Note 2 — Chapter VII · GORELOVKA AND QUEEN LUKERIA

When the missionaries next turned their attention to the pursuit of their original purpose, they were confronted by difficulties of a different kind. To their surprise they were informed by the Governor-General of Transcaucasia that the Government possessed no land on the Persian frontier which could be spared for the settlement they had in view. The Mission itself would be allotted a building in any town which they might select; and, although the privilege of receiving converts would not be legally attachable, the Governor himself would exert his influence to protect them in its exercise should their efforts be blessed with fruit. Shusha was their choice for the establishment of their Mission; schools were opened and a printing press set up. But in the countries west of India the conversion of Mohammedans has at all times been an arduous and ungrateful task. Our own missionaries, established in Persia, are roused to extreme enthusiasm should a stray Moslem embrace their faith. I remember travelling across Persia with one of these pampered individuals, who appeared to me to be admirably equipped for early perdition among the surroundings in which his walk in life lay. The experiment was boldly made by the missionaries of Shusha, although the conquests of Russia, a few years after their installation, provided them with an ample field for conducting their operations without crossing into Persian soil. Zaremba followed in the track of the armies of Paskevich, distributing the Scriptures, duly translated into Turkish, and arguing the eternal truth of Christianity and the errors of Islam. But his books were torn in pieces by a population among whom contempt for Christians is engendered through their mother’s milk; and I do not know that the bread which he cast upon the waters has been found up to the present day. Better results might be expected from their labours among the Armenians, whose clergy they discovered sunk in the depths of ignorance, where the beginning of the twentieth century finds them still. But they had not anticipated the existence of this sphere for their activities; and in the absence of special powers it was not permissible to them to receive converts from a Christian Church. It was open to the proselyte to enter the Orthodox Church of Russia; but, if he desired to be baptized by a minister of the tolerated sects, his own clergy could claim him back. It was inevitable that, with the progress of their schools and religious teaching, such a case should soon arise. It is, no doubt, the lofty virtue and the traditional practice of the Armenian Church to respect the religious tenets of other Christian Churches, and to inculcate a large tolerance among their congregation of the doctrines held by their brothers of a varying creed. In this respect the reverend traveller, to whose work I am indebted for this little history, might have learnt but failed to learn a valuable lesson from a clergy whose general standards he justly condemns.2 But the attitude of these militant missionaries, no less than the success of their efforts, touched the vanity of the Armenian hierarchy to the quick. Two deacons of their persuasion had become allied to the Swiss teachers, without formally renouncing their own Church. They were accused of influencing the people against their old religious practices, and, according to a time-honoured usage, it was ordered by the katholikos that they should be bound and sent to Edgmiatsin. The missionaries appealed to the Governor-General, who, in the spirit of a Roman proconsul, inquired for what reason they were interfering in the concerns of the Armenian Church. Let the Germans remain Germans and the Armenians remain Armenians—a ruling which was modified by the Imperial Government, to whom this high functionary referred the case. It was decided, much to the dismay of the religious communities, that if a man were determined to leave the bosom of the Armenian Church, it was not permitted to the clergy to retain him by force. But this favourable disposition on the part of the central Government was in advance of Russian methods. The victory of the missionaries was not of long duration; the multitude of their enemies overbore the power of their few friends. Their printing press is long since silent; they have no successors, except a few Armenian preachers, faithful to the old traditions, of whom our friend at Akhalkalaki was one. He himself was confined by Government within the limits of this remote fortress; two years he had already passed in this manner of imprisonment; for three more years he was sentenced to remain. He earned his own subsistence as clerk and assistant in the large draper’s shop. In Shusha itself, if I may trust the official statistics, the members of the Armenian Protestant community did not exceed twenty-six souls in 1886.3 Russian policy of the present day abhors missionary effort; it has been justly remarked by a recent clerical traveller that if a priest wishes to travel in the Russian provinces he must divest himself of his clerical character and clerical garb.4 I myself can testify to the extreme difficulty with which the Protestant missionaries in Turkey obtain permission to cross Russian soil. Such is the jealousy of that Orthodox Church, the object of British episcopal blandishments, to whose mercies it is announced that the Archbishop of Canterbury is about to transfer his long-cherished pupils, the Chaldæan or Assyrian Christians of Kurdistan.5