goes on at home, enables them to communicate regularly and rapidly with their friends, permits frequent visits to the fatherland, and keeps them from forming unhappy native connections, it makes them, on the other hand, more than ever birds of passage, and prevents that resolute settling down to work to which there was every inducement in former times. The English in India are becoming increasingly like the English in England in all their ways of thinking and feeling. One result is that the sceptical tone prevalent in some classes at home is still more pronounced and hurtful in India. Happily we have there thoroughly Christian Englishmen and Englishwomen, warm and liberal supporters of Christian missions, who have greatly encouraged and strengthened the hands of the missionary band; but it must be acknowledged the great majority are utterly worldly, and they are confirmed in their worldliness by the atmosphere of unbelief in which they move. Much is done to promote their spiritual good, far more than in any preceding period, and we trust with marked effect. It is very seldom that even the most worldly treat the missionaries with disrespect.

There is in India a large and important community of whom. we have said nothing-the Eurasian community- closely connected, as the name indicates, with both Europeans and natives, and yet separate from both. Justice to them would require space which we cannot command. We can give them only a few sentences. According to the census their number is 50,000, which we think must be below the mark. In appearance, character, position, and circumstances they form many grades, from those who are almost, sometimes altogether, as fair as Europeans to those who are as dark as the darkest natives, from those who adopt European habits and are being continually merged into the European community, to those who live like ordinary natives, from those who occupy high positions to persons in the humblest rank, and from the advanced in knowledge and the excellent in character down to the ignorant and debased. Whatever may be their character or position, they are all called Christians, and assume part of the English dress. They occupy an awkward position which makes them very sensitive, but much is done to raise them; they are on the improving scale, and we hope they will become in the future, far more than in the past, a blessing to the land of their birth.

We have thus reviewed our position and character in India. At the beginning of the last century no one could have anticipated the course of events which have borne us on to our NO. CLXIII.

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present position, and we are now as little able to anticipate our future. We have observed we are very few in number. If the people were to rise against us en masse they could sweep us away in a day; but we are strong in prestige, in actual possession, in the good which we are more and more striving to effect, in the divided condition of the population, and in the absence of leaders to form any other government containing any element of stability. There is still a large native army, but we cannot conceive it can have in the future the facilities and, we may add, the inducements to rise it had in the past. Many influences-governmental, educational, religious, com. mercial, and social-are powerfully working, and cannot fail to effect great changes. There is, as we have observed, in the great cities an increasingly educated class who are imbuing in some degree with their own spirit the uneducated many, as shown by recent events. These do not seek the subversion of our government, as they know well that with it too they would be swept away. All they claim is a higher place in the administration. As to the millions beyond the cities, who form the vast majority of the population, we have a strong impression they are yet very slightly moved. They find themselves subject to a strong government noted for its justice, and they try to carry on their respective businesses under its protection. A short time ago very alarmist rumours of disaffection were spread, but in the opinion of those best qualified to judge they had little foundation. We are told that the great Northern Power is creeping towards our Indian frontier, and preparing to attack us; but we find no mention made of obstacles in the way of Muscovite ambition, which appear to us so great that they are well-nigh insuperable.

No one who believes in providential guidance can doubt that India has been given to us for a great purpose, which has yet been only very partially fulfilled. We have to a large extent given liberty and justice to the land, but much more is required in order to the people being raised to the platform of true liberty and prosperity. The gospel is the lever by which this is to be effected. Only by its personal acceptance by our people in India, by their acting in accordance with it and giving themselves to its diffusion, helped by their brethren at home, can we rise to the height of our vocation and hope to be instrumental in conferring on the millions of that Continent the highest good. Let that great end be achieved, let them come under the sway of the Redeemer, and they will have cause for eternal gratitude they were brought under the rule of Britain, JAMES KENNEDY,

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ART. III.-The Coptic Churches of Egypt.*

It is curious how easily we reconcile ourselves to the existence of a vast chasm in history. The story of the Pharaohs is familiar to every one; from Cheops to Rameses, and again on to Ptolemy Philadelphus and Cleopatra, the annals of Egypt are full of names and events that are household words. So at the other end of the vista of the ages, most people who have travelled, or read travels, have heard of the Arab conqueror of Egypt, 'Amr, who pitched his tent near where Cairo now stands, and there founded the city which was called Fustât or the Tent,' the ruins of which Europeans have renamed 'Old Cairo;' many have read of the crazy Khalif Hâkim, founder of the Druse religion; of the great Saladin, soldan of Egypt and most chivalrous of warriors; of the long line of Slave Kings or Mamlûks, who filled their cities. with palaces and mosques and works of art, which, even in their decay, are the wonder and delight of the beholder, and the torment of the covetous. These two ends of the history of Egypt are familiar ground to ordinary readers. But between them stretches a period of blank darkness, which few attempt to penetrate-darkness which the names of Zenobia, Cyril, and Hypatia, only render more visible. As you stand in the great temple of Phile, the Holy Island where Osiris sleeps, you see that the portico of the Egyptian temple was once a chapel, St. Stephen's, and there, written in Greek, are the words, 'This good work was done by the well-beloved of God, the Abbot-Bishop Theodore;' and as the eye wanders over the walls, other Christian legends are encountered-' The cross has conquered and will ever conquer,' and more to similar purpose. Abbot Theodore's name, which is all we know of him, represents the dark period of later Egyptian history; he stands in the gap between the extinction of the worship of Isis and the Muslim call to prayer. The mass was then celebrated at Philæ, where once worshippers had crowded to pay their vows at the tomb of Osiris, and where now Arab dragomans, conducting English tourists, prostrate themselves to the God of Islam.

