YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

"A PROSPEROUS JOUI^EY BY THE WILL OF GOB."

DISCOURSE DELIVERER IN
rHi FIRST CHURG)
ON
SABBATH EVENING, JULY 7th, X844,

BY JOEL HAWES, D. D. J . .
,,v ¦ ¦ TGSS1V6 OI
5>AST0R OP THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHDRCH IN HARTE .
 [mitted to

THIRD EDITION.

HARTFORD:
PRINTED BY D. B. MOSELEY.
(Prees of the Religious Herald, 26J State Street.)
1845.

. This discourse, prepared in the hurry of travel and amid the sal
utations and greetings of my arrival at home, would not probably
b^K been published, had it not been that reports of * it have been
^Pin circulation in -some of the public prints which are exceed
ingly ^incojaeft ; which, indeed make me speak vanity and nonesense,
and jvhat ts more, that which is false. It is now committed to
the press as a grateful memorial of a prosperous journey, and in
compliance with the request of many who have expressed a desire
to see it as it was delivered. J. Hawes.

A SERMON.

Psalm CXVI. 7, 8, 18,. 13, H.— Return unto thy rest, O my soul ; for llie Lord
liath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast, delivered my soul from death,
mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. What shall I render unto the
Lord for all his benefits toward me ? I will take the cup of salvation, and call
upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the
presence of all his people.
Also Psalm CXXII. J, 2, 7, S, 9.— I was glad when they said unto me.Tet
us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jeru
salem.— Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy paBces. For my
brethren and companion's sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.' Because
of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good

I have read these scriptures, my friends, as expressive of
my own grateful and happy feelings, on being permitted to
meet you this evening, after an absence of nine months, wanting
three days. My heart is too full to allow me to confine my
self to any one set subject of discourse. At another time I
may call your attention to some topics which have pressed with
great interest on my mind while traveling in foreign lands;
But at present, I cannot but think, that it will better accord with
your feelings, as it certainly does with mine, to give free utter-
once to the sentiments which naturally arise in the mind, in the
circumstances in which we this evening assemble.
If, perchance, any are present, who are so far strangers
among us, as not to be able to sympathize in the spirit of the
occasion, they will, surely, pardon the freedom with which a

4
pastor and his people express their kindly salutations, and
mingle their thanksgivings to God for his goodness in permitting
them to meet again after so long a separation. Permit me then,.
in a free and familiar manner, to express to you some of the-
sentiments with which 1 return to you from my long tour.
And, I. In the first place, I return with a grateful sense, I trust,.
of the goodness of God which I have so richly experienced.
Since I left you, on the 7th of last October, I have traversed a
distance of between sixteen and seventeen thousand miles. It
has been by land and by sea, in different countries and climates,
among people of strange language and of still stranger religion,
subjected to many exposures and dangers, and often in much
weariness and exhaustion. And yet I have to record it to the
p0ise of God's goodness, that I have not had one sick day, nor
has any evil of any kind befallen me. I have visited the very
countries t have always most desired to visit; I have seen the
very places and objects I have always most desired to see ; I
have been greatly interested, and I hope profited by the scenes
I have passed through ; I have formed many new acquaintances
and friendships which I greatly value ; have found much good to
be done, as I passed from place to place, and have I trust, by
the help of God's grace, done some, and have now returned in
health and happiness; to the place of all others on earth most en
deared to me, to the people I most love; and to the services
among* them, in which I hope to spend the remainder of my
days. Truly then I have reason to exclaim in the language of
my text— what shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits
toward me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the
name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in
the presence of all his people. And in the gladness which fills
my heart, as I stand once more in this sacred place, endeared to
me by so many grateful recollections, I will say— Peace be within
thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren
and companion's sake, I will now say, peace be within thee:
It may be proper, in' passing, to say a word in respect to the
circumstances which, led me take my recent tour. It is

known to most of you, that the whole matter was of very sudden
occurrence,^-the measure never having entered riiy mind as
practicable, till some twb or three weeks before my embarcation
and not fully decided upbn, till the day before I was on ship
board, prosecuting the voyage. There was some diversity of
opinion among you as to the expediency of the measure. In that
diversity my own mind largely participated. I felt deeply the
difficulties in the way of being so long absent from the people of
rriy charge. More than once, after the Society had by their
vote consented to my absence, so great was my hesitation, that
I resolved to relinquish the design and remain at home ; and
not as I have said till the . day before I embarked was the
purpose finally taken to make- the voyage. And again and
again, while on the voyage, was I led to exclaim, mystery,
mystery, that I should be here, separated from my home and my
people, going to far distant and strange lands. Rut what seemed
so mysterious at first, was gradually cleared up, and in the
progress of my tour, I saw most abundant reason to be satisfied
that thehand of God was in the whole matter, and that he had
purposes of his own to accomplish by leading me away from my
home, and you to consent to my absence. His ways are not
our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts, but are far above
them. What measure of good I may have done, in the various
places visited, especially to the great cause of missions, it is not
for me to state. I will only say that I traveled not for pleas
ure, or merely for the sake of seeing new places and things.
The time I spent at our different missionary stations in the
Levant, was fully occupied with laborious duty, and I humbly
hope, that my visit to those stations, in connection with my
beloved friend, Dr. Anderson, the Secretary of the Board, has
not been in vain, but will be a matter of joy to mysejf and to
many others on the great day of final revelation.
2. I return with a deeper impression than ever of the great
value of the pure and simple gospel. I say pure and simple
gospel, because in most of the countries where I have been, the
gospel is most miserably perverted, and is thus deprived of all
its power to bless and to save. There is no want of religion,

in some form, either in- Turkey, or in Greece, or in Syria, or in
any of the countries- 1 have seen where Popery- prevails. ' Malta
seemed to me thejmost religious place I ever saw. The bells
were ringing for religious services of some kind from morning
till night, and that almost without interruption, during every day
in the week. And crosses and images and processions meet
you at well nigh every turn in the street.* The same is true in
all Catholic communities. The day ofrwhich I left Verona was
kept as a feast of the Holy Ghost, and' it was celebrated by
processions marching through the streets to the sound of martial
music, and by the people collecting together at hotels and places
of public resort, as I had occasion to notice, all the way to
Milan. There are more feast and fast days in the calendar of
the Greek and Armenian churches than there are days in the
ye"ar. And then for rites and ceremonies in their worship, there
is almost no end of them. Go into their churches in the time
of service, and you hear not the preaching of the gospel, nor
prayers in a language intelligible to the people, but you see
pictures and images and altars on every side, priests gorgeously
robed with their backs to the people, going through an endless
variety of genuflections and motions of the body, while not
"one word of instruction is addressed to the audience, nor
any thing said or done during the whole service, adapted to
enlighten the mind, impress the conscience, or guide an in
quirer into the way of peace and salvation. For doctrines,
* The religion of Malta is the papal, in its most deleterious forms-and influences ;
and there the faith of the people produces its legitimate fruits, — superstition, false
hood, irregularity, Cimmerian ignorance in the. mass; and scepticism among, the
elite of the island. It is astonishing what things can be passed off for religion
where superstition and ignorant credulity subject the people to the control of a corrupt
priesthood. At vno disce omnes. In Lent, the people-in Malta are eannonically forbid
den the sale or use of milk, and yetin the exquisite casuistry of blissful ignorance, the
milch goats perambulate the city as at other seasons, but the venders cry some-
thing white This something white the easusists allow the people to purchase," bu t
for a -world they must not purchase milk, Plenary indulgences are affixed to the
doors of their churches, and within the same buildings are sold sacred talismans
to string round the neck and charm .off evil,
One other example. . Every year there is literally " a feast of asses." Thsee
animals, as also mules and horses, all decked out in ribbons and floral wreaths, are
made to pass before a priest, who edifies the devont brutes with holy water and his
blessing.— Sixteen years in Malta and Grucce, hy Rev. T. T. Wilson, p. 30.

are taught the traditions of men, and for the simple ordinance*
appointed by Christ, forms and ceremonies are multiplied almost
without number as they are without meaning.
When I have witnessed these things, I have wondered
whence they could originate. I find them not in the New Tes»
tament. They> have no authority in the word of God* They
are of human invention ; have been brought in by perversions
of the gospel, by departing from the pure and "simple teachings
of the scriptures. This is the great source of the error, corrup
tion and deadness which have overspread the Oriental churches,
and reduced the people to a state but little better than that of
heathenism. Man in his folly and wickedness would mend the
revelation of God; would add rites and-dogmas of his own, in
order to help out what he deemed defective, or' make religion
more imposing and more acceptable to worldly and carnal
minds. Hence have risen up the monstrous masses of super
stition and delusion to which I have referred, and which in all
the countries around the Mediterranean where I have been,
hang as a dark, heavy cloud over the people, shutting out
from them the light of life.
The pure gospel, viewed, in contrast with all this, is indeed
a light from heaven. It is plain, direct, simple ; powerfully
appealing, by its truth and motives and few simple rites, to the
higher and nobler faculties of the soul, the understanding, the
conscience, the will ; and while kept free from human additions
and perversions, is of mighty efficacy to subdue the heart to
God and fit the soul for heaven.
The gospel in this view of it, plain, simple, direct, just as I
find it in the New Testament, never appeared to me so precious*
so above all price, as when I was traveling in lands of forms
and ceremonies, of superstition and ignorance. I thought how"
plain, how good, how easily understood is this gospel, how it re
veals to me the will and the love of my Father in heaven, how,-
instead of carrying me away to saints and images and sensless
forms, it calls me directly to the throne of all-sufficient grace ;
to a kind and merciful Redeemer, who is mighty to save ; ap
peals to my conscience and my heart, imparts light to my mind,

