Festivals which celebrate events in a course of history

On every side there is the pressure of a dominant Oriental society and polity, with its theocratic government, autocracy, the creed of Islam, polygamy, slavery, eunuchs, secluded and veiled womanhood, men in long robes and turbans, sluggishness, repose, the speech of Central Asia softened by the accents of Persia and Arabia, minarets, domes surmounted by the Crescent, graceful but strange salutations, festivals which celebrate events in a course of history not your own, and express joys which have never gladdened your souL And mingling, but not blended, with this world of Asiatic thought and sentiment and manner, is a European world, partly native, partly foreign, with ideas of freedom, science, education, bustle, various languages, railroads, tramways, ladies in the latest Parisian fashions, church bells, the banner of the Cross, newspapers and periodicals from every European and American capital, knitting scattered children to the life of their fatherland. The members of the foreign communities in the City of the Sultan do not forget the lands of their birth, or of their race and allegiance. Though circumstances have carried them far from their native shores and skies, physical separation does not sever them from the spirit of their peoples.

Turkish policeman dares enter

Nay, as if to make patriotic sentiment more easy, foreigners are placed under the peculiar arrangements embodied in what are termed the Capitulations, whereby, in virtue of old treaties, they enjoy the privilege of living to a great extent under the laws of their respective countries, with little interference on the part of the Ottoman Government When your house is your castle, in the sense that no Turkish policeman dares enter it without the authorization of your Consulate or Embassy, when legal differences between yourself and your fellow countrymen are submitted to judges, and argued by barristers, bred in the law which rules in your own land, when your church and school can be what they are at home, and when you can forward your letters, not only to foreign countries but even to some parts of the Turkish Empire, with a stamp bearing the badge of your own Government, it is natural that European residents in Constantinople should be able to preserve their special character, both after living here for many years, and also from generation to generation.

A Mohammedan polity is opposed to the assimilation of strangers, unless the aliens become converts to Islam. Whatever process of assimilation goes on in Constantinople appears in the slow changes of the East towards some likeness to the West Otherwise, the European world is as present to the view as the Asiatic, and together they spread a wide vista before the mind.

Engaged in the study of Arabic

Beyrout thus became the head-quarters of missionary operations in Syria; and as it was the only spot where missionary homes were established, it was frequently visited by the different missionary brethren who had come to the country. Mr. King spent much of his time at a monastery in Mount Lebanon, engaged in the study of Arabic; but he often joined the families on the coast. Pliny Fisk, who was engaged in exploring the country with a view to future operations, was also several times welcomed to the homes and the hearts of those who had known him as a brother beloved in their native land. And when his short work was done, just two years after Messrs.

Goodell and Bird landed, this devoted servant of Christ, whose name in connection with that of Levi Parsons, the first missionaries to Palestine, will ever be kept in sweet remembrance, came here to die lieturning from one of his tours, he reached the house of Mr. Goodell in his usual health, but was soon attacked with a fever which he had contracted while watching with an English gentleman. For several days there were no alarming symptoms; but, although every thing that love and tender care could do for him was done, and with apparent success, his disease suddenly took an unfavorable turn, and, rapidly sinking under its power, early on the morning of the Lord’s day, Oct. 23, 1825, he entered into rest. Of this event Mr. Goodell wrote at the time: —

Thankfulness in the course of his illness

“ It seems a great mercy that he died with us, and not abroad among strangers. This he often mentioned with thankfulness in the course of his illness. It appeared a comfort to him to have us about him to converse with him, pray for him, and strengthen his faith in God. Some of the Arabs were deeply affected, as they stood around his dying bed; they were amazed at his peace of mind, and could not conceive it possible that any one could be so willing to die.

They wept. We explained to them the cause of his tranquillity and joy, related to them much of his religious views and experience, and told them of Christ and heaven. Indeed, we sometimes felt that Christ and heaven were present. It seemed but a step ‘ to Him that sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb,’ where God himself wipes away all tears.”

Spacious outlook afforded by the political situation

Here are the sects that divide the Christian world; Orthodox Greek, Roman Catholic, Gregorian Armenian, Protestant, representatives of the Nestorian Church, and of the Syrian Jacobites. What long vistas of Church History are thus open on every hand; what different modes of conceiving truths stare you in the face at every turn!

Finally, but not least, there is the spacious outlook afforded by the political situation, of which Constantinople has long been the centre. The question of the continued existence of the Ottoman rule in Europe, if not also in Asia, has been a burning question for many generations, affecting both the destiny of the peoples subject to that rule and the interests and relations of all the Great Powers of Europe. It is one of the biggest, most important, most complicated problems that can occupy the minds of the statesmen of the world, and it has no less magnitude in its appeals to the concern of philanthropists. Here, to speak with malice to none and with charity for all, is a rule established by the might of conquest over different races, rival nationalities, various creeds.

