer, of a service which he attended 
at Constantinople. It was Christmas Day, and 
he hoped for something that would emphasize the 
lessons of Christmas. But he was disappointed. 
' Instead," says he, " of the simplicity which be- 
comes a place of worship I found in the church 
the tawdry decoration which belongs to a 
bazaar. The preacher arose for his sermon. It 
was a hasty recitation of the identical words 
which had formed for many years his Christmas 
sermon to his people. Having got that out of the 
way, he poured out the real thought which pos- 
sessed his soul in an appeal of twice the length 
for money to be given to the church support 
fund. Then the deacons went into the congrega- 
tion while mass was being celebrated, interrupt- 
ing its solemn phrases by presenting to everyone 
the contribution boxes. Even some of the 
priests officiating at the altar threw some gar- 
ment over their canonicals and seizing plates 



140 Constantinople 

rushed in among the congregation to get a share 
of the spoils. So intent were they upon this 
errand that they did not notice the words, ' Take, 
eat, this is My body,' and the scandalized peo- 
ple had to remind them of the claims of decency, 
begging them to wait until after the communion 
was over. 

" On an ordinary day the spectacle is even 
more repugnant. The people are there, but the 
priests are late to enter. They perform the serv- 
ice in a dull and perfunctory manner. The 
preacher of the day comes in late to the service, 
and while mass is being performed, he goes into 
the vestry to take a cup of coffee and have a 
smoke. In the body of the church a lot of school 
children turned loose to look out for themselves, 
disturb the service by their chatter and their 
pranks, and in one of the side chapels several 
priests are wrangling over the division of fees 
from a funeral from which they have just re- 
turned. So loud is their dissension that their 
voices rise above the voices of the choir singing 
the chant, ' Thou only art Holy, Oh Lord'." 

This writer uncovered the faults of his Church 
for a purpose. He made his criticisms in one of 
the Armenian daily newspapers of the city, and 
used them to show the need of preachers in this 
ancient church. He complained that the people 
are not fed. He said, " The daily scripture les- 
son is not opened to their minds. Forms and 
ceremonies, and only forms and ceremonies are 



The Eastern Church 141 

offered to the people in the church. Even the 
significance of these forms and ceremonies is 
not explained to the people. If the object of the 
preacher is to lead men to salvation, to make 
them see and love right, to fix religious truth in 
their minds, to build up faith, to stir the heart 
and the conscience, then the value of a sermon 
is its power to move people. 

" Such sermons are not heard in the Armenian 
Church. The reason is not that religion is worn 
out, else preachers in Europe and America would 
not hold their audiences. The reason is that the 
Armenian clergy do not care for the glory of 
God and the edification of the church. They let 
the people seek where they will for their instruc- 
tion in the Gospel and moral principle, while they 
themselves are given to the search after fees for 
weddings, funerals and masses. Spiritual in- 
struction is rarely offered to the people, and what 
is offered is without fruit, because no preacher 
practices what he himself teaches. The church 
does not lack preachers who might give spiritual 
instruction to their people, but these are reserved 
for service in the rich churches. To the poor the 
Gospel is not preached." 

An Armenian priest, signing himself 
" Preacher " made answer to this complaint in 
another of the daily papers, that the clergy are 
no worse than they have always been, and that 
the decline of religion is due to neglect of parents 
to have their children taught observance of the 



142 Constantinople 

fasts, of confession, and of the duty of church 
attendance. He further said that the schools 
injure religion because infidels are employed as 
teachers, and instead of making children learn to 
read out of the Church Psalter, bearing the sen- 
tence " The Cross help me " at the top of every 
page, they give the children primers which con- 
tain such useless sentences as " The dog barks," 
" The cat mews," etc. 

The reply to this defence of the clergy came 
from the editor of the paper and emphasized the 
ignorance and the folly of the clergy by contrast- 
ing their ideas with those of the Evangelicals. 
It charged the man who can make such an an- 
swer to criticism with ignorance of the differ- 
ence between religion and its outward shell ; add- 
ing that men are not made righteous themselves 
nor do they make Christians of their children by 
keeping fasts, and reciting prayers which they 
do not understand. " In fact," said the editor, 
" The men whom the priest condemns as infidels 
are those brought up under this system. What 
the people demand is a higher view and a more 
Christian conviction of truth on the part of the 
clergy." 

But let it not be supposed that the Armenian 
Church is worse than the Greek church in the im- 
pression of inability to judge between religion 
and its outer shell. At the risk of seeming to 
show rancour we must add to the material for 



The Eastern Church 143 

judging of the present state of the Greek church 
a description of one of its public rites. 

Going one day along the street in old Stam- 
boul which leads from the Galata bridge to the 
bazaars, a Greek friend accosted me: 

" Are you going to the show ? " 

"What show?" 

" Our Patriarch is to be buried to-day. All 
the great men of the European Embassies will 
be there, and the procession will be fine." 

The cynicism of the man who can see naught 
but a show in the funeral of the head of his 
church and the chosen representative of his na- 
tion, piqued curiosity as to the bearing of a 
crowd made up of such men. We went through 
the narrow streets, bordered here and there with 
curious old relics of the house architecture 
of the Byzantines, toward the Phanar, where 
stands the Greek Patriarchate and its Cathedral. 
A throng of sight-seers was moving in the same 
direction, and as we drew near to the Cathedral 
a compact mass of people, sitting on posts and 
walls and in windows of houses and filling every 
inch of the street until a needle dropped among 
them could not fall to the ground, barred further 
progress. 

This crowd was made up of pleasure seekers, 
not of mourners. All the Greeks of the city 
seemed to be there, and with them great num- 
bers of Armenians, of Europeans, of Jews and of 



144 Constantinople 

Mohammedans as eager as any to see the curious 
ceremonies attending the burial of a Patriarch. 
The men were dressed in their best clothes and 
the women decked in gay silks and ribbons. 
Wherever room for movement could be found, 
peddlers hawked eatables, crying out the excel- 
lencies of their grapes or figs or bread or ice 
water or sherbet, and in fact of all the oriental 
equivalents for the gingerbread and peanuts and 
candy of a country fair. The people were com- 
fortably munching these viands in every place 
where they could find room to work their elbows 
and their jaws. The body of the Patriarch had 
been lying in state for three days, and the crowd 
were discussing their experiences in getting into 
the church. 

Said one of the Greeks to another, " Did you 
kiss the old man's hand ? " 

" Yes, but it was too old ! " 

" Some of them don't keep. Perhaps he was 
no better than he should be." 

" Ah, but the weather is hot. You should not 
lay it to the sins of the poor old man." 

" Well, he is no better now, than he should be, 
any way." 

The coarse jest at the expense of the great 
dead was received with roars of laughter, and 
the speakers rolled up fresh cigarettes and dis- 
cussed the state of the market. 

Suddenly the masses about the doors of the 
cathedral began to quiver and shake like sol- 



The Eastern Church 145 

diers fatigued by a heavy fire. Then the crowd 
came back in a stampede which flattened against 
the wall all who had not found places of refuge. 
On the heels of the fleeing crowd was a patrol 
of Turkish police pushing the people back with 
the butts of their muskets. A troop of cavalry 
followed and then a guard of honour of Turkish 
infantry, with arms reversed as if mourning, but 
swaggering along as though to flaunt their Mus- 
lim indifference in the faces of the Greeks. 

After the troops, came Greek priests in rich 
robes and bearing cakes and wine. They were 
followed by a procession of chanting choristers 
and higher dignitaries of the church, robed in 
cloth of gold. But the moment the soldiers had 
passed, so that there was no longer any barrier 
between the multitude and the chanting priests, 
every semblance of order and decency was lost 
in the rush of the people to see. The-e was no 
longer a procession, but a writhing and strug- 
gling mass filling the narrow way. 

A high functionary had been charged with the 
duty of bearing alone, solemn and imposing, a 
lighted candle of massive proportions before the 
bier of the dead. But he and his great candle 
were borne along bobbing and dodging in the 
midst of a swirl of the rabble determined to see 
well the thing which was behind him. What 
was behind him was a group of twenty-four 
priests elbowing their way through the crowd 
and distressed by the effort quite as much as by 



146 Constantinople 

the heavy burden which they bore, hardly above 
the surface of the pavement. A glint of gold 
in their midst arrested attention. The thing 
which they carried was a very nightmare of hor- 
ror. They painfully laboured to bring through 
the crowd a sort of throne of black velvet upon 
which was seated a corpse, — the body of an old, 
old man. The body was robed in cloth of gold, 
and the head, which lolled and wagged from side 
to side with each throb and push of the crowd, 
wore a ball-shaped golden crown, set with pre- 
cious stones. The right hand of the corpse was 
raised and swayed from side to side in hideous 
opposition to the wagging of the white-haired 
head ; being maintained in an attitude supposed to 
be that of benediction by a piece of coarse twine 
tied to one of the fingers. This was the Patri- 
arch Dionysius V. of the Orthodox Church, borne 
to his last resting place. And his people, who 
rushed frantically into the procession to get a 
near view of the horrible corpse, already marked 
with spots of decay, were the lineal and worthy 
descendants of those Byzantine Greeks who were 
ever willing to sacrifice anything for a sight of 
horrors in the amphitheatre over yonder. Such 
was the scandalous spectacle which the Greek 
Church offered to the world as the best which it 
can devise in honour of the chief of its ecclesiasti- 
cal body. 

Understanding of the relation of the Eastern 
Church to the question of the evangelization of 



The Eastern Church 147 

the world requires mention of one further pecu- 
liarity. A very important part of harmonious 
relations with any people upon matters of relig- 
ion must be mutual agreement as to the meaning 
of words. Whatever difficulty exists in under- 
standing the Eastern Church in this department 
results from Mohammedan influence. For some 
five or six hundred years Islam has exerted di- 
rect pressure and indirect influence upon Ori- 
ental Christians. The result has been like the 
result of leaving timber too long in the water — 
the logs become soaked and useless. 

The insistence of the Armenian and Greek 
villagers in the interior of Turkey upon veiling 
their women; the notion among them that mod- 
esty is violated when a woman converses with a 
man who is not of her kin, and the use of Sunday 
as the market day, are deeply-rooted customs 
taught the Christians by Mohammedanism, along 
with the cringing disposition resulting from 
hopeless servitude. But the meaning of religious 
terms in use among the members of the Oriental 
Church has become modified by the same influ- 
ences. For instance, the idea that obedience to 
God consists of observance of rites and ceremo- 
nies and has no relation to moral conduct, is 
firmly fixed in the minds of the common people 
in each branch of that Church. Worship is un- 
derstood to be recital of certain forms of words 
at appropriate times. Faith is assent to a creed. 
Piety is ascetic attention to forms of worship 



148 Constantinople 

and to fasting. Manliness is determination to 
crush an enemy, and humility is a grovelling, 
cringing spirit. 

If the Christians of the seventh century re- 
garded Mohammed as merely a heretical Chris- 
tian, by the beginning of the nineteenth century 
in many important matters they had accepted 
the heresy themselves. A few years ago a band 
of robbers captured the Vienna Express train in 
the province of Adrianople, and held for ran- 
som a number of European passengers. After a 
ransom of about forty thousand dollars had been 
paid by friends, the prisoners were released. 
They gave a lively account of their life in the 
mountains, while the robbers were eluding pur- 
suit and negotiating for the ransom. The most 
curious part of the story related to the great 
piety of these robbers, who were members in 
good and regular standing, of the Greek Church. 
Every day they read prayers and the lessons of 
Scripture with great unction. They doubtless 
ascribed to this pious observance their success in 
getting the ransom and escaping capture. At 
all events none of them suffered loss of social 
standing or fell under discipline of the Church 
for their crime. Neither the robbers nor the 
Greek clergy saw anything in the enterprise in- 
consistent with spotless purity of character. 

On the- whole, in the Eastern Church the min- 
istrations of the clergy do not cultivate spiritual 
life among the people. In planning for the cul- 



The Eastern Church 149 

ture of the people the tendency is to make much 
of the evidence of power in displays of magnifi- 
cence. What the clergy deem the people to need 
is sight of the gorgeous vestments of the church 
functionaries once or twice a day, with splendours 
of lighted candles and gold and glitter, and lavish 
burning of incense, and impressive chantings of 
liturgy in the sonorous and unintelligible 
phrases of the ancients, and at the same time op- 
portunity to make deposits in the contribution 
box on the assurance that dividends will be paid 
in heaven. 

There are bishops both in the Greek and the 
Armenian Churches who preach the Gospel in a 
simple and elevating way and live pious lives to 
match. But they are exceptions to a general 
rule. The quality most easily seen in the clergy 
of the Eastern Church is a self-complacency as 
impermeable as if designed to resist influences 
from without. Happily the clergy for the most 
part dare not put into acts their dread of the edu- 
cation which their people would fain pick up 
from sources outside of the church. 

Among the laity of the Eastern Church one 
finds in Constantinople men who are public 
spirited, liberal minded, and possessing initiative 
in plans for the advancement of their own people. 
The Greek Syllogos in Pera is a literary society 
made up of such. It does admirable work in 
original historical research and in popularizing 
knowledge among the Greek middle class fam- 



150 Constantinople 

ilies of the city. Many a fine Greek school owes 
its endowment and its support to the generosity 
of well to do and far-seeing Greek merchants and 
bankers. Among the Armenians, too, many men 
are found who have studied abroad and who 
make a point of labouring for education and prog- 
ress among their own people. But such laymen 
of modern ideas have to carry the burden of their 
undertakings themselves. In culture and intel- 
lectual power and in breadth of vision they are 
immeasurably beyond their own clergy. The 
church does not oppose their enterprises for the 
good of the common people in any mediaeval 
sense. But it cannot sympathize with them. It 
is a drag on progress and never by any chance a 
stimulating force. The consequence of this con- 
trast between the dull self-complacency of the 
mass of the clergy and the vigour of the pro- 
gressive layman is what might be expected. The 
priests have been weighed and found wanting. 
The disparagement which they earn for them- 
selves, falls also upon the religion which they 
teach. It is a foregone conclusion that the 
younger generation of educated men have relig- 
ion in the sense of respect for a national institu- 
tion, or in the sense of satisfying claims of pro- 
priety set forth by the women. Possibly they may 
not themselves become moral degenerates. But 
it should be noted here that such young men 
never by any chance feel responsibility for im- 
proving the morals of those who are degenerate. 



The Eastern Church 151 

But the skepticism thus cultivated does not 
mean that the Eastern Christians are neces- 
sarily without feeling in the religious sense. 
There could be no more telling exhibit of the 
response made by the heart to unexpected spir- 
itual impulses than a statement of the writer 
above quoted in one of the Armenian secular 
papers of the city. He said that he went into one 
of the Protestant chapels in Constantinople and 
found it full of Armenians although the Arme- 
nian church stood empty and craving worshippers 
but a short distance away. " The reason is," he 
said, " that the preacher in the Protestant chapel 
offers the people the simple Gospel, expounds 
and applies it powerfully, and supports his teach- 
ing by a blameless life open to the eyes of the 
whole community. When he speaks he both 
feeds the hearts and convinces the minds of his 
hearers. Let there be preaching of this class in 
the Armenian churches ! Only when this is done 
will the empty churches and the equally empty 
hearts of the people be filled." 

The question is often asked by our own people 
whether the moral standards of the Eastern 
Christian are not really below those of his Mo- 
hammedan neighbour. It is frequently asserted 
that in honesty and truthfulness the Mohamme- 
dan is far above the Christian of the Eastern 
rite. A desert produces sombre-hued, thick- 
leaved, thorny plants, whether it is in America or 
in Arabia. If self-interest is understood to imply 



152 Constantinople 

dishonesty, the lie which it evolves is of the 
same quality the world around. For men who 
lack the purpose of placing God above self in 
questions of aim and conduct will be found to be 
very much the same whether Eastern or Western 
Christians, Buddhists, or Mohammedans. They 
are to be had for a price, and the only question is 
as to the stiffness of the price. One meets Mo- 
hammedans in Constantinople who are more 
noble than some Greeks and Armenians. One 
there encounters Greeks and Armenians more 
trusty than some Mohammedans. In commer- 
cial houses of the city the porters are often Ar- 
menian peasants from the Eastern provinces. 
These porters come to Constantinople and serve 
five years or so for $12 or $15 per month. Out 
of this pittance they feed and clothe themselves, 
and at the end of the time they expect to take 
home $500 or $600. These dark-skinned, bag- 
trowsered Armenian porters are daily sent to col- 
lect or deposit funds for their employers. Many 
times it happens that the porter has in his hands 
a sum exceeding all that he will lay up in his five 
years of toil. Yet his betrayal of the trust re- 
posed in him is almost unknown. 

Probably some Mohammedan peasants and 
porters in Constantinople might be trusted in the 
same way. One old Mohammedan peasant from 
an interior province of the Empire, who worked 
as a day labourer in Constantinople quite won my 
heart by his generous treatment of an Armenian 



The Eastern Church 153 

widow left on his hands by the massacre of 1896. 
He came to ask advice. The woman was also 
from an interior town. Her husband had been 
killed and her two sons were fugitives in Europe. 
She had a room in the house of the Turk, but 
could not be induced to pay the rent. After ex- 
amining the case I told the Turk that he would 
be justified in turning the woman out of his 
house, for she was using the plea of need of 
money to pay rent to extract a regular allowance 
from charitable people, and at the same time 
must be hoarding up the coin gained in this way. 
Some weeks later I asked the ragged old Mo- 
hammedan labourer if he had got rid of his Ar- 
menian tenant. " No," he said, " I could not do 
it. God knows that I am poor and need the rent 
money. But the woman is poor, too. Perhaps 
some day I will be alone like her. Then I would 
be sorry to have a landlord turn me into the 
street ! " 

But a noble sentiment like this does not prove 
the Turk to be a complete model in morals. 
This same man was installed as care-taker in a 
country house while the owner went into a far 
country for a year. This care-taker of noble 
sentiments then commenced a regular process of 
transferring the more marketable parts of the 
house to the junk-dealers. He wrenched off the 
locks of the doors and sold them ; he gradually 
sold off the shutters from the windows ; he 
stripped the sheet lead from accessible portions 



154 Constantinople 

of the roof and transmuted the lead into silver ; 
he even dug up and sold a lot of choice roses 
and other plants from the garden. When the 
owner at last returned, the house was very like 
a ruin standing in a desert. " The rose-bushes," 
glibly explained my versatile friend, " were killed 
by the frost. The window shutters were beaten 
to pieces in a storm long ago ; and as for the 
locks I never could find out who did it; people 
came in and stole them while I was asleep. I 
could not stay awake the whole time for a year 
could I?" 

Do not let us try to gauge the value of a 
religion by the moral conduct of those of its ad- 
herents who do not obey its precepts. In the 
comparison proposed, perhaps the most that can 
be said with confidence to the disadvantage of 
the Mohammedan is this : Among all those who 
profess to follow the God of Israel the Moham- 
medan is unique in his doctrine on bloodshed and 
on the relation between the sexes. Hence in 
these two directions there are depths of infamy 
to which any Mohammedan may plunge to which 
the most degraded of the Eastern Christians 
could not stoop. 

In its relations to the people about it the East- 
ern Church shows in utmost extension the notion 
that men should mind their own religious affairs 
and let others take care of themselves. For a 
thousand years that Church has not known the 
emotion of joy which comes from doing a service 



The Eastern Church 155 

to others, outside of the favoured few, which 
does not bring return of personal profit which 
ran be weighed, jingled and tied up in a bag. Yet 
such service is of the essentials of Christianity. 
A characteristic of conversion too much over- 
looked in our own churches is the part of the defi- 
nition of salvation upon which Dr. William New- 
ton Clarke strongly insists in pointing out the 
grounds of Missions. " To be saved is to be 
brought into moral fellowship with God — it is 
to become in heart a saviour, in fellowship with 
Him to whom we owe our own salvation." 
Without this idea fully before the mind man will 
naturally tend to indolent enjoyment of his own 
privileges, though his neighbour have no one of 
them. Such a man tends to live on the level of 
the street dog of Constantinople which, on find- 
ing a windfall of food, stuffs his mouth with all 
that he can seize, and bolts for a secluded corner 
where no other dog may ask a share in his good 
fortune. The most painful feature in the present 
aspect of the Eastern Church at Constantinople 
is its utter lack of impulse to serve Christ by be- 
coming an uplifting force to those outside of its 
own narrow enclosure. 

Nevertheless the present condition of this 
Church may not lessen our sympathy for it. At 
the time of the downfall of the Byzantine Em- 
pire, the proud Western Church noted that Con- 
stantinople was taken by the Turks upon the day 
of the feast of the Holy Ghost. " Therefore," 



156 Constantinople 

said the prelates of the age, " it is clear that the 
Holy Ghost so ordered the downfall of the po- 
litical power of the Greeks because they obsti- 
nately held the belief that the Holy Ghost pro- 
ceeds from the Father alone and not from the 
Father and the Son." It is a measure of the tre- 
mendous growth of modern Christian feeling 
that such folly to-day would blast the mouth that 
uttered it. But there is reason for a feeling 
deeper than mere tolerance for the Eastern 
Church. During centuries of its abandonment 
by Western Christendom that Church has held 
to belief in the name of Christ. During cen- 
turies arguments which its clergy have lost the 
power to refute, dazzling splendour of bribes and 
rewards urged as inducements for exchange of 
the offence of Jesus Christ for the license of the 
Prophet of Mecca, oppressions, penalties and 
blood-curdling threats have failed to lead it to 
give up its inheritance of faith in Jesus, although 
its isolation long ago slew hope of deliverance. 
Such a history must arouse our warm regard. 
The weakness of this Church is the concern of all 
Christendom. As when fever is sapping the life 
of a dear friend, all who can must aid in making 
possible a cure. 

To return to the power of the city of Constan- 
tinople to influence all surrounding regions, it 
must by this time be clear that the message which 
the city sends out into the country is a message 
that all evil things are of the natural and irreme- 



The Eastern Church 



'57 



diable class of evils, and that almost any thing is 
good and right and wise to do, if a man gets 
enough of reward for doing it. From the side 
of the Mohammedan teaching, cumbered as it 
is with the incubus of such a woman question, 
little that will tend to the elevation of the people 
of that vast region may be expected to go out. 
Nor can the Eastern Church in its present state 
be a factor in any great movement of reform in 
the region controlled by the influence of Con- 
stantinople. 

At the same time the condition of the people 
of all those regions over which Constantinople 
holds its magic sway is an abiding menace to the 
rest of the world. We are even shut out from 
all chance of commerce in wealthy regions far 
more accessible than the rising empires of the 
Pacific by the fact that these people have not sim- 
ilar principles of equity with the West, having 
had no one to teach them how to live and im- 
prove the conditions of life. We can not afford 
to ignore the hurt and the danger to the world 
that grows out of the fact that the peoples of 
Western Asia have chosen a wrong centre for 
their aspirations. 

If the Eastern Church can ever be brought 
to its proper work as a Christian church, sending 
out influences of purity and enlightenment by 
every caravan, and train, and ship that carries 
the people of the city to their distant homes 
beneath the rising sun, conclusive results among 



158 Constantinople 

all these peoples may be expected. But not until 
then. Hopes for elevation of the moral and so- 
cial standards of the masses in Turkey depend 
upon the discovery of means for arousing the 
Eastern Church at Constantinople to nobler per- 
spectives of the Christian life. Here is the place 
to begin missionary work for the backward peo- 
ple of Western Asia. All consideration of the 
situation leads to the conclusion that missionary 
effort throughout the region dominated by the 
great city, and especially effort in the great city 
itself should be concentrated upon applying wise 
and kindly stimulus to this venerable Church that 
it may live and itself take the first steps toward 
a general renewal of principles in the whole 
population. 



THE MEETING OF EAST AND WEST 

ANY good influence which the West can exert 
on Eastern people is limited by the curious 
opposition so often noted between the man of the 
East and the man of the West in method of 
action. 

The Western man deferentially takes off his 
hat on entering a house, but he carefully keeps 
his lower members covered. When he writes he 
lays his paper upon the table, and moves his pen 
from left to right. If he saws a board he has his 
saw arranged to cut upon the downward stroke 
so that his whole force may tell. The Eastern 
man wears his hat into the house, although a king 
be within, but he takes off his shoes, leaving his 
feet, perhaps bare and exposed to view. When 
he writes, he takes up the paper from the table 
(if he has one) while doing so, and moves his 
pen from right to left. If he has to saw a board 
or a log of wood, he makes his saw cut on the 
up stroke alone. These common instances of a 
general tendency of Orientals to do exactly the 
opposite of what Occidentals would do under the 
same circumstances, have an importance deeper 
than their picturesqueness when on exhibition. 

159 



160 Constantinople 

They are surface indications of a reversal in the 
point from which life is viewed. When the Ori- 
ental wears his hat into the house, it is because 
he feels that his shaven head would make him 
grotesque if exhibited to others. The idea that 
leads him to take off his shoes is that presently 
he is going to sit down on the floor, and he does 
not wish to soil his clothes when he does so. If 
he has no table at which to write it is because 
he would be obliged to move in order to use it, 
if he had one. To write where he is requires 
that he shall rest the paper on the palm of his 
hand; and this again makes it necessary for him 
to move his pen from right to left. If he has 
his saw made so that it does its work when 
drawn back instead of when it is pushed forward, 
it is because he prefers to sit while sawing, in 
order to avoid too severe exertion. 

In Western lands it is quite possible that a 
man will work without the need to work ; because 
idleness is burdensome and ruinous. But in Asia 
this idea is quite incomprehensible. A carpenter 
from the vicinity of Constantinople, who was 
earning about eighty cents a day at his trade, 
heard that in the United States carpenters get 
two or three dollars a day. So he packed his 
kit and hastened to that favoured country. After 
a time his friends wrote to ask if the increased 
pay was a fact. " Yes," he wrote back, " I do get 
two dollars a day. But so would I have had two 



Meeting of East and West 161 

dollars a day at home, if I had been willing to 
work there as hard as they work me in this ter- 
rible country." Throughout the continent of 
Asia labour is incompatible with personal dignity. 
Those favoured from on high will be freed from 
the need for it. Those who have to work are 
the " herd " — the people made for such degrada- 
tion. Not to work ; to be supported by the labour 
of others ; to be waited on by servants ; to grow 
fat through stagnation of the capillaries is an 
ideal of existence so generally held in the East, 
that it might almost be styled the Asiatic scheme 
of complete happiness. It was an Asiatic to whom 
God once said " Thou fool." The hope of that 
man still lives among the millions of Asia. It 
is the hope to be able to say " Soul take thine ease, 
for thou hast much goods laid up for many 
years." 

The man of the West glories in examining, 
testing, discovering unknown facts. In Asia, the 
experimental stage of existence ended before any 
Western nation had come out of its caves or 
imagined dress goods better than skins. The 
Fathers have examined everything and they have 
fixed the best in their saws and proverbs and 
rules. The old Hebrew preacher expressed the 
opinions of Asiatics when he said " That which 
is hath been already, and that which is to be hath 
already been, and God seeketh again that which is 
passed away." The hope of the West is in the 



\6i Constantinople 

aspiration of the individual. The purpose of the 
East is that the mass shall always repress and 
overwhelm the aspiring individual. 

In the West there is such a thing as action in 
which, for a time, personal aims are suppressed; 
for instance action for the benefit of the com- 
munity or of the nation. But from China to the 
Mediterranean the axiom is fixed that self-inter- 
est and self-seeking ever must (and ought to) 
override all other considerations. If a man sets 
about an enterprise in which the people cannot 
see how his personal interest is to gain, this fact 
is enough to make the whole thing uncanny and 
to arouse insurmountable opposition against it. 
When men risk all that they have, and their lives 
besides, in an effort to do away with some op- 
pressive power, the motive may be deemed to be 
disinterested defence of a vital principle. But 
among Orientals one may always expect to find 
that the motive was either personal vengeance, 
or a desire to exchange places with the wrong- 
doer in order to do the same things at the ex- 
pense of the party which he represents. 

In Western lands public opinion limits the sat- 
isfaction which a man may find in ill-gotten gains. 
In the East, success in life is the attainment of 
ease. Ease is ease, whether gained through luck, 
of through dishonourable " cornering " of things 
that others must have, or (best of all) through 
power that can force others to become one's in- 
struments for the amassing of property. In 




THE BOSPHORUS AS A HIGHWAY 
(Russian transport on the way to China) 




THE CART (IF ASIA MINOR 



Meeting of East and West 163 

Turkey, Government service promises wide op- 
portunity in these directions, and therefore a 
stream of candidates wide and unending, flows 
from all over the land toward Constantinople. 
At times Washington sees something in the way 
of a rush for office. But Constantinople outfaces 
it in this. The Turkish candidate is not a sup- 
pliant for any particular office for which he is 
convinced that he is the best man. He brazenly 
admits the naked desire, and puts it in his petition 
too, that a salary " may be tied to him." Along 
with such aspirations we may note the fact that a 
favourite door of entrance to lucrative place in 
the civil service is offered by the position of 
lackey to a Minister, or of Shoe-keeper at the 
foot of the stairway of a palace. 

