The headquarters from which the campaign of evangelization is directed is called the Bible House in Stamboul, the native section of Constantinople, which was built in 1871 and is to-day the most far-reaching lighthouse in all the East. Its rays penetrate to every corner of the Ottoman Empire. Here are the offices of administration, the depository of the Bible Society, the printing plant and publication house, the treasury, the library, the information bureaus, and other branches of the work. If you ever want to know anything about missions or missionaries in the near East, individually or collectively, their personnel, their purposes, or the results they have accomplished, or anything about American education and charitable work in Turkey, write to the Bible House, Stamboul, Constantinople, and if you have any money to contribute toward the expenses of the great work that is going on, send it there to Dr. Peet. The most far-reaching work of the American missionaries is educational, which comprehends all races, all religions, and all languages. They are educating representatives of every one of the many different races of which the Turkish Empire is composed, regardless of religious faith — Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Armenians, Kurds, Persians, Macedonians, Bulgars, Druses, Nestorians, Greeks, Russians, Georgians, Circassians, and others too numerous to mention. Their influence is thus extended to every community, because no student leaves an American institution without carrying with him the germs of progress which must affect the family and the neighbourhood and all of the inhabitants with whom he may thereafter come in contact. This influence has been working for half a century or more and has been preparing the minds of the people for the great change that has recently come over them. The missionaries do not teach revolution; they do not encourage revolutionarymethods, but they have always preached and taught liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man.
The congregations of the American churches, and especially the pupils of the missionary schools, are usually reduced from 25 to 30 per cent, ever year by immigration to the United States. Having learned from their teachers of the advantages and the opportunities that exist across the water, having acquired the English language, and being able to get good advice as to location and often letters of introduction, they have decided advantages over ordinary emigrants and for the same reason they make the best sort of citizens when they reach their new homes. It had been very difficult for an emigrant to leave Turkey until two years ago, but somehow or another, there has been a constant stream running that way for a quarter of a century.
A dozen missionaries have told me that the brightest and most promising young men and women in their districts, and especially the best teachers in their schools, have emigrated. Many of them go to Massachusetts, Chicago has thousands, and there is a large colony in Troy working in the shirt and collar factories. For example, the churches at Harpoot had 3,107 members one year and 2,413 the next. The balance had gone to America. One fourth of the congregation of the mission church at Bitlis emigrated, almost in a body, last year. It would be a great deal better for Turkey if these people would stay at home and use the knowledge and the principles they have gained in the regeneration of their country, but it cannot be denied that they are among the most valuable immigrants of all the aliens that go to the United States.
Most of the mission churches are small, like those in the villages of the United States, with congregations of only twenty-five or thirty or fifty members. Those in the cities are larger, several having more than a thousand members. They are organized just like the Protestant churches in the United States with native pastors and native church oflBcers. They have Sunday schools, prayer meetings, Christian Endeavor societies and other organizations, and they study the same Sunday school lessons as the Protestant children in the United States.