Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/346

292 presbyter George Badger and his colleagues. This is our great hope; and may the Lord prolong your life, while we in parting repeat a second and a third time the kiss of brotherly salutation.

"Written on Saturday, the first day of January, in the year of our 1844, in the town of Mosul, in the house of the presbyter George Badger, by the hand of Kash' Auraha, the archdeacon and servant of Mar Shimoon."

In the month of April we received a letter from the Committee of the Gospel Propagation Society informing us that they were obliged to adhere to their former decision, and directing us to return homewards. The feelings of Mar Shimoon on hearing this intelligence I conveyed to the Committee in the following extract from a letter, dated 19th April, 1844.

"It is not for me to offer any opinion on the propriety of the Society's determination to break up the mission to the Nestorians at a moment when our services are so much in request by them. The motives which induced them to do so I have fully explained to Mar Shimoon; but it is very difficult for him to understand the constitution of our Church Societies in England, and therefore I am not able to say, that with all my efforts I have succeeded in removing from his mind the impression that the authorities who commissioned us to offer assistance to his people have broken faith with him, and treated him with marked unkindness."

Before we left Mosul the Patriarch addressed the two following letters to the Bishops of the Church of England and to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

"From Mar Shimoon, Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in the East, to the most holy father Mar William, Catholicos of the Church of England, and to the company of pious fathers and most reverend bishops, peace be with you, from our, and from our.