Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/419

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TERMINATION OF THE MISSION.
359

finally reached London in October, after an absence of nearly two years.

The Committee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had entirely relinquished the idea of continuing a mission to the Nestorians, and had transferred my services to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, by whom I was to have been engaged, in company with the two priests Kas Botros and Kas Michael, in preparing for the press a Syriac edition of the Sacred Scriptures, the Book of Common Prayer, and other useful works, for the benefit of the people among whom we had been labouring. The valuable MSS. which we had brought with us, amounting to one hundred and fifty in number, had been collected to this end; but the Society, finding that their funds were not adequate to the undertaking, finally declined to enter upon it, and thus ended the mission to the Nestorians. Mr. Fletcher was afterwards admitted to holy orders, and is now minister of S. Saviour's district, in the parish of Hampstead. Kas Botros and Kas Michael remained for some time at Malta under the supervision of the Lord Bishop of Gibraltar, who throughout had manifested a deep interest in the welfare of the Nestorians, and were afterwards placed at the disposal of Bishop Southgate at Constantinople. I am not aware how the former came to leave the Bishop, but being thrown out of employ, with no means of subsistence, he attached himself to the American Independent Missionaries, and is at present in their service at Aleppo his native place. Kas Michael was sent to Mosul with instructions to open schools and otherwise to exert himself in behalf of the Nestorians, with a salary of £60 a year. Out of this sum he succeeded in opening two schools in Buhtân, and frequently visited the Nestorian villages in that district, freely preaching in their churches, and exercising the other functions of his ministerial character with the consent and approbation of the Patriarch. Moreover, when Mar Shimoon fled from Mosul he left him in charge of his people there, and directed them to look up to him as their spiritual guide. Last year his salary was stopped, the two schools have fallen into the hands of the American Independents who have consented to support them, and Kas Michael, one of the most able Syriac scholars of the day, and a good man, is now left wholly unprovided for. With