The Syrian Church in India. By George Milne Rae, M.A.
(Black- wood and Sons.)—Mr. Rae has manifestly used much research for this work of his. He examines the traditions which connect the Malabar Church with St. Thomas, and, while pronouncing them to be fictitious, shows that it is, notwithstanding, a very venerable community. It must be confessed that his volume is not attractive reading,—not as attractive as it might be, we venture to think. He is too historical and too controversial. He cannot keep his hands off the Inquisition, and, indeed, this tribunal seems to have had a peculiarly odious character in Goa,—the Portuguese In- quisition always was the worst form of the thing. And he tells us a long story about a protracted law-suit, which ended in the triumph of a certain Mar Dionysius Joseph over Mar Athanasius Thomas. Here, again, we sympathise with his view of the case, which seems to have been decided by two Hindoo judges against their English colleague in defiance of facts. (The Hindoo lawyers, to whom the whole matter was absolutely new, actually relied on spurious Canons of the Nicene Council, and talked in their judgment of the Catholicos of Baghdad as invested by the Council with a certain jurisdiction, an anachronism of about four centuries.) But of the Malabar Christians themselves, we hear very little. The most interesting chapter by far is that on the Inquisition, and this is but remotely connected with the subject, except as showing that Roman methods do not always promote missionary, success. In Goa and its dependencies it was more
dangerous to be a Christian than a Mahometan or Pagan. Mr. Rae's book is valuable in its way, but it misses one of the results which it might have attained, the interesting of the general reader.
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