The nineteenth century has been not a whit behind others in its proportion of the strange, the uncouth. The romantic and the bloody, the brilliant and the repulsive have been so piled on one another that it is perplexing to know where to begin in work, or in narration. Once the East was master and the West was the learner, but now the terms of the problem have been transposed, and the task before us of the American Churches has been well expressed in the phrase, “The republication of the Bible, in Bible-lands."

The Church has never been permitted to go on with its work in any land undisturbed; but there has been a maximum of interference in the East. From the persecutions of apostolic days onward history has been written in blood, in convulsions, in long and useless wars. Greeks, Romans, Caliphs, Crusaders have turned back the wheels again and again. And in this century, France, England, and the Ottoman have crossed bayonets with Russians, Tartars, Arabs and Bedouin. In a fit of crusading fury, Roger Bacon proposed to Pope Nicholas IV. to burn up the great Mohammedan cities by the use of focal mirrors, to be erected near those cities. But in this our modern crusade we propose to erect near those cities institutions that shall pour upon them concentrated light, not from the sun, but from the Bible and Christian culture.

The educational forces now operating in Turkey are very considerable; and to this may be ascribed no small proportion of the good accomplished. The American Board has at work in Turkey (exclusive of Syria and Egypt) more than six hundred native helpers, and this large force represents the efficiency of the schools. But this is not enough. More men are needed for preaching, for teaching, and for the duty of Bible distribution.

An exact and rigid classification is impossible, because the work is not perfectly systematic in all its parts; e. g., the term "high-school" is not used in the same way in the Eastern Turkey Mission, and in the Western Turkey Mission. So too, theological instruction is sometimes so combined with the literary and scientific, that it is not easy to say whether a given school is a high-school or a theological school.

But it may be said by way of a general grouping, that the

Central Turkey....

Eastern Turkey.....

Total.......

grades are, Primary, Secondary, Academic and Collegiate. The lower grades are numerous, and the pupils enrolled are numbered by thousands.

The total enrolment of pupils, in the Turkish Empire proper, exclusive of Syria and Egypt, is in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand. This remark applies to those controlled by the American Board, and not to similar schools under native direction.

Of this large number, about a thousand are students in the various high-schools and theological seminaries and more than eight hundred are pupils in the boarding schools for girls. The figures as reported in the last published documents are decidedly encouraging.

7 88

71

II

122

80

F °

270

389

4.283

5,559

70

3,100 3.425

These statistics do not begin to represent the blessings conferred on the people of that empire by an evangelical system of education, but they may serve as a basis for some kind of estimate. It is plain that each pupil in a school is evidence that something has been accomplished in the family from which he

comes.

In this system of schools it is absolutely necessary that we

begin at the bottom, and that we go on till the summit is reached. The reason for this is plain, in the false methods thus far in use; the errors long cherished on fundamental points; the deliberate adoption of a perverse taste, and a crooked formula. The end sought cannot be attained by any patching of that which exists in the East; we must give them something new. This remark applies even to the external framework of literary taste, to questions of style, of the bending to new use many stock forms. We must so press that which is better as to compel the retreat of that which is worse. An illustration of the literary taste of Mohammedans will show how important this is in the planning of a work that is to be a foundation.

A Turkish historian, giving an account of a battle near the river Dniester, in the year 1738, says:

"A great number of the accursed ones, destined to Hell, took the fatal leap over the arch formed by the sparkling sabre of the true believers, into the infernal gulf."

Another, writing of the sacred cities says:

"Samarkand is the face of the earth; Bukhara the marrow of Islam; were there not in Mashad an azure dome, the whole world would be only a ditch for ablution."

In war against the Christians there is a bad spirit shown under any possible conditions. If the Christians are defeated in battle, then they are "dogs," but if they are successful, then they are "the impious," "the blood-eating enemies."

