Mr. Gutzlaff, a Protestant missionary in China of modern times, says that "Ricci had spent only twenty-seven years in China but when he died there were more than three hundred churches in the different provinces." Gutzlaff's testimony is all the more precious, because, according to Marshall, his own associates describe him as "more occupied in amassing wealth than in making Christians." Referring to the scientific labors of Ricci and his successors, Thornton (History of China, Preface, p. 13) says: "The geographical labors performed in China by the Jesuits and other missionaries of the Roman Catholic Faith will always command the gratitude and excite the wonder of all geographers. Portable chronometers and aneroid barometers, sextants and theodolites, sympiesometers and micrometers, compasses and artificial horizons are, notwithstanding all possible care, frequently found to fail, yet one hundred and fifty years ago a few wandering European priests traversed the enormous state of China Proper, and laid down on their maps the positions of cities, the direction of rivers and the height of mountains with a correctness of detail and a general accuracy of outline that are absolutely marvellous. To this day all our maps are based on their observations." "Whatever is valuable in Chinese astronomical science," adds Mr. Gutzlaff, "has been borrowed from the treatises of Roman Catholic missionaries." Ricci's death was a calamity to the Church, for in the following year a mandarin who was in charge at Nankin started a genuine persecution. The missionaries were summoned to his tribunal, publicly scourged and sent back to Macao--and all this with the authorization of the emperor. Matters grew worse, but at the emperor's death in 1620, there was a lull, for the Tatars were invading China and the help of the Portuguese had to be invoked; as that, however, could not be done unless the Europeans were placated by recalling the missionaries, the exiles returned to their posts. The emperor overcame the Tatars, and the tranquillity and good feeling that followed allowed the Fathers, who were scattered all over the empire, some of them 800 leagues from Pekin, to get together and decide on uniformity of methods in treating with their converts. In that congregation the doubts which met them at every step as to what they were to tolerate and what to forbid were settled. They knew the people thoroughly by this time, their ideas, their customs; and their scrupulous love of the Faith guided them in their decisions.