As already observed, the conquerors have neither wished nor been able to efface these distinctions, nor have the conquered had any inclination to be merged into a common life and polity. In such a state of things it is not surprising that no love has been lost Legend has it that the battle of Chalons was waged with such ferocity, that, after the bodies of the combatants lay cold upon the ground, their spirits continued to fight in the air. The struggle between the conqueror and the conquered in Turkey has raged in their hearts even when, to all appearance, it seemed to have ended. In thought and sentiment the country has always been in a state of war.

Herodotus came to admire

The picturesque cemetery, shaded by oaks, on the hill above the Genoese Castle, overlooking the entrance to the Black Sea, a view that Darius I. and Herodotus came to admire, is also named “The Field of Witnesses,” because there, it is supposed, Saracen soldiers who fell in an attack upon the castle were buried. Such cemeteries are holy ground, and sepulture in them is regarded as a great honour. The attendance of the Sultan at the midday public prayers on Fridays is the official act of the Caliph of the Mohammedan world. He ascends the throne after girding his sword at the grave of the first standard-bearer of the Prophet, in the Mosque of Eyoub.

The mantle of the Prophet, his green standard, his staff, sword, bow, are enshrined in the Seraglio as the sovereign’s regalia, and are annually visited by the Sultan as a great State function. Around that standard all true Moslems must rally when Islam is in peril. No great act of Government may be performed until the chief doctor of the Sacred Law, the Sheik – ul – Islam, has been consulted, and sanctions the act, as in accordance with the supreme authority of faith and righteousness. Sultan Abdul Azis and his nephew, Sultan Murad, were deposed only after such sanction had been obtained.

Brought up as Moslems

Upon this theocratic conception of the State, the exclusion of the Christian subjects of the Empire from the army is based. For, how can aliens in religion be enlisted under the banner of the Faith? Hence the institution of the janissaries in the early history of the Ottoman Power, whereby children of Christian parentage were taken from their homes and brought up as Moslems, to furnish recruits for the army. It was an ingenious device to maintain the religious character of the military force of the Empire, and yet to prevent the burden of filling the ranks from resting exclusively upon the faithful. The abolition of the child-tax, however fortunate to others, proved a great injury to Turkey.

It not only deprived the Sultans of their finest troops, but has been one of the principal causes of the great decrease in the Moslem population of the country; as that class of the community alone has since been called to sustain the losses involved in military service. The mortality among the soldiers of the Turkish army from disease and war is so great that the Moslem population is rapidly dying out, and well-informed medical experts are heard to say, “ The Eastern Question will be solved by the disappearance of the Turks in the natural course of things.”

Communities have enjoyed privileges

As these bodies were ecclesiastical corporations, their ecclesiastical chiefs became at once their rulers, both in religious and in civil affairs, and their representatives in all transactions with the Ottoman authorities. In fact, these communities have enjoyed privileges that give them, in some respects, a status similar to that conferred upon foreigners by the Capitulations. On the principle of religious classification, Greeks, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Servians, were considered members of the same civil community, because members of the same Church.

And, on the same principle, if an Armenian left his National Church to join the Roman Catholic or the Protestant communion, he passed beyond the authority of his former ecclesiastical superiors not only in matters spiritual but also in matters secular, acquiring with his new beliefs a new legal standing, as a “Latin” or an “Evangelical” In this new character, he came under the protection of another chief, was placed under new regulations, and made amenable to a different court It is because of this intimate union of the religious and the civil, that converts from the National Churches in the Empire have been compelled to form themselves into distinct civil communities, and to incur the odium of, apparently, deserting their own people. But only thus could they escape the pains which their original ecclesiastical authorities had the power to inflict upon dissident subjects; only thus could the Turkish Government grant the converts a legal independent status in religious life.

Christian subjects of the Empire

This method of dealing with the Christian subjects of the Empire worked, on the whole, smoothly, until the idea of nationality, which has been such a powerful factor in the recent history of Europe, spread also among the various peoples of Turkey, inspiring them to assert their distinctness from one another, and to seek liberation from the rule of the dominant race. Then great searching of hearts arose. For the new idea was subversive of a system based upon the principle that the fundamental bond of unity between men is community of faith. Hence, when the Bulgarians demanded to be organised into a community distinct from the Greek community, though one in doctrine with it, and to have bishops and an ecclesiastical head of their own nationality, the request proved a source of considerable difficulty.

