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.
AdvertisementIn 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.
AdvertisementWhen, 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.
AdvertisementNorman 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.
AdvertisementThe 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.
Gentile Christians had not felt the fang of the Law as the ex-Pharisee had occasion to feel it.
For various reasons it became more and more common, until the fourth Lateran council (1215) ordered all Christians of the Roman obedience to make a confession once a year at least.
Before long a commencement was made of the missions to the delta of the Niger, and between 1866 and 1884 congregations of Christians were formed at Bonny, Brass and New Calabar, but the progress made was slow and subject to many impediments.
In the religious world the Seventh-Day Adventists (who are connected with many sanatoria and the manufacture of food specialities) and some Bible Christians, the worshippers of Vishnu and the Swami Narang and Vishnoi sects, amongst others, preach abstinence from flesh food.
As regards the administration of justice, the distinction is maintained between (I) Europeans and persons assimilated with them (who include Christians and Japanese), and (2) natives, together with Chinese, Arabs, &c. The former are subject to laws closely resembling those of the mother country, while the customs and institutions of natives are respected in connexion with the administration of justice to the latter.
Goussen (though members of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians had previously been acquainted with the book).
Robert now resolved to employ Roger's genius in reducing Sicily, which contained, besides the Moslems, numerous Greek Christians subject to Arab princes who had become all but independent of the sultan of Tunis.
It was particularly offensive to Christians as tending to dishonour the Creator who is set over against the serpent as bad against good.
In contradistinction to all these somewhat refined meanings, the term "Protestant" is in common parlance applied to all Christians who do not belong to the Roman Catholic Church, or to one or other of the ancient Churches of the East.
Among the Christians who did most to spread the gospel in the Gentile world was the apostle Paul, whose conversion was the greatest event in the history of the early Church.
Those Jewish Christians who refused to go with the rest of the Church in this matter lived their separate life, and were regarded as an heretical sect known as the Ebionites.
Moreover, the feeling of unity which bound Christians everywhere together and made of them one compact whole, and which found expression before many generations had passed in a strong organization, did much for the spread of the Church.
Superstition, misunderstanding and hatred caused the Christians trouble for many generations, and governmental repression they had to suffer occasionally, as a result of popular disturbances.
Constantine, recognizing the growing strength of the Church and wishing to enlist the loyal support of the Christians, treated them with increasing favour, and finally was baptized upon his death-bed (337).
It reached the barbarians on the northern and western borders at an early day, and the Goths were already Christians of the Arian type before the great migrations of the 4th century began.
This conception, which came over from Judaism, controlled all the life of the early Christians both individual and social.
The monks and nuns were looked upon as the most consistent Christians, and were honoured accordingly.
As a consequence the completest liberty was accorded to all Christians to take such part as they chose, it being assumed that they did so only under the Spirit's prompting.
Particular Christians were designated to take charge of the services, and orders of worship were framed out of which grew ultimately elaborate liturgies.
The views of the Gnostics, and of Marcion as well, seemed to the majority of Christians destructive of the gospel, and it was widely felt that they were too dangerous to be tolerated.
The men in question claimed to be Christians and to enjoy divine illumination as truly as anybody, and so other safeguards appeared necessary.
Christians upon a journey were always sure of a warm welcome and hospitable entertainment from their fellow-disciples.
A certain number, too, of Arabic Christians, believers living on the west coast of India, the so-called Christians of St Thomas, and finally those belonging to places nearer the middle of Asia (Merv, Herat, Samarkand), remained in communion with the Nestorian church.
Political conditions at the beginning of the middle ages favoured the Nestorian church, and the fact that the Arabs had conquered Syria, Palestine and Egypt, made it possible for her to exert an influence on the Christians in these countries.
Here too the Arab conquest (641) put an end to the oppression of the native Christians by the Greek minority; but this did not afford the Coptic church any possibility of vigorous development.
Though at the time of the Arab conquest the Copts were reckoned at six millions, in 1820 the Coptic Christians numbered only about one hundred thousand, and it is improbable that their number can have been much greater at the close of the middle ages.
