The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 2/Division 4/Chapter 5

by Walter Frederic Adeney

 

CHAPTER V

LATER EASTERN CHRISTIANITY

 

Marco Polo (trans. by Yule, 2nd edit.); Asseman, tome iv.; Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, vols. ii. and v.; Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 1902; Rae, Syrian Churches in India, 1892; Brinkley, China ("Oriental Series," 1902); Broomhall, The Chinese Empire, 1907.

 

When Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, he enlarged the world of the Latin race and religion in a way almost comparable with the influences of Columbus's discovery of America on the Teutonic peoples and the scope of Protestantism. The rediscovery of the Old World was only second in importance to the discovery of the New World. In the fifteenth century the Turkish despotism sprawling over the wreck of the Byzantine Empire became a huge barrier between Asia and Europe, which shut off the West from intercourse with the East by the old overland road. What was then needed was the reverse of the policy of later Europe in its construction of the Suez Canal—a route to India that would avoid the Ottoman territory. Columbus had set out to find this route by circumnavigating the globe, when he stumbled on a new continent half-way round, and so surprised everybody by making a much more important discovery. Vasco de Gama attained the Genoese enthusiast's object in another and more effective way. He reached Asia by sailing round Africa. The immediate result was the establishment of the Portuguese dominions in India.

The Portuguese on their arrival in India found a Christian Church oppressed by Mussulman tyranny, which at once welcomed the advent of a Christian power, in the hope of securing its protection. Altliongh the Syrian Church in India, was Nestorian and the European newcomers were Roman Catholics, for the moment no ecclesiastical or doctrinal differences were noticed. It was enough that both were Christian for the two parties to draw together in presence of their common foe, the infidel. The friendship was mutual. The Portuguese were glad to find friends in a strange land, and the Syrian Christians were grateful for the prospect of shelter from the persecution they were enduring under the Mohammedan rule, In the year 1502 they presented a petition to Vasco de Gama begging him to put them under the protection of the King of Portugal, to whom, in sign of subjection, they sent the old sceptre of their former Christian kings, a silver-mounted rod with three little bells, and at the same time handed over the copper plates containing their charters to the Portuguese authorities. It was not a conquest; it was a voluntary, eager, grateful action like that of the Jews welcoming Cyrus. These simple people little dreamed that what they took for an asylum was really a prison, that their deliverers were to become their gaolers. At first the wisdom of their course seemed to be amply justified. The most complete friendliness was established between the old inhabitants and the colonists. The Portuguese were freely admitted to the Syrian churches, and they attended amicably. It was only by degrees that the divergencies from Roman belief and practice were noted and commented on. When a change of attitude on the part of the Portuguese was brought about, this was owing to the importation of the worst product of Spanish cruelty—the Inquisition, and that was due to the presence of the Jesuits.

Nevertheless the Jesuits did not come in the first instance as inquisitors. Their expedition to India was undertaken with a positive and constructive end in view—not correction of error, repression, persecution; but evangelisation, the spread of the Christian gospel among Mussulman and heathen people, the extension of the Church in the East to make up for the large slice of territory of which the Reformation had robbed her in the West. It was borne on a great wave of enthusiasm. Its leader was one of the most gifted, devoted, energetic, and successful missionaries the world has ever seen—Francis Xavier, the story of whose life belongs to the annals of the true saints.

Francis Xavier was born in the year 1506, the youngest son of a a nobleman high in the employ of the King of Aragon. While teaching philosophy at the university of Paris he met Ignatius Loyola, then in his early dreams of the counter-revolution, who gradually wrought the spell of his fascinating personality over a reluctant scholar, till at last Xavier yielded to it and became one of the seven who in the year 1534 took the first Jesuit vow. The company intended to go to Palestine in order to convert the Saracens, and they left Paris and travelled as far as Venice with that end in view. Their further journey being delayed, Ignatius set Xavier to work in hospital nursing. Then a war that broke out between the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire compelled the Jesuits to abandon their design of attempting work in the Holy Land, and Xavier was now ordered to join Rodriquez in an Indian mission. He reached Goa in May 1542, and there commenced his famous missionary career. Xavier found the Syrian Christians so dead to the evangelistic vocation of the Church, so absolutely exclusive and self-contained as a religious caste, keeping scrupulously aloof from their Mohammedan neighbours, that they regarded his efforts to convert these people with disapproval. For instance, he says that on one occasion, when he was about to baptise the child of a Mussulman, "the people of Socotra began to cry out that Mussulmans were unworthy of so great a blessing; that they would not let them be baptised, however much they deserved it, and that they would not permit any Mussulman to become a Christian." "Such," he adds, "is their hatred of Mussulmans."^[1]

