fined; and the whole dispute has been had received to their own nation, or even regarded by many as mere verbal contro- to their settlements in further Persia; versy. It was nevertheless of importance but from the third century they displayed sufficient to bring on the Ephesian, or a surprising energy and constancy in its Third Ecumenical Council, by whose diffusion, such as hath never been exemirregular or tumultuous proceedings plified by any other people: and it was Nestorius was declared a traitor to the they themselves-the original Nestorian Church; and, being ejected from his Church, in their own Assyria, and not patriarchate, was driven into exile and dis- any of its ramifications-which thus disgrace. From the same hour his doctrine seminated the truth, such as they held became renowned, and his cause espoused it, far and extensively. Through twelve by multitudes; and among those who centuries they laboured in proclaiming have always looked to him with the great- it over central Asia,-carrying it to the est reverence and regard, are the inhabit-confines of Scythia and the farthest east, ants of the part of Asia which we are now considering. They had professed already some of his most obnoxious sentiments or tenets, they resembled him in the greater purity of his worship, which in all cases rejected the veneration of the creature,—and they appear to have soon conformed more completely to the general schism of doctrine which he enjoined. They came at last, therefore, to be distinguished as a sect by his name, and are still known by it at the present day, though, with some pride of spiritual ancestry, they are accustomed to refuse the designation given to them,-the truth, as they affirm it, certainly being, that they never were connected with Nestorius except through sympathy of doctrine; and that not on his individual opinions, or those of any father or confessor, how-established the chief seat of their spiriever eminent, can be said to have been founded a church which they are entitled to deduce from apostolic times. But this church is one, likewise, which possesses other claims to distinction besides those which we have stated, and other titles to the regard and respect of mankind, even equal to any which it may derive from the antiquity of its origin. Its zeal in the enlargement of the Redeemer's kingdom, its rapid accretion, and final size, would alone demand attention and honour from Christendom. Not merely were the Nestorians the Protestants of the East,-they may, with strict truth, be described as forming at one time the principal Christian community of the great Eastern Continent. At no period, from the beginning of their career, had they confined the light which they into parts of India, into all the remote and barbarous lands lying north of India and east of the Caspian Sea-to Tartary, to Mongolia, to China itself. They either established there churches, or in some degree left their track in all those distant realms. They stretched, also, backward, and to the north and west into Armenia and Cappadocia, many provinces of Asia Minor, and many countries in the east of Europe; and again, backward and southward, into Syria, Arabia, and even Egypt; to Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and to Socrata in the Arabian Sea. It was not, therefore, without colour of reason, that, in the 5th century, when they gained the support of the Persian king, when they drove the Greek Church from Persia, and tual power in Seleucia and Ctisiphon, that their supreme bishop or patriarch there assumed the title of Patriarch of the East. We do not know what was the precise extent of his jurisdiction in that age; but it is on record, that not fewer than twenty-five metropolitan bishops, scattered over all those regions, acknowledged his supremacy at a later period. In Persia itself, Nestorianism was long the only form of Christianity. In Arabia, and lower Mesopotamia, the Nestorian people were protected and honoured by the Caliphs, successors of the Arabian Prophet, as they had been even by that personage himself. In Mongolia, the great Khan of the Tartar empire held the rank of presbyter in their church; and when the dominion of the Caliphs, and subsequently that of the Tartar kings, who subdued them, had ceased, their missions still received toleration and respect from the succeeding and more powerful dynasty of Genghis Khan in all those kingdoms. This respect, indeed, as well as the favour and protection extended to them by the Caliphs, the mutual qualities and resources of their educated classes, and among others of their priesthood, in a high degree enforced. In these ingenious lands and restless days, when, amid the twilight of science, men groped earnestly towards knowledge, and turned in every direction to the arts of refinement,-in many cases overcoming all disadvantages, and attaining so nearly or completely what they so admirably sought, -these Christian sectaries were among the leaders of the national mind. In their schools, so celebrated of Edersa, of Nisibis, and of Seleucia, they taught and received knowledge; in the courts of Bagdad, under the humane and liberal sway of the Abassides, they filled offices of trust, and practised all liberal arts. They cultivated Greek learning, and preserved many Grecian remains; they taught the Chaldee and Syriac languages, translated