The Buddhist religion, then beginning to decay in India, was working its way to a new growth in China, and contemporaneously the Nestorian Christians were establishing bishoprics at Herat, Mer y and Samarkand, whence they subsequently proceeded to Kashgar, and finally to China itself.
The water must in ritual washings run off in order to carry away the miasma or unseen demon of disease; and accordingly in baptism the early Christians used living or running water.
Christians might not enter a church to say their prayers without first washing their hands.
The people are Greek Christians, and do not differ in appearance from the inhabitants of the other Greek islands.
In July 1860, when the Moslems of that city, taking advantage of disturbances among the Druses of Lebanon, attacked the Christian quarter and killed over 3000 persons, Abd-el-Kader helped to repress the outbreak and saved large numbers of Christians.
The nearest equivalent in the ancient Church was the local and temporary African practice of restoring lapsed Christians to communion at the intercession of confessors and prospective martyrs in prison.
At Bagdad, in the reign of Mamun (813-833), the son of Harun al-Rashid, philosophical works were translated by Syrian Christians from Greek into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic. It was in his reign that Aristotle was first translated into Arabic, and, shortly afterwards, we have Syriac and Arabic renderings of commentators on Aristotle, and of portions of Plato, Hippocrates and Galen; while in the 10th century new translations of Aristotle and his commentators were produced by the Nestorian Christians.
The territory now forming the state of Delaware was within the boundaries defined by the Maryland charter, but in 1682 it was transferred by the duke of York to William Penn and in 1685 Lord Baltimore's claim to it was denied by an order in council, on the ground that it had been inhabited by Christians before the Maryland charter was granted.
The opposition, as might be expected, came from the side of the Jews, and was due partly to the controversial use which was made of the version by the S Christians, but chiefly to the fact that it was not suffi- ciently in agreement with the standard Hebrew text estab.- lished by Rabbi Aqiba and his school.
But if the use of versions, or of an uncritical text of the original, was one condition unfavourable to criticism, another that was not less serious was the dominance over both Jews and Christians of unsound methods of interpretation - legal or dogmatic or allegorical.
The New Testament is the collection of the Sacred Books of Christians.
It forms in the Bible the distinctive possession of Christians, just as the Old Testament is the collection of Sacred Books which Christians share with Jews.
The first generation of Christians was not given to writing.
This reason lay in the dominant attitude of Christians, which was what we call " eschatological."
The first generation of Christians lived in the daily expectation that Christ would return from heaven.
The truth is, that not only were Christians expecting (as we say) the Second Coming of the Messiah, but what they expected was the Coming.
The Messiah, as all Jews conceived of Him, was a superhuman being; and His First Coming as a man among men did not count as really Messianic. The whole first generation of Christians looked intently for His Coming in power and great glory, which they believed to be near at hand.
The turning from idols was of course peculiar to the Gentile communities, but the waiting for the Messiah from heaven was common to all Christians, whatever their origin.
It was the deep impression made by these which prepared Christians generally to accept the apostolic writings as inspired, and therefore sacred.
Of the many theories as to the address, the most plausible are perhaps those which would apply to a single congregation of Hebrew Christians in Rome, or to a local church or group of local churches in Palestine, perhaps like that of which the centre would be at Caesarea.
The Catholic Epistles were so called in the first instance from their wider and more indefinite address; they were intended for Christians generally, or over some wide area, rather than for a particular church or individual.
Throughout the apostolic age Christians were conscious of being carried forward in a great movement, the origin and motive-power of which they regarded as supernatural.
But the Creed was but the condensed essence of the New Testament scriptures, and behind it there lay an appeal to these scriptures, which was especially necessary where (as in the case of the Valentinian Gnostics) the dissident bodies professed to accept the common belief of Christians.
According to Strauss the fulfilments of prophecy in the New Testament arise from the Christians' belief that the Christian Messiah must have fulfilled the predictions of the prophets, and the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament either originate in the same way or are purely mythical embodiments of Christian doctrines.