8
and strength to my soul ; brings me to duty, to peace and to God,
and finally to eternal rest in heaven. This I said is the gospel,
—a system of grace and truth ordained by a merciful God, to
enlighten, to sanctify and save the creature man. All additions
to it, all departures from it do but obscure its glory and weaken
its power. This I saw in numerous most melancholy examples
before me ; and I said, the pure and simple gospel, with nothing
added to it or taken from it by man, — this is God's grand ordi
nance for saving a guilty and miserable world — and grateful to
God that my birth had been given me in a land blessed beyond
any other on earth by a pure and simple gospel, I resolved to
embrace that gospel anew to my heart, and to spend the rest of
my days in recommending it to my people, and in spreading
its light and blessings through the world.
My dear friends, you know not the number, nor the value of
the privileges which you enjoy in the gospel of Christ. — You
have not seen, as I have, the affecting contrast between your
condition, and that of the unhappy millions in the East, who are
either without any gospel, or are cursed with a perverted and
corrupted gospel. There reign oppression, ignorance, supersti
tion, poverty and misery in their most revolting form. Here I
behold freedom, peace, intelligence, social and domestic comfort,
and all the innumerable blessings of enlightened, Christian soci
ety. As I look around me to day and contemplate the various
rich and numberless blessings which distinguish your lot, and
generally that of the people in this land, I can hardly believe
myself to be on the same planet or conversant with the same
race, as I was during the time I spent in Turkey and Syria, —
every thing in society, in religion, in morals, in customs and man
ners js here so changed, so entirely different from what I
there saw. And I feel with a vividness of impression I
never had before, that the great cause of the difference is
in the blessed gospel of Christ. This gospel is indeed prof
itable unto all things, giving the blessings of the life that
now is and of that which is to come. Wherever it exists
in purity, it is a fountain of light and life, of joy and salvation.
It breaks the power of oppression and tyranny, and breathes jus-

tice and equity into the administration of government. It teaches
the people to understand their rights and qualifies them to enjoy
them. It wakes up mind, inspires a love of knowledge, and
leads to the establishment of schools, academies and colleges.
It nerves the arm of industry and enterprise — -clothes the fields
with plenteous harvests and diffuses far and wide the means of
comfort and happiness. It enters into all the relations of life,
and blesses all its privileges and enjoyments. It makes happy
families and happy communities; good fathers and mothers, and
affectionate, dutiful children. It forms and cements good neigh
borhood ; blesses our friendships, cheers our steps, brightens our
hopes, surrounds us with light and peace in the dying hour, and
crowns all with immortal blessedness in heaven. This, my
brethren, is the gospel; these are its blessed fruits. I felt this
more deeply than ever while journeying in those dry and thirsty
lands, where no rain or dew of heaven falls, and no plants of
righteousness grow. And the impression I trust will remain on
my mind till the end of life, endearing the gospel to my heart,
and making me more earnest in commending it to your's and
to all whom I can reach by my influence.
I pass on to remark,
3. That another effect of my tour has been to give me ;a
deeper impression than I ever had before, of the temporal evils,
the present miseries of sin. I speak not here of the punishments
and woes of sin in another world, but of the miseries which it
draws after it in this. These we see in some measure at home-;
but they strike us far more forcibly in foreign lands, where sin,
departure from God and duty has had a longer time to work
out its proper results. My journey led me over some of the
fairest and most beautiful portions of the earth ; and as I passed
from place to place, I could not but be struck with the exuberant
goodness of God, in the frame and order of his creation, and with
the abundant resources he had provided for the gratification of all
the reasonable desires of man. Turkey comprises some of the
richest and most fertile countries on the globe. Constantinople, its
metropolis, occupies a position, which, of all others I ever saw,
2

10
seemed to me best fitted to be the centre and capital of the
world. Asia Minor was famed of old as the garden and granary
of the earth. Syria and Palestine are characterized in the
Scriptures as a good land, a land of rivers and fountains, and
as flowing with milk and honey. And most forcibly did I feel
the truth of this description, as I passed through these countries
in the opening of the last spring. My eyes never rested upon
a more beautiful spot, than when from the mountains at- the
north, I looked down upon the plains of Samaria, and surveyed
the surrounding country from the hill on which the city once stood. -
It seemed like a scene of enchantment, and as if man living there
could not be otherwise than happy. The same may be said of
the country around the beautiful lake of Tiberias, where I spent
a Sabbath, und of the broad, extended plains, of Esdraellon and
Sharon, and of many other parts of Judea through which I
passed on my way to Jerusalem. The regions here referred to,
are of exhuberant fertility. I saw them dressed in the richest
bloom of the season, decked in a profusion of wild flowers and
herbage, and I could not doubt that with a little culture from the
"hand of man, they would yield most plentifully the means of
subsistence, and of happiness, to a dense and numerous population.
But while in passing through the countries now alluded to, I
was every where struck with the goodness of God in his works,
and saw on every side how abundant the means he had provided ,
for making a virtuous population happy, I was equally pained to
see that man, in the midst of all this profusion of the Creator's
bounty, was sunk in extreme poverty, degradation and misery.
And sin, I clearly saw, was the cause of all.
I must say that I never saw poverty, I never saw degradation
and misery till I saw them in Turkey, and especially in Syria. I
had no conception how low human beings might sink, orhowj
near like brute animals they might become, till I saw the demon
strations ,of it amid the profusions and bounties which God has so
munificently showered upon the lands I visited in and around the
Mediterranean. It seemed as if a most perverse ingenuity had
been at work to pervert the greatest blessings and turn them into
means of the greatest degradation and misery. The govern-

11 -.
stent, it is .enough to say, is an absolute Turkish despotism, ad
ministered in the provinces by the injustice and tyranny of rapa
cious Pashas and Agas. Oppression grinds the people in the
dust, and keeps them in a state of extreme depression, ignorance,
indolence and want. Large portions of the richest soil in Syria
and Palestine, are.owned by the Sultan, and are farmed.out byhis
agents . at a most exorbitant rental. And even the crops, raised
on this hard condition, the cultivator of the soil has no certainty
of gathering for himself. They may be taken from him by an
order from the Pasha or some other officer of government, or
what is very common, may be swept away by some, wandering
horde of Bedouins.
The consequence is, that large tracts of the richest land lie
uncultivated and waste, and the people are obliged to depend on
the most scanty and precarious paeans of subsistence. Social
and domestic comfort is very little known. The houses in the
villages are for the most part wretched hovels, usually having
but one room which- serves as the common receptacle of the
family and their cattle, and is remarkable for nothing so much as
for filth and vermin. The means of intellectual and moral im
provement, in so far as the mass of the people are concerned,
are wholly unknown. There is not a newspaper, and so farasl
could learn, not a bookstore in all Syria. The whole country,
seemed to me to be lying under a dreadful curse, Every thing
wore the aspect of decay and hastening ruin. With the single
exception of Beirut which is increasing in trade and population,
and some few places in Mount Lebanon where I noticed signs of
thrift, I saw not the least mark of improvement, in any thing,
in all my journey through Syria and the Holy Land, but decay,
prostration and ruin were every where visible.
The people as I have said, are miserably poor. Beggars
swarm on every side. The men are indolent, ignorant and shift
less; and the women are substantially slaves. Nothing struck
me more forcibly than the deep degradation of the^ female sex.
They are universally regarded and treated as an inferior order
of beings, and are subjected to the most menial and severe.servi-
ces. The day I left Jerusalem, a cold and blustering day, I saw

12
many women on the road, two, three and four miles from the
city, going thither with heavy loads of wood on their heads, for
the market, poor, ragged, sorrow-worn beings as I ever beheld.
It is needless to add, that in circumstances like these, children are
miserably neglected ; many of them become the subjects of
early disease and death, and those that live to grow up, grow up
without instruction, and as a matter of course, inherit the viees
and the miseries of their parents.
In consequence of the things now stated, the population of
Turkey in general is said to be fast decreasing. In the whole
of [Syria, including Palestine, there are but a million and a half
of people ; a number scarcely equal to what was once contained
in the single tribe of Judah. Around the western shore of the
sea of Tiberias, where, as Josephus informs us, there were once
numerous towns and villages, the least of which contained 15,000
souls, there are now only two very small ones, and these wretch
edly poor and decaying. Four hundred and sixty towns in the
Houran, east of the Jordan, have been discovered in ruins, and
some of them of recent date, laid waste by the incursions of
lawless Arabs. Fragments of temples, broken arches, fallen
pillars, ruined aqueducts and dislocated pavements, met our view
'wherever we went, and continually reminded us that we were
trayeling over buried cities, and amid the graves of myriads of
once living and active human beings.*
The remarks now made apply, with very little abatement, to
almost every part of the Turkish empire. Constantinople itself
is said to have diminished its population since 1812, by 300,000,-(-
Five hundred villages are not found in the district of Mardin, in
Messopotamia, which once possessed 1,600. The island of Cy
prus, one of the largest and most fertile in the Mediterranean,
once containing 14,000 villages and 2,000,000 of people, has now

*It is an instructive faot that the most end tiring monuments ever reared by man are
those that mark his frailty and mortality.— I refer to grave yards and tombs. These are
to be seen all over Turkoy and Syria, In the sides of mountains, and on plains where
for many miles around, not a human being now exists.
tHartley's Researches in Greece and the Levant.

13
less than 700 villages, and only about 80,000 inhabitants ; and
these, for the most part, in a state of extreme poverty and wretch
edness. And the island of Rhodes, one of the richest and most
enchanting spots I ever saw, has decreased in population nearly
in the same proportion. As I walked through the principal
street, once inhabited by the proud knights of the order of St.
John, and now bearing their name, it seemed as if I was in a city
of the dead, every thing was so still and gloomy. And then for
Ephesus, and Sardis, and Laodicea, and Nice, arid hundreds of
other cities, once large and flourishing in Asia Minor, where are
they now ? Utterly laid waste, inhabited only by jackalls and
wolves, or furnishing a temporary abode for wandering Arabs,
who occasionally pitch their tents amid their ruins and feed
their flocks on the surrounding plains.
But I dwell too long on these details. And yet they all go to,
show how great are the temporal evils, the present miseries,
which sin draws after it. As I passed through the scenes of igr
norance, poverty and wretchedness to which I have adverted, I
could not hut exclaim again and again — this is all the work of sin^
of departure from God, and rebellion against his wise and benev
olent laws, I could not but trace the wisdom arid goodness of
God displayed in the fertility and beauty of his creation around
me ; I could not forget that I was in a land once blessed of God
beyond all other lands on earth ; a land in which patriarchs had
lived and died, and prophets and apostles had taught and prayed,
and where the Son of God had manifested his glory and wrought
out the world's redemption ; and when in the midst • of all this
goodness and mercy, and these provisions of bounty and love for
the happiness of man, I saw around me, on every side, such mel
ancholy signs of poverty, degradation and misery, I felt with a
vividness of impression I never had before, how great and how
terrible an evil sin is ; how low, how wretched and debasing it
can make men even in the present world ; and I prayed that my
own beloved country might, by reverence of God and obedience
to hjs laws, be saved from the calamities and woes which are
sure, sooner or later, to come upon all who forsake his ways and
despise his authority.

