The Conversion of India - 1893 Author:George Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II THE GREEK ATTEMPT '' Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and... more » not after Christ. For in Him dwetteth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. A nd ye are complete in Him."—Col. ii. 8-10. India, like the Britain of our Celtic and savage forefathers, first received the gospel of Jesus Christ through commerce and colonisation, which are still the most rapid and wide-spreading carriers of divine truth. At the close of the first Christian century, when the Phoenicians were trafficking in Cornwall and Wales, and in India and Ceylon, " those who had seen the apostles," to use the words of Photius, were beginning to teach the nations alike of England and of the Indias, and to found Churches in both regions. The Jews, as widely dispersed as their Tyrian neighbours, with whom they had been partners since the days of Solomon and Hiram, and ever closely connected with Jerusalem, used the facilities of communication given by the Greek tongue and the Roman order to carry first their own Monotheism and Messianic hopes, and then the good news that Jesus Christ was the promised One, where- over trade penetrated. That apostolic Christianity was carried to what we now call India, and especially to its western coast between Barygaza or Broach, north of the modern island of Bombay, and Cranganor above Cape Comorin, by Jews, is a fact of intense spiritual interest. Seventeen years after the atonement, the resurrection,and the ascension of our Lord, when He had repeated His last charge to every believing disciple in all ages, the first great geographical and scientific discovery was made to which Christian missions owe their progress. In the year 50 A.d. the pilot Hippalus revealed the semi-annual reversa...« less