Journeys In Persia And Kurdistan ( Vol.Ii).

230 JOURNEYS IN PERSIA ~ NOTES

union with its mother church, the Orthodox Church of
the East." The objects of the latter and its ecclesias-
tical position are stated briefly in the note below.1

The actual work to be done by the Mission is thus
summed up by its promoters : " The work of the Mission
is in the first place to train up a body of literate clergy;
secondly, to instruct the youth generally in both religious
and secular knowledge; and thirdly, to print the very
early liturgies and service-books, to which the Assyrians
are much attached, which have never been published in
the original, and of which the very primitive character is
shown by their freedom from doubtful doctrine. The
Mission in no way seeks to Anglicanise the Assyrians on
the one hand, nor, on the other, to condone the heresy
which separated them from the rest of Christendom or
to minimise its importance."

The English clergy are celibates, receive no stipends,
and live together, with a common purse, each receiving
£25 per annum for personal expenses.

1 " By God's help : (1) To raise up and restore a fallen Eastern Church
to take her place again amongst the Churches of Christendom. (2) To
infuse spiritual life into a church which the oppression of centuries has
reduced to a state of weakness and ignorance. (3) To give the Chaldsean
or Assyrian Christians (a) a religious education on the broad principles of
the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church ; (&) a secular education calculated
to fit them for their state of life, the common mistakes and dangers of
over-education and of Europeanising education being most carefully
guarded against. (4) To train up the native clergy, by means of schools
and seminaries, to be worthy to serve before God in their high vocation,
and to rise to their responsibilities as leaders and teachers of the people in
their villages. (5) To build schools, of which at present there are none,
owing to the extreme poverty and misery of the people. (6) To aid the
Patriarch and Bishops by counsel, by encouragement, and by active sup-
port. (7) To reorganise the Chaldsean Church upon her ancient lines, to
set in motion the ecclesiastical machinery now rusty through disuse, and
to revive religious discipline amongst clergy and laity. (8) To print the
ancient Chaldsean service-books. They are now only in MS., and the
number of copies is totally insufficient for the supply of the parish
churches."