CHRIST IN THE "LI TAI SHEN 

 HSIEN T'UNG CHIEN" 



E. T. C. WERNER, 



H.B.M. Consul, Foochow (retired). 



The slow progress made by Christianity in its earlier 

 stages precludes surprise at the scarcity of references to it 

 or its author (disregarding for the nonce the probability of 

 Christ's cousin, John, being its real founder) in the pre- 

 modern literature of Far Eastern countries. The low estima- 

 tion in which "barbarian" religions were held must also 

 have militated to some extent against liberal treatment 

 in literary works. In Chinese literature these references are 

 confined, as far as I know, to a fairly large number of 

 allusions of various lengths in the literature chiefly of 

 the Ming Period, notably in the works of Hsu Kuang-Ch'i 

 (ft 3te ©), a Prime Minister who lived A.D. 1562-1634 and 

 was noted as a convert to Christianity (what interest was 

 then shown being of course the result of the revival of Eoman 

 Catholic influence); but in the Li tai shen hsien t'ung chien 

 (l&i ft ffi i til ££ |g ) there occurs a summarized narration of 

 the traditional account of the life of Christ which is of special 

 interest and has not, I believe, hitherto been translated, This 

 work, as is generally known, dates from the middle of the 

 seventeenth century. Its author was Hsieh Ta-hsiin 

 (H ^C IHI). It consists of biographies of gods, saints, and 

 sages, chiefly, though not exclusively, Taoist, and is copiously 

 illustrated. My copy, from which I take the subjoined 

 account of the life of Christ, is an edition revised by Chang 

 Chi-tsung ( 3& $1 ^ ) and Huang Chang-lun ( ^ ^ %m ) in the 

 reign of K'ang Hsi (A.D. 1662-1723), when Christianity was 

 officially tolerated and generally popular. 



I translate the passage from the Chinese text as 

 follows : — 



"The people of the Far Western nations say that the 

 distance from their countries to China is about 97,000 li 

 (32,333 miles). The journey takes three years. One first 

 arrives at Hsi Ch'iang (^56) [the country of the Western 



