Third interview with the Reverend William McElwee Miller in his home in Philadelphia, made on January the 17th, 1979, for the Presbyterian Historical Society. And the interviewer is Alan Thomson. When we finished the last tape, you had just arrived in Tehran, your first arrival, your first time in Iran. Would you tell us something about Tehran and your your first impressions there?

I well remember my arrival in Tehran about ten or 11:00 at night on November the 19th, 1919. The truck in which my companions and I were arriving had a very difficult time getting the last 25 miles, making the last 25 miles into Tehran. They had no lights. A lantern was tied on the front of the truck. The lantern fell off and broke. And we made the rest of the way in darkness and went off the road once. Finally, we arrived and I was taken to the home of Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Jordan, where I was to live while I was in Tehran. And they gave me a welcome, some sagnak and some abgoosht, which is a meat soup. And I went to bed. Next morning I was having breakfast with the Jordans fairly early before school began, and as we were eating, Dr. Jordan said to me in his Pennsylvania voice, Miller, your language teacher is waiting for you in the other room. And so about 8:00 next morning after my arrival, I began to study Persian. The teacher was one of the boys of the Christian Boys School in Tehran. Issamidine Jaffar, and he taught me my first sentences in Persian, the same way that he himself had learned his sentences in English. Aan dasht man ast. This is my hand. Aan peaa man ast. This is my foot. And so after an hour of this sort of training, I could make several remarks in the Persian language as Issamidine, the way later taught my wife. He came to America, to Wooster College, and there he graduated. He became a dentist. And to my great joy in the Second World War, he appeared in Tehran as a captain in the United States Medical Corps. And one night when he was sitting in the church and I was preaching in Persian, I introduced him to the congregation and I told them that a part of that Persian tongue with which I was speaking to them was given me by Issamidine Jaffar. Dr. Jordan and Mrs. Jordan were remarkable people. Their whole life was centered in the boys school in Tehran. Dr. Jordan realized that the young men of Iran need to learn some very important lessons. They needed to learn the dignity of work. And so he managed to find jobs that they could do or must do with their hands so that they would get over the idea that, gentlemen don't get their hands dirty. He also felt it was extremely important for them to have athletic sports so that they could learn the importance of clean play. And he taught them soccer, football. This had not been introduced into Iran before. And the boys loved this game. And it opened an era of important development in sports in Iran. The story is told that one boy, the son of a very important gentleman in Tehran, went to his father and said, Father, Mr. Jordan, our principal says, I must have a football. And the father said, Well, what do you want with a football? Well, the boy said after school they kicked the football. The father said, I don't see any point in that. But if Mr. Jordan says you must have won, of course I'll get you one. But remember, whenever it's necessary for the football to be cooked, to be kicked, you have a servant to do that for you. Very soon, I'm sure this boy and all the others learned it was more fun kicking the ball and to have servants around doing it for them. Mr. and Mrs. Jordan really loved their students. They had no children of their own, and they devoted themselves entirely to the boys in their school and the families of the boys. They said that these boys in the school where their sons and. Dr. Jordan was a strict disciplinarian, but he had not only the obedience, but the admiration of his students. When a boy misbehaved badly, Dr. Board, Jordan would take him out behind the school and say to him, No, you are sick and you need medicine. I'm going to give you some medicine to help you get over your sickness. And with that, he would take off his leather belt and would give the boy a good strapping in a place where it was necessary. Then he would say to the boy, Now, when you go to the drugstore to get medicine, do they give it to you free or do you pay for it? The boy would say, Of course we pay for it. All right. Dr. Jordan would say, Now you can pay me for this medicine I've given you. And he would collect the sum of money to Riyadh or something like that from the boy. Well, lead boys never forgot the experiences they had of being whipped by Dr. Jordan. Years later, I was the guest of one of these boys who became governor of the city of Najaf. Poor. The city was young. I was in his home in the shop poor. And he and some other friends would tell with great play how Dr. Jordan had whipped them and how this had happened and that it happened. And they admired him immensely. Mrs. Jordan was a wonderful little person. She was really the power behind the throne. And she taught the boys the Bible and she loved them and she prayed for them. And these two together made the school for boys, the American Christian School for Boys in Tehran, a famous school. A great many of the students who went to the school later held important positions in Iran. Uh, some years later, my wife and I were invited to the Iranian Embassy in Washington to have dinner with one of the graduates who was then ambassador to the United States. The story is told that when Sam Higginbottom, the famous agricultural missionary in India, was driving with his wife through Iran on his way back to India, something that had not been done before, he was the guest of the Jordans, and each of these men was telling about what he was doing. Dr. Higginbottom, who later became moderator of the Presbyterian Church in America, was boasting about what wonderful cattle he was helping the people of India to raise as a result of his agricultural school. And then when Dr. Jordan's turn came, he said, Well, in our school we are specializing in raising cabinet ministers. And he told of some of the very important citizens of Iran who had been educated in his school. One of them did become prime minister once, and others held very important positions in the