For two centuries and a half, from the Edict of Theodosius (A.D. 379) to the Arab conquest (641), the state religion of Egypt was Christianity, though the old worship of the country still held out awhile in the corners of the land. But long

The Coptic Churches of Egypt.' By Alfred J. Butler, Fellow of Brasenose. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

before that famous edict that theological coup d'état-Christianity had taken a firm hold of the Delta; and Christian recluses, imitating the asceticism of the votaries of Serapis, betook themselves to caves and desert places, there to subdue the flesh and the devil by prayer and fasting. To Egypt belongs the debatable honour of having invented monasticism. The followers of St. Mark had scarcely seen the third century before they were settled in scattered communities all over the Delta, and had already begun to formulate what is known as 'the Egyptian rule.' We do not yet know how much we in the British Isles owe to these remote hermits. It is more than probable that to them we are indebted for the first preaching of the gospel in England, where, till the coming of Augustine, the Egyptian rule alone prevailed. But more important is the belief that Irish Christianity, the great civilizing agent of the early middle ages among the northern nations, was the child of the Egyptian Church. Seven Egyptian monks are buried at Disert Ulidh, and, as Mr. Butler points out in his delightful volumes, there is much in the ceremonies and architecture of Ireland in the earliest times that reminds one of still earlier Christian remains in Egypt. Every one knows that the handicraft of the Irish monks in the ninth and tenth centuries far excelled anything that could be found elsewhere in Europe; and if the Byzantine-looking decoration of their splendid gold and silver work, and their unrivalled illuminations, can be traced to the influence of Egyptian missionaries, we have more to thank the Copts for than has been imagined.

This early Egyptian Church is indeed the Coptic Church, though it was not distinguished by the name till the separation effected in 451 by the orthodox decision of the Council of Chalcedon. Copt is simply Gupt, Gypt, or Egyptian; and the Coptic Church means nothing more than the Church of Egypt, as separated by the adoption of the heresy of Eutyches. The Egyptian Christians were as much Copts before as after the Council of Chalcedon; but it was their devotion to a metaphysical definition that made them a distinct church, and to this they owe at once their misfortunes and their interest. By their adhesion to the Nicæan definition of the single nature of Christ-that 'Christ being made man is one Nature, one Person, one Will, is also God the Word, and at the same time Man born of the Virgin Mary; so that to Him belong all the attributes and properties of the Divine as well as of the human nature -the Copts subjected themselves to prosecution and isolation, and, sharing in none of the

changes and developments of the other churches, preserved in their scanty and neglected community, unchanged for fifteen hundred years, the ancient tradition and practice of the fifth century. Their implacable hatred of the Greeks or Melekites (ie., Royalists' or Church and State men) induced the Copts or Jacobites (ie., followers of Jacob of Edessa, the leader of the Eutychians) to throw themselves into the arms of the Arab conqueror, when he invaded Egypt in the seventh century; and though their shameful surrender at first procured them a considerable measure of toleration, they were not long in discovering how fatal a blunder they had committed. The Muslim persecutions of the Copts were no whit more cruel than the contemporary Christian persecutions of the Jews, but they were not the less abominable. Not a century had passed since the covenant with 'Amr, when the Muslim governors of the Khalifs began to extort unlawful taxes from their Christian subjects, upon pain of grievous pe alties. Monks were branded on the hand, and those found without the brand had the hand cut off; humiliating sumptuary rules were devised; the Copts were compelled to wear a distinguishing garb of one ridiculous colour, were forbidden to ride except on asses and mules, and were ordered to hang wooden effigies of the devil at their doors. Every now and then some rising, or a mere street quarrel, would be made the pretext for a wholesale massacre; and on one of these occasions sixty churches were razed to the ground. It was no wonder that millions of Copts from time to time embraced the faith of their rulers.

But in spite of persecution, in spite of the apostacy of the weaker brethren, the Coptic Church still preserved a painful existence. There is something truly heroic in the constancy of these ignorant people-for the Coptic priesthood was never famous for learning-to the faith of their forefathers. They still persevered in the celebration of the rites of their religion, though the loop-holed walls, massive doors, and secret passages of their surviving churches testify to the perils that attended such solemnities. From time to time many of them waxed rich, as the gorgeous adornments of these churches show; for the Copts have ever been the accountants and clerks of Mohammedan Egypt, and while their masters might exhaust the refinements of persecution upon the obstinate Christians, they could not do without their skill in reckoning and scriveners' work. Aided by this monopoly, and supported by a dogged adherence to their ancient faith, the Copts present to this day the curious spectacle of a people