Ten Great Religions

An Essay in Comparative Theology

by

James Freeman Clarke

Prophets who have been since the world began.—Luke i. 70.

Gentiles ... who show the work (or influence) of the (that) law which is written in their hearts.—Romans ii. 15.

God ... hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth ... that they should seek the Lord, if haply they may feel after him and find him.—Acts, xviii. 24-27.

Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1871,
by James Freeman Clarke, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Copyright, 1899,
By Eliot C. Clarke.

To
William Heney Channing,
My Friend and Fellow-Student
During Many Years,
This Work
Is Affectionately Inscribed.

Preface.

The first six chapters of the present volume are composed from six articles prepared for the Atlantic Monthly, and published in that magazine in 1868. They attracted quite as much attention as the writer anticipated, and this has induced him to enlarge them, and add other chapters. His aim is to enable the reader to become acquainted with the doctrines and customs of the principal religions of the world, without having to consult numerous volumes. He has not come to the task without some preparation, for it is more than twenty-five years since he first made of this study a speciality. In this volume it is attempted to give the latest results of modern investigations, so far as any definite and trustworthy facts have been attained. But the writer is well aware of the difficulty of being always accurate in a task which involves such interminable study and such an amount of details. He can only say, in the words of a Hebrew writer: "If I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto."

Contents.

[Chapter I.]

Introduction.—Ethnic and Catholic Religions.

[Chapter II.]

Confucius and the Chinese, or the Prose of Asia.

[Chapter III.]

Brahmanism.

[Chapter IV.]

Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the East.

[Chapter V.]

Zoroaster and the Zend Avesta.

[Chapter VI.]

The Gods of Egypt.

[Chapter VII.]

The Gods Of Greece.

[Chapter VIII.]

The Religion of Rome.

[Chapter IX.]

The Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion.

[Chapter X.]

The Jewish Religion.

[Chapter XI.]

Mohammed and Islam.

[Chapter XII.]

The Ten Religions and Christianity.

Ten Great Religions.

Chapter I.

Introduction.—Ethnic and Catholic Religions.

§ 1. Object of the present Work.

The present work is what the Germans call a Versuch, and the English an Essay, or attempt. It is an attempt to compare the great religions of the world with each other. When completed, this comparison ought to show what each is, what it contains, wherein it resembles the others, wherein it differs from the others; its origin and development, its place in universal history; its positive and negative qualities, its truths and errors, and its influence, past, present, or future, on the welfare of mankind. For everything becomes more clear by comparison We can never understand the nature of a phenomenon when we contemplate it by itself, as well as when we look at it in its relations to other phenomena of the same kind. The qualities of each become more clear in contrast with those of the others. By comparing together, therefore, the religions of mankind, to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ, we are able to perceive with greater accuracy what each is. The first problem in Comparative Theology is therefore analytical, being to distinguish each religion from the rest. We compare them to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ. But the next problem in Comparative Theology is synthetical, and considers the adaptation of each system to every other, to determine its place, use, and value, in reference to universal or absolute religion. It must, therefore, examine the different religions to find wherein each is complete or defective, true or false; how each may supply the defects of the other or prepare the way for a better; how each religion acts on the race which receives it, is adapted to that race, and to the region of the earth which it inhabits. In this department, therefore, it connects itself with Comparative Geography, with universal history, and with ethics. Finally, this department of Comparative Theology shows the relation of each partial religion to human civilization, and observes how each religion of the world is a step in the progress of humanity. It shows that both the positive and negative side of a religion make it a preparation for a higher religion, and that the universal religion must root itself in the decaying soil of partial religions. And in this sense Comparative Theology becomes the science of missions.

Such a work as this is evidently too great for a single mind. Many students must co-operate, and that through many years, before it can be completed. This volume is intended as a contribution toward that end. It will contain an account of each of the principal religions, and its development. It will be, therefore, devoted to the natural history of ethnic and catholic religions, and its method will be that of analysis. The second part, which may be published hereafter, will compare these different systems to show what each teaches concerning the great subjects of religious thought,—God, Duty, and Immortality. Finally, it will compare them with Christianity, and will inquire whether or not that is capable of becoming the religion of the human race.

§ 2. Comparative Theology; its Nature, Value, and present Position.

The work of Comparative Theology is to do equal justice to all the religious tendencies of mankind. Its position is that of a judge, not that of an advocate. Assuming, with the Apostle Paul, that each religion has come providentially, as a method by which different races "should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him," it attempts to show how each may be a step in the religious progress of the races, and "a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ." It is bound, however, to abstain from such inferences until it has accurately ascertained all the facts. Its first problem is to learn what each system contains; it may then go on, and endeavor to generalize from its facts.

Comparative Theology is, therefore, as yet in its infancy. The same tendency in this century, which has produced the sciences of Comparative Anatomy, Comparative Geography, and Comparative Philology, is now creating this new science of Comparative Theology.[1] It will be to any special theology as Comparative Anatomy is to any special anatomy, Comparative Geography to any special geography, or Comparative Philology to the study of any particular language. It may be called a science, since it consists in the study of the facts of human history, and their relation to each other. It does not dogmatize: it observes. It deals only with phenomena,—single phenomena, or facts; grouped phenomena, or laws.

Several valuable works, bearing more or less directly on Comparative Theology, have recently appeared in Germany, France, and England. Among these may be mentioned those of Max Müller, Bunsen, Burnouf, Döllinger, Hardwicke, St. Hilaire, Düncker, F. C. Baur, Rénan, Creuzer, Maurice, G. W. Cox, and others.

In America, except Mr. Alger's admirable monograph on the "Doctrine of the Future Life," we have scarcely anything worthy of notice. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's work on the "Progress of Religious Ideas" deserves the greatest credit, when we consider the time when it was written and the few sources of information then accessible.[2] Twenty-five years ago it was hardly possible to procure any adequate information concerning Brahmanism, Buddhism, or the religions of Confucius, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. Hardly any part of the Vedas had been translated into a European language. The works of Anquetil du Perron and Kleuker were still the highest authority upon the Zendavesta. About the Buddhists scarcely anything was known. But now, though many important lacunæ remain to be filled, we have ample means of ascertaining the essential facts concerning most of these movements of the human soul. The time seems to have come to accomplish something which may have a lasting value.

§ 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian Apologists.

Comparative Theology, pursuing its impartial course as a positive science, will avoid the error into which most of the Christian apologists of the last century fell, in speaking of ethnic or heathen religions. In order to show the need of Christianity, they thought it necessary to disparage all other religions. Accordingly they have insisted that, while the Jewish and Christian religions were revealed, all other religions were invented; that, while these were from God, those were the work of man; that, while in the true religions there was nothing false, in the false religions there was nothing true. If any trace of truth was to be found in Polytheism, it was so mixed with error as to be practically only evil. As the doctrines of heathen religions were corrupt, so their worship was only a debasing superstition. Their influence was to make men worse, not better; their tendency was to produce sensuality, cruelty, and universal degradation. They did not proceed, in any sense, from God; they were not even the work of good men, but rather of deliberate imposition and priestcraft. A supernatural religion had become necessary in order to counteract the fatal consequences of these debased and debasing superstitions. This is the view of the great natural religions of the world which was taken by such writers as Leland, Whitby, and Warburton in the last century. Even liberal thinkers, like James Foster[3] and John Locke,[4] declare that, at the coming of Christ, mankind had fallen into utter darkness, and that vice and superstition filled the world. Infidel no less than Christian writers took the same disparaging view of natural religions. They considered them, in their source, the work of fraud; in their essence, corrupt superstitions; in their doctrines, wholly false; in their moral tendency, absolutely injurious; and in their result, degenerating more and more into greater evil.

A few writers, like Cudworth and the Platonists, endeavored to put in a good word for the Greek philosophers, but the religions of the world were abandoned to unmitigated reprobation. The account which so candid a writer as Mosheim gives of them is worth noticing, on account of its sweeping character. "All the nations of the world," he says, "except the Jews, were plunged in the grossest superstition. Some nations, indeed, went beyond others in impiety and absurdity, but all stood charged with irrationality and gross stupidity in matters of religion." "The greater part of the gods of all nations were ancient heroes, famous for their achievements and their worthy deeds, such as kings, generals, and founders of cities." "To these some added the more splendid and useful objects in the natural world, as the sun, moon, and stars; and some were not ashamed to pay divine honors to mountains, rivers, trees, etc." "The worship of these deities consisted in ceremonies, sacrifices, and prayers. The ceremonies were, for the most part, absurd and ridiculous, and throughout debasing, obscene, and cruel. The prayers were truly insipid and void of piety, both in their form and matter." "The priests who presided over this worship basely abused their authority to impose on the people." "The whole pagan system had not the least efficacy to produce and cherish virtuous emotions in the soul; because the gods and goddesses were patterns of vice, the priests bad men, and the doctrines false."[5]

This view of heathen religions is probably much exaggerated. They must contain more truth than error, and must have been, on the whole, useful to mankind. We do not believe that they originated in human fraud, that their essence is superstition, that there is more falsehood than truth in their doctrines, that their moral tendency is mainly injurious, or that they continually degenerate into greater evil. No doubt it may be justly predicated of all these systems that they contain much which is false and injurious to human virtue. But the following considerations may tend to show that all the religions of the earth are providential, and that all tend to benefit mankind.

To ascribe the vast phenomena of religion, in their variety and complexity, to man as their author, and to suppose the whole a mere work of human fraud, is not a satisfactory solution of the facts before us. That priests, working on human ignorance or fear, should be able to build up such a great mass of belief, sentiment, and action, is like the Hindoo cosmogony, which supposes the globe to rest on an elephant, the elephant on a turtle, and the turtle on nothing at all.

If the people were so ignorant, how happened the priests to be so wise? If the people were so credulous, why were not the priests credulous too? "Like people, like priests," is a proverb approved by experience. Among so many nations and through so many centuries, why has not some one priest betrayed the secret of the famous imposition? Apply a similar theory to any other human institution, and how patent is its absurdity! Let a republican contend that all other forms of government—the patriarchal system, government by castes, the feudal system, absolute and limited monarchies, oligarchies, and aristocracies—are wholly useless and evil, and were the result of statecraft alone, with no root in human nature or the needs of man. Let one maintain that every system of law (except our own) was an invention of lawyers for private ends. Let one argue in the same way about medicine, and say that this is a pure system of quackery, devised by physicians, in order to get a support out of the people for doing nothing. We should at once reply that, though error and ignorance may play a part in all these institutions, they cannot be based on error and ignorance only. Nothing which has not in it some elements of use can hold its position in the world during so long a time and over so wide a range. It is only reasonable to say the same of heathen or ethnic religions. They contain, no doubt, error and evil. No doubt priestcraft has been carried very far in them, though not further perhaps than it has sometimes been carried in Christianity. But unless they contained more of good than evil, they could not have kept their place. They partially satisfied a great hunger of the human heart. They exercised some restraint on human wilfulness and passion. They have directed, however imperfectly, the human conscience toward the right. To assume that they are wholly evil is disrespectful to human nature. It supposes man to be the easy and universal dupe of fraud. But these religions do not rest on such a sandy foundation, but on the feeling of dependence, the sense of accountability, the recognition of spiritual realities very near to this world of matter, and the need of looking up and worshipping some unseen power higher and better than ourselves. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind forbids us to ascribe pagan religions to priestcraft as their chief source.

And a reverence for Divine Providence brings us to the same conclusion. Can it be that God has left himself without a witness in the world, except among the Hebrews in ancient times and the Christians in modern times? This narrow creed excludes God from any communion with the great majority of human beings. The Father of the human race is represented as selecting a few of his children to keep near himself, and as leaving all the rest to perish in their ignorance and error. And this is not because they are prodigal children who have gone astray into a far country of their own accord; for they are just where they were placed by their Creator. HE "has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation." HE has caused some to be born in India, where they can only hear of him through Brahmanism; and some in China, where they can know him only through Buddha and Confucius. The doctrine which we are opposing is; that, being put there by God, they are born into hopeless error, and are then punished for their error by everlasting destruction. The doctrine for which we contend is that of the Apostle Paul, that God has "determined beforehand the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, IF HAPLY THEY MAY FEEL AFTER HIM AND FIND HIM." Paul teaches that "all nations dwelling on all the face of the earth" may not only seek and feel after God, but also FIND him. But as all living in heathen lands are heathen, if they find God at all, they must find him through heathenism. The pagan religions are the effort of man to feel after God. Otherwise we must conclude that the Being without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, the Being who never puts an insect into the air or a polyp into the water without providing it with some appropriate food, so that it may live and grow, has left the vast majority of his human children, made with religious appetences of conscience, reverence, hope, without a corresponding nutriment of truth. This view tends to atheism; for if the presence of adaptation everywhere is the legitimate proof of creative design, the absence of adaptation in so important a sphere tends, so far, to set aside that proof.

