He turned, and then turned back. "Can I help you in any way?" he asked, lifting his low felt hat to his brother cleric.

'We were looking for an old monument, once very familiar to me,” began Mr. Erle, with like courtesy, "that of Nicholas Burridge, the old cathedral organist-"

"In whose days the best part of old Father Smith's work in S. Gabriel's organ was, by some means, transferred to that of the cathedral!" remarked Mr. Hope, gently, but with a light of humour in his eye, “I bear him a sore grudge therefore, but the Dean holds fast by his ill-gotten gain."

"He was my great-grandfather, do not revile him," said Kathleen, with dignity; rising with the cherub's head within her fair and dainty hands; hands and wrists that had served many a time as a model for both drawing and plastering friends and even fellow-students.

"My daughter," said Mr. Erle, introducing her, "and an almost musically mad devotee to the memory of this musical grandfather's grandfather; but, my dear, you must not rival him in more than his music! you must not carry off that trophy."

"I

suppose one will have to prove in court first of all that there ever was such a monument."

Then Mr. Erle explained exactly for what purpose they had made their way to S. Gabriel's at all. Mr. Hope was sympathetic and concerned in their disappointment; looked at his watch, regretted that he was already due at a meeting with his churchwardens on some final arrangements for the morrow; but on Monday he would make every inquiry as to what had become of the bulk of the object of their search, and "I will write."

Mr. Erle gave him his card; he just lifted his hat to Kathleen, and they parted: she liked him for one thing, though she was not needlessly outspoken as Freda and Isabel, nor one to whom speech was such a necessity; and so she made no comment even on the point that had pleased her in the new vicar, his virtual and perfectly natural ignoring of herself; "has something better to think of, at any rate, than whether a girl is pleasing to his own eye or not," was her thought. And it is well she did not speak it, for that such was her thought would have caused her old father infinite pain had he known it; so unmaidenly, although from, happily, such a modest-looking maiden, thanks to hereditary characteristics and early training, and at present, still ennobling if, to her eyes, humdrum as well as simple surroundings.

184

S. LAMBERT,1 M.

SEPTEMBER 17.

"And he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way."

THE silver sea is shining,

The boat lies on the sand,

We launch her in the sunshine

To reach the lovely land

That on the blue horizon
Lies in the arms of day—
We see not ere we enter
The angel in the way.

And there are fragrant blossoms
That bloom on yonder hills,
Where all the air harmonious

Wakes to a thousand trills,
And staff in hand we thither

On pilgrimage to-day

We see not in the upland

The angel in the way.

And by the babbling river,
Where through each flowering reed,
Her silver waters wander

Through many a lily mead,

The stepping-stones we venture

Above the shadows gray-
We see not by the alders
The angel in the way.

Thus ever as we journey
GOD changes in His love,
With wisdom far-discerning
The path we think above-
The mountain to the valley,
The night-toil to the day,-
Placing unseen beside us
His angel in the way.

1 One recently writing of S. Lambert has well said: "He asked God that he might spread the knowledge of the true faith, and GOD so ordered his life that he never could. God did better for him than he could have done for himself. He asked to be useful to one province; GOD made him an example to the whole Church. He sought to be a missionary; GOD willed that he should be a Martyr.”

For who would stand Confessor

A Martyr oft He makes,
And who would be Apostle
To some poor land, He takes-
And in the roll triumphant
Of saintdom sets his name,
'Tis Christendom that honours
Henceforth that servant's fame.

O Sacred Heart of JESUS,
On Thee be all this care,
Of fashioning each servant,
Be his alone the prayer;
Be Thine his life's disposal,
Be his alone the fray;

And Thine to set before him
The angel in the way.

Then as the blesséd Lambert,
Far different though it be
We thought, in first desires,
Our upward way to Thee,
By paths alone Thou knewest,
We come, O blessed day,

To stand at length before Thee,
No angel in the way!

M.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA.

