lege.

Here we may properly pause, and consider what God had wrought, not
alone through the agency of the churches, but with the cooeperation
of the great powers of the earth. Twenty years before, Messrs. Smith
and Dwight did not find a single clear case of conversion in their
extended travels through the Turkish empire. How many and great the
subsequent changes! First came the national charter of rights, given
by the Sultan in 1840; which, among its other results, destroyed the
persecuting power of the Armenian aristocracy. Next came the
abolition of the death penalty, in 1843, and the Sultan's pledge,
that men should no more be persecuted for their religious opinions.
Then, after three years, came the unthought of application of this
pledge to the Armenian Protestants, when persecuted by their own
hierarchy. In the next year followed the recognition of the
Protestants as an independent community. Finally, in 1850, came the
charter, signed by the Grand Sultan himself, placing the Protestants
on the same national basis with the other Christian communities of
the empire.

How wonderful this progression of events! So far as the central
government was concerned, missionaries might print, gather schools,
form churches, ordain pastors, and send forth other laborers,
wherever they pleased. Attention had been awakened, and there was a
disposition to inquire, renounce errors, and embrace gospel truths.
There was a progressive change in fundamental ideas; a gradual
reconstruction of the social system; a spiritual reformation. At
least fifty places were known, scattered over Asiatic Turkey, in all
of which souls had been converted through the truth, and where
churches might be gathered. Ten churches had been formed already,
and in part supplied with pastors. Aintab, scarcely known by name
five years before, numbered more Protestants than even the
metropolis, and was becoming one of the most interesting missionary
stations in the world.

In this remarkable series of results we recognize the hand of God,
who makes all earthly agencies subservient to the great work of
redemption; so that secular agencies come as legitimately into the
history of the republication of the Gospel in Bible lands, as do the
labors of the missionaries. They were among the ordained means; and
the leading agents cannot fail to command our grateful admiration.

The danger at this time was, that the reformation so auspiciously
begun, would pass its grand