The view which we are opposing contradicts that law of progress which alone gives meaning and unity to history. Instead of progress, it teaches degeneracy and failure. But elsewhere we see progress, not recession. Geology shows us higher forms of life succeeding to the lower. Botany exhibits the lichens and mosses preparing a soil for more complex forms of vegetation. Civil history shows the savage state giving way to the semi-civilized, and that to the civilized. If heathen religions are a step, a preparation for Christianity, then this law of degrees appears also in religion; then we see an order in the progress of the human soul,—"first the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the ear." Then we can understand why Christ's coming was delayed till the fulness of the time had come. But otherwise all, in this most important sphere of human life, is in disorder, without unity, progress, meaning, or providence.

These views, we trust, will be amply confirmed when we come to examine each great religion separately and carefully. We shall find them always feeling after God, often finding him. We shall see that in their origin they are not the work of priestcraft, but of human nature; in their essence not superstitions, but religions; in their doctrines true more frequently than false; in their moral tendency good rather than evil. And instead of degenerating toward something worse, they come to prepare the way for something better.

§ 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles.

According to Christ and the Apostles, Christianity was to grow out of Judaism, and be developed into a universal religion. Accordingly, the method of Jesus was to go first to the Jews; and when he left the limits of Palestine on a single occasion, he declared himself as only going into Phoenicia to seek after the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he stated that he had other sheep, not of this fold, whom he must bring, recognizing that there were, among the heathen, good and honest hearts prepared for Christianity, and already belonging to him; sheep who knew his voice and were ready to follow him. He also declared that the Roman centurion and the Phoenician woman already possessed great faith, the centurion more than he had yet found in Israel. But the most striking declaration of Jesus, and one singularly overlooked, concerning the character of the heathen, is to be found in his description of the day of judgment, in Matthew (chap. XXV.). It is very curious that men should speculate as to the fate of the heathen, when Jesus has here distinctly taught that all good men among them are his sheep, though they never heard of him. The account begins, "Before him shall be gathered all the Gentiles" (or heathen). It is not a description of the judgment of the Christian world, but of the heathen world. The word here used (τὰ ἔθνη) occurs about one hundred and sixty-four times in the New Testament. It is translated "gentiles" oftener than by any other word, that is, about ninety-three times; by "heathen" four or five times; and in the remaining passages it is mostly translated "nations." That it means the Gentiles or heathen here appears from the fact that they are represented as ignorant of Christ, and are judged, not by the standard of Christian faith, but by their humanity and charity toward those in suffering. Jesus recognizes, therefore, among these ethnic or heathen people, some as belonging to himself,—the "other sheep," not of the Jewish fold.

The Apostle Paul, who was especially commissioned to the Gentiles, must be considered as the best authority upon this question. Did he regard their religions as wholly false? On the contrary, he tells the Athenians that they are already worshipping the true God, though ignorantly. "Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." When he said this he was standing face to face with all that was most imposing in the religion of Greece. He saw the city filled with idols, majestic forms, the perfection of artistic grace and beauty. Was his spirit then moved only with indignation against this worship, and had he no sympathy with the spiritual needs which it expressed? It does not seem so. He recognized piety in their souls. "I see that ye are, in all ways, exceedingly pious." He recognized their worship as passing beyond the idols, to the true God. He did not profess that he came to revolutionize their religion, but to reform it. He does not proceed like the backwoodsman, who fells the forest and takes out the stumps in order to plant a wholly different crop; but like the nurseryman, who grafts a native stock with a better fruit. They were already ignorantly worshipping the true God. What the apostle proposed to do was to enlighten that ignorance by showing them who that true God was, and what was his character. In his subsequent remarks, therefore, he does not teach them that there is one Supreme Being, but he assumes it, as something already believed. He assumes him to be the creator of all things; to be omnipotent,—"the Lord of heaven and earth"; spiritual,—"dwelleth not in temples made with hands"; absolute,—"not needing anything," but the source of all things. He says this, as not expecting any opposition or contradiction; he reserves his criticisms on their idolatry for the end of his discourse. He then states, quite clearly, that the different nations of the world have a common origin, belong to one family, and have been providentially placed in space and time, that each might seek the Lord in its own way. He recognized in them a power of seeking and finding God, the God close at hand, and in whom we live; and he quotes one of their own poets, accepting his statement of God's fatherly character. Now, it is quite common for those who deny that there is any truth in heathenism, to admire this speech of Paul as a masterpiece of ingenuity and eloquence. But he would hardly have made it, unless he thought it to be true. Those who praise his eloquence at the expense of his veracity pay him a poor compliment. Did Paul tell the Athenians that they were worshipping the true God when they were not, and that for the sake of rhetorical effect? If we believe this concerning him, and yet admire him, let us cease henceforth to find fault with the Jesuits.

No! Paul believed what he said, that the Athenians were worshipping the true God, though ignorantly. The sentiment of reverence, of worship, was lifting them to its true object. All they needed was to have their understanding enlightened. Truth he placed in the heart rather than the understanding, but he also connected Christianity with Polytheism where the two religions touched, that is, on their pantheistic side. While placing God above the world as its ruler, "seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth," he placed him in the world as an immanent presence,—"in him we live, and move, and have our being." And afterward, in writing to the Romans, he takes the same ground. He teaches that the Gentiles had a knowledge of the eternal attributes of God (Rom. i. 19) and saw him in his works (v. 20), and that they also had in their nature a law of duty, enabling them to do the things contained in the law. This he calls "the law written in the heart" (Rom. ii. 14,15). He blames them, not for ignorance, but for disobedience. The Apostle Paul, therefore, agrees with us in finding in heathen religions essential truth in connection with their errors.

The early Christian apologists often took the same view. Thus Clement of Alexandria believed that God had one great plan for educating the world, of which Christianity was the final step. He refused to consider the Jewish religion as the only divine preparation for Christianity, but regarded the Greek philosophy as also a preparation for Christ. Neander gives his views at length, and says that Clement was the founder of the true view of history.[6] Tertullian declared the soul to be naturally Christian. The Sibylline books were quoted as good prophetic works along with the Jewish prophets. Socrates was called by the Fathers a Christian before Christ.

Within the last few years the extravagant condemnation of the heathen religions has produced a reaction in their favor. It has been felt to be disparaging to human nature to suppose that almost the whole human race should consent to be fed on error. Such a belief has been seen to be a denial of God's providence, as regards nine tenths of mankind. Accordingly it has become more usual of late to rehabilitate heathenism, and to place it on the same level with Christianity, if not above it. The Vedas are talked about as though they were somewhat superior to the Old Testament, and Confucius is quoted as an authority quite equal to Paul or John. An ignorant admiration of the sacred books of the Buddhists and Brahmins has succeeded to the former ignorant and sweeping condemnation of them. What is now needed is a fair and candid examination and comparison of these systems from reliable sources.

§ 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support of Christianity.

Such an examination, doing full justice to all other religions, acknowledging their partial truth and use, will not depreciate, but exalt the value of Christianity. It will furnish a new kind of evidence in its favor. But the usual form of argument may perhaps be changed.

Is Christianity a supernatural or a natural religion? Is it a religion attested to be from God by miracles? This has been the great question in evidences for the last century. The truth and divine origin of Christianity have been made to depend on its supernatural character, and to stand or fall with a certain view of miracles. And then, in order to maintain the reality of miracles, it became necessary to prove the infallibility of the record; and so we were taught that, to believe in Jesus Christ, we must first believe in the genuineness and authenticity of the whole New Testament. "All the theology of England," says Mr. Pattison,[7] "was devoted to proving the Christian religion credible, in this manner." "The apostles," said Dr. Johnson, "were being tried one a week for the capital crime of forgery." This was the work of the school of Lardner, Paley, and Whately.

But the real question between Christians and unbelievers in Christianity is, not whether our religion is or is not supernatural; not whether Christ's miracles were or not violations of law; nor whether the New Testament, as it stands, is the work of inspired men. The main question, back of all these, is different, and not dependent on the views we may happen to take of the universality of law. It is this: Is Christianity, as taught by Jesus, intended by God to be the religion of the human race? Is it only one among natural religions? is it to be superseded in its turn by others, or is it the one religion which is to unite all mankind? "Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?" This is the question which we ask of Jesus of Nazareth, and the answer to which makes the real problem of apologetic theology.

Now the defenders of Christianity have been so occupied with their special disputes about miracles, about naturalism and supernaturalism, and about the inspiration and infallibility of the apostles, that they have left uncultivated the wide field of inquiry belonging to Comparative Theology. But it belongs to this science to establish the truth of Christianity by showing that it possesses all the aptitudes which fit it to be the religion of the human race.

This method of establishing Christianity differs from the traditional argument in this: that, while the last undertakes to prove Christianity to be true, this shows it to be true. For if we can make it appear, by a fair survey of the principal religions of the world, that, while they are ethnic or local, Christianity is catholic or universal; that, while they are defective, possessing some truths and wanting others, Christianity possesses all; and that, while they are stationary, Christianity is progressive; it will not then be necessary to discuss in what sense it is a supernatural religion. Such a survey will show that it is adapted to the nature of man. When we see adaptation we naturally infer design. If Christianity appears, after a full comparison with other religions, to be the one and only religion which is perfectly adapted to man, it will be impossible to doubt that it was designed by God to be the religion of our race; that it is the providential religion sent by God to man, its truth God's truth its way the way to God and to heaven.

§ 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to become the Religion of all Races.

By ethnic religions we mean those religions, each of which has always been confined within the boundaries of a particular race or family of mankind, and has never made proselytes or converts, except accidentally, outside of it. By catholic religions we mean those which have shown the desire and power of passing over these limits, and becoming the religion of a considerable number of persons belonging to different races.

Now we are met at once with the striking and obvious fact, that most of the religions of the world are evidently religions limited in some way to particular races or nations. They are, as we have said, ethnic. We use this Greek word rather than its Latin equivalent, gentile, because gentile, though meaning literally "of, or belonging to, a race," has acquired a special sense from its New Testament use as meaning all who are not Jews. The word "ethnic" remains pure from any such secondary or acquired meaning, and signifies simply that which belongs to a race.

The science of ethnology is a modern one, and is still in the process of formation. Some of its conclusions, however, may be considered as established. It has forever set aside Blumenbach's old classification of mankind into the Caucasian and four other varieties, and has given us, instead, a division of the largest part of mankind into Indo-European, Semitic, and Turanian families, leaving a considerable penumbra outside as yet unclassified.

That mankind is so divided into races of men it would seem hardly possible to deny. It is proved by physiology, by psychology, by glossology, and by civil history. Physiology shows us anatomical differences between races. There are as marked and real differences between the skull of a Hindoo and that of a Chinaman as between the skulls of an Englishman and a negro. There is not as great a difference, perhaps, but it is as real and as constant. Then the characters of races remain distinct, the same traits reappearing after many centuries exactly as at first. We find the same difference of character between the Jews and Arabs, who are merely different families of the same Semitic race, as existed between their ancestors, Jacob and Esau, as described in the Book of Genesis. Jacob and the Jews are prudent, loving trade, money-making, tenacious of their ideas, living in cities; Esau and the Arabs, careless, wild, hating cities, loving the desert.

A similar example of the maintaining of a moral type is found in the characteristic differences between the German and Kelts, two families of the same Indo-European race. Take an Irishman and a German, working side by side on the Mississippi, and they present the same characteristic differences as the Germans and Kelts described by Tacitus and Cæsar. The German loves liberty, the Kelt equality; the one hates the tyrant, the other the aristocrat; the one is a serious thinker, the other a quick and vivid thinker; the one is a Protestant in religion, the other a Catholic. Ammianus Marcellinus, living in Gaul in the fourth century, describes the Kelts thus (see whether it does not apply to the race now).

