[Sidenote: Early Missionaries.] Among the famous missionaries of this period were Gregory, the Illuminator, a missionary to the Armenians about the year 300; Ulfilas, who invented a Gothic alphabet so that he might translate the Scriptures into Gothic; Chrysostom, who founded in Constantinople a missionary institution, and Saint Patrick, who converted Ireland. From the secluded churches of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands there went forth to Iceland, to the Faroe Islands, and far into the barbarian sections of the Empire a new band, Columba, Aidan, Columbanus and Trudpert. From the young English Church went Wilfrid to Friesland, Willibrord to the neighborhood of Utrecht, and Boniface to Germany. Further to the east the Gospel was proclaimed under fearful difficulties. At one time it seemed that Christianity might become one of the religions of old China. [Sidenote: Church and State.] Gradually the alliance of the Church and State came to its inevitable conclusion. The Church began to share the ambitions of the State. Christianity armed itself with the sword and strove to wrest from the Moslem the sepulcher of the Prince of Peace. A measure of the true spirit of the Nazarene remained in such as Raymond Lull, who protested against extending God’s kingdom by the sword and testified to his convictions by giving up his life. The great missionary societies of the Church, the Jesuit, the Dominican, the Capuchin, accepted in the main the Church’s theory of conquest, a theory made enormously advantageous by the discovery of new continents. The missionary enterprises of Spain and Portugal were marked by hideous oppression of those who would not accept the offered religion. Upon the ministers of the Church the alliance with the State wrought its evil effect. The ambitions of a bishop of Rome led him in 442 to ask the weak Emperor that he be made the head of western Christendom. Henceforth the See of Rome grew more and more powerful. The Church lost entirely the democratic quality of its early life. Pope Gregory claimed toward the end of the Eleventh Century that he had power not only over the souls of men but over all rulers. The lives of great prelates grew evil, the administration of ecclesiastical affairs venal, the pure Gospel was obscured. A mistaken emphasis was put upon good works as a means of winning that forgiveness of sin which God had promised for Christ’s sake. Before the missionary stream could flow for the blessing and healing of mankind, a clear passage must be opened to its Source.