But after the fall of Jerusalem, partly through the need for systematizing the traditional post-biblical law, and partly through disputes with the Christians, orthodox Rabbinism received the stamp which has since characterized it.
The district, however, was reconquered by Persia under the Sassanian dynasty, and we hear of Nestorian Christians at Samarkand, at any rate in the 6th century.
His work Against the Christians was directed, not against Christ, nor even against what he believed to be Christ's teaching, but against the Christians of his own day and their sacred books, which, according to Porphyry, were the work of deceivers and ignorant people.
This letter excited some rancour among the theologians, and Dr George Horne, afterwards bishop of Norwich, published in 1777 A Letter to Adam Smith on the Life, Death and Philosophy of his Friend David Hume, by one of the people called Christians.
In this original scheme it is clearly marked out "that this entire Society and all its members fight for God under the faithful obedience of the most sacred lord, the pope, and the other Roman pontiffs his successors"; and Ignatius makes particular mention th4t each member should "be bound by a special vow," beyond that formal obligation under which all Christians are of obeying the pope, "so that whatsoever the present and other Roman pontiffs for the time being shall ordain, pertaining to the advancement of souls and the propagation of the faith, to whatever provinces he shall resolve to send us, we are straightway bound to obey, as far as in us lies, without any tergiversation or excuse, whether he send us among the Turks or to any other unbelievers in being, even to those parts called India, or to any heretics or schismatics or likewise to any believers."
With him, as far as we are able to conclude from the scanty notices of him, the manifold Gnostic speculations are reduced essentially to the one problem of the good and the just God, the God of the Christians and the God of the Old Testament.
Of late, however, they have decided to give up this name and call themselves "Christians of the Universal Brotherhood."
Untaught by experience, he resumed his course of selfish tyranny over Christians and heathen alike, and raised the irritation of the populace to such a pitch that when, on the accession of Julian, his downfall was proclaimed and he was committed to prison, they dragged him thence and killed him, finally casting his body into the sea (24th of December 361).
His career falls into three parts, his conquests in Egypt 1164-1174, the annexation of Syria 1174-1187, and lastly the destruc tion of the Latin kingdom and subsequent campaigns against the Christians, 1187-1192.
The Christians under Count Amalric immediately intervened and the four expeditions which ensued in 1164, 1167, 1168 and 1169 were duels between Christians and Saracens.
From 1177 to 1180 he made war on the Christians from Egypt, and in 1180 reduced the sultan of Konia to submission.
In the kingdom only Tyre was left to the Christians.
The Christians had thus a stronghold whence their remnant marched to attack Acre in June 1189.
Saladin's lack of a fleet enabled the Christians to receive reinforcements and thus recover from their defeats by land.
In this he was so far successful that they made peace with the grand prince and were for a while nominally Christians.
It states essentially the Roman doctrine of purgatory, and asserts the world-wide primacy of the pope as the "true vicar of Christ and the head of the whole Church, the Father and teacher of all Christians"; but, to satisfy the Greeks, inconsistently adds that all the rights and privileges of the Oriental patriarchs are to be maintained unimpaired.
On the 26th of April 1441 the pope announced that the synod would be transferred to the Lateran; but before leaving Florence a union was negotiated with the Oriental Christians known as Jacobites, through a monk named Andreas, who, at least as regards Abyssinia, acted in excess of his powers.
As Turkish interests demanded the isolation of the Oriental Christians from their western brethren, and as the orthodox Greek nationalists feared Latinization more than Mahommedan rule, a patriarch hostile to the union was chosen, and a synod of Constantinople in 1472 formally rejected the decisions of Florence.
Some Christians escaped the difficulties of their position by eating no meat at all.
Even benefit societies were feared and forbidden by the Roman autocrats, and the " dominical suppers " of the Christians were not likely to be spared.
Among Christians, prayers, supplications and thanksgivings have taken the place of the sacrifices of the old covenant.
For the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored (for that were idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians); and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one."
In 1812, urging baptism by immersion upon his followers by his own example, he took his father's place as leader of the Disciples of Christ (popularly called Christians, Campbellites and Reformers).