Xavier's letters reveal the character of a man of sanguine temperament and affectionate nature, a Christian of deep, fervid devotion, true humility, and passionate earnestness for the winning of souls. His biographers surround his career with a halo of miracles; yet in his letters he lays claim to no such performances, a silence which admirers ascribe to modesty. In the breviary office for his festival he is said to have enjoyed the miraculous gift of tongues; but his letters show that he had to resort to an interpreter for communicating with the native population. These letters bring us close to the real man, and help us to form a vivid picture of his labours. Xavier would go about through the streets ringing a bell and inviting the people—men, women, and children—to come and hear him preach. The following is his own account of his method: "I used to preach to the people promiscuously," he says, "in the morning, on Sundays, and on holy days. In the afternoon I expounded the articles of the creed to the natives, and the crowd of hearers was so great that the church could hardly contain them. I afterwards taught them the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments of the law of God. On Sundays I used to say mass for the lepers, whose hospital is close to the city, heard their confessions, etc."^[2] Xavier established a college at Goa to hold five hundred students, which was partly supported by the government. After his first five months in Goa he set out with three students on a missionary journey, of which he gives a full description in his letters to the Society at home. Travelling barefooted, with a torn cassock and wearing a black stuff hat on his head, he visited the Paravas, a poverty-stricken people of low caste, with whom he spent fifteen months. Like our modern missionary he had found the Brahmin almost hopeless. Next he went to Travancore, which was partly heathen and partly Mohammedan; yet there he tells us that village after village received him with joy. Subsequently his tours extended to Ceylon—to Malacca—to the Molucca group—to Japan. At Kagoshuma, the most southerly small island of Japan, his converts were threatened with death. Moving on to the north he met with a better reception, though he found his ascetic ideal not so acceptable here as it had been in India. Still thirsting for more worlds to conquer for Christ and His Church, he projected a visit to China, and collected large sums of money for an extensive mission in the Celestial Empire, when he was stricken down with fever while on his way thither. He died at Sanchan, in the fortyseventh year of his age (a.d. 1552). The extraordinary amount of work accomplished by Xavier during so short a lifetime, and the passionate enthusiasm that was the inspiration of it, have enshrined his name in the hero-roll of the Church Universal. The story of his fruitful travel from country to country reads like an echo of the account of St. Paul's journeyings in the Acts of the Apostles. On the other hand, we must accept his glowing reports of his successes with caution. What, for instance, are we to think when we find him writing in one of his letters, "In the space of four months I made Christians of more than 10,000"?^[3] Either this is gross exaggeration, or the Christianity was very superficial, or we have a miracle that throws Pentecost into the shade.

Now it was the great missionary Xavier who introduced the Inquisition into India. He did this in the burning earnestness of his zeal, not because he imagined that he could convert it into an engine for forcing the heathen into the Church—any such object was not in its province; but because he desired to have certain impediments to the growth and what he deemed the health of the Church removed out of its way. This institution was not invoked to plough up fallow ground; it was demanded in order to remove rocks of offence. In a letter written towards the end of the year 1545, Xavier begged the King of Portugal to establish the Inquisition in order to check "the Jewish wickedness" that was spreading through his Eastern dominions. Fifteen years passed before the eager missionary's wish was granted. Xavier had died eight years before the terrible persecuting Spanish invention appeared on the field of his labours. Therefore he was not called upon to take part in its cruelty, and he must not be held responsible for the awful consequences of his mistake. In the year 1560 one of the four branches of the Inquisition was established at Goa. All the inquisitors were nominated by the King of Portugal, and their appointment was confirmed by the pope. Aiming primarily at the correction of Christians, it was also used against Jews, Mohammedans, and even heathen people. For, while the former were executed for heresy, many of the latter were punished for sorcery. The Inquisition at Goa was kept up till the year 1812, when it was abolished by a decree from the prince regent, Don José, at Rio Janeiro. Long before this it had done its worst in ruining the Portuguese Indian possessions.

