"The other Armenian in Baku[21] came to Shushee to be employed
in distributing tracts and Bibles. He has already made a
journey into Georgia, and preaches to Armenians and Turks."

[21] This is the Armenian whose history I gave a
little account of before, as the son-in-law of the richest
merchant in Baku, who has given up all the prospects of his
connection with his father-in-law, which are very considerable,
to endure afflictions with the people of God. This young
Armenian is another proof of the immense importance of having
those to bear testimony to the power of the Spirit's work in
regenerating the soul in the image of him that created it, from
among themselves. The people can see in him the contrast
between the past and the present man. They have also a
knowledge of the peculiar modes of thinking and feeling among
those with whom they have been educated, and been in the
closest terms of intimacy with from their infancy, that they
cannot have with foreigners.

The two dear and most interesting deacons, of whom one is mentioned as
having died in the faith in his way to suffer for the truth, and the
other has gone to witness alone before his enemies and persecutors at
Etchmiazin, were both in the school at Shushee, and in the study of
and translating the word of God, had been led step by step, to see
through the errors of the system by which they were bound.

Another proof of the progress of the same spirit manifested itself in
our infant beginnings. The two little Armenian boys who live with us,
eat and live as we do; on being asked by the boys without, why they
did not fast as their nation did for fifty days? without any knowledge
or direction from me, they set about selecting from the New
Testament, in conjunction with my own little boys, those passages
which bear on the question, and which shew that if we eat not we are
none the better, and if we do eat, none the worse. Remarks of a
similar kind have many times occurred in the course of our
translations from the Testament. At all events, there is a growing
tendency in the minds of the children, to feel that God's word is the
one rule on which they must justify all they impose, and thence the
necessity of understanding it; and these principles upset at once the
whole system of ignorant mummery which is now called or thought to be
the religion of Jesus h