With all caution to avoid too sweeping gen- 
eralization, we have to conclude that in Asia the 
philosophical formula " Let us eat and drink for 
to-morrow we die," upon which the changes are 
rung by Omar Khayyam, controls life. It is this 
which ensures the narrowest possible view of self- 
interest as the highest good, making commercial 
integrity appear to be a neglect of present op- 
portunity, statesmanship to be blindness to pres- 
ent needs, and the submission of conduct to re- 
ligious principle a present loss so great that 
Divine mercy could not demand it. This philos- 
ophy persists disguised under cloak of differing 
religious beliefs. It ensures a repulsion from 
anything in the West that seems to attack the 



164 Constantinople 

time honoured principle. People engaged in a 
wrangle for the advancement of self, have for a 
salient characteristic a querulous and almost 
venomous suspicion of all others. Asiatics can- 
not understand the Western man, and they gen- 
erally misunderstand him in a way that causes 
them to hate him, so long as he takes no pains 
to remove the misunderstanding. Nevertheless 
this very opposition produces in the Oriental a 
curiosity which drives him to examine the 
Western usages against which he revolts. 

Now we must remember that Constantinople is 
an Asiatic city. Far the larger portion of its 
inhabitants were born in Asia. The Asiatic ele- 
ment is always being replenished by new impor- 
tations. The people have come together from 
widely separated regions. Their habits and their 
principles may have minor differences due to 
being brought up under Indian or Chinese or 
Persian or Arabian influences. But the man of 
Constantinople is the same in essential thought 
and aim as his fellow in China. The common- 
places of Western civilization are absent in both. 
The life of the city centres about physical needs. 
In vain do we seek there knowledge of the ele- 
mentary principles of manly power or of growth. 
Suggest to the people dissatisfaction with a 
merely vegetable existence, or the value of equity, 
and honesty, and energy, and self-control, and 
you will have for answer " It is not the custom." 
The people of the city are at present quite out- 



Meeting of East and West 165 

side of the broad sympathies which give to West- 
ern nations some degree of harmony of purpose, 
enabling men to plan relations with others in 
some confidence that the dangers and difficulties 
of their enterprises have been foreseen. 

There are necessarily exceptions to such broad 
statements. In Constantinople one does not fail to 
meet Greeks and Armenians who are bright and 
entertaining and obliging, or Mohammedans who 
are noble and courteous, and thoughtful enough 
to make their acquaintance an acquisition. But 
every study of the people in mass is a revelation 
of arrested development, absence of initiative, 
and general uselessness by reason of narrow self- 
ishness. The city, and with it the millions to 
whom the city is model seem hostile to what is 
best in the world's work. High-sounding phrases 
of lofty principle are heard in the city. Custom 
provides for this much of concession to the sensi- 
bilities of others. But the centuries seem to have 
frayed off the last semblance of meaning from the 
words. To quote a remark of a sage official in 
India which applies to the whole of Asia " Whilst 
the mouth is proclaiming its enlightenment and 
progress, the body is waddling backward as fast 
as the nature of the ground will permit." The 
bane of Constantinople is not solely poverty of 
resources. It is poverty of ideals. 

It is quite impossible for one having any pre- 
tensions whatever to general good will toward 
men, to come in contact with the good and at- 



1 66 Constantinople 

tractive qualities of these people, without wish- 
ing for some means of helping them to get rid of 
the had. Such a benevolent bystander, question- 
ing how the people of this city may he led to 
measure their real needs, may naturally incline to 
believe that contact with Western civilization is 
the speediest agency for waking them up. The 
contagious energy of the West must in time 
modify this sluggish content in what has been 
and in the belief that respect to the fathers de- 
mands that the children shall not expect to be 
better. 

The main thing needed seems to be to isolate 
the principles of civilization from the religious 
principle somewhat persistently associated in the 
West with the advance of civilization. The way 
is prepared for this by the fact that in Constanti- 
nople a sort of compromise seems to have taken 
place between the claims of a medley of rival re- 
ligions in order to permit commercial intercourse. 
The captain of a Turkish steamboat on the Bos- 
phorus illustrated the feeling that undue asser- 
tion of religious prejudice alone disturbs the 
placidity of the business world. A small boy had 
found surreptitious access to the whistle of the 
boat, and made it give forth a blast both deafen- 
ing and untimely. The captain, rushing from 
his post to seek the culprit, instead of asking who 
did this thing, voiced his disgust and his belief 
that religion was at the bottom of all ills by the 
shout " Whose religion have I got to curse now?" 



Meeting of East and West 167 

If civilization so isolated is the redemptive and 
elevating agency that will bring forth progress in 
Turkey, Constantinople is the place in which to 
watch the process. 

For with all of its shrinking from adopting 
modern theories, Constantinople frankly and 
warmly admires their fruits in other nations. No 
Turk, Jew, nor Christian in all the city hesitates 
to tell the curious inquirer of his boundless af- 
fection for civilization. When talking of the 
problem of progress in his country every Turkish 
official naively gauges it by comparison with 
England, France, Germany, or America. It never 
occurs to him that, by choosing such types of the 
highest development of man, Asia and Islam are 
rendering an interesting and suggestive homage 
to Christianity and the West. 

The action of the West upon Turkish ideas in 
the business world at Constantinople is less than 
would be supposed. A small part only of the 
native population of the city is engaged in busi- 
ness that brings it in contact with the West. The 
natives have their small businesses and industries. 
Mendicancy is one of them ; with regular organiz- 
ation into a trade guild, with a chief, and with 
rules and regulations for the mutual protection 
of its members, and with its tutors all over the 
empire to discover or manufacture and bring to 
the capital for exploitation all monstrosities of 
human suffering that will serve to arouse pity and 
extract coppers from the pocket of the passer 



1 68 Constantinople 

by. One of the least offensive exhibitions of the 
beggar tribe is the street musician. He stands 
in front of a house in the Mohammedan district 
of the city on a bleak winter afternoon. White 
cotton garments hang in shreds about his body, 
confined at the waist by a ragged and faded cloth 
girdle. A battered fez cap is on his head, his feet 
are wrapped in rags bound on with ropes, and 
the colour of the soil is upon him from head to 
foot. He is playing the reed flute — an instru- 
ment whose model dates from the earliest musical 
efforts of man. It is an open tube about eigh- 
teen inches long. It has six holes for the fingers 
and two for the thumbs. One end has been care- 
fully shaped so that the wood of the tube has a 
fine edge. By blowing against this edge at the 
end of the flute, the mouth and the whole visage 
contorted in the effort to secure the proper direc- 
tion to the breath, a wailing and not unpleasant 
sound is produced. The play of the fingers and 
thumbs produces the variation required for the 
four or five notes that compose the tune. The 
man makes a pitiful spectacle standing persist- 
ently in front of the closed door of a house and 
rendering up his wailing melody while the cold 
north wind is tossing his rags about and search- 
ing out the vulnerable points of his bare chest. 
The man is young and strong. By what steps did 
he bring himself to depend for his bread upon 
whistling to unsympathetic walls? What boyish 
ambitions must have been crushed ; what hopes 



Meeting of East and West 169 

must have been dashed, before he came to this ! 
Nothing of the sort. His trade is to beg. It is a 
perfectly reasonable trade for a young man to 
adopt ; only if he is not so fortunate as to have 
some bodily deformity which he can exhibit, he 
has to exert himself to learn the musician's art 
in order to make his trade profitable. For after 
the man has whistled there in the cold for a 
half hour or so, a hand will appear from the 
lattice above, and will drop a penny to the musical 
genius, when he will move on to the next house 
and repeat the process. 

The principle on which the Beggar's Guild rests 
is the good old Bible doctrine that " He that 
giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." This is 
interpreted by both Muslim and Christian to 
mean that whenever a man gives a copper to a 
beggar he wipes out a sin, or lays up treasure in 
Heaven in the sense of opening a hoard there 
which will scale down the debit side of his ac- 
count in the last day. So the beggars always 
appeal to the religious motive in their petitions. 
A stalwart Mohammedan will beseech you for a 
cent " for the sake of the Virgin Mary " and a 
Greek beggar will ask from a Mohammedan that 
he may show that he " loves his religion." Mer- 
chants in the city have a fashion of giving some- 
thing to every one who applies on Saturday after- 
noon as a good preparation for Sunday. The 
neighbourhood of church and mosque is also a 
profitable one for the beggars. Under this system 



170 Constantinople 

beggars sometimes become quite rich. A foreign 
lady had a habit of giving a copper to a certain 
beggar on the Galata Bridge whenever she 
passed. One day she gave him a pound by mis- 
take for a penny. Having discovered her error 
she returned, but the beggar had gone. The next 
day was that beggar's " day off," but she man- 
aged by diligent inquiry to find his abode. The 
man was sitting in a comfortable house, well 
dressed and courteous. " Oh yes." he said " You 
gave me a pound yesterday. I thought it was a 
mistake. Give me the penny that you intended 
for me and I will give you back the pound." And 
he did. 

Foreigners give to these beggars until they be- 
gin to find them out, and then they commonly 
resort to more systematic methods of charity, 
giving freely for the really needy whose case has 
been investigated, but utterly refusing to give to 
the professionals. As a result — and this illus- 
trates one of the curious phases of Western influ- 
ence upon the Oriental — the foreigner is under- 
stood by the people at large to have no com- 
passion. I have often heard a native say to a 
beggar who was ringing at the door of a foreign- 
er's house. " Don't wait there. It is an English 
house. They never give alms." 

Constantinople has multitudes of occupations 
as squalid in their real unprofitableness as that of 
the Beggars' Guild. But these fall rather in the 
class of contrasts than of contacts with the busi- 



Meeting of East and West 171 

ness life of the West. Greater contrast can hardly 
be imagined than is found between the European 
business houses of Galata, on the one hand, with 
their commodious comfort ; their desks, chairs, 
writing machines, file-cases and other parapher- 
nalia of a prompt and accurate business system, 
and on the other hand the cramped quarters of 
native merchants. For the latter have as the only 
roomy thing about the place, the arm chair for 
the head of the firm, built wide enough to receive 
his feet as well as the rest of his person. They 
shun desks as inventions of the evil one for the 
mislaying of papers which can far more readily 
be found when carried about in a leather hand- 
bag. And they do their writing by resting the 
paper upon the palm of the hand unless they have 
employed clerks educated by Europeans, and 
therefore able to handle paper on a desk or 
table when preparing the correspondence of the 
firm. 

The Turk accustomed to the little open stalls 
which answer for shops in the native city beyond 
the Golden Horn, is fairly dazed at the magnifi- 
cence of the shops of Pera, the European district. 
He never ceases to wonder at their roomy in- 
teriors, their space for everything, making it 
unnecessary for stockings and ribbons and laces 
and Berlin wools to be kept in the same box. He 
is astounded at the broad counters for the display 
of goods, at the masses of decorative material 
sacrificed for the show windows, and particularly 



172 Constantinople 

at the use of plate glass, fit for the palace of a 
king, to shut in the shop front. The most reck- 
less of native merchants will not venture to use 
glass larger than ten inches by twelve for his 
shop front. He would feel unprotected behind 
plate glass. 

In the European part of the city there is spa- 
ciousness and thoughtful provision of conveniences 
based on the assurance that the customer will pay 
for them. In the Asiatic districts of Stamboul is 
contrasting narrowness of limited expectation, 
and the repellent tokens of distrust in mankind. 
This contrast rarely impresses the Turk to the 
degree of dissatisfaction with his own methods. 
There are cases where Mohammedan shop-keep- 
ers who have Christian clerks have embellished 
and enlarged their quarters. The Greeks and 
Armenians who are in trade, generally copy from 
the Western merchants, if their shops are not 
hidden in the recesses of the native quarters. But 
to adopt as a rule a business system of which the 
principle is frugal self-denial in personal ex- 
penses coupled with lavish expeditures in busi- 
ness, would overthrow the philosophy of the 
whole life. Generally the most accomplished for 
the Turk by bringing him to see such fruits of 
Western civilization is to draw from him ejacula- 
tions of amazement at the fidelity with which the 
devil helps his followers of the Wesf, or at the 
inscrutable Providence which denies like luxury 
to the servants of God. And the rumour goes out 



Meeting of East and West 173 

to all parts of the Empire ; and in Kourdish tents 
on the Eastern highlands you may hear the chil- 
dren instructed that the reason why Frankish 
goods are elegant is that the devil walks openly in 
Frankistan to teach the people. 

But the Turk can understand lavish expendi- 
ture for pleasure. The amusements of the city 
therefore promise to bring him upon the same 
ground as the European. The simplicity of the 
recreations of this city excites quick sympathy. 
An evening walk in the Mohammedan districts 
during the fast of Ramazan, when all of every 
night seems to be devoted to enjoyment, will show 
the Turk's idea of amusement. All of the hun- 
dreds of mosques in the city are illuminated and 
have the balconies of their minarets crusted over 
with lamps. Where a mosque is large enough to 
have two or more minarets, ropes stretched be- 
tween the minarets bear lamps suspended in ar- 
tistic arrangement so as to form pious texts or 
other pleasing decorations which sway in the 
breeze high above the heads of the people. 

The shops are open and brilliantly lighted. 
Whatever there is in the city at the moment in 
the way of foreign importation for pleasure, 
whether it is theatre, circus, cinametograph or me- 
nagerie, is brought to the Mohammedan districts 
of the city for the delectation of the faithful and 
their encouragement in religious observances. 
Such outside attractions are deemed especially 
useful in a time of religious mortification since the 



174 Constantinople 

relaxation of the night assists endurance of the 
stringency of the clay. 

The sidewalks are covered with chairs or low 
stools for such as prefer to watch the throng 
while comfortably smoking or eating ice-cream. 
The lack of street lamps in those streets which 
are off from the main thoroughfares is supplied 
by the enterprise of coffee-house keepers. Every< 
twenty or thirty feet these public benefactors have 
driven into the pavement a short rough stake, 
on the top of which is fixed a glass lantern with 
flaring candles. A constant stream of men, 
women, and children, laughing and happy, is 
moving along the road way unterrified by the 
multitude of horses, carriages and crowded street 
cars. The people know that if harm comes to 
any pedestrian by collision with a vehicle, the 
driver will not only be arrested but will be well 
beaten by the police before his case is investigated 
at the police station. 

Street vendors fill the air with their plaintive 
but not unmusical cries. Baskets of peaches, mel- 
ons and cucumbers (which latter are to be eaten 
as one would eat a stick of molasses candy) jostle 
trays of green walnuts, unroasted peanuts or 
roasted pumpkin seeds, or respectfully make way 
for perambulating tubs of ice-cream that swing 
from a yoke on the shoulders of the most cavern- 
ous-lunged man in the crowd. Each class of edi- 
bles is presented by the man whose inventive 
genius has discovered the particular phrase most 



Meeting of East and West 175 

likely to arouse desire in all hearers to partake of 
the proffered viands. Even the sellers of ice- 
water shout with the frankest seriousness, 
" Water of Life ! Who wishes to renew his heart ? 
Here is water of Life to restore the soul ? " Hand- 
organs and hurdy-gurdies hired for the night by 
enterprising coffee-shops, fill the air with melli- 
fluous repetitions of their limited score. 

One coffee-shop is filled with the members of 
a local fire-company who have turned it for the 
moment into a private club house. They are a 
stalwart band of young fellows dressed in white, 
with bare legs and bare arms, and with throats 
and brawny chests fully open to the air. The 
badge of their type is the gaily coloured cotton 
handkerchief which the Turk of the city winds 
about his red cap when he feels particularly 
wicked, and intends to act up to the feeling. 
These young men have a private b\md of their 
own. There are two kettle drums hung across 
the operator's knee, and beaten with a leathern 
strap ; there is an earthenware jar, having its 
bottom replaced by a tight drumhead on which 
the musician beats with both hands ; there is a 
sort of flageolet which gives forth a tone dis- 
tressingly nasal and most penetrating in quality, 
and there is a French horn. This band plays a 
few bars in a minor strain, vivacious in movement 
and mighty in volume. Then it ceases, and one 
of the young fellows, with his fez set on the very 
back of his head, lifts up his voice in a love ditty 



176 Constantinople 

sung to the same tune, but in the slowest possible 
time. The effect on the audience is that of one 
of Madame Sembrich's solos in the Metropolitan 
Opera house. Passers in the street pause at the 
door to enjoy the emotions of that song, and the 
performance will continue for hours without 
variation. 

A little farther along, a thousand people are 
packed in a large garden by the roadside, smok- 
ing narguilchs or sipping coffee and iced sher- 
bets while listening to a chorus of Armenian 
singers established on a band-stand in the centre. 
These men sing love songs in unison and always 
fortissimo, accompanying themselves on violin, 
guitar and mandolin. The cost of the evening's 
amusement is ridiculously small. A man chooses 
the place where he will enjoy himself, sits in that 
place until he has enjoyed himself, if it takes 
hours, and when he pays the bill for his enter- 
tainment it will be six or eight cents. The quiet 
good-nature of every one in the crowd is most 
noteworthy. There is no liquor visible, and there 
is no fighting. Or if there is liquor and fighting 
it is kept out of sight in places to which people 
who like such things go apart from the crowd and 
consume their own smoke, as it were. The police 
circulate, but it is not to protect men against each 
other, but to see that no one dares to criticise the 
Government administration. 

As to entertainments at home, the Turk frankly 
and openly makes his table a place to eat — not a 




GEUK SOU (Family parties out for the day) 




IX A COFFEE SHOl' 



Meeting of East and West 177 

place to talk. He makes up for the absence of 
women from the table where he entertains his 
guests by the lavishness of its other gratifications. 
For what are good things made, if not to be en- 
joyed ? As you enter the house you are welcomed 
by the host, who, if he has not had previous deal- 
ings with foreigners, will probably invite you " to 
undress for dinner." Without removing the 
coat, vest, and trowsers of exterior and official 
life, no Turk can be at ease. He supposes that 
the European escapes from the closely fitting gar- 
ments of the outer world as eagerly as himself. 
One is expected to remove, besides these outer 
garments, collar and cuffs, and shoes and stock- 
ings. A servant stands near with a robe of the 
feast, made out of coloured chintz, or possibly of 
curtain cretonne. It is a loose open gown that 
falls from the neck straight away to the feet. It 
has no buttons, but is caught together at the waist 
by a decorative girdle. Thus enveloped you are 
equipped for the efforts of the table ; merely 
thrusting your bare feet into slippers as you leave 
the room to go downstairs. The table is a copper 
tray set on a low stool. Around this table the 
guests take position on the floor, which has been 
cushioned for the rite. The round form of the 
table prevents disagreeable questions of prece- 
dence and position, and all present are on an 
equality; the equality of desire for palate-tick- 
ling viands. 

In the centre of the table are fifteen or twenty 



178 Constantinople 

small dishes containing various delicacies, such 
as preserved rose leaves, caviar, dried mutton- 
chips, cherry jam, cheese, grape jelly, sardines, 
and the like. Around the edge of the table are 
fragments of spiced rusk which each guest dips 
into any dish that suits his fancy. And if with 
his thumb he picks out a plum, so much the better 
for him. A slight skirmish with these appetizers 
prepares the way for the real business of the 
hour. The soup is a thick puree which defies 
analysis of its contents save for its liberal sur- 
face dressing of olive oil. Aside from that single 
dish, the menu is not distasteful in any of its 
parts. It is thirteen courses long. As a whole it 
might be criticised, since it has intensely sweet 
dishes and meats and vegetables in regular alter- 
nation, while each course is served in a single 
dish in which all may dip their sop of bread or 
their prehensile finger tips. 

At the beginning of the dinner each member 
of the party is supplied with a pewter fork and a 
highly ornamented horn spoon, much as the steer- 
age people on an Atlantic liner are supplied at 
the beginning of the voyage with the table ware 
which is to last them through all the emergencies 
of the trip. These implements the diner-out uses 
as taste or fancy may dictate ; and if a case arises 
beyond the scope of fork or spoon alone, the 
fingers are expected to come into action to secure 
control of any savoury but refractory morsel 



Meeting of East and West 179 

which the central dish offers to the competition 
of the party. 

We have here a system of feeding which re- 
moves constraint and favours intimacy. But con- 
versation does not flourish at one of these dinner 
tables. Caressing ejaculations of approval of any 
peculiarly tasty bit, or full-mouthed reminiscences 
of previous experiences called up by some culi- 
nary master-piece, or polite entreaty to one's neigh- 
bour not to neglect the opportunity of the moment, 
form the staple chat of the dinner hour. That 
hour is to the Turk a time of serious concentra- 
tion. To do full justice to the meal he rolls up 
his loose sleeves because of the activity needed 
when each companion of the table is in some de- 
gree a rival of all others. He views the meal 
from a purely carnal stand-point, and would be 
annoyed if there were anything to distract atten- 
tion from the food. His culture and good heart 
is shown by his invitation to others to participate 
in his pleasure. Were he not good at heart he 
might retire to a corner and growl unutterable 
threats over his dinner, as a cat or a dog 
would do. 

After the absorbing labour of eating, the wash- 
ing of hands is essential. This is accomplished 
before the guests leave the table. A single ewer 
and basin answers the purpose for all. This an- 
cient prototype of the finger bowl is presented 
with a towel to each guest in turn. So ends the 



180 Constantinople 

business-like function. At the same time the de- 
vout phrase " In the name of God the Merciful 
and the Compassionate " with which the meal is 
begun and ended, suggests a simplicity of recog- 
nition of divine providence in every meal which 
can hardly fail to soften criticism of the peculiari- 
ties by which Turkish customs of the table are 
distinguished from our own. 

After dinner one may spend some time in the 
garden, which is always made much of by the 
Turk, even if city requirements give him but a 
square rod. Or it is quite a usual thing to go 
into a neighbouring coffee-shop and have a game 
of backgammon or of cards while taking the 
usual coffee and smoke. Some idea of the cof- 
fee-shops has already been given in this chapter. 
It may be added in this connection however that 
the coffee house that is not upon a great thor- 
oughfare becomes a sort of club-house for the 
residents of the neighbourhood. There they regu- 
larly meet to exchange views and to while away 
an hour or so between evening prayers and bed. 
One of the features which the Turkish coffee- 
shop has gained from contact with the Western 
style of amusements is that few of them now fail 
to have beer and cognac upon their bill of fare, 
the latter being served to Mohammedans in a 
discreet coffee cup in order to save appearances. 

Another amusement which has been introduced 
from Europe is the theatre. It is told as a rather 
good story of the American missionaries in 



Meeting of East and West 181 

Scutari, the Asiatic centre of Constantinople, 
that a few years after the missionary post was 
established there, a large ungainly structure was 
erected upon a vacant lot not far away. The new 
building was singular even for Constantinople. 
It was made entirely of unplaned boards, had no 
windows, and had several staircases running up 
outside of its wall. The building aroused the 
curiosity of one of the missionaries and in the 
course of an afternoon walk he visited the place, 
and made some inquiry as to the uses to which 
the building was to be put. " Oh," replied the 
owner of the land, very much pleased at the in- 
terest shown by a foreign gentleman in his en- 
terprise. " This is a theatre, — I hope that you will 
not fail to come over every evening and we shall 
be very glad to name it in your honour." So the 
theatre had a great sign put up over the door 
with the inscription " The American Theatre " 
in French and Turkish, and Armenian, and 
Greek, and Hebrew letters. 

Theatres in the European part of the city do 
not need particular description. They are very 
much like theatres elsewhere, and the company 
is commonly imported from France or Germany, 
as are the plays. But a theatre in the Turkish 
part of the city is always a vast shed, constructed 
at the least possible expense and with the least 
possible provision for comfort. The stage is 
decorated, and the curtain is a work of art en- 
tirely original and unique. So are the plays. The 



1 82 Constantinople 

troupe is generally of native talent, and the ad- 
vantage of hearing- a tragedy as rendered hy a 
native troupe is that it is quite impossible to re- 
strain laughter during the proceedings. Some 
of the plays are comic, and of these such as deal 
with commercial knavery are often really good. 
But love, blood, deep laid plots on the part of the 
hero against the peace of the villain are the nec- 
essary staples of the Turkish stage. One of the 
play-bills will give an impression of the inter- 
minable nature of these entertainments: 

" The Ottoman Theatre will be open to the 
public on the evening of Wednesday, that is to 
say, the night of Thursday next. The celebrated 
troop of M. Dikran, the Armenian, will play. 
English acrobats will perform feats hitherto seen 
in no other part of the world. There will be an 
operetta of ten acts, with songs by actresses. 
There will also be a pantomime of three acts. 
The performance on this occasion being for the 
benefit of the public, no tickets will be required." 

The slight uncertainty which appears respect- 
ing the day of this performance arises from the 
fact that the Mohammedan day begins at sunset, 
so that Wednesday evening coincides with the 
beginning of the night of Thursday. The thea- 
tre is one of the institutions which Turks have 
derived from contact with the West. It is hardly 
necessary to say that the place is crowded with 
both men and women at every performance. 
With all its defects the Turkish theatre is a 



Meeting of East and West 183 

power. The capital cities of some of the prov- 
inces of the empire receive from it their sole 
effective impression of what the Western world 
is. The poorest of the native companies and the 
worst of their plays are taken to cities of the 
interior and put on the boards. Then the local 
papers will congratulate the people that Brousa 
or Adrianople, or Konia, as the case may be, is 
assuming the characteristics of a European city, 
for a theatre has now been established. 

Visitors at Constantinople rarely fail to visit 
the Sweet Waters, or Geuk Sou, and remember 
the beautiful little river and the multitude of 
boats and the masses of people enjoying them- 
selves on the grass. Such expeditions to places 
where natural beauty is the chief attraction form 
another favourite recreation of the people of the 
city. Rarely do we find a people more truly 
lovers of nature — of fine scenery, of pure air and 
gurgling water, of the songs of birds, and of the 
colour-songs which earth sends out in the form of 
trees and gay flowers. These little expeditions 
which the people make are the only recreations 
in which the family is found enjoying itself as 
a unit. 

Under magnificent plane trees, or in cool 
groves of oak and chestnut the people place 
themselves by families upon mats furnished by 
the ubiquitous coffee-shop man. On these mats, 
spread upon the ground within sight of some 
stream, or of the sea, the Turk will sit for hours, 



184 Constantinople 

finding great delight in the pure air, the gracious 
foliage, the music of unwonted hirds, and the 
prattle of his women and his children. To an 
American, " refreshments " may imply drinks 
that exhilarate, or at the very least that have 
" fizz " in them, and food of substantial quality. 
The Turk who is out for a picnic, has for his re- 
freshment water from some favourite spring, (of 
which the brand is as carefully tested as though 
it were champagne) and coffee. For food he has 
bread and cheese or olives or dried fish, and 
fruit. A water-pipe (narguileh), and cigarettes 
which he makes himself fill out the list of his 
requirements at such a place. His whole excite- 
ment is in the beauty of nature and in the dress 
and the manners of assembled human-kind. As 
the day wears away the men will mingle more 
together, chatting or singing love-ditties with 
evident delight in their own vocal powers. The 
women meanwhile wander sedately over neigh- 
bouring hillsides to gather flowers, while the chil- 
dren frolic in herds upon the grass. The end of 
the day finds the whole family quite as thor- 
oughly refreshed by their outing as if they had 
spent the day in circus or drinking house, or in 
amusements like those that delight the heart of 
the Coney Islander. 

One peculiarity of the out-door recreations of 
the Turk emphasizes their contrast with those 
of the West. All of such recreations easily fall 
in with the requirements of religious duty. It is 



Meeting of East and West 185 

very common to see the men at one of these 
family outings withdraw a little from the hum of 
the crowd that they may give time to worship. 
The quiet spot which they select commonly 
shows the Asiatic love to make " high places " 
places of prayer. On the top of a hill they will 
align themselves facing in the direction of Mecca, 
and then they will go through the genuflections 
of the Muslim cult with a relish which is per- 
fectly unmistakable. After performing the pre- 
scribed number of bowings and kneelings, they 
return to their friends with a clear conscience. 
As to the Christians of the Eastern Church, the 
common folk yet untaught by Europeans, amuse 
themselves with picnics much as do the Moham- 
medans. Since the most of their holidays are 
connected with church festivals, their resort is 
often in the neighbourhood of some country 
church or holy fountain for these simple festivi- 
ties which last through the whole day. The visit 
to the church with a few moments spent in 
prayer before its altar is as much a part of the 
privilege of the day as is the enjoyment of the 
shade of the trees, the balmy air of the open 
country, and the mingling in the sociable crowd 
which is lounging out its holiday. 

