Christians Sentence Examples

The first Christians were regarded, even by themselves, as a Jewish sect.

To the left of the Turks and the right of the Christians, there was open sea.

Unable to bear up against the Dominican's fiery denunciations, the sovereigns, three months after the fall of Granada, issued a decree ordering every Jew either to embrace Christianity or to leave the country, four months being given to make up their minds; and those who refused to become Christians to order had leave to sell their property and carry off their effects.

Among the population were about 12,800 Christians, mostly Karens.

To his translation (1530) of a Latin Chronicle and Description of Turkey, by a Transylvanian captive, which had been prefaced by Luther, he added an appendix holding up the Turks as in many respects an example to Christians, and presenting in lieu of the restrictions of Lutheran, Zwinglian and Anabaptist sects, the vision of an invisible spiritual church, universal in its scope.

It faded away in the great Church, and probably Celsus was describing Montanist circles (though Origen assumed that they were ordinary believers) when he wrote 3 of the many Christians of no repute who at the least provocation, whether within or without their temples, threw themselves about like inspired persons; while others did the same in cities or among armies in order to collect alms, roaming about cities or camps.

This church contained some well-executed native paintings of St George and the Dragon, The Last Supper, &c. Among the religious observances of the Christians of Gondar is that of bathing in large crowds in the Gaha on the Feast of the Baptist, and again, though in more orderly fashion, on Christmas day.

Belief in a primitive historical revelation, once universal among Christians, has almost disappeared; but belief in a very early and highly moral theism is stoutly defended, chiefly on Australian evidence, by Andrew Lang (The Making of Religion and later works).

It Simplifi- is possible for Christians to work out natural theology in separate detail; but we cannot wonder if they rarely attempt the task, believing as they do that they have a fuller revelation of religious truth elsewhere.

The spiritual courts in the East have permanently acquired jurisdiction in the matrimonial causes of baptized persons; the Mahommedan governments allowing to Christians a personal law of their own.

In 177 occurred that persecution of Christians, the share of Aurelius in which has been the subject of so much controversy.

People said they were not Christians, but they too have souls.

The population of the island comprises 7000 Moslems, 21,000 Christians, and 2000 Jews.

The Christians suffered from systematic persecution, and many historians, with a strange lack of historical insight, have poured denunciation upon him for an attitude which was the natural outcome of his convictions.

Thirdly, there can be no doubt that the Christians had recently assumed a much bolder attitude, and thus segregated themselves from the mass of those unorthodox sects which the Roman could afford to despise.

When, therefore, we remember that Aurelius knew little of the Christians, that the only mention of them in the Meditations is a contemptuous reference to certain fanatics of their number whom even Clement of Alexandria compares for their thirst for martyrdom to the Indian gymnosophists, and finally that the least worthy of them were doubtless the most prominent, we cannot doubt that Aurelius was acting unquestionably in the best interests of a perfectly intelligible ideal.

In a brief epilogue, the apostle justifies himself for having thus addressed the Roman Christians.

His repute as a commentator on the Scriptures is still high; in the 17th and 18th centuries he was much read by Christians such as Buxtorf.

The greatest of all medieval Jewish scholars was Moses ben Maimon (Rambam), called Maimonides by Christians.

Much of his life was spent in controversy, not only with Christians (in 1293 before the king of Aragon), but also with his own people and on the views of the time.

Norman warriors had long before helped the Christians of Spain in their warfare with the Saracens of the Peninsula, and in Sicily it was from the same enemy that they won the great Mediterranean island.

In one place the Christians were in utter bondage, in another they were simply tributary; still, everywhere the Mussulman Saracen formed the ruling class, the Christian Greek formed the subject class.

There is a distinction between Christians and Saracens; among Christians there seems to be again a distinction between Greeks and Latins, though perhaps without any distinct use of the Latin name; there is again a further distinction between "Lombardi" and "Franci"; but Normans, as a separate class, do not appear.

The book contains expressions such as daemones, angelica virtus, and purgatoria dementia, which have been thought to be derived from the Christian faith; but they are used in a heathen sense, and are explained sufficiently by the circumstance that Boetius was on intimate terms with Christians.

On the other hand, Christians and Jews are pretty well agreed on natural theology; so the New Testament tends to take its theism for granted.

The Jews, less bitterly opposed to Mahommedanism than the Christians were, caught fire more rapidly, and in some cases served as an intermediate link or channel of communication.

He interpreted the Sermon on the Mount literally, denounced war and oaths, opposed the union of Church and State, and declared that the duty of all true Christians was to break away from the national Church and return to the simple teaching of Christ and His apostles.

Nowadays they are all nominally Christians.

They style themselves " truly spiritual Christians," and in their rejection of the sacraments, their indifference to outward forms, and their insistence on the spiritual interpretation of the Bible (" the letter killeth "), they are closely akin to the Quakers, whom they resemble also in their inoffensive mode of life and the practice of mutual help.

His dreams of freeing the Christians from the yoke of the infidel had to be abandoned, and the conquest of the northern shores of the Black Sea was postponed till the reign of Catherine II.

As protector Nicholas of the Orthodox Christians he espoused the cause of L and the the rayahs in Greece, Servia and Rumania.

In this way the development of Russian policy with regard to Turkey was checked for some years, but the project of confirming and extending the Russian protectorate over the Orthodox Christians was revived in 1852, when Napoleon III.

In the first instance it is probable that among Christians, as among Jews, every meal, and especially every social meal, was regarded as being in some sense a thank-offering.

Nearly all the natives are Christians, Protestant missions having been long established in several of the islands.

This meeting of Christians we admit deserves to be made illicit, if it resembles illicit acts; it deserves to be condemned, if any complain of it on the same score on which complaints are levelled at factious meetings.

The time was one of fierce persecution directed against the Christians, and the bishop of Carthage became a prominent object of attack.

The struggle between Conrad and Guy paralysed the energies of the Christians in 1191.

Many religious teachers and many revolutionaries were crucified within this period; and the early Christians were outwardly distinguished from other Jews only by their scrupulous observance of religious duties.

But the admission of Christians into the Jewish fold was punished by confiscation of goods (357), the erection of new synagogues was arrested by Theodosius II.

A similar penalty attached to intermarriage between Jews and Christians, and an attempt was made to nullify all Jewish marriages which were not celebrated in accordance with Roman law.

