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CHAPTER XVIII.

 

Missionary labours at Mosul.—Effects thereof upon the Chaldeans and Jacobites.—Flight of Mar Shimoon and his arrival at Mosul.—His letter to the English Bishops.—Sir Stratford Canning's intervention in behalf of the unfortunate Nestorians and Mr. Rassam's zeal and benevolence in the same cause.—Deceitful conduct of the Turkish authorities towards the Nestorians.—The Nestorians rise against the Coords at Asheetha.—Arrival of liberated captives from Jezeerah.—Appointment of a Turkish commissioner to obtain the release of the captives, &c.—The Romanists attempt to bribe Mar Shimoon.—Intrigues against the Nestorians.—News that our mission is to be withdrawn.—Further account of missionary labours.—The authority of the Church wanted in order to the proper conducting of Eastern missions.— Letters of Mar Shimoon to the English Bishops and the Society for Propagating the Gospel on the withdrawal of our mission.—Death and funeral of the author's mother.

 

Before leaving for the Tyari country I had begun to fit up a small chapel in my own house for the use of our mission and the few English residents at Mosul, and my first care on my return from the mountains was to see it completed. Here we assembled daily, morning and evening, whilst in every other respect we endeavoured to conform strictly to the injunctions of our ritual. The moral effect of this measure upon the native Christians equalled our expectations. It brought before them in a tangible and unmistakeable form our service and discipline, and numbers who visited the chapel generally left with some remark of this kind: "We now see that what we have been told about the English, of their having no churches, no altar, no Eucharist, and no regularly ordained priesthood, is untrue."

Shortly after my return from the mountains we had associated with us, at the recommendation of the Lord Bishop of London and the Lord Bishop of Gibraltar, two Eastern ecclesiastics, Kas Michael Giamala, formerly of the convent of Rabban Hor-