Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/86

74 74 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. Christianity in China ; for there is no other motive conceivable, which could have induced them to run the risks of so perilous an enterprise. Now the monument of Si-ngan-Fou contains the exposition, not of an ortho- dox Catholic, but of a Nestorian doctrine. If they had set themselves to work at such a fraud as this, they certainly would not have been so awkward as to leave on this monument traces of a heresy that might occa- sion them great embarrassment, by compelling them to disclose to the Chinese that there had been among Christians, at an early period, very serious differences on points of doctrine as fundamental to Christianity, as the mystery of the Incarnation ; and any one must know little indeed of the Chinese to suppose that such a fact as the discovery of this monument could make any great impression upon them. Events dating no further back than eight centuries would not be of any great weight in the opinion of men, who are fond of deriving their faith and their traditions from the remotest pos- sible periods, and who admire and venerate in Con- fucius himself, only the restorer of antiquity, and of the doctrines of the founders of their ancient monarchy. Yoltaire knew his own epoch and his own country rather better than he did China, and his decisive argu- ment against the inscription is this: " The Jesuits have made us acquainted with it, therefore it is false." But this mode of reasoning, though not without its value in France at that time, will hardly, it is to be hoped, be esteemed very cogent at present. We may have no great affection for the Jesuits, and yet not be willing to subscribe to mere absurdities in order to throw blame on them. The only serious difficulty in the case of the monu-