122 THE ORIGIN OF THE ROOSEVELT EXPEDITION. 



accessible. Their ancestors were Christians, and they still have 

 legends among them of the cross of Christ and its power to save. 



Christianity entered North Africa soon after Pentecost, and 

 spread rapidly among the Berbers and other natives. Within a 

 hundred years of the death of Saint John, the Evangelist, with 

 Carthage as the center, half of the people in the cities were Christ- 

 ian. In the fourth century there were five hundred and eighty 

 seats with their Bishops. 



In the first four centuries after the apostles, of twenty great 

 names in the history of Christianity, more than half came from 

 North Africa. The first foreign missionaries after the apostles 

 were from Africa. One of them, Pantjeus, founder of a Christian 

 school, went to India to preach the Gospel, so that the first mis- 

 sionary to India was from Africa. 



For two hundred and fifty years North Africa led Latin Christ- 

 ianity, and in the work of evangelization translated the Scriptures, 

 for the first time, into a Western tongue. That Latin Bible was 

 the foundation of the Vulgate and came to be the common version 

 of Western Christianity. 



The indebtedness of the Christian world to the North African 

 Church is beyond estimation. One half of the Antenicene Library 

 was African in origin. For fifty years it grew, and during those 

 centuries several of the most important questions of doctrine were 

 settled under the leadership of African scholars. After Rome had 

 overwhelmed its laws from Africa. 



In the latter part of the second century Tertullian, the first 

 great name in Western Christianity, flourished. "The blood of 

 martyrs is the seed of the Church," is a paraphrase of his sublime 

 words in bidding defiance to the rulers who were persecuting Christ- 

 ians. After him Arnobius, and later Augustine, who, though 

 next to Paul, has dominated Christian thought and doctrine. Over 

 the portals of Trinity Church, Boston, are carved, after the names 

 of the four evangelists, those of Paul and Augustine. The third 

 stone in the series remains uncut. There is no man yet who has 

 wielded so wide a scepter, both intellectual and ecclesiastical, as 

 Augustine. 



