Missionaries Among the Nestorians: Justin Perkins; Thomas Laurie

FOR centuries after its rise and decline the Nestorian Christian Church had little real vitality or power for good. A large portion of the Nestorians submitted to the Pope, having a Patriarch appointed by the Pope, and they constitute what has been called the Chaldean Church. What may be called the Orthodox Nestorians inhabit the plain of Ooroomiah and the Koordish Mountains, between Persia and Turkey. The Nestorians, who as a people had rich and varied historical associations, attracted special attention in America as a field of missionary endeavors, towards the close of the first third of the nineteenth century when American Christians were first waking up to the importance and possibilities of missionary activities the world over.

In 1830, the Nestorian field was first examined by explorers from the American Board. They found it unsafe to penetrate the Koordish Mountains; but they deemed Ooroomiah a favorable field. Mr. Justin Perkins of West Springfield left his place as tutor in Amherst College to go as the pioneer missionary to Ooroomiah. An associate of his was Dr. Asahel

Grant, a missionary physician from Northern New York, who did excellent service in Koordistan, and whose life was afterwards written by a fellow-laborer, Rev. Thomas Laurie. And from that beginning, missionary work with its vicissitudes has been carried on among the Nestorians.

Rev. Thomas Laurie, born in Scotland and trained in New England, with his wife joined the mission to the Nestorians, or the Assyrian Mission, as it is sometimes called, in the autumn of 1842. The two prominent centres of the mission were Mosul on the Tigris, on the borders of Mesopotamia, and Ooroomiah on an extended plain in Persia. From these centres movements were made into the hill country of the Koords and among the mountain Nestorians. Various and diverse people were to be reached. These were the Chaldeans, or Nestorians who acknowledge the Pope; the Jacobites, and the papal Syrians, who are seceders from the Jacobites; the Armenians; and the Orthodox Nestorians. There were also many Muhammadans, and also as in most parts of the world, more or less Jews. That Mosul was a prominent Muhammadan centre is indicated in the fact that it was from that city that the designation “Muslimin” or “Mussulmans” came to be so generally applied to the followers of Muhammad. And this varied population in the missionary held to be reached, made the work there the more complex and difficult.

Not a great distance from Mosul, on the other side of the Tigris, were the ruins of ancient Nineveh. This brought thither at different times the distinguished scientific explorers, Rich and Botta, and thus go Old Time Student Volunteers

newly drew the attention of the civilized and Christian world to the region as one of exceptional prominence in its history and its possibilities. The American missionaries were alive to the importance and interest of the scientific discoveries; and the explorers were glad to avail themselves of, and to gratefully acknowledge, the cooperation of the missionaries with their familiarity with the country and their power over the people. This was peculiarly so a little later in the case of Dr. W. Frederic Williams and Sir Henry Layard.

In the early years of the Assyrian Mission, as has been the case in so many other mission fields, more since then than before, the medical knowledge of the missionary workers proved a means of winning and holding the confidence of the people ministered to. All were glad to have their physical needs and ills cared for, even though they might seem unmindful of their higher spiritual interests. The medical and surgical skill of Dr. Asahel Grant, as a missionary in Koordistan and among the mountain Nestorians, was a power for good among all sorts and classes of people. An “Appeal to Pious Physicians,” written by Dr. Grant in view of his own experience in Persia with its obvious lessons, presents this truth most impressively.

But Dr. Grant was removed from his field by death in the spring of 1844, and the mission felt the loss of his personal influence over the diverse peoples. Other causes contributed to the bringing about of opposition and persecution. There had already been a fearful massacre of Nestorians in the hill country during a war between the Turkish army and the Koords. Ecclesiastical opposition to the missionaries and their course increased, and local stations of the missionaries were broken up. In view of existing difficulties, as preventing for the time hopeful work in that region, Mr. Laurie and some of his associates were, in 1844, removed to other stations for a time. Yet the good missionary work among the mountains by Drs. Perkins and Grant and Laurie was never given up, however it may have been interrupted. Schools started by them are still flourishing; and those trained in the schools have been preaching the gospel and carry on missionary work.