Here Paul, being dead, yet speaks through Timothy to the local Christians who are exposed to such mischievous tendencies in their environment.
Mani, following the example of the gnostic Jewish Christians, appears to have held Adam, Noah, Abraham (perhaps zoroaster and Buddha) to be such prophets.
We have here essentially the same condition of things as in the Catholic Church, where a twofold morality was also in force, that of the religious orders and that of secular Christians - only that the position of the electi in Manichaeism was a more distinguished one than that of the monks in Catholicism.
And they say that Ormuzd and Ahriman are brothers, and in consequence of this saying they shall come to annihilation."In the same fragment the Christians are condemned as worshippers of idols, unless indeed the writer has genuine pagans in view.
The Western Manichaeans of the 4th and 5th centuries are much more like Christians than their Eastern brethren.
European residents and Christians numbered 2,000 to 3,000, Mohammedans about 34,000 and Jews 3,700.
Although he had left the church, his earlier writings continued to be extensively read; and in the 4th century his works, along with those of Cyprian, were the principal reading of Western Christians, until they were superseded by those of Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine and Gregory.
It disposes of the charges brought against Christians for secret crimes (incest, &c.) and public offences (contempt of the State religion and high treason), and asserts the absolute superiority of Christianity as a revealed religion beyond the rivalry of all human systems.
He had a barbarous hatred not only for Christians but for all civilization.
So Early As The Znd Century Of Our Era, Great Disputes Had Arisen Among The Christians Respecting The Proper Time Of Celebrating Easter, Which Governs All The Other Movable Feasts.
The Christians of the early centuries, looking for corporeal resurrection, avoided the incisions, extraction of organs, &c., practised by their pagan forefathers, and buried the body entire after pickling it in salt.
At the same time he was anxious to obtain for the Christians of Turkey some amelioration of their condition, and to give thereby some satisfaction to his own subjects.
Instead of stirring up persecution against the Christians, he extended to them the strong hand of his protection throughout the empire.
In doctrine the Bible Christians did not differ from the other Methodists.
In the various colonial Methodist unions the Bible Christians have contributed a total of 159 ministers, 14,925 members and 660 chapels.
His efforts to establish peace between France and England and to aid the Eastern Christians against the Turks were fruitless, but he prevented the Visconti of Milan from making further encroachments on the States of the Church.
It is true that at all times churches have been put to secular uses; in periods of unrest, as among the Nestorian Christians now, they were sometimes built to serve at need as fortresses; their towers were used for beacons, their naves for meetings on secular affairs.
The promise that Christians should be temples of the living God has been fulfilled.
In all parts the Christians assembled on the anniversary of the martyrs' death at their graves, to celebrate the Agape and the Eucharist at this spot.
Already individual Christians began to possess themselves of portions of the bodies of martyrs, and to carry them about with them.
But in the long run these substitutes for relics did not satisfy the Christians of the West, and, following the example of the Eastern Church, they took to dividing the bodies of the saints.
His own explanation of the act, connecting it with the martyrdom of a thousand Christians in the time of Diocletian, is not convincing.
The earliest Christians had no altars, and were taunted by the pagans for this.
It is admitted by Origen in his reply to Celsus (p. 389), who has charged the Christians with being a secret society " because they forbid to build temples, to raise altars."
There, beyond the Great Wall, a large but scattered population of native Christians had found a refuge from the persecutions of KiaKing, to be united half a century later in a vast but vague apostolic vicariate.
This brief heading embraces all that on which Christian tradition from the end of the 2nd century was unanimous; and it says no more than that the readers addressed were Christians of Jewish extraction.
But, for a generation or so, it has been denied that this can be inferred simply from the fact that the epistle approaches all Christian truth through Old Testament forms. This, it is said, was the common method of proof, since the Jewish scriptures were the Word of God to all Christians alike.
If Christians wish to offer any special sacrifice to God, let it be that of grateful praise or deeds of beneficence (r5 f.).
Many attempts have been made to identify the home of the Hellenistic Christians addressed in this epistle.
There are also certain obvious points of resemblance between the Essenes and the early Christians.