"The Gauls," says he, "are mostly tall of stature,[8] fair and red-haired, and horrible from the fierceness of their eyes, fond of strife, and haughtily insolent. A whole band of strangers would not endure one of them, aided in his brawl by his powerful and blue-eyed wife, especially when with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, poising her huge white arms, she begins, joining kicks to blows, to put forth her fists like stones from a catapult. Most of their voices are terrific and threatening, as well when they are quiet as when they are angry. All ages are thought fit for war. They are a nation very fond of wine, and invent many drinks resembling it, and some of the poorer sort wander about with their senses quite blunted by continual intoxication."

Now we find that each race, beside its special moral qualities, seems also to have special religious qualities, which cause it to tend toward some one kind of religion more than to another kind. These religions are the flower of the race; they come forth from it as its best aroma. Thus we see that Brahmanism is confined to that section or race of the great Aryan family which has occupied India for more than thirty centuries. It belongs to the Hindoos, to the people taking its name from the Indus, by the tributaries of which stream it entered India from the northwest. It has never attempted to extend itself beyond that particular variety of mankind. Perhaps one hundred and fifty millions of men accept it as their faith. It has been held by this race as their religion during a period immense in the history of mankind. Its sacred books are certainly more than three thousand years old. But during all this time it has never communicated itself to any race of men outside of the peninsula of India. It is thus seen to be a strictly ethnic religion, showing neither the tendency nor the desire to become the religion of mankind.

The same thing may be said of the religion of Confucius. It belongs to China and the Chinese. It suits their taste and genius. They have had it as their state religion for some twenty-three hundred years, and it rules the opinions of the rulers of opinion among three hundred millions of men. But out of China Confucius is only a name.

So, too, of the system of Zoroaster. It was for a long period the religion of an Aryan tribe who became the ruling people among mankind. The Persians extended themselves through Western Asia, and conquered many nations, but they never communicated their religion. It was strictly a national or ethnic religion, belonging only to the Iranians and their descendants, the Parsees.

In like manner it may be said that the religion of Egypt, of Greece, of Scandinavia, of the Jews, of Islam, and of Buddhism are ethnic religions. Those of Egypt and Scandinavia are strictly so. It is said, to be sure, that the Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the gods of the Romans were borrowed from the Greeks, but their life was left behind. They merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power to invent one for themselves. But the Greek religion they never received. For instead of its fair humanities, the Roman gods were only servants of the state,—a higher kind of consuls, tribunes, and lictors. The real Olympus of Rome was the Senate Chamber on the Capitoline Hill. Judaism also was in reality an ethnic religion, though it aimed at catholicity and expected it, and made proselytes. But it could not tolerate unessentials, and so failed of becoming catholic. The Jewish religion, until it had Christianity to help it, was never able to do more than make proselytes here and there. Christianity, while preaching the doctrines of Jesus and the New Testament, has been able to carry also the weight of the Old Testament, and to give a certain catholicity to Judaism. The religion of Mohammed has been catholic, in that it has become the religion of very different races,—the Arabs, Turks, and Persians, belonging to the three great varieties of the human family. But then Mohammedanism has never sought to make converts, but only subjects; it has not asked for belief, but merely for submission. Consequently Mr. Palgrave, Mr. Lane, and Mr. Vambery tell us, that, in Arabia, Egypt, and Turkistan, there are multitudes who are outwardly Mohammedan, but who in their private belief reject Mohammed, and are really Pagans. But, no doubt, there is a catholic tendency both in Judaism and Mohammedanism; and this comes from the great doctrine which they hold in common with Christianity,—the unity of God. Faith in that is the basis of all expectation of a universal religion, and the wish and the power to convert others come from that doctrine of the Divine unity.

But Christianity teaches the unity of God not merely as a supremacy of power and will, but as a supremacy of love and wisdom; it teaches God as Father, and not merely as King; so it seeks not merely to make proselytes and subjects, but to make converts. Hence Christianity, beginning as a Semitic religion, among the Jews, went across the Greek Archipelago and converted the Hellenic and the Latin races; afterward the Goths, Lombards, Franks, Vandals; later still, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans. Meantime, its Nestorian missionaries, pushing east, made converts in Armenia, Persia, India, and China. In later days it has converted negroes, Indians, and the people of the Pacific Islands. Something, indeed, stopped its progress after its first triumphant successes during seven or eight centuries. At the tenth century it reached its term. Modern missions, whether those of Jesuits or Protestants, have not converted whole nations and races, but only individuals here and there. The reason of this check, probably, is, that Christians have repeated the mistakes of the Jews and Mohammedans. They have sought to make proselytes to an outward system of worship and ritual, or to make subjects to a dogma; but not to make converts to an idea and a life. When the Christian missionaries shall go and say to the Hindoos or the Buddhists: "You are already on your way toward God,—your religion came from him, and was inspired by his Spirit; now he sends you something more and higher by his Son, who does not come to destroy but to fulfil, not to take away any good thing you have, but to add to it something better," then we shall see the process of conversion, checked in the ninth and tenth, centuries, reinaugurated.

Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, all teaching the strict unity of God, have all aimed at becoming universal. Judaism failed because it sought proselytes instead of making converts. Islam, the religion of Mohammed (in reality a Judaizing Christian sect) failed because it sought to make subjects rather than converts. Its conquests over a variety of races were extensive, but not deep. To-day it holds in its embrace at least four very distinct races,—the Arabs, a Semitic race, the Persians, an Indo-European race, the Negroes, and the Turks or Turanians. But, correctly viewed, Islam is only a heretical Christian sect, and so all this must be credited to the interest of Christianity. Islam is a John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord"; Mohammed is a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. It does for the nations just what Judaism did, that is, it teaches the Divine unity. Esau has taken the place of Jacob in the economy of Providence. When the Jews rejected Christ they ceased from their providential work, and their cousins, the Arabs, took their place. The conquests of Islam, therefore, ought to be regarded as the preliminary conquests of Christianity.

There is still another system which has shown some tendencies toward catholicity. This is Buddhism, which has extended itself over the whole of the eastern half of Asia. But though it includes a variety of nationalities, it is doubtful if it includes any variety of races. All the Buddhists appear to belong to the great Mongol family. And although this system originated among the Aryan race in India, it has let go its hold of that family and transferred itself wholly to the Mongols.

But Christianity, from the first, showed itself capable of taking possession of the convictions of the most different races of mankind. Now, as on the day of Pentecost, many races hear the apostles speak in their own tongues, in which they were born,—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judæa, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Cretes and Arabians. The miracle of tongues was a type of the effect of the truth in penetrating the mind and heart of different nationalities. The Jewish Christians, indeed, tried to repeat in Christianity their old mistake which had prevented Judaism from becoming universal. They wished to insist that no one should become a Christian unless he became a Jew at the same time. If they had succeeded in this, they would have effectually kept the Gospel of Christ from becoming a catholic religion. But the Apostle Paul was raised up for the emergency, and he prevented this suicidal course. Consequently Christianity passed at once into Europe, and became the religion of Greeks and Romans as well as Jews. Paul struck off from it its Jewish shell, told them that as Christians they had nothing to do with the Jewish law, or with Jewish Passovers, Sabbaths, or ceremonies. As Christians they were only to know Christ, and they were not to know him according to the flesh, that is, not as a Jew. So Christianity became at once a catholic religion, consisting in the diffusion of great truths and a divine life. It overflowed the nationalities of Greece and Rome, of North Africa, of Persia and Western Asia, at the very beginning. It conquered the Gothic and German conquerors of the Roman Empire. Under Arian missionaries, it converted Goths, Vandals, Lombards. Under Nestorian missionaries, it penetrated as far east as China, and made converts there. In like manner the Gospel spread over the whole of North Africa, whence it was afterwards expelled by the power of Islam. It has shown itself, therefore, capable of adapting itself to every variety of the human race.

§ 7. Comparative Theology will probably show that the Ethnic Religions are one-sided, each containing a Truth of its own, but being defective, wanting some corresponding Truth. Christianity, or the Catholic Religion, is complete on every Side.

Brahmanism, for example, is complete on the side of spirit, defective on the side of matter; full as regards the infinite, empty of the finite; recognizing eternity but not time, God but not nature. It is a vast system of spiritual pantheism, in which there is no reality but God, all else being Maya, or illusion. The Hindoo mind is singularly pious, but also singularly immoral. It has no history, for history belongs to time. No one knows when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began, what caused its progress, what its decline. Gentle, devout, abstract, it is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions. It combines the most ascetic self-denials and abstraction from life with the most voluptuous self-indulgence. The key to the whole system of Hindoo thought and life is in this original tendency to see God, not man; eternity, not time; the infinite, not the finite.

Buddhism, which was a revolt from Brahmanism, has exactly the opposite truths and the opposite defects. Where Brahmanism is strong, it is weak; where Brahmanism is weak, it is strong. It recognizes man, not God; the soul, not the all; the finite, not the infinite; morality, not piety. Its only God, Buddha, is a man who has passed on through innumerable transmigrations, till, by means of exemplary virtues, he has reached the lordship of the universe. Its heaven, Nirvana, is indeed the world of infinite bliss; but, incapable of cognizing the infinite, it calls it nothing. Heaven, being the inconceivable infinite, is equivalent to pure negation. Nature, to the Buddhist, instead of being the delusive shadow of God, as the Brahman views it, is envisaged as a nexus of laws, which reward and punish impartially both obedience and disobedience.

The system of Confucius has many merits, especially in its influence on society. The most conservative of all systems, and also the most prosaic, its essential virtue is reverence for all that is. It is not perplexed by any fear or hope of change; the thing which has been is that which shall be; and the very idea of progress is eliminated from the thought of China. Safety, repose, peace, these are its blessings. Probably merely physical comfort, earthly bien-être, was never carried further than in the Celestial Empire. That virtue so much exploded in Western civilization, of respect for parents, remains in full force in China. The emperor is honored as the father of his people; ancestors are worshipped in every family; and the best reward offered for a good action is a patent of nobility, which does not reach forward to one's children, but backward to one's parents. This is the bright side of Chinese life; the dark side is the fearful ennui, the moral death, which falls on a people among whom there are no such things as hope, expectation, or the sense of progress. Hence the habit of suicide among this people, indicating their small hold on life. In every Chinese drama there are two or three suicides. A soldier will commit suicide rather than go into battle. If you displease a Chinaman, he will resent the offence by killing himself on your doorstep, hoping thus to give you some inconvenience. Such are the merits and such the defects of the system of Confucius.

The doctrine of Zoroaster and of the Zend Avesta is far nobler. Its central thought is that each man is a soldier, bound to battle for good against evil. The world, at the present time, is the scene of a great warfare between the hosts of light and those of darkness. Every man who thinks purely, speaks purely, and acts purely is a servant of Ormazd, the king of light, and thereby helps on his cause. The result of this doctrine was that wonderful Persian empire, which astonished the world for centuries by its brilliant successes; and the virtue and intelligence of the Parsees of the present time, the only representatives in the world of that venerable religion. The one thing lacking to the system is unity. It lives in perpetual conflict. Its virtues are all the virtues of a soldier. Its defects and merits are, both, the polar opposites of those of China. If the everlasting peace of China tends to moral stagnation and death, the perpetual struggle and conflict of Persia tends to exhaustion. The Persian empire rushed through a short career of flame to its tomb; the Chinese empire vegetates, unchanged, through a myriad of years.

If Brahmanism and Buddhism occupy the opposite poles of the same axis of thought,—if the system of Confucius stands opposed, on another axis, to that of Zoroaster,—we find a third development of like polar antagonisms in the systems of ancient Egypt and Greece. Egypt stands for Nature; Greece for Man. Inscrutable as is the mystery of that Sphinx of the Nile, the old religion of Egypt, we can yet trace some phases of its secret. Its reverence for organization appears in the practice of embalming. The bodies of men and of animals seemed to it to be divine. Even vegetable organization had something sacred in it: "O holy nation," said the Roman satirist, "whose gods grow in gardens!" That plastic force of nature which appears in organic life and growth made up, in various forms, as we shall see in the proper place, the Egyptian Pantheon. The life-force of nature became divided into the three groups of gods, the highest of which represented its largest generalizations. Kneph, Neith, Sevech, Pascht, are symbols, according to Lepsius, of the World-Spirit, the World-Matter, Space and Time. Each circle of the gods shows us some working of the mysterious powers of nature, and of its occult laws. But when we come to Greece, these personified laws turn into men. Everything in the Greek Pantheon is human. All human tendencies appear transfigured into glowing forms of light on Mount Olympus. The gods of Egypt are powers and laws; those of Greece are persons.