14
4. It will be expected that I should state what impressions I
have received respecting the cause of missions in the part of the
world where I have been. I cannot now dwell on this copious
topic. I shall take occasion to consider it more particularly at a
future time. I would state generally, that my impressions are, on
the whole, decidedly favorable. I have had large opportunity to
become informed on this subject ; having visited all our mission
ary stations in the Mediterranean, and spent a considerable time
at each station, in intimate intercourse with the missionaries and
their families. In respect to the character of our missionaries, I
am prepared to say that, taking them as a "class, I hold them, to
be men of rare excellence ; intelligent, judicious, faithful and de
voted in an eminent degree. Some of them I knew before they
left our country ; all of them I know now ; and I feel it to be
both my duty and. my happiness to say, that I have never known
men, who appeared to me to have greater simplicity of purpose,
or a quicker sense of obligation, or a more earnest desire to
know and do what is right and pleasing to God. They have
diversity of gifts and relative qualifications; and to expect to
find them without fault, would be to expect more than falls to the
lot of humanity, even in its best estate. But they are good, sound-
minded, devoted men, and worthy of all the confidence which the
Christian community reposes in them. I felt it to be a privilege to
have intercourse with them ; and I shall never forget the pleasant
and profitable seasons I spent with them in prayer and consulta
tion respecting the Dest means of promoting the great cause to
which their lives are devoted.* In the midst of great difficulties

*In a Letter, (by the Rev, Horatio S outhgate,) recently published in this country, and
widely circulated, a charge is brought against our missionaries, especially those resid
ing at Constantinople, which deeply implicates their character as honest men, and
-which, if true, should destroy all confidence in them. It is to this effect,— that they
studiously conceal their true character ; are unwilling to be known as Congregational
missionaries among the people of the East, knowing that this -would be fatal to their
cause,— and further, they are influenced by envy and jealousy towards missionaries
of the Episcopal connection, as conscious of their superior advantages for propagating
the gospel among the Oriental churches.
I cannot conceive of a charge more false and injurious than this. I am sure it is un
true every word of it. I saw nothing, I heard nothing in all my visit, which furnishes
the slightest justification of this charge. It is doubtless true, that our missionaries

' 15
and many discouragements, they are laboriously and faithfully
pursuing their work, and at several of the stations with very
marked tokens of God's blessing. We had occasion to notice
this especially among the Armenians at Constantinople, Broosa
and Tribizond. There is a most interesting reformation in pro
gress among this people, and that on a wide scale ; and I have
strong hope that God is about to take from them a people for
himself. At each of the stations referred to, we several times
met collections of Armenian converts and others interested in
the gospel. These interviews were most deeply instructive and
affecting-, as exhibiting the power of the gospel to renew and
sanctify the heart ; and I have rarely seen more pleasing evi
dence of -sincere and devoted piety than I witnessed in many
whom I met on the occasions referred to. The Armenians are
indeed an exceedingly, interesting people. Their exact number
have-not thought it their first duty to proclaim from the house-top that they are Congrega-
tionalists. Theyhave sought to be known in another and higher character, that of minis
ters of Christ, sent forth by the friends of Christ to publish his precious name to their
perishing fellow men. They have felt, what I must think, all true missionaries should
feel,-that iheirfirst and leading objectshould be (o make-known Christ and him
crucified, as the only ground of hope for lost men, and not'to prea'Ch up external church
organization, or to teach the people how many orders there are in the ministry, or
how they should observe fast days and feast days — a poor work, by the way, for a
protestant missionary to be engaged in, but not wholly neglected in a certain quarter.
But that they have ever sougbt to conceal their true character, or have ever been
unwilling to declare their real sentiments when asked, and they have often beerr asked
on the subject of church order and the ministry, and modes of worship, I have seen
not the slightest evidence to believe. The men, I believe, are incapable of such dupli
city. The truth is, the Armenians and all others who feel any interest in the matter,
know perfectly well what are the views of our missionaries on church polity and .
modes of worship ; and it is a gross wrong to represent them as wishing to conceal
their sentiments on these subjects.
. As to their being actuated by envy and jealousy, because of the known, superiority
of Episcopacy for promoting the gospel in the East,— I was careful to inquire into that
matter, having heard the claim of such superiority set forth at home. The result of all
my inquires is, that the claim has no foundation in truth. It is a mere imagination ;
nothing else. This is the uniform testimony of all the missionaries with whom Icon-
versed. They all affirm that they never felt the least envy or jealousy on the point
in question, for they never believed there was the least cause for it. They have never
believed that Episcopacy has any superiority in the case for which it is claimed. So-
far from this, it ever has been, and is, their uniform belief that as Congregationalists, they
have a decided advantage over Episcopacy for receiving and propagating apure, spiritual
Christianity among a people who are already' overlaid and crushed under a mass of

16
it is difficult to ascertain. They are usually estimated at front
two to four millions. They are numerous in all the prin
cipal towns of the Turkish Empire, in Persia arid in other
countries of the East. They number 150,000 in Constantinople.
They are subject to the Sultan in their civil relations, but retain,
their own independent church organization. They are a fine
portion of our race. For candor, fair mindedness and general
interest in religious truth, they are the direct opposite of the
Greeks. They are indeed the New Englanders of the East.
There is among them a spirit of inquiry on the subject of
religion, which is not confined to anyone place or country ; but
is manifesting itself in many places, and in parts. of the empire
far asunder ; and from all I saw and heard, I could not resist the
conviction that God means to do a great work among this
people. They present by far the most hopeful field Of mission-
dead forms and ceremonies and rites of human invention. This opinion, I believe to
be true ; and. every attempt to revive pure religion in the dead churches of the East
which falls in with their love of forms, or which relies upon any thing, but the pure
gospel preached in simplicity and truth, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,
will most certainly prove abortive. It is as absurd, as it would have been for ihe
Apostles to attempt to embody the pure, living spirit of Christianity in the dead forms
of Pharisaism.
The object of this note is not to provoke controversy, but to defend our missiona
ries against an unjust and deeply injurious charge. The Letter containing the charge
has other matters which deserve examination, and the whole subject will, perhaps, be
examined in due time by some one fully competent to the task. The fact is, Mr. South-
:gate has put himself into a false position. He is not what he once was, nor what he
was, for some time, after he forsook the faith of his fathers and entered the Episcopal
¦churcTi . Had he remained such, as he was when he first went out to the East, no dif
ficulty would have arisen between him and our missionaries. Unhappily he has be
come a high churchman. That tells the whole story. His sectarianism warps his
judgment, perverts his better feelings, and leads him to speak of his brethren, and of
the American Board generally, in a manner, which, a few years since, would have
seemed shocking to himself, and which now furnishes matter of grave reflection to
many who knew him in better days. Far "be it from me to charge him with intent to
injure his brethren. I judge not his motives ; these must be left to the scrutiny of a
higher tribunal. I will only add, that I fully concur in (he sentiment recently expressed
by a distinguished Theologian in another part of tho country,' that the Letter is fitted to
injure Mr. Southgate in the estimation of serious and intelligent Christians, more
than any thing which has yet been written against him. O come the day When there
shall be an end of controversy about the externals of religion, and when all the friends
of Christ, holding the head, shall unite in bidding each other God-speed in efforts to
build up the kingdom of the common Master.

17
ary labor in the East ; arid how, when the national mind; is
waking up to inquiry, and many are anxiously Seeking the way
of" life, every means should be used to extend to them, as soon
and as widely as possible, the light of salvation.
In Syria too, degraded and miserable as is its general condi
tion, I saw very pleasing evidence, at our missionary stations,
both at Beirut and oii Mount Lebanon, that our brethren there
have not been laboring in vain. At each of these- stations. I
became1 acquainted with several' converts to the gospel, who
would d6 honor to any Christian church in this country;' and
prerJaration, I saw, was5 being made, by the diffusion of light
among-the people, and the freer access to them which our mis
sionaries were gaining, for a much more plentiful harvest when it
shall please God to shed down the good influences of his Spirit
to render the means of his appointment effectual. Without the
powerful: aids of his grace, we all know, that Paul may plant,
and Apoflos water in vain.
In regard to themtssionamorig the Greeks, I can say but little
that is encouraging. A great amount of means has been'
employed in their behalf during the last twenty or twenty-five1
v'eafs, but with only a very limited measure of success. I do
not' mean'to intimate that no good has been done; A great1 duty
axis' been performed, towards this people, and a great lesson has
been learnt from the experiment made among them, which
cannot fail to be of much use in the future conduct of missions
among' the Oriental churches. A very useful impulse has been
giyetr to the cause of common education in Greece, and many
of* the" schools established by the g6verriment are modeled, in a
greater or less degree, after those that have been connected
with our missions. The elements of divine light and salvation
haVe been widely diffused by the circulation of the scriptures and°
other books, and by the preaching and conversation of the mis
sionaries '; and these may, ere long, begin to operate with power
arid' yield an abundance^ of fruit unto eternal life.
But when we look;for such fruit at present, it is to be fount!'
only in a very stinted measure, — few, very few have been con'-'
3

re
'verted to the knowledge and love of the truth. There is indeed
something in the character and circumstances of the Greeks,
which, to -a surprising degree, repels the gospel as a principle of.
new, spiritual life. They are a vain, proud, superstitious, bigot
ed people ; extremely jealous of the influence of foreigners, and
very much under the control of a corrupt and ignorant priest
hood. The consequence is they turn away from all efforts made, ¦•
to enlighten and save them, and cling to their superstitions and
delusions, to the rites and the forms of a dead church, .with
extreme tenacity. Ithas therefore been resolved, and wisely. in
my opinion, both by the missionary societies in England; and by
our own American Board, to withdraw in great measure, for the
present, from the Greek field, and concentrate our efforts where,
they will be more gratefully received, and be more„promising; of
useful results.
.The difficulties which attend the propagation of the. gospel
among the people of the East are far greater than are usually
supposed. They can be properly estimated by no one who has
not been on the ground. I knew something of them previous to
my recent visit, but I now have a far deeper impression of them
than ever before. They lie in the nature of the government ;.
despotic,^ jealous, and hostile to the gospel in all its forms-"
in a corrupt, and1 bigoted priesthood, which guards the?
avenues of light, and repels every attempt at reformation and'
change; in the ignorance, superstition and depression of the
people, which hold them in the slavery of sin,- and too often con
tented with their chains; in long established forms and ceremo
nies which have taken the place of spiritual religion and laidfthe;
Bible in the dust; in image worship,-and saint worship, and false,
doctrines without number; in the broken, fragmentary state;
of Society, composed of a heterogeneous mass of different
nations, and speaking different languages; each individual, and
family, standing as it were alone, with no bond of social sympa
thy uniting them together, by which good influences can be cir
culated through the mass, added to all, and strengthening ali,
the natural aversion of the heart to .God's holiness, and its love'

