Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/59

47 MONUMENT OF SI-GNAN-FOU. 47 People had been accustomed hitherto to regard China as having been, up to a recent period, kept entirely apart from all contact with the nations of the West ; when, in 1583, Father Ricci announced in that country the glad tidings of the Gospel, it was imagined that the name of Jesus was then pronounced for the first time in that sequestered land. No little astonishment, therefore, was created, when a voice from antiquity, issuing thus from the bowels of the earth, proclaimed that Christi- anity had been preached from the beginning among the remotest nations ; that even for the Chinese the Day- spring from on high had shone forth ; and that if they were still in darkness, it was not because Providence never afforded them an opportunity of seeing the light. It is stated on the monumental stone in question, that a religious man, named Olopen, a man of eminent virtue, came, in 635, from Ta-Thsin (the Roman Em- pire) to Si-gnan-Fou. The Emperor sent his officers to meet him in the western suburb of the city, had him brought to the palace, and ordered him to translate the sacred books that he had brought with him. These books having been examined, the Emperor pronounced the doctrine they contained good, and permitted its publication. The decree issued to this effect is cited in the inscription. It is therein asserted, to the honour of the doctrine taught by Olopen, that under the dynasty of Tcheou, the law of truth was eclipsed in China, and having been carried towards the West by Lao-Tze, has now returned to its primitive source, to increase the splendour of the reigning dynasty. This doctrine proclaims, that Aloho (that is, God, in the Syriac language) created the heavens and the earth ; and that Satan, having seduced the first man, God sent the