The opposite tendencies of these antagonist forms of piety appear in the development of Egyptian and Hellenic life. The gods of Egypt were mysteries too far removed from the popular apprehension to be objects of worship; and so religion in Egypt became priestcraft. In Greece, on the other hand, the gods were too familiar, too near to the people, to be worshipped with any real reverence. Partaking in all human faults and vices, it must sooner or later come to pass that familiarity would breed contempt. And as the religion of Egypt perished from being kept away from the people, as an esoteric system in the hands of priests, that of Greece, in which there was no priesthood as an order, came to an end because the gods ceased to be objects of respect at all.

We see, from these examples, how each of the great ethnic religions tends to a disproportionate and excessive, because one-sided, statement of some divine truth or law. The question then emerges at this point: "Is Christianity also one-sided, or does it contain in itself all these truths?" Is it teres atque rotundus, so as to be able to meet every natural religion with a kindred truth, and thus to supply the defects of each from its own fulness? If it can be shown to possess this amplitude, it at once is placed by itself in an order of its own. It is not to be classified with the other religions, since it does not share their one family fault. In every other instance we can touch with our finger the weak place, the empty side. Is there any such weak side in Christianity? It is the office of Comparative Theology to answer.

The positive side of Brahmanism we saw to be its sense of spiritual realities. That is also fully present in Christianity. Not merely does this appear in such New Testament texts as these: "God is spirit," "The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life": not only does the New Testament just graze and escape Pantheism in such passages as "From whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things," "Who is above all, and through all, and in us all," "In him we live and move and have our being," but the whole history of Christianity is the record of a spiritualism almost too excessive. It has appeared in the worship of the Church, the hymns of the Church, the tendencies to asceticism, the depreciation of earth and man. Christianity, therefore, fully meets Brahmanism on its positive side, while it fulfils its negations, as we shall see hereafter, by adding as full a recognition of man and nature.

The positive side of Buddhism is its cognition of the human soul and the natural laws of the universe. Now, if we look into the New Testament and into the history of the Church, we find this element also fully expressed. It appears in all the parables and teachings of Jesus, in which man is represented as a responsible agent, rewarded or punished according to the exact measure of his works; receiving the government of ten or five cities according to his stewardship. And when we look into the practical working of Christianity we find almost an exaggerated stress laid on the duty of saving one's soul. This excessive estimate is chiefly seen in the monastic system of the Roman Church, and in the Calvinistic sects of Protestantism. It also comes to light again, curiously enough, in such books as Combe's "Constitution of Man," the theory of which is exactly the same as that of the Buddhists; namely, that the aim of life is a prudential virtue, consisting in wise obedience to the natural laws of the universe. Both systems substitute prudence for Providence as the arbiter of human destiny. But, apart from these special tendencies in Christianity, it cannot be doubted that all Christian experience recognizes the positive truth of Buddhism in regarding the human soul as a substantial, finite, but progressive monad, not to be absorbed, as in Brahmanism, in the abyss of absolute being.

The positive side of the system of Confucius is the organization of the state on the basis of the family. The government of the emperor is paternal government, the obedience of the subject is filial obedience. Now, though Jesus did not for the first time call God "the Father," he first brought men into a truly filial relation to God. The Roman Church is organized on the family idea. The word "Pope" means the "Father"; he is the father of the whole Church. Every bishop and every priest is also the father of a smaller family, and all those born into the Church are its children, as all born into a family are born sons and daughters of the family. In Protestantism, also, society is composed of families as the body is made up of cells. Only in China, and in Christendom, is family life thus sacred and worshipful. In some patriarchal systems, polygamy annuls the wife and the mother; in others the father is a despot, and the children slaves; in other systems, the crushing authority of the state destroys the independence of the household. Christianity alone accepts with China the religion of family life with all its conservative elements, while it fulfils it with the larger hope of the kingdom of heaven and brotherhood of mankind.

This idea of the kingdom of heaven, so central in Christianity, is also the essential motive in the religion of Zoroaster. As, in the Zend Avesta, every man is a soldier, fighting for light or for darkness, and neutrality is impossible; so, in the Gospel, light and good stand opposed to darkness and evil as perpetual foes. A certain current of dualism runs through the Christian Scriptures and the teaching of the Church. God and Satan, heaven and hell, are the only alternatives. Every one must choose between them. In the current theology, this dualism has been so emphasized as even to exceed that of the Zend Avesta. The doctrine of everlasting punishment and an everlasting hell has always been the orthodox doctrine in Christianity, while the Zend Avesta probably, and the religion in its subsequent development certainly, teaches universal restoration, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Nevertheless, practically, in consequence of the greater richness and fulness of Christianity, this tendency to dualism has been neutralized by its monotheism, and evil kept subordinate; while, in the Zend religion, the evil principle assumed such proportions as to make it the formidable rival of good in the mind of the worshipper. Here, as before, we may say that Christianity is able to do justice to all the truth involved in the doctrine of evil, avoiding any superficial optimism, and recognizing the fact that all true life must partake of the nature of a battle.

The positive side of Egyptian religion we saw to be a recognition of the divine element in nature, of that plastic, mysterious life which embodies itself in all organisms. Of this view we find little stated explicitly in the New Testament. But that the principles of Christianity contain it, implicitly, in an undeveloped form, appears, (1.) Because Christian monotheism differs from Jewish and Mohammedan monotheism, in recognizing God "in all things" as well as God "above all things." (2.) Because Christian art and literature differ from classic art and literature in the romantic element, which is exactly the sense of this mysterious life in nature. The classic artist is a ποιητής, a maker; the romantic artist is a troubadour, a finder. The one does his work in giving form to a dead material; the other, by seeking for its hidden life. (3.) Because modern science is invention, i.e. finding. It recognizes mysteries in nature which are to be searched into, and this search becomes a serious religious interest with all truly scientific men. It appears to such men a profanity to doubt or question the revelations of nature, and they believe in its infallible inspiration quite as much as the dogmatist believes in the infallible inspiration of Scripture, or the churchman in the infallible inspiration of the Church. We may, therefore, say, that the essential truth in the Egyptian system has been taken up into our modern Christian life.

And how is it, lastly, with that opposite pole of religious thought which blossomed out in "the fair humanities of old religion" in the wonderful Hellenic mind? The gods of Greece were men. They were not abstract ideas, concealing natural powers and laws. They were open as sunshine, bright as noon, a fair company of men and women idealized and gracious, just a little way off, a little way up. It was humanity projected upon the skies, divine creatures of more than mortal beauty, but thrilling with human life and human sympathies. Has Christianity anything to offer in the place of this charming system of human gods and goddesses?

We answer that the fundamental doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation, the word made flesh. It is God revealed in man. Under some doctrinal type this has always been believed. The common Trinitarian doctrine states it in a somewhat crude and illogical form. Yet somehow the man Christ Jesus has always been seen to be the best revelation of God. But unless there were some human element in the Deity, he could not reveal himself so in a human life. The doctrine of the incarnation, therefore, repeats the Mosaic statement that "man was made in the image of God." Jewish and Mohammedan monotheism separate God entirely from the world. Philosophic monotheism, in our day, separates God from man, by teaching that there is nothing in common between the two by which God can be mediated, and so makes him wholly incomprehensible. Christianity gives us Emmanuel, God with us, equally removed from the stern despotic omnipotence of the Semitic monotheism and the finite and imperfect humanities of Olympus. We see God in Christ, as full of sympathy with man, God "in us all"; and yet we see him in nature, providence, history, as "above all" and "through all." The Roman Catholic Church has, perhaps, humanized religion too far. For every god and goddess of Greece she has given us, on some immortal canvas, an archangel or a saint to be adored and loved. Instead of Apollo and the Python we have Guido's St. Michael and the Dragon; in place of the light, airy Mercury she provides a St. Sebastian; instead of the "untouched" Diana, some heavenly Agnes or Cecilia. The Catholic heaven is peopled, all the way up, with beautiful human forms; and on the upper throne we have holiness and tenderness incarnate in the queen of heaven and her divine Son. All the Greek humanities are thus fulfilled in the ample faith of Christendom.

By such a critical survey as we have thus sketched in mere outline it will be seen that each of the great ethnic religions is full on one side, but empty on the other, while Christianity is full all round. Christianity is adapted to take their place, not because they are false, but because they are true as far as they go. They "know in part and prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away."

§ 8. Comparative Theology will probably show that Ethnic Religions are arrested, or degenerate, and will come to an End, while the Catholic Religion is capable of a progressive Development.

The religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, have come to an end; having shared the fate of the national civilization of which each was a part. The religions of China, Islam, Buddha, and Judæa have all been arrested, and remain unchanged and seemingly unchangeable. Like great vessels anchored in a stream, the current of time flows past them, and each year they are further behind the spirit of the age, and less in harmony with its demands. Christianity alone, of all human religions, seems to possess the power of keeping abreast with the advancing civilization of the world. As the child's soul grows with his body, so that when he becomes a man it is a man's soul and not a child's, so the Gospel of Jesus continues the soul of all human culture. It continually drops its old forms and takes new ones. It passed out of its Jewish body under the guidance of Paul. In a speculative age it unfolded into creeds and systems. In a worshipping age it developed ceremonies and a ritual. When the fall of Rome left Europe without unity or centre, it gave it an organization and order through the Papacy. When the Papacy became a tyranny, and the Renaissance called for free thought, it suddenly put forth Protestantism, as the tree by the water-side sends forth its shoots in due season. Protestantism, free as air, opens out into the various sects, each taking hold of some human need; Lutheranism, Calvinism, Methodism, Swedenborgianism, or Rationalism. Christianity blossoms out into modern science, literature, art,—children who indeed often forget their mother, and are ignorant of their source, but which are still fed from her breasts and partake of her life. Christianity, the spirit of faith, hope, and love, is the deep fountain of modern civilization. Its inventions are for the many, not for the few. Its science is not hoarded, but diffused. It elevates the masses, who everywhere else have been trampled down. The friend of the people, it tends to free schools, a free press, a free government, the abolition of slavery, war, vice, and the melioration of society. We cannot, indeed, here prove that Christianity is the cause of these features peculiar to modern life; but we find it everywhere associated with them, and so we can say that it only, of all the religions of mankind, has been capable of accompanying man in his progress from evil to good, from good to better.

We have merely suggested some of the results to which the study of Comparative Theology may lead us. They will appear more fully as we proceed in our examination of the religions, and subsequently in their comparison. This introductory chapter has been designed as a sketch of the course which the work will take. When we have completed our survey, the results to which we hope to arrive will be these, if we succeed in what we have undertaken:—

1. All the great religions of the world, except Christianity and Mohammedanism, are ethnic religions, or religions limited to a single nation or race. Christianity alone (including Mohammedanism and Judaism, which are its temporary and local forms) is the religion of all races.

2. Every ethnic religion has its positive and negative side. Its positive side is that which holds some vital truth; its negative side is the absence of some other essential truth. Every such religion is true and providential, but each limited and imperfect.

3. Christianity alone is a πλήρωμα, or a fulness of truth, not coming to destroy but to fulfil the previous religions; but being capable of replacing them by teaching all the truth they have taught, and supplying that which they have omitted.

4. Christianity, being not a system but a life, not a creed or a form, but a spirit, is able to meet all the changing wants of an advancing civilization by new developments and adaptations, constantly feeding the life of man at its roots by fresh supplies of faith in God and faith in man.

Chapter II.

Confucius and the Chinese, or the Prose of Asia.

§ 1. Peculiarities of Chinese Civilization.

In qualifying the Chinese mind as prosaic, and in calling the writings of Confucius and his successors prose, we intend no disrespect to either. Prose is as good as poetry. But we mean to indicate the point of view from which the study of the Chinese teachers should be approached. Accustomed to regard the East as the land of imagination; reading in our childhood the wild romances of Arabia; passing, in the poetry of Persia, into an atmosphere of tender and entrancing song; then, as we go farther East into India, encountering the vast epics of the Mahá-Bhárata and the Rámáyana;—we might naturally expect to find in far Cathay a still wilder flight of the Asiatic Muse. Not at all. We drop at once from unbridled romance into the most colorless prose. Another race comes to us, which seems to have no affinity with Asia, as we have been accustomed to think of Asia. No more aspiration, no flights of fancy, but the worship of order, decency, propriety, and peaceful commonplaces. As the people, so the priests. The works of Confucius and his commentators are as level as the valley of their great river, the Yang-tse-kiang, which the tide ascends for four hundred miles. All in these writings is calm, serious, and moral They assume that all men desire to be made better, and will take the trouble to find out how they can be made so. It is not thought necessary to entice them into goodness by the attractions of eloquence, the charm of imagery, or the fascinations of a brilliant wit. These philosophers have a Quaker style, a dress of plain drab, used only for clothing the thought, not at all for its ornament.

