ed in the large extent of country to which we
often give the comprehensive name of Germany.

The Churches now comprehended in EUROPEAN TURKEY and GREECE were, as we
have already seen (pp. 37 to 40), the fruits of the labours of St.
Paul, and, like the Church of Rome, had wealth and learning to
encounter instead of poverty and ignorance. The Book of Acts records
very fully the earliest history of these Churches, and a large
proportion of St. Paul's Epistles are addressed to them. [Sidenote:
Liability of the Greeks to heresy.] The theorizing and philosophical
tendencies of the Greeks made them very liable be led away by heretical
teachers, and we find that the Church in Greece, from St. Paul's time
downwards, was continually disturbed by the presence of those who
taught or listened to "some new thing." Hence all the General
Councils, summoned for the authoritative settlement of the faith of the
Church, were held either in Greece, or in that part of Asia which had
been colonized by Greeks. Arianism in particular, {80} for a long
period, caused the most violent dissensions throughout the Eastern
world, and these were the occasion of that first Great Council of
Nicaea which, though not actually held in Greece, was only separated
from it by the narrow strait of the Bosphorus. [Sidenote: Origin of
jealousies between Rome and Constantinople.] The building of
Constantinople, A.D. 330, gave a Christian capital to Greece, and,
indeed, to the whole of the Eastern Roman empire; and from this time
may be dated the jealousies and struggles for supremacy which took
place between the Church in Italy and the Church in Greece, and
resulted eventually in the Great schism between East and West[2].

[Sidenote: St. Andrew in Russia.]

The CHURCH OF RUSSIA is believed to have been founded by the Apostle
St. Andrew, who extended his labours northwards from Thrace (which now
forms part of Turkey in Europe), to that portion of Scythia lying north
of the Black Sea, and now constituting the southern part of European
Russia. The bulk of the present Russian empire was, however, converted
at a much later period.

Section 5. _The Church in Africa._

[Sidenote: St. Simon Zelotes and St. Mark in Africa.]

The first evangelizing of North Africa, including what we now know as
Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, is ascribed to St. Simon Zelotes and St.
Mark, the latter of whom founded the CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA, of which he
became the first Bishop.