In 1843, Dr. Justin Perkins visited the United States for a brief season. He was accompanied by a native Nestorian, Mar (or Bishop) Yohannon. The presence of the latter, and his earnest addresses, excited much interest and drew fresh attention to the Nestorians, and the Assyrian Mission as it was called. Although I was not then a resident of Hartford, where they visited and spoke to the churches, I later heard much about the two men from the East from those who had seen and heard them. A lithographic picture of Mar Yohannon in his turban and Oriental garb, was in many a Hartford home, and it first won my special interest to the Nestorians and the Assyrian Mission. In 186g I met Dr. Justin Perkins, who had been compelled, after thirty-six years of missionary labor, to retire from active efforts in the foreign field. Dr. Perkins, at the time when I saw him, towards the close of his hero life, was in his personality a noble and venerable witness for Christ, and a telling appeal in behalf of the service that could win such a man to its high endeavors, and could fix on his very face and form such marks and proofs of ennobling sacrifice and glorious development.

It was in 1866 that I became acquainted with Dr. Thomas Laurie, a fellow-missionary with Dr. Perkins and Dr. Grant in the Eastern field. He had been compelled to return to the United States after long and exhausting missionary service. I first saw him in his home In Providence, Rhode Island. He also was a scarred and honor-medaled veteran, with the Christ love in his face and speech, impressing on all a sense of the personal gain of such service to the one who is privileged to be in it.

Like every returned missionary whom I have known. Dr. Laurie had a hearty interest in Christ’s work, especially in Bible study and teaching in the home field. His bearing was not that of one who felt that he had done so much for Christ that he might be excused from further effort. It was rather that of one who would say: “Since I am no longer able to be in the foreign field I am only too glad to be able to help any who are at work for Christ near home.”

I was then engaged in Sunday-school missionary work in the New England field. In my work of winning souls to Christ’s service and to Bible study, I found good Dr. Laurie ready to help me always in any way I could suggest, and I found his rich experience in Bible lands and among peoples described in the Bible of inestimable service to me in my efforts to fit myself for what God had for me to do. When I became editor of The Sunday School Times, Dr. Laurie furnished for several years stimulating and instructive articles as throwing light on Bible teachings.

In the first of these articles Dr. Laurie gave expression to a precious thought, when he referred to the richness of the words of Jesus and to the fact that so much was often suggested by a single word of Jesus. “Take as an illustration the vioxA. fruii in the saying, ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit’ (John 15: 8). He does not bid them be good or do good, be holy or useful, but to bear fruit. That is the way he preferred to express it.” Then Dr. Laurie went on to show the fullness and richness of the term “fruit” in Oriental imagery.

In another article Dr. Laurie showed how much more of God’s abounding love was indicated in the biblical Oriental figures of speech than in our cold and formal English words. He told of his own surprise when he first landed as a missionary in the East and saw men falling on the necks of men, and kissing each other on both cheeks. Then as he read the story of the father of the Prodigal Son, where the father kisses the son much when the boy returns, he realized the lesson that Jesus taught of God’s abounding love. Even the Revisers of our New Testament would not put the full meaning of the original into the text as Jesus taught it, because Oriental ways are so much more hearty than ours. And in this connection Dr. Laurie emphasized the prominence which the Bible from its earliest pages to its latest gives to heartiness of affection on the part of God and of God’s children.

These articles of Dr. Laurie were another illustration of the value in Bible translation of the knowledge of the East and Eastern ways supplied to us cold, matter-of-fact Westerners. Christian missionaries in the East have done a vast deal to bring a more precious Bible to needy Christians in the West.

But perhaps Dr. Laurie’s most important aid to American Christians was the completion of his monumental work, “The Ely Volume,” undertaken at the request of the American Board, according to the desire and at the expense of the Hon. Alfred B. Ely, of Newton, Massachusetts, in memory of his father, as a devoted friend of foreign missions. It is a full record of “The Contribution of our Foreign Missions to Science and Human Well-being,” in addition to all that has been done for the spiritual interests of the people in non-Christian lands. Although this work did not come into my hands until this present volume was practically complete, I have made free and frequent use of it, in addition to all other material with which I was familiar, in complement and supplement of what I had already written.

Without “The Ely Volume” no friend or student of missions can fully realize what the men and their work in this field have done for those at home, apart from their chief and commonly recognized service for those to whom they go. Had, however. Dr. Laurie not been the man he was in the foreign mission field, he could not have done as he did this important work at home in behalf of those at home and those still in the foreign field.