for the moment, to be touched by our brother's
faithful appeals, and he looked very thoughtful. He requested Mr.
Khachadurian to call again after two days, which he accordingly did,
but was not received. A vartabed was sent to say, that if he
continued of the same mind as before, the Patriarch did not wish to
see him; and on the following Sabbath he was publicly anathematized
in all the churches."1

1 _Christianity Revived_, pp. 199-201.

Soon after this anathema, the persecuted brethren addressed a letter
to the Patriarch, explaining their religious sentiments, and asking
to be relieved from their sufferings. This producing no effect, they
addressed themselves to the Primates of the Armenian community, but
no one of them was disposed to interfere in their behalf. At length
they presented a petition to Reschid Pasha, Turkish Minister of
Foreign Affairs. This petition was treated with respect; but, owing
to the influence of some of the Armenian Primates, it procured no
relief. Subsequently they carried their case before the English,
Prussian, and American Ministers, asking their intervention. These
gentlemen took the kindest interest in their case, and made repeated
efforts to procure redress. Still the persecution went on. The
Patriarch even ventured, within a month after the excommunication,
to send the names of thirteen leading Protestants to the Porte,
requesting their banishment. This was going a step too far. The
English Ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, had called the attention
of the Turkish ministry to the pledge given, three years before, by
the Sultan, that "henceforth there should be no more persecution for
religious opinions in Turkey;" and it was now decided, in accordance
with this pledge, that the persecution of the evangelical Armenians
could not be allowed.

Scores of men, women, and children were wandering houseless, for the
faith of Jesus, in the streets of the great metropolis, but they
could not be left thus to suffer. Through the kindness of Mr. Allan,
missionary of the Free Church of Scotland to the Jews, twenty
individuals were comfortably lodged in a large building he had
secured for a chapel and mission house. For the rest, the
missionaries hired such tenements as could be found; at the same
time providing bread for those cut off from all means of procuring
their own subsistence. Nor was any time lost in appealing for aid to
evangelical Christians throughout the world; and responses were