TRACTS AND PAPERS ISSUED

117

privilege so long granted us of sharing in a work on which the divine blessing has so conspicuously rested, and we bid all who come after us to work with a firm confidence that advance in the years to come in all departments of our common work will be with accelerated velocity, will be with a wider constituency than heretofore, will enlist a vastly increased number of competent laborers, will do more than any other influence or agency to contribute to the safe and permanent establishment of real liberty and constitutional government and to the final triumph of the Kingdom of God and of the Church of Christ in this land.”

The work of publishing the Bible had been begun by the British and Foreign Bible Society in Turkey before the American missionaries began their work, and has since been carried on jointly by the British and American Bible Societies, the translation being done by missionaries. Schoolbooks, tracts, Sundayschool helps and other religious literature are prepared and printed by the Mission Press carried on by the American Mission in the Bible House at Constantinople. The Mission Press also sends out a weekly family paper and a monthly illustrated paper for children. The tracts which it publishes are made possible by money given by the Religious Tract Society of London and by the American Tract Society of New York. While much of the literature is intended for adults, the missionaries have ever been mindful of the children, and from primers, intended for the little

people, they have gone on to schoolbooks for them as they grew older.

The entire Bible has been translated into all the principal languages of the Empire, has undergone repeated and most careful revision, has been issued in many and varied editions, and sold to the extent of three million volumes, reckoning Testaments and portions. Other Christian literature, periodical and permanent, has been issued at an average of about ten million pages a year.

The story of the Turkish translation of the Scriptures begins two hundred and fifty years ago, when a Turkish official named Ali Bey, with the advice of a Dutch gentleman connected with the diplomatic service at Constantinople, translated the New Testament into Turkish. Whether he did this out of mere love for literary work or because he thought it would benefit his people to read the Bible is not clear to the mind of Dr. Dwight, who tells the story. Ali Bey gave the finished manuscript to his Dutch friend, who sent it to the University at Leyden in the hope that it would be published there. It was put into the library of the University as a curiosity, and lay there for one hundred and fifty years, when a Russian nobleman rummaging through the treasures of the library discovered the manuscript and tried to get it published for circulation in Turkey. About this time the British and Foreign Bible Society had been organized. The first Turkish version of the New Testament published for that

VERSIONS OF THE TURKISH BIBLE 119

Society at Paris in 1819 was the work of a Mohammedan, revised and improved by Russian and French linguists.

There have been several versions of the Turkish Bible, and the one in use now is the work of a committee composed of missionaries of the American Board and of the Church Missionary Society of England, assisted by three Turkish scholars. This version is now printed in three editions, one in Arabic, one in Armenian and one with the Greek letters. "It is fair to claim," says Dr. Dwight, "that the missionaries have at least 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 worshiping 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 in Constantinople was conceived by the Rev. Isaac G. Bliss, D.D., then agent at Constantinople. He raised the money and saw the work completed. The building is owned by trustees chartered by the State of New York. When the excavations were being made for the foundations of the Bible House, the contractors came upon a pile of the Byzantine period whose roof was supported by columns marked with the Greek Cross, near which were the massive foundations of a small Christian Church whose peculiar bricks seemed to fix the date of its construction at the beginning of the sixth century.

This chapter must end as it began, with a question: Will the Cross or the Crescent win in the conflict in Turkey? This query does not imply doubt in the mind of the writer so much as uncertainty regarding the manner in which the subject is to be viewed in the near future by Christian people in Europe and America, principally in America. Forty converts from Mohammedanism in eighty years of noble missionary effort in Northern Turkey are more than might have been expected in view of all the circumstances, but that record does not suggest an easy or an early victory or even a final victory for the Cross. Whether or not Christianity shall eventually win the Mohammedans seems to depend very much upon whether or not Christians in America think it worth while now to reinforce the workers on the field with a force sufficiently strong in numbers, and in training, and properly equipped to ensure victory. That this is a time of crisis in Mohammedan affairs is evident to every student of worldproblems. It seems to many that Moslems are more alive to the situation than Christians are. This is the time to sing:

"Fling out the banner! wide and high,

Seaward and skyward, let it shine:
Nor skill, nor might, nor merit ours;
We conquer only in that sign."

SMYRNA

CHAPTER X

AND EPHESUS

As far as the Phæacian race excel

In guiding their swift galleys o'er the deep,
So far the women in their woven work.

A spacious garden of four acres lay,

A hedge enclosed it round, and lofty trees

Flourished in generous growth within: the pear
And the pomegranate, and the apple-tree
With its fair fruitage, and the luscious fig
And olive always green. The fruit they bear
Falls not, nor ever fails in winter-time

Nor summer, but is yielded all the year.
The ever-blowing west wind causes some
To swell and some to ripen; pear succeeds
To pear; to apple apple, grape to grape,
Fig ripens after fig. A fruitful field
Of vines was planted near; in part it lay
Open and basking in the sun, which dried
The soil, and here men gathered in the grapes,
And there they trod the winepress.

-FROM THE ODYSSEY.

HE Gulf of Smyrna, thirty-four miles long, is one

THE

of the grandest in the Egean Sea. The southern shore is extremely picturesque with its mountain scenery: the north shore is not so interesting, as it is occupied for the most part by the vast alluvial plain of the Hermus. This river at one time threatened to close the approach to Smyrna altogether, but the Government diverted the river into the Agria Bay. After passing the Sanjah Kole, an old Turkish fort erected