And surely we ought not to ask for any other attraction than the subject itself, in order to find interest in China and its teachers. The Chinese Empire, which contains more than five millions of square miles, or twice the area of the United States, has a population of five hundred millions, or half the number of the human beings inhabiting the globe. China proper, inhabited by the Chinese, is half as large as Europe, and contains about three hundred and sixty millions of inhabitants. There are eighteen provinces in China, many of which contain, singly, more inhabitants than some of the great states of Europe. But on many other accounts this nation is deeply interesting.

China is the type of permanence in the world. To say that it is older than any other existing nation is saying very little. Herodotus, who has been called the Father of History, travelled in Egypt about 450 B.C. He studied its monuments, bearing the names of kings who were as distant from his time as he is from ours,—monuments which even then belonged to a gray antiquity. But the kings who erected those monuments were possibly posterior to the founders of the Chinese Empire. Porcelain vessels, with Chinese mottoes on them, have been found in those ancient tombs, in shape, material, and appearance precisely like those which are made in China to-day; and Rosellini believes them to have been imported from China by kings contemporary with Moses, or before him. This nation and its institutions have outlasted everything. The ancient Bactrian and Assyrian kingdoms, the Persian monarchy, Greece and Rome, have all risen, flourished, and fallen,—and China continues still the same. The dynasty has been occasionally changed; but the laws, customs, institutions, all that makes national life, have continued. The authentic history of China commences some two thousand years before Christ, and a thousand years in this history is like a century in that of any other people. The oral language of China has continued the same that it is now for thirty centuries. The great wall bounding the empire on the north, which is twelve hundred and forty miles long and twenty feet high, with towers every few hundred yards,—which crosses mountain ridges, descends into valleys, and is carried over rivers on arches,—was built two hundred years before Christ, probably to repel those fierce tribes who, after ineffectual attempts to conquer China, travelled westward till they appeared on the borders of Europe five hundred years later, and, under the name of Huns, assisted in the downfall of the Roman Empire. All China was intersected with canals at a period when none existed in Europe. The great canal, like the great wall, is unrivalled by any similar existing work. It is twice the length of the Erie Canal, is from two hundred to a thousand feet wide, and has enormous banks built of solid granite along a great part of its course. One of the important mechanical inventions of modern Europe is the Artesian well. That sunk at Grenelle, in France, was long supposed to be the deepest in the world, going down eighteen hundred feet. One at St. Louis, in the United States, has since been drilled to a depth, as has recently been stated, of about four thousand.[9] But in China these wells are found by tens of thousands, sunk at very remote periods to obtain salt water. The method used by the Chinese from immemorial time has recently been adopted instead of our own as being the most simple and economical. The Chinese have been long acquainted with the circulation of the blood; they inoculated for the small-pox in the ninth century; and about the same time they invented printing. Their bronze money was made as early as 1100 B.C., and its form has not been changed since the beginning of the Christian era. The mariner's compass, gunpowder, and the art of printing were made known to Europe through stories told by missionaries returning from Asia. These missionaries, coasting the shores of the Celestial Empire in Chinese junks, saw a little box containing a magnetized needle, called Ting-nan-Tchen, or "needle which points to the south." They also noticed terrible machines used by the armies in China called Ho-pao or fire-guns, into which was put an inflammable powder, which produced a noise like thunder and projected stones and pieces of iron with irresistible force.

Father Hue, in his "Christianity in China," says that "the Europeans who penetrated into China were no less struck with the libraries of the Chinese than with their artillery. They were astonished at the sight of the elegant books printed rapidly upon a pliant, silky paper by means of wooden blocks. The first edition of the classical works printed in China appeared in 958, five hundred years before the invention of Gutenberg. The missionaries had, doubtless, often been busied in their convents with the laborious work of copying manuscript books, and the simple Chinese method of printing must have particularly attracted their attention. Many other marvellous productions were noticed, such as silk, porcelain, playing-cards, spectacles, and other products of art and industry unknown in Europe. They brought back these new ideas to Europe; 'and from that time,' says Abel Remusat, 'the West began to hold in due esteem the most beautiful, the most populous, and the most anciently civilized of all the four quarters of the world. The arts, the religious faith, and the languages of its people were studied, and it was even proposed to establish a professorship for the Tartar language in the University of Paris. The world seemed to open towards the East; geography made immense strides, and ardor for discovery opened a new vent for the adventurous spirit of the Europeans. As our own hemisphere became better known, the idea of another ceased to appear a wholly improbable paradox; and in seeking the Zipangon of Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.'"

The first aspect of China produces that impression on the mind which we call the grotesque. This is merely because the customs of this singular nation are so opposite to our own. They seem morally, no less than physically, our antipodes. Their habits are as opposite to ours as the direction of their bodies. We stand feet to feet in everything. In boxing the compass they say "westnorth" instead of northwest, "eastsouth" instead of southeast, and their compass-needle points south instead of north. Their soldiers wear quilted petticoats, satin boots, and bead necklaces, carry umbrellas and fans, and go to a night attack with lanterns in their hands, being more afraid of the dark than of exposing themselves to the enemy. The people are very fond of fireworks, but prefer to have them in the daytime. Ladies' ride in wheelbarrows, and cows are driven in carriages. While in Europe the feet are put in the stocks, in China the stocks are hung round the neck. In China the family name comes first, and the personal name afterward. Instead of saying Benjamin Franklin or Walter Scott they would say Franklin Benjamin, Scott Walter. Thus the Chinese name of Confucius, Kung-fu-tsee, means the Holy Master Kung;—Kung is the family name. In the recent wars with the English the mandarins or soldiers would sometimes run away, and then commit suicide to avoid punishment. In getting on a horse, the Chinese mount on the right side. Their old men fly kites, while the little boys look on. The left hand is the seat of honor, and to keep on your hat is a sign of respect. Visiting cards are painted red, and are four feet long. In the opinion of the Chinese, the seat of the understanding is the stomach. They have villages which contain a million of inhabitants. Their boats are drawn by men, but their carriages are moved by sails. A married woman while young and pretty is a slave, but when she becomes old and withered is the most powerful, respected, and beloved person in the family. The emperor is regarded with the most profound reverence, but the empress mother is a greater person than he. When a man furnishes his house, instead of laying stress, as we do, on rosewood pianos and carved mahogany, his first ambition is for a handsome camphor-wood coffin, which he keeps in the best place in his room. The interest of money is thirty-six per cent, which, to be sure, we also give in hard times to stave off a stoppage, while with them it is the legal rate. We once heard a bad dinner described thus: "The meat was cold, the wine was hot, and everything was sour but the vinegar." This would not so much displease the Chinese, who carefully warm their wine, while we ice ours. They understand good living, however, very well, are great epicures, and somewhat gourmands, for, after dining on thirty dishes, they will sometimes eat a duck by way of a finish. They toss their meat into their mouths to a tune, every man keeping time with his chop-sticks, while we, on the contrary, make anything but harmony with the clatter of our knives and forks. A Chinaman will not drink a drop of milk, but he will devour birds'-nests, snails, and the fins of sharks with a great relish. Our mourning color is black and theirs is white; they mourn for their parents three years, we a much shorter time. The principal room in their houses is called "the hall of ancestors," the pictures or tablets of whom, set up against the wall, are worshipped by them; we, on the other hand, are only too apt to send our grandfather's portrait to the garret.[10]

§ 2. Chinese Government based on Education. Civil-Service Examinations.

Such are a few of the external differences between the Chinese customs and ours. But the most essential peculiarity of this nation is the high value which they attribute to knowledge, and the distinctions and rewards which they bestow on scholarship. All the civil offices in the Empire are given as rewards of literary merit. The government, indeed, is called a complete despotism, and the emperor is said to have absolute authority. He is not bound by any written constitution, indeed; but the public opinion of the land holds him, nevertheless, to a strict responsibility. He, no less than his people, is bound by a law higher than that of any private will,—the authority of custom. For, in China, more than anywhere else, "what is gray with age becomes religion." The authority of the emperor is simply authority to govern according to the ancient usages of the country, and whenever these are persistently violated, a revolution takes place and the dynasty is changed. But a revolution in China changes nothing but the person of the monarch; the unwritten constitution of old usages remains in full force. "A principle as old as the monarchy," says Du Halde, "is this, that the state is a large family, and the emperor is in the place of both father and mother. He must govern his people with affection and goodness; he must attend to the smallest matters which concern their happiness. When he is not supposed to have this sentiment, he soon loses his hold on the reverence of the people, and his throne becomes insecure." The emperor, therefore, is always studying how to preserve this reputation. When a province is afflicted by famine, inundation, or any other calamity, he shuts himself in his palace, fasts, and publishes decrees to relieve it of taxes and afford it aid.

The true power of the government is in the literary class. The government, though nominally a monarchy, is really an aristocracy. But it is not an aristocracy of birth, like that of England, for the humblest man's son can obtain a place in it; neither is it an aristocracy of wealth, like ours in the United States, nor a military aristocracy, like that of Russia, nor an aristocracy of priests, like that of ancient Egypt, and of some modern countries,—as, for instance, that of Paraguay under the Jesuits, or that of the Sandwich Islands under the Protestant missionaries; but it is a literary aristocracy.

The civil officers in China are called mandarins. They are chosen from the three degrees of learned men, who may be called the bachelors, licentiates, and doctors. All persons may be candidates for the first degree, except three excluded classes,—boatmen, barbers, and actors. The candidates are examined by the governors of their own towns. Of those approved, a few are selected after another examination. These again are examined by an officer who makes a circuit once in three years for that purpose. They are placed alone in little rooms or closets, with pencils, ink, and paper, and a subject is given them to write upon. Out of some four hundred candidates fifteen may be selected, who receive the lowest degree. There is another triennial examination for the second degree, at which a small number of the bachelors are promoted. The examination for the highest degree, that of doctor, is held at Pekin only, when some three hundred are taken out of five thousand. These are capable of receiving the highest offices. Whenever a vacancy occurs, one of those who have received a degree is taken by lot from the few senior names. But a few years since, there were five thousand of the highest rank, and twenty-seven thousand of the second rank, who had not received employment.

The subjects upon which the candidates are examined, and the methods of these examinations, are thus described in the Shanghae Almanac (1852).[11]

The examinations for the degree of Keujin (or licentiate) takes place at the principal city of each province once in three years. The average number of bachelors in the large province of Keang-Nan (which contains seventy millions of inhabitants) is twenty thousand, out of whom only about two hundred succeed. Sixty-five mandarins are deputed for this examination, besides subordinate officials. The two chief examiners are sent from Pekin. When the candidates enter the examination hall they are searched for books or manuscripts, which might assist them in writing their essays. This precaution is not superfluous, for many plans have been invented to enable mediocre people to pass. Sometimes a thin book, printed on very small type from copperplates, is slipped into a hole in the sole of the shoe. But persons detected in such practices are ruined for life. In a list of one hundred and forty-four successful candidates, in 1851, thirteen were over forty years of age, and one under fourteen years; seven were under twenty; and all, to succeed, must have known by heart the whole of the Sacred Books, besides being well read in history.

Three sets of themes are given, each occupying two days and a night, and until that time is expired no one is allowed to leave his apartment, which is scarcely large enough to sleep in. The essays must not contain more than seven hundred characters, and no erasure or correction is allowed. On the first days the themes are taken from the Four Books; on the next, from the older classics; on the last, miscellaneous questions are given. The themes are such as these: "Choo-tsze, in commenting on the Shoo-King, made use of four authors, who sometimes say too much, at other times too little; sometimes their explanations are forced, at other times too ornamental. What have you to observe on them?" "Chinshow had great abilities for historic writing. In his Three Kingdoms he has depreciated Choo-ko-leang, and made very light of E and E, two other celebrated characters. What is it that he says of them?"