On noting the natural and matter of course 
way in which religious observances are brought 
into the midst of the recreations of the people, 
one is apt to conclude that this religious element 
must bar out excess from such enjoyments. 



1 86 Constantinople 

Closer vision shows, however, another curiosity. 
Pious Oriental Christians come out of the church 
on such an occasion to gamble on the gravestones 
of the churchyard, or to use the convenient flat 
surface of monuments to the virtues of the de- 
parted, as a stand for the bottles and glasses of a 
disgraceful drinking bout. Pious Mohammedans 
too, come from their prayers on the hilltop to in- 
dulge in the vulgar intrigues for which such a 
gathering in the open country offers suitable mo- 
ments, or to laugh over the infamies of the 
" Kara Giuc " marionettes, or to applaud the pro- 
fessional storyteller whose tales depend for suc- 
cess upon their obscenity, or to feast the eyes on 
the gyrations of gypsy dancing women whose ex- 
hibition of lasciviousness on the Midway Plais- 
ance at Chicago, left marks upon our own people 
that have not been, and will not be easily re- 
moved. In Turkey, the fact that a man prays is 
no gauge of his moral character. Still, one must 
admit that when contact with Europeans, who 
do not pray while they are amusing themselves, 
has eliminated this curious habit of the Orientals, 
progress has been made toward abolishing some 
vestiges of moral restraint. 

Another mode of recreation used by the Turks 
of Constantinople, and enjoyed with all the thrills 
known by the boy who slinks away from home 
for a stolen hour of delight at a forbidden circus, 
is a visit to the amusements of the European 
portion of the city. The native part of the city 



Meeting of East and West 187 

is organized upon the theory that the day is done 
when the sun sets. Excepting during the month 
of fasting, when clay and night exchange places, 
Turks do not commonly appear on the streets 
after the last of the five hours of prayer — an 
hour or so after dusk. But the European part 
of the city begins its daily recreation with the 
hours of darkness, and the Turk who ventures 
into Pera and Galata at that time feels that he is 
truly within the veil, with that mysterious thing 
called civilization. 

During two hundred years, Europeans, often 
notable for refinement and culture, and since the 
Crimean War of 1856, considerable in numbers, 
have lived in Constantinople surrounded as far 
as possible by the requirements of their own vari- 
ous types of civilization. They constitute a 
colony, living under the protection of the curious 
treaty privilege of extra-territoriality, which, to 
the European in any Asiatic domain is what the 
air helmet is to the diver working in deep waters. 
In this European colony are many men who stand 
head and shoulders — in point of morals — above 
the Turks who style them infidel dogs. There 
are men whose word is sacred under all circum- 
stances, and whose sturdy manliness might act 
directly to break up the Mohammedan prejudice 
against Christianity. But there are also in this 
colony numbers of Europeans who make the 
name of Christianity a byword by their profligate 
lives. And there are large numbers of Europeans 



1 8 8 Constantinople 

in this colony who arc not really Europeans at 
all, but who give, in the eyes of the Turks, char- 
acter to the whole body, because they are the 
only part of the colony with which a middle-class 
Turk can enter into intimate relations. 

These are the half-bloods, such as throng the 
outskirts of every European colony in Asia. 
They are the somewhat nondescript offspring of 
European fathers and native mothers. These 
" Levantines " dress as Europeans, and have 
European passports. They translate the alert 
and active bearing of the European into a swag- 
ger that is peculiar to themselves, and that im- 
poses itself on the simplicity of the Oriental as a 
token of greatness. They browbeat the natives 
in virtue of their superiority, they converse in 
polyglot fluency, pursue amusement as the Euro- 
pean does not, and they often lie and cheat with 
as clean a conscience as any native. When they 
go to Europe they are eyed askance as " Greeks " 
in the clubs and the gambling houses to which 
they find admittance. In Constantinople the 
average Levantine may be studied any day in the 
coffee houses of the Petit Champs of Pera, which 
he frequents as the Venetian does the Piazza of 
St. Mark's, because there one may receive one's 
friends without expense for hospitality. He also 
has among his amusements the club, because 
English civilization demands it. There he gam- 
bles for high stakes, because Italian civilization 
demands the thrill of appeals to chance. He has 



Meeting of East and West 189 

also the theatre and the concert hall, because 
French civilization demands the society drama 
and the singing of girls as a set-off and accom- 
paniment to light tippling. He has also the beer 
garden in all its forms because German civiliza- 
tion requires that the pleasures of life shall be 
mixed with beer. At specified times he has to go 
out hunting, and mentions the fact as a solemn 
duty done. If he has a fraction of a drop of 
English blood in his veins he pays penalty in 
unseemly and wearisome exertion on the cricket 
field, the golf links, or in the stern of a sail boat 
which he calls a yacht. Intellectual pleasures do 
not flourish in such soil and the Levantine is out 
of his element in a moment if any one broaches 
a subject of conversation outside of the celebrated 
Levantine Quadrilateral of Society, Shop, The 
Turk, and the Table: Society — that is to say, 
womankind and amusement ; Shop — namely the 
conditions and incidents of trade; The Turk — 
including the daily bulls and delicious absurdities 
of Government officials ; and The Table — the art 
of producing savoury meats, drinks, and smokes. 
The afternoon of the Levantine brings out car- 
riages full of ladies and gentlemen, and sends 
them spinning over the hills toward the SweeL 
Waters of Europe, or far up the road toward 
Buyukdere. The reputation of Constantinople 
for its hodge podge of races is justified by study 
of the types seen in any gathering of the ladies 
of the European colony. There is the long-fea- 



190 Constantinople 

tured, fair-haired English woman, who clings to 
the London cut of her dress, notwithstanding its 
power to attract the astonished eyes of all other 
nations ; there is the stout and crimson German 
woman, with her fondness for startling buttons ; 
there is the slight and smiling French woman, 
serene in the midst of a colour scheme harmoni- 
ously worked out to the tips of her dainty shoes. 
There is the Italian woman, black of hair and 
brilliant of eye, who loves to introduce into her 
neat dress discords of gold chains, and a hat al- 
ways too ambitious. There is the buxom bru- 
nette of an Armenian, with full lips and too full 
a nose, and there is the Greek, most celebrated 
of all the southern peoples for features that are 
irregular, a voice that is mellow, and eyes that 
have a special glaze upon them for concealing 
thought behind a crystal promise of frankness. 

If there is a woman in all the crowd less liable 
than any other to find acceptance as a type of 
beauty in feature or in complexion, for some 
mysterious reason that woman is sure to be a 
Greek from Athens. But next to her is the 
Levantine, who is colourless in her complexion 
and composite in her features, who assures you 
that she is English, or French, or Italian, but 
who knows no environment save that of Pera, 
although she can talk to you in French or Eng- 
lish or Italian or Greek or Turkish, and in either 
language shows by her accent that it is not quite 
her own. She too will never venture in her con- 



Meeting of East and West 191 

versation outside of the safe limits of the Levan- 
tine quadrilateral, devised to avoid giving offence 
to unknown and incomputable susceptibilities. 

The principle of assuming the existence of 
difficulties unknown and unknowable in a medley 
of races, limits the character of the social life of 
Pera. This life is like that in a house where visi- 
tors unacquainted with each other have been 
brought together and must be amused by such 
devices as the hostess commands. It is marked 
by a frenzied pursuit of amusements known to be 
found in every country. One cannot give a din- 
ner party without having it followed by a ball, 
and preferably a ball in costume or in masque, 
and as the Turk bent on a tour of exploration 
among the curiosities of Pera, discovers that Pera 
ladies, are ogled by lines of young men as they 
come out of the church of Santa Maria, or gently 
carried to the ball in Sedan chairs through the 
narrow streets, he fancies that in this tenderness 
toward woman he has seen the source of the 
peculiar power of the European to push his af- 
fairs, to succeed in business, and to live in what 
seems like limitless luxury. Perhaps he has. 

But the Turk finds after a little that in the 
sphere of European Society in Pera all laws of 
behaviour can be violated with impunity, since on 
encountering dubious conduct or a coat of doubt- 
ful cut, no one can criticise, lest it prove to be 
legitimate custom with some of the many na- 
tionalities here brought into contact. The result 



igi Constantinople 

is a moral anarchy in the foreign colony at Con- 
stantinople which can hardly he paralleled else- 
where. The confusion produced in the mind of 
a Turk by this state of things was shown not 
long since by so small a thing as a duel which 
took place at Constantinople. A Levantine with 
an English pedigree and an English passport, 
not having had the opportunity of studying Eng- 
lish practice in such matters, was misled into the 
idea that having had a quarrel with a Russian 
over a chorus girl in the theatre, English stand- 
ards of manliness demanded that he should fight 
a duel in defence of his honour. The local police 
got wind of the affair ; but not being informed as 
to whether duelling is a sacred right under the 
religious system of Christendom, and fearing that 
at the least the privilege may be secured to Euro- 
peans under the treaties of extra-territoriality, 
they dared not act. Finally the British consulate 
requested the Turkish police to arrest the pugna- 
cious English subject. So they deployed along 
the shores of the Bosphorus to prevent the duel 
thus made illegal. The two men, however, 
camped out one night in a garden on the upper 
Bosphorus, and at the peep of day took boat for 
the Asiatic shore. The perfect courtesy of their 
bearing toward each other deceived the police and 
gave the duellists the time necessary for their 
purpose. Before the belated police arrived from 
Europe, the Muslim villagers of Asia had re- 
ceived a lesson in the manners of Christian gentle- 



Meeting of East and West 193 

men. For the Levantine Englishman ran the 
Russian through the abdomen in the presence of 
seconds in a perfectly honourable manner, and 
then taking to his heels he escaped to a Greek 
steamer, where he was safe from the researches 
of the Turkish police. 

The native Christian can form somewhat of a 
correct impression as to the evil and the good in 
the European colony. Thus the effect upon him 
of an influence that is immoral is hardly more 
than its effect upon a man dwelling among people 
of his own social customs. If he is inclined to 
welcome the influence he is harmed, but if he is 
inclined to rule himself he is not carried away 
by the weight of a foreigner's dominating per- 
sonality. With the Turk there is no such power 
of discrimination. He may see one of the strong 
true men found in the European colony in Pera, 
but he can no more draw near to him than to a 
king. Such men do not frequent the Casino or 
Concert Hall. If they sometimes appear at the 
theatre, it is not to mingle in the crowd in the 
lobbies. They pass by the average Turk without 
even seeing him. If some phase of business 
courtesy forces them to notice him, they talk to 
him politely enough, but never for long. There 
is nothing so marked in the society of the Euro- 
pean quarter at Pera of Constantinople as the 
lack of subjects for real conversation. No possi- 
ble theme of common interest can exist unless it 
be the scandals of the day. An educated Eng- 



194 Constantinople 

lisliman meets a Turk in that society. If the 
Turk is old, his culture has led him into the 
Persian and Arabian writers of antiquity. If he 
is young - , Zola and a lesser host of the same 
school of French writers have been his delight. 
The Englishman has had little benefit of either 
source of inspiration. There the two men are, 
stranded after a few common-places, and they 
flee to more congenial company at the first good 
opportunity. 

With rare exceptions the result of this state of 
affairs is that the Turk, if in official position, rubs 
shoulders with the best part of the European 
colony without really knowing one of them, or if 
he is in common life he merely looks at them 
afar off. In either case the European with whom 
the Turk comes into real contact is the profligate 
one — the one who to whom the Turk might per- 
haps teach morals, or else it is the half-blood 
Levantine who poses as a European on the 
strength of his right to wear a hat. The idea of 
the Western civilization received by the Turk 
from either of these is that it centres about wine, 
women, and the roulette table. If he had before 
no tendency to haunt the drinking houses and 
brothels of Pera, the Turk gets the impulse to do 
so from the " Europeans " whom he has met, and 
that very rapidly makes an end of him. 

Civilization represented by Western commer- 
cial enterprise and isolated from religious prin- 
ciple has been in contact with the people of Con- 



Meeting of East and West 195 

stantinople for many many years. Since the 
Crimean War it has had untrammelled sway. 
Some of the externals of environment have bene- 
fited from this contact. Individuals may some- 
times have been lifted out of the quagmires of 
the mass of the population by glimpses of what 
manhood really is. But there is no question as to 
the general result. The result has been the moral 
deterioration of the city, and the strengthening 
of the repulsion felt by Turks toward the West. 
One of the leading Turkish papers of Constanti- 
nople dealt with this subject not long ago. It said 
that the one positive influence of Western civili- 
zation is against faith in God and in favour of 
drunkenness and debauchery. It pointed to the 
great number of disorderly houses in Pera, which 
engulf and destroy large numbers of Mohamme- 
dan youth, and it declared in open terms that the 
family life of Europeans living in Pera is such 
as to lead to the supposition that marital fidelity is 
not known there. " We want none of this Chris- 
tian civilization," said the Turk. 

The syndicate of European officials who con- 
stitute the Administrators of the Turkish Public 
Debt, have multiplied several fold the places in 
Constantinople where liquor is sold. They are 
proud of this, for it has added to the revenues 
derived from the tax on liquors and has brought 
dividends to the holders of Turkish bonds. But it 
is worthy of note that during two hundred years 
of commercial intercourse between the Turkish 



196 Constantinople 

people and civilized Europe, the mercantile 
colonists living in Constantinople in all the 
splendour of superior culture, enterprise and busi- 
ness success, have not once tried to do anything 
for the improvement of the minds or the morals 
of the native population, whether Mohammedan 
or Christian. It was the missionary spirit in 
Roman Catholic and Protestant churches which 
first gave the city schools that could teach and 
school books which children could understand. 

This is nothing surprising. The Western mer- 
chant living at Constantinople has his own in- 
terests to consider. Why should he trouble him- 
self about the moral state or material condition 
of the people who buy his goods? If he is a 
good man he will do them no harm while building 
up his fortune among them. If he is a bad man 
it is their misfortune that he ceases to be a merely 
passive force and hinders their rise in the scale of 
humanity by adding his mite toward debauching 
their minds or by infuriating them toward Chris- 
tianity through his intemperate greed. 

There is truth in the merchant's view of the 
case, and it ought once for all to fix in mind the 
helplessness of civilization as such, when isolated 
from connection with religious principle, in the 
matter of raising any people out of a submerged 
condition. Civilization as represented by com- 
merce has no motive for trying to lift the fallen. 
But its emissaries often, when removed from the 
restraints of Western society, suffer their own 



Meeting of East and West 197 

selfishness to be a motive for thrusting- down to 
perdition any native wretch who trusts himself 
to their direction. 

That love for mankind and concern for its well- 
being which is taught by Jesus Christ makes the 
difference between the aggressive civilization 
which acts automatically to elevate the backward 
races with which it comes in contact, and the 
passive civilization of which the best that can be 
said is that it is helpless to lift them. We must 
therefore turn sadly away from the hope that 
mere civilization is the redeeming force which 
will raise the people of this city to the place of 
importance in the world which they might hold. 
Meanwhile reports of what Constantinople deems 
the useful part of Christian civilization are car- 
ried to the ends of the empire and even to Central 
Asia by every train and steamer and caravan. 
On this showing in remote places straightway 
the foolish begin to imitate what is imitable (and 
therefore the worst) of what has been described 
to them, while the wise are hardened and made 
more bitter in their natural repulsion toward 
everything spoken to them as in the voice of the 
West. 

From the midst of this rather gloomy view of 
the moral effects of the meeting of East and West 
at Constantinople one fact of some value has 
emerged. The Turk does select for imitation 
some of the fruits of Western civilization after 
holding them at the point of the bayonet until 



198 Constantinople 

he is satisfied that they can he made to serve 
his own views of the pursuit of happiness. The 
value of this fact appears when we find that 
Western education is one of the things which 
is being slowly and timorously imitated in 
Turkey. The subject of education in Turkey is 
important enough to call for a chapter by itself. 



VI 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL TEACHERS 

BEFORE pith hats had been imported from 
India, Europeans residing in Constanti- 
nople used in summer to wind white turbans 
about their straw hats in order to break the 
force of the sun's rays. They then found 
themselves treated with marked consideration by 
the common people. There was some mystery 
about the subtle homage and about a tendency to 
refer questions to them for decision. Then it 
came out that the people were calling them " Well 
read people" (okoumoush). The wnite turban 
had been taken by the populace to have the same 
significance when worn by foreigners as when 
used by Turks. In Constantinople it is what the 
square mortar-board cap is in Oxford. It is the 
only gauge by which common folk can measure 
the profundities of one who has delved in books. 
It therefore commands the respect which knowl- 
edge of bookish mysteries always evokes among 
people who have heard of its power. 

The importance placed upon learning by the 
Turkish people is emphasized by the special cere- 
monies which mark the commencement of the 

199 



loo Constantinople 

scholastic career of a child. One may sometimes 
meet in the streets of the city a procession of 
thirty or forty little boys and girls. The girls 
are in front, with their bright coloured robes 
and their gay head-dresses of gauze shining 
through the veils which are loosely thrown over 
their heads. The boys follow, in the more sober 
dress of those who have to bear the responsibil- 
ities of life. A man in flowing robes, and wear- 
ing a white or a green turban, heads the proces- 
sion — perhaps leading one of the smaller girls 
by the hand. Some of the children are singing, 
or rather chanting, an Arabic hymn, and at a 
sign from the teacher in front, all shout with 
full voice the word " Amin ! " 

Following the singing children comes the in- 
nocent cause of this demonstration. On the back 
of a gaily caparisoned horse or perhaps a fine 
white donkey, is a boy or a girl of five or six 
years with fat little legs stuck out at the sides 
of the beast. The child is dressed in gala clothes, 
and carries a satchel of gold-embroidered velvet 
over its shoulder, while one or two attendants 
walk by the side of the steed to reassure the rider 
and to carry a bundle containing some simple 
present for the teacher. The latter gentleman, 
turning back occasionally from his position as 
leader of the procession under pretence of keep- 
ing watch over the ranks, eyes this bundle with 
expectant curiosity. After the new pupil has 
thus been escorted by the school to the halls of 



Schools and School Teachers 201 

learning, there is a distribution of sweets to the 
whole party, and then the work of the day begins. 
This is the " Schooling Ceremony." It exalts the 
gravity of the new life which takes the child 
from the mother's side, and so helps to make the 
child content to begin it. 

At great State functions in Constantinople 
there is a more public exhibition of respect for 
learning. One will see the grandees of the em- 
pire pass in procession. But the military and 
civil Pashas, in uniform covered with gold lace 
and profusely decorated with various orders of 
merit or renown, make no such impression upon 
the spectator as do the Ulema.* To them also 
the soldiers present arms. They, too ride on 
horseback. But the saddle-cloths are severely 
free from decoration. Instead of gold-embroid- 
ered uniform they wear the long green or black 
robe of ancient Asiatic usage, and their heads 
are crowned with the plain white turban of the 
schools. Some of the most important of them 
wear a band of gold lace wound in the folds of 
the white turban, and most of them have one or 
two tinkling orders attached to their gowns. But 
few of them would condescend to accept the title 
of Pasha. Their knowledge is their title. The 
reason of their position of honour in the proces- 
sion is the profound learning which has enabled 

* The word Ulema is plural of Alim, which means 
One who Knows. The Ulema, then, are simply the 
Wise Men of the Empire. 



ioi Constantinople 

them to speak authoritatively upon social, political 
and religious questions. Their share in the 
pageant represents the homage of the Turkish 
nation to knowledge. 

The foreigner, on seeing the place given to the 
Ulema by the Turks and on hearing that their 
education is chiefly religious, naturally calls them 
the priests of Islam. But Mohammedans resent 
this. They declare that Islam has no priests. In 
the statement of Mohammedan doctrine quoted 
in the second chapter, it will be remembered that 
the Sheikh ul Islam insists that no man can in- 
tervene between man and his God. He thus 
strikes at what is offensive to Mohammedans 
in the usages of Christians, whose priests assume 
to be the only channel by which one can learn 
God's will and gain sure access to Him. 

At every Mohammedan mosque there is an 
Imam who acts as leader of the devotions of the 
people and officiates as their pastor at weddings 
and funerals and in settling minor disputes. But 
this man is not a priest in any Western sense 
of the word. In one of the smaller mosques he 
may be an artisan. A picture which lingers in 
my memory is that of a white-bearded, peaceful- 
visaged man sitting in a cell of the cloisters at a 
little mosque in Constantinople. He was cross- 
legged on a cushioned floor by a sort of low plat- 
form built under the window opposite to the 
door of entrance, and was binding a book. The 
setting sun, shooting level rays across the room 



Schools and School Teachers 203 

from the narrow grated window, gilded the dark 
brown hair of a little girl of ten, who sat close by 
intently watching her father as he fitted the 
leather cover upon the book. Neither the old 
man, nor the child who was wrapt in his skilful 
work, noticed the step of the stranger. 

That group had picturesque value. I paused 
to note the striking effect of sunlight and heavy 
shadow on that vaulted room and its appurte- 
nances — the calmly contented old man in his long 
under-robe of pink striped cotton, the sweet- 
faced girl in her gown of pale blue gauze, and the 
rough wooden clamps for holding the book, the 
gilding pad, the wheels for tool work on the 
leather, the flat-headed hammer, the knives for 
leather-trimming, with the slab of porphyry used 
as a whet-stone after having served to decorate 
the rooms of the Porphyrogeniti of the Byzantine 
Empire. Then I spoke to the old man, and was 
received with a courtesy which barely covered 
his surprise at being tracked to his workshop by 
a foreign wanderer. This was the Imam of that 
little mosque and its parish. 

Although the Imam is the leader of worship 
and the paster of the congregation of a mosque, 
the man who there receives the highest honour is 
the Muderris, or teacher, whose office it is to 
lecture on religious duty in the mosque upon 
specified days. The Muderris is one of the Ulema, 
which the Imam is not. He is salaried by the 
Government to teach religion to the people. He 



ao4 Constantinople 

sits cross-legged in his pulpit or on a raised dais 
on the floor of the mosque, and there he dogma- 
tizes, without fear of rejoinder or question from 
the people who sit cross-legged in a circle ahout 
him. Turks will tell you that the man's influence 
is solely the influence of education, and that the 
possession of knowledge is what the people re- 
spect. At the same time these Ulema do claim 
the sole right of expounding the way of salva- 
tion, and they narrow the uses of intellectual gifts 
to defence of their ancient sources of revenue in 
gold or in power. Here at least they show the 
external signs of priestcraft. 

The schools of these Ulema, or Wise Men, 
who say they are not priests and yet act like 
them, were until within a generation the only 
educational establishments of the empire, if we 
except the schools of the pages carried on within 
the Sultan's palace for training courtiers. The 
aim of these schools is to raise up for the people 
instructors in practical religion, who shall at the 
same time solve the problems of the people, like 
Moses when he used to " judge between one and 
another and make known to them the statutes of 
God and his laws." The scope of the schools in- 
cludes the nature and attributes of God, all the 
acts, relations and interests of man during life, 
the disposition of his body and soul after death, 
and, what may be thought more difficult, the 
division of his property among those who sur- 
vive. The schools might be classed as schools of 



Schools and School Teachers 205 

Law if they studied a code. They might be 
called schools of Sociology if scientifically based 
on experience and dealing with rules applicable 
to any besides Muslims. What they study is the 
Koran and the obligations of men who believe in 
it, evolving these obligations from the example 
and the oral teachings of the Prophet Moham- 
med as explained by the learned men who have 
studied such questions from the beginning of 
Islam. The opinions of these learned men rival 
the Talmud in keenness and fancifulness of argu- 
ment and in hair-splitting delicacy of casuistry. 
What these schools produce therefore is a body 
of men who are necessarily legal experts, and 
whose chief attribute is that of the Judge. In 
practice the decisions of these judges have the 
weight and possibly the scope of theological 
dogmas. 

A type of schools of this class is the great 
Medresse * of Al Azhar at Cairo, which is 
familiar to all travellers. It is said of the Cairo 
Medresse that the students there studying are 
preparing to be missionaries of Islam. The state- 
ment is due to a misunderstanding. Men taught 
at any school of the Ulema go forth, according to 
ability, as teachers, scribes, lawyers or judges. 
They are the " Pillars of Religion," and are sup- 
ported by the Religious Endowment Funds 

* Medresse means place of teaching, and is the name 
applied in Turkey to such schools as distinguished from 
more modern schools of secular science. 



2o6 Constantinople 

wherever they are sent, and they teach diligently 
wherever they go. But the missionary idea, as 
understood in the West, does not exist in Islam. 
It impels one to seek to better the condition of 
men through pity or love. The attitude of Islam 
toward unbelievers is that of scorn and even of 
anger for stupid obstinacy. 

I once asked a member of the Ulema why Mo- 
hammedan missionaries are not sent out to con- 
vert the nations. The pious Turk made a reply 
which recalled that of the Baptist minister who 
thought to silence Carey, although characteris- 
tically it excluded the idea of eternal profit to the 
heathen through conversion. ;< Man," said he, 
" the religion of every human being, born or to 
be born, is written on the Reserved Tablets by the 
hand of God. Those who are Muslim are so be- 
cause the Most High wrote ' Islam ' upon the 
egg from which they came. Those who are not 
Muslim are misbelievers by Divine decree from 
the foundation of the world. Though prophets 
came to call them to the faith, they would not 
hear. Of course it is our duty to see that the 
faith is taught wherever there are Muslims, for 
all Muslims need instruction in the truth. But 
the winning of the people of Islam was done 
before you or I were born." 

Schools of the Ulema are found in many of the 
large towns of Asiatic Turkey, and many stu- 
dents get no farther than the course of these 
smaller schools. There is no real grading of the 



Schools and School Teachers 207 

schools. But the higher schools are necessarily 
those in the larger cities. There are fully 
equipped Medresses at Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, 
Brousa, and Adrianople, because these cities are 
reputed to have the highest legal ability in their 
courts. The Arabic speaking students frequent 
the first three of these on account of the difficulty 
of attending schools where students use Turkish. 
But the very highest of these schools of the 
Ulema are at Constantinople. Cairo alone pre- 
tends to rival the Medresses of this city. The 
largest of these schools at Constantinople are 
connected with the mosque of Sultan Suleiman 
the Magnificent, the mosque of Sultan Bayazid, 
and the mosque of the Conqueror Sultan Mo- 
hammed II. From 10,000 to 15,000 students are 
at the mosque schools of the city all the time. 
They are regarded as a separate class of the 
population, and are called softas. 

The usual form of the Medresse is a parallelo- 
gram enclosing an open court. The students' 
rooms are sometimes in two tiers, but all open 
upon a cloister which surrounds the central 
court. In the cloister the men sit on hot days, 
and even hear minor lectures there. The chief 
lectures, however, are given in suitable halls 
near the mosque or in the mosque itself. In- 
struction is free in these schools. Students also 
receive free lodging, and commonly a ration of 
bread from the Religious Endowment Fund. 
Occasional rations of soup are given out from the 



208 Constantinople 

same source. The ancient custom of " sending 
portions " from any family festival supplies them 
with some tidbits. Occasionally the Sultan sends 
a sheep or two to each of the Medresses, or has 
presents of money distributed among professors 
and students. During three months of the year 
many of the students in these schools at Con- 
stantinople are sent at State expense into the 
provinces for the religious instruction of the 
people in less cultured regions. 

But at the best the life of the student is hard, 
particularly in the earlier years of his course. 
The young man in the interior of the country 
who sets out to become one of the Ulema, goes on 
foot to the nearest city where one of these schools 
exists. The beautiful custom of hospitable en- 
tertainment of strangers ensures him lodging and 
food during his journey at any village where he 
may stop. He goes to the school with little more 
of introduction than the words " I've come," and 
proceeds to sit down on his roll of bedding and 
listen. After a while some one notices him and 
perhaps gives him something to eat when meal- 
time comes. As for his bed he carries that with 
him and spreads it wherever he may. But he 
goes hungry many a day until he has found some 
professor who is willing to feed him in return 
for menial service, or until, by a process of 
gradual accretion, he has attached himself to the 
body of servants of some mosque, or has got his 
name registered, in consequence of real ability, 



Schools and School Teachers 209 

on the list of the beneficiaries of the Endowment 
Fund. One of these students told me that at 
times, as he expressed it, he " had to steal 
wheat from the ants who were carrying the grain 
to their nests." 

The student does not stay at one school, but 
goes here and there according as he learns that 
some one study is better taught in one place than 
another. As he progresses in knowledge he can 
find writing to do, that gives him an income more 
sure than that of going to the woods to gather 
dye-stuffs for sale, as some students have to. 
Sometimes a wealthy villager will say to him 
as Micah did to the Levite of Bethlehem-Judah : 
" Dwell with me and be to me a father and a 
priest and I will give thee ten shekels of silver 
by the year and a suit of apparel and thy 
victuals." By such precarious methods the young 
man supports himself whether in the country or 
in the Capital. Perseverance carries him through 
ten or fifteen arduous years. 