w
of error and sin— These are some of the difficulties which have
to be encountered in propagating the gospel among the people of
the East, — and in the midst of which our missionaries' are :
patiently and laboriously pursuing their great work. They are-
slowly, but I think certainly, overcoming the difficulties^of their -
situation: They are gaining the confidence of the people,- and
establishing their character as honest and able- men, bent on
doing good. They are diffusing around them, by preaching, by ;
conversation, by the publication of tracts and books, and by their1
Christian example, the elements of spiritual life and salvation?
and they are praying and waiting on God for his^blessing. Nor1
do they pray arid wait in vain. God owns their labors, and they
are permitted. to. see the first fruits of their toils in many souls ;
converted and saved.
It is important that we entertain-a just view of the difficulties -
with which our missionaries have to contend , in the prosecution
of their work, lest we should expect too much of them, and with
draw our confidence and support, because they do not at once
report nations converted to God.' The missionary work is-at;
first, and foralong time, necessarily, preliminary and preparatory;
consisting in learning the language and manners of the people, in
breaking up the ground and casting iri the seed, — and we should'
learn to wait in patience, and not demand the harvest before
the seed has had time to' spring up and grow — or as is some
times the case, before it has been sown.
The difficulties to which I havereferred, it should be remarked,
are graduallypassing away. TheTurkish power is waning. The
bowstring and the simitar are not now quite as terrible in the land
of.the Ottomans as they once were. The arrangement recently
made with the Porte, by which a mussulman, becominga Chris
tian, is no longer in danger of losing his head, strikes at a funda
mental law of the Koran, and if carried out, as I trust if will be,
it will mightily curb the. insolence of Turkish bigotry, and open
the way for the entrance of light among a people, whose minds
have for centuries been hermetically sealed. The civilization of
the West is throwing pack, a mighty influence on the East. —

20
The steamboats that arrive daily in the principal, ports of
Turkey, bearing thither, the arts and the science of a higher and
more advanced state of society, and sending merchants and men
of business and intelligent travelers over every part of the
empire, do wonderfully disturb the quietude and repose of the
Turks, and make them feel that they must throw off their
slippers and gird up their long flowing robes for a quicker step,,
or be swept away before the march of modern improvement.
Indeed the impression is now very general among them, that the
time is not distant when they shall be. driven out of Europe ap/d,
be compelled to find their home on the Asiatic side of the Bps-
phorus. And for one* I must say, the sooner that time comes the
better. It is not fitting that the Turk, in all his haughtiness, and
sensualism, and bigotry, and hostility to every kind of progress,
should monopolize the fairest portion of the earth, and turn back
from it all that can elevate and bless society, or make man intel
ligent and happy. Important changes, I cannot doubt, must
ere long take place in the state of the Turkish empire ; and
they will, I am confident, be changes for the better. Fresh-
troubles may arise to disturb some of our missions, and for a
season, interrupt their operations ; but alj will, in the end, turn
out for the furtherance of the gospel. When on my return
from J.affa.to Beirut, I saw, off the Island of Rhodes, a fleet of)
Turkish transports conveying troops into Syria, to enforce a new
conscription of thirty thousand soldiers for the Sultan's army, 
a work, it was believed, which could not be carried through
without the most serious disturbances in the country. Insurrec
tion and war may again burst upon the mountains of Lebanon
and sweep over the valleys and plains of Syria and Palestine.
But Syria and Palestine shall yet be redeemed from Turkish
oppression and wrong. It cannot be, that shey shall lie much
longer under a government, whose whole influence is to make
desolate and waste. A better state awaits them. They are
included in the covenant of God,— in the land of promise-— §
land once traversed by patriarchs, prophets arid apostles, where
the Son Ijved.and taught, and. suffered and died for the world's

21
redemption. That land shall yet be redeemed. Causes are- at
worfc which will assuredly bring about deliverance. So I felt as
I looked at some of the barren hills of Judea, ' where the beast
wanders not, the bird flies not, and the grass grows : not,' and
saw how drear and desolate a land may become under the curse
of God, for the sins Of the people, — 'a sight rendered still more
striking by the beautiful flowers, and the fields of flourishing
grain and rich pasturage, that here and there present themselves,
as if to show what the land was once, and what it again may be,
when the blessing of the Lord shall rest upon the city an,d upon
the field, and the labor of man's hand shall be refreshed by the
former and latter rain.'
5. I.returnwith a deeper sense than ever, of the many great
and distinguishing blessings enjoyed by the people of this land,
Never was I so impressed with thankfulness to God, for the
moral, religious, free, prosperous and happy state of my own
country, as when I had the opportunity of comparing; it with
that of other nations of the, East. I cannot dwell on this
topic, though it would be easy to wrijte a, volume. I will
only say, that the effect of all I have seen abroad has been
to send me home with a deeper love of my own country, and
with a stronger impression than ever, of her responsibility in rela
tion to the other nations of the earth. We hear at home a great
many murmurs and complaints: Men are restless and discontent
ed, as if they were suffering under some great oppression and
wrong. But let any one travel abroad, and he will be ungrateful in
deed if he does not soon dismiss his complaints, and return home
contented and, happy ; fully persuaded that the lines have fallen
to him in pleasant places, and that he has indeed a goodly herit
age. All good things, it is true, are not to be found in any one coun
try ;' they are not. to be :found in our own. I know too, that there
are many arid great evils in our social state, which sadly mar its
sjmmetry, anddisturb its good order. There is much immorality
and vice In our Country, much desecration of the day and the
name of God, and much intemperance and licentiousness yet re
maining, in consequence of which, there is, in the aggregate, pp

22
small amount of poverty and misery. We have too our doctrine'
of repudiation^ which has had too wide a currency among us ; is
a national reproach in the view of Europeans, and should never
be named, but to be abhorred ; we have our outbreaks of mis
rule and mob violence, which sober men justly regard with;
much apprehension ; we have our slavery, a system of infinite -
wrong, and fraught with unspeakable danger to our republic ;
we have also a foolish and wicked grasping after foreign terri
tory, as if we had not already in our country enough of the
elements of division and strife, but must introduce new causes of
discord and disunion.
These are great evils,— dark spots on our national character ;
and when one is abroad, he feels keenly the deep reproach which
they cast upon his country in the view of intelligent foreigners.
Still it cannot be denied by any one who has had an opportunity
to make the comparison, that all the great essential elements Of
a growing, prosperous, and happy state of society, are enjoyed;
here,- as they are in no other country on earth.
Again and again, as I passsed from one country to another, and1:
viewed the state of things around me, I was led to exclaim, — Th'e-
salvation of America is the hope of the world. And I said this,
and say it now, not with a diminished interest in the cause of"
foreign missions ; for I have a deeper interest in that cause thariJ
ever ; but in the full persuasion, that if we would evangelize and
save the world, we must take care of our own country, arid fill it,
as fast, and as perfectly as possible, with the knowledge : and
glory of God.
I may say —
6. That I bring home with me a deeper abhorenee than ever-
of bigotry, and a warmer, and larger charity, towards all true.
Christians, whatever be their name or denomination. What \
have seen in the Oriental churches, has given me a perfect disgust
of all exclusive, bigoted pretensions, built on rites, and forms,
and external ecclesiastical organization. There is the Roman
Catholic Church, the Greek Church, and the Armenian Church,
and the Syrian and Coptic Church, each claiming to be the onljr-

23
true chffrch, in the direct line of Apostolical succession, and
having the only authorized ministry, and the only valid ordinances.
The Catholic church, seated in the chair of St. Peter; at Rome,
hurls her anathemas against all who do not kneel at her altars,
and submit "to her rites. The Greek church, equally corrupt in
doctrine and practice, holding the dogma of transubstantiation,
the worship of saints, and .-baptismal^pgeoeration,* hurls back
these anathemas with equal violence; ahd>-wouM as soon refuse'
communion with the Archbishop'of Canterbury, as with a plain,;
Baptist o» Congregational minister.
. The Armenian, Coptic and Syrian churches, with some
slight modifications, follow in the same train. And yet all
these churches are most miserably corrupt, — are dejtd ; the
spirit of life has gone out of them, and each lies wrapped in
its winding sheet of cold forms and ceremonies. These things
have thoroughly sickened me of all exclusive claims founded.
on the externals of religion. Why should we seek the living.
among the dead? The tru^ church is not to be found in jex-;
ternals of any kind,. The. true. church consists of all true
Christians; of all who have been born of the Spirit, repentedjof
-sin, believed in Christ,«are living in obedience;to his commands^
and for the glory of.his name. My. charity .embraces all such ill'
whatever church they are found, or in whatever forms they may
choo$e~to worship God. I have my preferences in this matter ;
I concede to them theirs*? and nothing shall prevent me from
loving and seeking fellowship with the -true Christian spirit,
wherever ancPby whomsoever I see it manifested. This I am
sure is the right ground^; and I am equally sure that those who
reject this ground ; who set up exclusive pretensions, based on
the externals religion, and refuseJo receive those whom Christ
has received, are miserably symbolizing with the corrupt churches
of the East, and are raising most formidable barriers to the
progress of Christ's kingdom in the world.
'But I must close, and I do so witlj,a single remark, — While I
return grateful to God for his goodness, invigorated in health, and

24
refreshed in spirit, I returnfalffwith the' fijjfcjjjrpfcge to devofe
myself anew to the service' of my dear^peopWin the gospel of
Christ. Twenty-six years I -have spent in this service; they
have been happy years; and each One -as it has passed has en
deared that service more and more t© my heart, and bound me
in stronger and still stronger affection to the much loved people
of my charge. Whatf-oifstrength agd life yet retmairi to me, I
here consecrate -'to thaVsajne service; and I desire ho higher
happiness than to be used as" an mstrumenVin the hand' of my
gracious God^; in leading all of you; my deaf frieflSs, to the
knowledge and love of the Saviour; and with you' to stand ap:
proved,, at -the last, by our common Judge, fitted to a%ell to
gether forever in a holy and happy heaven.
"VJffcilel thus- devote myself especially to the people of my^
charge, I hope it is proper to say, to this great congregation^'
that, with most hearty good will, I shall beready to unite with
my ministerial brethren and fallow Christians of every harne in
this city, — most pleasant to me and*rnost loved, of any I have
seen in all my travels,— in whatever measures may seem adapted
to'promdfe the cause of our 'common Savioar. May God bless
aril the churches in the city, arid all their pastors, arid send down
his Spirit to dwell in all out%earts, in all our families and con
gregations, arid soon fill this place, and 'this wbrld, with the
knowledge and glory of his'great name.