country. This school was at that time a Christian school in the sense the Bible was taught. Attendance at Christian Chapel services was required, and all the boys who went to that school, especially those who graduated by the time they finished the 12th grade. New video about the Christian religion and they had seen it revealed in the lives of their Jordans and other Christian teachers who were in the school. The school gave the Jordans and the other teachers an opportunity to become acquainted with many of the leading families of Iran, because at the New Year's vacation, the Nowruz 21st of March and also on other occasions, the Jordans and other teachers made a special effort to call on the families of the students. I remember going with them one day it was raining and snowing, but they went from one house to another, drinking innumerable cups of tea and being in friendly contact with the parents of the boys. Some of these were among the leading citizens of Iran at that time, and the esteem with which the Jordans and the other teachers in the school, like the boys was held, was really tremendously impressive. This was, of course, done in a Christian spirit and with a Christian purpose. And then there was the hospital. In the first year that I was in Tehran. The doctor in the hospital was Dr. Philip McDowell. He and his wife were both missionary children born. Born in Iran, I believe, and they and the others, the nurses and others who were working in the hospital made the Christian hospital there a place where a very strong Christian witness could be given by their very skillful medical care, their graciousness, their love for people. They exhibited something of the love as well as the truth of Jesus Christ. They these two institutions, the boys school, and then, of course, the girls school, which like the boys school, had a tremendous influence on the women of Persia, represented the chief outreach of the Christian, the Presbyterian mission in Tehran at that time. And this was true also in the other cities where there were schools for boys, schools for girls and also hospitals. When I went to Tehran, the principal of the girls school was Miss Mack Henry. But not long after that, Miss Jane Doolittle came and later became the principal of the school and held that position for many years and became just as famous as Dr. Jordan in being an outstanding educationalist and a friend of the people of Iran and Dr. Jordan and Mrs. Jordan died a good many years ago. But Miss Jane Doolittle retired in Iran, and she is still there after something like 55 years of life in Iran. The church in Iran at that time was small, but it was important. And Dr. Jordan used to say that there's only one thing in the Christian work in Tehran, more important than the boys school. And that was the evangelical church. And the church was not called the Presbyterian Church. The word Presbyterian was not used in connection with the church at that time. In the Persian language, as in Arabic. The word for the gospel is in jail. And so the church was properly called the English Church. That is the gospel church. We didn't want to make the people there. Members of our denomination, we wanted them to be Christians. I think I mentioned the fact that there were two sections of the church. The church was established in 1872, I believe, when about 12 Armenians and one Muslim convert formed this evangelical church in Tehran. Mr. Basset, who began the work in Tehran, had the desire to reach everybody, and so he worked in the Persian language. But it became evident that the people who were responsive, both in coming to the boys school, in the girls school and also coming to the church services were largely Armenians. And so the church began largely as an Armenian Protestant church, but by degrees. There were Moslems who came along and wanted to know about Christ, and some of them professed faith in Christ and wanted to become members of the church. Then the problem arose as to their being welcomed in the church that was largely Armenian. It is extremely difficult for Armenians and Assyrians, who had been separated from Moslems for more than a thousand years by cultural and language and theological differences to believe that amongst them could be truly converted. And so the elders of the little church sometimes made it difficult for Moslems who professed faith to receive baptism and become members of the church. They were very carefully examined and kept waiting, often a long time. Well, finally the missionaries felt that this attitude would prevent Moslems from coming into the church and becoming active members. And so once Dr. Jordan and I believe Mr. Potter and Mr. Esselstyn, I think those were the three set up a committee to examine Moslem converts and to approve their baptism, and they began baptizing some. The stories of some of these are found in the book. Ten Muslims Meet Christ and by degrees this little group of converts grew. Were converts from Islam. They were converts from Judaism. They were converts also a few from the Zoroastrian group in Tehran. And when I arrived, there were these two small Christian groups meeting each Sunday morning, the Armenian Protestant church and the Persian speaking Protestant church worshiping in different languages, but worshiping side by side. The convert group was quite vigorous, and after several years they raised money themselves to put up on the church property a little building which they felt would be their own. They had a meeting room and a place where they could prepare tea for their social meetings, and it showed a great deal of real interest and concern on the part of these converts that they did this themselves. They were very proud of what they had been able to accomplish. And so that was the situation which I found when I arrived in Tehran in November 1919. I would just add this a few days after my arrival was Thanksgiving, and it was the custom of the missionaries to have an American Thanksgiving service in English and all the Americans in the city. We're invited. As I recall, this small meeting in which I was the speaker, there were not more than 12 or 15 Americans. The whole American population in Tehran. And at that time, we never dreamed that one day there might be as many as 40 or 50,000 Americans in Iran as I have recently heard there has been.

