3 Review(s)

About The Book: History of the Church of Malabar (1694), which was the first work in English on the subject, and is still of considerable value. Gibbon, who approached it by a different route, introduced into a memorable chapter of the Decline and Fall a notice of the ancient Church which for comprehensiveness of grasp and general accuracy has not been surpassed. But it was reserved for Claudius Buchanan, whose aims were of a distinctly practical character, to habilitate in this country a knowledge of the Syrian Christians. About The Author: George Milne Rae (1844 1933) usually known as Mrs. Milne Rae, was a Scottish novelist and missionary born at Willowbank, Aberdeen. She began to write fiction while living in India, beginning with Morag: A Tale of Highland Life in 1872. Janet Gibb lost her mother, Margaret Smith, at the age of 12 and her civil engineer father, Alexander Gibb, at the age of 20. She married a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, Rev. George Milne Rae, and the couple went out as missionaries to Madras, India. There her husband taught at the university and at Madras Christian College. They returned to Edinburgh in about 1891.Back in Scotland, George Milne Rae published The Syrian Church in India (1892) and Connection between Old and New Testaments (1904), and was prominent in the United Free Church of Scotland. In the first of those books, he argued against the theory that St Thomas the Apostle had preached in India, explaining the assertion as an example of a tradition migrating with the people who believed in it, the Nestorians. He died in 1917. Mrs Milne Rae died in Edinburgh in 1933. The Milne Rae had four children, of whom the third, Lettice Milne Rae (1882–1959), was likewise a novelist and also a local historian. Their eldest daughter, Olive Rae (1878–1933), became an Edwardian musical comedy actress in London and on tour in Britain.