Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/188

134 issued permitting such as were made Mohammedans by force to return to their own creed; and the Yezeedees in Jebel Toor are just beginning to recover from the effects of their former servitude and oppression.

It has been my lot to know much of this people under their adverse as well as under their more prosperous circumstances, and my conviction is that they present the most unpromising field I know of for missionary exertion. They are ignorant to a proverb, and entertain the strongest prejudices against learning of every kind. They are neither communicative nor frank when inquired of respecting their own religious system, and manifest the greatest indifference whenever any attempt is made to expound to them the doctrines of Christianity. With God all things are possible; but humanly speaking there seems little hope of the conversion of these heathen until the native churches shall have risen from sleep, and again trimmed their lamps with a zeal and love such as were exhibited in the early Nestorian missionaries, who carried the glad tidings of the Gospel into the wilds of Tartary, and planted the banner of the cross among the refined pagans of China.