§ 145. THE MONOPHTSITE SECTS. 771
ceiis,' ai d dwindled from some two millions of souls U a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand, of whom about ten tliousand, or according to others from thirty to sixty thousand, live in Cairo, and the rest mostly in Upper Egypt. They now in common with all other religious sects, enjoy toleration. They and the Abyssinians are distinguished from the other Monophysites by the Jewish and Mohammedan practice of circumcision, which is performed by lay persons (on both sexes), and in Egypt is grounded upon sanitary considerations. They still observe the Jewish law of meats. They are sunk in poverty, ignorance, and semi-barbarism. Even the clergy, who indeed are taken from the lowest class of the people, are a beggarly set, and understand nothing but how to read mass, and perform the various ceremonies. They do not even know the Coptic or old Egyptian, their own ancient ecclesiastical language. They live by farming, and their official fees. The literary treasures of their convents in the Coptic, Syriac, and Arabic languages, have been of late secured for the most part to the British Museum, by Tattam and other travellers.
Missions have lately been undertaken among them, especially by the Church Missionary Society of England (commencing in 1825), and the United Presbytei-ians of America, but with little success so far.'
The Abyssinian church is a daughter of the Coptic, and was founded in the fourth century by two missionaries from Alexandria, Frumentius and Aedesius. It presents a strange mixture of barbarism, ignorance, superstition, and Christianity.
' So that even their Arabic historian Makrizi was moved to compassion foi them.
' A detailed, but very unfavorable description of the Copts is given by Edward VY. Lane in his " Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians," 1833. Notwithstanding this they stand higher than tlie other Egyptians. A. P. Stanley (Hist, of the Eastern Church, p. 95) says of them: "The Copts are still, even in their degraded state, the most civilized of the natives ; the intelligence of Egypt still liugera in the Coptic scribes, who are on this account used as clerks in the ofSces of theij conquerors, or as registrars of the water-marks of the Nile." Comp. also the occa sional notices of tte Copts in the Egyptological writings of Wilkinson, Bunsen, Lep 9ius, Brugsch, and others.
778 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
Its Etliiopic Bible, which dates perhaps from the first miisionaries, includes in the Old Testament the apocryplial book of Enoch. The Chronicles of Axnma (the former capital of the countrj), dating from the fourth century, receive almost the same honor as the Bible. The council of Chalccdon is accounted an assembly of fools and heretics. The Abyssinian chm'ch has retained even more Jewish elements than the Coptic. It observes the Jewish Sabbath together with the Christian Sunday ; it forbids the use of the flesh of swine and other unclean beasts ; it celebrates a yearly feast of general lustration or rebaptizing of the whole naticn ; it retains the model of a sacred ark, called the ark of Zio i, to which gifts and prayers are olfered, and which forms the central point of public worship. It believes in the magical virtue of outward ceremonies, especially imn]ersion, as the true regeneration. Singularly enough it honors Pontius Pilate as a saint, because he washed his hands of innocent blood. The endless controversies respecting the natures of Christ, which have died out elsewhere, still rage there. The Abyssinians honor saints and pictures, but not images ; crosses, but not the crucifix. Every priest carries a cross in his hand, and presents it to every one whom he meets, to be kissed. The numerous churches are small and dome-shaped above, and covered with reeds and straws On the floor lie a number of staves and crutches, on which the people support themselves during the long service, as, like all the Orientals, they are without benches. Slight aa are its remains of Christianity, Abyssinia still stands, in agriculture, arts, laws, and social condition, far above fhe heathen countries of Africa — a proof that even a barbaric Christianity is better than none.
The influences of the "West have penetrated even to Abyssinia. The missions of the Jesuits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of the Protestants in the nineteenth, have been prosecuted amidst many dangers and much self-denial, yet hitherto with but little success.'
* Especially worthy of note arc the labors of the Basle missionaries, Somnel Gobat (now Anglican bishop in Jerusalem), Kugler, Isenberg, Blunihardt, and Krapf since 1830. Comp. Gobat iu the Basler MissiousmagazLU lor 18;'.4, Part 1