MISSIONS 



231 



Ireland owed to Scotland for the mission of 

 Patrick she nobly repaid by the mission, just 

 a century later, of Columba and his associates 

 to lona. The religion imported probably in a 

 casual way by Roman soldiers and Roman civilians 

 and Roman slaves, and by British sojourners in 

 Koine, ha<l not died out, but it had not become 

 widespread. The Picte were uncivilised and un- 

 evangelised. It was from the sequestered I or lona 

 that the light went forth which shone brightly for 

 many generations all the more brightly by reason 

 of the depth of the darkness which it had to pene- 

 trate. If the Scottish Patrick might fitly be called 

 the apostle of Ireland, and the Irish Columba in 

 some sort the apostle of Scotland, Aidan, one of 

 the lona 'family,' is entitled in like sort to be 

 regarded as the apostle of Northumbria ; and St 

 Cuthhert was a spiritual descendant of Aidan. 

 Moreover, the Irish-Scottish missionaries were the 

 great evangelists of a large part of the European 

 continent. Ebrard has shown the magnitude and 

 the imiMirtance of the work undertaken and accom- 

 plished by Columbanux and Gallus and a host of 

 others, ' numerous as swarms of bees,' who, in the 

 midst of innumerable dilliculties, introduced agri- 

 culture and civilisation, learning and religion, into 

 France and Switzerland and Italy and Germany, 

 of which last country the English Boniface became 

 the 'apostle.' Not that the externals of Christianity 

 were non-existent at an earlier time. In France, for 

 example, these noble missionaries had to do with 

 the religion introduced by the Romans ; but the 

 pure faith was now represented by a corrupt clergy 

 ministering to dissolute nobles and neglecting .in 

 enslaved people. Then they had to do with the 

 recent invaders, who were partly heathen and 

 partly Arian. Sad to say, the missionaries seem to 

 have suffered less from the heathens than from the 

 Arians, less from the Arians than from the ortho- 

 dox, and, among the orthodox, less from the 

 peasantry than from the nobles, and most of all 

 from the clergy, or from others at their instigation. 



What the Irish and Scots did for Europe in the 

 earlier middle ages the Xestorians about the same 

 time attempted, with no less zeal, though with 

 less success, for Asia. Condemned as a heretic 

 by a council held at Ephesus in the 5th century, 

 Nwtotin (q.v.) was banished from Constantinople 

 to Egypt. From that time onwards, for five cen- 

 turies the Ncstorians carried on extensive and not 

 unsuccessful missionary operations in central Asia, 

 ami founded churches, some of which exist in a lan- 

 {,'iii-hing condition to this day, whilst others recog- 

 nised papal authority in the later medieval cen- 

 turies. The Nestorian Tartar Church seems to have 

 subsisted under a succession of ecclesiastics (see 

 I'RKSTER JOHN) until the country was devastated 

 by Genghis Khan. The Nestorians either intro- 

 duced the gospel into India, or else revived a 

 church previously founded, possibly by the apostle 

 Thomas. There can ! no reasonable doubt that 

 in the 7th century they passed through Tartary 

 into China, that they founded churches there, that 

 they were at least tolerated and probably subsidised 

 by successive emperors till the end of the 9th cen- 

 tury, when, with a revolution or change of dynasty, 

 the system of intolerance was introduced. 



In the later niediirval centuries the missionary 

 work was mainly in the hands of the great Roman 

 orders, the Dominicans (q.v.) and the Franciscans 

 ('|.v. ), especially the latter. Their work was 

 chiefly among the Mussulmans of Spain, North 

 Africa, and western Asia. Las Casas (q.v.) 

 earned the title of 'apostle of tlie Indians." 



(e) Modern Missions. The Jesuit order was 

 formed immediately after the Reformation, 

 avowedly for the purpose of retrieving the disaster 

 which that great event had caused to the Church 



of Rome. By far the most distinguished of the 

 early Jesuit missionaries was Francis Xavier (q.v.). 

 Unquestionably Xavier was no ordinary man ; it 

 is, however, evident even from the eulogies passed 

 on him by his admirers that he did not make any 

 spiritual impression on the minds of the people of 

 India and Japan, though he consolidated the 

 Portuguese mission in India and helped to open 

 China and Japan to missionary effort. After the 

 labours of Ricci and Schall there are said to 

 have been in China 300,000 Catholics in 1663. 

 For the Jesuit 18th-century missions in Paraguay, 

 see JESUITS, PARAGUAY. Notes on the Catholic 

 missions in Japan and Corea will be found in the 

 articles on these countries. There is a separate 

 article on the Propaganda (q.v.). The Missiones 

 CatholictK states that the number of European 

 missionaries belonging to the Roman Catholic 

 Church in 1886 was 2800, of mission adherents 

 nearly 2,800,000; in India there being 1,180,000, 

 in Indo-China over 500,000, nearly 500,000 in 

 China, 210,000 in Africa, and over 100,000 in 

 Oceania. 



The Reformation was a great preparation for 

 evangelistic work, lint the Reformation period 

 was not distinctively a missionary period. This 

 was not merely, though it might be in part, be- 

 cause the hands of the Reformers were full of 

 the work which they had to do at home. It is 

 to be remembered that the nations which had 

 foreign relations, foreign traffic, and foreign pos- 

 sessions were Spain and Portugal, in which the 

 Reformation got no firm hold. But it must be 

 admitted that the Reformers did not rightly appre- 

 hend the commission to preach the gospel to every 

 creature. When Luther, therefore, bos occasion to 

 refer to that text, he tacitly assumes that its re- 

 quirement is fulfilled when the gospel, as distin- 

 guished from Romanism, is preached to the nations 

 of Europe. In the 16th and 17th centuries, there- 

 fore, we find no more than sporadic and ill-sustained 

 efforts after mission-work among Jews or heathens. 

 Leibnitz, indeed, anticipated the conception of a 

 later age, and may well be regarded as the har- 

 binger of modern missions, even as, along with 

 Newton, he is honoured as the harbinger of modern 

 science. It was natural that the needs of the 

 English colonies should first attract the interest of 

 Englishmen to foreign parts ; the life labours of John 

 Eliot, ' the Indian apostle ' ( 1604-90), were carried 

 out under the auspices of the Corporation for the 

 Spread of the Gospel in New England. The 

 Hon. Roliert Boyle, first governor of that society, 

 contributed to tlie translation of the gospels into 

 Malay, and left a bequest for foreign mission.*. 

 Bishop Berkeley laboured for the foundation of a 

 missionary college in Bermuda; and it was mainly 

 for the spiritual wants of the American colonies 

 that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 

 in Foreign Parts was founded in 1701 ; its first 

 missionary to India sailed in 1818. 



Early in the 18th century the first Protestant 

 mission was sent to India. It was projected 

 by the king of Denmark, having probaoly been 

 suggested to him by his chaplain, Dr Liitkens. 

 At first, and for a long time, Germany supplied 

 the missionaries ; but the pecuniary support of 

 the mission soon devolved upon Englanu, Prince 

 George of Denmark, the husband of Queen Anne, 

 having recommended the object to the Society for 

 Promoting Christian Knowledge. Among many 

 noble men who have been engaged in this mission 

 the most notable is Schwartz, who probably ob- 

 tained an influence over all classes of the people of 

 India such as no other European ever possessed. 



While all the Protestant churches of Europe and 

 America are now engaged in missionary work, 

 there is one church which is distinguished from all 



