candidates were comparatively well-educated men, and one of them,
hereafter to be more specially noted, had a high reputation for
learning.

Peshtimaljian, the head of the school, was an uncommon man. His
inquisitive mind was ever gaining knowledge, and what he acquired
his memory retained. He was a critical and accurate scholar in the
language and literature of his nation, and made himself familiar
with the theology and history of the Eastern and Romish Churches,
and with the general history of the Church from the earliest ages.
He was able to quote from the Scriptures with wonderful facility and
accuracy. His confidence in the Bible, as the true Word of God and
the only standard of faith, had indeed been shaken for a while by
his disgust with the superstitions of his Church, and by the low
character of many of its clergy, but he had recovered from this.
Though timid and cautious to a fault, like Erasmus, and sometimes
open to the charge of time-serving, he gradually led his pupils into
new paths of inquiry, until they came to believe that the Church not
only may err, but that it had actually erred in many of its
teachings.

Peshtimaljian became convinced at length, that his pupils were
consistently carrying out the principles they had learned from him,
and he strongly, though still privately, encouraged them in their
labors for the spiritual good of their countrymen. Until his death,
which occurred in 1837, he was the friend of the missionaries, and
had much intercourse with them; though he never acquired the courage
distinctly to avow himself an evangelical man. Up to that time,
however, there had been no open persecution of the followers of
Christ, and consequently no formal separation of the evangelical
brethren from the Armenian community. All the first converts in
Constantinople, and many of the later ones, were from his school.

There can be no doubt that, owing to these and other less apparent
causes, there was a preparation in the Armenian mind of Turkey for
the reception of divine truth, before the arrival of the American
missionaries. Though more evident at the capital than in the
provinces, there seems to have been some degree of this preparation
wherever Armenians were found. In this respect, there was a marked
difference among that people, as compared with Jews and Greeks. The
common people, where not intimidated by the clergy, almost
everywhere heard the Word with gladness; and it was so with many