"A PROSPEROUS JOURNEY BY THE WILL OF GOD"

DISCOURSE

DELIVERED IN

2OT M&mU,22'<S'Si$»3

SABBATH EVENING, JULY 7th, 1844.

BY JOEL HAWES, D. D.
PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.

HARTFORD:
PRINTED BYpD. B. MOSELEY.
(Press of the Religious Herald, 26* State Street.)
1844.

This discourse, prepared in the hurry of travel and amid the sal
utations and greetings of my arrival at home, would not probably
have been published, had it not been that reports of it have been
put in circulation in some of the public prints which are exceed
ingly incorrect ; which indeed make me speak vanity and nonsense,
and what is more, that which is false. It is now committed to
the press as a grateful memorial of a prosperous journey, and in
compliance with the request of many who have expressed a desire
to see it as it was delivered. J. Hawes.

A SERMON.

Psalm CXVI. 7, 8, 12, 13, 14.— Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord
hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death,
mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. What shall I render unto the
Lord for all his benefits toward me? I w.ill take the cup of salvation, and call
upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the
presence of all his people.
Also, Psalm CXXII. 1, 2, 7, 8, 9. — I was glad when they said unto me, Let
us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jeru
salem. — Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my
brethren and companion's sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee. Because
of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good.

I have read these scriptures, my friends, as expressive of
my own grateful and happy feelings, on being permitted to
meet you this evening, after an absence of nine months, wanting
three days. My heart is too full to allow me to confine my
self to any one set subject of discourse. At another time I
may call your attention to some topics which have pressed with
great interest on my mind while travelling in foreign lands.
But at present, I cannot but think, that it will better accord with
your feelings, as it certainly does with mine, to give free utter
ance to the sentiments which naturally arise in the mind, in the
circumstances in which we this evening assemble.
If, perchance, any are present, who are so far strangers
among us, as not to be able to sympathize in the spirit of the
occasion, they will, surely, pardon the freedom with which a

4
pastor and his people express their kindly salutations, and mingle
their thanksgivings to God for his goodness in permitting them
to meet again after so long a separation. Permit me then,
in a free and familiar manner, to express to you some of the
sentiments with which I return to you from my long tour.
And, 1. In the first place, I return with a grateful sense, I trust,
of the goodness of God which I have so richly experienced.
Since I left you, on the 7th of last October, I have traversed a
distance of between sixteen and seventeen thousand miles. It
has been by land and by sea, in different countries and climates,
among people of strange language and of still stranger religion,
subjected to many exposures and dangers, and often in much
weariness and exhaustion. And yet I have to record it to the
praise of God's goodness, that I have not had one sick day, nor
has any evil of any kind befallen me. I have visited the very
countries I have always most desired to visit ; I have seen the
very places and objects I have always most desired to see ; I
have been greatly interested, and I hope profited by the scenes
I have passed through ; I have formed many new acquaintances
and friendships which I greatly value ; have found much good
to be done, as I passed from place to place, arid have I trust, by
the help of God's grace, done some, and have now returned in
health and happiness, to the place of all others on earth most en
deared to me, to the people I most love, and to the services
among them, in which I hope to spend the remainder of my
days. Truly then I have reason to exclaim in the language of
my text— what shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits
toward me ? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the
name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the
presence of all his people. And in the gladness which fills my
heart, as I stand once more in this sacred place, endeared to me
by so many grateful recollections, I will say— Peace be within
thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren
and companion's sake, I will now say, peace be within thee.
It may be proper, in passing, to say a word in respect to the
circumstances which led me to take my recent tour. It is

known to most of you that the whole matter was of very sudden
occurrence, — the measure never having entered my mind as
practicable, till some two or three weeks before my embarcation,
and not fully decided upon, till the day before I was on ship
board, prosecuting the voyage. There was some diversity of
opinion among you as to the expediency of the measure. In that
diversity my own mind largely participated. I felt deeply the
difficulties in the way of being so long absent from the people of
my charge. More than once, after the Society had by their
vote consented to my absence, so great was my hesitation, that
I resolved to relinquish the design and remain at home ; and
not as 1 have said till the day before I embarked was the
purpose finally taken to make the voyage. And again and again,
while on the voyage, was I led to exclaim, mystery, mystery,
that I should be here, separated from my home and my people,
going to far distant and strange lands. But what seemed
so mysterious at first, was gradually cleared up, and in the
progress of my tour, I saw most abundant reason to be satisfied
that the hand of God was in the whole matter, and that he had
purposes of his own to accomplish by leading me away from
my home, and you to consent to my absence. His ways are
not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts, but are far above
them. What measure of good I may have done, in the various
places visited, especially to the great cause of missions, it is not
for me to state. I will only say that I travelled not for pleasure,
or merely for the sake of seeing new places and things. The
time I spent at our different missionary stations in the Levant
was fully occupied with laborious duty, and I humbly hope, that
my visit to those stations, in connection with my beloved friend,
Dr. Anderson, the Secretary of the Board, has not been in vain,
but will be a matter of joy to myself and to many others on the
great day of final revelation.
2. I return with a deeper impression than ever of the great
value of the pure and simple gospel. I say pure and simple
gospel, because in most of the countries where I have been, the
gospel is most miserably perverted, and is thus deprived of all
its power to bless and to save. There is no want of religion, in

6
some form, either in Turkey, or in Greece, or in Syria, or in any
of the countries I have seen where Popery prevails. Malta
seemed to me the most religious place I ever saw. The bells
were rino-ing for religious services of some kind from morning
till night, and that almost without interruption, during every day
in the week. And crosses and images and processions meet
you at well nigh every turn in the street.* The same is true in
all Catholic communities. The day on which I left Verona was
kept as a feast of the Holy Ghost, and it was celebrated by
processions marching through the streets to the sound of martial
music, and by the people collecting together at hotels and places
of public resort, as I had occasion to notice, all the way to
Milan. There are more feast and fast days in the calendar of
the Greek and Armenian churches than there are days in the
year. And then for rites and ceremonies in their worship, there
is almost no end of them. Go into their churches in the time of
service, and you hear not the preaching of the gospel, nor prayers
in a language intelligible to the people, but you see pictures and
images and altars on every side, priests gorgeously robed with
their backs to the people, going through an endless variety of
genuflections and motions of the body, while not one word of
instruction is addressed to the audience, nor any thing said or
done during the whole service, adapted to enlighten the mind,
impress the conscience, or guide an inquirer into the way of
peace and salvation. For doctrines, are taught the traditions of
* The religion of Malta is the papal, in its most deleterious forms and influences;
and there the faith of the people produces its legitimate fruits, — superstition, false
hood, irregularity, Cimmerian ignorance in the mass; and scepticism among the
elite of the island. It is astonishing what things can he passed off for religion
where superstition and ignorant credulity subject the people to the control of a corrupt
priesthood. Ab uno disce omnes. In Lent, the people in Malta are cannonically forbid
den the sale or use of milk, and vet in the exquisite casuistry of blissful ignorance, the
milch goats perambulate the city as at other seasons, but the venders cry some-
ihing white. This something white the casuists allow the people to purchase but
for » world they must not purchase milk. Plenary indulgences are affixed to the
doors of their churches, and within the same buildings are sold sacred talismans
to string round the neck and charm off evil.
One other example. Every year there is literally " a feast of asses." These
animals, as also mules and horses, all decked out in ribbons and floral wreaths
are made to pass before u priest, who edifies the devout brutes with holy water
and his blessing. — Sixteen years in Malta and Greece, by Rev. T. T. Wilson v 30>

men, and for the simple ordinances appointed by Christ, forms
and ceremonies are multiplied almost without number as they
are without meaning.
When I have witnessed these things, I have wondered
whence they could originate. I find them not in the New Testa
ment. They have no authority in the word of God. They are
of human invention ; have been brought in by perversions of the
gospel, by departing from the pure and simple teachings of the
scriptures. This is the great source of the error, corruption and
deadness which have overspread the Oriental churches, and re
duced the people to a state but little better than that of heathen
ism. Man in his folly and wickedness would mend the revela
tion of God ; would add rites and dogmas of his own, in order
to help.out what he deemed defective, or make religion more im
posing and more acceptable to worldly and carnal minds.
Hence have risen up the monstrous masses of superstition and
delusion to which I have referred, and which in all the countries
around the Mediterranean where I have been, hang as a dark,
heavy cloud over the people, shutting out from them the light of
life. The pure gospel, viewed in contrast with all this, is indeed a
light from heaven. It is plain, direct, simple ; powerfully ap
pealing, by its truth and motives and few simple rites, to the
higher and nobler faculties of the soul, the understanding, the
conscience, the will ; and while kept free from human additions
and perversions, is of mighty efficacy to subdue the heart to God
and fit the soul for heaven.
The gospel in this view of it, plain, simple, direct, just as I
find it in the New Testament, never appeared to me so precious,
so above all price, as when I was travelling in lands of forms
and ceremonies, of superstition and ignorance. I thought how
plain, how good, how easily understood is this gospel, how it re
veals to me the will and the love of my Father in heaven, how,
instead of carrying me away to saints and images and senseless
forms, it calls me directly to the throne of all-sufficient grace ; to
a kind and merciful Redeemer, who is mighty to save ; appeals to
my conscience and my heart, imparts light to my mind, and

