Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/289

 THE REV. MONTAGUE FOWLER, M.A. 247

Mr Fowler adheres to the universal tradition, both of East and West, connecting St Mark, the Evangelist, with the foundation of the Church of Alexandria. The Coptic Church, it needs to be explained, is the name by which the ancient Christian Church of Egypt, comprised within the Patriarchate of Alexandria, is generally known in the present day. He tells how when the Apostles and disciples were dispersed into different countries to carry out the Master s farewell command, &quot; Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,&quot; it fell to the lot of St Mark (who, according to St Jerome, was the disciple and inter preter of St Peter) to accompany that Apostle to Rome, and afterwards to proclaim the message of salvation in Egypt, Nubia and Abyssinia. St Mark s mission he dates from A.D. 37, and the founding of the Church at Alexandria from A.D. 40. He goes on to recount the melancholy circum stances surrounding St Mark s death twenty-two years later, and this death of martyrdom reads like the story of a modern tragedy bereft of its foulest details. The Evangelist, it seems, had returned to Egypt from Rome about A.D. 49, after having written his Gospel, the original of which the Egyptian tradition maintains was not in the Greek, but in the Coptic, language. Thence on ward he laboured indefatigably in the East. But, alas ! even in those early days jealousy was rife, and it came about that the increasing results of St

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