These public-service examinations are conducted with the greatest impartiality. They were established about a thousand years ago, and have been gradually improved during the intervening time. They form the basis of the whole system of Chinese government. They make a good education universally desirable, as the poorest man may see his son thus advanced to the highest position. All of the hundreds of thousands who prepare to compete are obliged to know the whole system of Confucius, to commit to memory all his moral doctrines, and to become familiar with all the traditional wisdom of the land. Thus a public opinion in favor of existing institutions and the fundamental ideas of Chinese government is continually created anew.

What an immense advantage it would be to our own country if we should adopt this institution of China! Instead of making offices the prize of impudence, political management, and party services, let them be competed for by all who consider themselves qualified. Let all offices now given by appointment be hereafter bestowed on those who show themselves best qualified to perform the duties. Each class of offices would of course require a different kind of examination. For some, physical culture as well as mental might be required. Persons who wished diplomatic situations should be prepared in a knowledge of foreign languages as well as of international law. All should be examined on the Constitution and history of the United States. Candidates for the Post-Office Department should be good copyists, quick at arithmetic, and acquainted with book-keeping. It is true that we cannot by an examination obtain a certain knowledge of moral qualities; but industry, accuracy, fidelity in work would certainly show themselves. A change from the present corrupt and corrupting system of appointments to that of competitive examinations would do more just now for our country than any other measure of reconstruction which can be proposed. The permanence of Chinese institutions is believed, by those who know best, to result from the influence of the literary class. Literature is naturally conservative; the tone of the literature studied is eminently conservative; and the most intelligent men in the empire are personally interested in the continuance of the institutions under which they hope to attain position and fortune.

The highest civil offices are seats at the great tribunals or boards, and the positions of viceroys, or governors, of the eighteen provinces.

The boards are:—

  • Ly Pou, Board of Appointment of Mandarins.
  • Hou Pou, Board of Finance.
  • Lee Pou, Board of Ceremonies.
  • Ping Pou, Board of War.
  • Hing Pou, Board of Criminal Justice.
  • Kong Pou, Board of Works,—canals, bridges, &c.

The members of these boards, with their councillors and subordinates, amount to twelve hundred officers. Then there is the Board of Doctors of the Han Lin College, who have charge of the archives, history of the empire, &c.; and the Board of Censors, who are the highest mandarins, and have a peculiar office. Their duty is to stand between the people and the mandarins, and between the people and the emperor, and even rebuke the latter if they find him doing wrong. This is rather a perilous duty, but it is often faithfully performed. A censor, who went to tell the emperor of some faults, took his coffin with him, and left it at the door of the palace. Two censors remonstrated with a late emperor on the expenses of his palace, specifying the sums uselessly lavished for perfumes and flowers for his concubines, and stating that a million of taels of silver might be saved for the poor by reducing these expenses. Sung, the commissioner who attended Lord Macartney, remonstrated with the Emperor Kiaking on his attachment to play-actors and strong drink, which degraded him in the eyes of the people. The emperor, highly irritated, asked him what punishment he deserved for his insolence. "Quartering," said Sung. "Choose another," said the emperor. "Let me be beheaded." "Choose again," said the emperor; and Sung asked to be strangled. The next day the emperor appointed him governor of a distant province,—afraid to punish him for the faithful discharge of his duty, but glad to have him at a distance. Many such anecdotes are related, showing that there is some moral courage in China.

The governor of a province, or viceroy, has great power. He also is chosen from among the mandarins in the way described. The only limitations of his power are these: he is bound to make a full report every three years of the affairs of the province, and give in it an account of his own faults, and if he omits any, and they are discovered in other ways, he is punished by degradation, bambooing, or death. It is the right of any subject, however humble, to complain to the emperor himself against any officer, however high; and for this purpose a large drum is placed at one of the palace gates. Whoever strikes it has his case examined under the emperor's eye, and if he has been wronged, his wrongs are redressed, but if he has complained unnecessarily, he is severely punished. Imperial visitors, sent by the Board of Censors, may suddenly arrive at any time to examine the concerns of a province; and a governor or other public officer who is caught tripping is immediately reported and punished.

Thus the political institutions of China are built on literature. Knowledge is the road to power and wealth. All the talent and knowledge of the nation are interested in the support of institutions which give to them either power or the hope of it. And these institutions work well. The machinery is simple, but it produces a vast amount of happiness and domestic virtue. While in most parts of Asia the people are oppressed by petty tyrants, and ground down by taxes,—while they have no motive to improve their condition, since every advance will only expose them to greater extortion,—the people of China are industrious and happy. In no part of the world has agriculture been carried to such perfection. Every piece of ground in the cultivated parts of the empire, except those portions devoted to ancestral monuments, is made to yield two or three crops annually, by the careful tillage bestowed on it. The ceremony of opening the soil at the beginning of the year, at which the emperor officiates, originated two thousand years ago. Farms are small,—of one or two acres,—and each family raises on its farm all that it consumes. Silk and cotton are cultivated and manufactured in families, each man spinning, weaving, and dyeing his own web. In the manufacture of porcelain, on the contrary, the division of labor is carried very far. The best is made at the village of Kiangsee, which contains a million of inhabitants. Seventy hands are sometimes employed on a single cup. The Chinese are very skilful in working horn and ivory. Large lanterns are made of horn, transparent and without a flaw. At Birmingham men have tried with machines to cut ivory in the same manner as the Chinese, and have failed.

§ 3. Life and Character of Confucius.

Of this nation the great teacher for twenty-three centuries has been Confucius. He was born 551 B.C., and was contemporary with the Tarquins, Pythagoras, and Cyrus. About his time occurred the return of the Jews from Babylon and the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. His descendants have always enjoyed high privileges, and there are now some forty thousand of them in China, seventy generations and more removed from their great ancestor. His is the oldest family in the world, unless we consider the Jews as a single family descended from Abraham. His influence, through his writings, on the minds of so many millions of human beings is greater than that of any man who ever lived, excepting the writers of the Bible; and in saying this we do not forget the names of Mohammed, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Luther. So far as we can see, it is the influence of Confucius which has maintained, though probably not originated, in China, that profound reverence for parents, that strong family affection, that love of order, that regard for knowledge and deference for literary men, which are fundamental principles underlying all the Chinese institutions. His minute and practical system of morals, studied as it is by all the learned, and constituting the sum of knowledge and the principle of government in China, has exerted and exerts an influence on that innumerable people which it is impossible to estimate, but which makes us admire the power which can emanate from a single soul.

To exert such an influence requires greatness. If the tree is to be known by its fruits, Confucius must have been one of the master minds of our race. The supposition that a man of low morals or small intellect, an impostor or an enthusiast, could influence the world, is a theory which is an insult to human nature. The time for such theories has happily gone by. We now know that nothing can come of nothing,—that a fire of straw may make a bright blaze, but must necessarily soon go out. A light which illuminates centuries must be more than an ignis fatuus. Accordingly we should approach Confucius with respect, and expect to find something good and wise in his writings. It is only a loving spirit which will enable us to penetrate the difficulties which surround the study, and to apprehend something of the true genius of the man and his teachings. As there is no immediate danger of becoming his followers, we can see no objections to such a course, which also appears to be a species of mental hospitality, eminently in accordance with the spirit of our own Master.

Confucius belongs to that small company of select ones whose lives have been devoted to the moral elevation of their fellow-men. Among them he stands high, for he sought to implant the purest principles of religion and morals in the character of the whole people, and succeeded in doing it. To show that this was his purpose it will be necessary to give a brief sketch of his life.

His ancestors were eminent statesmen and soldiers in the small country of Loo, then an independent kingdom, now a Chinese province. The year of his birth was that in which Cyrus became king of Persia. His father, one of the highest officers of the kingdom, and a brave soldier, died when Confucius was three years old. He was a studious boy, and when fifteen years old had studied the five sacred books called Kings. He was married at the age of nineteen, and had only one son by his only wife. This son died before Confucius, leaving as his posterity a single grandchild, from whom the great multitudes of his descendants now in China were derived. This grandson was second only to Confucius in wisdom, and was the teacher of the illustrious Mencius.

The first part of the life of Confucius was spent in attempting to reform the abuses of society by means of the official stations which he held, by his influence with princes, and by travelling and intercourse with men. The second period was that in which he was recalled from his travels to become a minister in his native country, the kingdom of Loo. Here he applied his theories of government, and tested their practicability. He was then fifty years old. His success was soon apparent in the growing prosperity of the whole people. Instead of the tyranny which before prevailed, they were now ruled according to his idea of good government,—that of the father of a family. Confidence was restored to the public mind, and all good influences followed. But the tree was not yet deeply enough rooted to resist accidents, and all his wise arrangements were suddenly overthrown by the caprice of the monarch, who, tired of the austere virtue of Confucius, suddenly plunged into a career of dissipation. Confucius resigned his office, and again became a wanderer, but now with a new motive. He had before travelled to learn, now he travelled to teach. He collected disciples around him, and, no longer seeking to gain the ear of princes, he diffused his ideas among the common people by means of his disciples, whom he sent out everywhere to communicate his doctrines. So, amid many vicissitudes of outward fortune, he lived till he was seventy-three years old. In the last years of his life he occupied himself in publishing his works, and in editing the Sacred Books. His disciples had become very numerous, historians estimating them at three thousand, of whom five hundred had attained to official station, seventy-two had penetrated deeply into his system, and ten, of the highest class of mind and character, were continually near his person. Of these Hwuy was especially valued by him, as having early attained superior virtue. He frequently referred to him in his conversations. "I saw him continually advance," said he, "but I never saw him stop in the path of knowledge." Again he says: "The wisest of my disciples, having one idea, understands two. Hwuy, having one understands ten." One of the select ten disciples, Tszee-loo, was rash and impetuous like the Apostle Peter. Another, Tszee-Kung, was loving and tender like the Apostle John; he built a house near the grave of Confucius, wherein to mourn for him after his death.

The last years of the life of Confucius were devoted to editing the Sacred Books, or Kings. As we now have them they come from him. Authentic records of Chinese history extend back to 2357 B.C., while the Chinese philosophy originated with Fuh-he, who lived about 3327 B.C. He it was who substituted writing for the knotted strings which before formed the only means of record. He was also the author of the Eight Diagrams,—each consisting of three lines, half of which are whole and half broken in two,—which by their various combinations are supposed to represent the active and passive principles of the universe in all their essential forms. Confucius edited the Yih-King, the Shoo-King, the She-King, and the Le-Ke, which constitute the whole of the ancient literature of China which has come down to posterity.[1] The Four Books, which contain the doctrines of Confucius, and of his school, were not written by himself, but composed by others after his death.

One of these is called the "Immutable Mean," and its object is to show that virtue consists in avoiding extremes. Another—the Lun-Yu, or Analects—contains the conversation or table-talk of Confucius, and somewhat resembles the Memorabilia of Xenophon and Boswell's Life of Johnson.[12]

The life of Confucius was thus devoted to communicating to the Chinese nation a few great moral and religious principles, which he believed would insure the happiness of the people. His devotion to this aim appears in his writings. Thus he says:—

"At fifteen years I longed for wisdom. At thirty my mind was fixed in the pursuit of it. At forty I saw clearly certain principles. At fifty I understood the rule given by heaven. At sixty everything I heard I easily understood. At seventy the desires of my heart no longer transgressed the law."

"If in the morning I hear about the right way, and in the evening I die, I can be happy."

He says of himself: "He is a man who through his earnestness in seeking knowledge forgets his food, and in his joy for having found it loses all sense of his toil, and thus occupied is unconscious that he has almost reached old age."

Again: "Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a pillow,—happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue both riches and honor seem to me like the passing cloud."

"Grieve not that men know not you; grieve that you know not men."

"To rule with equity is like the North Star, which is fixed, and all the rest go round it."

"The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance."

"Worship as though the Deity were present."

"If my mind is not engaged in my worship, it is as though I worshipped not."

"Formerly, in hearing men, I heard their words, and gave them credit for their conduct; now I hear their words, and observe their conduct."

"A man's life depends on virtue; if a bad man lives, it is only by good fortune."

"Some proceed blindly to action, without knowledge; I hear much, and select the best course."

He was once found fault with, when in office, for not opposing the marriage of a ruler with a distant relation, which was an offence against Chinese propriety. He said: "I am a happy man; if I have a fault, men observe it."