Speaking of numbers, Mr. Miller, could you give us any kind of an estimate of what was the the Christian community in Tehran and in Iran at the time of your arrival?

It's difficult to answer that question because they all the Armenians in Iran or wherever they are consider themselves Christians and some of them are very devout Christians and some are not Christians at all. The same thing is true of the Assyrians. And I might guess that the Armenians and the Assyrians in Iran at that time, they may have numbered 100,000. But this is simply a guess. The Catholics there also had some thousands of members in their churches, most of them drawn from the Assyrian community or the Armenian community. The number of members of the churches related to our Presbyterian mission was, oh, I don't know, maybe about 3000, the majority of whom were the Assyrians in the western part of Iran, and a much smaller number of Armenians. The number of converts from Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism at that time was very small, perhaps 50 or so in the whole country. It must be remembered also that in addition to the Presbyterian mission in Iran, which was the strongest Protestant mission there at the time, there was the Episcopal mission established by the Church Missionary Society, which had very fine work, similar to the work of the Presbyterians in four of the cities in South Iran. And the number of members of their churches was also quite small. So the Christian population in this country was indeed very small.

Were Roman Catholic missionaries also active in working with Muslims?

Roman Catholic missionaries at that time were not active in working for Muslims. We had a suspicion that they had some sort of arrangement with the Iranian government and that they would not try to proselytize, would not try to convert Muslims. At any rate, their work was with the Christian populations and with the foreigners who were in the city.

This is the first time I've ever heard that there actually were converts from Zoroastrianism. The process of coming from Zoroastrianism to Christ would be quite different. I would take it than than would be the case for Jews or Muslims. Did you know personally any of these Zoroastrian converts?