The attitude of the Church of Rome towards heresy was bound to have grave effects on the Syrian Church in India. In the year 1546 the Franciscans had set up a college at Crangamore with the purpose of training priests of the Roman Catholic faith to become clergy in the Syrian Church. But it never came sufficiently into touch with the population. The Jesuits did better with their college at Vaipicotta, erected more than forty years later. Still, the Syrians held to their beliefs and customs. Mar Abraham, the catholicos, was accused on various charges by Aleixo Menezes, the papal "archbishop of Goa and primate of all the Indies." But he declined to submit to this alien authority. When he died, in the year 1597, his archdeacon, George, was appointed his successor in spite of the pope's prohibition. This man had informed Menezes that the Syrian Church had no connection with the pope of Rome. Here was material for a pretty quarrel. But the races of South India could not be expected to emulate Teutonic independence. The Syrian opposition to Rome was crushed by the synod of Diamper which met two years later (a.d. 1599). The differences between the two bodies were brought to a climax at this synod, which was convened "for the increase of the Catholic faith among the Syrians in Malabar," together with the extirpation of heresy and the establishment of union under the papacy. The papal party assumed that previous to the Nestorian schism in the fifth century the Syrian Church had been subject to Rome. The synod was to put an end to a separation which had lasted for more than a thousand years. Although the Syrians were invited, the synod was dominated by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, to whose decisions the native Christians were required to submit. It began by denouncing Nestorius and saluting Mary as the "mother of God." Then it substituted the Roman saints' days for the Nestorian calendar, anathematised the catholicos of Babylon, established the authority of the pope, ordered moral reforms in the Church, licensed the Jesuits to preach in the Syrian churches, commanded the celibacy of the clergy, and required married priests to dismiss their wives. One further consequence of the synod's decrees was the destruction of the old service books where these were not. altered beyond recognition. Every book containing heretical doctrine that could be found was burnt. In fact, no efforts were spared to bring this ancient Church into line with Rome and under the absolute authority of the pope. And the Syrian Christians submitted. One hundred and fifty-three priests and six hundred and sixty lay procurators signed the decrees of the synod.

It was submission, but forced submission. For more than half a century the fires of discontent smouldered, and in the year 1653 they broke into open flames. A man named Atalla (i.e. Theodore), then ordained bishop by the catholicos of Babylon, and appointed by that supreme ecclesiastic of the Syrian Church, had no sooner landed at Mailapore than he was arrested by the Portuguese authorities, sent to Goa, and there delivered over to the Inquisition. This treatment of the new bishop roused the Syrians to a white heat of indignation. They gathered together in thousands round the Coonen cross in a village near Cochin, and took an oath renouncing the Portuguese bishops. Since their own Syrian bishop was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, these people elected a substitute, Mar Thomas i., for the temporary government of the province. But the result was a split of the Syrian Church, one party adhering to the Papal Church as Romo-Syrians, while the more daring spirits reverted to the Syrian usages. It is estimated that the former, known as Puthencoor, or the new community, now number about 110,000, while the latter, the Palayacoor, or old community, amount to about 330,000.

Ten years later the Dutch obtained possession of Cochin. These new masters ordered foreign Roman Catholic ecclesiastics out of their territory, and the Syrians continued to obtain their bishops from the catholicos of Babylon. But in the year 1665, Gregorius, the Jacobite metropolitan of Jerusalem, appeared among the Syrian Christians at Malabar. These people were at the time without a consecrated bishop, the communication with the catholicos having broken down. For twelve years they had been served by Mar Thomas, the bishop whom they had elected, but who had not received episcopal ordination. Gregorius now duly consecrated Thomas to his office, at the request of his flock, in spite of the fact that the metropolitan was a member of another communion which stood in relations of mutual excommunication to his Church. Gregorius remained in the country administering the affairs of the Church conjointly with Thomas. In this way the Nestorian Church in India passed under Jacobite rule—voluntarily, and apparently without any consciousness of the irregularity of its action. We could not have a plainer proof of the condition of indifference to theological dogmas to which it had arrived. So things went on till the end of the century, apparently giving rise to no confusion of teaching or clash of customs. The Church was ruled by a succession of Jacobite prelates, some of whom attempted practical reforms, but apparently never exciting any theological interest in their own peculiar tenets. Evidently theology was dead in the Church, and the vitality of the Church itself was not very vigorous. But a silent current was flowing towards the Jacobite position. This is proved by what happened early in the eighteenth century, when Mar Gabriel, a Nestorian bishop, came to Malabar. Neither the metran (metropolitan) nor his people would acknowledge him or permit him to preach in the churches. But this inhibition may have been more due to his polemical airs than to any local objection to his heresy, for he was described as an implacable enemy of the Jacobites. He was able to detach a small following of Syrians whom he brought back to their old Nestorianism. In the year 1751 the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch sent out a number of copies of Jacobite liturgies, but only on one occasion, in the year 1770, was the metran ordained by the Jacobite patriarch. Thus those who are much concerned with the question of orders have grave doubts concerning the status of the priesthood of the Syrian Church in India. It would appear that in many cases, to say the least, ordination has been irregular.