Confucius was humble. He said: "I cannot bear to hear myself called equal to the sages and the good. All that can be said of me is, that I study with delight the conduct of the sages, and instruct men without weariness therein."

"The good man is serene," said he, "the bad always in fear."

"A good man regards the ROOT; he fixes the root, and all else flows out of it. The root is filial piety; the fruit brotherly love."

"There may be fair words and an humble countenance when there is little real virtue."

"I daily examine myself in a threefold manner: in my transactions with men, if I am upright; in my intercourse with friends, if I am faithful; and whether I illustrate the teachings of my master in my conduct."

"Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things."

"When you transgress, do not fear to return."

"Learn the past and you will know the future."

The great principles which he taught were chiefly based on family affection and duty. He taught kings that they were to treat their subjects as children, subjects to respect the kings as parents; and these ideas so penetrated the national mind, that emperors are obliged to seem to govern thus, even if they do not desire it. Confucius was a teacher of reverence,—reverence for God, respect for parents, respect and reverence for the past and its legacies, for the great men and great ideas of former times. He taught men also to regard each other as brethren, and even the golden rule, in its negative if not its positive form, is to be found in his writings.

Curiously enough, this teacher of reverence was distinguished by a remarkable lump on the top of his head, where the phrenologists have placed the organ of veneration.[13] Rooted in his organization, and strengthened by all his convictions, this element of adoration seemed to him the crown of the whole moral nature of man. But, while full of veneration, he seems to have been deficient in the sense of spiritual things. A personal God was unknown to him; so that his worship was directed, not to God, but to antiquity, to ancestors, to propriety and usage, to the state as father and mother of its subjects, to the ruler as in the place of authority. Perfectly sincere, deeply and absolutely assured of all that he knew, he said nothing he did not believe. His power came not only from the depth and clearness of his convictions, but from the absolute honesty of his soul.

Lao-tse, for twenty-eight years his contemporary, founder of one of the three existing religions of China,—Tao-ism,—was a man of perhaps equal intelligence. But he was chiefly a thinker; he made no attempt to elevate the people; his purpose was to repress the passions, and to preserve the soul in a perfect equanimity. He was the Zeno of the East, founder of a Chinese stoicism. With him virtue is sure of its reward; everything is arranged by a fixed law. His disciples afterwards added to his system a thaumaturgic element and an invocation of departed spirits, so that now it resembles our modern Spiritism; but the original doctrine of Lao-tse was rationalism in philosophy and stoicism in morals. Confucius is said, in a Chinese work, to have visited him, and to have frankly confessed his inability to understand him. "I know how birds fly, how fishes swim, how animals run. The bird may be shot, the fish hooked, and the beast snared. But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts in the air, and soars to heaven. To-day I have seen the dragon."

But the modest man, who lived for others, has far surpassed in his influence this dragon of intelligence. It certainly increases our hope for man, when we see how these qualities of perfect honesty, good sense, generous devotion to the public good, and fidelity to the last in adherence to his work, have made Confucius during twenty-three centuries the daily teacher and guide of a third of the human race.

Confucius was eminently distinguished by energy and persistency. He did not stop working till he died. His life was of one piece, beautiful, noble. "The general of a large army," said he, "may be defeated, but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant." He acted conformably to this thought, and to another of his sayings. "If I am building a mountain, and stop before the last basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed of my work. But if I have placed but one basketful on the plain, and go on, I am really building a mountain."

Many beautiful and noble things are related concerning the character of Confucius,—of his courage in the midst of danger, of his humility in the highest position of honor. His writings and life have given the law to Chinese thought. He is the patron saint of that great empire. His doctrine is the state religion of the nation, sustained by the whole power of the emperor and the literary body. His books are published every year by societies formed for that purpose, who distribute them gratuitously. His descendants enjoy the highest consideration. The number of temples erected to his memory is sixteen hundred and sixty. One of them occupies ten acres of land. On the two festivals in the year sacred to his memory there are sacrificed some seventy thousand animals of different kinds, and twenty-seven thousand pieces of silk are burned on his altars. Yet his is a religion without priests, liturgy, or public worship, except on these two occasions.

§ 4. Philosophy and subsequent Development of Confucianism.

According to Mr. Meadows, the philosophy of China, in its origin and present aspect, may be thus briefly described.[14] Setting aside the Buddhist system and that of Tao-ism, which supply to the Chinese the element of religious worship and the doctrine of a supernatural world, wanting in the system of Confucius, we find the latter as the established religion of the state, merely tolerating the others as suited to persons of weak minds. The Confucian system, constantly taught by the competitive examinations, rules the thought of China. Its first development was from the birth of Confucius to the death of Mencias (or from 551 B.C. to 313 B.C.). Its second period was from the time of Chow-tsze (A.D. 1034) to that of Choo-tsze (A.D. 1200). The last of these is the real fashioner of Chinese philosophy, and one of the truly great men of the human race. His works are chiefly Commentaries on the Kings and the Four Books. They are committed to memory by millions of Chinese who aspire to pass the public-service examinations. The Chinese philosophy, thus established by Choo-tsze, is as follows.[15]

There is one highest, ultimate principle of all existence,—the Tae-keih, or Grand Extreme. This is absolutely immaterial, and the basis of the order of the universe. From this ultimate principle, operating from all eternity, come all animate and inanimate nature. It operates in a twofold way, by expansion and contraction, or by ceaseless active and passive pulsations. The active expansive pulsation is called Yang, the passive intensive pulsation is Yin, and the two may be called the Positive and Negative Essences of all things. When the active expansive phase of the process has reached its extreme limit, the operation becomes passive and intensive; and from these vibrations originate all material and mortal existences. Creation is therefore a perpetual process,—matter and spirit are opposite results of the same force. The one tends to variety, the other to unity; and variety in unity is a permanent and universal law of being. Man results from the utmost development of this pulsatory action and passion; and man's nature, as the highest result, is perfectly good, consisting of five elements, namely, charity, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and sincerity. These constitute the inmost, essential nature of man; but as man comes in contact with the outward world evil arises by the conflict. When man follows the dictates of his nature his actions are good, and harmony results. When he is unduly influenced by the outward world his actions are evil, and discord intervenes. The holy man is one who has an instinctive, inward sight of the ultimate principle in its twofold operation (or what we should call the sight of God, the beatific vision), and who therefore spontaneously and easily obeys his nature. Hence all his thoughts are perfectly wise, his actions perfectly good, and his words perfectly true. Confucius was the last of these holy men. The infallible authority of the Sacred Books results from the fact that their writers, being holy men, had an instinctive perception of the working of the ultimate principle.

All Confucian philosophy is pervaded by these principles: first, that example is omnipotent; secondly, that to secure the safety of the empire, you must secure the happiness of the people; thirdly, that by solitary persistent thought one may penetrate at last to a knowledge of the essence of things; fourthly, that the object of all government is to make the people virtuous and contented.

§ 5. Lao-tse and Tao-ism.

One of the three religious systems of China is that of the Tao, the other two being that of Confucius, and that of Buddhism in its Chinese form. The difficulty in understanding Tao-ism comes from its appearing under three entirely distinct forms: (1) as a philosophy of the absolute or unconditioned, in the great work of the Tse-Lao, or old teacher;[16] (2) as a system of morality of the utilitarian school,[17] which resolves duty into prudence; and (3) as a system of magic, connected with the belief in spirits. In the Tao-te-king we have the ideas of Lao himself, which we will endeavor to state; premising that they are considered very obscure and difficult even by the Chinese commentators.

The TAO (§ 1) is the unnamable, and is the origin of heaven and earth. As that which can be named, it is the mother of all things. These two are essentially one. Being and not-being are born from each other (§ 2). The Tao is empty but inexhaustible (§ 4), is pure, is profound, and was before the Gods. It is invisible, not the object of perception, it returns into not-being (§§ 14, 40). It is vague, confused, and obscure (§ 25, 21). It is little and strong, universally present, and all beings return into it (§ 32). It is without desires, great (§ 34). All things are born of being, being is born of not-being (§ 40).

From these and similar statements it would appear that the philosophy of the Tao-te-king is that of absolute being, or the identity of being and not-being. In this point it anticipated Hegel by twenty-three centuries.[18] It teaches that the absolute is the source of being and of not-being. Being is essence, not-being is existence. The first is the noumenal, the last the phenomenal.'

As being is the source of not-being (§ 40), by identifying one's self with being one attains to all that is not-being, i.e. to all that exists. Instead, therefore, of aiming at acquiring knowledge, the wise man avoids it: instead of acting, he refuses to act. He "feeds his mind with a wise passiveness." (§ 16.) "Not to act is the source of all power," is a thesis continually present to the mind of Lao (§§ 3, 23, 38,43,48, 63). The wise man is like water (§§ 8, 78), which seems weak and is strong; which yields, seeks the lowest place, which seems the softest thing and breaks the hardest thing. To be wise one must renounce wisdom, to be good one must renounce justice and humanity, to be learned one must renounce knowledge (§§ 19, 20, 45), and must have no desires (§§ 8, 22), must detach one's self from all things (§ 20) and be like a new-born babe. From everything proceeds its opposite, the easy from the difficult, the difficult from the easy, the long from the short, the high from the low, ignorance from knowledge, knowledge from ignorance, the first from the last, the last from the first. These antagonisms are mutually related by the hidden principle of the Tao (§§ 2, 27). Nothing is independent or capable of existing save through its opposite. The good man and bad man are equally necessary to each other (§ 27). To desire aright is not to desire (§ 64). The saint can do great things because he does not attempt to do them (§ 63). The unwarlike man conquers.[19] He who submits to others controls them. By this negation of all things we come into possession of all things (§ 68). Not to act is, therefore, the secret of all power (§§ 3, 23, 38, 43, 48, 63).

We find here the same doctrine of opposites which appears in the Phædo, and which has come up again and again in philosophy. We shall find something like it in the Sánkhya-karika of the Hindoos. The Duad, with the Monad brooding behind it, is the fundamental principle of the Avesta.

The result, thus far, is to an active passivity. Lao teaches that not to act involves the highest energy of being, and leads to the greatest results. By not acting one identifies himself with the Tao, and receives all its power. And here we cannot doubt that the Chinese philosopher was pursuing the same course with Sakya-Muni. The Tao of the one is the Nirvana of the other. The different motive in each mind constitutes the difference of their career. Sakya-Muni sought Nirvana, or the absolute, the pure knowledge, in order to escape from evil and to conquer it. Lao sought it, as his book shows, to attain power. At this point the two systems diverge. Buddhism is generous, benevolent, humane; it seeks to help others. Tao-ism seeks its own. Hence the selfish morality which pervades the Book of Rewards and Punishments. Every good action has its reward attached to it. Hence also the degradation of the system into pure magic and spiritism. Buddhism, though its course runs so nearly parallel, always retains in its scheme of merits a touch of generosity.

We find thus, in the Tao-te-king, the element afterwards expanded into the system of utilitarian and eudæmonic ethics in the Book of Rewards and Punishments. We also can trace in it the source of the magical tendency in Tao-ism. The principle, that by putting one's self into an entirely passive condition one can enter into communion with the unnamed Tao, and so acquire power over nature, naturally tends to magic. Precisely the same course of thought led to similar results in the case of Neo-Platonism. The ecstatic union with the divine element in all nature, which Plotinus attained four times in his life, resulted from an immediate sight of God. In this sight is all truth given to the soul. The unity, says Plotinus, which produces all things, is an essence behind both substance and form. Through this essential being all souls commune and interact, and magic is this interaction of soul upon soul through the soul of souls, with which one becomes identified in the ecstatic union. A man therefore can act on demons and control spirits by theurgic rites. Julian, that ardent Neo-Platonician, was surrounded by diviners, hierophants, and aruspices.[20]

In the Tao-te-king (§§ 50, 55, 56, etc.) it is said that he who knows the Tao need not fear the bite of serpents nor the jaws of wild beasts, nor the claws of birds of prey. He is inaccessible to good and to evil. He need fear neither rhinoceros nor tiger. In battle he needs neither cuirass nor sword. The tiger cannot tear him, the soldier cannot wound him. He is invulnerable and safe from death.[21]

If Neo-Platonism had not had for its antagonist the vital force of Christianity, it might have established itself as a permanent form of religion in the Roman Empire, as Tao-ism has in China. I have tried to show how the later form of this Chinese system has come naturally from its principles, and how a philosophy of the absolute may have degenerated into a system of necromancy.

