When asked by the young men about him for his dying charge, it was, "See that ye hold fast to God's Word." An immense concourse gathered from the surrounding country to do honor to his memory; and Dr.Perkins preached from the text: "My father, my father! The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." As a most cheering illustration of what Nestorians may yet become, through the grace of God in the Gospel, I quote largely from an account of the venerable man, by Mr.Rhea.[1] "While our good old bishop was not an educated man,--his knowledge in books extending little beyond the Word of God,--and had but ordinary intellectual ability, he was still one of the most interesting characters among the Nestorians.

There is no name among them that will be more fragrant; none that deserves a more honored place in the annals of his Church.

The singularity of his position here, thirty years ago,--devout, spiritual, God-fearing, and active, when a deep night hung over his whole people,--like a mountain beacon, whose summit had caught the first beams of the sun, which was soon to flood all below with its glory; his prophetic anticipation of the coming of missionaries; his joy in welcoming them; his peculiar attachment to them and their families; his true-hearted devotion to them as God's ministers, and to their work, through all kinds of vicissitudes; the charming guilelessness of his character, ingenuous as a child; his wonderful love for the Word of God, making it his meditation by day and by night,--not able to pass two or three hours consecutively, without drinking from this well-spring of life; the child-like gentleness of his character,--though, when stirred in God's behalf, he showed a lion-hearted courage, tearing down the pictures and images which Papal hands had stealthily hung on the walls of his church, and pitching them indignantly from the door; his love of sound doctrine, holding forth the word of life in his humble way, always and everywhere, his face never so full of spiritual light as when rehearsing a conversation he had just had with some Mussulman friend, to whom he had opened the Scriptures, and talked of the kingdom yet to fill the whole earth,--the brotherhood of all races,--the one flock and the one shepherd; his silent patience, in a land of cruel wrong, under heavy burdens, borne uncomplainingly for many years; his wonderful spirituality, all things earthly being but the types of the heavenly,--the one, by resemblance or contrast, constantly suggesting the other, so that he could not be reminded that he was late to tea without the quick reply, 'May I not be late at the marriage supper of the Lamb,' or 'Jesus will gather us all in, in season;' all these traits of Christ-like beauty combined to make a character which, in this weary land, was a constant rest to the toil-worn missionary,--an influence for good, continually streaming forth into the darkness of spiritual death around him.
God, who accurately weighs all men, only knows how much his kingdom in Persia has been advanced by Mar Elias, than whom the Nestorian Church never had a more spiritual and evangelical bishop." [1] See _Missionary Herald_, 1864, pp.

146, 147.
Almost five thousand Armenians inhabit the plain of Oroomiah, and the attention of the mission was gradually turned towards their spiritual enlightenment, with a prospect of ultimate success.
At a general meeting of native helpers, in March, 1863, a Church Manual, or Directory was adopted; "in the observance of which," Mr.
Cochran writes, "we have all that is essential to a reformed church, with reformed pastors; and in the possession of the substance, we can afford to dispense with the shadow of new organizations.....The prospect, we believe, was never brighter than at present for the ultimate evangelization of the old Church." During the thirty years from the arrival of Dr.Perkins, five of the twenty men and seven of the twenty-four women, who had joined the mission, had died; and five men and nine women had for various causes been obliged to retire from the field, leaving in the mission seven male and nine female laborers.

In this time, the vast unknown of men and things where dwelt the primeval race, had become well known.