A new chapter in the history of this old Church opens with the introduction of English influences under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society. It was rightly seen that what the Nestorian Church most needed in the first instance was education, for the Syrian Christians, clergy as well as laity, were found to be sunk in gross ignorance. Accordingly in the year 1813 a college was opened. The English missionaries were disposed to hope that if the Roman corruptions could be removed the Syrian Church would return to its pristine simplicity. But longer experience showed them that their task of restoring evangelical Christianity would require a more radical reformation. At first the native metrans welcomed the co-operation of the missionaries; but later on a hostile spirit was manifested towards the foreign intruders. A mistake was made by Bishop Heber at Bombay in highly honouring the bishop, who had been sent to Malabar by the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch to supersede the native metran, but who turned out to be a very undesirable personage. In the year 1835, Bishop Wilson held a conference with the Syrian clergy, and gave them some excellent advice on the need of ministerial training, the establishment of schools, the use of the vernacular in the prayers, instruction in the Gospels, and other improvements, in which they appeared to acquiesce, but which they entirely repudiated as soon as he had left them, even sending him back the 1,000 rupees he had given them. Perhaps something may be said for the Syrian side of the case. Excellent as was the good bishop's advice, he had come on a tour of inspection as the first "Metropolitan of British India." We can understand with what feelings the leaders of an ancient Church, proud of a history they dated back to the Apostolic Age, would regard a visit from this English clergyman with his high-sounding title, especially if we allow that Bishop Wilson was—as it is asserted—not deficient in British masterfulness.

After this the Syrian Church broke off relations with the Church Missionary Society. A little later. Mar Athanasius Mathew, a native of Malabar, became metran. This good man worked for years for the reform of his Church, in spite of local opposition and rivalry. His position was rather ambiguous, because, after priding himself on having been consecrated by the patriarch of Antioch, he denied that prelate's authority to depose him. After his death the question of the succession to the bishopric came into the law courts and gave rise to ten years of litigation. This question turned mainly on the right of the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch to supremacy over the Syrian Church in India. In point of fact, he had only ordained one metran accepted by that Church, Mar Athanasius, during the whole Jacobite period. The opposing party based their claim for independence on the earlier history of the Church when it was in communion with the Nestorian catholicos at BabyIon and derived its orders from him, as well as on its own habitual autonomy. But the judicial decision handed the see over to the Jacobite nominee, Mar Dionysius Joseph.

While there is little sign of progress in the Syrian Church as an organisation, many young men from this communion go to study at Madras University. Therefore, perhaps, these educated Christians of St. Thomas will come in time to insist on the introduction of more enlightened methods in the conduct of their Church, such as the extension of education and the higher training of the clergy; but that will only be the case if they remain loyal to the faith and Church of their fathers after passing through the mill of Western culture.

The Syrian churches which may be seen in South India to-day are constructed with Saracenic arches, sloping roofs, and buttressed walls. For the most part they are red in hue, and are built of stones squared and polished in the quarries. They have bells cast in native founderies. The traveller off the lines of modern missions may be startled to hear the sound of church bells among the hills, indicating the neighbourhood of some old church of the Syrian Christians.