8
strength to my soul ; brings me to duty, to peace and to God,
and finally to eternal rest in heaven. This I said is the gospel,
— a system of grace and truth ordained by a merciful God to
enlighten, to sanctify and save the creature man. All additions
to it, all departures from it do but obscure its glory and weaken
its power. This I saw in numerous most melancholy exam
ples before me ; and I said, the pure and simple gospel, with
nothing added to it or taken from it by man, — this is God's
grand ordinance for saving a guilty and miserable world — and
grateful to God that my birth had been given me in a land
blessed beyond any other on earth by a pure and simple gospel-,
I resolved to embrace that gospel anew to my heart, and to
spend the rest of my days in recommending it to my people,
and in spreading its light and blessings through the world.
My dear friends, you know not the number, nor the value
of the privileges which you enjoy in the gospel of Christ. —
You have not seen, as I have, the affecting contrast between
your condition, and that of the unhappy millions in the East,
who are either without any gospel, or are cursed with a per
verted and corrupted gospel. There reign oppression, igno
rance, superstition, poverty and misery in their most revolting
forms. Here I behold freedom, peace, intelligence, social and
domestic comfort, and all the innumerable blessings of enlight
ened, Christian society. As I look around me to day and con
template the various rich and numberless blessings which dis
tinguish your lot, and generally that of the people in this land,
I can hardly believe myself to be on the same planet or con
versant with the same race, as I was during the time I spent
in Turkey and Syria,— every thing in society, in religion, in
morals, in customs and manners is here so changed, so entirely
different from what I there saw. And I feel with a vividness
of impression I never had before, that the great cause of the
difference is in the blessed gospel of Christ. This gospel is
indeed profitable unto all things, giving the blessings of the life
that now is and of that which is to come. Wherever it exists
in purity, it is a fountain of light and life, of joy and salvation.
It breaks the power of oppression and tyranny, and breathes jus-

tice and equity into the administration of government. It teaches
the people to understand their rights and qualifies them to enjoy
them. It wakes up mind, inspires a love of knowledge, and
leads to the establishment of schools, academies and colleges.
It nerves the arm of industry and enterprise— nibbles the fields
with plenteous harvests and diffuses far and wide the means of
comfort and happiness. It enters into all the relations of life,
and blesses all its privileges and enjoyments. It makes happy
families and happy communities ; good fathers and mothers, and
affectionate, dutiful children. It forms and cements good neigh
borhood ; blesses our friendships, cheers our steps, brightens our
hopes, surrounds us with light and peace in the dying hour, and
crowns all with immortal blessedness iri heaven. This, my
brethren, is the gospel ; these are its blessed fruits. I felt this
more deeply than ever while journeying in those dry and thirsty
lands, where no rain or dew of heaven falls, and no plants of
righteousness grow. And the impression I trust will remain on
my mind till the end of life, endearing the gospel to my heart,
and making me more earnest in commending it to your*s, and
to all whom I can reach by my influence.
I pass on to remark,
3. That another effect of my tour has been to give me a
deeper impression than I ever had before, of the temporal evils,
the present miseries of sin. I speak not here of the punishments
and woes of sin in another world, but of the miseries which it
draws after it in this. These we see in some measure at home ;
but they strike us far more forcibly in foreign lands, where sin,
departure from God and duty has had a longer time to work
out its proper results. My journey led me over some of the
fairest and most beautiful portions of the earth ; and as I passed
from place to place, I could not but be struck with the exuberant
goodness of God, in the frame and order of his creation, and with
the abundant resources he had provided for the gratification of all
the reasonable desires of man. Turkey comprises some of the
richest and most fertile countries on the globe. Constantinople, its
metropolis, occupies a position, which, of all others I ever saw,
2

10
seemed to me best fitted to be the centre and capital of the
world. Asia Minor was famed of old as the garden and granary
of the earth. Syria and Palestine are characterized in the
Scriptures as a good land, a land of rivers and fountains, and
as flowing with milk and honey. And most forcibly did I feel
the truth of this description, as I passed through these countries
in the opening of the last spring. My eyes never rested upon
a more beautiful spot, than when from the mountains at the
north, I looked down upon the plains of Samaria, and surveyed
the surrounding country from the hill on which the city once stood*
It seemed like a scene of enchantment, and as if man living there
could not be otherwise than happy. The same may be said of
the country around the beautiful lake. of Tiberias, where I spent
a Sabbath, and of the broad, extended plains of Esdraellon and
Sharon, and of many other parts of Judea through which I
passed on my way to Jerusalem. The regions here referred to,
are of exhuberant fertility. I saw them dressed in the richest
bloom of the season, decked in a profusion of wild flowers and
herbage, and I could not doubt that with a little culture from the
hand of man, they would yield most plentifully the means of sub
sistence, and of happiness, to a dense and numerous population.
But while in passing through the countries now alluded to, I
was every where struck with the goodness of God in his works,
and saw on every side how abundant the means he had provided
for making a virtuous population happy, I was equally pained to
see that man, in the midst of all this profusion of the Creator's
bounty, was sunk in extreme poverty, degradation and misery*
And sin, I clearly saw, was the cause of all.
I must say that \ never saw poverty, I never saw degradation
and misery till I saw them in Turkey, and especially in Syria. I
had no conception how low human beings might sink, or how-
near like brute animals they might become, till I saw the demon
strations of it amid the profusions and bounties which God has s©
munificently showered upon the lands I visited in and around the
Mediterranean. It seemed as if a most perverse ingenuity had
been at work to pervert the greatest blessings and turn them into
means of the greatest degradation and misery. The govern-

11
ment, it is enough to say, is an absolute Turkish despotism, ad
ministered in the provinces by the injustice and tyranny of rapa
cious Pashas and Agas. Oppression grinds the people in the
dust, and keeps them in a state of extreme depression, ignorance,
indolence and want. Large portions of the richest soil in Syria
and Palestine, are owned by the Sultan, and are farmed out by his
agents at a most exorbitant rental. And even the crops, raised
on this hard condition, the cultivator of the soil has no certainty
of gathering for himself. They may be taken from him by an
order from the Pasha or some other officer of government, or
what is very common, may be swept away by some wandering
horde of Bedouins.
The consequence is, that large tracts of the richest land lie
uncultivated and waste, and the people are obliged to depend on
the most scanty and precarious means of subsistence. Social
and domestic comfort is very little known. The houses in the
villages are for the most part wretched hovels, usually having
but one room which serves as the common receptacle of the
family and their cattle, and is remarkable for nothing so much as
for filth and vermin. The means of intellectual and moral im
provement, in so far as the mass of the people are concerned,
are wholly unknown. There is not a newspaper, and so far as I
could learn, not a bookstore in all Syria. The whole country,
seemed to me to be lying under a dreadful curse. Every thing
wore the aspect of decay and hastening ruin. With the single
exception of Beirut which is increasing in trade and population,
and some few places in Mount Lebanon where I noticed signs of
thrift, I saw not the least mark of improvement, in any thing,
in all my journey through Syria and the Holy Land, but decay,
prostration and ruin were every where visible.
The people as I have said, are miserably poor. Beggars
swarm on every side. The men are indolent, ignorant and shift
less ; and the women are substantially slaves. Nothing struck
me more forcibly than the deep degradation of the female sex.
They are universally regarded and treated as an inferior order
of beings, and are subjected to the most menial and severe servi
ces. The day I left Jerusalem, a cold and blustering day, I saw

12
many women on the road, two, three and four miles from the
city, going thither with heavy loads of wood on their heads, for
the market, poor, ragged, sorrow-worn beings as I ever beheld.
It is needless to add, that in circumstances like these, children are
miserably neglected ; many of them become the subjects of
early disease and death, and those that live to grow up, grow up
without instruction, and as a matter of course, inherit the vices
and the miseries of their parents.
In consequence of the things now stated, the population of
Turkey in general is said to be fast decreasing. In the whole
of Syria, including Palestine, there are but a million and a half
of people ; a number scarcely equal to what was once contained
in the single tribe of Judah. Around the western shore of the
sea of Tiberias, where, as Josephus informs us, there were once
numerous towns and villages, the least of which contained 15,000
souls, there are now only two very small ones, and these wretch
edly poor and decaying. Four hundred and sixty towns in the
Houran, east of the Jordan, have been discovered in ruins, and
some of them of recent date, laid waste by the incursions of
lawless Arabs. Fragments of temples, broken arches, fallen
pillars, ruined aqueducts and dislocated pavements, met our view
wherever we went, and continually reminded us that we were
travelling over buried cities, and amid the graves of myriads of
once living and active human beings.*
The remarks now made apply, with very little abatement, to
almost every part of the Turkish empire. Constantinople itself
is said to have diminished its population since 1812, by 300,000.f
Five hundred villages are not fonnd in the district of Mardin, in
Messopotamia, which once possessed 1,600. The island of Cy
prus, one of the largest and most fertile in the Mediterranean,
once containing 14,000 villages and 2,000,000 of people, has now

*Itisan instructive fact that the most enduring monuments ever reared by man are
those that mark his frailty and mortality.— I refer to grave yards and tombs. These are
to be seen all over Turkey and Syria, in the sides of mountains, and on plains where for
many mile* around, not a human being now exists.
f Hartley 's Researches in Greece and th ?- ievant.

13
less than 700 villages, and only about 80,000 inhabitants ; and
these, for the most part, in a state of extreme poverty and wretch
edness. And the island of Rhodes, one of the richest and most
enchanting spots I ever saw, has decreased in population nearly
in the same proportion. As I walked through the principal
street, once inhabited by the proud knights of the order of St.
John, and now bearing their name, it seemed as if I was in a city
of the dead, every thing was so still and gloomy. And then for
Ephesus, and Sardis, and Laodicea, and Nice, and hundreds of ,
other cities, once large and flourishing in Asia Minor, where are
they now ? Utterly laid waste, inhabited only by jackalls and
wolves, or furnishing a temporary abode for wandering Arabs,
who occasionally pitch their tents amid their ruins and feed
their flocks on the surrounding plains.
But I dwell too long on these details. And yet they all go to
show how great are the temporal evils, the present miseries,
which sin draws after it. As I passed through the scenes of ig
norance, poverty and wretchedness to which I have adverted, I
could not but exclaim again and again — this is all the work of sin,
of departure from God, and rebellion against his wise and benev
olent laws. I could not but trace the wisdom and goodness of
God displayed in the fertility and beauty of his creation around
me ; I could not forget that I was in a land once blessed of God
beyond all other lands on earth ; a land in which patriarchs had
lived and died, and prophets and apostles had taught and prayed,
and where the Son of God had manifested his glory and wrought
out the world's redemption ; and when in the midst of all this
goodness and mercy, and these provisions of bounty and love for
the happiness of man, I saw around me, on every side, such mel
ancholy signs of poverty, degradation and misery, I felt with a
vividness of impression I never had before, how great and how
terrible an evil sin is ; how low, how wretched and debased it
can make men, even in the present world ; and I prayed that my
own beloved country might, by reverence of God and obedience
to his laws, be saved from the calamities and woes which are
sure, sooner or later, to come upon all who forsake his ways and
despise his authority.

