BULGARIA UNDER NEW LEADERS

Commissioner Railton (1)

Having been privileged to join in the welcome home of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria with his new wife, just at the moment when England’s Government seems at last to have woke up about the State of Macedonia, I have some little hope that Salvationists may think about these people, even if it be long before we get to work among them.

Let me try to picture what this princess – accustomed, I hear, earnest evangelical work in Germany – will find among the four million people she has come to reign over. Where, only thirty years ago, there was hardly a decent looking building of any sort, she will find in the capital, Sofia, with its serenity thousand inhabitants, and in other towns a number of really very find public structures, and at least the beginnings of many striking boulevards, streets, parks, and especially gymnasia (or high schools) for girls as well as boys.

But, except a very, very few new churches, she will notice that the only places of worship anybody would see on entering a town are the Mohammedan mosques, mostly small and very often dingy, but commanding universal attention by the tall, whitewashed minarets they all have. These minarets seem as a rule, no broader than an average factory chimney; but yet there is a stair inside, and a little circular platform, twenty to fifty feet up, from which in many cases the call to prayer is given several times a day.

THE RISING GENERATION

The national churches often have a bell hung outside, and it rings a little occasionally. But she will be told that the rising generation has ceased to go either to mosque, church or synagogue, and when she inquires why, she will not, I think, be at all surprised.

There are only half a million Mohammedans left in the country, the younger ones preferring to go to Turkey or elsewhere, although they have perfect liberty here and have some members of Parliament. As for the National Orthodox Church, though all school children are taken to it several times a year to be “sacramented”, and it is crowded on special occasions, she will learn that the services are held in old Slavonic language the people do not understand, and that, as a rule, nobody goes to hear them, there being scarcely ever any preaching, though very fine singing. Should she ever see what goes on when churches are crowded with all the children of the schools, and their teachers trying in vain to stop their pushing and almost fighting for the first turn to get “the sacrament”, she will not wonder that almost all the educated people have become infidels.

The older people who continue to go occasionally to “sacramented” are said to behave no less roughly, and even to swear sometimes in the struggle for first turn.

How can I but that an intelligent princess may see the national ruin that all this threatens, and find ways to get light into the darkness? She will, I hope, hear of the ten thousand New Testaments sold in the last five months by the British and Foreign Bible Society, of the intention of the Holy Synod of the National Church to get out at a Bulgarian Bible of their own, and of the missions carried on in some fifty other little churches.

WANTED – TRUE CHRISTIANITY

She may hear further of the few Roman Catholic Churches and German Lutheran and Baptist ones, all, I fear, gathering less than two thousand people in worship: but I cannot help supposing that she will be horrified if she is told that mothers of the highest families, who have themselves passed years in mission schools, make no profession of any religion at all, and say that they “leave their children quite free in the matter!” What, indeed, are such mothers to do?

They cannot expect an educated boy or girl to respect the National Church, but that anyone who dares go to any other is likely to be refused any situation of value, or turned out of it.

Now, I rejoice that both prince and princess have dared to join for marriage according to their several religious convictions, outside the National Orthodox Church. How can I but expect of such leaders that they will find ways to lead their people into definite, bold, godly living? The prince, I am told, goes not only to both Christian places of worship in every city he visits, but to the mosque as well, lest any of his subjects should think he wished to discourage their faith in the One God whom the Mohammedans certainly alone proclaim, at present. But oh I wish (2) that there were a force busy in every place to make Him properly known!

In talking to a Mohammedan tradesman on this line I was astonished to find him open to conviction. He said that the young Mohammedans did not care to go to mosque; but that he did wish to be faithful to God. “But how can I?” said he. “Where can I get the power to live as I know I ought to live for God?”

Oh, that The Army may be in time with the answer before all young Islam be into the infidel condition of all the Christians they mostly know!

Who can dare to prophesy the future of Bulgaria under its new leaders? If ever a couple needed hearty, earnest, believing prayer, the do. Their country can become the centre of either the brightest, clearest gospel light for the near East, or the most rabid, socialistic contempt for all religion and all proper authority. Which shall it be?

May God grant us the honour, at least by our prayers, of securing a victorious decision.

Published in the American War Cry June 1908 (3)

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(1) Commissioner George Scott Railton

(2) Wish is not in the original text, but without this or an equivalent word, the sentence does not make sense.

(3) Given the dating of the article, it is referring to Prince Ferdinand I of Bulgaria’s marriage to Princess Eleonore Reuss of Köstritz. Later the same year, Ferdinand declared independence from The Ottoman Empire and declared Bulgaria a monarchy giving himself the title Tsar with  princess Eleonore becoming Tsaritsa.