Walter Henry Medhurst
Girardot traces the origins of this "methodological rigidity" or "benign neglect" for the study of Chinese religion and mythology back to early 19th-century missionary scholars who sought creation myths in early Chinese texts, "the concern for the study of Chinese cosmogony on the part of the missionaries resulted in a frustration over not finding anything that resembled the Christian doctrine of a rational creator God." For instance, the missionary and translator Walter Henry Medhurst claimed Chinese religions suffered because "'no first cause' characterizes all the sects", "the Supreme, self-existent God is scarcely traceable through the entire range of their metaphysics", and the whole system of Chinese cosmogony "is founded in materialism".