14
4. It will be expected that I should state what impressions I
have received respecting the cause of missions in the part of the
world where I have been. I cannot now dwell on this copious
topic. I shall take occasion to consider it more particularly at a
future time. I would state generally, that my impressions are, on
the whole, decidedly favorable. I have had large opportunity to
become informed on this subject ; having visited all our mission
ary stations in the Mediterranean, and spent a considerable time
at each station, in intimate intercourse with the missionaries and
their families. In respect to the character of our missionaries, I
am prepared to say that, taking them as a class, I hold them to
be men of rare excellence ; intelligent, judicious, faithful and de
voted in an eminent degree. Some of them I knew before they
left our country ; all of them I know now ; and I feel it to be
both my duty and my happiness to say, that I have never known
men, who appeared to me to have greater simplicity of purpose,
or a quicker sense of obligation, or a more earnest desire to
know and do what is right and pleasing to God. They have
diversity of gifts and relative qualifications ; and to expect to
find them without fault, would be to expect more than falls to the
lot of humanity, even in its best estate. But they are good, sound-
minded, devoted men, and worthy of all the confidence which the
Christian community reposes in them. I felt it to be a privilege to
have intercourse with them ; and I shall never forget the pleasant
and profitable seasons I spent with them in prayer and consulta
tion respecting the best means of promoting the great cause to
which their lives are devoted.* In the midst of great difficulties
* In a Letter, (by the Rev. Horatio Southgate,) recently published in this country, and
widely circulated, a charge is brought against our missionaries, especially those residing
at Constantinople, which deeply implicates their character as honest men, and which, if
true, ^ should destroy all confidence in them. It is to this effect, — that they studiously
conceal their true character ; are unwilling to be known as Congregational missionaries
among the people of the East, knowing that this would be fatal to their cause,  and
further, they are influenced by envy and jealousy towards missionaries of the Episcopal
connection, as conscious of their superior advantages for propagating the gospel among
the Oriental churches.
I cannot conceive of a charge more false and injurious than this. I am sure it is
untrue every word of it. I saw nothing, I heard nothing in all my visit, which furnishes
the slightest justification of this charge. It is doubtless true, that pur missionaries have

15
^and many discouragements, they are laboriously and faithfully
pursuing their work, and at several of the stations with very
marked tokens of God's blessing. We had occasion to notice
this especially among the Armenians at Constantinople, Broosa
and Tribizond. There is a most interesting reformation in pro
gress among this people, and that on a wide scale ; and I have
strong hope that God is about to take from them a people for
himself. At each of the stations referred to, we several times
met collections of Armenian converts and others interested in
the gospel. These interviews were most deeply instructive and
affecting, as exhibiting the power of the gospel to renew and
sanctify the heart ; and I have rarely seen more pleasing evi
dence of sincere and devoted piety than I witnessed in many
whom I met on the occasions referred to. The Armenians are
indeed an exceedingly interesting people. Their exact number

not thought it their first duty to proclaim from the house-top that they are Congregation-
alists. They have sought to be known in another and higher character, that of ministers
of Christ, sent forth by the friends of Christ to publish his precious name to their
perishing fellow men. They have felt, what I must think, all true missionaries should
feel, that their first and leading object should be to make known Christ and him
•crucified, as the only ground of hope for lost men, and not to preach up external church
organization, or to leach the people brow many orders there are in the ministry, or
how they should observe fast days and feast days — a poor work, by the way, for a
.protestant missionary to he engaged in, but not wholly neglected in a certain quarter.
But that they have ever sought to conceal their true character, or have ever been
unwilling to declare their real sentiments, when asked, and they have often been asked,
on the subject or church order and the ministry, and modes of worship, I have seen
not the slightest evidence to believe. The men, I believe, are incapable of such dupli
city. The truth is, the Armenians and all others who feel any interest in the matter,
know perfectly well what are the views of our missionaries on church polity and
modes of worship ; and it is a gross wrong to represent them as wishing to conceal
their sentiments on these subjects.
As to their being actuated by envy and jealousy, because of the known superiority
of Episcopacy for promoting the gospel in the East, — I was careful to inquire into that
matter, having heard the claim of such superiority set forth at home. The result of all
my inquiries is, that the claim has no foundation in truth. It is a mere imagination;
nothing else. This is the uniform testimony of all the missionaries with whom 1
. conversed. They all affirm that they never felt the least envy or jealousy on the point
^in question, for they never believed there was the least cause for it They have never
"believed that Episcopacy has any superiority in the case for which it is claimed. So far
from this, it ever has been, and is, their uniform belief that as Congregationalists, they
have a decided advantage over Episcopacy for reviving and propagating a pure, spiritual
^Christianity among a peqple who are already overlaid and crushed under a mass of

16
it is difficult to ascertain. They are usually estimated at front
two to four millions. They are numerous in all the prin
cipal towns of the Turkish Empire, in Persia and in other
countries of the East. They number 150,000 in Constantinople.
They are subject to the Sultan in their civil relations, but retain
their own independent church organization. They are a fine
portion of our race. For candor, fair mindedness and general
interest in religious truth, they are the direct opposite of the
Greeks. They are indeed the New Englanders of the East,
There is among them a spirit of inquiry on the subject of
religion, which is not confined to any one place or country 5 but
is manifesting itself in many places, and in parts of the empire
far asunder ; and from all 1 saw and heard, I could not resist the
conviction, that God means to do a great work among this
people. They present by far the most hopeful field of mission-

dead forms and ceremonies and rites of human invention. This opinion, I believe to
be true ; and every attempt to revive pure religion in the dead churches of the East
which falls in with their love of forms, or which relies upon any thing, but the pure
gospel preached in simplicity and truth, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,
will most certainly prove abortive. It is as absurd, as it would have been for the
Apostles to attempt to embody the pure, living spirit of Christianity in the dead forms of
Pharisaism. The object of this note is not to provoke controversy, but to defend our mission
aries against an unjust and deeply injurious charge. The Letter containing the charge
has other matters which deserve examination, and the whole subject will, perhaps, be
examined in due time by some one fully competent to the task. The fact is, Mr. South-
gate has put himself into a false position. He is not what he once was, nor what he
was, for some time, after he forsook the faith of his fathers and entered the Episcopal
church. Had he remained such, as he was when he first went out to the East, no diffi
culty would have arisen between him and our missionaries. Unhappily he has become
a high churchman. That tells the whole story. His sectarianism warps his judgment,
perverts his better feelings, and leads him to speak of his brethren, and of the American
Board generally, in a manner, which, a few years since, would have seemed shocking
to himself, and which now furnishes matter of grave reflection to many who knew
him in better days. Far be it from me to charge him with intent to injure his brethren.
I judge not his motives ; these must be left to the scrutiny, of a higher tribunal.—'
I will only add, that I fully concur in the sentiment recently expressed by a distin
guished Theologian in another part of the country, that the Letter is fitted to injure
Mr. Southgate in the estimation of serious and intelligent Christians, more than any
thing which has yet been written against him. O come the day when - there shall be
an end of controversy about the externals of religion, and when all the friends of Christ
holding the head, shall unite in bidding each other God-speed in efforts to build up the
kingdom of the common Master.

17
ary labor in'the East ; and now, when the national mind is waking
up to inquiry, and many are anxiously seeking the way of life,
every means should be used to extend to them, as soon and as
widely as possible, the light of salvation.
In Syria too, degraded and miserable as is its general condi
tion, I saw very pleasing evidence, at our missionary stations,
both at Beirut and on Mount Lebanon, that our brethren there
have not been laboring in vain. At each of these stations I
became acquainted with several converts to the gospel, who
would do honor to any Christian church in this country ; and
preparation, I saw, was being made, by the diffusion of light
among the people, and the freer access to them which our mis
sionaries were gaining, for a much more plentiful harvest when it
shall please God to shed down the good influences of his Spirit to
render the means of his appointment effectual. Without the
powerful aids of his grace, we all know, that Paul may plant,
and Apollos water in vain.
In regard to the mission among the Greeks, I can say but little
that is encouraging. A great amount of means has been
employed in their behalf during the last twenty or twenty-five
years, but with only a very limited measure of success. I do
not mean to intimate that no good has been done. A great duty
has been performed, towards this people, and a great lesson has
been learnt from the experiment made among them, which cannot
fail to be of much use in the future conduct of missions among
the Oriental churches. A very useful impulse has been given to
the cause of common education in Greece, and many of the
schools established by the government are modeled, in a greater
or less degree, after those that have been connected with our mis
sions. The elements of divine light and salvation have been widely
diffused by the circulation of the scriptures and other books, and
by the preaching and conversation of the missionaries ; and these
may, ere long, begin to operate with power, and yield art abund
ance of fruit unto eternal life.
But when we look for such fruit at present, it is to be found
only in a very stinted measure, — few, very few have been con«
3

18
verted to the knowledge and love of the truth. There is indeed
something in the character and circumstances of the Greeks,
which, to a surprising degree, repels the gospel as a principle of
new, spiritual life. They are a vain, proud, superstitious, bigot
ed people ; extremely jealous of the influence of foreigners, and
very much under the control of a corrupt and ignorant priest
hood. The consequence is they turn away from all efforts made
to enlighten and save them, and cling to their superstitions and
delusions, to the rites and the forms of a dead church, with
extreme tenacity. It has therefore been resolved, and wisely in
my opinion, both by the missionary societies in England, and by
our own American Board, to withdraw in great measure, for the
present, from the Greek field, and concentrate our efforts where
they will be more gratefully received, and be more promising of
useful results.
The difficulties which attend the propagation of the gospel
among the people of the East are far greater than are usually
supposed. They can be properly estimated by no one who has
not been on the ground. I knew something of them previous to
my recent visit, but I now have a far deeper impression of them
than ever before. They lie in the nature of the government ;
despotic, jealous, and hostile to the gospel in all its forms;
in a corrupt, and bigoted priesthood, which guards the
avenues of light, and repels every attempt at reformation and
change; in the ignorance, superstition and depression of the
people, which hold them in the slavery of sin, and too often con
tented with their chains; in long established forms and ceremo
nies which have taken the place of spiritual religion and laid the
Bible in the dust; in image worship, and saint worship, and false
doctrines without number; in the broken, fragmentary state
of Society, composed of a heterogeneous mass of different
nations, and speaking different languages ; each individual, and
family, standing as it were alone, with no bond of social sympa-
thy, uniting them together, by which good influences can be cir
culated through the mass,— added to all, and strengthening all,
the natural aversion of the heart to God's holiness, and its love