Oh, yes. One of the outstanding converts was a man named Muazu Shariah. She married young. He was the assistant to Dr. Weisman in the literature work. He was a very devout Christian, and he gave a strong Christian testimony and he was deeply interested in the production and distribution of Christian literature. And his son today is one of the leading members of the Presbyterian Church in Tehran. The problem of Zoroastrians becoming a Christian in a way, is simpler than that of Muslims becoming a Christian, and because he doesn't have to deny his own religion. The Zoroastrian teaching was very good. It taught that there was a power of a good power and there was an evil power and ahura Mazda now. Nariman And it was the duty of every person to side with the good power, the good God, and work against the evil power. However, the Zoroastrians were few in number were very much involved in their own society and were very loath to see any member of their ingrown group go over to any other faith. And so they held on to their claim to their members with great tenacity, and it seemed is difficult for a Zoroastrian to become a Christian as it was for a moslem to become a Christian. Now, there was a young man in Tehran of a Zoroastrian family named Rostam. His story is very interesting. He was in the Boys School of Our mission and was chosen by Ford to come to America and study in the Ford Automobile School in Detroit. And he came, and while in America, he became very ill and had to come back to Iran on a stretcher before going to America, he had become a very earnest Christian. And when he came back as an invalid, he was just a remarkably joyous and triumphant Christian. And he was so happy. He told everybody, instead of saying, Salaam peace to you, to say, be happy. Shahid Zee and the former students of the school who had known him and his friends in the church were very devoted to Rostam, and they called him happy. Rostam and up to the time of his death, he gave an outstanding witness to the power of Christ to overcome illness. He he was, as I said, a convert from Zoroastrianism. But his family never became Christians.

Well, are you ready to take us to Mass?

Yes, I can say that the months that I had in Tehran were very helpful to me. I was very glad that the mission detained me there for some months to help as little as I could in the evangelistic work and in the school work, because some of the friends that I made at that time became lifelong friends of mine. And I got an understanding of the situation of the missionary work, which otherwise I would never have gotten. So when June came, I taught in the school and I studied Persian. I chief task was trying to learn Persian. And when the school year ended in June, the mission approved my going on to my assignment. Mashhad, which is 560 miles east of Tehran. Several three boys from the city of Beard jammed, which is some 300 miles south of Mashhad. We're traveling back to their home in Baghdad for the summer. They had to pass through Mashhad. And so Doctor Jordan assigned me to their care. They arranged to travel by a horse drawn vehicle run by the posts. At that time, there were stations about every 20 miles, all the way between Tehran and Mashhad, where horses were kept. And when a person or a group wanted to travel, it was possible to rent a wagon or a carriage, something like a stagecoach, and travel more rapidly than one could do using, say, a carriage or riding horseback. Just day after day.

These are the famous Persian posts that were celebrated by wasn't the two cities or.