manuscripts from the Greek or the Chaldee into the Arabian tongue, and greatly prosecuted all those exact and physical sciences for which the Arabians have obtained renown. They themselves wrote works and treatises in that Semitic dialect allied to the Hebrew, the Arabic, and the Syriac, which the Nestorians of the present day still write, and with some variation still speak; in which also their church books are composed; which, in fact, is the Chaldee we refer to, and still bears that ancient and venerable name. This, however, and the extent of their dominion as a church, and all their influence and celebrity beyond their own Assyria or Kurdistan, was but for a time, though a time of so great duration. At last they sunk greatly from this high estate. In the fourteenth century the Mohammedan power, breaking forth in the remote east more disastrous than at its first apparition in Arabia, rose like an inundation, and swept, unassuaged, over the surrounding oriental nations. The Nestorian Church in these regions-in other words, the Christian doctrine as it existed to the east of the Caspian Searetired before it all over Asia, leaving, nevertheless, scattered remnants of its converts in most of the countries in which it had been settled. Towards the close of the same century, or the beginning of the next, their outposts in the west-in Moesia, in Thessaly, in Anatolia, or Asia Minor, in Arabia, and in the two Syrias -were also driven in; and very much by the same terrible agency, the dreadful sword of Tamerlane. Meanwhile Rome also had brought against them, not the violence of war, but her own acts of subjugation, and essayed to creep around them with that darkness with which she invaded and overcame the natives. Attempts to include them within her communion had been formally made by the Popes of the thirteenth century; but these had failed. More covertly and more successfully the Papal emissaries assailed the people in Kurdistan itself, when, in the next age, they were suffering under the Mohammedan persecutions, especially that of the Turks, who had established themselves, and now predominated in this part of Asia. By combined fraud and compulsion, the inhabitants of the plains were then, and during the two succeeding centuries, largely added to the Papal communion. The same influence, accompanied by the most terrible severities of Rome, prevailed, at a greater distance, against those diminished Nestorian communities in the east, which had lived through the Moslem persecutions, or revived after their cessation. At length, in the sixteenth century, the confusions arising in the Nestorian body itself, and the ambition of their own ecclesiastics, opened an opportunity to the Roman See, of which it gladly availed itself. Sulaka, a pretender to the patriarchal throne, being irregularly elected, and unable to obtain consecration in his own church, sought and received it from the Italian priest. But the price paid was his patriarchal independence, in some degree his Nestorian faith; at the very least, his sincerity and honour. New contention and division among the Nestorians flowed also, and inevitably, from such an event. The usurpation could not remain undis- But the seat of the Nestorian patriarch puted. The more legitimate patriarchs had been consecrated at the same time as his rival; and he and his successors still maintained themselves in their faith and their power. From this perod in their history, the patriarchs of this original time bear the distinctive appellation of Mar, or Lord Elias; while those of the secession are known by that of Mar Shimon. Patriarchs of the secession, however, these last did not always remain. So accidental and important had been their union with the Papacy, that, under the third patriarch of their dynasty, the see returned to its independence, and within a hundred years from the election of Sulaka, all its correspondence with Rome had ceased. In the meantime, the example which he had exhibited, the exigencies of an unhappy position, and the ceaseless activity of the Capucin and Carmelite monks, who, in the seventeenth century, roamed over, and agitated Mesopotamia through its whole extent, from Diarbekir to Bussorah, had their full influence for evil. In the beginning of that century, Mar Elias himself acknowledged the Romish supremacy, and, at some uncertain period in the eighteenth, was finally converted to its communion. This event transferred the allegiance of all true Nestorians to the Mar Shimon, now become to the reunited Nestorian church the legitimate patriarch of the East. But previous to this defection, another had taken place, not less complete in itself, which was followed by greater consequences, and is better ascertained in history. In 1681, the metropolitan bishop of Diarbekir, after a quarrel with his patriarch, embraced Romanism; was himself dignified by the Pope with the patriarchal office; and with that supremacy was placed over all Papal converts who had been recovered from the Nestorian, and from the Jacobite or Menophysite sects, and who were then, under the name of the Chaldean Church, first united into one body. The residence of this third patriarchate was fixed at Diarbekir, where it first accidentally arose, and where its patriarch, calling himself Mar Usuf, still resides at the present day. himself, which, in the