This honor they retained even after the fall of the native dynasty that patronized them.  When the Manchus effected their conquest in 1644, not only were the Jesuit missionaries left in charge of the observatory, but the heir apparent was placed under their instruction.  Coming to the throne in 1662, under the now illustrious title of Kanghi, the young prince showed himself a generous patron as he had previously been a respectful pupil.  He was apparently not averse to the idea of his people’s adopting Christianity as their national religion, and allowed the missionaries a free hand to plant churches throughout the vast interior.  Rarely if ever has so fine an opportunity offered for making an easy conquest of a pagan empire.  It was lost through the jealousy of contending societies, and especially through the blunder of an infallible Pope.  The Dominicans denounced the Jesuits for tolerating the practice of pagan rites, such as the worship of ancestors, and for employing for God the name of a pagan deity.  The name which they then objected to was Shang-ti, Supreme Ruler, a venerable designation for the Supreme Power found in the earliest of the Chinese canonical books, and at this day accepted by a large proportion of Protestant missionaries.

The question as to its fitness was referred to the Emperor, who decided in favor of the Jesuits.  It was then brought before the Papal See, condemned as idolatrous, and Tien Chu, the Lord of Heaven, adopted in its stead.  That Shang-ti, however pure in origin, had come to be applied to a whole class of deities was perfectly true, but the name proposed in its stead was not free from a taint of idolatry,—­Tien Chu, Lord of Heaven, being one of eight divinities, and worshipped along with Ti Chu, Lord of Earth, Hai Chu, Lord of the Sea, etc.

The manner in which his opinions had been set aside by the Pope had no doubt a repelling influence on the mind of the Emperor, so that if he had ever felt inclined to embrace Christianity, he drew back in his later years.  Not only so, but he left behind him a series of Maxims in which he censures the foreign creed and warns his people against it.  These Maxims were ordered to be read in public by mandarins, and they continue to be recited and expounded as a sort of religious ritual.  Is it surprising that this lost opportunity was followed by a century and a half of open persecution?  That most of the churches survived, not only attests the zeal with which the Faith had been propagated, it throws a pleasing light on the force of the Chinese character.  At the dawn of our new epoch, there were still some half a million converts,—­with here and there a foreign Father hiding in their midst.