In the Holy Land and Constantinople: William Goodell
WILLIAM GOODELL seemed to be helped by hindrances from the beginning of his active and determined purpose to be in God’s service, preaching Christ and winning souls. When his good father, in a Massachusetts country home, wanted him to study for the ministry, he had not money to pay for the boy’s tuition. As William heard that there was a fund for educating boys in Phillips Academy, Andover, he set out to avail himself of it. He could not pay his stage fare, so he went sixty miles on foot, except as he could pick up a ride part of the way. When he reached Andover he found that the charity fund was overloaded, with other new applicants ahead of him. Then he went back home, footing the whole sixty miles, nothing daunted.
The next term he tried again. With his little trunk of clothing and books and all his possessions strapped on his back, he trudged the sixty miles to apply once more. This time he was received, and began to fit for college. By and by he graduated at Dartmouth, and then studied theology in Andover Seminary. After leaving the seminary he studied medicine, in order better to fit himself as a missionary. Then he did some missionary work among the Indians in the southwest, at that time a far off region.
In 1822 he, with Isaac Bird of Connecticut, started for Syria and Palestine, expecting to reach Jerusalem. Again he was hindered in his plans by troubles in connection with the Greek revolution. At Beyroot, where he and Mr. Bird stopped for a time, he aided in establishing the Mission, and he spent some time profitably in stud)ring the Arabic, the Turkish, and the Armenian languages. War was going on between Greece and Turkey, and ecclesiastical persecution drove him from the field. In 1828 he went, for safety, to Malta, with his family. Yet none of these obstacles swerved him from his main purpose. He had meantime translated the New Testament into Armeno-Turkish, and he issued the work from Malta. In 1 83 1 he was transferred to Constantinople, and there he started a mission to the Armenians. He also occupied himself in translating the Old Testament, as he had before translated the New.
Once more his blessings came in added trial and disaster. The great fire in Constantinople, that destroyed nearly a mile square of the city, destroyed all his property, including his dictionaries, his commentaries, his translations, and his most valued manuscripts. Yet later he was in the midst of the Asiatic plague in its most violent form. After this, a bitter persecution of the missionaries, and determined hostility to the mission itself, began on the part of the Turkish government; and for a time it seemed as if the entire work must be abandoned; but in the Providence of God the Turkish army was defeated by the Russians and their allies; the Sultan himself died; another great fire swept over Constantinople; many of the leading persecutors were removed; and the missionaries were enabled to resume their good work.
It might be supposed that the long series of obstacles and hindrances and opposings would be discouraging and depressing to one who was seeking God’s help and protection in doing God’s work. But there was no sign of discouragement or depression in the face, or words, or tones, of good” Father Goodell.” He was very buoyant, cheerful, and full of hope. I first saw and heard him in 1852, when he was on a visit to this country for a brief time. He preached for Dr. Havves, in the Center Church, with which I had recently united. His manner was inspiriting and almost enthusiastic. From his words and ways one might think that there was only one side to a missionary’s life, and that a bright side. Just look back over his thorny and beset path, from the beginning of his life work, and then think of this!
A single illustration given by him in that discourse put the Christian life in a new light, and I have walked in that light ever since. As I learned afterwards, the illustration is from old Flavel; but in my mind it is Father Goodell’s. I see him to-day as the afternoon sun shone in on his cheery face and his snowy hair, as he said in seriousness, and devoutly: “We often think of death as a break in the path of life, when we must step over the brink before us. We know not how near it is. It may be some distance ahead, or it may be close at hand, but until we reach that brink we are safe. Yet the truth is, death’s brink is not before us; it is alongside of us. From the day of our birth we move along death’s brink. There is never more than a step between us and death. A single step may take us over that brink at any time. Yet God may enable us to keep still on life’s path instead of going over the brink. Our hope and our trust must be ever in Him.” The good missionary’s face shone with faith’s light as he spoke; and I have been grateful for his words ever since.
Dr. Goodell was most anxious that his translation of the Bible into Armen o Jurki sh should be complete and accurate, and worked at its revision until a few years before his death. On the day of its completion, in 1863, he wrote to his old teacher at Phillips Academy, Andover: “Thus have I been permitted, by the goodness of God, to dig a well in this distant land, at which millions may drink, or as good Brother Temple [a brother missionary who brought out a printing press to Malta] would say, to throw wide open the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem to this immense population.”
But Dr. Goodell did much as a missionary while translating the Bible. As early as 1832 he dropped a feopy of “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” which he had translated into Armeno-Turkish, at the door of a church in Nicomedia. He learned, years after, that a boy gave it to a priest, who read it himself, and then read it to another priest. It was blessed to those two and through them to others. Six years later the priest came to Dr. Goodell for help in evangelizing his neighborhood, and then he learned of the influence of the little book. After more than forty years of missionary service, including Bible translation, Dr. Goodell returned to America, and in 1867 he died at the home of his son in Philadelphia.
One of the notable occasions of his appearing before the public in a great assembly was the meeting of the American Board in Chicago, 1865. He was already so well-known by reputation that there was a general desire to see him. Rev. Dr. E. D. G. Prime, his son-in-law, writes of the occasion:” Probably nothing connected with the meeting at Chicago excited greater interest at the time, or will be remembered with more pleasure, than his venerable presence, which was a benediction in itself. With his aged form bent with years and toil, his beaming countenance, his snow-white beard, his head wearing, the Oriental cap [or fez] on which was inscribed in Arabic characters the motto, ‘The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness,’ wrought by the hands of eastern converts to the Cross; and still more by his cheerful bearing, his spiritual conversation, none the less spiritual because flavored with his sparkling humor, he made an impression which will ever be associated with this anniversary of the Board.
“One day, at this anniversary, while the great congregation was gathering, he took his seat on the floor of the hall, when two ladies came in and sat next him. One of them asked him if he saw Dr. Goodell on the stage. Looking over the faces, he said he did not see him, and he was sure he was not among those gentlemen. She asked him if he would be kind enough to look about the hall, and if he saw him, point him out, as she greatly desired to see him. Looking about, he said he did not see him. Then, after a little, he said to her abruptly, ‘Why, madam, he is sitting just next to you.’ She looked at her friend and then at him, and seemed bewildered. When the truth dawned on her she said, in her confusion, ‘Why, sir, I am so ashamed.’ He replied, ‘And I am so ashamed, too.’” But this was just like him, all through.
In the few words he spoke to the members of the Board at that time, he said that in his early missionary life he set out for Jerusalem, and at that time he expected to live and die there; but he was kept from going there, and had never seen Jerusalem. “I have now,” he added, “set my face towards the New Jerusalem, taking Chicago on my way.”
I was pleasantly associated with a son of Dr. Goodell in army life, in our Civil War, and afterwards in Williston Seminary, and in the Agricultural College, at Amherst; with his older son, in my Oriental researches, in Philadelphia. I also knew several of his daughters who worthily represented their good father in different phases of God’s work. But most of all I am glad to have seen and heard the godly missionary himself, of whom it was well said: “He was rarely gifted, full of genial humor, sanguine, simple, courageous, modest, above all holy. He won hearts, and molded lives.”