WHEN Mahomet founded his sect in the seventh century, Christianity had already made great progress in Central Asia; along the north of Africa; in Arabia; and even in India; but owing to the scarcity of copies of the Scriptures, or of religious books, and also to the want of educated priests, it was gradually becoming mixed with the ancient superstitions of those countries, and in some instances degenerating into idolatry. The controversies maintained at the Seven General Councils show the errors which were creeping in and combated in the more civilised and advanced Christian cities, and those nations which possessed a written language and monastic establishments where theology was cultivated, and where the Bible could be multiplied by the copyists, were enabled to maintain the Faith in tolerable purity. But it was far otherwise in the remote parts of

Arabia, Central Asia, and India, where the people were either endowed with material wealth without corresponding intellectual development; or of a turbulent race, addicted to war for the sake of plunder, so that the precepts of Christianity had to combat in its proselytes the self-indulgence common to the wealthy Oriental, or the very profession of their whole lives. To the wealthy Oriental, Mahometanism offered a sensual Paradise as well as earthly luxury; and to the brigand and mercenary soldier it held out the inducement of the plunder of all Christendom, adding to the temptation of his natural avarice the prospect of an exalted position in a future state, as the reward of robbing and murdering the enemies of Mahomet. The Mecca prophet presented his creed in the form of one of the numerous sects of Christianity which were at that period constantly breaking off from the Eastern Church; and as such it is still regarded by many of the Syrian Mahometans. The Eastern Christian's fasts were very severe, extending over more than half the days in the year, and prohibiting him from partaking of milk, eggs, meat, or butter, during nearly seven weeks in Lent; but Mahomet reduced these fasts to the period of one month for his followers, and even in that month they were allowed to indulge as freely as they pleased after sunset. He represented himself as the Comforter Whom our LORD had promised to send to His disciples; and it was to refute this blasphemous assertion that the first alteration was made in the Nicene Creed. The Creed was originally worded, "I believe in the HOLY GHOST, the Comforter, Who proceedeth from the FATHER; Who with the FATHER and the SON together is worshipped," &c. It was now altered to, "I believe in the HOLY GHOST, the LORD and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the FATHER; Who with the FATHER and the SON together is worshipped," &c. The original phraseology shows us why the form we now recite, "Who proceedeth from the FATHER and the Son," was not inserted at first, in order to keep more nearly to the exact words of our LORD in S. John xiv., xv., and the later addition of the three words in Italics by the Western Church, was one of the chief points of dispute between the Greek and Latin Churches in the ninth century.

India had been the scene of the labours and martyrdom of S. Thomas, and it is believed that S. Bartholomew also taught in the northern part of the country. A Bishop of India was regularly appointed from the first century; his nomination being vested in the Patriarchs of Syria; and when the Nestorians, deriving their name from a schis

matic whose peculiar opinions they no longer hold, became the most active missionaries in Asia, they greatly increased the number of converts beyond the Indus. Even Gibbon admits that "in the sixth century Christianity was successfully preached to the Bactrians (in modern Turkestan and Turcomania) the Huns, (on the borders of Russia and Siberia) the Persians, the Indians, the Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites; the Barbaric Churches from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea were almost infinite, and their recent faith was conspicuous in the number and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The pepper coast of Malabar and the isles of the ocean, Socotra and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing multitude of Christians, and the bishops and clergy of those sequestered regions derived their ordination from the Catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age, the zeal of the Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined the ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The missionaries of Balkh and Samarcand pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves into the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the Selinga." The Christianity of China between the seventh and the thirteenth century, Gibbon adds in a note, “is invincibly proved by the consent of Chinese, Arabian, Syriac and Latin evidence. In their progress by sea and land the Nestorians entered Asia by the port of Canton, and the northern residence of Sigan."

A series of savage conquerors accompanied by a cloud of sometimes heathen, sometimes Mahometan followers, has alternately swept over India till the original inhabitants have been driven to the less accessible provinces in the centre, the sea-coast, or to the hilly districts. At the time of the English conquest the weak but gentle votary of Brahma was entirely crushed under the supremacy of Mahometan masters. The most vigorous portion of the native race were the Christians of S. Thomas, as they were called, a sect supposed to be descended from the Apostle's converts, and which when the Portuguese first opened the navigation of India in the seventeenth century were found, says Gibbon, "to have been seated for ages on the coast of Malabar. In arms, in arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan; the husbandman cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the King of Cochin, and the Zamorin himself. They acknowledged