orians who, in connexion with the Jews,
founded the medical college of Djondesabour, and first instituted a
system of academical honours which has descended to our times. It was
the Nestorians who were not only permitted by the khalifs the free
exercise of their religion, but even intrusted with the education of the
children of the great Mohammedan families, a liberality in striking
contrast to the fanaticism of Europe. The Khalif Alraschid went so far
as even to place all his public schools under the superintendence of
John Masue, one of that sect. Under the auspices of these learned men
the Arabian academies were furnished with translations of Greek authors,
and vast libraries were collected in Asia.

[Sidenote: Their great spread in the East,]

Through this connexion with the Arabs, Nestorian missionaries found
means to disseminate their form of Christianity all over Asia, as far as
Malabar and China. The successful intrigues of the Egyptian politicians
at Ephesus had no influence in those remote countries, the Asiatic
churches of the Nestorian and Jacobite persuasions outnumbering
eventually all the European Christians of the Greek and Roman churches
combined. In later times the papal government has made great exertions
to bring about an understanding with them, but in vain.

[Sidenote: and persecutions in the West.]

The expulsion of this party from Constantinople was accomplished by the
same persons and policy concerned in destroying philosophy in
Alexandria. St. Cyril was the representative of an illiterate and
unscrupulous faction that had come into the possession of power through
intrigues with the females of the imperial court, and bribery of eunuchs
and parasites. The same spirit that had murdered Hypatia tormented
Nestorius to death. Of the contending parties, one was respectable and
had a tincture of learning, the other ignorant, and not hesitating at
the employment of brute force, deportation, assassination. Unfortunately
for the world, the unscrupulous party carried the day.

[Sidenote: They inherit the old Greek medicine.]

By their descent, the Nestorians had become the depositaries of the old
Greek medical science. Its great names they revered. They collected,
with the utmost assiduity, whatever works remained on medical topics,
whether of a Greek or Alexandrian origin, from the writings of
Hippocrates, called, with affectionate veneration by his successors,
"The Divine Old Man," down to those of