United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When, hundreds of years after, the Jesuit missionaries penetrated into this most exclusive of all the nations of the earth, they found near the palace at Chang-an the ruins of the Nestorian mission church, with the cross still standing, and, preserved through all the changes of dynasties, an abstract in Syriac characters of the Christian law, and with it the names of seventy-two attendant priests who had served the church established by O-lo-pun.
This very day doth the great emperor go forth from the City of Peace, to the banks of the Yellow River. Come thou with me to witness the splendor of his train, and perchance even to see the great emperor himself and the young Prince Kaou, his son." The meaning of Chang-an, the ancient capital of China, is "the City of Continuous Peace."
And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and more helpful light of Christianity.
"Grant me, I pray, One dewdrop from Thy willow spray, And in the double Lotos keep My hidden heart asleep." How great is the Glory of Kwannon! In the city of Chang-an music filled the palaces, and the festivities of the Emperor were measured by its beat. Night, and the full moon swimming like a gold-fish in the garden lakes, gave the signal for the Feather Jacket and Rainbow Skirt dances.
Now, among the rulers of China there are three classes of privileged targets the skin of the bear for the emperor himself, the skin of the deer for the princes of the blood, and the skin of the tiger for the nobles of the court; and thus, side by side, in the Imperial Archery School at Chang-an, hung the three targets.
And a great emperor was Tai-tsung, though few, if any, of my young readers ever heard his name. His splendid palace stood in the midst of lovely gardens in the great city of Chang-an, that old, old city that for over two thousand years was the capital of China, and which you can now find in your geographies under its modern name of Singan-foo.
Word Of The Day