The caliph Omar initiated in the 7th century a code which required Christians and Jews to wear peculiar dress, denied them the right to hold state offices or to possess land, inflicted a poll-tax on them, and while forbidding them to enter mosques, refused them the permission to build new places of worship for themselves.

Already under Charlemagne this development is noticeable; in his generous treatment of the Jews this Christian emperor stood in marked contrast to his contemporary the caliph Harun al-Rashid, who persecuted Jews and Christians with equal vigour.

But the reconquest of Andalusia by the Christians associated towards the end of the 15th century with the establishment of the Inquisition, introduced a spirit of intolerance which led to the expulsion of the Jews and Moors.

Restrictions on their occupations were everywhere common, and as the Church forbade Christians to engage in usury, this was the only trade open to the Jews.

The emperor even permitted Jewish wholesale merchants, notables and their sons, to wear swords (January 2, 1782), and especially insisted that Christians should behave in a friendly manner towards Jews."

The most petty limitations of Jewish commercial activity continued; thus at about this period the community of Prague, in a petition, " complain that they are not permitted to buy victuals in the market before a certain hour, vegetables not before 9 and cattle not before II o'clock; to buy fish is sometimes altogether prohibited; Jewish druggists are not permitted to buy victuals at the same time with Christians " (op. cit.).

The ancient liturgy used by the Christians of Toledo is commonly known as Mozarabic.

According to the census taken in June 1900, the population of the island was 301,273, the Christians having increased to 267,266, while the Moslems had diminished to 33,281.

The Moslems, as well as the Christians, are of Greek origin and speak Greek.

Owing to the existence of a strong Mussulman minority among its inhabitants, the warlike character of the natives, and the mountainous configuration of the country, which enabled a portion of the Christian population to maintain itself in a state of partial independence, the island has constantly been the scene of prolonged and sanguinary struggles in which the numerical superiority of the Christians was counterbalanced by the aid rendered to the Moslems by the Ottoman troops.

In 1813 the ruthless severity of the governor-general, Haji Osman, who obtained the co-operation of the Christians, broke the power of the janissaries; but after Osman had fallen a victim.

The Christians were ready for another outbreak, when, in 1878, the Greek government, finding Hellenic aspirations ignored by the treaty of San Stefano, gave the signal for agitation in the island.

During the insurrection which followed, the usual barbarities were committed on both sides; the Christians betook themselves to the mountains, and the Mussulman peasants crowded into the fortified towns.

A parliamentary regime was thus inaugurated, and party warfare for a time took the place of the old religious antagonism, the Moslems attaching themselves to one or other of the political factions which now made their appearance among the Christians.

Unlike the two preceding movements, the insurrection of 1889 resulted unfavourably for the Christians.

The firman was undoubtedly illegal, as it violated a convention possessing a quasi-international sanction, but the Christians were unable to resist, and the powers abstained from intervention.

The elections held under the new system proved a failure, the Christians refusing to go to the polls, and for the next five years Crete was governed absolutely by a succession of Mahommedan Valis.

In 1894 the Porte, at the instance of the powers, nominated a Christian, Karatheodory Pasha, to the governorship, and the Christians, mollified by the concession, agreed to take part in the assembly which soon afterwards was convoked; no steps, however, were taken to remedy the financial situation, which became the immediate cause of the disorders that followed.

The Epitrope was at first nothing more than a handful of discontented politicians who had failed to find places in the administration, but some slight reverses which it succeeded in inflicting on the Turkish troops brought thousands of armed Christians to its side, and in April 1896 it found itself strong enough to invest the important garrison town of Vamos.

The indignation of the Christians increased, a state of insecurity prevailed, and the Moslem peasants refused to return to their homes.

The aim of the society was a war with Turkey with a view to the acquisition of Macedonia, and it found a ready instrument for its designs in the growing discontent of the Cretan Christians.

Affairs were brought to a climax by a series of conflicts which took place at Canea on the 4th of February; the Turkish troops fired on the Christians, a conflagration broke out in the town, and many thousands of Christians took refuge on the foreign warships in the bay.

The first withdrawal of the troops (July 27), hailed with enthusiasm by the Cretan Christians, led to rioting by the Mussulmans, who believed themselves abandoned to their fate.

The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians.

The first Christians continued to observe the Jewish festivals, though in a new spirit, as commemorations of events which those festivals had foreshadowed.

Although the observance of Easter was at a very early period the practice of the Christian church, a serious difference as to the day for its observance soon arose between the Christians of Jewish and those of Gentile descent, which led to a long and bitter controversy.

With the Jewish Christians, whose leading thought was the death of Christ as the Paschal Lamb, the fast ended at the same time as that of the Jews, on the fourteenth day of the moon at evening, and the Easter festival immediately followed, without regard to the day of the week.

The Gentile Christians, on the other hand, unfettered by Jewish traditions, identified the first day of the week with the Resurrection, and kept the preceding Friday as the commemoration of the crucifixion, irrespective of the day of the month.

This Polycrates firmly refused to agree to, and urged many weighty reasons to the contrary, whereupon Victor proceeded to excommunicate Polycrates and the Christians who continued the Eastern usage.

When, in the 5th century A.D., owing to theological differences the Syriac-using Christians became divided into Nestorians or East Syrians and Jacobites (Monophysites) or West Syrians, certain differences of pronunciation, chiefly in the vowels, began to develop themselves.

West of the Sutlej the population of Asia may be said to be wholly Mahommedan with the exception of certain relatively small areas in Asia Minor and Syria, where Christians predominate.

The Armenians are Christians, mostly of the national Gregorian Church (979,566), though 34,000 are Roman Catholics.

This school, of which the origin (though assigned to Athenagoras) is unknown, was the first and for a long time the only institution where Christians were instructed simultaneously in the Greek sciences and the doctrines of the holy Scriptures.

As the attendance at his classes continually increased - pagans thronging; to him as well as Christians - he handed over the beginners to his friend Heracles, and took charge of the more advanced pupils himself.

The ten books of Stromata (in which Origen compared the teaching of the Christians with that of the philosophers, and corroborated all the Christian dogmas from Plato, Aristotle, Numenius and Cornutus) have all perished, with the exception of small fragments; so have the tractates on the resurrection and on freewill.2 6.

