I. THE EARLY PERIOD.
The energy of the Apostles in winning men to believe in Jesus Christ is a characteristic feature of the New Testament narrative of the begin nings of Christian history. Earl• traditions give ground for belief that their missionary operations were extended. Vet excepting in the case of Paul and his companions details are meagre. The ex planation of the rapid spread of Christianity seems to be that individual believers taught it wherever they went. whether for business, for safety from enemies, or as slaves to heathen masters. Great importance was attached also to translating the Bible into the language of every people at this period. Examples of this automatic spread of Christianity may be seen in its a 'meant neu in Ant inch before any Apostle went there, its entrance into Italy before Paul's visits, into Britain by way of Gaul from Smyrna dur ing the second century. along the ordinary routes of trade, and into the of the Itoths in the third century through captives taken in war. By the time that Constantine the Great, early in the fourth century. Caine in con tact with Christianity in Western Ern•ope, shrew-My championing it in his struggle for su premacy. groups of Christians were found in all parts of the Boman Empire, from Britain to Persia. Christians formed but a -mall pereent age of the population. But they had a high ideal and the energy of aspiration. This produced 1111 1Ingging activity in missions in the West and in the East. The monasteries now performed great services for religions culture in out-of-the-way places. In the fifth century the eentre of mis sionary initiative for the West seems to have been in Central Gaul. Theme bishops went over into Britain to help the I'lii•tinns settle doc trinal difficulties. and thence Patrick told: his new-found knowledge into Ireland. For the East at the same time the eentre of missions seems to have been in Mesopotamia, at plan, like Ede.sa and Nisibis. with a long chain of advance posts reaching into Central Asia and India. and with a sebum) at Samarkand. Toward the north at the saille period (q.v.) went on a mission to his heathen kin in the re gion of the Danube. given; them an alpha bet and a ililibo in their own tongue. In the sixth century the initiative in the West was from the British Islands eastward and from France northward, Desire to teach Christ brought Co lumba from Ireland to Iona, which became a won derful centre of Christian culture and of mis sionary zeal in behalf of Scotland. North Britain,
and Central Europe. As to the East. the -line of foreign missi(mal;e advance was among the Tatars and in China, and was carried on by Nestorians in relations with the Church in Meso potamia. At the very end of the sixth the beginning of a missionary policy in the Church as an organization appeared in the patch of Augustine and his helpers from Rome to England, where the Saxon invasion had nearly crushed out Christianity. Augustine's mission from the Pope was to evangelize the pagans and to win the assent of the English Christians to Roman ecclesiastical control. The method of operation of these independent missions was an adaptation of the monastic system which found vogue in the East in the third century. A hand of Christians under a leader would form a settle ment in a wild and savage region, where they labored for their own support. By kindness some of the barbarians would be drawn to settle near the monastery. After the favor of emperors be gan to give the Church numerical preponderance, power, and wealth, these gains led to spiritual loss, and missions were left to the chance ability of simple-minded believers in remote regions. At the beginning of the seventh century Christianity was still an Oriental religion. In Europe its northern bounds were, in general, marked by the Danube and the Alps, although during the cen tury missionaries made ineffectual attempts at a lodgment in Denmark, and Columban, going forth from Iona with his associates. began a fiery and successful propaganda among the barbarians of Central Europe. The narrow limits of European Christendom at this time should be borne in mind if we would realize the full mean ing to the Christian Church of the Mohammedan irruption. The Eastern Church bad one mo mentous mission to its credit in the ninth cen tury in its dispatch of Cyril and Methodius to endow the Slav races with knowledge of Jesus Christ and with a translation of the Scriptures. In the far East the Nestorians also continued their operations until the Tatars finally cast in their lot with Islam, and Tamerlane in the four teenth century destroyed the last vestiges of the Central Asian Churell. But with regard to the Church in general. from the end of the seventh century onward for nine hundred years the only Christian foreign missions were remote from the touch of the Mohammedan power. and belonged to the Western or Latin section of the Church.
it. THE MIDDLE PERIOD.