The list might be enlarged, but it would not necessarily prove more than that the early Christians shared in the ideas of their age.
De Quincey's contention that there were no Essenes but the early Christians is now a literary curiosity.
Peter died there, in 64, without doubt, among the Christians whom Nero had put to death as guilty of the burning of Rome.
There is no doubt that he wished to satisfy the complaints that emanated First from the Christians dwelling in Jerusalem and The .
The entry of the Christians into Jerusalem produced an extraordinary effect upon the faithful of the West.
It is through us that from a private person thou hast become the father of all Christians.
He was privileged to survive the victory of the Christians at Lepanto; but on the 1st of May in the following year he died, as piously as he had lived.
The Syrian Christians, however, found that they had only exchanged the domination of a Zoroastrian monarch for an unsympathetic ecclesiastical despotism.
When in 638 he made another ca attempt, it is said at the entreaty of the Mesopotamian Christians, Arab forces appeared before Rakka, Edessa, Nasibin and other places, and all Mesopotamia was soon in the hands of the Arabs.
He clearly preferred the society of the semi-heathen Kumanians to that of the Christians; wore, and made his court wear, Kumanian dress; surrounded himself with Kumanian concubines, and neglected and ill-used his ill-favoured Neapolitan consort.
There were many Christians in Melitene at the time of the Decian persecution in A.D.
The priestly families, we learn, hearing that the God preached by Gregory needed not sacrifice, sent to the king a deputation and asked how they were to live, if they became Christians; for until then the priests and their families had lived off the portions of the animal victims and other offerings reserved to them by pagan custom.
Little is known of the condition of the subject populations of the peninsula during the Arab occupation; but we are informed that the Christians were, sometimes at least, judged according to their own laws in separate tribunals presided over by Christian judges; 2 and the mere fact of the preservation of the name alcalde, an official whose functions corresponded so closely to those of the judex or defensor civitatis, is fitted to suggest that the old municipal fora, if much impaired, were not even then in all cases wholly destroyed.
The Bible, especially the Old Testament, is thus regarded even by orthodox Christians from a rationalist standpoint, very different from that of the early and medieval Church.
The population is largely Armenian and Kurd with some Turks (Moslems 500,000, Christians 140,000).
The errorists developed speculations and practical theories on the basis of the Old Testament law, which proved extremely seductive to many Christians.
The chief point of interest in his account is that he speaks of the species having been already taken from New Spain (Mexico) to the islands and to Castilla del Oro (Darien), where it bred in a domestic state among the Christians.
The father of Hebrew study among Christians was the humanist Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), the author of the Rudimenta Hebraica (Pforzheim, 1506), whose contest with the converted Jew Pfefferkorn and the Cologne obscurantists, established the claim of the new study to recognition by the Church.
Similar practices were prevalent, to an extent hardly realized, among the Christians up to the middle ages and even later.
It is not possible to obtain even an approximate estimate of the numbers of the Christians at the time of Constantine.
But the zeal of the Portuguese took too often a one-sided direction, repressing the Syrian Christians on the Malabar coast, and interfering with the Abyssinian Church,3 while the fanatic temper of the Spaniard consigned, in Mexico and Peru, multitudes who would not renounce their heathen errors to indiscriminate massacre or abject slavery.'
In 1792, Carey, a Baptist, who was not only a cobbler, but a linguist of the highest order, a botanist and zoologist, published his Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, and the book marks a distinct point of departure in the history of Christianity.
With all its deficiencies, the Christian church has gained the " nations of the future," and whereas in the 3rd century the proportion of Christians to the whole human race was only that of one in a hundred and fifty, this has now been exchanged for one in three, and it is indisputable that the progress of the human race at this moment is identified with the spread of the influence of the nations of Christendom.
Stock's Short Handbook of Missions has a chapter on " Some Notable Missionaries " and another on " Some Prominent Native Christians."
When the work was recommenced it was found that the native Christians had multiplied and developed during the harsh treatment of the 25 years.
The outstanding problem of African missions at least north of the Equator (south there is the Ethiopian question) is not the degradation of the black races, nor the demoralizing influences of heathen Christians, nor even the slave dealer, though all these obstacles are present and powerful.