Well, perhaps so, whether they were the same ones or not, the horses had been changed, I guess. And so Dr. Jordan arranged that these boys would rent one of these vehicles, which had room in it for about eight people. The three of them, their servant. And I started out drawing by in this wagon, drawn by four horses abreast. And theoretically, we could travel night and day because if horses were in the stables and were hitched up immediately, we could move right on, no matter when we arrived. As a matter of fact, usually there were no horses in the stables because they had gone to the next post and when they came back, they had to be fed new water. And so there were delays in changing horses post after post. But we traveled on in this manner for, I think it was eight days and six nights on our way to Mashhad. And you can imagine how weary we were when we reached Mashhad late one night, and I found my way to the mission. Now, the story of the opening of Christian work in Mashhad is a thrilling story. And Mashhad, or a properly pronounced Mashhad means place of martyrdom because the eighth descendant of Muhammad was put to death there by his religious enemies. And around his tomb grew up a community called Mashhad City of Martyrdom. And thousands of pilgrims would come from distant places over a period of hundreds and hundreds of years to visit the tomb of this martyr, hoping that God would forgive their sins if they made this pilgrimage. So this was the most sacred Moslem city in Iran. And when Dr. Louis Esselstyn, ordained minister, looked eastward from Tehran, when he eye of his mind, he could see no Christian witness anywhere between Tehran and the border of India. All across Iran, more than 600 miles across Afghanistan. There was no Christian witness, whatever. So he resolved to go to Mashhad and there establish Christian work. He made the journey. It was about 27 days, travel on horseback, and he arrived in Mashhad, I think it was about 1898. But he didn't stay there long because people in this holy city who didn't want any infidel coming in and polluting their city by walking on its holy soil recognized that this man was a foreigner. He was an outsider and they mobbed him and he might have become another martyr there. But a man whom I later knew who worked in the post office told me that he had gotten Dr. Sultan into the post office, had locked the doors. And then in the night had gotten him through the city. So he returned safely to Tehran. But he didn't give up the idea of opening a mission in Mashhad. And so in 1911, he went back again. He determined to be extremely tactful and careful in making his contacts not to stir up unnecessary antagonism. And when he reached Mashhad, he went quietly about the streets. He would buy his own bread and cheese and make contact with the shopkeepers and joke with them. And he was a man who attracted immediate attention for two reasons. One was that he had a long red beard. And one was that he spoke Persian with a beautiful pronunciation. People remember the employees fluent and beautiful Persian, and wore his long beard as well as for his very gracious personality. And so he used to go around not only in the city of Mashhad, but in the whole province of Khorasan, which is his largest friends, visiting the towns and villages, taking with him copies of the Persian scriptures and selling them for a cheap price to people who showed interest. The story is told that once probably in Mashhad, when several people were gathered around him interested in his books, several of the mullahs saw him and charged down upon this group with great anger. They said to the people, Why don't you taking these books for you? Food, you ashes, throwaway these books, if you read them, you will go to hell. Well, it is said that Mr. Esselstyn stood his ground and smiled at the people around him and he said to them, Now my friends, I'll leave it to you to decide whether the right is with me or with your mullahs, your clergy here. They have died, their beards read. We cannot because tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed had a red beard and they want to be like him. But I didn't need to dye my beard red and because its color was red. And then he said, under those turbans, they have shaved their heads because tradition says Mohammed always shaved his head. But he said, taking off his hat and exposing exposing his own bald pate, I didn't need to shave my head, see what God did for me. And everybody laughed. And the mullahs went off in confusion and he continued with his work. Well, when I arrived there, the chief mission and activity was the hospital, and there had been no adequate hospital of any sort in this city to which thousands of pilgrims came, got sick and with no medical care, died or else remained there as beggars. It was really a sad situation. And so the mission had sent there in, I believe, 1915. Dr. Cook, who later died in Helmand, died and then later, Dr. Hoffman, to see if the people would respond to medical work. Indeed they would. The doctor rented an old building, set himself up in business. He didn't have a trained nurse to assist him. He didn't have much medical equipment, but he got carpenters to make some beds and to make an operating table. And he trained a few young men to assist him in giving anesthetics and so on, and trained several women to look after the women patients. And when I arrived there, the hospital was going strong on the ship, going out with me. I mentioned that Dr. Liaquat and his wife were in the party. And so Dr. Hartman and his wife were trainers, and Dr. Liaquat and his wife would train nurse. We're there. And Mr. and Mrs. Donaldson were also in my shed, and they took me into their homes and I continued my study of Persian there in Mashhad.

Mr. Miller thinking about establishing work in a city that in many, many ways was hostile, I was wondering if there were the problems in Iran and in Mashhad that there were in many countries about acquiring property, foreigners or church people acquiring property.