Lastly, we have traces of Syrian Christianity in China. Its origin has not been discovered, and some have doubted its ever having existed. But there is clear evidence that the early Nestorian missionaries or their successors penetrated into the interior of the Celestial Empire. In the year 1625 the Jesuits found a marble tablet, 7½ ft. high and nearly 4 ft. broad, buried under some ruins at Singanfu, a large city on the Yellow River, formerly the capital of the empire. This tablet is entitled "A monument commemorating the introduction and propagation of the noble law of Ta t'sin in the middle kingdom." In the upper part there is an incised cross, beneath which is an inscription in Syriac and Chinese, first setting forth a vague abstract of Christian doctrine, and then recording the chief events of a Syrian mission in China. It tells how a missionary named Olopan came from Judæa to China in the year 636, having escaped great dangers by sea and land, and was met by an official of the emperor and lodged in the imperial palace, where his law was examined, with the result that its truth was acknowledged. Thereupon, according to the inscription, the emperor issued an edict in favour of Christianity, ordered a church to be built, and nominated twenty-one persons to serve it. So much for the beginnings. Then follows a chronicle of the mission from the year 636 to the year 780 (in the inscription 1092 of the Greek era). At first there was success, and the Christians prospered unmolested. This went on for two generations. In the year 699 there came a change, and the Church was persecuted; a second persecution broke out fourteen years later, after which the Christian again entered on a happy time. This was under the Emperor Hinem-cum. At a later time a second mission appeared, in consequence of which many churches were built, and Christianity was patronised by a succession of emperors. The tablet also contains a list of clergy.^[4]

The antiquity and genuineness of this tablet are not altogether above suspicion. It might be expected that if so great progress had been made in early times, more indications of it would be apparent in the present day. The account of the notice taken of this mission by the emperors and their active patronage and assistance is certainly remarkable; it calls for confirmation that is not forthcoming. Accordingly some have held that the whole thing is an impudent fraud of the Jesuits.^[5] That, however, is highly improbable. What motive would these zealous proselytes of the papal party have had for producing false evidence in favour of the venerable antiquity and former high status of the Syrian Church?^[6] Besides, we have other evidence of the existence of Christianity in China not far from the times of the tablet.

The canon of Theodore, bishop of Edessa in the year 800, refers to "Metropolitans of China, India, and Persia, of the Merozites of Siam, of the Raziches, of the Harinos, of Samarcand, which are distant and which by reason of the infested mountains and turbulent sea are prevented from attending the four yearly convocations with the catholicos, and who therefore are to send their reports every six years."

In the year 845 the Emperor Wu Tsung condemned 4,600 Buddhist monasteries to be destroyed, and at the same time ordered three hundred foreign priests "to return to the secular life, that the customs of the empire might he uniform."^[7]

Further, two Arab travellers of the same century have left accounts of their discoveries of Christianity in China. One of them, Ebn Wahab, describes his conversation with the emperor about the contents of the Old and New Testament. Another indication of ancient Syrian Christianity in China is to be seen in the discovery in the year 1725 of a Syrian manuscript containing large portions of the Old Testament and a collection of hymns which was in the possession of a Chinaman.^[8]

In the tenth century—so dark in Western Europe—the Nestorians introduced Christianity into Tartary proper. Three centuries later (a.d. 1274), Marco Polo says that he has seen two churches in the city of Cingianfu built by Nestorians. He states that "the Great Khan sent a baron of his whose name was Mar Sarghis [? Sergius], a Nestorian Christian, to be governor of this city for three years. The two churches were built during that time."^[9] A little further on Marco Polo tells us of some people called Alans who were Christians, but who lost a city they had captured by their drunkenness.^[10]

The legend of Prester John, so widespread and so long enduring in the East, wild and fantastic as it has become, is based on the idea of the conversion of a Mongol tribe called Karith, living on the confines of China. The hero of the legend is said to have been the king of this people, and to have lived at Kara-Korum, a city on the Orchar about six hundred miles west of Pekin. His original name and title were Ung or Avenk Khan; but coming under the Christian influences of the Syrians he was converted, and then he received his baptismal name and title, Malek Juchana, i.e. King John. His niece, who also became a Christian, was said to have been married to Tuli, the son of Genghis Khan. If the story is correct, like Bertha of Canterbury, she introduced the faith of Christ to her pagan husband's court, with the result that a succession of kings of the tribe of Karith professed Christianity.^[11]

In the year 1145 the Syrian bishop of Gabala (Jibal, in Laodicea of Syria), coming to Europe to lay his grievances before Pope Eugenius iii., reported that not long before, a certain John, living in the Far East, a king and Nestorian priest, claiming descent from the three wise kings, had made war on the Samiard king of the Medes and Persians, and had taken Ecbatana their capital. Proceeding to deliver Jerusalem, he was stopped by the Tigris and by the sickness of his army.^[12] The probability is that this story refers to a raid by some Armenian prince. The Crusading project of rescuing Jerusalem and the stoppage of it at the Tigris do not point to China.

