At the period Pliny refers to, and for a long time previously, there can be no pretence that any of Jesus' apostles accompanied traders to Hindostan, for every one of them were employed nearer home. On the other hand, we may inquire into the possibility and the reasonableness of Buddhist missionaries travelling westward in the course of Alexandrian traffic, or of the caravans which, we have grounds for believing, came through Persia to the Roman Empire. On turning to Oriental literature, we find that the often-mentioned King Asoka adopted Buddhism as the religion of his empire about b.c. 250, and that, in his time, missionaries carried that faith successfully to the uttermost parts of Hindostan--to Burmah, to Ceylon, to Japan, to Thibet, and to China. The envoys carried with them, in some instances, written books, in others, their guide was oral tradition. Wherever they went they bore a biography of Sakya--or Buddha--accounts of miracles that he had performed, and a summary, more or less extended, of his preaching or doctrines. This dispersion of Hindoo envoys was about fifty years later than the mission of the Greek Megasthenes to the court of Asoka's grandfather, and it is quite as probable that Buddhist preachers went to enlighten what they imagined to be the benighted, and what they knew to be the then defeated Grecians, as that they went over frightful mountains and stormy seas to Thibet, China, and Japan. We may profitably pause for a moment here, to contemplate that which I at one time believed to be the most wonderful of all the miracles recorded in the New Testament, viz., "the gift of tongues." The references to this which we meet with in the epistles of the apostle Paul might lead to the supposition, that some who had this "gift" spoke mere gibberish--something which was not, either in intention or in reality, an utterance in a foreign language; but the story of the original imparting of power to speak in a previously unknown tongue involves the idea, that the disciples had, on the occasion referred to, a faculty given to them, by which they knew the languages used by various nationalities, without the trouble of learning them. Many divines have held that such ability was absolutely necessary to those who had to go forth to teach all nations the doctrines of the gospel I am quite aware that, however earnest I might be to propagate truth, I could not go, with advantage, to preach in Russia, because I know nothing of its language.