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104 What would we give to have native, self-supporting bishoprics in those centres to-day? Merv, which is also in the list, has now probably a bishop once more—an official of the conquering Russian Government, brought and maintained by their bayonets; but his fifth-century predecessor came there by the power of the living extension of the Church, and he speedily developed into a metropolitan, with other bishops under him. Christianity could certainly be so proclaimed as to suit the oriental, when taught by easterns to their brethren; and when a religion, intrinsically eastern, was presented without the western externals which a western is apt to identify with its essence.

Yet if this oriental Christianity, oriental taught, could spread itself and flourish in these lands once, it has passed from them now; and with the exception of some scattered colonies of Armenians, may be said to have passed from them completely. How is it that it failed? How is it that another and a lower faith has expelled it? The question is a serious one for a writer who believes fully in the gospel of the Word made Flesh, and who holds that it, and it alone, can fully answer the cravings of the human heart. It is easy to say that this wonderful extension was "founded on Nestorius, and not on Christ," and therefore had no strength. But—putting aside the point that much of the growth took place before Nestorius was heard of—the explanation that a form of Christianity that has failed must have been heretical does not seem to cover the facts. Admitting for argument's sake (we must deal with the point more at length in a later chapter) that the Church of the Assyrians did teach what we mean by "Nestorianism," the fact remains that it is not the only great Church that has gone down before