All this speaks of intense hatred alike of Jews and Christians; the fasts, celibacy and monastic and anchoret life of the latter are peculiarly objectionable to the Mandaeans.

The aim of the work is to show, on Scriptural grounds, that sins of professing Christians are to be punished by civil authority, and not by withholding of sacraments on the part of the clergy.

A third part shows, from the practices of their religious worship, that the Christians had in truth dedicated themselves to God.

The whole closes with an appeal to the princes, with a reference to the edict issued by Hadrian in favour of the Christians.

In the so-called Second Apology, Justin takes occasion from the trial of a Christian recently held in Rome to argue that the innocence of the Christians was proved by the very persecutions.

It must not, however, be forgotten that Justin is here speaking as the apologist of Christianity to an educated Pagan public, on whose philosophical view of life he had to base his arguments, and from whom he could not expect an intimate comprehension of the religious position of Christians.

As a result of his moderation, he remained high-priest till his death, venerated alike by Christians and pagans.

The essential unity and interdependence of "all God's faithful people scattered throughout the world," is common to all sections of Christians.

To the Romanist " Catholic " means " Roman Catholic "; to the high Anglican it means whatever is common to the three " historic " branches into which he conceives the church to be divided - Roman, Anglican and Orthodox; to the Protestant pure and simple it means either what it does to the Romanist, or, in expansive moments, simply what is " universal " to all Christians.

The church of St James, belonging to a small community of Jacobite Christians, and a few pillars and blocks of masonry are the only remains of the former greatness of the town.

He put down the rebellion of his brother Zareh, and is praised as a mild and generous monarch, who made concessions to the Christians.

The ground-idea was to reproduce the life of the first Christians as described in Acts iv.

For centuries, however, a lively intercourse was maintained between the Latin Church in Jerusalem, which the clemency of the Arab conquerors tolerated, and the Christians of the West.

The native Christians suffered; the pilgrims of the West found their way made still more difficult, and that at a time when greater numbers than ever were thronging to the East.

Western Christians could not but feel hampered and checked in their natural movement towards the fountainhead of their religion, and it was natural that they should ultimately endeavour to clear the way.

But while the Christians of the West were thus winning fresh ground from the Mahommedans, in the course of the 11th century, the East Roman empire had now to bear the brunt of a Mahommedan revival under the Seljuksa revival which, while it crushed for a time the Greeks, only acted as a new incentive to the Latins to carry their arms to the East.

Let the truce of God be observed at home; and let the arms of Christians be directed to the winning of Jerusalem in an expedition which should count for full and complete penance.

Greeks; lastly, there are the Crusades waged by the papacy against revolted Christians - John of England and Frederick II.

Yet it had at any rate saved for the Christians the principality of Antioch, the county of Tripoli, and some of the coast towns of the kingdom; 2 and if it had failed to accomplish its object, it had left behind, none the less, many important results.

National rivalries had been accentuated and national differences brought into prominence by the meeting of the nations in a common enterprise; while, on the other hand, Mahommedans and Christians had fraternized as they had never done before during the progress of a Crusade.

Malik-al-Adil, the brother of Saladin, had by 1200 succeeded to his brother's possessions not only in Egypt but also in Syria, and he granted the Christians a series of truces (1198-1203, 1204-1210, 1211-1217).

By the treaty of the 18th of February 1229, which was to last for ten years, the sultan conceded to Frederick, in addition to the coast towns already in the possession of the Christians, Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, with a strip of territory connecting Jerusalem with the port of Acre.

The Christians were, however, able to maintain a footing in Syria for forty years after St Louis' departure, not by reason of their own strength, but owing to two powers which checked the advance of the Mamelukes.

In the second place, the Mongols of the 13th century were not as yet, in any great numbers, Mahommedans; the official religion was "Shamanism," but in the Mongol army there were many Christians, the results of early Nestorian missions to the far East.

While these things were taking place around them, the Christians of the kingdom of Jerusalem only hastened their own fall by internal dissensions which repeated the history of the period preceding 1187.

A great field for missionary enterprise opened itself in the Mongol empire, in which, as has already been mentioned, there were many Christians to be found; and by 1350 this field had been so well worked that Christian missions and Christian bishops were established from Persia to Peking, and from the Dnieper to Tibet itself.

The Christians are an important element, constituting probably as much as a fifth of the whole population; the majority of them belong to the Orthodox Greek Church, which has two patriarchs in Syria, at Antioch and Jerusalem.

The Christians constitute the educated portion of the Syrian people; but the spirit of rivalry has produced stimulative effects on the Mahommedans, who had greatly fallen away from that zeal for knowledge which characterized the earlier centuries of their faith.

On both sides was civil war, urged as fiercely as that against the common enemy, in which the parties sought allies indiscriminately among Christians and Mahommedans.

Eusebius was so much struck by the likeness of the Therapeutae to the Christian monks of his own day as to claim that they were Christians converted by the preaching of St Mark.

Eusebius having gone wrong on this point, others of the Fathers followed suit, so that Philo is reckoned by Jerome among the ecclesiastical writers of the Christians.

Whilst other Christians, following St Paul, were content to do all things for the glory of God, Ignatius set himself and his followers to strive after the greater glory.

In the public and private use of Christians some parts of Ephesians have been among the most favourite of all New Testament passages.

During the conflict between Paganism and Christianity when many Christians "testified" to the truth of their convictions by sacrificing their lives, the word assumed its modern technical sense.

In the anticipations of the future prevalent amongst the early Christians (c. 50-150) it is necessary to distinguish a fixed and a fluctuating element.

Nay more, the Gentile Christians took possession of them, and just in proportion as they were neglected by the Jews - who, after the war of Bar-Cochba, became indifferent to the Messianic hope and hardened themselves once more in devotion to the law - they were naturalized in the Christian communities.

There were pure evangelical forces at work in it; and many Anabaptists need not shun comparison with the Christians of the apostolic and post-apostolic ages.

Thereupon the Quakers, who were perhaps not without the -obstinacy of which Marcus Aurelius complained in the early Christians, rushed to Massachusetts as if invited, and the result was that the general court of the colony banished them on pain of death, and four of them, three men and one woman,were hanged for refusing to depart from the jurisdiction or for obstinately returning within it.

Their kingdom, too, was divided and weakened by the fierce hostility between the orthodox Christians and those who professed Arianism.

