THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
subtleties of this sort. Some use a species of planchette for obtaining adumbrations of fate, some keep ledger accoimts of merits and demerits, while others strive after the (Taoist) " pill of immortahty." The I Ho Ch'uan (or " Boxers ") in 1899 adopted the name of an organization much more than a century old. Whenever any society is vigorously repressed, it invariably reappears under a new name. The existence of these countless sects is a conspicuous witness to the radical insufficiency of each of the standard " religions " of China to satisfy the wants of the human soul.
II. Christian Missions. — 1. Nestorian Missions: According to ancient tradition Christianity was carried to India and perhaps even to China by the apostle Thomas. While it is not impossible that a knowledge of the new faith may have penetrated so far in the early centuries, no certain evidence of it is now to be obtained. The Nestorians, however, sent missionaries to China at the beginning of the sixth century, as is proved by the black marble tablet discovered near the present Si Ngan Fu, the western capital of China, in 1625, recording the establishment of the " Illustrious Doctrine." The date of this justly famous monument of the past is 781 a.d., and its authenticity, once hotly disputed, is now irrefragably established. Judging by the allusions in Marco Polo's narrative, in the thirteenth century Nestorian churches must have been niunerous. The followers of this faith were no doubt bitterly antagonized by the aggressive Mohammedans, who came to China somewhat later than they, the Nestorians in turn persecuting the early Roman Catholic missionaries. Nestorianism seems to have survived for almost a thousand years, traces of it being mentioned by travelers as late as the fourteenth century. But not a building which the Nestorians erected, not a page which they wrote has been preserved, and after more than twelve centuries they are remembered only by a stone tablet [In Nov., 1907, probably on account of the increasing number of European vandals in the province, the governor of Shen-Si removed the Nestorian Tablet from its ancient position in an open field near Si Ngan Fu and placed it in the Peilin Temple, inside the walls of the city.]
S. Boman Catholic Missions: The efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to establish itself in China are divisible into several well-
Ea^f ^ marked periods, of which the first be- " gan with the arrival of John of Monte
Period. Corvino (q.v.), who reached China in 1292, during the Yuan, or Mongol dynasty. This zealous priest labored alone for eleven years, being later reenforced by seven assistants and himself made archbishop. His letters speak of translating the Psalms and the New Testament into Mongol, and of some 30,000 " infidels " converted. But with the advent of the native Ming dynasty and the expulsion of the Mongols in 1368, so completely were the traces of the past effaced that it was long forgotten that Christianity had ever entercil the Celestial em])ire at all.
The second period of Roman Catholic missions is separated from the first by more than two centuries of silence. The great missionary Francis
Second Period.
Xavier (q.v.) died on the island of St. John in 1552, after heroic but unavailing efforts to enter China. In 1582 two Jesuit priests 2. The succeeded by a stratagem in getting a foothold in the province of Kwangtung. One of these was Michele Ruggieri (Roger), and the other the celebrated Matteo Ricci (q.v.), a man of great natural abilities, of a genial diplomatic temperament, and gifted with an unwearying patience. After nearly twenty years of romantic adventures he at last accomplished his great purpose, reaching Peking in Jan., 1601, where his labors were most indefatigable, and at his death in 1610 at the early age of fifty-five, they appeared to be crowned with success, especially in winning the literati. Ricci's Chinese writings remain to this day as an evidence of his unique achievements. His most famous convert was a Han Lin named Hsii, who took the name of Paul, and whose daughter (baptized as Candida) was a foster-mother to the infant Church. The family estate near Shanghai (locally called Sikawei — " home of the Hsii family ") is now perhaps the most important center of Roman Catholic influence in China. Ricci nominated Longobardi (Lombard) as his successor, who after careful investigation felt obliged to reverse the policy of concession to Chinese customs in regard to the worship of ancestors, and in the use of the characters Shang Ti as the designation for God. These divisive and perversive questions were the rock upon which Roman Catholic missions in China ultimately split. The talents of Adam Schaal, one of his successors, like those of Ricci himself, were various and imposing, his labors ranging from astronomical erudition, exhibited in the reform of the Imperial calendar, to the composition of works of theology, and of metal for the casting of cannon. His success was provocative of jealousy, so that he was undermined by intrigues, and died of grief and mortification at the age of seventy-eight, having been thirty-seven years in the employ of five monarchs. The achievements and honors of his successor, Ferdinand Verbiest, were if possible even greater, continuing for a period of thirty years to 1688. This trio of men of extraordinary abilities and devotion not perhaps equaled in missions in any other part of the world might have been expected to insure the success of the Church to which they gave themselves.
But meantime the seeds of dissension which ultimately proved the ruin not only of the Jesuit labors in China but also of those of the Franciscans and Dominicans who followed them were yielding their harvest of ill. Ricci had endeavored in everything to regard Chinese prejudices that he might win the literati. Upon the representations of Lombard, Pope Innocent X, (1645) forbade the worship of Heaven, and the rites to the dead, but the Jesuits succeeded in getting a bull from Alexander VII. (1656) practically (although not in form) reversing the decision. A third bull maintained the validity of each of the former, the rites being forbidden to those who thought them idolatrous, but lawful to those who considered them as merely civil and not religious. In 1699 the Jesuits with signal imprudence appealed the ques-