THE
fearful and cataclysmic drama of anti-Christ unrolled in these pages is still
developing, in all its phases. In the “Christian Advocate” of June 18,
1925, appeared the following editorial, as the leading article, which I quote
in full:
A
NAME! A NAME!
What’s
in a name! asks the poet, as if “Nothing” must be the inevitable answer. Yet
it is the experience of mankind that the proper answer would be “Everything.”
For around the name cluster all the qualities of the thing named. The color
and scent of the queen of flowers flash out before the imagination at the very
name of “rose.” So precious are the
names of articles of commerce that we find manufacturers of soaps and
tooth-pastes, gasolines and lubricants, bread, salves and cigarettes, paying
large sums to secure a distinctive name for their special brand, and
registering it with the government and defending their sole right to its use
with all the authority the laws confer. Shut your eyes and let some one speak
the words “Ford” and “Rolls-Royce,” and no more ask what’s in a name?
There
is a Name that is—or must we say was?— above every name. What has happened to
it?
A
remarkable thing has recently taken place in Turkey. The government called into
consultation Asa Kent Jennings, an American resident of Asia Minor (whose name
is still borne with honor on the rolls of the Northern New York Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church). During the war between the Turks and Greeks
he had displayed qualities of character, which won him the good opinion of
both nations. He was told that the Turkish Republic was seeking to discover
some educational method or social agency that would promote the physical,
intellectual and moral excellence of the young men and women of the nation. In
conference with him a plan was worked out for a system of associations or clubs
in large centers, where everything which distinguishes the threefold program
of the Young Men’s Christian Association shall be put in practice under the
official patronage and with the support of the Turkish Government, which is Mohammedan
in religion, but under the direction of Mr. Jennings, who is a “Y” secretary
and a Methodist preacher. The first of these clubs is to be opened at Angora,
the new capital, and the man in charge will be another Methodist preacher, John
B. Ascham, of West Ohio, whose illuminating contributions on the European
political situation since the war have appeared in these columns from time to
time. But it was stipulated by the Angora government these institutions,
though redolent of the spirit of Christ, must not bear the name of Christian.
That is a fundamental condition. Everything Christian, except the label!
How
can this be? The explanation is obvious. From the time of the Crusades, when
the wearers of the Cross clashed with the wearers of the Crescent, the name of
Christian has been forever tarnished with memories of massacre and war. None of
the fruits of the Spirit, the virtues which the Western world likes to connect
with the word Christian, come to the mind of the Turk when he sees that name.
Thus Christianity, named for the Elder Brother of all mankind, is for a whole
nation synonymous with racial and religious enmity.
There are European nations where the name that should be
above every name has been dragged in the dust. A London writer who was
commissioned to create a Christian literature for the boys of Czechoslovakia
proposed to initiate a series of hero-biographies with a life of Jesus Christ.
A man who was better acquainted with the people of that country warned him that
a life of Christ would kill the series. During the long period of Austrian
tyranny over these lands the Church of Rome had so identified itself with the
ruling despotism, that everything bearing the Christian name shared the evil
reputation of that partnership of oppression and superstition. The Kaiser was
gone and the Church disestablished, but a book with the label of Christian
would still be viewed with suspicion by the people, as being propaganda for
their former masters. Consequently the series will start off with Abraham
Lincoln because groups calling themselves Christian have made the name of
Christ a reproach.
Mahatma Gandhi of India tells the missionaries that Christ
wins him, but Christianity as exemplified by Western political, social and economic
standards he does not recognize as a New Testament product. China looks
lovingly toward Christ, but becomes suspicious of Christian nations when they
are represented by warships, machine guns, and extra-territorial courts, or by
predatory foreign business corporations, wringing the last cent from coolie
labor at the expense of decency and life itself. “If this is Christ,” they say,
“let us stick to Confucius !”
Nor is it necessary to go abroad to find the golden name of
Christ debased and counterfeited.
The
purity of the coinage is entrusted to every one who has named for himself the
name of Christ. The excellence of His precepts is sure to be judged by the
performance of His professed followers. Many a sermon has failed to convince, convict
and convert the sinner, chiefly because the sinner could point to men and women
in the congregation whose lives, known and read by their associates, tended to
discredit the minister’s appeal. Thus, the Name before which every knee should
bow commands no homage.
The
nation or the individual that takes the name of Christian incurs a weighty
responsibility. In some degree the Name of Christ is committed to them. Upon
the manner in which that person, church, society, or nation discharges its
responsibility will measurably depend the esteem which others will give to
that Name.
