(Foreign Office) must be abolished and a new ministry of foreign affairs erected, the Wai-wu Pu, which must be regarded as the highest of the departments instead of the lowest. China's cup of humiliation was indeed full. 1 XVIII BEGINNINGS OF THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE— THE TAI-PING REBELLION AND THE LATER DEVELOPMENT T HE first definite knowledge of the true God appears to have come to China with some Jews who are said to have entered the Empire in the third century. Conjecture has long been busy with the circumstances of that ancient migration. That the colony became fairly numerous may be inferred from the fact that in 1329 and again in 1354, the Jews are mentioned in the Chinese records of the Mongol dynasty, while early in the seventeenth century Father Ricci claimed to have discovered a synagogue built in 1183. In 1866, the Rev. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, then President of the Tung-wen College at Peking, visited Kai-fung-fu, the centre of this Jewish colony, and on a monument he found an inscription which included the following passage: "With respect to the religion of Israel, we find that our first ancestor was Adam. The founder of the religion was Abraham; then came Moses who established the law, and handed down the sacred writings. During the dynasty of Han (B. C. 200-A. D. 226) this religion entered China. In the second year of Hiao-tsung, of the Sung dynasty (A. D. 1164), a synagogue was erected in Kai-fung-fu. Those who attempt to represent God by images or pictures do but vainly occupy themselves with empty forms. Those who honour and obey the sacred writings know the origin of all things. Eternal reason and the sacred writings mutually sustain each other in testifying whence men derived their being. All those who profess this religion aim at the practice of goodness and avoid the commission of vice."1 1 Martin, "A Cycle of Cathay," p. 275. |