The desire for education thus shown is praise- 
worthy. But the point of view is always differ- 
ent in an Oriental from that of a Western man. 
One of these students explained to me that he had 
two thoughts in taking up this hard and trying 
life. First, he could escape conscription for mili- 
tary service by becoming a student, and second, 
he believed that books would give him knowl- 
edge of magic, which would offer easy access to 
power and wealth. He was studying in a school 



aio Constantinople 

at Suleimanieh on the borders of Persia when 
he heard that the prophet Daniel, whose reputa- 
tion as a necromancer is great in Asia, wrote one 
of the books of the Bible. He went over into 
Persia and asked a missionary there for a copy 
of the Bible. Gaining his wish, ho. drew his 
dagger and cut out the book of Daniel from the 
Bible and fled, leaving the remains of the book on 
the table before the astonished missionary. 

It has been mentioned already that these schools 
are quite separate from the public school system 
established by the Government. The primary 
school alone is common to both systems of edu- 
cation. Travellers and artists have made known 
before this the quality of the old primary school 
of Turkey. The teacher sat on a cushion at 
one end of the room and the children sat in front 
of him with their books, and shouted to him at 
the top of their lungs the words there written, 
which being in Arabic were entirely unintelligible 
to the poor little scholars. The main duty of the 
teacher was to see that each child shouted, and 
that the accent and enunciation were passable. 
After six or seven years of this kind of exercise, 
varied by efforts at writing the Arabic letters 
and perhaps by some ineffectual wrestling with 
simple arithmetical processes, the child was 
deemed educated, except for those boys of 
peculiar promise who were taken into the mosque 
schools to go on toward the goal of becoming 
" Wise men." Under the improved modern sys- 



Schools and School Teachers 211 

tem which has been a good result of intercourse 
with the West, the primary school has been some- 
what changed. Children are really taught some 
things about reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
They still shout in chorus the passage from the 
Koran. But the chorus now has been swollen by 
the addition of the multiplication table. They 
still have much to do in the way of learning by 
heart things that they do not (and are not ex- 
pected to) understand. Elocution is still re- 
garded an essential part of primary instruction. 
But the primary school is no longer a thing to be 
laughed to scorn — at least in the city of 
Constantinople. 

With the primary school instruction, or at most 
with the additional knowledge derived from a 
course in the next higher grade of the public 
school system the student enters a mosque school. 
The course of study in these latter schools is 
rather loosely organized, but it includes The 
Koran, Elocution, Arabic Grammar, Syntax, 
Rhetoric, Logic, Metaphysics, and Mohammedan 
doctrine, embracing Theology, Casuistry, and 
Moral Philosophy, and the whole vast range of 
Jurisprudence. Some attention is given to the 
Persian language, and History, Geography and 
some Mathematics are given in the later part of 
the course, but at the first the whole attention 
of the student is concentrated on the Koran and 
its interpretation. 

The theory of the method of study seems to 



2ia Constantinople 

be that reiteration will finally bring understand- 
ing, for students at Constantinople do not under- 
stand Arabic, in which the Koran is written. 
Many of the Softas commit the whole book to 
memory and can recite it forwards or backwards 
or beginning in the middle, and all without un- 
derstanding the meaning of a verse. Many copy 
out the whole book in fine manuscript. While 
thus wrestling with the text, they attend lectures 
where learned professors give them the exegesis 
of the various passages. These gentlemen mingle 
critical and grammatical notes with the interpre- 
tation of the text, and thus by long repetition of 
sounds the students arrive at some knowledge of 
the structure and meaning of the language. 

The system of instruction depends upon mem- 
ory for its effectiveness. Accordingly the faculty 
of memory is wonderfully developed. But the 
use of the reflective faculty is restrained. The 
young men are taught, as the lady did her foot- 
man, " that they have no business to think." It is 
only after ten or fifteen years of training that it is 
considered safe for a man to use his own powers. 
By that time the bias of his mind, and its habit of 
ignoring inconvenient matter is pretty well fixed 
and the man himself is safe as a teacher of the 
people. The exclusiveness of Islam and the 
narrowness of its leading men is fully explained 
by such an imprisonment in the dark as is implied 
by attendance at the schools of the Ulema. 

During the educational course a constant pro- 



Schools and School Teachers 213 

cess of weeding out takes place. Many a man 
fails to absorb wisdom and is provided with a 
berth as teacher of a primary school. Others, 
who have good elocution, but fail to master the 
higher problems of Arabic grammar and logic, 
drop out to fill vacancies as Imam or pastor of 
some parish. Others again, who while good 
writers cannot be good reasoners, are made clerks 
of the courts, and leave the unprofitable study. 
The man who goes on far enough to have a place 
among the heads of the people receives the de- 
gree of " Rouous " * and the title of Muderris or 
teacher. He is then entitled to hold his head 
above the mass and may receive appointment to 
teach the people in some mosque. The degree 
would be called in the West a license to preach. 
He will be sure after this point of having money 
to buy his bread. 

The Muderris who has aspirations and abilities 
in the line of logic and metaphysics continues his 
studies. But he is still outside of the group of 
real authorities on the essence of religion. He 
has four degrees to win by hard work in the sci- 
ence of reasoning and the record of precedents 
before the degree of " Movement of Entrance " 
places the coveted honour in his grasp. Many 
end their career at this point, and subside into 
enjoyment of the lesser judgeships or such em- 
ployment as they can get as lawyers at the bar. 
As the common slang has it, " there is a deep 

* Heads or Chiefs. 



2 14 Constantinople 

slough to be passed before reaching the degree 
of 'Entrance to the Sofa.'" But when this 
Asses' Bridge is safely crossed, the man is no 
longer a student hut an honoured dictator on all 
matters relating to the religious and secular life 
of mankind, lie is given some place of responsi- 
bility as judge (for there is no possibility of 
separating law from theology in Islam), or he is 
made Professor in some school, and his further 
rise depends upon his legal acumen rather than 
upon his feats of memory. 

Seven more degrees have to be passed, how- 
ever, before the man can reach the highest circle 
of what for want of a better term we may call 
the Muslim hierarchy. Then at last he may hope 
to be given the rank of " Judgeship of the Five 
Cities." This means that the man so honoured 
has ability and learning enough to hold the posi- 
tion of chief judge, or Kadi, at either of the 
great cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, Adri- 
anople or Brousa. He now has a salary of about 
$2,500 a year, whether in office or not, and be- 
sides this he has a part of the court fees when- 
ever he is lucky enough to hold appointment as 
judge. Above this point are five grades of rank 
of which the highest is that of Sheikh ul Islam, or 
Chief Doctor of Islam. Only one man can be 
Sheikh ul Islam at a time. But a hundred or 
more hold rank in the four grades next below the 
highest rank. The emoluments carried by the 
rank, independently of any active appointment 



Schools and School Teachers 215 

suited to it, are very considerable. To reach this 
highest group, access to which is open to every 
one who has ability and will use application, and 
thus to sway the destinies of the whole realm of 
Islam, is the ambition which fires the heart of 
every student who enters a mosque school. But 
in the course of his education he commonly 
meets little that suggests to his mind that the 
world has literature, or science, or wisdom out- 
side of the sacred books of Islam and their 
commentators. 

The limitation of the student's attention to the 
sacred literature of Islam will be found to have 
exceptions. In this great city, which brings to- 
gether men from the coast of the Adriatic and 
from Samarcand, every rule has exceptions. A 
bright young man who has attended a High 
school or an Academy of the Public school sys- 
tem before entering the mosque school, cannot 
shut his eyes to the wider vision of which his 
eyes have then had a glimpse. Many of the 
Ulema are men of general education. One man 
in particular who holds one of the higher de- 
grees of the schools has a habit of making him- 
self known to travellers whom he encounters on 
the Bosphorus steamers. To one he will speak in 
English, to another, in German, to another in 
French. As the astonished traveller is thus led 
to take note of this evidence of the liberal edu- 
cation enjoyed by the Ulema, he will probably 
hear Greek, Armenian, Italian, Persian, Arabic, 



1 1 6 Constantinople 

and Turkish phrases fall from his lips. A Turk 
who sees the amazement of the " tenderfoot " 
will chuckle until he nearly hursts. To him the 
linguist is merely a good joke. 

One result of such departures from the safe 
lines of traditional education is generally de- 
plored. The religious classics of Islam, have 
hopelessly entangled their theological proofs with 
the foolish science of the Middle Ages. Young 
men taught from modern text-books are not 
moved to awe by minute details of the method of 
creation wherewith the ancient Muslim divines 
thought to enhance the glory of God's power. 
Wherever the science of those venerable writers 
meets a Galileo the religion which has staked 
its all upon such a partnership encounters a 
Voltaire. Even the discovery that Christian Eng- 
land has produced a Shakespeare may unsettle 
the young Muslim's belief in God. 

Another fruit of the Turkish respect for edu- 
cation is a praiseworthy activity in extending a 
fairly good system of secular schools over the 
Empire. The Turkish Government issued a 
decree some thirty years ago for a complete sys- 
tem of graded public schools. Beginning at the 
infant and primary schools, where boys and girls 
are taught together, the law contemplates gram- 
mar schools in every considerable town, and high 
schools for girls and boys separately in every 
city. Academies of a still higher grade are re- 
quired to be established in the capital city of 



Schools and School Teachers 217 

every province. There is also provision for pro- 
fessional schools for the. further development of 
graduates from the academies. 

The school system has not been very thor- 
oughly established in the provinces. But there 
are high schools in nearly all of the provincial 
capitals, while almost every day's Constantinople 
papers contain a record of new primary schools 
opened in villages throughout the country " by 
the help of God and the generosity of the Patron 
of Education, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan." 

In Constantinople, professional schools are ac- 
tually organized and would justly be considered 
to form a great university if they were under one 
management and associated together. There is a 
Classical College in Pera, called the Lyceum of 
Galata Serai, there is a Civil Service School 
where men are trained for the Sublime Porte and 
for the official dignities of the Provincial admin- 
istration. There is a School of Law, a fine 
School of Medicine, in two departments, civil 
and military. There is a Commercial School, a 
School of the Merchant Marine Service, a 
School of Arts and Architecture, a School of 
Engineering, Normal Schools for both men and 
women, and there is a fine Military School and a 
Naval School. In the Galata Lyceum and in the 
Medical School and the schools of the Military 
and Naval service Europeans of ability are found 
among the instructors. There is also a curious 
school at Constantinople called the " School of 



21 8 Constantinople 

the Tribes." It is founded expressly for the 
higher training of the sons of the chiefs of the 
nomad Kourdish ami Bedouin tribes found in 
the Eastern and Southern districts of the Empire. 
Turkish schools for girls are a comparatively 
recent innovation. Until they are about ten years 
old girls have all the advantages enjoyed by their 
brothers, and commonly use them. But after the 
primary school, difficulties beset the question of 
the education of girls. Girls must be treated 
separately from boys. They must be married at 
sixteen or seventeen years of age, and they may 
not be seen unveiled by men after reaching the 
age of separation. If they are to be taught by 
women, the whole supply of qualified women 
teachers for the Empire does not exceed a few 
score. Hence, resource is had to white-haired old 
men whose age makes them safe from a moral 
point of view. But from the point of view of 
knowledge and teaching ability it assures incom- 
petency, save perhaps in the Eastern languages. 
The result so far is, that the majority of Turkish 
girls end their education at the exit from the pri- 
mary school. The high schools for girls, of 
which there are perhaps a dozen in Constanti- 
nople, tend to become on the whole schools of 
language and needle work, and the bystander is 
obliged to admit that the question of the educa- 
tion of Turkish girls is far from being solved. 
There is no need to discuss the training of the 



Schools and School Teachers 219 

daughters of the rich by private governesses. The 
results may he of far-reaching importance in 
these circles. But such makeshifts do not affect, 
at present, the case of the great untaught mass 
of women. 

The course of study in the Government public 
schools was carefully prepared some thirty years 
ago with the advice of competent foreigners, 
having been slightly changed since by the addi- 
tion of studies from time to time. That of the 
Primary Schools has already been mentioned. 
The Grammar Schools add to the three R's, 
Geography, Grammar, and Turkish History with 
some ideas of Persian and Arabic. The High 
Schools take up Geometry and Algebra, and 
Cosmography, and carry on the studies in Per- 
sian and Arabic, which are the substitutes for 
Latin and Greek in the East. French is also 
begun at this stage. In the Academies and Pro- 
fessional Schools, Chemistry and Physics and 
Mathematics, with Universal History, and French 
and German are given some importance, together 
with the studies belonging to the specialty which 
the students are to follow. In the Naval School 
prominence is given to English in order that the 
naval officers may have the advantage of English 
literature on Navigation and Naval Warfare. 
Throughout the course, great importance is given 
to Mohammedan religious instruction. The Ko- 
ran, the Life of the Prophet, and the Rules of 



220 Constantinople 

Worship are continuous subjects of study which 
may not be neglected whatever else is allowed 
to suffer. 

The course of study is not at all a bad one. 
The great difficulty of the Turkish student is his 
teacher, and his text-book. The text-books of the 
lower schools have distinctly improved by study 
of the methods of instruction in the foreign 
schools of the city. But in the higher grades they 
are mere translations of French or German 
works, and slavishly follow the original to the 
extent of introducing illustrations perfectly famil- 
iar in Western lands, but hopelessly unintelligible 
in Constantinople. It adds nothing to the knowl- 
edge of a student of botany at Constantinople to 
be told that a daisy is the plant commonly known 
in French as " marguerite," and found abun- 
dantly in meadows outside of the fortifications of 
Paris. Failure to replace books of science trans- 
lated thirty years ago has the effect to keep Turk- 
ish students behind the age. Still the books used 
in the schools of the regular Government system 
are a couple of centuries in advance of those used 
in the schools of the Ulema. 

The fact is, that Turkey is still wrestling with 
the problem of teaching young people to read, 
and giving them modern science, while at the 
same time preventing them from being thus led 
to escape from the control of the ancient sys- 
tem. The point of difficulty is, to avoid such oc- 
currences as the comment of a young man upon 



Schools and School Teachers 221 

a sermon in which an eminent Mohammedan 
preacher was describing the magnificence of Par- 
adise. The preacher said that the tree of life is 
of sublime dimensions. Each leaf is three days' 
journey from one end to the other. After some 
further description in this strain, he turned to the 
happiness of the dwellers in Paradise, saying 
among other things that in each one of the 
mansions of the blest is a branch of the tree of 
life bearing all manner of fruit. The young man 
unexpectedly showed his ability to put two and 
two together by saying: " Each leaf of that tree 
is three days' journey long, and a branch grows 
in each of the mansions. Of course there must 
be two or three leaves on each branch. What 
must the size of the mansions be? For my part 
I would rather live out of doors ! " 

The necessity of foreseeing the ill effects of 
knowledge affects the choice of books and the 
whole course of instruction in the schools. There 
can be no study of History, except as prepared 
by Turkish authors. There can be no unexpur- 
gated study of Literature. Political Economy, 
and even Metaphysics cannot be studied except 
where provision has been made to prevent access 
to non-Mohammedan views on these subjects. 

In all of these schools the charges for tuition 
are very small, consisting in fact, of little more 
than small presents to the teachers on festival 
occasions ; the presents being gauged according 
to the ability of the parents. In the higher 



ill Constantinople 

schools there is no charge for tuition, and in the 
professional schools at Constantinople students 
who are intended for Government service, with 
a certain number of other students, receive not 
only tuition, but board, lodging - , and clothing 
from the school. Non-Mohammedans are re- 
ceived in the professional schools at Constanti- 
nople and at the Academies in some of the 
Provinces. But the pupils of all the lower grade 
schools and the great majority of those in the 
higher schools are Mohammedans. 

As in other lands, so in Turkey, the student 
who is bound to learn will do so whatever the ob- 
stacles of his surroundings or his implements. It 
has been my fortune to be on such terms of inti- 
macy with a Mohammedan family that the son 
regarded me as almost a relative. " It was no 
small pleasure to have the boy of fourteen or 
fifteen come bursting into my room, full of exulta- 
tion and with flushed cheek and sparkling eye to 
cry out : " Oh, Uncle, uncle ! I have passed the 
examination. I go into the Academy next 
term ! " That boy was a student. Whatever the 
defects of his books or his teachers, he was on 
the high road to culture. 

There are good teachers among the Turkish 
public schools. But it is an unfortunate fact 
that thoroughly wide awake men, who succeed in 
waking up the minds of their pupils, have more 
than once been disposed of by being sent to posts 
in distant parts of the Empire where their alert- 



Schools and School Teachers 223 

ness may find a balance-wheel in the backward- 
ness of the population at large. Such men are 
left in obscurity long enough to realize that there 
is such a thing as being too active as a teacher. 

An educated Turkish gentleman one day looked 
at me sharply in surprise, as though he had been 
read too closely when I remarked that the great 
difficulty with the Turkish schools is the incom- 
petence of the teachers. " Yes," he said, " teach- 
ers are not easily found at best and with us they 
are chosen for their need or for their ability to 
flatter rather than for their skill. The nation 
suffers that a man may have a morsel of bread." 

A part of the remarks of this gentleman were 
illustrated by an incident which occurred under 
my eye in the office of a high official, a part of 
whose duties was the choice of teachers for the 
public schools. A man of fifty, slovenly in ap- 
pearance, wearing the long robe of the old style 
Turks, and the green turban which shows that a 
man has more trust in his ancestry than in him- 
self, entered the room, after having been an- 
nounced by an obsequious servant at the official's 
ear. The old man walked rapidly forward, 
stooped over, and fumbled for the official's coat 
tail, that he might kiss it. This produced a sort 
of polite scuffle. The official pushed the man's 
hand away, saying " God forbid ! " and the sup- 
pliant finally compromised on kissing his hand. 
Then he folded his two hands on his breast with 
a gesture of despair, and said : 



li\ Constantinople 

" First I look to God and afterwards to you 
alone. There is no one else." 

" What do you want ? " 

* I am dying of hunger, and your servants my 
children cry for bread every day." 

" Where do you live? " 

'In Salma Tomruk (a District in Stamboul). 
I was teacher of the infant school, but they have 
sent a man there to take my place." 

" Why were you removed ? " 

" Because there was a question about some 
school money that got eaten up." 

" It was eaten up ? Do you mean that you 
could not account for it ? " 

"Yes; it was only about a hundred dollars, 
and you know that man is weak. Accidents of 
that sort will happen." 

" What is your name ? " 

" Feizoullah of Gurun." 

" Ah ! You had a salary of ten dollars a month 
for teaching the Salma Tomruk primary school, 
and after a year there were a hundred and fifty 
dollars of school money remaining charged 
against you ? " 

" Yes, but do not look at my shortcomings, 
remember that God's purpose is that every one 
of His servants shall have bread." 

" What do you expect me to do for you ? " 

" Oh ! Sir, you know what to do. Give me a 
salary that will bring me bread. It may be here 
or it may be there. It is all in your hands." 



Schools and School Teachers 225 

" But I want good men to teach the schools." 

" Oh ! do not say that," said the man, beginning 
to blubber and making a fresh effort to seize the 
official coat-tail. " Remember your maid-servant 
my wife, and her four children without bread. 
It surely is not your wish that they should die 
right here at the capital." 

Like the unjust judge of the parable the official 
could not endure importunity. ' Well, well," he 
said, " Go to Rifaat Bey and ask him to give you 
something. Tell him I sent you ! " 

The ex-teacher went out after invoking the 
Divine blessing upon the great man. In a mo- 
ment Rifaat Bey came in to ask what he should 
do with Feizoullah. 

" Give him one of the Primary Schools," said 
my friend, " only get rid of him. His brother is 
father-in-law of the steward at Savas Pasha's 
house. We shall have Savas Pasha writing about 
this man if we don't give him something. Give 
him something that no one else will take. Do 
something to get rid of him." 

" Such men are the curse of our schools," said 
the Turk to me after Rifaat Bey had gone. Then 
ordering up more coffee and lighting another cig- 
arette, he began tc enquire as to the steps which 
the Commissioner of Education at Washington 
has to take in order to know the fitness of candi- 
dates for appointment as teachers in distant vil- 
lages. The idea that the United States Govern- 
ment has nothing to do with the appointment of 



116 Constantinople 

school teachers in distant villages seemed too 
strange for him to grasp. 

The theory of the enormous value of learning 
by rote, on the whole still possesses the Turkish 
teacher. Children are required to commit the 
lessons to memory whether they understand them 
or not. It often happens that a pupil asks the 
teacher to explain a matter and is silenced by the 
order to learn his lesson and not ask questions. 
This theory rules the plan of examinations. All 
studies are interrupted for a week or ten days 
before an examination, in order that the students 
may " cram " for the occasion. I have been told 
by students that the teacher is also made to feel 
the necessity that certain pupils whose parents 
have influence shall pass successfully. Hence, 
the favored pupils are given a list of the ques- 
tions which they are to be asked, and are allowed 
to limit their " cramming " to the answers to 
these questions. From this, one is obliged to con- 
clude that the student encounters special diffi- 
culties in Turkey, which are peculiar to the need 
of the country for limiting independent thought, 
for protecting the teacher from exposure of his 
incompetency, and for saving the children of the 
rich from being outdone by the children of the 
poor. Some, every year, show that such ob- 
stacles have not prevented their gaining knowl- 
edge and the power to use it. This fact is but 
another proof that perseverance and sturdy wish 



Schools and School Teachers 22,7 

to do right can be found in Turkey by him who 
searches. 

In all of these schools of the Turkish public 
school system, great attention is paid to the 
moral training of the pupils. The religious 
training consists of reading and re-reading the 
Koran in Arabic. There is also full training in 
the proper method of forms of worship. The 
mere act of reading good books without intelli- 
gence is supposed to have a good effect on the 
pupil. But there are also lesson in morals to 
which little exception can be taken. The Turks 
are proud of their moral excellence and of the 
attention paid to this department. We would not 
belittle the value of this attention although the 
ethical philosophy of these books is sometimes a 
little uncertain. But one point, at least, in this 
ethical training has serious effect on students 
aside from the point of the example of the 
teacher. The peculiar views of Turks on polyg- 
amy and concubinage influence the young. They 
not only cover with a murky haze all instruction 
relating to purity, but make the practice of vir- 
tuous living a question of expediency, and permit 
impure and indecent thoughts and words from 
childhood up. The results in the higher schools 
for boys and young men cannot be discussed. 
Even in the schools for young women scandals 
occur which increase the popular antipathy to the 
education of women. A Mohammedan official 



228 Constantinople 

once said to me, " How can I give my daughter 
an education? I would rather see her in her 
grave than have her in any of our schools for 
girls." The remark was not more a revelation of 
the degradation clinging to everything which is 
in contact with polygamy, than it was of noble 
qualities found in these people which wait to be 
brought into prominence by the work of the 
Spirit of God. 

We all know the doom which hangs over the 
man and the people that tolerate corruption of 
this sort even in thought. This one point of the 
moral tendency of the school destroys much of 
the hope which we might feel for the uplift that 
the Turkish school system can bring to the nation. 
Not until means are found of checking dry rot 
in the heart will the public school bring its proper 
fruit in Turkey. 

The importance of the Turkish school system 
of Constantinople to the Empire, is not limited 
to its effect upon the young men and women who 
are trained by its methods. They compose nearly 
three-fourths of the young people of the city. 
But this system is the one message as to educa- 
tion received by the Mohammedan population of 
the Empire. The highest model set before Mus- 
lims in all the towns and cities of Turkey and of 
bordering regions, is the public school of Con- 
stantinople. To reach a degree of efficiency that 
will give pupils entrance to the schools of the 
capital is the highest ideal of the schools else- 



Schools and School Teachers 229 

where. To have a teacher who has studied at 
Constantinople is enough to make the reputation 
of a school in the interior whether the teacher 
knows anything or not. The gap between ideals 
and their realization seen in other things exists 
in this case, too. The system of education in the 
Interior of the Empire is waiting to be raised by 
influences from Constantinople. 

The various non-Mohammedan sects and 
nationalities throughout the Empire have their 
own schools which are classed by the school laws 
as private schools. They are required to conform 
their courses of study and their text-books to 
the Government standards, and their teachers 
must be approved by the Ministry of Public In- 
struction. Their support is provided for by the 
sect which establishes them. All the Government 
schools on the other hand are supported by the 
Ministry of Public Instruction out of funds set 
apart for the purpose, and chiefly derived from 
a percentage of the tax on real estate. Since the 
non-Mohammedans pay rather a large propor- 
tion of this tax, they might be expected to derive 
some benefit from it. It all goes, however, to 
the support of the Government Schools, all the 
lower grades of which are barred to non-Moham- 
medans who refuse to let their children be taught 
Mohammedan religious doctrine. 

The Armenian schools of Constantinople are 
supported by the Church and by private contri- 
bution. Within the last twenty-five years they 



230 Constantinople 

have taken a rapid advance both in number and 
efficiency. The difficulty of finding skilled teach- 
ers has been a hampering influence, and so has 
been the control exercised by the Turkish Depart- 
ment of Public Instruction with its political ends 
to seek in conjunction with its efforts for the ad- 
vancement of education. Nevertheless the Arme- 
nians have a quite complete system of lower 
grade schools, beginning with well organized 
kindergartens. With them progress in education 
in Constantinople means progress also in the in- 
terior provinces of Turkey. For the teachers and 
the inspiration for schools in the provinces comes 
from the Capital, where any lacks on the part of 
the clergy are filled by lay Societies for the Ad- 
vancement of Schools. In higher education little 
has been done of importance. There are several 
High Schools and Academies which do creditable 
work. But for professional training, young Ar- 
menians have to go to Europe or America. 

In the Greek community of Constantinople 
there is a better showing. The University of 
Athens supplies all needed teachers and the gen- 
erosity of wealthy Greeks supplies the means. 
There are fine schools of all grades among the 
Greeks and for both sexes. Here as among the 
Armenians the clergy are the nominal directors 
of education. But during the centuries of their 
isolation from Christendom, their ideals have in- 
sensibly been shaped by their surroundings. The 
teaching of church observances was in their eyes 



Schools and School Teachers 231 

the most important function of the school. Like 
the schools of the Mohammedans, the schools of 
the Eastern Church gave no real education until 
they passed under the control of the laymen who 
had some knowledge of Western science. 

In the Eastern Church then, we have a living 
educational system, in full touch with European 
systems and with enthusiastic assent to the neces- 
sity for education of the people. The influence of 
the schools is limited, however, by two causes 
other than the limited proportion of non-Moham- 
medans in the Empire. There can never be a 
strong development of the higher grade of Christ- 
ian schools, because the Turkish Government 
formally excludes from its service graduates of 
other than the Government academies and pro- 
fessional schools. This measure was not neces- 
sarily designed to prevent the growth of higher 
grade institutions among Christians, but it has 
that effect. Many young men attend the Gov- 
ernment Lyceum or other Turkish colleges and 
are lost to their Church, while those who cannot 
stomach a vitiated atmosphere go abroad and are 
lost to the country. 

The other limitation of the influence of the 
schools carried on within the various branches of 
the Eastern church is moral. The question how 
to secure strong moral principle in pupils has 
not yet been worked out. In some of the schools, 
books on ethics are used which distinctly teach 
that deceit is essential to success in life under 



l$i Constantinople 

certain circumstances of the business world. 
Hence it is regarded as a venial fault. One of 
the commonest expressions of ordinary conversa- 
tion between Greeks or Armenians in Constanti- 
nople is " That's a lie! " And the good-natured 
way in which the remark is received shows that 
in all probability the charge is true. 

It is nearly impossible for an American, accus- 
tomed to see education lift up a people, to realize 
how much of this result of education is due to 
moral and religious environment. In our public 
schools pupils receive no religious instruction in 
morals. But the very atmosphere is so perme- 
ated with the essence of the moral teachings of 
Jesus as to be poisonous to the ease of any who 
openly repudiate truthfulness, honesty, purity, 
and self-sacrifice for the sake of duty. It is not 
left to the Church to denounce unmitigated self- 
ishness or lack of consideration for others. 
Moreover, if any young man would set at defiance 
the teachings of church, Sunday school, and home 
in elementary morals, he is speedily brought to 
his senses and made to go into his own class. 
For merchants, bankers, railroad managers, man- 
ufacturers, builders will give no place of trust to 
the dishonest, the false, the unclean, and the self- 
indulgent. 

In Asia the highest ideal of moral attainment 
is that some men may perhaps " pay great atten- 
tion to " some elementary points of moral con- 
duct. A triumph of principle once for all, which 



Schools and School Teachers i^ 

permits advance in character, is not even dreamed 
of. Under such circumstances the utmost ac- 
complished by the school at Constantinople, to 
use the Turkish phrase, is, to make men " have 
holes in their ears." 

