We add to this chapter a Note, containing an interesting account, from Hue’s “Christianity in China,” of an inscribed stone, proving that Christian churches existed in China in the seventh century.  These churches were the result of the efforts of Nestorian missionaries, who were the Protestant Christians of their age.  Their success in China is another proof that the Christianity which is to be welcomed there must be presented in an intelligible and rational form.

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NOTE.

   The Nestorian Inscription in China.[29]

In 1625 some Chinese workmen, engaged in digging a foundation for a house, outside the walls of the city of Si-ngau-Fou, the capital of the province of Chen-si, found buried in the earth a large monumental stone resembling those which the Chinese are in the habit of raising to preserve to posterity the remembrance of remarkable events and illustrious men.  It was a dark-colored marble tablet, ten feet high and five broad, and bearing on one side an inscription in ancient Chinese, and also some other characters quite unknown in China.

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Several exact tracings from the stone were sent to Europe by the Jesuits who saw it.  The library of their house at Rome had one of the first, and it attracted numerous visitors; subsequently, another authentic copy of the dimensions of the tablet was sent to Paris, and deposited at the library in the Rue Richelieu, where it may still be seen in the gallery of manuscripts.

This monument, discovered by chance amidst rubbish in the environs of an ancient capital of the Chinese Empire, excited a great sensation; for on examining the stone, and endeavoring to interpret the inscription, it was with surprise discovered that the Christian religion had had numerous apostles in China at the beginning of the seventh century, and that it had for a long time flourished there.  The strange characters proved to be those called estrangelhos, which were in use among the ancient inhabitants of Syria, and will be found in some Syriac manuscripts of earlier date than the eighth century.

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   Monument of the great Propagation of the Luminous Doctrine in the
   Central Empire, composed by Khing-Tsing, a devout Man of the Temple of
   Ta-Thsin.

1.  There has always been only one true Cause, essentially the first, and without beginning, supremely intelligent and immaterial; essentially the last, and uniting all perfections.  He placed the poles of the heavens and created all beings; marvellously holy, he is the source of all perfection.  This admirable being, is he not the Triune, the true Lord without beginning, Oloho?

   He divided the world by a cross into four parts.  After having
   decomposed the primordial air, he gave birth to the two elements.