excursion into the realms of theurgy and magic, and I must therefore content myself with a few brief remarks. Theurgy was practised by the Egyptians; it was a prominent feature of Gnosticism; it is at the present moment the main and distinctive element of the Shingon worship, which consists very largely of manual gestures and the repetition of certain meaningless Sanskrit formulae The mystic formulae are Greek or Coptic in the one case, Sanskrit in the other; but the manual gestures are much the same in both. It is probable that the Gnostic system was taken by Alexandrian merchants to Southern India, a district which had intimate trade relations with Alexandria during the whole of the first century, though it fell off in volume after the death of Nero in A.D. 68; and it was in Southern India, according to the Shingon story, that Nagarjuna found the mystic books which lie at the base of their system. This migration from Egypt to South India would account for the Sanskritizing of a system mainly Egyptian, and there is a certain amount of historical probability in the story as related by the Shingon authorities; for Nanjo tell us that Nagarjuna (whom we may place anywhere about the middle of the second century) received the Shingon doctrine from a teacher of the name of Vajrasattva (Jap. Kongosatta), and that Vajrasattva had received it, along with the mystic Baptism, from Vairoc'ana himself through the hands of S'akyamuni, at an assembly called the Joshoe

[paragraph continues] ("self-nature-assembly"). If we may apply to a Buddhist assembly the ordinary rules of chronological computation (which is perhaps a little hazardous), that "self-nature-assembly" must have taken place about the end of the first century A.D.

We must not forget that Antioch as well as Alexandria was a great centre of trade with the Orient. Antioch was the centre of much Christian life. From it went forth St. Paul and all that missionary activity which laboured in Asia Minor, in Greece, and in Italy. From it, likewise, went forth, Eastward, the missions to Edessa, to Nisibis, to Armenia, to Persia and beyond. From it came the churches which were cut off in consequence of the quarrels over Nestorius, and through the Nestorians Antioch became the grandmother of the earliest missions--at least as far as definite records are at hand--to China.

Antioch originated the word "Christian;" the first Christian from Antioch whose name is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, was a certain Nicolas, a proselyte of that city, who was chosen to be one of the Seven Deacons. The term "proselyte" would seem to imply that Nicolas was a Gentile by birth, converted to Judaism, and again to Christianity. He must have been a fickle person, for he subsequently left the Christian Church, and became the founder of a heretical sect mentioned by the writer of the