of the Imperial city
of Komdam, son of Millesins, priest of happy memory, of Balkh, a town
of Tokharistan (Turkistan), raised this tablet of stone, on which are
described the benefits of our Saviour, and the preaching of our fathers
in the kingdom of the Chinese. Adam, Deacon, son of Yezd-bouzid,
Chor-Episcopus; Sabar-Jesu, Priest; Gabriel, Priest, Archdeacon, and
Ecclesiarch of Komdam and Sarage."

* * * * *

The abridgment of Christian doctrine given in the Syro-Chinese
inscription of Si-ngau-Fou shows us, also, that the propagators of the
faith in Upper Asia in the seventh century professed the Nestorian
errors.

Through the vague and obscure verbiage which characterizes the Chinese
style, we recognize the mode in which that heresiarch admitted the
union of the Word with man, by indwelling plenitude of grace superior
to that of all the saints. One of the persons of the Trinity
communicated himself to the very illustrious and venerable Messiah,
"veiling his majesty." That is certainly the doctrine of Nestorius;
upon that point the authority of the critics is unanimous.

History, as we have elsewhere remarked, records the rapid progress of
the Nestorian sects in the interior of Asia, and their being able to
hold their ground, even under the sway of the Mussulmans, by means of
compromises and concessions of every kind.

Setting out from the banks of the Tigris or the Euphrates, these ardent
and courageous propagators of the Gospel probably proceeded to
Khorassan, and then crossing the Oxus, directed their course toward the
Lake of Lop, and entered the Chinese Empire by the province of Chen-si.
Olopen, and his successors in the Christian mission, whether Syrians or
Persians by birth, certainly belonged to the Nestorian church.

Voltaire, who did not like to trouble himself with scientific
arguments, and who was much stronger in sarcasm than in erudition,
roundly accuses the missionaries of having fabricated the inscription
on the monument of Si-ngau-Fou, from motives of "pious fraud." "As if,"
says Remusat, "such a fabrication could have been practicable in the
midst of a distrustful and suspicious nation, in a country in which
magistrates and private people are equally ill-disposed towards
foreigners, and especially missionaries, where all eyes are open to
their most trivial p