the Hebrews." This then would be a Jewish Christian Church. The "Acts of Thomas" shows that Christianity had reached the north-western part of India itself, our modern India, as early as the third century. By the time of the council of Nicæa there were churches in Arabia east of the Dead Sea, a region over which the empire had very little control. The gospel was carried up the Nile to the towns and villages of Egypt at an early time, and thence it penetrated the Soudan—"Æthiopia," the south country beyond Philæ—in the fourth century, till perhaps it reached the mission in Abyssinia, which had entered Africa from the east.
When we pass over to the fourth century the accounts of foreign missions and the experiences of the churches in the outlying regions round about the empire become more definite and explicit. The Armenian Church, with the story of its famous apostle Gregory the Illuminator; the Ethiopian and Abyssinian Church, the origin of which is traced to the labours of two shipwrecked young travellers, Frumentius and Ædesius; the Georgian Church, springing from the influence of a woman—the Armenian slave girl Nunia; the Syrian Church in India, which claims St. Thomas as its founder—all of them independent churches in regions outside the Roman Empire—will claim our attention later on; because as they have remained in independent existence on to our own day we shall want to know something about the course of their history right down the centuries. But incidents in connection with two outlying communities of Christians lead the interest connected with them to be concentrated for us in the early period, and therefore seem to demand our consideration at once. These incidents are the persecution of the Persian Christians and the mission of Ulfilas among the Goths.
1. The origin of Christianity in Persia is hidden in obscurity; but, as we have seen, in all probability it was an offshoot of the activity of the Syrian Church at Edessa, which in turn must be traced back to Antioch, the earliest great missionary church. In the district of Garamæa, east of the Tigris, and south-east of Mosul, there appear to
