In the year 1860, in a public address in the city of London, the Earl of Shaftesbury paid the following tribute to the character of the American missionaries¹ in Turkey:—

“I do not believe that in the whole history of missions; I do not believe that in the history of diplomacy², or in the history of any negotiations³ carried on between man and man, we can find anything to equal the wisdom, the soundness, and the pure evangelical truth of the body of men who constitute the American mission. I have said it twenty times before, and I will say it again—for the expression appropriately conveys my meaning—that ‘they are a marvelous combination of common sense and piety⁴.’ Every man who comes in contact with these missionaries speaks in praise of them. Persons in authority, and persons in subjection, all speak in their favor; travelers speak well of them; and I know of no man who has ever been able to bring against that body a single valid⁵ objection. There they stand, tested by years, tried by their works, and exemplified by their fruits; and I believe it will be found that these American missionaries have done more toward upholding the truth and spreading the gospel of Christ in the East, than any other body of men in this or in any other age.”

Mr. William T. Stead once said, “How many American citizens, I wonder, are aware that from the slopes of Mount Ararat all the way to the shores of the Blue Ægean Sea, American missionaries have scattered⁶ broadcast over all the distressful⁷ land the seed of American principles. When General Mosseloff, the director of foreign faiths within the Russian empire, visited Etchmiadzin the Armenian patriarch spread before him the map of Asia Minor⁸, which was marked all over with American colleges, American churches, American schools, American missions. They (the American missionaries) are busy everywhere, teaching, preaching,

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