19
of error and sin — These are some of the difficulties which have
to be encountered in propagating the gospel among the people of
the East, — and in the midst of which our missionaries are
patiently and laboriously pursuing . their great work. They are
slowly, but I think certainly, overcoming the difficulties of their
situation. They are gaining the confidence of the people, and
establishing their character as honest and able men, bent on
doing good. They are diffusing around them, by preaching, by
conversation, by the publication of tracts and books, and by their
Christian example, the elements of spiritual life and salvation,
and they are praying and waiting on God for his blessing. Nor
do they pray and wait in vain. God owns their labors, and they
are permitted to see the first fruits of their toils in many souls
converted and saved.
It is important that we entertain a just view of the difficulties
with which our missionaries have to contend, in the prosecution
of their work, lest we should expect too much of them, and with
draw our confidence and support, because they do not at once
report nations converted to God. The missionary work is at
first, and for a long time, necessarily, preliminary and preparatory;
consisting in learning the language and manners of the people, in
breaking up the ground and casting in the seed, — and we should
learn to wait in patience, and not demand the harvest before the
seed has had time to spring up and grow — or as is sometimes the
case, before it has been sown.
The difficulties to which I have referred, it should be remarked,
are gradually passing away. The Turkish power is waning. The
bow string and the simitar are not now quite as terrible in the land
of the Ottomans as they once were. The arrangement recently
made with the Porte, by which a mussulman, becoming a Chris
tian, is no longer in danger of losing his head, strikes at a funda
mental law of the Koran, and if carried out, as I trust it will be,
it will mightily curb the insolence of Turkish bigotry, and open
the way for the entrance of light among a people, whose minds
have for centuries been hermetically sealed. The civilization of

20
the West is throwing back a mighty influence on the East. —
The steamboats that arrive daily in the principal ports of
Turkey, bearing thither the arts and the science of a higher and
more advanced state of society, and sending merchants and men
of business and intelligent travelers over every part of the
empire, do wonderfully disturb the quietude and repose of the
Turks, and make them feel that they must throw off their
slippers and gird up their long flowing robes for a quicker step,
or be swept away before the march of modern improvement.
Indeed the impression is now very general among them, that the
time is not distant when they shall be driven out of Europe and
be compelled to find their home on the Asiatic side of the Bos-
phorus. And for one, I must say, the sooner that time comes the
better. It is not fitting that the Turk, in all his haughtiness, and
sensualism, and bigotry, and hostility to every kind of progress,
should monopolize the fairest portion of the earth, and turn back
from it all that can elevate and bless society, or make man intelli
gent and happy. Important changes, I cannot doubt, must
ere long take place in the state of the Turkish empire; and
they will, I am confident, be changes for the better. Fresh
troubles may arise to disturb some of our missions, and for a
season, interrupt their operations; but all will, in the end, turn
out for the furtherance of the gospel. When on my return
from Jaffa to Beirut, I saw, off the Island of Rhodes, a fleet of
Turkish transports conveying troops into Syria, to enforce a new
conscription of thirty thousand soldiers for the Sultan's army, 
a work, it was believed, which could not be carried through
without the most serious disturbances in the country. Insurrec
tion and war may again burst upon the mountains of Lebanon
and sweep over the valleys and plains of Syria and Palestine.
But Syria and Palestine shall yet be redeemed from Turkish
oppression and Wrong. It cannot be, that they shall lie much
longer under a government, whose whole influence is to make
desolate and waste. A better state awaits them. They are
included in the covenant of God, — in the land of promise  a
land once traversed by patriarchs, prophets and apostles, where
the Son lived and taught, and suffered and died for the world's

redemption. That land shall yet be redeemed. Causes are at
work which will assuredly bring about deliverance. So I felt as
I looked at some of the barren hills of Judea, 'where the beast
wanders not, the bird flies not, and the grass grows not,' and
saw how drear and desolate a land may become under the curse
of God, for the sins of the people, — ' a sight rendered still more
striking by the beautiful flowers, and the fields of flourishing
grain and rich pasturage, that here and there present themselves,
as if to show what the land was once, and what it again may be,
when the blessing of the Lord shall rest upon the city and upon
the field, and the labor of man's hand shall be refreshed by the
former and latter rain.'
5. I return with a deeper sense than ever, of the many
great and distinguishing blessings enjoyed by the people of this
land. Never was I so impressed with thankfulness to God,
for the moral, religious, free, prosperous and happy state of
my own country, as when I had the opportunity of com
paring it with that of the nations of the East. I cannot dwell
on this topic, though it would be easy to write a volume. I
will only say, that the effect of all I have seen abroad has been
to send me home with a deeper love of my own country, and
with a stronger impression than ever, of her responsibility in rela
tion to the other nations of earth. We hear at home a great many
murmurs and complaints. Men are restless and discontented, as
if they were suffering under some great oppression and wrong.
But let any one travel abroad, and he will be ungrateful indeed if
he does not soon dismiss his complaints, and return home con
tented and happy ; fully persuaded that the lines have fallen to
him in pleasant places, and that he has indeed a goodly heritage.
All good things, it is true, are not to be found in any one country ;
they are not to be found in our own. I know too, that there are
many and great evils in our social state, which sadly mar its sym
metry, and disturb its good order. There is much immorality and
vice in our country, much desecration of the day and the name
of God, and much intemperance and licentiousness yet remaining,
in consequence of which, there is. in the aggregate, no small
amount of poverty and misery. We have too our doctrine

22
of repudiation, which has had too wide a currency among us ; is
a national reproach in the view of Europeans, and should never
be named, but to be abhorred ; we have our outbreaks of mis
rule and mob violence, which sober men justly regard with
much apprehension ; we have our slavery, a system of ..infinite
wrong, and fraught with unspeakable danger to our republic ;.
we have also a foolish and wicked grasping after foreign terri
tory, as if we had not already in our country enough of the
elements of division and strife, but must introduce new causes of
discord and disunion.
These are great evils, — dark spots on our national character ;
and when one is abroad, he feels keenly the deep reproach which
they cast upon his country in the view of intelligent foreigners.
Still it cannot be denied by any one who has had an opportunity
to make the comparison, that all the great essential elements of
a growing, prosperous, and happy state of society, are enjoyed
here, as they are in no other country on earth.
Again and again, as I passsed from one country to another, and
viewed the state of things around me, I was led to exclaim, — The
salvation of America is the hope of the world. And I said this,
and say it now, not with a diminished interest in the cause of
foreign missions ; for I have a deeper interest in that cause than
ever ; but in the full persuasion, that if we would evangelize and
save the world, we must take care of our own country, and fill it,
as fast, and as perfectly as possible, with the knowledge and.
glory of God.
I may say —
6. That I bring home with me a deeper abhorence than ever
of bigotry, and a warmer, and larger charity, towards all true-
Christians, whatever be their name or denomination. What I
have seen in the Oriental churches, has given me a perfect disgust
of all exclusive, bigoted pretensions, built on rites, and forms,
and external ecclesiastical organization. There is the Roman
Catholic Church, the Greek Church, and the Armenian Church*
and the Syrian and Coptic Church, each claiming to be the only

23
true church, in the direct liite of Apostolical succession, and
having the only authorized ministry, and the only valid ordinances.
The Catholic church, seated in the chair of St. Peter, at Rome,
hurls her anathemas against all who do not kneel at her altars,
and submit to her rites. The Greek church, equally corrupt in
doctrine and practice, holding the dogma of transubstantiation,
the worship of saints, and baptismal regeneration, hurls back
these anathemas with equal violence, and would as soon refuse
communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as with a plain
Baptist or Congregational minister.
The Armenian, Coptic and Syrian churches, with some
slight modifications, follow in the same train. And yet all
these churches are most miserably corrupt, — -are dead ; the
spirit of life has gone out of them, and each lies wrapped in
its winding sheet of cold forms and ceremonies. These things
have thoroughly sickened me of all exclusive claims founded
on the externals of religion. Why should we seek the living
among the dead ? The true church is not to be found in ex
ternals of any kind. The true church consists of all true
Christians ; of all who have been born of the Spirit, repented of
sin, believed in Christ,and are living in obedience to his commands
and for the glory of his name. My charity embraces all such in
whatever church they are found, or in whatever forms they may
choose to worship God. I have my preferences in this matter ;
I concede to them theirs ; and nothing shall prevent me from
loving and seeking fellowship with the true Christian spirit,
wherever and by whomsoever I see it manifested. This I am
sure is the right ground ; and I am equally sure that those who
Teject this ground ; who set up exclusive pretensions, based on the
externals of religion, and refuse to receive those whom Christ has
received, are miserably symbolizing with the corrupt churches of
the East, and are raising most formidable barriers to the progress
of Christ's kingdom in the world.
But I must close, and I do so with a single remark, — While I
return grateful to God for his goodness, invigorated in health, and
refreshed in spirit, I return also with the full purpose to devote

24
myself anew to the service of my dear people, in the gospel
of Christ. Twenty-six years I have spent in this service ; they
have been happy years ; and each one as it ha* passed has en
deared that service more and more to my heart, and bound me m
stronger and still stronger affection to the much loved people of
my charge. What of strength and life yet remain to me, I here
consecrate to that sam,e service ; and I desire no higher happiness
than to be used as an instrument in the hand of my gracious God,
in leading all of you, my dear friends, to the knowledge and love
of the Saviour; and with you to stand approved, at the last, by
our common Judge, fitted to dwell together forever in a holy and
happy heaven.
While I thus devote myself especially to the people of my
charge, I hope it is proper to say, to this great congregation, that,
with most hearty good will, I shall be ready to unite with my
ministerial brethren and fellow Christians of every name in this
city, — most pleasant to me and most loved, of any 1 have seen
in all my travels, — in whatever measures may seem adapted to
promote the cause of our common Saviour. May God bless all
the churches in the city, and all their pastors, and send down his
Spirit to dwell in all our hearts, in all our families and congrega
tions, and soon fill this place, and this world, with the knowledge
and glory of his great name.