The Countries, their Peoples and their Religions. 7 Day of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost descended on the infant Church were from ‘ Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene,’ and Apollos, the great preacher at Ephesus and Corinth, was a Jew from Alexandria (Acts ii. 10; xviii. 24, 28). That Egyptian capital, then the second city in the Roman Empire, which had witnessed the translation into the Greek language of the sacred Hebrew books now called the Old Testament, was evidently one of the first cities outside Palestine to receive the Gospel. There, according to the historian Eusebius, the evangelist St. Mark laboured, and there, according to St. Jerome, he became Bishop and suffered martyrdom. There, too, was established the great catechetical school or theological college whence went forth Christian teachers to many Eastern lands. At the end of the second century the Principal himself, Pantzenus, went to ‘ India,’ but it is not clear whether this term really stands for the great Indian peninsula. Among his successors were Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, the famous defender of the true doctrine of the Trinity, and Cyril the Archbishop, of whose times a vivid account is given in Kingsley’s Hypatia.

The Coptic Church.

As years passed, dissensions arose in the infant Church. About A.D. 428, Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, a Syrian by birth, objected to the term Theotokos (bearer or mother of God) applied to the Virgin Mary, saying that God could neither be born nor die. Nestorius was fiercely opposed by the ‘ orthodox’ party as calling in question our Lord’s divinity, and one who was prominent in opposing him was subsequently charged with the opposite error of denying our Lord’s human nature. This _ was HKutyches, abbot of a convent at Constantinople. The opinions of Eutyches, though condemned by the Council of Chalcedon (a.p. 451) spread rapidly, and before the end of the sixth century held a commanding position in Egypt, and were embraced by the vast majority of the Copts who to-day are the true representatives of the ancient Egyptian race.* The Copts were sorely persecuted by the ‘orthodox’ Christians and when in a.p. 640 the Mohammedans invaded Egypt, the firstnamed welcomed the intruders as a means of deliverance. They soon had abundant reason to regret their action. For many * The word ‘Copt’ is supposed to be a corruption of the second syllable of ‘ Egypt.’