The Complete Works of John Percival Jones by John Percival Jones

Author:John Percival Jones [Jones, John Percival]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780599896246
Goodreads: 53215272
Publisher: Shrine of Knowledge
Published: 2020-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter VI.

The History Of Christian Effort In India.

Christianity found very early entrance into India. How early we cannot definitely say. The Syrian Church of Malabar traces its legendary origin to the “doubting disciple,” by whose name it loves to be called. The Romish Church also warmly supports this contention and exalts St. Thomas to a high place as the Patron Saint and Apostle of India.

Careful historical investigation entirely overthrows this old claim. The Thomas legends probably owe their existence to the natural desire of the Syrian Christians to connect their history with Apostolic origin and sanction. The name may also be confounded with a later Thomas, several of whom were conspicuous in the annals of the India Syrian Church.

The ancient vagueness of the name “India,” has also, doubtless, had no little influence in the formation of these legends. In the beginning of the Christian era “India” was a term of much wider application than at present. It included several countries in Southwestern Asia, and even a portion of Africa. While St. Thomas may therefore have laboured and died in “India,” it does not at all follow that his field of labour was within the limits of the peninsula now called by that name. Indeed, many [pg 164] historical incidents and facts agree in disproving Apostolic connection with the rise of Christianity in India.

Pantænus, the saintly and learned Presbyter and Christian philosopher of Alexandria and the renowned teacher of the illustrious church fathers, Clement and Origen, is the first honoured name which finds historic sanction in the grand roll of Christian missionaries to India. He visited Malabar, South India, during the last decade of the second century. He was a man wonderfully equipped by deep spiritual insight and piety and also by philosophic training and metaphysical acumen to become the messenger of Christian truth and life to the Buddhists and Brahmans who lived side by side in South India in those days.

We know little of his work in that land. He found in Malabar a colony of Jewish Christians who possessed a copy of the Gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew tongue, said to have been given to them by the Apostle Bartholomew. It is not known, however, whether this last named apostle laboured among these Christians in that region.

Probably a century later that Christian community formed connection with Antioch, Syria, which was the first of all Christian missionary centres; but which, through its Nestorian faith, soon lost its missionary ardour.

1. And thus emerges out of the darkness into its long and unique history the Syrian Church of Malabar.

It has passed through many vicissitudes and has lost much, if not all, of its positive Christian influence and missionary character. During a recent visit to [pg 165] that region I was saddened by the sight of this Christian community which had lived all these centuries in the centre of a heathen district with apparently no concern for the religious condition of the surrounding, non-Christian, masses—content to be as a separate

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