At Travancore in the south, Ringeltaube, an agent of the London Missionary Society, had begun a work, especially among the Shanars or toddy drawers, which by 1840 had 15,000 Christians; and the Church Missionary Society, led by Rhenius, had equal success in Tinnevelly.
The government census for India and Burma (1901) gives a Christian population of 2,923,241 (native Christians 2,664,313) out of a total population of 294,361,056, or about 3%.
Though there are many Christians in India to-day, the Hindu still looks askance at Christianity, not because it is a religion but because it is foreign.
In 1857 there were only about 400 baptized Protestant Christians in the whole of China.
Native Christians were stigmatized as traitors, " followers of the foreign devils."
One of Morrison's contemporaries hoped that after a century of mission work there might possibly be 2000 Christians in China.
That number was reached in 1865, and in 1910 there was a Protestant community of 214,546 church members and baptized Christians.
Since the Japanese War the Scottish and Irish Presbyterians have made wonderful progress in Manchuria; native evangelists do an increasing share of the work, and there is hardly any town or village without Christians.
The conference reported, " We have quite as much reason to be encouraged by the net result of the progress of Christianity in China during the 19th century as the early Christians had with the progress of the Gospel in the Roman Empire during the first century."
In 1581 there were 200 churches and 150,000 Christians; ten years later the converts numbered 600,000, in 1594 a million and a half.
In 1866 there were not more than loo Christians; official returns in 1910 show 178,686 Protestants, including 72,000 church members and probationers; and 72,290 Roman Catholics.
In Java the government has favoured Mahommedans (there is active intercourse between the island and Mecca), but there are some 25,000 Christians and a training school and seminary at Depok near Batavia.
The total number of Christians in British Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies is about 600,000 (including 57,000 Roman Catholics).
Even the wandering Eskimos, thanks to the Moravians, are mainly Christians.
If, however, we are to take statistical returns for what they are worth, it is estimated that the Christians in heathen lands gathered by Protestant missions probably amount to five millions, and a similar total may be ascribed to Roman Catholic missions, making ten millions in all.
Christians numbered nearly 9000, mostly Karens.
El Ufrani writes that "it was besieged so closely that the Christians had to flee on their vessels and escape by sea, leaving the place ruined from bottom to top."
It may be regarded as certain that among Jewish Christians it almost imperceptibly grew out of the old habit of annually celebrating the Passover on the 14th of Nisan, and of observing the "days of unleavened bread" from the 15th to the 21st of that month.
The inscription on the work describes it as the "Embassy of Athenagoras, the Athenian, a philosopher and a Christian concerning the Christians, to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, &c."
In the Apology, after contrasting the judicial treatment of Christians with that of other accused persons, he refutes the accusations brought against the Christians of atheism, eating human flesh and licentiousness, and in doing so takes occasion to make a vigorous and skilful attack on pagan polytheism and mythology.
The sources of the Apostolic Canons (which date between 140-180) lay down the rule that even the smallest community of Christians, though it contain only twelve members, must have its bishop and its presbyters.
The chief buildings are the mosques, which are open to Christians, Kairawan being the only town in Tunisia where this privilege is granted.
The church stands on the spot where the first Christians of the district suffered martyrdom, and where a chapel was erected in the 6th century over the grave of St Afra.
Paul's Christology therefore was of the Adoptionist type, which we find among the primitive Ebionite Christians of Judaea, in Hermas, Theodotus and Artemon of Rome, and in Archelaus the opponent of Mani, and in the other great doctors of the Syrian Church of the 4th and 5th centuries.
The population is estimated at 852,000; Christians, 8000, principally Nestorians or Chaldaeans; Jews, 54,000; Moslems, 790,000, of whom the larger part are Shi`as.
It was at the instance of Galerius that the first of the celebrated edicts of persecution against the Christians was published, on the 24th of February 303, and this policy of repression was maintained by him until the appearance of the general edict of toleration (31 I), issued in his own name and in those of Licinius and Constantine.