In time of peace there is no real improvement, because the same bad spirit, the same total want of all true sympathy exists. There is nothing in the Mohammedan world on which we may practise grafting with success, in our moral and educational schemes. We are under the necessity of setting before them a new type of manhood, from the very alphabet upward! For this reason we watch narrowly our entire line of battle, we search the whole vineyard to find the sunny spots: we organize our schools with a view to the most complete occupation possible, of the entire educational ground. It is to be hoped that the provision made will be so full and generous, that at any time a youth who is so disposed can find a place for himself in our primary, our secondary, or high-schools; and beyond this that colleges will

be opened in such places that no young man shall be condemned by the nature of the case to an unwilling intellectual starvation. In a thickly settled country like the Turkish Empire, no student ought to be compelled to travel more than a hundred miles to college. We have by no means reached any such state of affairs as that in Turkey yet. Some students travel five hundred miles to the Robert College.

The real value of each school to the work as a whole, is so dependent on the personal power and moral force of the teacher, that no general summary is very satisfactory. In one place a man with limited book learning may be a most valuable agent, and in another place of larger claims, a man with far more knowledge may be by comparison, a failure. But the schools of higher grade may be defined more accurately. Those which may fairly be called "high-schools" in the Western Turkey Mission, are located at Marsovan, Baghchejuk, Sivas, Kaiserieh and (part of the time) Constantinople. These are doing good in many ways, and especially in sowing seed that shall tell in the harvests of another century. An earnest effort is now made to reorganize the high-school at Marsovan, so that it may have the name of a college, and such a real augmentation in equipment and endowment, that it may do the work of a college.

The Robert College at Constantinople is well known; the new Central Turkey College is also a power; and there is a similar institution at Harpoot, in the eastern field. The theological seminaries for the special training of preachers, are located at Samokov, Marsovan, Harpoot, Marash and Mardin. Of these, only one, that at Marsovan, has been in operation continuously for twenty years. Even there, one class in two years represents the average of work, in respect to the graduates. All these seminaries have been sadly hampered in respect to the candidates, the funds at command, and the poor quality of preparation in most cases. Innumerable details might be given of the history of each separate institution, and an earnest plea made in behalf of each, for endowment, for more of apparatus, for a fuller faculty, for better dormitories, for a larger contingent fund, and above all, for more money to use in aid of students that are needy.

But, passing by all such details, we are ready for a more comprehensive question.

Has not the time arrived for the adoption of an educational system as the avowed policy of our foreign mission work?

It is not necessary to base an elaborate argument on the success of a single experiment; we do not propose to establish any formula for the direction of the work on the structure of the Robert College. But we appeal to experience as a whole, in our own national history, and in the history of modern religious effort, in the asking of this most important question: If this be not the time for educating a force of native workers, when will that time come?

The flower must grow on a stalk. The market must be supplied from the field. A spade is a very cheap utensil, and spades are abundant, yet a vast deal of expensive machinery was set in motion before a single spade could be manufactured.

The very phrase we have used, an educated native ministry, implies training under given conditions, it implies resources, culture. But T. W. Higginson says that we must not look for real culture till the third generation, and that judgment is confirmed in many ways. Is it not true then that a system of education must be adopted? Is it not true that an educated class is the stalk on which our cultivated ministry may be the flower?

If it be assumed, then, that a substantial and permanent apparatus for education ought to be provided in the fields of mission enterprise, then the question assumes a more definite form. What is to be the plan adopted? How shall the system. be so shaped that it may promptly take root? How can we reach the best results with the least loss? To the missionary on the spot these are no small questions. A blunder may prove a tragedy. The happy inspiration of to-day may be the genius of to-morrow, or perhaps it may be only a dream.

Those mighty marine engines that are the wonder of this mechanical age, must be built into a frame that is strong enough to bear the action of the engine, otherwise the ship would be sunk by the violence of reaction. Our moral machinery must be likewise built into a suitable frame, it must not be left to shake itself to pieces by mere jarring at unprotected points. We have