Turkish Government wished to expel

In this delicate situation one day we were officially 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 Constantinople known as the Bible House Mission, and the mission of the American Board is under no director 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. But the newspaper 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 appeared, 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 question, 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 I would certainly he 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 satisfactory statement, the missionary was neither questioned nor molested,—and I was not shot.

Holding familiar intercourse

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 private sofia tours. Moreover some of these chance friendships, merely because the missionary deals with natives as other foreigners at Constantinople 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 distinguished Mohammedan religious teacher, who was believed to have the power of working miracles, and who was the guest of the Sultan at Constantinople for some time, on the principle common in Turkey of controlling a people by controlling their leader. For this man was the acknowledged leader of more than a million people in the Eastern part of Turkey. After a time this gentleman asked a Mohammedan, also a mutual 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 everything 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 friendly by opportunity of studying the character and work of the missionary, 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 officials often reach the point of helping the missionaries in getting permits for their schools or in building churches or in suggesting means of guarding against unjust suspicions excited by sonic innocent act.