Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/559

Rh habitual autonomy. But the judicial decision handed the see over to the Jacobite nominee, Mar Dionysius Joseph.

While there is little sign of progress in the Syrian Church as an organisation, many young men from this communion go to study at Madras University. Therefore, perhaps, these educated Christians of St. Thomas will come in time to insist on the introduction of more enlightened methods in the conduct of their Church, such as the extension of education and the higher training of the clergy; but that will only be the case if they remain loyal to the faith and Church of their fathers after passing through the mill of Western culture.

The Syrian churches which may be seen in South India to-day are constructed with Saracenic arches, sloping roofs, and buttressed walls. For the most part they are red in hue, and are built of stones squared and polished in the quarries. They have bells cast in native founderies. The traveller off the lines of modern missions may be startled to hear the sound of church bells among the hills, indicating the neighbourhood of some old church of the Syrian Christians.

Lastly, we have traces of Syrian Christianity in China. Its origin has not been discovered, and some have doubted its ever having existed. But there is clear evidence that the early Nestorian missionaries or their successors penetrated into the interior of the Celestial Empire. In the year 1625 the Jesuits found a marble tablet, 7½ ft. high and nearly 4 ft. broad, buried under some ruins at Singanfu, a large city on the Yellow River, formerly the capital of the empire. This tablet is entitled "A monument commemorating the introduction and propagation of the noble law of Ta t'sin in the middle kingdom." In the upper part there is an incised cross, beneath which is an inscription in Syriac and Chinese, first setting forth a vague abstract of Christian doctrine, and then recording the chief events of a Syrian mission in China. It tells how a missionary named Olopan came from Judæa to China in the year 636, having escaped great dangers by sea and land,