The difficulty came when the hospital attempted to buy property for a number of years old. Buildings were rented and apparently there was no difficulty about renting buildings because the owners were glad to get some good rent money. But when a few years later it was decided that these buildings that they were able to rent were entirely inadequate and they must put up a hospital building that made it possible for them to do more effective work. Then there was great difficulty in acquiring property and finding a piece of land large enough they had to buy a number of garden vegetable plots to make a place large enough for the mission community and then to get permission. The master authorities were very anxious to block this. They didn't want unclean Christians coming in there and buying up their sacred soil. And finally, I believe they agreed that on this property, no church building would be erected. But this did not mean that they couldn't carry on their Christian activities there in other buildings with great difficulty. A hospital was built, I think it was in the year 1923, or for that the children in the Sunday schools in America at their Easter offering, raised the money to build the MASH and the hospital became a project for the children in the Sunday schools and an adequate building was put up and for many years served hundreds of thousands of sick people there in not only in Mashhad, but people who came on pilgrimage from distant cities. People around in the province flocked to this hospital, and our doctors and nurses there did an outstanding piece of Christian work.

Mr. Miller, you're speaking about children in America raising money for the hospital. Reminds me of something to ask something about your own support. I believe that in that period, it was customary to have specific churches or individuals supporting missionaries directly. And of course, you were working for the mission board of the Church, which was not your own denomination. How was your own support arranged?

My support at this time was given through the Summit Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia by one individual. Later, my support was taken over by the Calvin Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia, and for the last 27 years, I was in Iran. That church paid my full support through the Board of Missions.

And at the same time, however, you are a member in good standing of your own presbytery in the Southern Presbyterian Church.

That is true. That is true. And I attended presbytery when I was on furlough as often as I could. In fact, one year I was made moderator of the presbytery before leaving this period. I want to say something more about this remarkable pioneer missionary, Reverend Lewis Esselstyn. When the second when the First World War occurred, Iran was involved more or less. And. A very terrible famine occurred in the eastern part of the country. No rain fell all one winter with the result that the wheat didn't sprout and the people had no bread. Also, there was an epidemic of typhus. And so these two men, Hoffman, a medical doctor, Esselstyn, the minister, had more than they could do in trying to meet the physical as well as the spiritual needs of the people. They got some money together and. Mr. Austin's cook boiled up a pot of soup every day. He got what bread he could buy, and hundreds of poor people gathered around his house and they gave out a bowl of soup and a little bread to as many as they could. Many of these poor people had light on their bodies, and lice are the carriers of typhus. And both Hoffman and Esselstyn went down with typhus. Hoffman was unconscious for several days, and when he recovered consciousness, he was told that his colleague, Dr. Esselstyn, had died and he was left there alone. He recovered and later a nurse from Tabriz came and became his wife, and he continued to serve as a medical doctor in the mission in Iran for many years after that. After I arrived in Mashhad, I went to the cemetery, which had been established by Russians, I believe, and visited the grave of Mr. Esselstyn. And I read on the tombstone the words Greater love hath no man did this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. I saw the master gardener standing nearby and I called him over to me and I said, Did you know this man? He said, Everybody in Mashhad knew him. I said, What sort of a man was he? He said, Whether he's a moslem or a Jew, a Christian, I don't care. But I know God has accepted him and forgive me since because anybody who was so kind to the poor people as he was, has certainly been accepted by God. Mr. Austin had a servant who became a Christian, and this servant had a brother who was a carpenter. The brother was a very devout Muslim, and he had made for himself two swords because he believed that the 12th imam of the Shiites was going to return. And when the man returned, he wanted to get on a horse and go out and fight with him against his enemies. Well, finally, this carpenter, whose name was Hussein, was brought to Christ and became a Christian. And when he was baptized, he turned over to Mr. Douglas, knew baptized him his sword, and I believe it was in the Museum of the Board of Foreign Missions in New York. This man was quite a remarkable man. He didn't have much education, but he was a very earnest and faithful Christian. And sometimes when he would speak in the little church services, his simple words had more effect. And now to more educated people, I this once he said to me, Do you know why Jesus chose carpentry as his profession? I said, No, I never heard that. Why? He said, I know. He said, in carpentry and cabinet making, everything has to be perfectly smooth and straight and true. And Jesus loved these qualities. And so this profession appealed to him and he became a carpenter.

Thank you very much, Mr. Miller.