eighth century, had been transferred from Ctesiphon to Bagdad, was again removed from Bagdad upon the fall of the Caliphs; and after several transfers less important, was, in the sixteenth century, established at Mosul. From Mosul, when evil days still further fell, and persecution and Papal pertinacity continued to disturb them around, the patriarchs of the East withdrew finally within the stronghold of their Assyrian hills. There chiefly, as we have already intimated, and on the Lake Ouromiah, in Persia, their primitive faith and nation had existed, if not flourished, in all ages of the Church,— sheltered greatly, though not entirely, from the storms of war and persecution, and from Italian wiles; and the people, if not as free as they sometimes boasted, nor as exempt from violence and alarms as the imagination would willingly believe them, yet protected from the fate.of other eastern sectaries, and of their own missions, at once by the native force and resistance of their character, and by that strength of nature which their position throws around them. There, it has been also stated, did the same causes, in a great measure, shut them up from the knowledge and attention of the western world, until they may be said to have been almost rediscovered in our own time by the activity and zeal of the missionaries of America, who, on the new and perilous field of exertion presented by this corner of the Asiatic continent, have afforded distinguished evidence of the enterprise and perseverance which their countrymen derive from one common ancestry, and share with the other branches of the Anglo-Saxon family. It is within the last twenty years that the manners and history of the Nestorian people, as well as their need and capacity for a purer form of Christianity than that to which their own faith had declined, have been a subject of research and consideration; and it is by American Missions in the East, and especially by one individual belonging to them, that this inquiry has been chiefly conducted, against physical obstacles and moral discouragement of no ordinary magnitude. Extracts. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us."Rom. v. 5. THE first time I ever knew the meaning of Rom. v. 5, it was conveyed to me under circumstances which I can never forget. I was called, many years ago, when but a short time in the ministry, to visit a poor creature dying of a fever. It was a hovel on a mountain-side in the county of Wicklow. The door leading from the miserable chamber to the kitchen, (the only other room in the habitation,) was built up to prevent infection, and the only entrance was through a window, about a foot and a-half square, out of which the frame had been taken for that purpose. In the corner of that wretched apartment, on some straw, lay a young man of twenty-one, dying, but in the fullest possession of his faculties. A few moments' conversation convinced me that I was there, not to teach, but to learn, in witnessing the triumph of a believer over sin, death, and hell. The young man was rejoicing in Christ; and as a passage of Scripture which seemed appropriate to his state of mind, I opened the fifth of Romans, and began to read it, applying each successive sentence to the young man, as according with his experience, to which he gave a most cordial response. I reached the fifth verse, I said, view of the text, which, of course, I immediately acknowledged; and never can I forget either the comment or the commentator,-both may well serve to illustrate this passage. before, been brought to the knowledge That poor youth had, not many months lecturing in the cottages in that, a disof the Gospel through the means of my too old, and too much engaged in labour tant district of the parish. Too poor, to go to school, he had learned from a ings when his work was over, that he young companion to read, in the evenmight read that Book which had revealed a Saviour to his soul. He had read, and had been taught by Him who can teach not as man teacheth. I had not known him, I had not to my knowledge seen him before, though God had taught him under my ministry. day-entering into "the Valley of the I saw him but once again-the next Shadow of Death," and fearing no evil. That night, or next morning, he entered into his rest. His name was never printed in this world before; but as certainly as it is recorded here, so surely in "the Lamb's Book of Life" is written the name of CHARLES ARMSTRONG. From Expository Lectures on the Epistle to the Ephesians, by the Rev. Robert M'Ghee, A.M., Dublin. When "Now you feel how true this is,—you have that blessed hope which maketh not ashamed, for you feel such love to God shed abroad in your heart, that it must be by the Spirit of God which is given to you." Ah! sir," said he, "that is not the meaning of that text at all." "What!" said 1, "not the meaning!" and I looked at the verse again, never baving thought that any other could be attached to it. "What meaning then do you give to it?" "Ah! sir," he replied, "it would be a poor hope I should have, if it was derived from any love I feel to God. When I think of what He has done for me, and how I ought to love Him, I feel so cold and dead compared to what my love ought to be, that I would be in despair, instead of having a hope that maketh not ashamed. Read on, sir, and you will see it is." I