Anglican church at Kadikeuy

There are about 1200 of these native Protestants in Constantinople. Three churches have been organized among them, which manage their own ecclesiastical affairs independently of foreign control. The influence of these “ Gospel Christians ” must be reckoned upon in any summing up of forces that tend for the substitution of the service of God for the service of self in this place. Besides the native “ Gospel Churches ” in Constantinople there are congregations of English speaking Protestants connected with the chapel of the British Embassy and the Crimean memorial church in Pera, with the Union Evangelical Church which worships at the chapel of the Dutch Legation in Pera, with an Anglican church at Kadikeuy, the ancient Chalcedon, and with a little Union Church of English and Americans at Bebek on the Bosphorus.

German Protestant congregation at Bebek

There is also a German Protestant congregation at Bebek, and a more important one under the charge of the Chaplain of the German Embassy in Pera. All of these efforts to secure the spiritual culture of foreign residents of Constantinople are to be regarded as one in purpose and interest with missions among the natives, because people who do not know Christ learn of Him more influentially through the lives and conduct of his followers than through the most eloquent of sermons. It is entirely possible that an English or Swiss or German merchant, who is of incorruptible character, and who lives in Constantinople without thought of what is beyond the Bosphorus may exert a Christianizing influence in Bagdad through the return to that place of natives who have admired the Christian life of such business men tailor-made bulgaria tours.

Among these forces for the reform of life and character will be reckoned, too, every one of the foreign missionary establishments in Constantinople alluded to in the last chapter. As a type of the influence which such establishments may wield the work of the mission of the American Board may be described, since it is one of the oldest and largest of these institutions in the city.

After seeing the Colleges and the Bible House, the traveller sometimes leaves Constantinople with the idea that he has looked into all the enterprises of the American missionaries there, and that they do educational work alone. As a remedy for this idea the visitor has to be taken to see sights on Sunday. A missionary calls at the hotel at nine o’clock on Sunday morning, and takes the stranger to a chapel about two blocks away. There for the first time in his life the visitor hears “ Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” sung in Armenian to the tune of Old Hundred, and then listens to a prayer in Armenian offered by the preacher.

He is hurried away from this chapel, however, and taken to another two blocks farther along. Here an-other native congregation is assembled, and another pastor is in the midst of a service in the Greek language. There the visitor hears for the first time, perhaps, the Greek Testament read with its natural pronunciation. Thence again he is hurried a mile and a half to the Bible House, where in a neat chapel another Greek preacher is just finishing a very eloquent sermon. The bene-diction is pronounced and the congregation disperses.

The visitor wishes to go, too, when he discovers that an entirely different set of people are beginning to come into the chapel. Before he knows what is happening a new congregation has filled the place. It is composed of all classes of people, from the professional man and the merchant to the day-laborer and the donkey driver, and from the lady in silk to the tired handkerchief painter in her faded cotton dress. Then he hears for the first time a sermon in Turkish, to which the people pay profound attention, and which a Turkish officer or two also come in to hear. By their tunes he recognizes the hymns in Turkish, sung by every man, woman and child, roaring at full lung power. He further understands without the services of an interpreter, the collection, and drops a gold piece on the plate, to the vast amazement of the coppers and five-cent pieces into the midst of which it falls.