The course of the apostle and his companion toward the east, so far as this tradition and its modern limitations have defined it, may thus be traced. Leaving Jerusalem, they journeyed by the usual route to the Red Sea, and thence along the coasts of Arabia Petraea and Arabia Felix to Aden, then, as now, a city of much commercial importance, on account of its excellent harbor and commanding situation. Here they remained for a considerable period of time, the apostle preaching the Gospel and laying foundations on which other men might build. Embarking thence, they sailed around the southern borders of the Arabian peninsula, and, crossing the Gulf of Oman, landed at one of the then flourishing cities near the mouths of the Indus. After some delay, of which St. Thomas made good use in the service of the Gospel, they pushed north-easterly into the interior to the immediate province of King Gondaphorus, where, after the labors of two years, the apostle brought the monarch and his family under obedience to the yoke of Christ. His special work thus accomplished, St. Thomas travelled into many other kingdoms on the same divine errand, and terminated his devoted and fruitful life by holy martyrdom. Thus far, the legend; and that it agrees with and is in fact the interpreter of all other traditions of St. Thomas, as well as of those various monuments which, until recently, have been unknown as teachers of Christian history, will shortly be made manifest.
The holy apostle, having once established Christianity in those parts of India which lie nearest to Jerusalem, would naturally extend his journey into more distant regions, rather than retrace his steps, and occupy, as his field of labor, a territory to which the Gospel would, without his intervention, probably be soon proclaimed. For, having in himself powers plenipotentiary for the organization and perpetuation of the church, wherever he might plant it, and being assured, as a Christian and disciple, that the zeal and perseverance of his fellow-workers might safely be entrusted with the conversion of the nations adjacent to the centres of Christian doctrine, it was simply manlike, simply apostolic, for him to set his face steadfastly toward those who, but for him, might not in many generations obtain the light of faith. If, therefore, the footsteps which we have already traced be genuine, we may with reason look for traces of the same unwearied feet in other and still more unknown lands.
And herein also, the traditions of the early ages will not disappoint us. Still reckoning by nations, rather than by kingdoms, the ancient writers tell us that St. Thomas preached the Gospel to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, Germanians, Seres, Indians, and Scythians. Thus in a fragment of St. Dorotheus, (A.D. 254,) "The apostle Thomas, having announced the Gospel to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Germanians, Bactrians, and Mages, suffered martyrdom at Calamila, a city of India." Theodoret, speaking of the universality of the preaching of the apostles, says, "They have caused, not only the Romans, and those who inhabit the Roman empire, but the Scythians, … the Indians, … the Persians, the Seres, and the Hyrcanians to receive from them the law of the Crucified." Origen, and from him Eusebius, relates that St. Thomas received Parthia as his allotted sphere; and Sophronius mentions that he planted the faith among the Medes, Persians, Carmanians, (Germanians,) Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and other nations of the extreme east. Both the latter and St. Gaudentius declare that he suffered at Calamina in India.
The same traditions are faithfully preserved among the Christians of India. In the breviary of the Church of Malabar, it is stated that St. Thomas converted the Indians, Chinese, and Ethiopians, and that these different nations, together with the Persians, offer their adorations to God in commemoration of this devoted apostle, from whom their forefathers received the truth of Christ. The presumption of fact, which arises out of such a mass of testimony as these and other witnesses which might be quoted offer us, existing for so many ages and in countries so widely separated from each other, is surely sufficient to justify a careful study of the localities to which these different nations belonged, as indicative of the later and more extended missionary labors of St. Thomas.
According to the best authorities on the subjects of ancient geography and ethnology, all the various territories which were inhabited by the nations whose conversion has been attributed to St. Thomas lie east of the Euphrates, and, with the single exception of the Scythians, below the fortieth parallel of latitude. The Medes occupied the districts between the Caspian and Persian seas. The Hyrcanians lay on the south-east of the Caspian, the Parthians and the Bactrians lying east of them; and all three being included in the present Turkistan. The Persians held the northeastern borders of the Persian Gulf, next to the kingdom of the Medes; the Germanians, or Carmanians, lying next on the south-east, in part of what is now known as Beloochistan, and the lower corner of modern Persia. The "Seres" was a name given to the Chinese in the earliest historic ages, and embraced the vast and cultivated people who dwell beyond the Emodi, or Himalaya, mountains, and east of the sources of the Indus. The Indians and Scythians—the former occupying from the Indian Ocean and the latter from the Arctic zone—met together between the Bactrians and the Seres, and formed the Indo-Scythian races of the ante-Christian age. Calamila, or Calamina, the city near which the apostle finally rested from his labors, is on the eastern coast of Hindostan, a short distance from Madras, and has been known, at different periods, by the names of Meliapour, Beit-Thoma, and St. Thomas.
The connection of these ancient nations and countries with, and their successive propinquity to, each other enables us to form a tolerably correct idea of the course of the apostle's missionary work, from the baptism of Gondaphorus to the close of his own career. For although our guide is simply the intrinsic probability which grows out of the nature of the workman and the work God had appointed him to do, yet, to whoever takes the map of the various regions which we have described as the scenes of the apostolic life and death, it will appear that one of two courses must have been adopted. The first starts from the valley of the Indus, and, leading westward, reaches in turn the Germanians, Persians, and Medes; then, turning toward the north and flexing eastward by the southern border of the Caspian Sea, it penetrates the land of the Hyrcanians, Parthians, Bactrians, Indo-Scythians, and Seres; where, again met by the upper Indus, it bends southward, and, striking through the heart of Hindostan, ends in the lower portion of the peninsula at or near Madras. The second, beginning at the same point, follows up the Indus in a path directly opposite to the former, until the place of departure is again reached and the final journey through modern India begins. It is scarcely possible to say which of these two routes is most probably correct. Future researches may throw light upon the extent of the region over which King Gondaphorus reigned, upon the relation of the dialects of these bordering nations to each other, and thus afford a clue to the more exact path of the apostle. But in either case, the districts over which he travelled, and the races into contact with whom he carried the Gospel, are distinguished with a high degree of certainty, and the triumphs of the cross under his leadership may thus be clearly understood.
Indeed, the work of scarce any apostle of the twelve can now be better followed than that of Thomas. The chief indefiniteness attaches to his mission to the Seres; for here little is extant to show, with any great conclusiveness, whether his labors terminated with the borders of Indo-Scythia, or penetrated to the Yellow Sea. Some monuments of antiquity have, it is true, been found, which point strongly to the spreading of the Gospel over a large part of China by primitive if not by apostolic missionaries; but nothing has as yet been discovered which would justify the conclusion that St. Thomas actually attempted the evangelization of that immense and thickly-populated empire. If such had been the case, it is hardly possible that India should have received him back again, and given him the distant Calamina for his martyrdom.
The area of territory over which the apostle Thomas must thus have journeyed embraces over three million two hundred and fifty thousand square miles, and the people to whom he opened the doors of heaven, through the Gospel, numbered more than two hundred millions of souls. The linear distance of his own personal travels probably exceeded ten thousand miles, and this, for the most part, necessarily on foot. The consideration of these facts, and of the results which followed from the apostle's labors, will give us some idea of the work which our Divine Lord committed to his immediate disciples, and of the untiring zeal and superhuman endurance with which they were endowed. It has become far easier for us to say, "The Lord hath shortened his hand," than to go and do likewise.