GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION IN TURKEY.
A correspondent who has been a missionary in Palestine for the past nine years, and has had many years of experience in other parts of the Turkish dominion, sends us some striking pictures of the situation in that much-troubled land. Being the results of personal observation and experience, these presentations are the more reliable:— Turkey Difficult to Govern.
There is no land in this world more difficult of government than Turkey. Why so? Because of its varied inimical, divided inhabitants, belonging to antagonistic races, speaking different languages, and holding to irreconcilable creeds. The wonder is that the Turk has succeeded in keeping the divergent parts under his dominion so long. Thus much in exoneration of Turkish misrule. The great bane of Turkey is the sectarian spirit and mutual hatred of Papists, Greeks, Armenians, Copts, Melchites, Maronites, Jews, and the dominant Moslems, and these last are also divided into sects and races, bearing no love to each other. It is a house divided against itself, and it can not stand together much longer; it must go to pieces—unless the “Christian nations” permit the extermination of one section of the mongrel population after another with the iron rod of despotism. Could the several so-called Christian sects be brought into accord and concord, and to act harmoniously for the general good, and to coöperate with the Jews in common objects for the welfare of all, the discordant elements might subsist longer compactly. But the Christian sects, particularly the Greeks, hate the Jews intensely, and it can not be expected that the Jews would love them, or care to promote their separate interests; and it is pretty much the same amongst themselves. What is the spectacle the Christian sects present in Jerusalem and Palestine? Through the intervention of France, Russia, and other nations, they, or most of them, have certain rights or privileges in such places as the churches of the Holy Sepulcher and of the Nativity; but it requires armed Turkish soldiers, with fixed bayonets, to prevent their coming to blows, or bloodshed, as frequently happens notwithstanding the presence of the soldiers, even close by the altars, while performing their distinct religious rites. How scandalous! What a disgrace! What must Jews and Moslems think of such representations of Christianity? The highest proof of discipleship, said the adorable Master, was “to have love one to another.” It is the new commandment enforcing the old one. But one seeks in vain for it in this land. I frequently see priests and monks of the different sects pass each other in the streets, singly or in groups, without exchanging any kind of salute. More frequently they turn their faces from each other, or exchange fierce looks. Nor, alas! is Christian love as predominant among the Protestant sects here as one would wish to see. How, then, can the Turk, with his intolerant Koran tenets, be expected to be more amiable and forbearing, when the Christians under his rule set him such a sad and lamentable example?