Leovigild himself was an Arian, being the last of the Visigothic kings to hold that creed; but he was not a bitter foe of the orthodox Christians, although he was obliged to punish them when they conspired against him with his external enemies.

Allying himself with the Byzantines and other enemies of the Visigoths, and supported by most of the orthodox Christians he headed a formidable insurrection.

His work, Monumenti delle anti christiane primitive, is the first in which the strange misconception, received with unquestioning faith by earlier writers, that the catacombs were exhausted sand-pits adapted by the Christians to the purpose of interment, was dispelled, and the true history of their formation demonstrated.

A romantic air has been thrown over these burial chapels by the notion that they were the places of worship used by the Christians in times of FIG.

Very exaggerated statements have been made as to the employment of the catacombs as dwelling-places by the Christians in times of persecution.

It was accepted as an unquestionable fact by every one who undertook to describe the catacombs, that the Christians of Rome, finding in the labyrinthine mazes of the exhausted arenariae, which abounded in the environs of the city, whence the sand used in building had been extracted, a suitable place for the interment of their martyred brethren, where also the sacred rites accompanying the interment might be celebrated without fear of interruption, took possession of them and used them as cemeteries.

Starting with the firmest belief in the old traditional view, his own researches by degrees opened his eyes to the truth, now universally recognized, that the catacombs were exclusively the work of the Christians, and were constructed for the interment of the dead.

Another equally erroneous idea was that these vast burialplaces of the early Christians remained entirely concealed from the eyes of their pagan neighbours, and were constructed not only without the permission of the municipal authorities but without their cognizance.

Its interest lies, not in its doctrines, which have often been absurdly over-estimated (particularly among Christians), but in its contribution to the study of human thought.

This book was widely read by Christians; it was rendered into various languages, and in 1650 was translated into English by Edward Chilmead.

They have the same love for poetry, music and romance; the same intense pride in their race and history; many of the same superstitions and customs. The Christians retain the Servian costume, modified in detail, as by the occasional use of the turban or fez.

In 18 95 43% of the population were Orthodox Christians, 35% Moslems and 21% Roman Catholics.

The power of the Bosnian nobles, though shaken by their defeat, remained unbroken; and they resisted vigorously when their kapetanates were abolished in 1837; and again when a measure of equality before the law was conceded to the Christians in 1839.

He sent large bribes to influential persons at Constantinople; he aided the Turkish vali to repress the Christians, who had again revolted; and he supported the Bosnian nobles against reforms imposed by the vali.

Serajevo was burned in 1697 by Eugene of Savoy, who similarly deported 40,000 Christians.

Sporadic insurrections had already broken out among the Bosnian Christians, and on the 1st of July 1875 the villagers of Nevesinje, which gives its name to a mountain neolithische Station von Butmir (Vienna 1895-1898); P. Ballif, Romische Strassen in Bosnien and Herzegovina (Vienna, 1893, &c.).

Out of a population of 13,241,000 (1896) in Armenia, Kurdistan and Asia Minor, 10,030,000 were returned as Mahommedans, 1,144,000 as Armenians, 1,818,000 as other Christians, and 249,000 as Jews.

Among the Christians, especially the Armenians, the Greeks of Smyrna and the Syrians of Beirut, it has long embraced a considerable range of subjects, such as classical Greek, Armenian and Syriac, as well as modern French, Italian and English, modern history, geography and medicine.

In virtue of the enactments of May 1880, of November 1886, of February 1888 and of December 1903, military service had been obligatory on all Mussulmans, Christians having been excluded but under obligation of paying a " military exoneration tax " of T50 for 135 males between the ages of 15 and 75.

The battle was hotly contested; but, in spite of the prowess of Hunyadi, the rout of the Christians was complete; the king of Hungary and Cardinal Cesarini were among the killed.

The humane and tolerant measures provided for in the " nizam-i-jedid," or new regulations for the better treatment of the Christians enacted by Mustafa Kuprili during his grand vizierate (1689-1691), did for a time improve the position of the rayas.

He demanded the recognition of the status quo in the holy places, and of the tsar's right, under the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, to the protectorate of all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman dominions.

It was stipulated that Turkey's promises of reform gave no power the right of interference on behalf of the Christians.

Christians are not allowed to enter its precincts, and the population of the Kazemain quarter is so fanatical that it is difficult and even dangerous to approach it.

There are about 34,000 Jews occupying a quarter of their own in the north-western part of the city; while in a neighbouring quarter dwell upwards of 6000 Christians, chiefly so-called Chaldaeans or Nestorians.

The porters of the town are all Kurds, the river-men Chaldaean Christians.

It was through possessing somewhat of this Reason that the philosophers attained to any truth and goodness; but in Christians he dwells more fully and guides them through all the perplexities of life.

The Jew and the heathen had the gospel preached to them in the world below by Christ and his apostles, and Christians will have to pass through processes of purification and trial after death before they reach knowledge and perfect bliss.

He was also the first to introduce Oriental founts of type into Rumania, and he printed there the first Arabic missal for the Christians of the East (Ramnicu, 1702).

The tree has also been introduced along the Mediterranean shores of Europe; but as its fruit does not ripen so far north, the European plants are only used to supply leaves for the festival of Palm Sunday among Christians, and for the celebration of the Passover by Jews.

In support of their views they appealed to scripture and to the Western Fathers, who had used the term "adoption" as synonymous with "assumption" in the orthodox sense; and especially to Christ's fraternal relation to Christians - the brother of God's adopted sons.

They were at first allowed religious freedom, but became Christians under compulsion in 1300.

And the Church policy, as old as the times of Constantine, to crush utterly the man who brings more problems and pressure than the bulk of traditional Christians can, at the time, either digest or resist with a fair discrimination, seemed to the authorities the one means to save the very difficult situation.

In 793 Hescham, the successor of Abd-al-Rahman II., proclaimed a holy war against the Christians, and collected an army of Ioo,000 men, half of which was directed against the kingdom of the Asturias, while the second invaded France, penetrating as far as Narbonne.

He also killed most of his other relatives, and persecuted the Christians.

Among the early Christians, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Synesius were eclectics in philosophy.

Pop. 8000 and upward, about one-tenth Christians; except in the official classes, there are no Turks.

With them, as with the bulk of the Christians of the 1st and 2nd centuries, apocryphal books as such were highly esteemed.