It is an achievement to train ears to hear. But 
when those steeped in self-coddling are turned 
loose after being trained to hear, what they hear 
is that the religious forms and ceremonies of 
their fathers rest on no Divine revelation, that 
self-restraint is ascetic folly, and that probably 
there is no God. Talk with one of the professors 
of the public schools of Turkey about those of 
the schools of the Ulema, and if he knows you 
well enough to dare express his real opinion he 
will say, " Do not pay attention to them. They 
are a lot of big-headed asses ! " Ask one of these 
Ulema about the public school system and its 
teachers, and he will reply, " These are not 
schools, but places where our good young people 
are sent- for the purpose of having their minds 
corrupted by a lot of infidels ! " The head of one 
of the great branches of the Eastern Church said 
to the President oT Robert College at Constan- 
tinople not long ago that among all his people the 
only young men who really believe in God and 
Christianity are those who have been educated in 
Robert College.* 

The graduates of schools which have no faith 

* Report of Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Mis- 
sions, 1900, Vol. II., p. 130. 



134 Constantinople 

in the possibility of changing and developing 
character might shine in the train of Robespierre. 
They might be towers of strength to municipal 
rings for the private exploitation of the revenues 
of a city. On occasion they might serve as 
apostles of social reform through anarchist meth- 
ods. Too many of them receive atheism and 
libertinism as the chief of the gains of study. 
The fact that schools of this class also endow 
students with " holes in their ears " is not going 
to regenerate the people of Asia. Education in 
obedience to the Power that makes for righteous- 
ness is what is needed to produce leaders in a 
steady moral progress on the part of the people. 

This is the common sense ground for the estab- 
lishment by missionaries of schools at Constan- 
tinople. The question of the wisdom or the 
need of educational work by missionaries is not 
one of sectarian prejudice or doctrinal divergence 
of opinion. Covetousness is idolatry, and selfish- 
ness, paganism, whatever the creed or the crass 
unbelief with which they would fain be cloaked. 
The question is that of cultivating in the young 
such elementary moral sense as the pagan cannot 
have but which the ordinary business man of 
England or America will insist on having in the 
man whom he is to trust. The missionary teacher 
uses for such culture of the moral sense the in- 
strument which served in his own case — the 
teachings of Jesus Christ. He uses these teach- 
ings, also, as Jesus Christ used them — in the 



Schools and School Teachers 235 

form of plain statements of duty which every 
conscience must and does approve, whatever its 
religious citizenship. 

Chief among such healthy educational forces 
at Constantinople, the schools established by 
Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries have 
more to do than is commonly realized with educa- 
tional progress in Turkey. Such schools have 
served as models for many native schools. At 
one time the course of study of the Girls' school 
which afterwards grew into the American Col- 
lege for Girls was framed and hung on the wall 
at the Turkish Ministry of Public Instruction, 
for those to study who wished to know what a 
Girls' school should teach. The opening of at- 
tractive schools by foreigners forced the hand 
of the clergy of the Eastern Church. If they had 
not favoured the development of a school system 
within the Church, their own people would have 
gone to the foreigner. 

Roman Catholic schools have existed in Con- 
stantinople for some two centuries. Those now 
carried on in the city are large, numerous, and 
efficient for the training of the young of both 
sexes. The teachers are Jesuits, or belong to 
other religious orders. Many young men in im- 
portant positions under the Turkish Government 
owe their success to the training received from the 
priests. The moral atmosphere of these schools 
at once distinguishes their scholars from those of 
the Muslim, or even of the Oriental Christian 



1^6 Constantinople 

schools. While the Roman Catholic schools are 
doing good work, and really educating numbers 
of the people, it seems ungracious to touch upon 
their weakness. It is the weakness which marks 
any school which has to champion the infallibility 
of a certain church system, and therefore to sub- 
mit to an Index Expurgatorius. The students are 
in danger of not receiving all that they might 
receive of scientific training, and of feeling that 
they get more than they need of Roman Catholic 
dogma. For these schools frankly aim, above all 
else, to raise up Roman Catholics. 

Like the American missions the Roman Catho- 
lic missions have opened up schools in the various 
provinces of the empire, and like them they draw 
their pupils almost entirely from the non-Mo- 
hammedans. 

Protestant missionaries in Constantinople are 
connected with English and Scotch societies 
working among the Jews, and with American 
societies working among the Eastern Christians. 
All have schools which must be reckoned among 
forces working for the general uplift of the 
people. The highest types of this class of edu- 
cational effort may be seen at Robert College, on 
its hill by the side of the ancient castle domina- 
ting the narrows of the Bosphorus where in- 
vading armies from Asia have always entered 
Europe, and at the American College for Girls, 
gracefully seated upon its hill at Scutari with the 
great city at its feet. 



^10^ 




... 






' 






■ 




Schools and School Teachers 237 

Robert College is not connected with any mis- 
sion, although an outgrowth from the mission of 
the American Board. Its work, however, is of 
precisely the same aim as that of the mission. 
Perhaps the nature of this work can best be 
illustrated by a concrete example. 

In one of the narrower streets of Constanti- 
nople is a fruit shop kept by two men belonging to 
one of the branches of the Eastern Church, and 
natives of a town in Asia Minor. The shop is 
about twelve feet square. Its front is open to 
the breezes. Its floor is the native earth packed 
by long tramping of feet. But at the end of the 
shop opposite the street, three or four rough 
planks form a floor to which the shop-keepers 
may retreat in wet weather. The centre of the 
shop is filled by a mass of large baskets arranged 
to display the fruits of the season to best advan- 
tage. Shelves around the walls carry choicer 
specimens of fruit, and serve to decorate the shop. 
There is not a particle of paint about the whole 
place. The walls were once white, but are bat- 
tered and bruised with the accidents of a score 
of years. As to the wood work, it is of natural 
colour except where similar accidents have 
touched it with greasy looking spots. 

The two owners of the shop live there. After 
the business day is done, they make a little fire of 
charcoal in an iron pan, and cook a stew of some 
vegetable with a few bony bits of meat to flavour 
it. When the kettle is taken off the fire the two 



238 Constantinople 

men sit down by it on low stools, each armed 
with a wooden spoon and the half of a two- 
pound loaf of bread. They eat their meal from 
the kettle, and by the light of a flickering' candle 
stuck in a bottle. After the meal they sit for a 
time, and smoke and discuss business chances. 
Then climbing the ladder which leads to the loft 
over the shop, they spread their beds upon the 
loose boards that serve for a floor and go to 
sleep. This is their life. 

But these men have families and houses in 
that far away town in Asia Minor. They them- 
selves live at an expense of perhaps five dollars 
a month for each. Their clothes are the same 
clothes they bought ten years ago in Asia Minor 
when they first came to the great city, and since 
then more or less protected from the stains of 
their trade by the long white cotton gown, much 
like a bath-robe, which they wear all day to the 
detriment of its whiteness. All the money that 
the two men gain and can spare from their busi- 
ness goes to the far off town in Asia Minor for 
the advantage of their wives and children, whom 
they take turns in visiting every year or so. 

One of these fruit dealers had an orphan 
nephew left on his hands in the Asia Minor town. 
" That boy," said he, " shall go to school. We 
are asses ourselves but that is no reason why he 
should not learn to be a man." He executed the 
daring project of putting the boy in Robert Col- 
lege, as soon as he made sure that the schooling 



Schools and School Teachers 239 

which his nephew had received in the church 
school in the Asia Minor town would admit him 
to the preparatory school at Robert College. The 
boy came to the city, was dazzled by its splendours, 
was delighted with the comforts of his uncle's 
shop, and after being fitted out with a complete 
suit of second-hand clothing of European cut, 
he took his place in the college. He studied 
seven years, and then he graduated in a black 
broadcloth coat and white necktie, with a red 
geranium in his buttonhole, and with a thousand 
people, from the British Ambassador and other 
high functionaries to the Asia Minor fruit dealer 
(dressed in hired broadcloth for the occasion), to 
applaud his essay in English upon the Place of 
Altruism in Human Progress. 

Then the fruit dealer, who had scrimped and 
slaved to eke out the $200 a year which he had 
to pay the College when he could not induce the 
faculty to grant the boy help from scholarship 
funds, found that he had a white elephant on 
his hands. He had taken counsel with me before 
sending the boy to tne College, so he came to me 
again. " See here," he said, " This thing doesn't 
work. The boy is educated, but what can one 
like me do with him? He knows English, he 
knows French. The Lord knows what he doesn't 
know. But he is going to ruin the firm if he 
doesn't find work quickly. When he first came 
on here he thought the place where we sleep was 
very comfortable, but now he says he can't sleep 



240 Constantinople 

there. He says it's dirty, and has cobwebs, and 
animals. We eat out of the kettle in the shop 
and a dinner costs us five cents apiece. But he 
can't live unless he has a twenty-five cent dinner 
at a restaurant at least once a day. If we have 
accounts to write we sit down by the candle and 
rest the book on one knee and work as long as 
need be. But he wants a room in which to sit 
and a lamp and a chair and a desk at which to 
write. What can I do with the boy ? " 

It was a clear case of error in educating a 
young man out of his station in life. But the 
philosophers who rebuke such proceedings omit 
to suggest how a young man is to rise out of a 
submerged mass if when he has risen he may not 
find himself above the station in life wherein he 
was born. I counselled the uncle to have 
patience, put small jobs of clerk's work in the 
way of the young man, and then, after a few 
months, the uncle met me one day smiling. His 
nephew had got a position as assistant superin- 
tendent of a mine somewhere in the interior of 
Asia Minor. 

And the young man? Look at him to-day — a 
man trusted by the mining company, handling 
accounts with accuracy, and correspondence with- 
out limitation of language, looked up to by the 
whole district as a living personification of manly, 
clean living. You must agree that when a school 
can take an individual from a mass of Asiatic 
villagers and make a true man of him in seven 



Schools and School Teachers 241 

years, the men who have taught that boy have 
done a work of which to be proud, for they see 
the fruit of their self-denying labour to a degree 
seldom permitted to those who work for the good 
of others. This is not a single case. Professor 
Ramsey of St. Andrews, Scotland, who has trav- 
elled much in Asia Minor says : * "I have 
come in contact with men educated in Robert 
College in widely separated parts of the 
country, men of divers races and different 
forms of religion — Greek, Armenian and Protest- 
ant — and have everywhere been struck with the 
marvellous way in which a certain uniform type, 
direct, simple, honest in tone, has been impressed 
upon them. Some had more of it, some had less, 
but all had it in a certain degree, and it is diamet- 
rically opposite to the type produced by growth 
under the ordinary conditions of Turkish life." 

The American College for Girls at Scutari is 
connected with the Woman's Board of Missions 
of Boston. It does for young women what 
Robert College is doing for young men. One of 
those truths which the American missions in 
Turkey set out to prove is the thesis that woman 
has a mind and can use it for the good of her race 
if men do not thrust her into marriage when she 
is still a baby. Proof of this thesis is worked 
out in the Girls' College in a way that once seen 
can never be forgotten. Many a woman of Con- 
stantinople looking at the intelligent, mature, and 

* Impressions of Turkey. 



i\i Constantinople 

capable young women who graduate at this Col- 
lege, at once to become centres of power in the 
community, sighs over her own lost opportunity, 
for she is a grandmother at thirty-two. To have 
begun to teach the people that there is such a 
thing as respect for woman because of intel- 
lectual power, is to have secured an advance in 
the Christianity of the country which amply 
justifies all that it has cost. 

In emphasizing the importance of the moral 
training given in these colleges we would not ob- 
scure the fact that the permanent fruitfulness and 
usefulness of graduates must depend upon the 
degree to which they have changed the centre 
of gravity of their lives — upon the change of 
nature wrought by the spirit of God. Where the 
teachers are themselves full of the Holy Ghost, 
and where they are able to distinguish between 
the work of training men to live in Jesus Christ 
and the work of training adherents to a sect, they 
impress the spiritual nature of* their pupils of 
whatever sect. The pupils of such teachers be- 
come in some degree centres of spiritual refor- 
mation wherever they may be. To have found a 
means, while imparting the highest scientific 
training, of making the tree good that its fruit 
may be good, is the discovery which makes these 
colleges and others like them in other parts of 
Turkey centres of hope for the future. 

So far as American effort is concerned the first 
step towards this advance at this great centre of 




t/5 

Pi 



o 



u 
u 

< 

u 

2 
w 



Schools and School Teachers 243 

influence was taken by three missionaries of the 
American Board who, with their wives estab- 
lished themselves at Constantinople in 1831, with 
the idea of seeking in all ways the elevation of the 
people of the city. In the presence of the splen- 
did successes of the educational work of missions 
in Turkey it is sometimes almost forgotten that 
effort in other lines with the same aim has equal 
claim upon our notice. What we have now 
briefly to consider is the Press and the Pulpit 
as agencies for the uplift of men. 



VII 

A HALF-FORGOTTEN AGENCY 

THE traveller in his walks about the " old 
city " at Constantinople is sure some day 
to go from the Galata Bridge of kaleidoscopic 
views of the nations, up the long hill, past 
the Bible House and the Bazar of the Wood 
Turners, to the tower of the War Department 
and the Mosque of the Pigeons. Proceeding 
along the broad road which passes the high gate 
of the War Department enclosure, and leaving 
the Mosque of the Pigeons behind us, we find the 
road quickly carrying us to a spectacle which for 
pathos can hardly be equalled in the city. It is 
the spectacle of the ancient guild of the book- 
writers still exercising their venerable trade in 
the stalls of a colonnade of Byzantine design. 
Coloured papers brighten the shelves and hand- 
painted mottoes the walls of the little stalls. With 
reed pen and colour box and gold leaf and 
burnisher, kindly old gentlemen in turban and 
gown, whose prospective successors are their de- 
voted apprentices, are slowly and elegantly filling 
page after page with exquisite script, or slowly 
and patiently giving the finished leaves solid and 
decorative bindings, the invention of designs for 

244 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 245 

which ceased when Byzantine Constantinople 
fell. 

This might be called one of the centres of intel- 
lectual life in the city. It is characterized by a 
placid pictnresqueness due not solely to the an- 
tiquity of its methods, nor to the backward look 
which forbids the guild to publish any thought less 
than a thousand years old. It is placid because 
these venerable craftsmen work in a pathetically 
sturdy faith of ultimate success in their brave 
struggle to compete with the printing press and 
with all that this century means to the rest of the 
world. The guild clings to this work because the 
traditional method of multiplying books is to copy 
them with a pen. Hence the world must some- 
time recover from its craze (introduced by West- 
ern infidels) for machine-made books. Some- 
time people will refuse to have any but the hand- 
made article which the writer can guarantee to 
be free from misprints. 

The simple faith of these old men and the use- 
lessness of their labour pains the bystander. Like 
the women of the neighbouring houses, whose ig- 
norance and superstition classes them with by- 
gone centuries, these book-writers are a survival. 
They love their books, but an awakening of dis- 
appointment will be their's so soon as men call 
for really living books. Yet the unlimited fealty 
rendered by this guild to written words suggests 
the question, " Why not give those who live in a 
dead past — the women and the Book-writers — ■ 



246 Constantinople 

modern thought ; placing permanently before 
them the soul-stirring truths whose power we 
know? May not books solve problems otherwise 
insoluble ? 

Constantinople is a commanding position for 
an enterprise of publication. The crowds of all 
sorts of people of the East w 7 ho flock into the 
city to get what they can for the bettering of their 
lives, will certainly carry back to their homes any 
books which there please their fancy. But the 
dominance of this city in the world of books rests 
upon other grounds. A law of the empire re- 
quires every printer (not the harmless old book- 
writer) first to obtain a special permit from the 
Sultan. Only when armed with such a personal 
authorization can he own a printing press or im- 
port material for his outfit. 

Having an authorized printing office, the 
printer may print neither book, newspaper, 
nor picture, without the signed approval of the 
censors of the press. These two rules force 
men to make Constantinople the literary cen- 
tre of the whole region of its influence. For 
in provincial towns officials shrink from re- 
sponsibility, and refer the would-be printer or 
author to Constantinople for the final decision 
upon the merits of his petition. Difference of 
language makes Beyrout a centre for printing in 
Arabic, and the American Mission and the Bible 
Societies print there large numbers of books in 
that language. There are also newspaper presses 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 247 

at Smyrna and Salonica. But in all the vast in- 
terior provinces of Turkey printing presses are 
found in the Government headquarters alone. 
For this reason the people of all that great region 
where the Turkish and Armenian and Greek lan- 
guages are used look to Constantinople for their 
books, if they have any. 

If Turkish or Greek or Armenian men and 
women in Turkey are ever to be stirred in any 
large sense to intellectual or spiritual life, the 
impulse must come through books issued at Con- 
stantinople by people who know intellectual and 
spiritual life. If the view already given is true, 
of the lacks in both these directions seen among 
the people of the city, a burden of responsibility 
falls upon missionaries as educated Christian 
men and women. The Missionary Societies 
should concentrate at this one point all necessary 
means and forces for making the press instruct 
and help the people of this Empire. Excuse for 
failure to do this can only be found in unreadiness 
of the people to be reached by the press, or in the 
effectiveness of a native press already thoroughly 
occupying the ground, or in some obstacle of the 
local laws. 

The press laws of Turkey do not form such 
an obstacle as one might expect. They limit the 
field and the style of literature produced under 
the censor's care. But they are not obstacles on 
the whole to the missionary, unless he wishes 
to write controversial books. And these are 



248 Constantinople 

commonly best unwritten. As to the prepared- 
ness of the people, all classes of the population 
of Turkey offer a living example of the punish- 
ment which neglect of reading brings upon itself. 
After a time, talkers who do not read have 
travelled so far from their original starting point, 
that their language is quite apart from that of 
those who meanwhile have been shut up with 
their books. Then comes the punishment of the 
people who have neglected reading. Any one of 
them who now tardily decides that he would like 
to read, cannot do it. The language of the books 
is a strange language to him, although it is the 
one which his ancestors deserted when they 
stopped reading. 

This calamity fell upon all the peoples of 
Turkey after the conquest of Constantinople in 
1453. Up to that time the Greeks still had pre- 
served the essential grammatical forms of the 
magnificent Greek literature which is still school- 
master to the civilized world in literary expres- 
sion. Now, they can only read their ancient 
writings by patient study with grammar and 
dictionary. 

Until the middle of the 15th century the Ar- 
menians too, had a literature. But in the catas- 
trophes of the Turkish invasion, they, too, lost 
the power of using it. Until the fourteenth cen- 
tury, the Turks themselves had beginnings of a 
literature written with Arabic letters, and mak- 
ing much use of Arabic and Persian expressions. 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 249 

But, having devoted themselves, like a good 
many other people of the Middle Ages, to war 
rather than to study, long before the end of the 
eighteenth century common Turks could not un- 
derstand the book language any more than they 
could understand the Arabic in which their 
religious books are written. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
Turk, Greek and Armenian, were thus in the 
predicament of having no intelligible books. 
Those who could read were generally the clergy. 
They had to read the Scriptures, at least. But the 
clergy were not ardent scholars. They shrank 
from translating books into the language of the 
common people, and they covered up their sloth 
by advancing the notion that the writings of the 
Fathers are too holy to be translated. The most 
that they would do to help the common people 
read was to teach choir boys to read the church 
service in parrot-like use of unknown sentences. 
This gave at least an alphabet to some of the chil- 
dren, and men used this alphabet in their busi- 
ness. They felt, however, that the very letters 
learned out of holy books are sacred. To each 
religious denomination the use of its own alpha- 
bet became like an article of the creed. The 
Turks write Turkish with Arabic letters not at 
all suited to the nature of the language, because 
the Koran is written in Arabic. Greeks and 
Armenians in Asia Minor who have forgotten 
their own language and use the Turkish only, 



250 Constantinople 

write it with Greek and Armenian letters re- 
spectively because these letters are those of ihe 
ancient church books. Even the Jews of Turkey, 
who in general are emigrants from Spain and 
who long ago lost the Hebrew, use Hebrew 
letters for writing Spanish words in their ledgers 
and business correspondence, and in the news- 
papers which of late years they have commenced 
to publish. 

The medley of jargons in Turkey is further 
perplexed by the fact that the larger part of the 
Greeks living there speak Modern Greek only, 
and the most of the Armenians speak Modern 
Armenian only, while all the people of Syria, 
whether Mohammedan or Christian, speak and 
read and write Arabic only, hating Turkish as 
" the language of Hell." To people in such a 
Babel it makes small difference that the Roman 
Catholic missionaries introduce in their Latin 
services another dead liturgy and another un- 
intelligible version of the Bible. 

From a Protestant and missionary point of 
view, the essential effect of this condition of 
things is that in Turkey to-day the masses of the 
common people, whether Christian, Moham- 
medan, or Jew have their sacred Scriptures in a 
language which they cannot understand. At the 
same time they are ready to quarrel with each 
other daily, in the name of God, concerning doc- 
trines which they suppose to be taught in these 
unknown Scriptures. If a devil by long study 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 251 

had invented a situation which should stand be- 
fore the world as a bitter mockery of all religion, 
his ingenuity could not have devised one more 
satisfactory for the purpose than this, where the 
people believe religious truth to be a revelation 
from God and at the same time pride them- 
selves upon the fact that this revelation is shut 
up from their understanding in an unknown 
tongue. 

When the Mission of the American Board was 
established at Constantinople seventy years ago, 
the stormy political agitations of the first quarter 
of the century had already partially shown a few 
men in the Eastern Church, both Armenians and 
Greeks, the depth of darkness in which they 
lived, and they had received some sympathetic 
suggestions from English clergymen. It re- 
quired only the opening of numerous mission 
schools, from 1840 to 1850, by men and women 
apt to teach, to arouse, and in the last twenty 
years to excite profoundly among all classes of 
the population that passion for information, 
which has radically modified the intellectual 
atmosphere of every sect in the empire, has be- 
gun to tear away veils of prejudice, and has 
resistlessly forced the American Missions in 
Turkey to abandon expectation of limiting their 
efforts to one method of evangelistic work. The 
people have found that there is such a thing as 
reading, and that it is good. They have dis- 
covered that the tree in the centre of the garden 



i$i Constantinople 

is the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and 
they are determined to partake of its fruit. 

This strange passionate outburst of the desire 
to learn, leads people who until a few years ago 
were sunk in densest ignorance, and who still 
distrust Western religious ideas, to reach out en- 
treating hands toward the West for its hoarded 
stores of experience and knowledge. Very good, 
we may say, let the Greek and Armenian writers, 
let the Mohammedans educated in Europe, rise 
to the occasion and give these people what they 
need. It is true that within the last thirty years 
the beginnings of a literary revival have ap- 
peared among all of these peoples. But this 
movement is yet uncertain and groping in its 
aim. As yet there are no writers in Turkey who 
can instruct the people. They do not know what 
the people need. 

On the whole the Greeks of Turkey are better 
equipped in this respect than any other class of 
Turkish subjects. They have the rapidly de- 
veloping writers of Athens to rely upon. 

For the Mohammedans there are two centres 
of book-work in Constantinople besides the one 
already described in the street of the book- 
writers' guild. One of these centres of intellec- 
tual culture is the long, heavily vaulted street in 
the bazars next to the shoe-market. The stalls 
offer the stranger a perennial puzzle as to how 
their contents can be used. The books lie flat on 
the shelves in piles. The sole aim of their arrange- 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 153 

ment seems to be to reverse the customs of the 
West ; for the back of a book is always turned 
toward the back of the shelves and the book- 
seller for his convenience has scrawled the title 
across the surface offered by the exposed edge 
of the pages. 

The confusion of these piles of books recalls 
the remark of a book-loving old Pasha who once 
told me that his library was the eighth wonder of 
the world ; for no living man could ever find any 
book in it. " But then," he added " though you 
may not find the sugar you came to seek, you 
will find honey, which is quite as good." When 
one comes to examine the contents of these shops, 
one finds little of either sugar or honey. Those 
heavy stone vaults are the very fortress of the 
ancient and intolerant Islam. They contain some 
fine manuscripts of the ancient Persian poets. 
But their main treasures are the great commen- 
taries and collections of sayings of the prophet, 
the logic and the philosophy, and the history and 
the science, which go to make up the library of 
the Mohammedan theological student, and which 
form the last lurking ground of the Ptolemaic 
system of astronomy, and of the rule of the 
thumb system of Chronology and of the stilted 
and unintelligible in literary style. Nothing that 
shall move the people will ever come out of those 
book shops of the bazars. 

The other centre for Mohammedan literature 
is in the broad street that leads to the Sublime 



254 Constantinople 

Porte, where the works of modern Turkish writ- 
ers are offered to Turkish readers by enterprising 
publishers who for the most part are Armenians. 
The books here are generally issued in the form 
of thin, little pamphlets, bought by the public at 
from two to five cents apiece, and frequently 
forming parts of some extensive work. The 
show windows are attractive ; for Turkish letters 
lend themselves to decoration. But the con- 
tents of the shops are commonly beneath 
contempt. 

Half of the stock in trade is composed of ro- 
mances of real life, of the class which has made 
the French novel typical of vulgarity. The re- 
mainder of the stock is about equally divided be- 
tween Mohammedan apologetics and school 
books written with a view to win government 
recognition to the author through skill in drag- 
ging laudations of the Ottoman State into the 
most unexpected places in scientific discussion. 
Moreover the authors are still much hampered by 
belief that the ancients had all knowledge, though 
they are dazzled by the brilliance of the French 
authors who have been the school-masters of 
their style. They still grope for a legitimate 
field. Nevertheless a point in Constantinople to 
be watched with hopeful interest is that group of 
dusty, tawdry bookshops in the Avenue of the 
Sublime Porte. 

As to the Armenian book-men, much that de- 
scribes the modern Turkish writers describes 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 255 

them. They have upon their shelves the solemn 
writings of the Venetian and Viennese monks 
which some of those can understand who are rich 
enough to pay the enormous prices charged. 
The rest of the books are at best shabby com- 
pilations of half truths half understood: of phi- 
losophy which makes self-interest the Supreme 
Good and the arbiter of morals, of science which 
has found everything except a place for the 
Creator, and especially of romances whose gilded 
vice is the sole human interest appreciated by 
their authors. 

We can find no excuse in the condition of na- 
tive literature in Turkey to urge for any failure 
on the part of the Mission to seize its oppor- 
tunity for literary leadership in Turkey. But 
let it not be supposed that this field has been 
wholly neglected at Constantinople. The mis- 
sionaries there have done a vast amount of valu- 
able work in this direction. When the earliest 
American missionaries were sent into Turkey 
their first task was the learning of some of the 
languages of the country. This could only be 
done by the use of grammars and dictionaries in 
Latin, French or Italian. 

It was while still learning the languages of 
the country that those first missionaries laid 
plans for printing books which the common 
people could understand. The people seemed 
most to need access to the Bible, and so the 
missionaries set themselves as soon as possible to 



156 Constantinople 

translating the Bible into modern Greek, modern 
Armenian, and common Turkish. In this they 
were opposed by the higher clergy who were 
naturally jealous of such interference with their 
functions as the sole channel of communica- 
tion between God and the people. They were 
also opposed by the common people, who thought 
that a man willing to translate those sacred 
words makes light of the inspiration of the Bible. 
The clergy, who controlled all the schools, would 
not help to teach the people to read the new 
translation. So while this work was in prog- 
ress the missionaries also had to make books to 
help the people to read and understand the Bible. 

The work of printing and publishing is thus 
separated into two classes. The publishing of 
the Bible falls within the limited sphere of Bible 
Societies. It had been begun by the British and 
Foreign Bible Society in Turkey before American 
missionaries went there, and has since been 
carried on generally at the joint expense of the 
British and American Bible Societies. The work 
of publishing school books, helps to understand 
the Bible (without which the work of the Bible 
Societies in such lands fails of full fruit), tracts, 
Sunday school lessons, and other religious litera- 
ture, is the class of work which falls to the 
Mission Press. This work is carried on by the 
American Mission in the Bible House at Con- 
stantinople by the side of the Bible Societies. 

It may be proper to note that while the print- 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 257 

ing of the Scriptures in Turkey is carried on by 
the Bible Societies, they have constantly relied 
on missionaries to do the work of translation. 
Missionaries have done this important work for 
the peoples of Turkey, and the use made of the 
Bible by the people is shown by the fact that it 
has influenced the whole literary style of writers 
in Armenian and in Bulgarian. 

The story of the Turkish translation of the 
Bible is worth telling separately. Somewhere 
about the year 1650 a Turkish official named AH 
Bey with the advice of a Dutch gentleman con- 
nected with the diplomatic service at Constanti- 
nople, translated the New Testament into Turk- 
ish. Whether he did this out of mere love for lit- 
erary work or because he thought it would benefit 
his people to read the Bible, is not clear. He gave 
the finished manuscript to his Dutch fiiend, and 
the diplomat, not knowing what else to do with 
it, sent it to the University at Leyden, in hopes 
that it would be published there. But it was 
put into the library of the University as a curi- 
osity, which it certainly was, and lay there for- 
gotten and harmless for about one hundred and 
fifty years. Then a Russian nobleman who had 
been in Turkey chanced to rummage among the 
treasures of the Library, and discovered this 
manuscript. He at once made known his dis- 
covery and tried to get it published for circula- 
tion in Turkey. 

