230 



MISSAL 



MISSIONS 



thenceforth adopt the Koiuan Missal. Of this 

 exemption several churches in (tvrnianv, France, 

 nnd even in Italy availed themselves ; I, HI in later 

 times the great majority have conformed to the 

 Roman use. The Roman Missal has twice wince 

 that date hcen subjected to revision ami collection 

 in 1(H by Clement VIII., and in 1034 Uy I'lbmi 

 VIII. The latter recension still continues in use. 

 The mi al- of the oriental rites differ from that of 

 the Itoman Church, each having for the most part 

 it- own proper form. See Lirrituv. 



Missions. The truth and divine origin of 

 Christianity being_ assumed, it might have l>een 

 expected that missions to propagate the faith should 

 have been carried on continuously till the world 

 was evangelised, and that that gcwil should have 

 been reached long ere now. It has not been 

 so. _ There have been lonj; periods of intermission, 

 during which the work either ceased, or was pro- 

 secuted without zeal or energy ; and others dining 

 which abundant zeal was neutralised by a strange 

 lack of discretion. In )x>int of fact "there have 

 been but three periods in the history of the Church 

 which have been distinctively marked as mission 

 ary periods, and a history of missions would lie 

 fairly complete if it gave an account of (n) the 

 apostolic and immediately post-apostolic ; (6) the 

 media 1 val ; and (<) the modern missions. 



(a) Missions of the Apostolic and immediately 

 subsequent Ages. It is certain that the gospel 

 made great progress during the lifetime of the 

 a|M>stles. From the 'Acts of the Apostles' it is 

 manifest that within a few years of the resurrec- 

 tion of Christ the gospel obtained a footing in 

 moat countries to the east and the north of the 

 Mediterranean ; while from other authentic sources 

 we learn that in the same brief |>criod it was 

 successfully introduced into Kgypt and the other 

 African regions on the southern shores of that sea. 

 Neither Gibbon, in his estimate of the effect- of 

 'secondary causes,' nor the orthodox apologists 

 who criticised that estimate, nor writers of the 

 history of missions in our day appear to estimate 

 highly enough, as contributing to the production 

 of this result, the labours of those Hellenistic Jews 

 and proselytes of whose conversion to the faith we 

 read in the second chapter of the Acts. \Vliile 

 there were in Jerusalem tens of thousands of 

 Jews who bat) never left the precincts of the Holy 

 Land, and who knew no language but the Help 

 rew of their Scriptures and the Aramaic dialect 

 into which it had degenerated, no mention is 

 made of them as witnesses of the miracle of the 

 gift of tongues, but only of the Hellenistic Jews 

 and proselytes who had come for the observance 

 of the great feast from numerous Asiatic, African, 

 and EurojH'an lands, and from the remote isles 

 of the sea. Of these three thousand were Imp. 

 ti-ed. They thenceforth constituted a 'native 

 agency* for conveying the message of the gospel 

 into their several lands, and telling of 'Jesus 

 Christ ami Him crucified ' in the vernacular |>eech 

 of these lands. Hut they needed training for this 

 work, and remained fora lime under the teaching 

 and fellowship of the apostles. As the result of 

 ' the [>erHeciitioii which arose about Stephen,' ' they 

 were all scattered abroad, except tin- apostles,' and 

 ' they that were scattered abroad went everywhere, 

 preaching the word.' It must have been through 

 the lalmiirsof these evangelist-, under the direction 

 of the apo-ilcs, that Christian churches were 

 founded in many places remote from Jerusalem 

 as, for example, nt PaiimsetiK, where we find a 

 church of such importance as to warrant the 

 employment of the ureh |>ersecutor for its suppres- 

 sion. 



A to the personal laliours of the apostles we have 

 DO reliable information outside the book of the 



Act*. There are innumerable churches that claim 

 the honour of a|x>stolic foundation : but their 

 claims rest on tradition- which cannot IM- traced 

 Ix-yond the 13th, the 1'Jth. or. at most, the III!, 

 century. There are. indeed, two exceptions, that 

 relating to the foundation of u church in the king 

 ilom of Kdessaby ThaiMeus. and that which ascribes 

 the Introduction of the gospel into India to the 

 apostle Thomas. The authorities for these are 

 apocryphal 'acts,' which are certainly of an i-aily 

 date. The liooks contain multitudes of mi-takes 

 and anachronisms, and cannot be regarded :u- his- 

 torical authorities; but they wear the a-pect of a 

 misapprehension of actual facts and occiiiTcii>-e-. 

 rather than that of pure invention. A gieater 

 amount of probability than is usually assigned to 

 it appears to liolong to the apostolic Origin of the 

 Syrian Church in Southern India (aeeTBOIUB, 



BTJL 



We have no sufficient data from which to esti- 

 mate the rate of the progress of the gospel during 

 the apostolic age. From such data as exist stati-ts 

 have estimated the iiumlier of Christians existing 

 at the death of the apostle John, or at the close of 

 the first Christian century, at numlier- varying 

 from less than a quarter of a million to more than 

 half a million. It were not safe to assume that the 

 actual numlier was a mean between these two 

 extremes, or even that it lay between them at all. 

 It may possibly have been below the smaller, or, 

 equally po-s ibly, alio\e the greater. Certainly, 



however, the numlier was large. The testi liy 



of Tertullian to this eflect would not l>e of much 

 value if it stood alone. Hut from it, confirmed as. 

 it remarkably is by the unexceptionable testimony 

 of the younger I'linv. it cannot hut IK- inferred that 

 within a century of the resurrection of Christ the 

 gospel hail been preached over a great part of the 

 Homan world, and that at least in some provinces, 

 as in Hithynia, the gosjiel was threatening to 

 supersede the worship of the gods of the empire. 



(6) Mi'i/iu fa/ .l//\.v, r//,.v Apart from missions in 

 the technical sense of the term, it is certain that 

 various causes contributed to the wide diffusion 

 of a knowledge of the gospel. Setting aside 

 some altogether untrustworthy legends und tradi- 

 tions, we find no reason to believe that the 



gospel was lii>t imrodu 1 into the British Islands 



By apostles or apwtoUe men, or by missionaries 

 specially set apart for the work; and \et it 

 is certain that before the time of Constantine 

 thcic were churches of considerable extent both 

 in the southern and the northern sections of 

 Hritain. The most probable supposition is that 

 these churches owe their origin to the intercourse 

 of Hritain with Home, which licgan with Ca'-ar's 

 inva-ioii, ami soon attained a gieat cxti nt. Soldiers 



and civilians came from I! to Britain, some of 



whom were Christians, while others brought with 

 them Christian slaves, llriti-h merchants went to 

 Rome a- traders, British chieftains as diplomatist-. 

 British ladies as hostages. There is -onie reason 

 to lielicve thai one of the last class was a friend 

 of 1'aul during his imprisonment there. Hut if the 

 Hriti-h Church did not owe it.- origin to mission- 

 aries in the strict sense of the term, it is it- 

 proml distinction to l>a\e heen the greatest mi- 

 sionary church throughout the cailier of the 

 medi.-eval centuries. If Patrick really was a 

 Hiiton, as seems demonstrable, he was the great 

 leader of the Hritisli missionary host. He found 

 Ireland entirely heathen, and he lived to sc-e 

 it profes- edly Christian. During bis lifetime 

 it WILS changed from a condition of barbarism 

 into a land of -aints and a hind of scholars, in 

 whose schools wen' trained not only the choicest 

 youths of the ncighliouring Britain, lint many also 

 from the continent of Europe. The debt that 