We have remarked above that the Jewish apocrypha - especially the apocalyptic section and the host of Christian apocryphsbecame the ordinary religious literature of the early Christians.

Christians being released, in important particulars, from conformity to the Old Testament polity as a whole, a real difficulty attended the settlement of the limits and the immediate authority of the remainder, known vaguely as the moral law.

Pop. 30,000; Moslems about 20,000, of whom a large proportion are Kizilbash (Shia); Christians (mostly Armenians), 10,000.

Its population comprises about 993,000 Moslems and 27,000 Christians.

The population of 16,000 includes about 2 500 Christians.

The present population of Adalia, which includes many Christians and Jews, still living, as in the middle ages, in separate quarters, the former round the walled mina or port, is about 25,000.

Tumults and massacres of Christians occurred in 1850 and 1862, accompanied by great destruction of property; but on the whole, since the - consolidation of Ottoman rule over Syria by Abdul Mejid's ministers, Aleppo has been reviving, although its trade is more local than of old.

The Jews in 1900 numbered 851,378, not counting the very great number who have become Christians, who are reckoned as Magyars.

The bishops prided themselves on being great statesmen, great scholars, great financiers, great diplomatists - anything, in fact, but good Christians.

The work contains accounts of John the Baptist and Jesus, which may account for the fact that Josephus' writings were rescued from oblivion by the Christians.

Hippolytus tells us that in his time most Christians said " the Psalms of David," and believed the whole book to be his; but this title and belief are both of Jewish origin, for in 2 Macc. ii.

They were for some time ruled by a Portuguese, Joao Albasini, who had adopted native customs. Since 1873 Swiss Protestant missionaries have lived among then and many of the Shangaans are Christians and civilized.

Of the total population 26.69 are Christians, and of the Christians 80% are whites.

Of the 336,869 Christians 69,738 were natives.

Another early Monophysite was Simeon of Beth Arsham, who by a series of journeys and disputations within the Persian empire did all he could to prevent the triumph of Nestorianism among the Persian Christians.

The other, which has been often edited,' is an account of a severe persecution which the Himyarite Christians of Najran in south-west Arabia underwent in 523, at the hands of the king of Yemen.

In lower Achradina remains of Roman private houses have been found, and it is in this district that the early Christians 4 constructed their catacombs.

Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine and the Apostolic Constitutions make no reference to any such feature either in the public or private worship of the Christians of that time.

And the whole argument from analogy is in favour of the presumption of the ceremonial use of incense by the Christians from the first.

There could be no real offence to Christians in the burning of incense.

The number of Burmese Christians is considerably increased by the inclusion among them of the Christian descendants of the Portuguese settlers of Syriam deported to the old Burmese Tabayin, a village now included in the Ye-u subdivision of Shwebo.

These Christians returned themselves as Burmese.

The fragments in Origen represent Jacob as speaking and claiming to be "the first servant in God's presence," "the first-begotten of every creature animated by God," and declaring that the angel who wrestled with Jacob (and was identified by Christians with Christ) was only eighth in rank.

He was a man of brutal and worthless character; but although Gibbon's statement that he was "just, humane and even partial towards the afflicted Christians" may be exaggerated, it is probable that he never exhibited any special hostility towards them.

In Rome, as at home, Gamaliel often had occasion to defend Judaism in polemical discussions with pagans, and also with professed Christians.

Pop. about 1 2,500, including a few Christians.

This being so, the epistle was probably written, not to Alexandria, but rather by a "teacher" of the Alexandrine Church to some body of Christians in Lower Egypt among whom he had recently been visiting.

At last, in 562, a peace was concluded for 50 years, in which the Persians left Lazistan to the Romans, and promised not to persecute the Christians, if they did not attempt to make proselytes among the Zarathustrians; on the other hand, the Romans had again to pay subsidies to Persia.

When one of his sons had rebelled about 550 and was taken prisoner, he did not execute him; nor did he punish the Christians who had supported him.

At the beginning of his reign he favoured the Christians; but when in 602 Maurice had been murdered by Phocas, he began war with Rome to avenge his death.

These were Christians, whose ecclesiastical language was Syriac, though the language of intercourse was Arabic. A Christian bishop of Hira is known to have attended a synod in 410.

To this end he expelled the Christians from Nejran and gave them lands in Syria and Irak, where they were allowed to live in peace on payment of tribute.

But the Omayyads (with one exception) were not religious men and, while preserving the outward forms of Islam, allowed full liberty to the pre-Islamic customs of the Arabs and the beliefs and practices of Christians.

In 608 Magian influence was so strong in Persia that the Christians were persecuted and the office of catholicus was vacant for 20 years, being filled again by Jesu-Jabus, during whose patriarchate the Mahommedan invasion overran Persia.

The patriarch was able to secure from the caliph permission for the Christians to practice their religion in return for tribute money and this was afterwards remitted.

They have a see at Bagdad, a monastery (Rabban Hormuz) at Elk06sh, and are called by those Syrian Christians who have resisted the papal overtures, Maghlabin (" the conquered").

The 400,000 Syrian Christians ("Christians of St Thomas," see Thomas, St) who live in Malabar no doubt owe their origin to Nestorian missionaries, the stories of the evangelization of India by the Apostles Thomas and Bartholomew having no real historical foundation, and the Indian activity of Pantaenus of Alexandria having proved fruitless, in whatever part of India it may have been exercised.

The theology of the Indian Syrian Christians is of a Nestorian type, and Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century) puts us on the right track when he says that the Christians whom he found in Ceylon and Malabar had come from Persia (probably as refugees from persecution, like the Huguenots in England and the Pilgrim Fathers in America).

The invitation was declined, but in the 16th century the Syrian Christians sought the help of the Portuguese settlers against Mussulman oppression, only to find that before long they were subjected to the fiercer perils of Jesuit antagonism and the Inquisition.

No Jews or Christians are allowed to reside there.

In the 14th century the Christians were almost exterminated.

The Jews, expelled from Constantinople, sought a home amongst them, developed the Khazar trade, and contended with Mahommedans and Christians for the theological allegiance of the Pagan people.

It was captured during the Russian campaigns of 1828 and 1854, also in 1878, but was then recaptured by the Turks, who subjected the Russian garrison to a long siege; the place was ultimately relieved, but a massacre of Christians then took place in the streets.

