acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

:
120 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
Before the day was out several English-speaking
Armenians callea"at the kJiaji, hearing that an English
visitor was there. Stuflents in tens of thousands,
most of them Armenians, have passed through the
various American schools and colleges and taken away
some knowledge of the PJnglish tongue. The result
is that in every town and many villages there are
people able to speak English.
One of these callers was the Tokat pastor of that
Armenian Protestant Church which is the darling
child of the American missions. No more pathetic
body of men than these Armenian Protestant pastors
are to be found anywhere. The lot of their race
is dark— it is darkest for them. In massacre they
are among the first to go. A pastor or priest is
a more choice and acceptable victim than any
shopkeeper. The killing of a group of pastors or
priests becomes a very notable achievement indeed
in the eyes of murderous fanatics. And by this
much the pastor's lot is harder than the priest's
that in a country where the national Church is the
very core and essence and symbol of each hostile race,
the pastor, ijy his defection, has cut himself off from
the majority of his own people. The path of these
pastors, indeed, is about as uncertain and difficult as
any ministry has had to follow ; little wonder that in
following it they become marked by a peculiar sadness.
All have passed through American seminaries,
and in tastes and outlook are more Western than
Eastern. They are intelligent and well - informed,
and devoted in their calling. The Ottoman Empire
does not possess a body of citizens more inoffensive,
more earnest, or more anxious to do good than these
Armenian pastors. Yet withal you are conscious of
something much awry with them. You feel they are
out of place, that the example they set their people is
not the exam})le of greatest benefit, and that another
sort of pastor might well do better.
The root of the matter is that by some fatal perversion
they hold the notion of the cheek to the smiter.