With the Turkish Conquest

They have maintained, so far as the times allowed, a people’s independence; preserved the ties which bound a people to its past; and continued the use of its ancestral speech at home, in the affairs of social life, and in the worship of God. With the Turkish Conquest, this fusion of national and religious sentiments became, if possible, more complete. The new rule, involving the loss of political freedom, and the ascendency of an alien faith, made the Church dearer, and left her to be the only sphere of anything approaching national life and independence.

The distinction between Church and Nationality consequently passed out of sight And nowhere is the idea that to change one’s religious profession is to be false to one’s people, and that to be a faithful churchman is to be a patriot, more strongly entrenched than among the adherents of the Christian communities in Turkey. On the other hand, the new rulers could not hope, and did not desire, to assimilate the Christian populations of the country, or to in-corporate them in one political body. What with the differences of race, creed, language, civilisation, a gulf was fixed between the conquerors and the conquered.

Different organisations

The two parties could be nothing else but distinct and alien communities. Under these circumstances, policy and necessity led the conquerors to maintain the different organisations in which they found the subjugated peoples already arranged. To divide and conquer may not be the highest statesmanship, but it was a principle that, in the condition of the country, could be quickly applied. For one thing, by that process the power of the conquered to rise would be crushed. Furthermore, to leave the different churches of the land to their own ways was, after all, the only solution of the problem how to govern people who, because of their religious beliefs, and their social institutions, could not be brought under the operation of the Sacred Code of Islam.

It would, so far, please the conquered. It would accord with that regard for use and wont, for what he calls Adet, which the Turk cherishes. It was practical, and in harmony with the theocratic conception of society familiar to the Moslem mind. Hence the Turkish Government has been accustomed to classify the various peoples of the Empire according to their respective creeds, and has granted them a considerable measure of self government, in such matters as marriage, inheritance, education, the management of charitable institutions, and jurisdiction over the cleigy.

The submission to the Divine will

A dogma, not a moral ideal, is its chief concern. Nevertheless, although the system does not develop the loftiest character, it does secure a demeanour that commands respect. The submission to the Divine will, which it inculcates, may have its defects ; but it has likewise its merits. If it saps energy, it fosters seriousness, calmness of spirit amid life’s vicissitudes, and a dignified acceptance of the inevitable. If Islam fails to inculcate disinterested virtue, or to inspire goodness on a grand scale, it urges the performance of many beautiful deeds of kindness.

Almsgiving is one of the great duties incumbent upon a Moslem. During Ramazan and the two festival seasons of Bairam, tables are set in the houses of the wealthy classes, to which poor neighbours are made welcome. Groups of beggars gather then about the houses of the rich to receive liberal portions of pilaf, and meat stewed with vegetables, besides a present of money or some article of dress.

Connected with the principal mosques of the city, there are endowed soup-kitchens (Imarets), at which, along with the softas and imaums of the mosque, the poor of the district can obtain soup every morning, and once a week pilaf and zerd£ (sweetened rice, coloured yellow with saffron). During Ramazan, pilaf and zerd£ are supplied every evening. The lame, the blind, the halt, are usually allowed to cross the bridges over the Golden Horn without paying toll, and to travel by the steamers on the Bosporus free of charge. The regard of Turks for animals is well known.

If, again, the legal and ascetic prohibition of the use of intoxicants by Mahomet is not the noblest method of educating free agents in self-control, the sober habits of a Moslem community and the rarity of violent crimes in it, when uncontaminated by foreign influence, are advantages not to be despised. A distinctive feature of a Turkish quarter in town or village is the absence of a wine-shop.

Feeling in Mohammedan society

On the other hand, the segregation of the sexes, while it diminishes the “ social evil,” fosters a sensual tone of thought and feeling in Mohammedan society, that contrast most unfavourably with the chivalrous sentiments entertained towards womanhood in Western civilisation. The martial spirit congenial to Islam has its admirable side, but, by the unfortunate sanction of the use of the sword for the suppression of unbelievers, unspeakable atrocities have been committed under the mantle of religion; as, indeed, wherever a similar sanction has been allowed.

Intense humility and veneration

The emotion is too strong for complete suppression, and the vast congregation heaves to and fro, rises and falls. It stands upon its feet, bends low, sinks to the floor, kneels, prostrates the head to the very earth, filling the great church with a sound as of distant thunder, or the sea breaking upon the shore. It is a scene of intense humility and veneration.

And yet it is so grave, so quiet, so controlled, that the dignity of the worshippers is never lost It is the homage of the great to the Greatest. It is a remarkable combination of reverence and of self-respect Except in the practices of certain orders of dervishes, the Howling Dervishes for instance, nothing in the attitude of a Moslem at his devotions betrays an overpowering feeling due to the weakness of human nature.