The Pisan fleet of three hundred sail, commanded by the archbishop Pietro Moriconi, attacked the Balearic Isles, where as many as 20,000 Christians were said to be held captive by the Moslems, and returned loaded with spoil and with a multitude of Christian and Moslem prisoners.

But the visible remains of Saracenic art in Tunis and its vicinity are of relatively recent date, the few mosques which might offer earlier examples not being open to inspection by Christians.

But all Christians and foreigners are directly governed by the French, and the native administration is supervised by a staff of thirteen French controleurs and their French and Tunisian subordinates.

There are about 24,000 inhabitants - all Moslems except about 150 Samaritans and perhaps 700 Christians.

Hermas sees that mere repentance is not enough to meet the backsliding condition in which so many Christians then were, owing to the recoil of inveterate habits of worldliness 4 entrenched in society around and within.

Here lies a great merit of Hermas's book, his insight into experimental religion and the secret of failure in Christians about him, to many of whom Christianity had come by birth rather than personal conviction.

In Bagdad he stayed several years, studying the Koran and other works of Moslem theology, for controversial purposes, arguing with Nestorian Christians, and writing.

The population (99 0, 000 Moslems and 80,000 Christians) is for the most part agricultural and pastoral.

Pop. 45,000, including 5000 Christians.

None the less Richard, whom even the French crusaders accepted as their leader, upheld the failing cause of the Frankish Christians with valour and tenacity.

The country round Sardis was frequently ravaged both by Christians and by Turks during the 13th century.

Finally in 1390 Philadelphia, which had for some time been an independent Christian city, surrendered to Sultan Bayezid's mixed army of Ottoman Turks and Byzantine Christians, and the Seljuk power in the Hermus valley was merged in the Ottoman empire.

The presence of Jews and Christians was encouraged and the Christians possessed a church.

As many as 5000 Christians lived peaceably in Tlemcen, and the Sultan included in his army a Christian bodyguard.

He conceived it as " a religious monopoly " to which " the nation at large contributes," while " Presbyterians alone receive," and which placed him in " a relation to the state " so " seriously objectionable " as to be " impossible to hold."5 The invidious distinction it drew between Presbyterians on the one hand, and Catholics, Friends, freethinking Christians, unbelievers and Jews on the other, who were compelled to support a ministry they " conscientiously disapproved," offended his always delicate conscience; while possibly the intellectual and ecclesiastical atmosphere of the city proved uncongenial to his liberal magnanimity.

But before accepting this conclusion as final, one must not lose sight of the fact that the so-called chiaroscuro engraving was at the height of its use in Italy at the same time that embassies from thc Christians in Japan visited Rome, and that it is thus possiblc that the suggestion at least may have been derived from Europe.

His episcopate, which lasted some thirty years, was characterized by great missionary zeal, and by so much success that, according to the (doubtless somewhat rhetorical) statement of Gregory of Nyssa, whereas at the outset of his labours there were only seventeen Christians in the city, there were at his death only seventeen persons in all who had not embraced Christianity.

The principal works of Gregory Thaumaturgus are the Panegyricus in Origenem (Eis 't ptybniv iravrnvpucos Xbyos), which he wrote when on the point of leaving the school of that great master (it contains a valuable minute description of Origen's mode of instruction), a Metaphrasis in Ecclesiasten, characterized by Jerome as " short but useful "; and an Epistola canonica, which treats of the discipline to be undergone by those Christians who under pressure of persecution had relapsed into paganism, but desired to be restored to the privileges of the Church.

When Julian published an edict forbidding Christians to lecture on polite literature, Victorinus closed his school.

They are even forbidden to enter the houses of Christians, and from such a pollution have to be purified before entering their own houses.

We order that the adherents of this faith be called Catholic Christians; we brand all the senseless followers of the other religions with the infamous name of heretics, and forbid their conventicles assuming the name of churches.

Thus would arise the confusion between Christians and Cretins.

Since the establishment of the privileged province they have lost the Ottoman support which used to compensate for their numerical inferiority as compared with the Christians; and they are fast losing also their old habits and distinctiveness.

The Lebanon is under a military governor (mushir)who must be a Christian in the service of the sultan, approved by the powers, and has, so far, been chosen from the Roman Catholics owing to the great preponderance of Latin Christians in the province.

Under the governor are seven kaimakams, all Christians except a Druse in Shuf, and forty-seven niudirs, who all depend on the kaimakams except one in the home district of Deir al-Kamar.

They are mostly Christians or Mahommedans.

The natives are all Christians, and the majority have learned to read and write, and to speak a little English, under the tuition of the London Missionary Society.

Denis in 1837 says explicitly that Barbarossa was the name applied by Christians to Khair-ed-Din.

The incessant conflicts among the Berber princes of northern Africa gave him employment as a mercenary, which he varied by piratical raids on the trade of the Christians.

For years he was engaged in subduing the native princes, and in carrying on warfare with the Christians.

As a combatant in the forefront of the war with the Christians he became a great hero in Islam, and dreaded by its enemies under his name of Barbarossa.

There were many who did not become, but who were, and therefore remained, Christians.

Then, in addition to this, Christians were already found in all ranks and occupations - in the Imperial palace, among the officials, in the abodes of labour and the halls of learning, amongst slaves and freemen.

It was natural that warning voices should then be raised in the Church against secular tendencies, that the wellknown counsels about the imitation of Christ should be held up in their literal strictness before worldly Christians.

He wished to organize a special community of true Christians to wait for the coming of their Lord.

But after the year 177 a persecution of Christians broke out simultaneously in many provinces of the Empire.

Moreover, it made demands on individual Christians such as very few could comply with.

When Montanus proposed to summon all true Christians to Pepuza, in order to live a holy life and prepare for the day of the Lord, there was nothing whatever to prevent the execution of his plan except the inertia and lukewarmness of Christendom.

Tertullian exhausted the resources of dialectic in the endeavour to define and vindicate the relation of the spiritualists to the "psychic" Christians; but no one will say he has succeeded in clearing the Montanistic position of its fundamental inconsistency.

But "on the holiest soil of history, he gave his people a fatherland"; and Fulcher of Chartres, his chaplain, who paints at the beginning of Baldwin's reign the terrors of the lonely band of Christians in the midst of their foes, can celebrate at the end the formation of a new nation in the East (qui fuimus occidentales, nunc facti sumus orientales) - an achievement which, so far as it was the work of any one man, was the work of Baldwin I.

