Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/100

64 the number of their clergy, and provided better means for their education and support, and are far more united in concord and design than the community from which they have seceded. This is doubtless owing to the co-operation of the Italian missionaries, to the support which they have received from abroad, and from the profitable visits which several of their Bishops have paid to Europe, where they learned to appreciate the benefits of order and education. But to whatever cause attributable, the fact cannot be disputed, that the body now styling themselves "Syrian Catholics," are far superior to the Jacobites in general intelligence, respectability, ecclesiastical discipline, and mutual agreement.

Improvements such as these are not without their value when we take into consideration that the Jacobites of the present day, whatever may be the teaching of their old standard writers, have adopted well nigh all the erroneous doctrines and corrupt practices of the Church of Rome. To this cause we must attribute the principal success of the Roman missionaries; for bringing with them so little that was repugnant to the received opinions of the Jacobites, and so many additional advantages, social and political, they were welcomed by them as special benefactors.

Notwithstanding the faithfulness of the above picture, there are tokens of promise among the Syrians amply sufficient to engage the sympathies of the English Church in their behalf. We have already seen that with so many errors which they hold in common with Rome, the remaining Jacobites are strongly opposed to the efforts of her missionaries, and this opposition is doubtless strengthened by the feelings of jealousy which they harbour towards the seceders who have dispossessed them of so many of their churches. On the other hand, the late revolutions in France and Italy, since which the large annual remittances to the Eastern communities in alliance with Rome have been cut off, have greatly weakened the strength of the dissenters and hindered the onward progress of proselytism. Now the Independents are vexing them, and they have no other resource left to help them in the work of reform than the Church of England. The Syrian Bishop and people of Mosul applied for her aid, but it was not granted; and at this time I have abundant proof