Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/113

Rh fathers of families, to instruct those under their care in the fear of the as contained in the Word of, and the ordinance ends with this strong sentence: "We must revere the teaching of our  above our life, and whosoever is neglectful of these things is the enemy of , and is under the interdiction of our 's word, and let such an one be held in no esteem in the Church."

The Nestorian clergy of the present day make no objection whatever to the reading of the Scriptures by their people; on the contrary, the more intelligent evince a laudable anxiety that the word of God may have free course among them, and be glorified. It is much to be regretted, however, that so few among them can read, and that fewer still are able to understand what they read. Manuscript copies of the Bible are very rare, but the stock of Syro-Chaldaic (so-called) Gospels from the press of the British and Foreign Bible Society which I brought out with me into Mesopotamia and Coordistan was soon distributed among importunate applicants. The American Independent missionaries at Ooroomiah have lately published the New Testament entire, but the Old Testament in Syro-Chaldaic has never yet been printed, and the few Nestorians who are able to do so peruse the Law and the Prophets in the Syriac version used by the Jacobites, which is printed in a character difiering considerably from their own. It would be an undertaking worthy of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge if they were to supply this desideratum, and further aid this interesting community in their inquiries after the truth, by publishing for them a concordance of the sacred Scriptures, on the plan of Cruden, a work much needed, and which many Chaldeans as well as Nestorians have expressed a great desire to possess.

It is to be hoped, however, that if this venerable Society enter upon so charitable a work, they will avoid the error and inconsistency into which the London Bible Society have fallen in their edition of the Syriac Bible. The New Testament of this version was originally printed after the order of the Jacobite Lectionaries, in which each lesson is headed with the title of the commemoration on which it is appointed to be read in the churches. Finding, as it appears, that some of these headings had reference