By this time the British and Foreign Bible 



258 Constantinople 

Society had been organized. And so it came 
about that the first Turkish version of the New 
Testament, published for that Society at Paris in 
181 9, was the work of a Mohammedan, revised 
and improved by Russian and French linguists. 
This cosmopolitan version was imperfect, and 
was quickly revised. But that first version has 
always been in the hands of later translators. 
The Turkish book language has much changed 
in the last fifty years, through exclusion of need- 
less Arabic and Persian forms of expression. 
This has compelled several revisions of the 
Turkish Bible. The present Turkish version, 
which has taken the place of all previous trans- 
lations, is the work of a Committee composed of 
missionaries of the American Board and a mis- 
sionary of the Church Missionary Society of 
England, assisted by native Turkish scholars. It 
is now printed in three editions, one with Arabic, 
one with Armenian, and one with Greek letters, 
the actual words of all three being identical. In 
meeting the expense of this great work Great 
Britain and the United States have stood side by 
side. 

The American missionaries all over Turkey 
long acted as the agents of the Bible Societies to 
induce the people to buy and read the Bible in 
these different languages of the people. By long 
and patient effort they have at length succeeded 
in one of the objects with which they began their 
work in Turkey. It is fair to claim that they 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 259 

have at last convinced the people of the Eastern 
Church, both Greeks and Armenians that as 
Christians they ought to read and understand 
the Bible instead of merely worshipping it on 
the altar, like any other relic of antiquity. This 
success alone, by the way, is enough to justify 
Missions in Turkey. 

The Bible House, where the preparation of 
books is done, is a monument to the prophetic 
vision and the energy of one man. The late Rev. 
Dr. Isaac G. Bliss, when agent at Constantinople 
of the American Bible Society, conceived the idea 
of such a building, was thrilled by foresight of 
the influence that might emanate from it, and 
overcame all obstacles to its construction. He 
raised the necessary funds, single-handed, and 
literally stood upon the works until the last stone 
had been placed in position. The building is 
owned by Trustees chartered by the State of 
New York, whose duty it is to see that the prop- 
erty fosters use of the Bible in Turkey. 

After the modern Turkish dwellings upon the 
site had been removed, excavations for the foun- 
dations of the Bible House brought to light a 
hall, of the Byzantine period, whose vaulted roof 
is supported by columns marked with the Greek 
cross. Hard by, were the massive foundations of 
a small Christian church whose stamped bricks 
seem to fix the date of construction at the very 
beginning of the Sixth Century. With part of 
its walls resting upon that old church foundation, 



260 Constantinople 

the modern Bible House has been erected by men 
from the West upon ground consecrated by the 
prayers of the Eastern Church of the period be- 
fore the schism. Upon this holy ground the Bible 
Societies and the Mission of the American Board 
are privileged to carry on their work of publica- 
tion. 

Besides books, the Mission of the American 
Board publishes a weekly family newspaper and 
a monthly illustrated paper for children in two or 
three languages. It sells its works in all parts 
of the Turkish Empire, in Persia, in Russia, and 
even to Armenians in America and India. In 
fact for all the missions in Turkey which use 
either Turkish or Armenian the press at the 
Bible House is the sole source of supply of mod- 
ern Christian literature. The tracts which the 
Mission has published with money generously 
granted by the Religious Tract Society of Lon- 
don and by the American Tract Society, are given 
away to people who show a desire to read them. 
But the books from the Mission press are never 
given away. In the last twenty years sales of 
books and papers have brought into the Mission 
treasury $116,000 which has been used again for 
new publications. 

The average American, dwelling in the midst 
of a stream of books, magazines and newspapers, 
which threatens to overwhelm him, can hardly 
realize a state of being which includes neither 
book, nor magazine, nor public library. Yet it is 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 261 

this condition of affairs with which we have 
to reckon in considering the influence of a 
Mission press at Constantinople. Its issues go 
where no missionary can go, and touch hearts 
and enlighten minds by their silent appeal in 
the privacy of the home. What the missionary 
might seek in vain to accomplish in person, they 
do. The missionary cannot give instruction to 
the clergy of the Eastern Church. But Bishops 
and priests in both of the great branches of that 
Church use the commentaries and Bible Diction- 
aries and Bible Hand Books published by the 
American mission. A missionary might seek in 
vain to preach in Greek or Armenian churches, 
or to advise the clergy to give their people 
Gospel sermons. But priests who would not for 
worlds admit evangelical leanings have often de- 
lighted their people by using (without credit) 
sermons issued by the Mission press, while it is 
from such issues that laymen in the Eastern 
Church learn what their priests ought to teach, 
and clamour for it. When appeal is made, even 
by a book, to the spiritual nature, response 
follows. 

Proof is abundant of the efficiency of these 
books in shattering ancient barriers of supersti- 
tion and prejudice and in permeating the mongrel 
populations of the Empire with knowledge of the 
Bible. 

One of the achievements of the Mission press 
at Constantinople is its success in firmly planting 



<lSi Constantinople 

in Turkey the idea of preparing books especially 
for children. The earliest real primers for little 
children in Turkey and also in Greece, were 
prepared by missionaries of the American Board. 
At first the people looked upon them with sus- 
picion. The books seemed infected with magic, 
because children not only learned quickly to 
read them but understood what they read ; an 
unheard of and incomprehensible thing. But 
after a time, arithmetics, geographies, and 
grammars published by the Mission were found 
to save months and years of the time of a child 
besides interesting pupils by an attractive style 
and by well made pictures. At last Greeks, Ar- 
menians, Turks, and Jews had to open schools, 
modelled after those of the Americans and using 
the books written by the Americans or copied 
from them. Merely copying the books at first, 
the native publishers have now grasped the idea 
and issue some quite good school books of their 
own, illustrated by pictures furnished by the 
missionaries. The opening of educational privi- 
leges to women and children in this way, is a 
work for humanity whose important conse- 
quences will never cease to be felt in Turkey. 
Another class of achievements of this press 
may be shown by this incident: A Greek mer- 
chant in the interior wanted to know what is 
going on in the world. He took a Greek daily 
paper published in Constantinople but found that 
its information was ill-chosen and often incorrect, 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 163 

and its editorial comments were misleading 
through ignorance. So he thought to try the 
weekly newspaper published by the American 
Mission, of which the news columns were in 
repute among both Mohammedans and Ar- 
menians for accuracy. Someone warned the 
merchant that this paper had pernicious views on 
religion, and that he would have to avoid look- 
ins at its religious articles, if he did not wish 
to be perverted in spite of himself. But he sub- 
scribed to the paper. 

For some weeks he read only the two pages de- 
voted to political news, and carefully burned 
the rest. Then one clay he saw an article on the 
telephone on one of the other pages. After 
that he did not burn the paper until he had read 
its notes on current science. He noticed re- 
ligious articles with a shudder until one day his 
eyes fell on the sentence " If you are a Christian, 
be a Christian." That seemed sensible, and he 
read the whole article, though his conscience ob- 
jected. To his amazement it contained no at- 
tacks on his own Church or his own faith, but 
was simply an urgent appeal for Christians to 
know and follow Jesus Christ. From that day 
the merchant read the whole paper every week. 
After some time the editor was surprised by a 
letter from this merchant enclosing money to pay 
for six copies of the paper to be sent for one 
year to various friends of his. The final out- 
come was the conversion of the Greek merchant, 



264 Constantinople 

who is now a most earnest Christian worker. 
One of the most eloquent of the Armenian Prot- 
estant preachers in Turkey, ascribes his con- 
version to the reading of two books published 
in Armenian by the Mission : " Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," and D'Aubigne's " History of the Refor- 
mation." 

Probably the reader, before this, has queried 
what propriety included this work in a chapter 
with such a title, if the Mission Press is doing 
so much at Constantinople. That press has done 
good work in the past, and a certain number of 
books exist in stock for future use. But no new 
books are being printed. The churches at home 
seem to have half-forgotten the enormous value 
of literature as a tool for demolishing old bar- 
riers. The educational branch of the work in 
Turkey is borne in mind. Fifty or more men 
and women specially trained for that branch of 
effort are cheerfully supported in Turkey. But 
few seem to remember the need to maintain 
trained specialists in literature in connection 
with the Mission. Yet the school, excepting those 
of the highest grade, where all the instruction 
is in English, cannot do its work without books 
in the languages of the country. Indeed it may 
be questioned whether it is right to awaken the 
mind by education, if we are to neglect provision 
of books by which readers can grow. 

The conditions of efficient work by the press at 
Constantinople are fulfilled so far as the state 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 16$ 

of the people is concerned, and during- the period 
while native writers are trying to fit themselves 
to supply the demands of the people, the Mission 
has the field of letters largely at its command. 
Surely the powers of darkness overreached them- 
selves in producing a condition which forces the 
missionary to begin his work with teaching men 
to read. This one fact unexpectedly gives the 
missionary priority of occupancy of the field of 
literature in almost every country which he 
enters. 

There is Providential importance in this fact. 
God designs the missionary to keep this leader- 
ship in literature in his own hands. By diligent 
use of printing facilities the modern revival of 
letters throughout Asia will take place under 
Christian auspices. Yet when we turn to the 
single publishing establishment of the Missions 
in Turkey we see none of the fiery activity which 
its importance demands. In place of applying 
its tremendous power to the problems of these 
awakening races, the printing apparatus at Con- 
stantinople is crippled for lack of funds ! Twenty 
years ago six missionary specialists using differ- 
ent languages, found full occupation at Con- 
stantinople in literary work. Now two veterans 
only can be afforded for it. Then $26,000 
annually was at the disposal of the Publication 
Committee. Now an allowance of $9,000 only, is 
available for all the printing done in three lan- 
guages, and of this one-half comes from the 



i66 Constantinople 

people of the country in the form of receipts from 
book sales, while a third of the remainder is a 
contribution from the Religious Tract Society of 
London. 

Meanwhile not a week passes without inquiry 
at the Bible House for new books suitable for 
the family circle. People belonging- to both of 
the great branches of the Eastern Church come, 
saying that only from the mission press do books 
issue which interest the children, and can be read 
by them without harm. " But," they add, " our 
children have read all the books which you have 
published." What a situation is this ! Where a 
boy has read, by the time that he is twelve years 
old, every morally pure book which has been 
published within his mental range, someone 
has sinned against God in neglecting the duty of 
providing for his Christian culture. 

There is full opportunity for circulating from 
Constantinople clean, and stimulating books 
among the people of the Eastern Church. The 
better class of these people are ready to clutch 
at all good books, throbbing with thought, even 
though published by foreigners belonging to the 
American Missions. Listen to what some of 
them say. An evangelical Armenian layman 
writes : " What are we going to do with the chil- 
dren? They have nothing to read. The whole 
collection of books now existing suited to chil- 
dren consists of but three or four volumes. The 
strength of the missionary enterprise rests on 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 267 

its use of opportunities to shape the thoughts and 
lives of the children. We must have material 
to direct their minds." 

An Armenian evangelical pastor says: " Once 
the trouble with our people was that they had no 
appetite for books. Now they have appetite but 
no food." 

An eminent bishop of the Eastern Church says : 
" We have men who can write infidel books, but 
we have none who can write Christian books. 
That you must do. The Armenian presses of 
Venice and Vienna publish Roman Catholic lit- 
erature, but do not help in the struggle against 
ungodliness. Mohammedans publish attacks on 
Christianity, and all the native Christians look to 
the missionaries to answer such attacks for they 
themselves cannot. Your mission is weak when 
it is weak in books." 

An Armenian Professor in a large College, 
says : ' The Armenians are divided into two 
classes, the infidels and the undecided. What 
there is for the undecided to read in order that 
they may fix their minds, is a mass of infidel 
writings. That is practically all. It is abso- 
lutely necessary to increase the amount of Chris- 
tian literature in order that the people may 
understand what true religion is, and in order 
to give preachers and others the latest material 
for answering the loose and impudent claims of 
infidel writers." 

The point of this whole discussion of the half- 



268 Constantinople 

forgotten uses of the press at Constantinople is 
that while there is now opportunity, the oppor- 
tunity will not wait. For schools of every de- 
nomination all over the country are pouring out 
partially educated young people who demand 
hooks to read. To these every printed word that 
comes from Constantinople seems like a drop 
from the fountain of truth. The very simplicity 
of their ardous to use their new powers threatens 
to make the press the instrument of their de- 
struction. The vendors of the pander's literature 
have already found that there is money in this 
situation. These rubbish-mongers are already 
hasting to turn into Oriental languages the re- 
jected remainders of the literary garbage heaps 
of France. 

No argument for action can increase the com- 
pulsive force of the facts as to such a catastrophe 
as a suspension of publication work at the mis- 
sion press at Constantinople. The missionaries 
have been largely the agency for extending the 
knowledge of reading through the country. 
Before any one had thought of doing it they pre- 
pared books that the common people could under- 
stand. It is clear that a like opportunity cannot 
again occur if apathy or lack of foresight per- 
mits the apostles of sensuality to wrest preemi- 
nence in the field of literature from their hands. 

The other department of the half-forgotten 
agency in Constantinople for elevation of the 
character of the people is the pulpit. This in- 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 269 

eludes all efforts by men or women to reach and 
arouse the dormant sense of need for communion 
with God, which is characteristic of the whole 
human race. 

When the missionaries of the American Board 
went to Constantinople in 1831, they had no idea 
of interfering with the Eastern Church. They 
hoped to have the aid of the clergy in their ef- 
forts to enlighten the people. For a time they 
had this aid. But when it appeared that people 
cannot be enlightened without coming out of 
darkness, the clergy turned their bitterest de- 
nunciations against these disturbers of the sleep 
of ages. A Greek bishop, speaking to an Eng- 
lish friend, once said : " We want light, but the 
light that these people (the American mission- 
aries) bring is a fire to burn us up." He would 
have the light withdrawn because where there is 
light there is heat. Something of the same feel- 
ing brought persecution upon those Armenians 
who, in 1840 to 1845, na d learned to read the 
Bible and to prize its searching words. 

An intolerant Armenian Patriarch proclaimed 
a " boycott " upon all Armenians who should re- 
fuse to abandon relations with the American mis- 
sionaries and their heresies. For the excom- 
munication hurled at these people in the early 
forties was really a boycott. Under the Turkish 
system the police is required to aid the Patriarch 
in matters of discipline. The men of evangelical 
view's were forbidden to buy bread or to sell 



27° Constantinople 

goods, to marry or be buried, and numbers of 
them were arrested when their shops had been 
closed, and were sent as " without visible means 
of support " into exile in Asia Minor. After 
some time the British Embassy and the Prussian 
Legation took up the case of these people and 
secured from the Porte an edict that Protestants 
should not be molested on account of their re- 
ligious faith. 

Now a curious thing happened. When an Ar- 
menian was persecuted as a " Gospel heretic " and 
applied to the police for protection, he was asked 
" What are you ? " Naturally he would answer " I 
am an Armenian." The police official would reply, 
" If you are an Armenian, you must obey the 
commands of your bishop. I have orders which 
concern Protestants only as to protection against 
the interference of the bishops." The man would 
then enter into explanations and the persecuted 
one would declare himself a Protestant, which he 
had never thought of doing until the Turk sug- 
gested it, for the sake of protection in the ordi- 
nary civil rights of man. Thus the list of Prot- 
estants at the Turkish police headquarters was 
opened and grew. 

By this curious and unexpected requirement of 
the Turkish method of administering the affairs 
of Christian subjects of the Sultan, the " Prot- 
estant community " in Turkey was formed. It 
is now a recognized body, with about 100,000 
members in all parts of the empire, and a Civil 



A Half- Forgotten Agency 271 

Head at Constantinople who communicates with 
the Porte on all matters relating to the civil rights 
of its members, whether Presbyterians, Baptists, 
Congregationalists, Methodists, Anglicans, or of 
other denominations. The official name of this 
body is " Protestant." But its members do not 
like that name. It has no pertinence and was 
chosen by the Turkish Government merely be- 
cause at the time of the persecution the Ambassa- 
dors of the Protestant Powers of Europe spoke 
of the people as Protestants. The people, 
whether orginally Greek, Armenian or Jew, call 
themselves " Gospel Christians " and it is better 
that they should hold to this name, for their atti- 
tude toward the Eastern Church is not one of 
hostility. They did not come out; they were 
cast out of its fold. 

There are about 1200 of these native Protes- 
tants in Constantinople. Three churches have 
been organized among them, which manage their 
own ecclesiastical affairs independently of for- 
eign control. The influence of these " Gospel 
Christians " must be reckoned upon in any sum- 
ming up of forces that tend for the substitution 
of the service of God for the service of self in this 
place. Besides the native " Gospel Churches " 
in Constantinople there are congregations of 
English speaking Protestants connected with the 
chapel of the British Embassy and the Crimean 
memorial church in Pera, with the Union Evan- 
gelical Church which worships at the chapel of 



1J2 Constantinople 

the Dutch Legation in Pera, with an Anglican 
church at Kadikeuy, the ancient Chalcedon, and 
with a little Union Church of English and Ameri- 
cans at Bebek on the Bosphorus. There is also a 
German Protestant congregation at Bebek, and a 
more important one under the charge of the 
Chaplain of the German Embassy in Pera. All 
of these efforts to secure the spiritual culture of 
foreign residents of Constantinople are to be re- 
garded as one in purpose and interest with mis- 
sions among the natives, because people who do 
not know Christ learn of Him more influentially 
through the lives and conduct of his followers 
than through the most eloquent of sermons. It 
is entirely possible that an English or Swiss or 
German merchant, who is of incorruptible char- 
acter, and who lives in Constantinople without 
thought of what is beyond the Bosphorus may 
exert a Christianizing influence in Bagdad 
through the return to that place of natives who 
have admired the Christian life of such business 
men. 

Among these forces for the reform of life and 
character will be reckoned, too, every one of the 
foreign missionary establishments in Constanti- 
nople alluded to in the last chapter. As a type 
of the influence which such establishments may 
wield the work of the mission of the American 
Board may be described, since it is one of the 
oldest and largest of these institutions in the city. 

After seeing the Colleges and the Bible House, 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 273 

the traveller sometimes leaves Constantinople 
with the idea that he has looked into all the enter- 
prises of the American missionaries there, and 
that they do educational work alone. As a 
remedy for this idea the visitor has to be taken 
to see sights on Sunday. A missionary calls at 
the hotel at nine o'clock on Sunday morning, 
and takes the stranger to a chapel about two 
blocks away. There for the first time in his life 
the visitor hears " Praise God from whom all 
blessings flow," sung in Armenian to the tune of 
Old Hundred, and then listens to a prayer in 
Armenian offered by the preacher. He is hur- 
ried away from this chapel, however, and taken 
to another two blocks farther along. Here an- 
other native congregation is assembled, and an- 
other pastor is in the midst of a service in the 
Greek language. There the visitor hears for the 
first time, perhaps, the Greek Testa*nent read 
with its natural pronunciation. Thence again he 
is hurried a mile and a half to the Bible House, 
where in a neat chapel another Greek preacher is 
just finishing a very eloquent sermon. The bene- 
diction is pronounced and the congregation dis- 
perses. 

The visitor wishes to go, too, when he discov- 
ers that an entirely different set of people are be- 
ginning to come into the chapel. Before he 
knows what is happening a new congregation has 
filled the place. It is composed of all classes of 
people, from the professional man and the mer- 



274 Constantinople 

chant to the day-labourer and the donkey driver, 
and from the lady in silk to the tired handker- 
chief painter in her faded cotton dress. Then he 
hears for the first time a sermon in Turkish, to 
which the people pay profound attention, and 
which a Turkish officer or two also come in to 
hear. By their tunes he recognizes the hymns in 
Turkish, sung by every man, woman and child, 
roaring at full lung power. He further under- 
stands without the services of an interpreter, the 
collection, and drops a gold piece on the plate, to 
the vast amazement of the coppers and five-cent 
pieces into the midst of which it falls. 

By the time that this service is finished the vis- 
itor is tired and wants to go back to the hotel for 
dinner. But the missionary says firmly but 
gently, " You have come out to see the missionary 
work in the city and you ought to finish seeing it." 
So they go on another half mile into the very 
heart of the old part of the city, and come to a 
shabby old shed which they enter, and see empty 
seats for some two hundred people, with a few of 
the congregation of Armenians which has just 
been dismissed, lingering to finish their chat be- 
fore they go home. Near by, they enter a great 
stone house, which the visitor is told is the Gedik 
Pasha Mission House of the Woman's Board of 
Missions. Some American ladies receive them 
cordially and give them a lunch at railroad speed, 
because Sunday School begins at half-past twelve. 

After lunch the whole of the Mission House is 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 275 

a bee-hive for a couple of hours. There is no 
room in it large enough to seat all the people at 
once, so that for the preliminary exercises all sit 
as they can in adjoining rooms with doors wide 
open. The visitor is taken through the house to 
see the various classes ; the old men and the 
young men, the old women and the young women, 
and the boys graded by themselves and the girls 
by themselves, and the infant classes with their 
pictures and their frequent hymns. He is shown, 
also, the further subdivisions made necessary by 
the fact that some of the people who come know 
Greek only, and some, Armenian only, and some, 
Turkish only. And he is caused to note that the 
work is not done by the missionary ladies alone, 
but that natives have come forward to do the 
work of the teacher. 

Right there is an illustration of the manner in 
which the missionary work does its most effective 
and permanent good service. It is in multiplying 
workers, so that by the grace of God the single 
labourers become a hundred or a thousand because 
the Gospel cannot be hid nor can it abide alone 
when it has fallen into the sincere heart. He 
sees also an illustration of the capabilities of this 
city as a place in which to do the work of the 
missionary. Not half of the people in the Sab- 
bath School at the Mission House are permanent 
residents of Constantinople. The other half are 
from distant portions of the country to which 
they will take what is taught them here in this 



276 Constantinople 

Mission House, to brood over the lesson until it 
causes at least some improvement in life. As 
these facts are pointed out to the visitor, he can 
not but feel enthusiasm when the reckoning of 
attendance is given him, and he finds that about 
three hundred people will attend the Bible lessons 
at the Mission House almost any Sunday. 

Perhaps the stranger is more than satisfied 
with his morning's work. But he is not allowed 
to stop his travels about the great city. He is 
made to go back to the Bible House again that 
he may see there at three o'clock a meeting of 
the Young Men's Christian Association managed 
by a clear-headed young Armenian. From there 
again he is taken across the city to a district near 
the old harbour of the Wheat Merchants on the 
Sea of Marmora, where he finds another congre- 
gation of Greeks, coming down stairs from an 
upper room which serves as a chapel at Koum- 
kapou, and where he sits a while to hear the 
missionary preach in Turkish to another congre- 
gation which collects as the Greeks disperse. 

" Well, you have had quite a day's work," says 
the missionary, as they turn at length toward the 
hotel once more. " It has been rather a busy 
day," says the visitor, ruefully, for he feels that 
he has had a surfeit of missions, and has walked 
almost twenty miles besides. He is glad enough 
that the time is short when the missionary goes 
on to apologize because time does not allow him 
to be taken to other congregations in the city 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 277 

connected with the Mission. One of them is 
in Hasskeuy on the Golden Horn, another is in 
Scutari, on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, 
and not far from that great hospital where Flor- 
ence Nightingale did her work as a nurse during 
the Crimean war. Besides these there are also 
an English service for the students of the Girls' 
College in Scutari, another English service for 
the students of Robert College on the Bosphorus, 
a congregation of some forty Armenians at the 
house of Dr. Washburn for whom Mrs. Wash- 
burn always sees that a preacher is provided, and 
another little congregation of as many more 
Armenians and Greeks together at one of the 
districts farther up the Bosphorus. 

The visitor is quite willing to admit that the 
work of the American Board's mission in Con- 
stantinople is not solely educational vork. He 
does not need to be dragged about to see all 
these other congregations. And in the evening 
as he thinks it over at his hotel, tired as he is with 
gadding, he is glad that there are men and 
women who are not too tired with the labours of 
the week to use their day of rest in trying to aid 
the spiritual development of this medley of 
peoples. For at this meeting point of the con- 
tinents this kind of work, if properly maintained 
must end in teaching men and women over large 
expanses of territory to know Jesus Christ, must 
attract them to follow Him, and must inspire 
them to do the same kind of work for their 



278 Constantinople 

fellows in all the places where they live or to 
which they go for business or pleasure. The 
work of the mission is the slow work of influ- 
encing the roots of character. But let the friends 
of Jesus Christ in the western lands support this 
work as it should be supported, and we shall 
begin to see that the awakening of the Eastern 
Church from its long lethargy has begun. 

The missionary does not merely preach to the 
people. He seeks to win a place in their hearts 
by all means in his power. 

Among the motley crowds in the streets of 
Constantinople are seen great numbers of coarsely 
dressed villagers, in blue cotton clothing with 
a bright handkerchief perhaps around the head 
and a gaily coloured shawl wound about the 
waist to keep together the loose and unfitted 
clothing. Some of these are Kourds, who are 
the burden bearers, and the ditch-diggers of the 
city, and some are Armenians, who are the 
masons and carpenters, and the hod-carriers of 
every enterprise in building houses. All such 
have come from their homes at the ends of the 
Empire, often plodding on foot for two or three 
weeks to reach a sea-port, and then crowding the 
decks of the steamers with their bedding and 
their food bags because they are unable to pay 
the cost of even a steerage ticket. In the city 
they live in masses together, six or eight men 
hiring a room and making it their home during 
four or five years while they are earning enough 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 279 

money to make it worth while for them to return 
again to visit their families. 

As another hranch of the missionary work in 
this city, skilled Christian workers (when there is 
money to support them) are always going about 
among the journeymen labourers to learn where 
they are from, to help them keep in touch with 
their distant homes, to show them how to send 
money safely to their families, and as oppor- 
tunity offers, to give them Bible instruction, or to 
gather them together in the evening for religious 
services. The work among these rough villagers 
is of considerable importance ; many times such 
workmen, converted in Constantinople have re- 
turned to their homes in obscure hamlets, there 
to give to others the light which has come into 
their lives. Then by and by when a missionary 
happens to visit that village, he is astounded to 
find a group of a score or so of people studying 
the Bible, and trying to follow its principles, to 
the dismay and perplexity of their priest, who 
has never before met the phenomenon of any one 
wishing to know the Bible, and is not quite sure 
what he ought to do about it. So when a 
preacher has been set to teach the masons and 
carpenters and ditchers of Constantinople a train 
has been laid which may explode barriers of 
ignorance and superstition in scores of towns and 
villages in the interior of the Empire. 

The simple sale of the Bible in the streets of 
the city is another work which tells in the same 



280 Constantinople 

direction. Cities have their peculiarities of sound 
and of odour. The peculiarity of Constantinople 
is that its din is the din of human voices far more 
than in any Western city, for people shout the 
attractions of their wares as they go about to 
sell them, while certain main streets, only, have 
carriages to rattle over pavements. The shoe- 
maker shouts on the streets his " Felt slippers 
for a quarter." The market-gardener carries 
his stock about in a big basket on his back, and 
uses the full power of his lungs to let people 
know the beauty of his tomatoes or radishes or 
lettuce or green peppers. Confectioner and pop- 
corn man, and second-hand clothes dealer, and 
baker, all travel about the streets declaiming the 
virtues of their particular wares, and even the 
auctioneer moves rapidly by, holding up the arti- 
cle which he wishes to sell, and bawling out the 
sum already bid, that he may find a better offer. 
Out of the midst of the turmoil of voices which is 
characteristic of Constantinople one hears now 
and then the cry of " Cheap Books ; the Holy 
Book " uttered by a man who has a leather bag 
on his back and his samples in his hand. He is 
one of the colporteurs of the Bible Society. After 
a long chaffering, such as is inseparable in the 
East from a sale of any kind, a man buys a Bible 
or a Testament, or even a single Gospel. The 
colporteur makes it a point to see that man every 
two or three days thereafter, for he knows that 
the purchaser will be reading the book in his 



A Half- Forgotten Agency 281 

shop to pass the time, and will have many ques- 
tions to ask. Such humble workers are an effect- 
ive instrumentality for scattering ideas among 
people who are not wont to have ideas, and the 
ideas which they scatter are of Christian Truth. 
The echoes of their work also are often heard in 
distant parts of the Empire, for nothing is done 
in a corner in Constantinople which is not pro- 
claimed on the housetops elsewhere. 