I
have read this editorial time and time again, and all that I can get from it is
that the name of Christ, of a soap, of a tooth-paste, of a salve, of a grease,
of a cigarette, should be used as long as it produces results, but when no
longer potent, should be dropped. This is certainly what has been officially
done in Turkey with the Name. What the church people of America should
understand is that Mohammedanism is marching on with firebrand and scimitar,
the greatest enemy of Christianity in the world, and that dropping the Name of
Christ and the teaching of the Master, by great Christain organizations, is
another victory for the Prophet. No sophistry, however ingenious, can obscure
this fact.
Let
us hope that this move on their part is the prelude to a great awakening and
revulsion on the part of Western Christians:
And
as Peter was beneath in the palace, there cometh one of the maids of the high
priest.
And
when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked upon him, and said, And thou
also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.
But
he denied, saying, I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he
went out into the porch; and the cock crew.
But
Peter afterward testified in quite a different manner. There can be no working
for Christ in any place where his Name is dropped. That concession is in
itself a victory for the Powers of darkness.
In
the press of October 25, 1925, appeared an article by George Seldes, describing
the persecution of the Christian Chaldeans, on the Turkish-British frontier,
near Mosul. It was announced as the first of a series, but the other articles
have not been published. It is so similar to the other well-authenticated
happenings of a like nature described in the foregoing pages, that it forms a
logical continuation of the narrative. I quote from the “Washington on Post”
of October 25, 1925:
Mosul,
Mesopotamia, October 18 (By Mail to Cairo).—In a beautiful village oasis called
Zakho, on the British-Turkish frontier in the biblical country, amidst peaceful
surroundings, I found witnesses to-day to a terrible tragedy which Mohammedan
Arabs as well as Christians asked me to relate to the Christian world.
It is the story of the deportation of eight thousand Chaldean
Christians from the frontier, of their march into the interior of Turkey, of
how the Turks murdered men, violated women and threw infants over precipices.
It is a story of suffering unparalleled in recent
times and every word here written is sworn to on the Bible by chieftains of
villages and their priests and attested by Archbishop Timothy, their spiritual
father.
OLD
AND ILL SLAIN
“Will the Christian world believe that such things can happen now!”
asked Archbishop Timothy as the Mukhtar—or sheif—of Murga, knelt and told his
story. What the Mukhtar told in Arabic was this:”
“ As God is my witness and by the blood of Christ I swear that on
the march north the Turks killed five men who, on account of their age, could
not keep up with the procession. Three women who were ill they stoned to death.
On the first night we camped near a fountain. The Turkish officers and soldiers
put out the lights and seized all the young pretty girls and carried them to
the fields. All night we heard the screams and cries of the girls and women.
They clouded the skies with their mournful cries and it was like the Day of
Judgment.”
“On the third day one of the women was in the pangs of childbirth.
The Turks waited until the baby was born. Other women took the baby, but the
mother was too feeble to march, so she was shot. At the Ozozan Mountains three
men and two women who tried to escape were shot to death. Their young orphaned
children were then killed.”
This
statement, in colder official form, I saw later in records sworn to and
attested by the British governor of Mesopotamia.
A
letter has just been received by me (October, 1925) from Doctor George E.
White, President of the ill-fated missionary college at Marsovan, Turkey. This
important and once flourishing institution has been reopened at Saloniki,
Greece. I quote the following from its circular:
“The
refugee peoples of the Near East deserve all the sympathy they receive from
American friends. This tragic “movement of populations”
is the greatest of its kind in all history. There are 160,000 refugees in the
city of Saloniki, 800,000 in the province of Macedonia, and 1,500,000 in the
whole of Greece. . . . The Greek Government has revised
its laws for the express purpose of welcoming American education. . . . Saloniki
is building mightily at the present time; it is the point where the Greek
seaman from the South meets the Slav plowman from the North; Moslem Jew and
Christian have felt at home for many generations; Saloniki is moving forward
under a Christian government reestablished in 1912, after alien domination
since 1430.”
Let
us hope that this Christian college will “build mightily” in its new habitat,
where it lime a great and sacred mission: so to diffuse the spirit of the Master
through the Balkans that race hatreds will diminish in those regions, wars
cease, and the remnants of the glorious old Byzantine Empire will be able to
reestablish that Christian civilization, which the Turk has driven out of Asia
Minor. Or, if that is too much, let us at least hope that the influence of its
teachings may be sufficiently great to prevent any of the Balkan States from
joining with the Moslems or the Bolsheviks to destroy their neighbors.