In the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople is temporal and spiritual guidance for all the Armenians of the Empire. From these eternal hills of New Rome the Legate of the Pope issues edicts of control for all Roman Catholics of Western Asia. There is the Grand Rabbi of the Jews of the Spanish emigration; there is the Exarch of the Bulgarian Church, and there too is the civil chief to whom the Protestant subjects of the Sultan look for obtaining both the instructions and the favour of their sovereign. Turkey has not been able to free itself from the ancient notion that the common people must be controlled through chief men of their own, who by necessity of their ability must live near the Sovereign. Hence its system of Government emphasizes the unique importance of this city to all in the Empire who would be or do anything whatever. Lapse of years has not ended, nor can it ever end the sway of this marvellous city over millions of Asiatics to whom during many centuries it has been known as the dominant point of the universe.
The influence of Constantinople can never cease so long as the peoples of Western Asia persist in their ancient custom of coming periodically to this city, like the flow of a tidal wave, in order to carry back with its ebb to distant hamlets the impressions and other gains which the city has given them. Under these circumstances Constantinople may be called the throbbing heart of Turkey sightseeing sofia. When beneficent principles of life once more govern the lives of its population, this city will once more become as of old an efficient channel for the influence of Europe to control Western Asia; this time, let us hope, with effect to lead the imaginative continent into voluntary and permanent abnegation of the views which have made it hitherto the bitter enemy of its own development and of true civilization.
Constantinople as the centre of a world
Perhaps the best way of putting the reader in touch with this peculiarity of Constantinople as the centre of a world of its own, and with the relation of this peculiarity to the efforts of the missionary stationed there, will be to mention a few by-ways of missionary experience in this city of broad issues. At least those at a distance may thus have better understanding of the people for whom the missionary is working and of their attitiule toward him. And if these experiences reveal the existence of humours in the life of the missionary, it will be but one more case where life alternates between situations at which men laugh and those at which they weep. One point which should be particularly borne in mind is the wide region of country from which the parties to these experiences came or to which their influence extended.
An application like that made to me one day by a man whom we will call Ahmed Bey, is typical of many made to missionaries at Constantinople by people who theoretically ought to be their enemies. Ahmed Bey was a handsome young Mohammedan from a city in Bulgaria, and an officer in the Turkish navy. He came to me in great distress. A certain Turkish Admiral of some importance so far as influence goes, had a daughter of comparative youth only, and afflicted like Leah with some trouble of the eyes which made her helpless much of the time, with injury to her prospects of matrimony.
This Admiral had unhappily seen the handsome young officer and wished to marry him to his daughter. When the officer declined the honour with thanks, the Admiral, Laban-like, said that marry her he must. Otherwise he would order the young man to the naval station at Bussora, on the Persian Gulf, for three years. To be sent to Bussora is like being sent to Cuba in yellow fever time. The young man came to me asking “ Must I marry this sore-eyed girl?” I could not help him. The order for his exile to Bussora was actually issued, and only overruled by the appeal at my suggestion of the weeping mother of mv friend to a Pasha of high rank who was a native of the same city in Bulgaria as Ahmed Bey, and who had access to the ear of the Sultan.
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