According to Ramsay, then, Peter was present during the famine, and made a private agreement with Paul that the latter should preach to the Gentiles, and so far Gentile Christianity was recognized, but the conditions of the intercourse between Gentile and Jewish Christians were not defined, and the question of circumcision was perhaps not finally settled.
It is more probable on general grounds that the martyrdom of Peter took place during the persecution of Christians in 64, and it is urged that Clement's language refers to this period.
According to the religious census of 1900 there were in the German empire- 35,231,104 Evangelical Protestants, 20,327,913 Roman Catholics, 6472 Greek Orthodox, 203,678 Christians belonging to other confessions, 586,948 Jews, f 1,597 members of other sects and 5938 unclassified, The Christians belonging to other confessions include Moravian Brethren, Mennonites, Baptists, Methodists and Quakers, German Catholics, Old Catholics, &c. The table on following page shows the distribution of the population according to religious beliefs as furnished by the census of 1900.
Since 1817 the distinction has accordingly been ignored in Prussia, and Christians are there enumerated only as Evangelical or Roman Catholic. Theunion, however, has not remained wholly unopposeda section of the more rigid Lutherans who separated themselves from the state church being now known as Old Lutherans.
Both had signed the protocol of 1852, and both realized that, if the European powers were to be given no excuse to intervene, their attitude must be scrupulously correct; and this involved the recognition of King Christians rights in the duchies.
The standpoint is that of the peculiar Judaizing or Ebonite Christianity due to persistence among Christians of the tendencies known among pre-Christian Jews as Essene.
Incidentally, too, its successive forms illustrate many matters of belief and usage among Syrian Christians generally in the 3rd and 4th centuries, notably their apologetic and catechetical needs and methods.
His importance is due to his refusal to receive, at least until the persecution had ceased, those Christians who during the persecutions had renounced their faith, and then repented.
The sympathy of the Slav inhabitants of the empire made it impossible for the government of Vienna to regard with indifference the sufferings of Christians in Turkey.
But the divisions among the Moslems helped the Christians; they won back several towns, and beat off all attacks on Syracuse and Tauromenium.
But when Ibrahim himself came into Sicily, renewed efforts against the Christians led to the first taking of Tauromenium (908), of Rametta and of other points.
Besides the struggle with the Christians in the island, there was often direct warfare between the empire and the Saracens; but such warfare was more active in Italy than in Sicily.
His brother and rival Abuhafas brought help from Africa; and finally all joined against the Christians.
The condition of the Christians varied from that of personal slaves to that of communities left free on the payment of tribute.
In Sicily they were welcomed by the Christians as deliverers from infidel bondage.
The Christians everywhere welcomed the conqueror.
He called himself the defender of Christians; others, on account of his favour to the Saracens, spoke of him as a pagan.
In that year Yusef passed the straits to Algeciras, and on the 23rd of October inflicted a severe defeat on the Christians at Sacralias, or in Arabic, Zallaka, near Badajoz.
Their religious teachers detested the native Mahommedan princes for their religious indifference, and gave Yusef a fetwa - or legal opinion - to the effect that he had good moral and religious right to dethrone the heterodox rulers who did not scruple to seek help from the Christians whose bad habits they had adopted.
By 1094 he had removed them all, and though he regained little from the Christians except Valencia, he reunited the Mahommedan power and gave a check to the reconquest of the country by the Christians.
For the purpose of his inquiry he adopts an obvious threefold division into idolaters, Jews and Christians.
He then proceeds to the description of the Christians.
He had twelve disciples, who after His ascent into heaven went forth into the provinces of the world and taught His greatness; whence they who at this day believe their preaching are called Christians."
Its merits are its recognition of the helplessness of the old heathenism to satisfy human aspiration after the divine, and the impressive simplicity with which it presents the unfailing argument of the lives of Christians.
It was, of course, impossible that speaking in Greek and living among Greeks, Christians should not to some extent use current conceptions for the expression of their faith.
What the attitude of the New People should be to it, whether it was all bad, or whether there were good things in it which Christians should appropriate, was a vital question that always confronted them.