Chapter 37

THEIR CONDITION AT THE TIME AMERICAN MISSIONS WERE STARTED.

The colleges of the Assyrians were destroyed four hundred years before the American missionaries came. Not a single school was left, and the only effort at education was by monks teaching dead languages to aspirants for the priesthood. Learned bishops and monks who were full of the spirit of Christ in spreading the gospel at home and abroad had all vanished. Some of the clergy could not understand what they read. Priests and their parish became blind to the Word of God, as their books had been burned in times of persecution by the Mohammedans in order to keep them ignorant. Sometimes there was only one priest in a dozen villages. The clouds of ignorance spread over all the nation. Their sun went down. Regeneration and conversion were unknown to them. Traditions prevailed among priests and laymen. They trusted in saints and in ancient and holy church buildings. In their ignorance they offered sacrifice to martyrs and built tombs to prophets; put more hope in the merit of fasting than in Christ. A small number of New Testament manuscripts, which were written in dead languages were used only in taking oaths. Sometimes laymen kneeled before them and kissed them instead of obeying the truth that was written in them. The candlestick of the church was turned down and the light quenched. Moreover the Mohammedans had threatened to massacre them if they did not accept that faith. The Assyrians had lost about all of their Christianity except the name. Among 100,000 Christians in Kurdiston and 60,000 in Persia there was only one lady who could read, and she was a nun, sister of the patriarch. The words of the daughter-in-law of Eli when she said, "The glory is departed from Israel." could have been applied to this nation.