Women now form a majority of the American 
Board's missionary force at Constantinople. Nor 
does their weight of influence rest upon their 
numbers alone. They are the ones in most inti- 
mate relations with the people of the great un- 
taught mass. In the Greek and Armenian houses 
of the poorer classes, the women, with worn 
faces and dishevelled hair, will be toiling over 
embroideries, or painting coloured designs upon 
handkerchiefs, surrounded by noisy and un- 
washed children, and engaged in gossip or in 
altercation with the opposite neighbour or with 
the husband if he happens to be out of work. To 
such houses comes the missionary woman. She 
always uses the aid of the Greek or Armenian 
woman whom she has trained as a visitor of the 
sick or as a Bible reader. Whole districts are 
moved in some degree by the power of that one 
kindly voice. I have seen her influence in leading 
the tired mother to look to Him who gives rest 
to the weary and heavy laden, or in putting into 
the father's mind some new idea of what he can 



i$2 Constantinople 

do to make his house a refuge, or in softening - the 
heart of a great hulking boy who has thought- 
lessly added to the burdens of the weary mother. 
I have seen those women lifting with their own 
hands, as it were, the people to better ideas of 
what life really is. Sometimes it is by simply 
opening the Bible and showing how it is a guide 
for every day use. Sometimes it is by practieal 
illustration of strength through a life of prayer. 
Sometimes by a word of tonic power to a dis- 
couraged working man, sometimes by medicine or 
cheery comfort for the sick, sometimes by the 
application of a quick wit to the perplexities and 
anxieties of the family, and sometimes by the 
actual relief given to the hungry. Everywhere 
the influence of these missionary women is help- 
ful and uplifting for the women and their 
families. 

They organize and superintend and teach com- 
mon schools and kindergartens. Whether in this 
common school work in old Stamboul, or in the 
College for Girls at Scutari the missionary 
women strongly draw their scholars to admire 
and to seek likeness to the great model and ideal 
of Christian character. A girl once taught in one 
of these schools is always the devoted friend of 
her teachers, and this fact, alone, ensures to her 
something at least of steady growth ; for she will 
be borne in mind and will receive kindly words 
and helpful suggestion, by letter if she has re- 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 283 

moved to a distant place, up to the very end of 
her life. 

Methods devised by the missionary women 
attract in the Sunday school. They inspire the 
native men and women who help as teachers so 
that none shall go away from the Bible lesson 
without some new seed-thought fixed in their 
minds to grow and bear fruit in other scenes. 
One illustration of the pervading quality of their 
influence was furnished by their work at Con- 
stantinople after the massacre of 1896. Two 
thousand families were found to be destitute, 
having been bereaved, and also stripped of their 
household goods. Money to keep alive these 
sufferers quickly came from England and 
America, and the missionary ladies were at once 
in the midst of them. They sought out the 
needy ; they investigated and reported upon their 
real wants ; and they did hard work in distribut- 
ing clothing, food, and especially materials for 
work whereby broken families might support 
themselves. 

The attempt to encourage a despairing people 
to believe it worth while again to work for a 
living, to inspire them with energy to persist in 
the face of cold, dogged hostility that thought 
to thwart their efforts to find work, and finally 
to send to the ends of the earth in order to find 
market for the wares which the discouraged 
people began to produce, formed a steady drain 



284 Constantinople 

upon the sympathy and patience and ingenuity of 
all who engaged in the work. But through these 
and similar efforts a great deliverance from de- 
moralization and even death was made effective 
to a bewildered and ruined people. 

In this summary of general missionary effort 
at Constantinople we may see how varied in form 
and how beneficent and persuasive in effect it 
may be if it is impelled, not by sectarian narrow- 
ness, but by the broad purpose of seeking to let 
the people see the loveliness of Jesus Christ and 
their own need of Him. It needs no seer's vision 
to discover that work like this, supported by 
that of an uncontroversial but thoroughly Chris- 
tian press, has quite as much of influence on the 
life of the masses as the Christian College. It 
may give direction to the thoughts and tastes and 
aims of individuals through the whole immense 
region which looks to Constantinople for guidance 
in questions of thought and of taste. Shape the 
thoughts and the aims of individuals and you 
have done much to fix the destiny of the masses 
of which they are a part. 

Every improvement of general conditions of 
national life has begun with an enthusiast and a 
conviction. The one man who grasped a truth 
has made the fire of his devotion a means to 
lead his comrades to see and adopt it. The mis- 
sionary lost in the multitudes that fill the streets 
of Constantinople may be regarded as such an 
enthusiast. But he is no longer a lone voice cry- 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 285 

ing in a wilderness. The idea of abandoning for 
Christ's sake all self-seeking has found lodg- 
ment in many hearts. Many there are who are 
painfully striving to change the centre of gravity 
of their lives from self to the self-sacrificing- 
Jesus of Nazareth. These people will long need 
to be led on in Christian growth by the mission- 
ary, for heredity is not to be overcome save by 
slow and steady culture. But where the idea of 
devotion once becomes self-propagating through 
its adoption by others equally filled with its 
grandeur, a force as certain in its action as gravi- 
tation has become auxiliary to the missionary 
and will work after he is dead. If therefore the 
missionary work at this centre is not forgotten, 
but is kept up in full efficiency, we may be sure 
that the Gospel of Jesus Christ will again go 
thrilling through these lands whence, by the 
operation of the same rule, it once issued for its 
regenerating influence upon our western nations. 
Professor Henry Drummond once said of proj- 
ects for the evangelization of the great empires 
of the far East : " It is not to be done by casual 
sharp-shooters bringing down their men here 
and there, but by a carefully thought out attack 
upon central points — a patient siege, planned 
with all a military tactician's knowledge." The 
doctrine is not new. The earliest missionaries 
won the world by using the strategic value of 
cities of commanding influence. They began at 
Jerusalem, and they threw themselves into 



286 Constantinople 

Antioch and Ephesus and Corinth and Athens 
and Rome. 

The view which has been attempted of Con- 
stantinople and its problems has been incomplete 
if it has not shown that this principle applies to 
this city also. The dominating quality of this 
city must be recognized and missionary opera- 
tions there must be carried on with that careful 
foresight which alone commands results. There 
are 132 " Gospel churches " in Turkey. There 
are missionaries with their schools and preaching 
places in almost every province in the empire. 
The influence of these is great and hopeful. Yet 
they are but skirmishers and sharp-shooters in 
their relation to the enterprise at Constantinople. 
For do what they may their influence is contin- 
ually being combatted by the reports of those who 
have been to Constantinople and have seen that 
in the great city there is no pressing demand for 
men to live for Christ. So few are the mes- 
sengers of the Gospel that many neither see them 
nor hear of them during a long sojourn in the. 
capital. What they do hear and see is that the 
West believes in making money and drinking 
and carousing, and why should there be any care 
for the appeals of missionaries who dwell in 
country villages, far from the centre of power? 

Perhaps the home churches have half -forgotten 
the tremendous value of Christian influences in 
this city. One strong, fully equipped missionary 
there, may have an influence for Christ more 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 287 

wide-spread than that of five men of equal 
power whose voices never pass beyond the 
country town in which they live or at most the 
limits of the province in which they tour. For 
lack of funds the number of native evangelists 
connected with the mission of the American 
Board at Constantinople has steadily diminished. 
The number of missionaries is also gradually 
diminishing, and as their number diminishes 
their age increases. There is now no ordained 
missionary of the American Board in Constanti- 
nople who is less than sixty years of age, and 
one only of these is devoted to the work which 
we would class with City Missions. Fancy the 
hopefulness of a man's task who, at the age of 
well nigh threescore years and ten, should be 
given the work of overseeing and planning and 
furnishing much of the instruction of workers 
for the whole population of Manhattan Island 
besides preaching twice every Sunday ! 

This city mission work and press work at Con- 
stantinople is not one to be neglected, nor to be 
abandoned after our fathers have planted the 
seed in prayer and watered it with the sweat of 
their care-worn brows, nor to be allowed to lan- 
guish in the hope that the people of the soil will 
miraculously spring into power and save the 
Western Church the pain of long nurture of its 
Asiatic children. The city must be occupied in 
full force as a missionary centre with hearty 
cooperation between all denominations of Chris- 



288 Constantinople 

tians there living out their conception of the 
Master's life of love. 

When the traveller visits the mosque of St. 
Sophia the turbaned guide will lead him to a cer- 
tain point in one of the galleries, and will silently 
point to the centre of the half dome of the apse. 
As the eye becomes accustomed to the details of 
the modern arabesque painted on a ground of 
gold, the visitor will discover underneath the 
arabesque of the Muslims, and forming a richer 
and more brilliant portion of the shining 
groundwork, the outlines of a figure of heroic 
size, with flowing robes, with arms outstretched, 
and with a halo crowning the head. The figure 
is a mosaic worked into the substance of the 
wall as a leading feature in the ancient decoration 
of the church. The Mohammedan conquerors 
instead of destroying the figure merely hid it 
from the eyes of their own people by overlaying 
it with gold. But it is not hidden from eyes that 
know how to trace the slightly different tint of 
its gracious outlines. 

That figure which could not be hid by the gold 
leaf which veils it, is the figure of Jesus Christ. 
For a thousand years it has stood with out- 
stretched arms as if giving a benediction to every 
congregation which has worshipped God accord- 
ing to its lights in the ancient temple. And when 
the Mohammedan guide silently points the Chris- 
tian visitor to this figure, all unknowingly he 
points to a fact too often forgotten. From the 



A Half-Forgotten Agency 289 

first the Lord Jesus Christ has had an in- 
terest of good will in the welfare of all the 
people of this city. He still waits for His 
Church to establish His invisible kingdom in 
this centre of commanding influence. No weari- 
ness, nor impatience, nor actual pain of sacri- 
fice can justify us in permitting work which He 
waits to have performed languish in this place 
to which all nations of Western Asia come to be 
taught. Let the Church press on this work, 
adopting for its motto and rule, the words of 
Constantine the Great, when he believed that he 
was laying the foundations of the capital of the 
Kingdom of Jesus Christ: "We will not stop 
until he stops who goes before us." 



INDEX 



Abd ul Mejid, Sultan, 121 
Ablution, 64, 65 
Adrianople, 207, 294 
Ahmed I., Sultan, 120 
Al Azhar university, 205 
Aleppo, 207, 294 
AH Bey, translator of N. T., 

257 

Aliye Khanum, 103 

Almsgiving, 58, 67 

Alphabet sacred, 249 

Amazons, 89 

American Bible Society, 
256-258 

American Board of Mis- 
sions, 258 ; its mission at 
Constantinople, see Mis- 
sion 

American College for Girls, 
235,. 236, 241, 277, 282 

American Tract Society, 
260 

Amusements, 53, 173-194 

Apologetic literature, 267 

Apostolic succession, 136 

Arab chief, 28 

Arabic, 211, 212, 246 

Argonautic expedition, 117 

Armenian Church, 136, 138; 
clergy, 140, 141, 150; 
services in, 139 

Armenians, lay influence 
among, 150; literature of, 
248 ; as masons and build- 
ers, 278 ; number of, 38 ; 
as porters, 152; as pub- 
lishers, 254; as revolu- 



tionists, 38; as singers, 
176 

Armenian troubles, 29, 30, 
3.8, 283 

Asia, its arrested develop- 
ment, 10; clings to an- 
tiquity, 161, 164; misun- 
derstands the West, 164; 
opposes civilization, 23 ; 
repels change, 89 ; its sel- 
fish philosophy, 162, 163; 
shrinks from work, 160; 
threatens the world, 157 

Atheism, tendency to, 216, 

233 
Atheistic literature, 267 
Avenue of the Sublime 

Porte, 253 
Averting a massacre, 32 

Baal Peor, 89 

Babis, 83 

Bachelor a king, 95 

Backward races, 125 ; a 
menace, 157 

Beauty of woman, 61, 92 

Bebek, 272 

Bebryces, 117 

Beggars' guild, 169, 170 

Begum, 93 

Behavior, cosmopolitan 

standard of, 191 

Beyrout, 246 

Bible, colporters, 280, 281 ; 
in Eastern Church, 258, 
261 ; fixes literary style, 
257; helps to study of, 



291 



292 



Index 



256; Gothic version, 128; 
Slavic version, 128 ; 
translation of, 255, 256; 
Turkish version, 257 ; un- 
intelligible to people, 250 
Bible House, 244, 256, 259 

272 
Bible Societies, sphere of, 

256 
Bliss, Rev. Dr. I. G., 259 
Bookbinder, 202 
Books at Constantinople : 
Armenian, 254; for chil- 
dren, 266 ; Greek, 252 ; 
immoral, 255 ; from Mis- 
sion Press, 256, 261 ; Mo- 
hammedan, 252 ; for 
schools, 220, 221, 256, 262 
Book-shops, 252, 254 
Book-writers' Guild, 244 
Bribery, how managed, 25 

26 
British Embassy, 270, 271 
British and Foreign Bible 

Society, 246, 256-258 
Brousa, 207, 214 
Buddhistic notion, 83 
Bulgarian Church, 134 
Business world of the city, 

167 
Bussora, 24 
Buyukdere, 189 
Byzantine ruins at Bible 
House, 259 

Cairo, 207, 214 

Caliph, 59 

Call to prayer, 51 

Candidates for office, 163 

Candle-maker's slave, 97 

Carlyle, Thomas, 54 

Carpenter's quest for pay, 

160 
Cart, 48 

Castle of Europe, 31 
Castor and Pollux, 117 



Censors of the Press, 36, 
37, 66, 246 

Chalcedon, 272 ; Council of, 
138 

Character unchangeable, 74, 
83, 84 

Character attracts Mus- 
lims, 85. 

Charity, 78 

Christianity, deemed poly- 
theism, 83; its doctrine 
of sin rejected, 83; its 
Gospel scorned, 66, 81 ; 
its single proof, 85 

Christians employed by 
Turks, 50 

Chrysostom, 126 

Church Missionary Society, 
258 

Cities, The Five, 214 

Civilization, Constantinople 
its arbiter, 1 1 ; agent of 
renovation, 166; admired, 
167; as reported in pro- 
vinces, 197, 286; as un- 
derstood by Turks, 194, 
195 ; helpless to renovate, 
194, 196; energized by 
Christian love, 197 

Clarke, Rev. W. Newton, 

155 
Clergv, Greek and Armen- 
ian, 10, 130, 135, 149, 249 
Clerk of Court, 213 
Coffee shop, 175, 176, 180 
College, Press, and Pulpit, 

284 
Compassion in Occidentals, 

170 
Commerce of the city, 18; 

not undertaken to elevate 

men, 196 
Commissioner of education 

(U. S.), 225 
Complex Fool, 41 
Conduct and example, 272 



Index 



293 



Confidence, 81 

Constantine the Great, 19, 
289 

Constantinople Asiatic in 
quality, 164 ; approach to, 
16; beauty of site, 18; 
capture by Turks, 155; 
dominating importance, 
17-22, 29, 30, 44, 125, 156, 
157, 183, 228, 230, 246; 
ebb and flow of popula- 
tion, 23; peculiarity of 
structure, 47; race pro- 
portions in population, 

Constantinople a literary 
center, 246 

Conscience dulled, 80; edu- 
cated, 37 

Controversial books, 247 

Conversation, 28, 189 

Co-operation between 

Christians, 287 

Courtship, 102 

Crimean Memorial Church, 
271 

Cyril and Methodius, 128 

Damascus, 207, 214 
Dancing girls, 186 
Daniel the Prophet, 210 
Danger of clapping hand., 

35 
Demons, 119 
Demosthenes, 19 
Dervishes, 83, 118 
Devil fosters genius, 173 
Dining customs, 177 
Dionysius V., funeral of, 

143-146 
Dishonesty, 10, 78, 79, 151- 

154 
Doggerel verse, 53 
Dogs of the streets, 113 
Drama, 182 
Drummond, Prof., 285 



Duel, 192 

Dutch Chapel, Pera, 271 

Eastern Church, 126-158; 
ancient hopes, 12; an- 
tiquity, 126; attitude to- 
ward Bible, 258, 259, 261, 
279 ; attitude toward Mis- 
sionaries, 129, 269 ; awak- 
ening, 158, 251, 278; con- 
fuses Church and State, 
132; dealings with Islam, 
132, 136, 137, 147; dreams 
of supremacy, 133 ; di- 
vorces morals and re- 
ligion, 148; extension of, 
128; fall from power, 20; 
influence of laity, 149; 
intoxicated by power, 
131 ; lack of Christian in- 
itiative, 129, 150, 155; 
similarity between 

branches, 137; eternal 
stability, 129 ; sympathy 
for, 156, 251 ; theorizing 
tendency of, 130 

Eastern Christians, moral 
standing of, 15: 

Eastern Question, 133 

Education, its debt to en- 
vironment, 232; demands 
literature, 264 ; in Islam, 
199-229 ; in Eastern 
Church, 229-234, 248, 249 ; 
in missions, 235-243, 251, 
262, 264. 282; powerless 
to regenerate, 234 

Elocution, 211 

Embarassments of address- 
ing women, 105 

Esaad Effendi, Sheikh of 
Islam, 56 

European colony in Con- 
stantinople, 187, 189 

European dress a burden, 
177; for women, 107 

Evil eye, 117 



a 94 



Index 



Exarch of 
Church, 22 
Exegesis, 212 
Extra-territoriality, 187 



Faith cure, 117 

Fear of God, 76 

Feizullah the teacher, 223- 
225 

Filioquc quarrel, 156 

Firemen, 175 

Flirtation, 102 

Flute, reed, 168 

Forms vs. morals, 63, 65 

Fortune telling, 118 

Fruit-shop, 237, 238 

Funeral rites of a Patri- 
arch, 143-146 

Gambling, 186 

Gedik Pasha Mission 
House, 274, 275 

German Embassy chapel, 
272 

German Protestant Con- 
gregation, 272 

Geuk Sou, 87, 183 

Girl scientist, 90 

Godliness, denying power 
of, 82 

Gnostics, 132 

Good of Public, 81 

Governess in Harem, 109 

Grace at meat, 180 

Grand Logothete, 133 

Grand Rabbi, 22 

Greek Church, see Eastern 
Church; and Bulgarians, 

134 
Greek churches shut up, 134 

Greek Holy Synod, 134 
Greek literature, 248, 252 
Greek Patriarch, 22, 126, 

127. 134, 143 
Greek priest and pictured 
God, 55 



Bulgarian Greek Syllogos, 149 

Greek Schools, 150, 230 
Greek writers, 252 
Gregory the Illuminator, 
136 



Hand-made books, 245 
Harem partners, 101 
Hell, 64 

Heraclius, Emperor, 132 
"High Places," 185 
Home and home life, 105, 

in, 281 
Honor paid women, 92 
Houses divided, 106 

Idolatry, 54 
Imam, 11, 79, 202, 213 
Islam, daily prayers, 63; 
failure to conquer world, 
81 ; fundamental doc- 
trines, 56-58; licence of, 
154; litany of, 63; mes- 
sage of, 138; its mission- 
aries, 205, 206; opposed 
to Christianity, 81 ; power 
with pagans, 55; its 
strength, 54, 55 ; its truth, 
82 ; its weakness, 81 ; its 
worship, 1, 52, 72 

Jesus Christ, kingdom of, 
131 ; His method of evan- 
gelizing, 12, 43; hi St. 
Sophia, 288, 289 

Jesuits, 235 

Joshua and the Romans, 
117 

Judge, 213, 214 

Justinian, Emperor, 20 

Kadi, 214 
Kadikeuy, 272 
Kindergarten, 232, 282 
Kiusen the Greek slave, 
121 



Index 



295 



Knowledge, desire for, 251 
Knowledge of God, 76 
Koran, 56, 57, 60, 66-68, 73, 
81, 83, 205, 211, 212, 249 
Kourds, 278 

Labor, a lesson in, 160 
Language, changes in, 248; 

of Scriptures, 250 
Lawyer and Judge, 25 
Learning, respect for, 199, 

201 
Levantines, 188-194 
Leyden university. 257 
Licentiousness, 154 
Liquor, traffic, 176, 180, 195 ; 

use of, 61, 176, 186 
Literary revival, 252 
Literature, Armenian, 254, 

267 ; Greek, 252 ; immoral, 

254, 255, 268 ; Turkish, 

253, 254; from mission 

press, 255-268 
Love energizes civilization, 

197 
Love song, 93 
Lying, 154-232 . 

Lyceum of Galata Serai, 217 

Mammon or God, 69 
Mankind classified, 11 
Marriage woman's vaca- 
tion, 91 
Married life described, 94 
Medresse, 205, 207, 208 
Memory culture, 212 
Mendicancy a profession, 

167 
Mercy of God, 61 
Methodius, 128 
Micah and the Levite, 209 
Midway Plaisance, 186 
Mimics of civilization, 19 
Minarets, 51 

Ministry of Public Instruc- 
tion, 229 



Mission of American 
Board, 243, 251, seq.; 
first missionaries, 243, 
255 ; attitude toward 
Eastern Church, 269 ; 
congregations, 273-277 ; 
comparison of force, 286 ; 
influence of, 277 ; influ- 
ence combatted, 286 ; 
multiplies workers, 275 ; 
native agents of, 283 ; 
needed in city, 84 ; prior- 
ity in literary effort, 265 ; 
not solely educational, 
273 ; success in Bible cir- 
culation, 258 ; should be 
supported, 289 ; weak- 
ened state, 287 ; work for 
villagers in city, 279 

Mission Press, 256-268; at 
Beyrout, 246 

Mission schools, 234-236, 
251, 282 

Missionaries in danger, 31, 

Missionaries not used by 
Islam, 206 

Missionary, aim of, II ; 
avoids politics, 38; not 
daunted, 29-32 ; intimate 
with people, 12, 40 ; his 
message, 43 ; an optimist, 
45 ; more than a preacher, 
11, 43; a reformer, 284; 
unsectarian, 11, 284; uses 
all methods, 44; univer- 
sal advisor, 44 

Missionary women, 281, 283 

Missions justified, 11-13,43, 
44, 84, 122-125, 154-157, 
196-198, 234-289 

Mohammed the Prophet, 
54, 55, 64, 76, 85, 132, 
205, 219 

Mohammed IV., Sultan, 
120 



2<)6 



Index 



Mohammedan literature, 
253, 254 

Mohammedanism, see Islam 

Mohammedans, admire 

piety, 83, 84; compared, 
151, 152, 153; incomplete- 
ly prepared for life, 51 ; 
intolerant of idolatry, 54 ; 
grounds of sympathy with 
Christians, 53; pious, 53; 
seeking improvement, 82 

Moral anarchy of Pera, 
191 

Morals and religion di- 
vorced, 69, 75, 78 

Moses, 64, 65 

Moslem, See Muslim 

Mosque, 202; of Bayazid, 
207, 244 ; of the Conquer- 
or, 207 ; of the Pigeons 
(or of Bayazid), 244; of 
Suleiman, 207 ; of St. So- 
phia, see Saint Sophia 

Mosque funds, 79 

Mosque schools, see Schools 
of Ulema 

Mother of Sultan, 121 

Muderris, 203, 213 

Muezzin, 51 

Music, 16, 176 

Musicians, 168, 175, 176 

Muslim, meaning of word, 

57 
Mussulman, 57 
Nebuchadnezzar's vision, 

82 
Non-Mohammedans, 229, 

236 

Obedience to God, 80 
Officials, courtesy of, 41, 50 
Olympus, Mount, 16 
Omar Khayyam, 163 
Oriental characteristics, 

159, 160 
Ornaments, 60, 61, 101 



Papal Legate, 22 
Paradise, 68 
Passport selling, 27 
Patriarch, Armenian, 22 ; 

Greek, 133, 143 
Peasants in city, 48, 152, 

153, 279 
Pekin siege of, 123 
Pera, 171, 187-195, 271 
Persecution, 269 
Philip of Macedon, 19 
Phrygian chariots, 49 
Piazza of St. Mark's, 188 
Picnic by families, 184 
Political Christianity, 20, 

I3I-I35 
Polygamy, 62, 101, 104 
Popes, first were Greeks, 

128 
Porphyrogeniti, 203 
Prayer during recreation, 

184, 185 
Preacher and Tree of Life, 

221 
Predestination, 118, 206 
Press, influence of, 263, 266, 

267; scope of, 247, 256, 

260, 261, 262; of Mission 

crippled, 264, 265, 268 
Press laws, 246, 247 
Priestcraft, tokens of, 204 
Priests in Islam, 202 
Primary schools, 210, 217 
Princes' Islands, 16 
Prophets, 56 
Protection seekers, 26 
Protestant Community, 28, 

270, 271 
Protestant preachers, 151 
Protestant name, 271 
Prussian Legation, 270, 271 
Ptolemaic system, 253 
Public School System, 217- 

229, 233 
Public schools as models, 

228 



Index 



2 9 J 



Purity, 64 

Ramazan, 66, 173 
Ramsey, Prof. 241 
Recitation cures, 117 
Refreshments, 176 
Religious Tract Society, 

260, 266 
Repentance, 65, 76 
Religion and morals, II, 69, 

75, 78 
Religious endowments, 79, 

205, 207 
" Reserved Tablets," 118, 

206 
Revenge lawful, 67 
Robert College, 233, 236- 

241, 272, 277 
Roman Catholic Schools, 

235, 236 
Rouous, degree of, 213 

Sacrifices, 67, 119 

Salutations, 119 

Salvation, 11; Christian 
definition, 155; in Islam, 
57. 58, 66, 68, 81 

Saint Sophia, 20, 69, 71, 72, 

^ 127, 288 

Schooling ceremony, 200 

Schools, see Armenian 
schools, Greek schools, 
Mission schools, Roman 
Catholic schools, Public 
schools 

Schools of the Ulema, aim 
and scope, 204; Asses' 
Bridge of, 214 ; Degrees 
of, 213-214; limitations 
215; locality of, 206; stu- 
dents of, or Softas, 207- 
209, 214; term of study, 
209 ; course of study, 
211; text-books, 220,253 

Schools, awakening effect 
of, 251 



School books from Mission 
press, 262 

Science, iconoclasm of, 220 

Scratching post of herd, 45 

Scriptures sealed, 250 

Sea of Marmora, 15 

Sectarianism, 11, 156, 284 

Self-denial, 74 

Self-gratification, 65, 69 

Selfishness, gauge of man- 
liness, 11, 12, 152; nar- 
rowing effect of, 76, 155, 
162; paralyzes, 81, 165; 
Pagan, 12, 234; uprooted, 
84, 285 

" Sending portions," 208 

Sheikh ul Islam, 56, 202, 
214 

Shops, 171, 237, 238 

Sin, 65, 74, 80. 82 

Snow in the city, 76, 77 

Social difficulties of Pera, 
191 

Sodom, 82 

Softas, 73, 212, see Schools 
of Ulema 

Soldiers, 50, 58, 92, 115 

Solidarity of A siatics, 164 

Sore eyed girl, 24 

Spanish in Hebrew letters, 
250 

Spiritual food, 76 

Spiritually minded teach- 
ers, 242 

Stamboul, 17, 87 

Stratford de Redcliffe, 
Lord, 121 

Stanley, Dean, quoted, 131, 
137, 269 

Street dogs, 113 

Street lamps, 174 

Street noises, 171, 280, 281 

Sublime Porte, edict of tol- 
eration, 270 

Suleimaniyeh, 210 

Sunken steamer, 77 



298 



Index 



Sunday school, 274, 283 
Sunrise on Constantinople, 

17 
Sunset begins day, 182 
Suspicions of officials, 34, 

38,45 
Sweet waters of Europe, 
183, 189 

Table manners, 176, 177 

Table talk, 178 

Teachers in public schools, 

100, 213, 218, 222, 223, 

224 ; who can reform 

others, 242 
Teacher's present, 200 
Theatre, in city, 181, 182; 

in provinces, 183 
Theology and ancient 

science, 216 
Translation of the Bible, 

see Bible 
Tree of Knowledge, 251 
Tree of Life, 221 
Tricks of trade, 78 
Truthfulness, 151-154 
Turkish language, 249, 258 
Turkish literature, 62, 103, 

244, 245, 248, 252, 253, 

254 
Turk in European social 
life, 193, 194 

Ulema, 201, 215, 253 
Ulphilas, 128 

Umbrellas and parasols, 87 
Union Evangelical Church, 

271 
Unsectarian schools 242 

Vice, literature of, 254, 255, 

268 
Villagers in the city, 278, 

280 



Venice and Vienna presses, 
242 

Wahabis, 83 

Walls of Constantinople, 
18, 19 

Walls as screens, 106 

Washing of hands, 179, see 
Ablution 

Wedding ceremony, 102 

Westcott, Bishop, 85 

White turban, 199 

Wine, 61 

Winter, "jy 

Writers, 252 

Woman Question, 86-125, 
281 

Woman's Board of Mis- 
sions, 274 

Women of Athens, 190 

Women physicians, 103 

Women of Turkey, attract- 
ed by Western woman, 
126; childish, 88, 89; con- 
trol men, 97, 104, 105, 
120, 121 ; decorative, 86, 
87; dress and undress, 
106, 107 ; education of, 
see Girls' schools ; home- 
life, 103, 107-112; in- 
trigues of, 120, 121 ; mar- 
riage true vocation, 90, 
91 ; names of slaves, 98 ; 
oppose reform, 89; orna- 
ments of, 60, 101 ; pas- 
times of, 106-107; as 
property, 96 ; respected, 
192 ; seclusion of, 101 ; 
superstitious, 116- 119; 
tongues of, 112, 114, 115; 
unveil through courtesy, 

115 
Women as missionaries, 281 
Worship, 35, 72, 79 



Opinions of the Press 



on 



Some Religious Books 
Selected from the Catalogue 



of 



Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier 

30 St Mary Street, Edinburgh 
21 Paternoster Square, London, E.C. 



Demy 8vo, Cloth Extra, with 14 Illustrations 
and Fac-simile of his Writing. 

