At the beginning of the period we are considering Japan is closed against the Christian missionaries, and all the blood that has been shed on its soil proves sterile. We saw that the emperors had at length determined to extirpate the new religion, and a final revolt of the surviving Christians in 1638 led to the completing of the work of destruction. One or two Jesuits afterwards penetrated the country, in the disguise of merchants, but they were arrested or forced to leave. The artful Japanese devised a test of faith which should have defeated the zeal of the missionary; every European immigrant had to spit or trample on the crucifix before landing. It is said by a serious authority, one of the General Commandants of the French East India Company (Martin, of Pondicherry), that the Jesuits found a casuistic way out of this difficulty and insulted the crucifix; they were, they said, merely regarding it as a piece of wood and metal. However that may be, the last Jesuit--an apostate who repented--was executed there in 1652, and the fathers of the "Japanese Province" were scattered over the other eastern missions.
China had, in the meantime, become a most attractive field of labour. It will be remembered that the Jesuit Ricci had at last found a way to penetrate the Chinese defences; he had concealed his religion, dressed as a Chinese scholar, and won great prestige as a mathematician and astronomer. He had obtained great influence at the court, and other Jesuits had followed his example. Their services to the court were rewarded with permission to preach their doctrines in the provinces, but this work was often checked by local persecution, and the Jesuits directed their chief efforts to the court and the educated class. The tradition started by Ricci was maintained and developed, and a very strange group of missionaries gathered about the emperor. Chief amongst them was Father Adam Schall, a very able mathematician and intimate friend of the emperor. He could cast horoscopes, found cannon, admire the works of Kung-fu-tse, and behave in every way as a Chinese gentleman. He found a substantial agreement between educated Chinese religion and Christianity--especially by keeping the crucifix out of sight--and genially sanctioned the worship of "Heaven," the veneration of Kung-fu-tse, and the cult of ancestors. The educated Chinaman is, as we know to-day, an Agnostic, and he concluded that the Jesuit was an almost equally liberal interpreter of popular superstitions. He therefore welcomed these western gentlemen who could read the stars, make fancy clocks, found cannon, direct armies, and paint pictures better than the native scholar.