If the essence of Christianity is winnowed down to a bare imitation of the Man Jesus, and his religion is accepted as Buddhists accept the religion of Buddha, still it cannot be denied that the early Christians put their trust in Christ rather than his religion.

Their creed became the passport by which Christians in strange cities could obtain admission to assemblies for worship and to common meals.

Their form of church government is Congregational; they take the Bible as the sole rule of faith and practice, and while adopting immersion as the proper mode of baptism, freely welcome Christians of every sect to their communion.

The original seceders in Virginia and North Carolina bore for a time the name "Republican Methodists," and then called themselves simply "Christians," a designation which with the pronunciation "Christ-yans" is still of ten applied to them.

The emperor is afraid that the fire-brigade might become a "political club," and cautiously contents himself with approving the provision of a fire-engine (34) Trajan's fear of factions and clubs in these two last cases has sometimes been connected with the question of his attitude towards the Christians in Bithynia.

Hitherto, in the case of those who were brought before him, he had asked them three distinct times whether they were Christians, and, if they persisted in the admission, had ordered them to be taken to execution.

Some of them, who denied that they had ever been Christians, had consented to pray to the gods, to adore the image of the emperor, and to blaspheme Christ; these he had dismissed.

Others admitted that they were Christians, but presently denied it, adding that they had ceased to be Christians for some years.

Trajan in his reply (Epp. 97) expresses approval of Pliny's course of action in the case of the Christians brought before him.

Hardy that the "double aspect of Trajan's rescript, which, while it theoretically condemned the Christians, practically gave them a certain security," explains "the different views which have since been taken of it; but by most of the church writers, and perhaps on the whole with justice, it has been regarded as favourable and as rather discouraging persecution than legalizing it" (Pliny's Correspondence with Trajan, 63, 210-217).

He appears to have been born about 340; his parents were Christians, orthodox though living among people mostly Arians and wealthy.

Pope Liberius baptized him in 360; three years later the news of the death of the emperor Julian came to Rome, and Christians felt relieved from a great dread.

This was the belief of the pagans, and the Christians for centuries shared it with them.

One capital argument of the Christians was the absurdity of a man making an idol and then being afraid of or adoring the work of his own hands.

It is ruled by a governor, and, along with Timor (East Indies), constitutes a bishopric, to which belong also the Portuguese Christians in Malacca and Singapore.

As the Greek and Roman methods of computing time were connected with certain pagan rites and observances which the Christians held in abhorrence, the latter began at an early period to imitate the Jews in reckoning their years from the supposed period of the creation of the world.

For this purpose they adopted a cycle of eighty-four years, which is mentioned by several of the ancient fathers of the church, and which the early Christians borrowed from them for the regulation of Easter.

Buccherius places the beginning of this cycle in the year 162 B.C.; Prideaux in the year 291 B.C. According to the account of Prideaux, the fifth cycle must have begun in the year 46 of our era; and it was in this year, according to St Prosperus, that the Christians began to employ the Jewish cycle of eighty-four years, which they followed, though not uniformly, for the regulation of Easter, till the time of the Council of Nice.

Soon after the Nicene council, the Jews, in imitation of the Christians, abandoned the cycle of eighty-four years, and adopted that of Meton, by which their lunisolar year is regulated at the present day.

The chronological computation of Julius Africanus was adopted by the Christians of Alexandria, who accordingly reckoned 5500 years from the creation of Adam to the birth of Christ.

The chronological reckoning of Julius Africanus formed also the basis of the era of Antioch, which was adopted by the Christians of Syria, at the instance of Panodorus, an Egyptian monk, who flourished about the beginning of the 4th century.

The denomination of Era of Martyrs, subsequently given to it in commemoration of the persecution of the Christians, would seem to imply that its commencement ought to be referred to the year 303 of our era, for it was in that year that Diocletian issued his famous edict; but the practice of dating from the accession of Diocletian has prevailed.

Many, if not most, of them were in reality of the same race as the Christians, and were descended from converts to Islam.

As they were dependent on the protection of the landlords, the Mahommedans were docile tenants, and their competition weighed heavily on the Christians.

In some known cases the expelled Moriscos suffered martyrdom in Africa as Christians.

The famous letter to Pliny about the Christians is, according to Roman ideas, merciful and considerate.

Hence the conflict which made Trajan appear in the eyes of Christians like Tertullian the most infamous of monsters.

Before his coronation as emperor, Charles had entered into communications with the caliph of Bagdad, Harun-al-Rashid, probably in order to protect the eastern Christians, and in 801 he had received an embassy and presents from Harun.

In the same year the patriarch of Jerusalem sent him the keys of the Holy Sepulchre; and in 807 Harun not only sent further gifts, but appears to have confirmed the emperor's rights in Jerusalem, which, however, probably amounted to no more than an undefined protectorate over the Christians in that part of the world.

Not improbably the sealing means to our author the preservation not from death, but through death from unfaithfulness, and the number 144,000 would signify mystically the entire body of true Christians, which formed the true people of God.

When the reviser recast the passage it dealt not with the destruction of Jerusalem, but with the persecution of the Christians.

The Christians were attacked on slanderous charges of superstition and secret abominations, but not as a church.

So far as we can discover, no persecution was directed against Christians as Christians till Domitian's time.

It was razed by the Moors and rebuilt later by the Christians.

Prophecies current among the Christians in Syria of the destruction of Mahomet's sect after six centuries of duration added to the excitement attending these rumours.

The delusion was dissipated slowly, and even after the great Tatar invasion and devastation of eastern Europe its effects still influenced the mind of Christendom and caused popes and kings to send missions to the Tatar hordes with a lingering feeling that their khans, if not already Christians, were at least always on the verge of conversion.

Apparently no real tradition existed among the Eastern Christians of such a personage; the myth had taken shape from the clouds of rumour as they rolled westward from Asia.

In Carpini's (1248) single mention of Prester John as the king of the Christians of India the Greater, who defeats the Tatars by an elaborate stratagem, Oppert recognizes Jalaluddin of Kharezm and his brief success over the Mongols in Afghanistan.

Eleven Christians had been brought, mostly from Philadelphia, to be put to death.