"Letters of 
Samuel Rutherford'* 

Price 5s. New Edition. 
WITH A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. 

Notice3 of his Correspondents, Glossary, and 
List of his Works. 

By Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D., 

Author of " Memoir and Remains of 
Robert Murray M'Cheyne." 



Dr. Marcus Dods in the British Weekly 

says : — 

"In its own department of devotional literature, 
Rutherford's Letters stand supreme. For warmth of 
feeling they are unmatched. . . . The present edition 
is, as they say on school prizes, at once ' praemium ac 
incitamenlum,' a tribute paid by the publishers to its past 
popularity, and a powerful incentive to its future fame. 
For in every respect this is a perfect edition. Not only 
is it very beautiful in its typography, but it is equipped 
with all an editor can do for it — a life of the author, 
biographical and topographical notes, elucidating the 
circumstances of his correspondents, and explanations of 
difficult words and expressions. All lovers of good men 
and good books should have it." 

Mr. SPURGEON in Sword a?td Trorvel says : — 
"What a wealth of spiritual nourishment we have here 
for half a guinea ! Rutherford is beyond all praise of 
men. Like a strong-winged eagle he soareth into the 
highest heaven, and with unblenched eye he looketh into 
the mystery of love divine. There is, to us, a something 
mystic, awe-creating, and superhuman about Rutherford's 
Letters. This is a noble volume, and we shall measure 
the soundness of Scotch religion very much by the sale of 
this work. . . . When we are dead and gone, let the 
world know that Spurgeon held Rutherford's Letters to 
be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in 
r.ll the writings of mere men." 



EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 



Post 8vo, on antique laid paper, cloth extra. Price 2s. 6d. 



The 

Life and Letters of James Renwick, 

the Last Scottish Martyr. 

By the Rev. W. II. CARSLAW, M.A., Helensburgh. 

With Facsimile of one of his Letters. 

" Renwick was a strange and interesting figure in the 
annals of the Scottish Church, and this tribute to his memory 
will find many willing readers." — Scottish Leader. 

"The first complete edition of Renwick's letters." — North 
British Daily Mail. 

" The letters reveal a singularly religious and devout spirit, 
and give us a striking insight into the sweetness and light that 
existed in the rugged depths of these stern and uncompromising 
pillars of the Covenant." — Scottish Weekly. 

"James Renwick's letters were greatly in need of re-editing, 
and Mr. Carslaw has proved himself the man to do it. He has 
spared no pains, for he is enthusiastic in the subject. And his 
pains have been well rewarded. An enormous number of 
disfiguring errors have been removed ; and now the letters are 
offered to us in a shape and condition that is worthy. The story 
of the life is interwoven with them, so that one may read the 
history of time as well as the spiritual history of the man who 
lived in it. The volume is very handsomely produced, and 
there is an excellent facsimile of one of Renwick's letteu." — 
Expository Times. 

"The biographical portions are written in a perspicuous, 
energetic, and graceful style, and Mr. Carslaw has not allowed 
his enthusiasm for Renwick to interfere to any extent with the 
requirements of historical accuracy." — Aberdeen Journal. 

" The most complete yet published of the correspondence of 
this noble and manly Scotchman." — Govan Press. 

" The Rev. Mr. Carslaw has skilfully interweaved the 

martyr's letters with the details of his life, and produced a 

thrilling picture of bloody and bygone days." — Dumfries 
Courier. 



EDINBURGH AND LONDON 

OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER 

Ami all Booksellers. 



Fourth Edition, Crown 8vo, Cloth, with Portraits* 
Price 5 s. 



"The Life and Times 



oe 



George Lawson, n.D." 

SELKIRK, 

Professor of Theology to the Associate Synod. 

With Glimpses of Scottish Character 
from 1720 to 1820. 

By Rev. John magfarlane, ll.u. 



Extract from Letter of Thomas Carlyle. — "Your 
' Biography of Dr. Lawson ' has interested me not a little ; 
bringing present to me from afar much that is good to be 
reminded of ; strangely awakening many thoughts, many 
scenes and recollections of forty, of sixty years ago — all 
now grown very sad to me, but also very beautiful and 
solemn. It seems to me I gather from your narrative and 
from his own letters a perfectly creditable account of Dr. 
Lawson's character, course of life, and labours in the 
world ; and the reflection rises in me that perhaps there 
was not in the British Islands a more completely genuine, 
pious-minded, diligent and faithful man. Altogether 
original, too, peculiar to Scotland, and, so far as I can 
guess, unique even there and then. England will never 
know him out of any book ; or, at least, it would take the 
genius of a Shakespeare to make him known by that 
method; but, if England did, it might much and whole- 
somely astonish her. " 



EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 



THE 

REV. ROBERT MURRAY M'GHEYNE, 

OF DUNDEE. 



Memoir and Remains, By Rev. Andrew A. 
Bonar, D.D. New Edition, with Additional 
Matter, Newly Engraved Portrait, and Fac- 
simile of Writing. Demy 8vo, Cloth Extra, 5s. 
Cheaper Edition, Extra Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

Additional Remains. Being Sermons and 
Lectures. Extra Crown 8vo, gilt edges, 5s- 
Cheaper Edition, 3s. 6d. 

Memoir of Rev. Robert Murray M'Oheyne. 
By Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D. (without 
the Remains). Small Crown 8vo, Cloth, is. 6d 

Life of Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne. 
Abridged from Dr. Bonar's Memoir. Small 
Crown 8vo, is. 

Letters to Inquirers and Young Converts. 
Sewed, 6d. ; Cloth, gd. 

Exposition of the Epistles to the Seven 
Churches in Asia. Sewed, 6d. ; Cloth, is. 

A Visit to the Holy Land, and Mission 
of Inquiry to the Jews. By Rev. A. A. Bonar 
and Rev. R. Murray M'Cheyne. 30th 
Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d- 



EDINBURGH AND LONDON 

OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

AND all booksellers. 



A New Edition, Demy Svo. Cloth Extra, with 
upwards of 1 50 Illustrations, Price 5s. 



" The Scots Worthies" 

By John Howie of Lochgoiri: 

Revised from the Author's Original Edition 
By the Rev. W. H. CARSLAW, M.A. 

The Landscapes and Ornaments by various Artists, 

engraved under the superintendence of 

Mr. Williamson; 

the Historical Portraits by Mr. Hector Chalmers, 

engraved by Messrs. Schenck &* M' Far lane. 



" It has all the quaintness of the original volume in a 
condensed form. It abounds in illustrations of well- 
executed views of Covenanter localities, from the Com- 
munion stones of Irongray to Dunnottar ; of Scottish 
palaces — Falkland, Holyrood, &c. ; of Scottish abbeys and 
churches — indeed it might aimost be called an Illustrated 
Gazetteer of Scotland. It likewise contains views of 
places in England, Ireland, and the Continent connected 
with Covenanting story, such as Westminster, Rotterdam, 
and Londonderry. It gives, moreover, a gallery of por- 
traits, from George Wishart to Robert Traill ; from Mary, 
Queen of Scots to William III.; and from Archbishop 
Sharpe to Claverhouse. It is in every way elegantly and 
quaintly got up, the illustrations having old-fashioned 
elaborately-decorated borders. We know of no book 
more calculated to quicken the pulse of modern Protest- 
antism, or to give in an attractively biographical form the 
history of the Church of Scotland, through the lives, and 
doings, and deaths of her noblest sons. We therefore 
commend it to all who wish to remember the days oi 
former generations, or to understand the glorious work 
done for Scotland in his chief book by the old farmer OS 
Lochgoin." — Christian Leader. 



EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER 

AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 



New Edition, Demy 8vo, Cloth Extra, with 
numerous Illustrations, and fac-simile of 
Original Title and Frontispiece, Price 5s. 



"A Cloitd of Witnesses? 

For the Royal Prerogatives of 
Jesus Christ. 

Being the Last Speeches and Testimonies of 

those who have suffered for the truth 

in Scotland since the year 1680. 

Reprinted from the Original Editions, with 
Explanatory and Historical Notes. 

By the Rev. John H. Thomson. 



EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 



Crown 8vo, Cloth Extra, with Portraits, numer- 
ous Illustrations and Map, Price 3s. 6d. 



"Among the Wild Ngoni" 

Being some Chapters in the History of the Living- 
stonia Mission in British Centra/ Africa. 

By 

W. A. ELMSLIE, M.B., CM., F.R.G.S., 

Medical Missionary. 

" Rarely have we opened a chronicle of missionary work 
so full of information, keen interest, and encouragement, as 
the one now before us. Dr. Elmslie gives a vivid, fascinating, 
and almost exciting account of what he has seen, heard, and 
experienced of labour for Christ among undoubtedly one of 
the most savage tribes of inner British Central Africa." — 
Baptist. 

"The book will give valuable information to those many 
persons who take an interest in Livingstonia, and recognise 
the possibilities of Africa." — British Weekly. 

"The story of the taming and Christianising of this savage 
people is graphically told, and the last chapter of the book, 
describing the wonderful ingathering of which we have heard 
from Donald Fraser, is a true page of ' The Acts of the 
Apostles.' " — Student Movement. 

"The story of the years of brave working, waiting, 
praying, and hoping and believing, is one of the most 
romantic and touching we have ever read." — Joyful News. 

"Dr. Elmslie has written a simply fascinating book. The 
traveller with no interest in Christian missions, the Christian 
with no interest in travel, both will find it fascinating. And 
it is true. It is strictly true, and rather under than over 
drawn." — Expository Times. 

' ' Dr. Elmslie gives an interesting account of the tribe and 
their customs, and of his own labours, as of those of his 
colleagues, among them." — Spectator. 

"In this volume he has at once done a real service to 
missions, and has made a most valuable and interesting 
addition to the fast-growing literature of Central Africa." — 
Times. 



OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER. 

ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH; 
21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.G. 



RESULTS OF MISSIONS. 

Large Crown 8vo, Cloth extra, Price 3s. 6d. 

Christianity and the Progress of Man. 

As Illustrated by Foreign Missions. 
By W. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, M.A. 



" We heartily congratulate Mr Mackenzie upon the clear thinking, careful work and 
lucid style which make the book not only pleasant to read, but a valuable contribution to 
our apologetic literature." — London Missionary Chronicle. 

" It gives an account of the intellectual aspects of the work done during the present 
century in evangelising the non-Christian people of the world, discusses the relation of 
missionary enterprise to the other civilising forces of modern times, and sums up all by 
endeavouring to estimate the effect that Christianity has had upon progress. Books about 
missionary work are usually either read for their adventures, for their piety or for practical 
information concerning the history of a particular mission. A work like the present, 
which gives what may be called the philosophy of the subject, has a place of its own in 
the literature to which it belongs, and deserves the attention of thoughtful readers in its 
subject." — Scotsman. 

"We admire the book for its simplicity. It is clear and direct in its statements, 
written to be read by the ordinary reader. But even the scholar and the critic will be 
constrained to admit that it presents the case with fairness and skill. Such a work is a 
distinct addition to the literature ol modern missions. It will furnish many a campaigner 
with incident and testimony for his speeches." — The Baptist. 

" The whole tone of the book is enthusiastic, and it should do good work for the cause 
which the author has so much at heart. It betrays a firm faith in the reality and ultimate 
success of all missionary effort, as well as a broad conception of Christian truth, and a 
clear insight into the causes and conditions of all human progress." — Daily Free Press. 

" If a copy could find its way into every Christian family in the land we have no doubt 
the benefit to Christian missions would be enormous." — Deny Standard. 

" If you happen to have an intellectual friend who does not believe in missions, this is 
the book to give him." — Expository Times. 

"We know of no recent book so vigorous and compact on this subject." — Baptist 
Magazine. 

" The author is thoroughly well-informed on his theme, and deals with it in clear, 
compact, forcible style, with admirable good sense and reasonableness." — Kilmarnock 
Standard. 

" It is hoped that serious students of the history of man will ascertain for themselves 
and acknowledge that evangelical religion occupies in this way an organic place in the 
evolutionary progress of mankind." — Dundee Advertiser. 

' ' The book is sensible and edifying. It touches a number of topics with a rapid but 
instructed hand. It gives a broad, popular view of some matters of great moment, and 
keeps a hopeful eye to the future." — The Critical Review. 

"Professor Mackenzie has done his best to present a fair view of the facts, and to 
draw from the facts only legitimate inferences. His work displays great ability as well as 
earnestness, and we trust that it will be widely read and attentively considered." — The 
Ne?o Age. 

"An eloquent and inspiring Apologetic for the Gospel, and should be widely circulated 
throughout the churches." — United Presbyterian Magazine. 

"Who should read this book? Friends of missions, devout Christians, doubters and 
sceptical philanthropists, scholars and teachers, and ministers should read it and circulate 
it, that all may combine more rapidly to make known the mystery of the Gospel accord- 
ing to the commandment of the eternal God for the obedience of faith unto all the 
nations." — -Sunday School Chronicle. 

"There is a literary brilliance, an analytical tendency, a scientific bent, a hearty 
thoroughness, a bright hopefulness and sparkling faith in this book that charms the 
reader. " — Kilmarnock Herald. 



OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

ST MARY STREET, EDINBURGH; 
21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. 



Post 8vo, Art Sateen, Price 3s. 6d. 



"The Christian Minister:" 

His Aims and Methods. 

Being Lectures delivered to Divinity Students 0/ 
the Four Scottish Universities. 

By Rev. JAMES ROBERTSON, D.D., 

Whittinghame. 

Dr. Alexander Whyte says : " It is a book of real distinction, 
and it will hold a special place of its own in that field of sacred 
literature to which it belongs." 
The Rev. Dr. M'Laren of Manchester writes— 
" Dear Dr. Robertson.— My letter is tardy, but my reading was 
swift. I have read few books on Homiletics, and comparisons are 
odious, but this I will say, that I doubt whether there is a better 
book on the subject extant. I am thankful that you have written 
it, and that so strong and tender a pronouncement for central truth 
has been listened to by your men at the beginning of their course. 
The counsels are weighty and wise, and the tone of the mentor is 
fatherly, yet not patronising. 1 have been much interested, too, in 
the chapters about pastoral duties, as giving me a glimpse of a 
system superficially different from ours, and of the v.ork in a parish 
in the country. L'ut I am glad to find the superficial diversity a 
very real unity. Alex. M'Laren." 

" It may suffice to commend the book to the reading of clergymen 
generally as a compendium of what may be called sanctified 
commonsense upon the several topics of which it treats, gracefully 
and pointedly set forth." — Scotsman. 

"It is a fine volume of systematic good sense. There are some 
who read all the books on preaching that are published, there are 
some who select the best. This is one to be selected."— Expository 
Titties. 

" The precepts on preaching may be specially commended to the 
notice of our readers. There is much good counsel in the lecture 
on 'Visiting.'" — Spectator. 

"We commend the volume with great heartiness." — Methodist 
Sunday School Record. 

"Every page teems with sound practical advice, pervaded with 
a spirit of reverence." — Dundee Courier. 

The Rev. Dr. Donald Macleoo, in the General Assembly of the 
Church of Scotland, said : "A more admirable set of lectures he 
could not well imagine— useful for students, and exceedingly useful 
for ministers for revisir.g their own ideas as regarded the work of 
the ministry." 

" These six lectures contain the ripe judgments of a wise master 
builder. Their spirit and temper are delightful."— London Quar- 
terly Review. 

OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH; 
21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. 



Pest 8vo, Art Linen. Price 3s. 6d. 



"Bible Characters!' 

Ahithophel to Nehemiah. 

THIRD SERIES. 

Completing the Old Testament Characters. 
By ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D. 

" What a wealth of biographical treasure is here, and what an un- 
folding by a master mind of the eternal principles that lie at the 
foundation of all true living. This is the sort of exposition that 
perpetuates the power and gives undying zest to the study of the 
Bible." — Christian. 

"We have here what the two preceding volumes by Dr. Whyte 
led us to look for : fine discrimination, balance of judgment, charity, 
and deep knowledge of the subject, with attractiveness and trans- 
parency of expression." — Christian Age. 

"The lectures reveal great earnestness of purpose, strong power 
of individual pouraiture, a wealth of imagination, and a freedom in 
discussing Bible Characters, such as does not always distinguish the 
pulpit. " — Scotsman. 

"The breezy, penetrating treatment, which was so conspicuous 
in the first two series, is here also. Dr. Whyte does the Old 
Testament no dishonour by his frank common-sense handling of 
characters which, just because they are in the Old Testament, many 
people fail to study in a direct and masculine way." — Academy. 

" In every case the great preacher seizes the central moral of 
the case, anatomically dissects out that moral, and i.o'ds it up to us 
in a vivid light." — Witness (P-elfast). 

" His Ia^ wine is as good as his first." — Daily Free Press. 

"His delineations are always terse, vivid, and interesting." — 
Glasgcr.r Herald. 

"As choice and striking as its predecessors. Ministers and 
other religious teachers cannot afford to be without these suggest- 
ive and helpful studies of Scripture characters." — Irish Presly- 
terian. 

"A vivid and thoughtful teacher. Preachers will suffer loss if 
they do not refer to these excellent books." — Literary World. 

" Brief, pithy, and forceful." — Primitive Methodist. 

"We stand right in the centre of each story, and feel all the tidc-s 
cf impulse and passion that are propelling the actors. The deeds, 
great and small, that make up the history are traced back to their 
most secret springs in the heart. One sees the whole thing to its 
innermost, and comes away with the lessons of it printed indelibly 
in the mind."— Christian World. 



OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH; 
21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. 



Square 8vo, Art Canvas Binding, with Fifteen Illustrations 
and Four Maps, Price 7s. 6d. 



"Jerusalem the Holy!' 

A Brief History of Ancient Jerusalem, with an Account of 
the Modern City and its Conditions, Political, Religious, 
and Social. 

By EDWIN SHERMAN WALLACE, 

Late United States Consul for Palestine. 

"A well-written and useful work.' — Scotsman. 

"The unequalled opportunities of consular residence are not often put to so 
excellent a use. Sir Harry Johnston, in his magnificent ' British Central Africa,' has 
shown what can be done by a Consul or Commissioner whose heart is in his work ; 
and we very highly praise 'Jerusalem the Holy' when we say that in most respects it 
ranks fitly with that masterly book." — Daily Free Press. 

"Many will be thankful that it occurred to Mr. Wallace to beguile the tedium 
of a five years' residence in Jerusalem by writing this interesting and valuable book. 
The chief value of the book will be found in its descriptions of the city as it now exists. 
Tourists will find in this book all the information they can require, and Bible students 
will find it in every way useful and suggestive." — Glasgow Herald. 

"To the student this history is direct, reliable, and clear; to the lighter reader, 
whose interest would scarcely carry him through the long treatises which have hitherto 
appeared, it is graphic, instructing, and entertaining ; and it is also thoroughly up 
to date." — Dundee Courier. 

"There is no lack of books dealing with Jerusalem, but none of them has been 
written with greater fulness of knowledge than Mr. Edwin S. Wallace's 'Jerusalem the 
Holy.' " — Sunday School Ckronicle. 

"The author has evidently had in view all the requirements of readers who think of 
visiting the city, but his pages are equally worth reading by those who have no hope or 
intention of doing so. The historical and typographical matter is usefully supplemented 
by some chapters on climate and health, and on the various classes in the present mixed 
population of the city." — North British Daily Mail. 

" He writes well, and will be found specially interesting by those who are as 
well acquainted as he is with the literature of the Bible, his knowledge of which be 
uses very effectively in frequent comparisons between the Palestine of the time of the 
prophets and the evangelists and the Palestine of the present day." — Manchester 
Guardian. 

"He has not only laid all the chief authoritative books on the subject under con- 
tribution, but has also detailed the results of his own intelligent investigations. The 
book is full of most interesting matter, and has numerous fine illustrations." — Dundee 
A dvertiser. 

"Mr. Wallace has lived for five years in Jerusalem as United States Consul. 
He is mildly interested in its history, and offers a brief and impartial account of that. 
He is deeply interested in its present state, and that he describes minutely and master- 
fully. Without fear he has entered the secret places of all the ecclesiastical sects, and 
laid bare the poverty of their pretensions, while appreciative of any spiritual reality 
there. He has followed Bliss in his explanations and Dickie in his measurements. And 
<;ince every step of his narrative is accompanied by a photographic illustration, we have 
ourselves the means of testing as well as understanding his descriptions. Mr. Wallace's 
book records an advance in the scientific study of Jerusalem. He is shrewd and pains- 
taking, and misses little, while he sets down nothing in offence. And though he glances 
into the future, it is not a mixture of earth and cloud that he sees, it is a development 
along lines that are now well marked and sufficiently reliable." — Expository Times. 



OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER. 

ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH; 
21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.G 



Popular Edition, Sixth Thousand, Large Ct^vvn Svo, Art 
Canvas, with Sixteen Full-Page Illustrations, Price 5s. 



* ' Chinese Characteristics. 

By ARTHUR H. SMITH. 

"This author minutely describes the various characteristics of the Chinese, 
and humourously contrasts them with Western civilisation. His experience 
in the country, for twenty-two years, as an American missionary, has given him 
opportunity in many parts of the country, and among all classes of the people, 
to observe with a keen eye, and no little humour, many phases of Chinese 
life, manners, customs, notions of religious belief, habits of thought and modes 
of expression, and he has narrated them from a genial heart in an amusing 
and racy manner. This is a popular edition, revised, with excellent illus- 
trations, glossary of technical terms, and a copious index." — Asiatic Quarterly 
Review. 

"The best book on the Chinese people." — Examiner. 

"A completely trustworthy study." — Advance. 

" Mr. Arthur Smith's ' Chinese Characteristics' is the book on its subject. 
It has taken its place (this is the fourth edition) as the authority. And it has 
the charm that authorities rarely have. It is easily written, or at least it is 
easily read. Its knowledge is surprising, both in itself and in its minuteness. 
It is excellently illustrated from many original photographs." — Expository 
Times. 

" There is all the difference between an intaglio in onyx and a pencil scrawl 
on paper to be discovered between Mr. Smith's book and the printed prattle 
of the average globe-trotter. Our author's work has been done, as it were, 
with a chisel and an emery-wheel. He goes deeply beneath the surface." 
— Critic. 

" It is scarcely enough to say about this book that it is both interesting and 
valuable. Those best informed call it without exception the best book on 
the Chinese that is before the public, and a pretty careful survey of it confirms 
that opinion." — Independent. 

" A very striking book. One of the best modern studies of that remarkable 
people." — Sydney Morning Herald. 

"An interesting, graphic, and racy volume." — Christian Endeavour. 



OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH ; 

2i PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON. E.C. 



Post Svo, Cloth Extra, Price is. 6d. 



" The Oldest Trade in the 
World!' 

And other Addresses to the Younger Folk. 

By 
Rev. GEORGE H. MORRISON, M.A., 

Dundee. 

"Though this is the last volume to be published, this is 
not the last we shall hear of these books. They have vitality 
and appropriateness enough to live on and be to us a standard 
of preaching to children." — Expository Times. 

"They are fresh, thoughtful, and pointed; and we are 
tempted to call this the best volume in the excellent series to 
which it belongs — the 'Golden Nails' Series." — Monthly 
Messenger. 

' ' The addresses abound in apt illustration and practical 
teaching, and are written in his characteristically winsome 
style." — Free Church Monthly. 

" It is an excellent book, and makes a worthy finish to a 
series which has been one of the most successful enterprises 
of the kind. A complete set of the series would form a 
most acceptable and useful gift to any Sunday-school super- 
intendent, and no parent need be at a loss to make a pleasant 
and profitable Sunday hour with his children who has these 
dainty little volumes at hand." — Sunday School Chronicle. 

"This is a most excellent series of addresses. There is a 
vein of humour, a quaint way of putting things, which is 
most refreshing. The advice given is excellent." — Church 
Family Newspaper. 

" The addresses contained in this little book are bright 
and pointed, and the advice imparted is such as children 
can hardly fail to understand." — Daily Free Press. 

"A crisp and charming little book of sermonettes for the 
young folk." — Evangelical Magazine. 

"The addresses in it are as clever, as interesting, as 
healthy, as valuable as the best in the series. What more 
need be said? — Primitive Methodist. 

"What a treasury of children's sermons this series is, and 
every volume most acceptable and precious. This is one of 
the best, though not the simplest, and contains much fresh 
thought suited to youth, and richly illustrated with telling 
anecdotes. " — Irish Presbyterian. 



OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH; 
21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. 



Post 8vo, Cloth Extra, Price is. 6d. 



" The Children s Prayer!' 

Addresses to the Young on the Lord's Prayer. 
By Rev. JAMES WELLS, D.D., 

Glasgow. 

"A most delightful book." — Presbyterian Witness. 

"Thirteen bright, simple, and practical addresses appro- 
priately illustrated by a copious supply of anecdotes." — 
Primitive Methodist Magazine. 

"They are models of what pulpit addresses to the young 
should be. Simple and pointed in style, with plenty of fresh 

illustrations." — Glasgow Herald. 

" The book is brightly and suggestively written, and while 
well adapted to little readers because of its simple and 
impressive divisions and its apt illustrations, it can be read 
with profit by their elders." — Baptist Magazine. 

" These addresses are just such as children will relish and 
be profited by. Their style is conversational, the lines of 
thought are well and memorably marked, and they abound 
in simple but apt illustrations." — Glasgow Daily Mail. 

"One of the very best expositions for children we have 
ever read. It is full of the deep spirit of the Pattern Prayer, 
expressed in simple telling language, and illustrated by 
stories more striking and original than are usually found in 
addresses to children." — Christian Commonwealth . 

"These are model addresses on the Model Prayer, and 
many besides children will read them, we should think, and 
get much good fom them. There is a freshness of treat- 
ment and an abundance of illustration of a worthy and 
appropriate character." — Methodist Recorder. 

" These addresses to the young on the Lord's Prayer are 
really excellent. They are bright and cheery and mingled 
with illustrations such as would delight a child." — Church 
Family Newspaper. 

" These addresses abound with simple yet telling illustra- 
tions ; the language is at once nervous and devout ; and the 
lessons of the Divine Prayer are applied with a freshness and 
force that may well be expected to leave lasting impressions 
on the youthful mind." — Kilmarnock Standard. 



OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 

ST. MARY STREET, EDINBURGH; 
21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. 



Post Sz'o, on antique laid paper, cloth extra. Price is. bit. 



The Covenanters of the Merse, 

their History and Sufferings, as found 
in the Records of that Time. 

By the Rev. J. WOOD BROWN, M.A. 

" iMr. Brown has not been content to chronicle still surviving 
traditions of the Covenanting period. He has gone to the 
historical records of the time, and his researches have been 
abundantly rewarded ; so much so that the volume he has 
written, modest though it be in size and scope, forms a not 
unimportant addition to the interesting Border literature of 
the period. " — Scotsman. 

"Wherever the heroic witness of the Covenanters is ap- 
preciated this book will be warmly welcomed." — Sword and 
Trowel. 

*' Mr. Wood Brown has gathered the scattered records of the 
district with a loving hand." — British Weekly. 

" A book which treats of the Covenanters is always sure to 
gain a respectful hearing. When to the merits of its subject 
such a volume adds clearness of style and an orderly presenta- 
tion of facts, it is safe of a fair popularity. Mr. Brown writes 
well and clearly, not without a certain picturesqueness, which 
should recommend his book." — Glasgow Herald, 

" Mr. Brown has rendered a service to the student of history 
which deserves grateful acknowledgment." — Aberdeen Journal 



EDINBURGH AND LONDON 

OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER 

And all Booksellers. 



University of Toronto 
Library 



DO NOT 

REMOVE 

THE 

CARD 

FROM 

THIS 

POCKET 




Acme Library Card Pocket 
Under Pat "Rel. Index File" 

Made by LIBRARY BUREAU