Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/39

Rh arrived on the coast of the Peninsula of Hindostan. Thence he travelled into the interior, and visited a king named Gondaphorus, who embraced Christianity; and after that he went to another province of India, where he received the crown of martyrdom. It will be seen that this narrative is in no way incompatible with that transmitted to us by tradition, and indicated also by archæological monuments.

Certainly not; and not only not incompatible, but, on the contrary, in the most perfect harmony with them. Everything tends to prove that St. Thomas was veritably the first apostle of India. This opinion, says M. Coquebert-Montbret, has in its favour an unvarying tradition, and the suffrages of the majority of Catholics; and of late years it has obtained some favour even with Protestants: for example, from M. Hohlenberg, in a dissertation on the origin and destiny of the Christian Church in India, and from Mr. Claude Buchanan in his "Christian Researches in India." (Second Edition, p. 104.)

We have said that the human race had been prepared from its commencement to receive the fundamental truths of Christianity. Independently of the relations established beyond the limits of the Celestial Empire between several Chinese and the Israelites whom God dispersed amongst the nations to make known his name