As president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin signed a petition to Congress (12th February 1790) for immediate abolition of slavery, and six weeks later in his most brilliant manner parodied the attack on the petition made by James Jackson (1757-1806) of Georgia, taking off Jackson's quotations of Scripture with pretended texts from the Koran cited by a member of the Divan of Algiers in opposition to a petition asking for the prohibition of holding Christians in slavery.

The three ends proposed by the church in such discipline are there stated to be, (1) that those who lead scandalous lives may not to the dishonour of God be numbered among Christians, seeing that the church is the body of Christ; (2) that the good may not be corrupted by constant association with the wicked; (3) that those who are censured or excommunicated, confounded with shame, may be led to repentance.

The number of native Christians is small.

Mwanga now determined to rid himself of Christians and Mahommedans alike by inducing them to proceed to an island in the lake, where he meant to leave them to starve.

The Mahommedans now formed a plot to oust the Christians, and treacherously massacred a number of their chiefs and then defeated their unprepared adherents.

Christians, before the arrival of Peters, had again engaged the Mahommedans and driven them to the frontier of Unyoro, where King Kabarega gave them an asylum and aid.

Pliny uses it similarly of the oath by which the Christians of Bithynia bound themselves at their solemn meetings not to commit any act of wickedness.

It has been argued that the sacramental rites of the Christians were largely imitated from the pagan mysteries; but for the first two hundred years this is hardly true, except perhaps in the case of certain Gnostic sects whose leaders intentionally amalgamated the new faith with old pagan ideas and rites.

Nor because the pagans regarded the close meetings of the Christians usually held in private houses as mysteries in which incest and cannibalism were rife, does it follow that the Christians themselves accepted the comparison.

The Christians' of Bithynia were evidently quite frank about them to Pliny (c. 112), and Justin in his Apology reveals everything to a pagan emperor (c. 150).

Christians ought to be taught that he who gives to a poor man or lends to the needy does better than if he bought pardons.

But he had no patience with a single monk who, led astray by his private judgment, set himself against the faith held by all Christians for a thousand years.

The German feudal lords he pronounced hangmen, who knew only how to swindle the poor man - " such fellows were formerly called scoundrels, but now we must call them ` Christians and revered princes.'

Literature.-Of his works the Manual of Private Devotions is the best known, for it appeals to Christians of every church.

Balaam has attracted much interest, alike from Jews, Christians and Mahommedans.

The early Christians continued the Jewish practice of making such an ascription at the close of public prayer (Origen, Hopi Ekijs, 3 3) and introduced it after the sermon also.

The anti-Jewish tone of the second part suggests the neighbourhood of Jews, from whom the Christians were to be sharply distinguished.

The popes took the direction of the matter into their own hands towards the end of the 11th century as they realized the necessity of promoting peace among Christians in order to unite them successfully in the crusades against the Mahommedans; and the first decree of the Council of Clermont (1095), at which Urban II.

Christians are forbidden to enter the mosques.

The principal educational establishments, besides that of the mosque of the Olive Tree, are the Sadiki College, founded in 1875, for free instruction in Arabic and European subjects, the Lycee Carnot in the Avenue de Paris, formerly the College of St Charles (founded by Cardinal Lavigerie), open to Christians and Moslems alike, and the normal school, founded in 1884 by the reigning bey, for the training of teachers in the French language and European ideas.

Their trial and execution took place in Carthage under the Pro-consul Vigellius Saturninus, whom Tertullian declares to have been the first persecutor of the Christians in Africa.

On such a theory confusion between full Catholicity and loyalty to some partial expression of it is minimized, and the feeling for Christians as such, everywhere and under whatever name, is kept pure.

From Browne's idea of a holy people, covenanted to walk after Christ's mind and will, all else flowed, as is set forth in his Book which sheweth the life and manners of all true Christians.

They were, as Milton said, " faithful and freeborn Englishmen and good Christians constrained to forsake their dearest home, their friends, and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide and shelter from the fury of the bishops."

At the close of July, the massacre of Christians at Kotchana deeply excited Balkan opinion.

It was followed by a similar massacre of Christians at Berana, and events now moved rapidly toward war.

Pop. about s000, including 2000 Metawali and 1000 Christians (Maronite and Orthodox).

Celsus opens the way for his own attack by rehearsing the taunts levelled at the Christians by the Jews.

Christians have no standing in the Old Testament prophecies, and their talk of a resurrection that was only revealed to some of their own adherents is foolishness.

Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dunghill, croaking and squeaking, "For our sakes was the world created."

Celsus does not indeed repeat the Thyestean charges so frequently brought against Christians by their calumniators, but he says the Christian teachers who are mainly weavers and cobblers have no power over men of education.

Above all Christians are disloyal, and every church is an illicit collegium, an insinuation deadly at any time, but especially so under Marcus Aurelius.

Why cannot Christians attach themselves to the great philosophic and political authorities of the world?

Most suggestive, however, is his closing appeal to the Christians.

Numerically, Christians may have formed perhaps a tenth of the population, i.e.

A positive testimony for the critical conclusion is derived from the existence of a group of Asia Minor Christians who about 165 rejected the Gospel as not by John but by Cerinthus.

But could Christians sufficiently numerous to deserve a long discussion by St Epiphanius in 374-377, who upheld the Synoptists, stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists, and had escaped every special designation till the bishop nicknamed them the " Alogoi " (irrational rejectors of the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and country, to hold such views, had the apostolic origin been incontestable ?

The cry of the heathen populace in the Roman empire against the Christians was " Away with the atheists!

This system spread widely, and the early Christians especially appealed to it as a confirmation of their belief that ancient mythology was merely an aggregate of fables of human invention.

Oaths and hostages were exacted; and many Saxon youths were educated in the land of the Franks as Christians, and sent back into Saxony to spread Christianity and Frankish influence.

Christians and Moslems have lived together on better terms here than elsewhere.

Pop. about 15,000 including many Christians, Armenian, Greek and European.

The islands are highly cultivated; deer and other game abound, and trout are plentiful in the mountain streams. A majority of the inhabitants are Christians.

They are evoked by pressing needs of the hour among some definite body of Christians and not by any literary motive.'

But while literary in form and conception, its appeal is in spirit so personal a testimony to what the Gospel has done for the writer and his fellow Christians, that it is akin to the piety of the Apostolic Fathers as a group. It is true that it has marked affinities, e.g.