The consciousness of belonging to the dute of the religious world, the sense that the worship is paid to the One, True, Great Allah, beside whom there is no other God, and that it is offered in a form worthy of the Divine nature, inspire an elevation of soul like the pride of great nobles in the presence of a mighty over-lord. A devout Moslem is an aristocrat to the tips of his fingers.

Partly because of the natural reserve of Moslems in speaking with Christians on religious matters, and partly on accoimt of the influence of the social institutions, which Moslems have inherited from an inferior stage of civilisation, it is exceedingly difficult to determine the ethical power of Islam in the inner life of its adherents.

Intelligent Mohammedan to a Christian friend

Perhaps the following remark, made by an intelligent Mohammedan to a Christian friend, gives a glimpse into the spirit of the system. “ Christianity is perhaps the best religion, but it is too high for frail human beings. Therefore God, in His mercy, has given us another religion, Islam, which, if not so lofty as yours, is more easy of attainment and practice.” Certainly, the distinction of Islam is the force with which it insists upon the unity, spirituality, and greatness of God.

Samson Agonistes be repeated

Opinions differ as to the lengths to which this spirit would go, if Turkish Power were, under certain circumstances, driven to despair and brought to bay. Will the part of Samson Agonistes be repeated then?—“ The edifice, where all were met to see him, upon their heads and on his own he pulled.” There are some who think so. But much may be said in favour of the contrary opinion.

The Turk is a brave man, but he can be cowed by superior strength, firmly applied. A Turkish maxim says: “ The hand you cannot cut, kiss, and press to your forehead.” This is not like Samson.

It is not, however, only the Turkish community that presents a religious colour. The same is true of the other communities of the country. With them, also, the nation has come to be the Church. This is due, in part, to circumstances anterior to the Turkish Conquest. The theological disputes between Christians in the earlier centuries of the history of the Church, even if purely religious and philosophical at first, erelong assumed a national character, and became respectively the banners around which racial distinctions and political antagonisms rallied, and acquired a consistence which endures to this day.

How deeply ingrained in the Christian population of the country, to-day, is the spirit to see things under a religious colour appears, sometimes, in small but significant ways. A poor Greek woman, anxious to find a husband for her daughter, who was neither young nor beautiful, was informed that a worthy boatman was prepared to marry the girl. He had everything to recommend him, but he was an Armenian.

My daughter to an Anan

“What!” exclaimed the mother, turning indignantly so to the friend who recommended the man ; “ What! do you wish me to give my daughter to an Anan? No; let her rather die.” Evidently the woman was not an expert in the use of theological terms, for the Armenians are not Arians. But her reply shows that old theological disputes, which one might suppose had been forgotten, have left their impress upon the popular mind, and are associated with national distinctions. The division between Eastern and Western Christendom is not merely a religious schism. The organisations known as the Coptic Church, the Nestorian Church, the Armenian Church, are not simply different ecclesiastical denominations, or various schools of thought. They are as much, if not more, the assertion of national peculiarities.

There is no God but God

The outward forms of Mohammedanism are exceedingly impressive. The muezzin’s call to prayer —at dawn, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset, and three hours later at night—floats through the air like a voice from the upper world No music of bells evokes such a sense of the Divine Majesty as his proclamation, “ God is Great, there is no God but God” However grand or however humble a mosque may be, whether frequented by the most intelligent or the most ignorant of the people, it contains nothing that tells of superstition, nothing that belittles or lowers the conception of the Most High. One can understand why, when Islam and Christianity confronted each other in the Byzantine Empire, there were emperors who, for upwards of a century, strove to banish pictures and statues from the worship of the Church.

And where is the reverence of the human soul before God expressed so utterly, as when the Moslem worshipper, washed clean, with shoes off his feet, stands, bows, kneels, prostrates himself before his Maker, in silent prayer? There is no more impressive religious service in the world than that celebrated, under the dome of S. Sophia, on “ The Night of Power,” in the season of Ramazan. Under the dim light of hundreds of small, hanging lamps, fed with oil, as in days past, ten thousand men are then gathered upon the floor of the mosque for evening worship, their hearts stirred by the associations of the sacred season. It is essentially a service of silent prayer.

A HOWLING DERVISH (“LA ILAH ILLA ’LLAH”)

The howling dervishes perform their devotions by standing in a row and repeating the confession of faith, “ La ilah ilia ’Hah,” rocking themselves backwards and forwards meantime; beginning slowly, they gradually quicken the time and work themselves into a frenzy of religious excitement.

The silence is made only the more impressive by the brief chant or vehement ejaculation that occasionally breaks the stillness, to afford pent feelings some relief. But though dumb with awe, the multitude cannot rest.