“What I have seen,” says he, “and experienced in the majority of places during my stay I truthfully declare. On the Island of Taprobane (_i.e._ Ceylon), in Inner India, where the Indian Ocean is, there is to be found a community of Christians, consisting of both clergy and the faithful, but I do not know whether there are any Christians to be found beyond this. Similarly in Male (Malabar, perhaps more particularly Quilon, which was later known by the Arabs as Kullam-male) where pepper grows and in the place called Caliana (Kalyan near Bombay) there is also a Bishop, who receives imposition of hands from Persia, as well as in the isle called the Isle of Discoris in the same Indian Sea. The inhabitants of that island speak Greek, having been originally settled there by the Ptolemies who ruled after Alexander of Macedon. There are clergy there also, ordained and sent from Persia to minister among the people of the island, and a multitude of Christians.... In a very great number of places one found churches of Christians with Bishops, martyrs, monks and recluses, wherever in fact the Gospel of Christ had been proclaimed.” This extract, taken with its context, not only proves how widely dispersed the Christian faith had become in the fifth century but also attracts our attention to the diffusion of the Nestorian doctrine which, with its imperfect presentation of Christianity, carried everywhere the element of its own failure, even where apparently such a success. It was an age in which, humanly speaking, the Church had her magnificent opportunity, but being divided and unworthy she failed to carry conquest. Had she remained true to the Apostolic teaching how different it might have been! Again the curtain falls and for six centuries the Syrian Church on the Malabar coast is out of sight and mind. Just a break for a moment in the year A.D. 883 when we see two priests of the Anglo-Saxon Church, Sighelm and Athelstan, taking to India the votive offerings of the great King Alfred of England, which he had promised to the shrine of St. Thomas during his siege of London. We only know they went and returned safely. But during these centuries Islam was advancing, its crescent banners red with blood, its eyes fired with hatred, trampling in its onrush the Christian Churches and all other religions and effacing only too effectively the fruit of the work of evangelizing Asia. The seats of learning, the sacred temples of the Christian faith, the priceless archives rich in the thought and piety of the age, the seven Churches of the Apocalyptic messages, all were overthrown as the Crescent supplanted the Cross. The tide of conquest not only overran the holy places of the East, but flung itself against the ramparts of European Christianity. The peril of the age woke the chivalry of the Crusaders, and the flower of Knighthood perished in trying to wrest the sacred spots of Palestine from the Infidel.