To-day one hears of interesting discoveries. Now it is of the old buried Christian strata among Turkomans of Samarcand, of doctrines preserved through the fury of Islam fanaticism by families that have secretly transmitted Christian worship through the centuries. Next it is of Nestorian monks in Asia Minor, startled at being able to read the characters of Ouighour inscriptions, relics of the writings which their predecessors carried to Mongolia. But for all practical purposes the Nestorian labors, once so promising, are as if they had never been. Another supreme opportunity for Christianity came when Kublai Khan, in 1268, sent west by the Polo brothers for Roman missionaries to teach his people. “The Great Khan, ... calling to him the two brethren, desired them for his love to go to the Pope of the Romans, to pray him to send an hundred wise men and learned in the Christian religion unto him, who might show his wise men that the faith of the Christians was to be preferred before all other sects, and was the only way of salvation. “After this the Prince caused letters to the Pope to be written and gave them to the two brothers. Now the contents of the letters were as follows: He begged that the Pope would send as many as an hundred persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men acquainted with the seven arts, well qualified to prove by force of argument to idolaters and other kind of folk, that the law of Christ was best; and if they would prove this, he and all under him would be Christians.” In the advance of Christianity the steps ahead have been made not so much by the conversion of the people as by the winning of their rulers,--Constantine, giving to Rome’s legions the standard of the Cross; Clovis; Ethelbert; Vladimir, who drove the whole population of Kiev naked into consecrated water of the Dnieper; Charlemagne, moving against the Saxons with his corps of priests. Where these spoke for a hundred thousand souls, Kublai spoke for a hundred million. He was able to deliver; it was the Pope who did not rise to the occasion. In all Christendom Gregory could find but two priests to go with the Khan’s messengers, and these turned back in the midst of the journey, alarmed by the prospect of its hardships. The Khan, who wished some religion, sent to Tibet, and received the Buddhist missionaries whom he requested. So China, Mongolia, Tibet, and eastern Turkestan are Buddhist to this day. Yet once again the Christian opportunity came. The way which had been opened into China by Matteo Ricci had been followed by Jesuit missionaries, until at the beginning of the seventeenth century there were two churches in Peking, some three hundred thousand converts in the Empire, and the favor of the Emperor Hang was with the Western faith.