read on, and the next three verses convinced me at once that he was right, -and that I had taken an erroneous DOING NOTHING. "He made me out a sinner for doing nothing!" This remark fell from the lips of one who was under conviction of sin, and of whom we asked the question, "How were you awakened?" He had heard a sermon from the words, "Woe unto them that are at ease in Zion !" It was a new thought to the poor man, who had been comforting himself with the plea that he had done nothing very bad. But now he saw that his greatest sin was the very thing in which he had been comforting himself-doing nothing. We were reminded of this incident by meeting, in an old religious magazine, with the following ingenious interrogagations on the words, "Curse ye Meroz," (Judges v. 23.) The writer goes on to ask, By whose authority ?-The angel of the Lord. What has Meroz done?-NOTHING. Why, then, is Meroz to be cursed?— Because they did nothing. What ought Meroz to have done?Come to the help of the Lord. Could not the Lord do without Meroz?-The Lord did do without Meroz. Did the Lord sustain any loss?-No; but Meroz did. Is Meroz, then, to be cursed?-Yes; and that bitterly. Is it right that a man should be cursed for doing nothing?-Yes, when he ought to do something. Who says so ?-The angel of the Lord. "That servant, which knew his lord's will, and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes."-Luke xii. 47.-Tract Magazine. Notices of Books. Lectures for the Times; or, Illustrations and Refutations of the Errors of Tractarianism and Romanism. By the Rev. JOHN CUMMING, D.D. Hall and Virtue. 1851. ALTHOUGH we are constantly in the habit of taking to ourselves the name of Protestants, and of hearing of the Protestant churches in contradistinction to the Church of Rome, there is reason to believe, that a great majority who employ these terms, are not sufficiently aware of the principles they imply, and the distinction they point out. Nor is it very wonderful that this should be the case. In earlier times, when the different countries of Europe were but emerging from the darkness and errors of Popery, and when they contained multitudes who still adhered to that corrupt form of worship, it was necessary that the members of the reformed churches should be well instructed in the principles they professed to embrace, and the errors against which they raised their protest. But in our day -at least till within a very recent period -the prevalence of the Popish religion had been so limited, and there was so little danger or opportunity of our coming into contact with its unscriptural tenets, that most people were content to remain ignorant of them. The divisions and sects that have sprung up in the bosom of the reformed Church itself, as they came more directly to our doors, have consequently occupied more attention, and demanded a more careful inquiry; and thus, while there are few amongst our people but know something of the grounds of distinction between the Presbyterian and Episcopalian forms of Church goverment, or between their common observances and those of the Baptist, Independent, and other evangelical denominations, there are comparatively few who are fully aware of the causes that have separated the whole of these from the Church of Rome, or of the vast importance and advantages of that separation which took place at the period of the Reformation; although, when viewed in itself, and in the consequences that have flowed from it, it is not too much to say, that it was the greatest and happiest, while at the same time it was the most necessary, revolu tion that has occurred in modern times, and for which, whether we consider its influence on the temporal condition, or the moral and religious interests of the world, we can never be sufficiently thankful. It would be foreign to the object of this paper to enter into any details of the auspicious improvements to which it led in the public and social condition of the countries where the spirit and doctrines of that Reformation were introduced. Suffice it to say, that so great and manifest were those improvements, that even on considerations of a temporal nature, it would be seen that the separation from Popery was a real blessing, which deserved to be kept in lively and But we are perpetual remembrance. called upon, in the present day, in a peculiar manner to direct attention to the religious benefits which it was the means of securing us,-for after all it was the circumstance of its being a religious movement that gives to the Reformamation its claim upon the remembrance of the Church and nation,-it was because it was begun by men of a religious character, carried on by the weapons which religion sanctions, and designed to emancipate the means by which the doctrines of religion might be restored to their native purity, and its ordinances enjoyed in freer exercise, that we are led to look upon the movement that was made against Popery three hundred years ago, as one of the grandest and most memorable eras in the history of man as a moral and spiritual being. Independently of the peculiar character of our times, therefore, this separation from the Church of Rome merits of itself to be commemorated with all the grateful and lively emotions with which we should think of an event so momentous in its nature, and so salutary in its influence, |