Great as was the fame of the mysterious John, possibly attached to more than one real or mythical person in more than one locality, it was not undisputed. For example. Friar William of Rubruch, who preceded Marco Polo by a few years, and travelled in these Eastern parts during the years 1253 to 1255, when referring to a famous Mongolian chieftain, says, "The Nestorians used to call him King John, and to say of him ten times more than was true, for this is the way of the Nestorians who come from these parts. Out of nothing they will make a great story, and so great reports went out concerning this King John; though when I went through his pasture lands no one knew anything of him save a few Nestorians."^[13]

Friar William's unkind remarks about the Nestorians are not quite fair. It was not they who invented the legend. The true origin of it is to be found in the West, where it grew up out of vague reports of distant Oriental travel, and whence it was transported to the region inhabited by the Nestorians, who no doubt were glad to welcome so flattering a story and not reluctant to make the most of it.

Roman Catholicism was introduced into Tartary and China in the thirteenth century, when Pope Nicholas iv. sent John de Monte Corvino to the court of Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuen or Mongol dynasty in China. Cut off from communication with Europe, this missionary laboured till his death at the age of seventy-eight (a.d. 1307), and left behind him a translation of the whole New Testament and the Psalter in the language of the Tartars. There are existmg letters in which—if they are genuine—Kublai Khan requests the pope to send one hundred missionaries to his country. Troubles in the papacy at home put a stop to the promising missionary enterprise. In the sixteenth century the Jesuit mission to China projected by Xavier was carried out by Father Ricci, who established himself at Shacking and cleverly worked his way on to Pekin, founding missions by the way at Nauchang Fu, Suchow Fu, and Nanking Fu. He died in 1610. In 1631 Dominican and Franciscan missionaries arrived in China, and a bitter controversy with the Jesuits was the consequence. Trouble also came from the break-up of the Ming dynasty and the rise of the present Manchu power.

By the year 1637, the Jesuits had published 340 treatises on religion, philosophy, and mathematics in the Chinese language. These energetic servants of the Church and the papacy have been accused of being remarkably accommodating in adapting the beliefs and requirements of Christianity to Chinese ideas and customs. They even succeeded in winning over Chung-chi, who became the first Christian emperor of the Mongolian race. On his death the mandarins, holding the reins of government during the youth of his son, turned against the Jesuits, of whose privileges they had become very jealous, and commenced a persecution (a.d. 1664). The chief of the Jesuits, John Adam Schaal, then an old man, who had held an honourable place at court, was flung into prison and ultimately executed, while the other missionaries were driven into exile. About five years later, the young heir, Kang-hsi, assumed the government and at once reversed this policy of the regency, and recalled the Jesuits. The new emperor proved to be a man of noble and generous spirit. He valued the Jesuits so greatly that he sent to Europe for more of the order, and set these men in the highest positions in the State. Thus the awakening of China under the influence of Europe which we are witnessing to-day seemed to be promised more than two hundred years ago.

The famous Emperor Kang-hsi continued to favour the Jesuits during the whole of his long reign of sixty years, and built them their magnificent church at Pekin. At the death of this emperor in the year 1722, the imperial favour ceased, and the Jesuit influence declined. But the Roman Catholics have ever since claimed a political status in the empire.

Protestant missions in China were begun in the year 1807 by Dr. Morrison. In the year 1907 there were 3,719 Protestant missionaries in the empire, with 9,998 native helpers, 154,142 communicants, 706 stations and 3,794 out-stations, 366 hospitals and dispensaries, 2,139 day schools, 42,73 8 pupils, 255 boarding and higher schools, containing 10,227 pupils.^[14]

 

1. Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. i. p. 119.
2. Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. i. p. 120.
3. Ibid. p. 280.
4. There is a facsimile of this tablet in Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 21.
5. Renan was very dubious about it. See Hist. Lang. Semit. p. 202.
6. See Mosheim, Church Hist. vol. ii. pp. 151, 152, notes a, b, for a learned discussion of this question.
7. Du Halde, China, vol. i. p. 518, quoted in Broomhall, The Chinese Empire, p. 6.
8. Ibid.
9. Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 162.
10. Ibid. p. 163.
11. See Asseman, tome iv. p. 494; Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 234 ff.
12. Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 228, note ff.
13. Hakinyt Soc, Second Series, iv., 1900.
14. Broomhall, p. 40.