§ 6. Religious Character of the "Kings."

We have seen that, in the philosophy of the Confucians, the ultimate principle is not necessarily identical with a living, intelligent, and personal God. Nor did Confucius, when he speaks of Teen, or Heaven, express any faith in such a being. He neither asserted nor denied a Supreme God. His worship and prayer did not necessarily imply such a faith. It was the prayer of reverence addressed to some sacred, mysterious, unknown power, above and behind all visible things. What that power was, he, with his supreme candor, did not venture to intimate. But in the She-King a personal God is addressed. The oldest books recognize a Divine person. They teach that there is one Supreme Being, who is omnipresent, who sees all things, and has an intelligence which nothing can escape,—that he wishes men to live together in peace and brotherhood. He commands not only right actions, but pure desires and thoughts, that we should watch all our behavior, and maintain a grave and majestic demeanor, "which is like a palace in which virtue resides"; but especially that we should guard the tongue. "For a blemish may be taken out of a diamond by carefully polishing it; but, if your words have the least blemish, there is no way to efface that." "Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues." "To acknowledge one's incapacity is the way to be soon prepared to teach others; for from the moment that a man is no longer full of himself, nor puffed up with empty pride, whatever good he learns in the morning he practices before night." "Heaven penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, like light into a dark chamber. We must conform ourselves to it, till we are like two instruments of music tamed to the same pitch. We must join ourselves with it, like two tablets which appear but one. We must receive its gifts the very moment its hand is open to bestow. Our irregular passions shut up the door of our souls against God."

Such are the teachings of these Kings, which are unquestionably among the oldest existing productions of the human mind. In the days of Confucius they seem to have been nearly forgotten, and their precepts wholly neglected. Confucius revised them, added his own explanations and comments, and, as one of the last acts of his life, called his disciples around him and made a solemn dedication of these books to Heaven. He erected an altar on which he placed them, adored God, and returned thanks upon his knees in a humble manner for having had life and health granted him to finish this undertaking.

§ 7. Confucius and Christianity. Character of the Chinese.

It were easy to find defects in the doctrine of Confucius. It has little to teach of God or immortality. But if the law of Moses, which taught nothing of a future life, was a preparation for Christianity; if, as the early Christian Fathers asserted, Greek philosophy was also schoolmaster to bring men to Christ; who can doubt that the truth and purity in the teachings of Confucius were providentially intended to lead this great nation in the right direction? Confucius is a Star in the East, to lead his people to Christ. One of the most authentic of his sayings is this, that "in the West the true Saint must be looked for and found." He has a perception, such as truly great men have often had, of some one higher than himself, who was to come after him. We cannot doubt, therefore, that God, who forgets none of his children, has given this teacher to the swarming millions of China to lead them on till they are ready for a higher light. And certainly the temporal prosperity and external virtues of this nation, and their long-continued stability amid the universal changes of the world, are owing in no small decree to the lessons of reverence for the past, of respect for knowledge, of peace and order, and especially of filial piety, which he inculcated. In their case, if in no other, has been fulfilled the promise of the divine commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

In comparing the system of Confucius with Christianity, it appears at once that Christianity differs from this system, as from most others, in its greater completeness. Jesus says to the Chinese philosopher, as he said to the Jewish law, "I have not come to destroy, but to fulfil." He fulfils the Confucian reverence for the past by adding hope for the future; he fulfils its stability by progress, its faith in man with faith in God, its interest in this world with the expectation of another, its sense of time with that of eternity. Confucius aims at peace, order, outward prosperity, virtue, and good morals. All this belongs also to Christianity, but Christianity adds a moral enthusiasm, a faith in the spiritual world, a hope of immortal life, a sense of the Fatherly presence of God. So that here, as before, we find that Christianity does not exclude other religions, but includes them, and is distinguished by being deeper, higher, broader, and more far-reaching than they.

A people with such institutions and such a social life as we have described cannot be despised, and to call them uncivilized is as absurd in us as it is in them to call Europeans barbarians. They are a good, intelligent, and happy people. Lieutenant Forbes, who spent five years in China,—from 1842 to 1847,—says: "I found myself in the midst of as amiable, kind, and hospitable a population as any on the face of the earth, as far ahead of us in some things as behind us in others." As to the charge of dishonesty brought against them by those who judge the whole nation by the degraded population of the suburbs of Canton, Forbes says, "My own property suffered more in landing in England and passing the British frontier than in my whole sojourn in China."

"There is no nation," says the Jesuit Du Halde, "more laborious and temperate than this. They are inured to hardships from their infancy, which greatly contributes to preserve the innocence of their manners.... They are of a mild, tractable, and humane disposition." He thinks them exceedingly modest, and regards the love of gain as their chief vice. "Interest," says he, "is the spring of all their actions; for, when the least profit offers, they despise all difficulties and undertake the most painful journeys to procure it" This may be true; but if a Chinese traveller in America should give the same account of us, would it not be quite as true? One of the latest writers—the author of "The Middle Kingdom"—accuses the Chinese of gross sensuality, mendacity, and dishonesty. No doubt these are besetting sins with them, as with all nations who are educated under a system which makes submission to authority the chief virtue. But then this writer lived only at Canton and Macao, and saw personally only the refuse of the people. He admits that "they have attained, by the observance of peace and good order, to a high security of life and property; that the various classes are linked together in a remarkably homogeneous manner by the diffusion of education; and that property and industry receive their just reward of food, raiment, and shelter." He also reminds us that the religion of China differs from all Pagan religions in this, that it encourages neither cruelty nor sensuality. No human victims have ever been offered on its altars, and those licentious rites which have appeared in so many religions have never disgraced its pure worship.

The Chinese citizen enjoys a degree of order, peace, and comfort unknown elsewhere in Asia. "He can hold and sell landed property with a facility, certainty, and security which is absolute perfection compared with the nature of English dealings of the same kind."[22] He can traverse the country for two thousand miles unquestioned by any official. He can follow what occupation he pleases. He can quit his country and re-enter it without a passport. The law of primogeniture does not exist. The emperor appoints his heir, but a younger son quite as often as an elder one. The principle that no man is entitled by birth to rule over them is better known to the three hundred and sixty millions of China than to the twenty-seven millions of Great Britain that they have a right to a trial by their peers.[23] The principle of Chinese government is to persuade rather than to compel, to use moral means rather than physical. This rests on the fundamental belief in human goodness. For, as Mr. Meadows justly observes: "The theory that man's nature is radically vicious is the true psychical basis of despotic or physical-force government; while the theory that man's nature is radically good is the basis of free or moral-force government." The Chinese government endeavors to be paternal. It has refused to lay a tax on opium, because that would countenance the sale of it, though it might derive a large income from such a tax. The sacred literature of the Chinese is perfectly free from everything impure or offensive. There is not a line but might be read aloud in any family circle in England. All immoral ceremonies in idol worship are forbidden. M. Hue says that the birth of a daughter is counted a disaster in China; but well-informed travellers tell us that fathers go about with little daughters on their arms, as proud and pleased as a European father could be. Slavery and concubinage exist in China, and the husband has absolute power over his wife, even of life and death. These customs tend to demoralize the Chinese, and are a source of great evil. Woman is the slave of man. The exception to this is in the case of a mother. She is absolute in her household, and mothers, in China, command universal reverence. If an officer asks leave of absence to visit his mother it must be granted him. A mother may order an official to take her son to prison, and she must be obeyed. As a wife without children woman is a slave, but as a mother with grownup sons she is a monarch.

§ 8. The Tae-ping Insurrection.

Two extraordinary events have occurred in our day in China, the results of which may be of the utmost importance to the nation and to mankind. The one is the Tae-ping insurrection, the other the diplomatic mission of Mr. Burlingame to the Western world. Whatever may be the immediate issue of the great insurrection of our day against the Tartar dynasty, it will remain a phenomenon of the utmost significance. There is no doubt, notwithstanding the general opinion to the contrary, that it has been a religious movement, proceeding from a single mind deeply moved by the reading of the Bible. The hostility of the Chinese to the present Mantchoo Tartar monarchs no doubt aided it; but there has been in it an element of power from the beginning, derived, like that of the Puritans, from its religious enthusiasm. Its leader, the Heavenly Prince, Hung-sew-tseuen, son of a poor peasant living thirty miles northeast of Canton, received a tract, containing extracts from the Chinese Bible of Dr. Morison, from a Chinese tract distributor in the streets of Canton. This was in 1833, when he was about twenty years of age. He took the book home, looked over it carelessly, and threw it aside. Disappointed of his degree at two competitive examinations, he fell sick, and saw a vision of an old man, saying: "I am the Creator of all things. Go and do my work." After this vision six years passed by, when the English war broke out, and the English fleet took the Chinese forts in the river of Canton. Such a great national calamity indicated, according to Chinese ideas, something rotten in the government; and such success on the part of the English showed that, in some way, they were fulfilling the will of Heaven. This led Hung-sew-tseuen to peruse again his Christian books; and alone, with no guide, he became a sincere believer in Christ, after a fashion of his own. God was the Creator of all things, and the Supreme Father. Jesus was the Elder Brother and heavenly Teacher of mankind. Idolatry was to be overthrown, virtue to be practised. Hung-sew-tseuen believed that the Bible confirmed his former visions. He accepted his mission and began to make converts All his converts renounced idolatry, and gave up the worship of Confucius. They travelled to and fro teaching, and formed a society of "God-worshippers." The first convert, Fung-yun-san, became its most ardent missionary and its disinterested preacher. Hung-sew-tseuen returned home, went to Canton, and there met Mr. Roberts, an American missionary, who was induced by false charges to refuse him Christian baptism. But he, without being offended with Mr. Roberts, went home and taught his converts how to baptize themselves. The society of "God-worshippers" increased in number. Some of them were arrested for destroying idols, and among them Fung-yun-san, who, however, on his way to prison, converted the policemen by his side. These new converts set him at liberty and went away with him as his disciples. Various striking phenomena occurred in this society. Men fell into a state of ecstasy and delivered exhortations. Sick persons were cured by the power of prayer. The teachings of these ecstatics were tested by Scripture; if found to agree therewith, they were accepted; if not, rejected.

It was in October, 1850, that this religious movement assumed a political form. A large body of persons, in a state of chronic rebellion against the Chinese authorities, had fled into the district, and joined the "God-worshippers." Pursued by the imperial soldiers, they were protected against them. Hence war began. The leaders of the religious movement found themselves compelled to choose between submission and resistance. They resisted, and the great insurrection began. But in China an insurrection against the dynasty is in the natural order of things. Indeed, it may be said to be a part of the constitution. By the Sacred Books, taught in all the schools and made a part of the examination papers, it is the duty of the people to overthrow any bad government. The Chinese have no power to legislate, do not tax themselves, and the government is a pure autocracy. But it is not a despotism; for old usages make a constitution, which the government must respect or be overthrown. "The right to rebel," says Mr. Meadows, "is in China a chief element of national stability." The Tae-ping (or Universal-Peace) Insurrection has shown its religious character throughout. It has not been cruel, except in retaliation. At the taking of Nan-king orders were given to put all the women together and protect them, and any one doing them an injury was punished with death. Before the attack on Nan-king a large body of the insurgents knelt down and prayed, and then rose and fought, like the soldiers of Cromwell. The aid of a large body of rebels was refused, because they did not renounce idolatry, and continued to allow the use of opium. Hymns of praise to the Heavenly Father and Elder Brother were chanted in the camp. And the head of the insurrection distinctly announced that, in case it succeeded, the Bible would be substituted in all public examinations for office in the place of Confucius. This would cause the Bible to be at once studied by all candidates for office among three hundred and sixty millions of people. It would constitute the greatest event in the history of Christianity since the days of Constantino, or at least since the conversion of the Teutonic races. The rebellion has probably failed; but great results must follow this immense interest in Christianity in the heart of China,—an interest awakened by no Christian mission, whether Catholic or Protestant, but coming down into this great nation like the rain from heaven.

In the "History of the Ti-Ping Revolution" (published in London in 1866), written by an Englishman who held a command among the Ti-Piugs, there is given a full, interesting, and apparently candid account of the religious and moral character of this great movement, from which I take the following particulars:—

"I have probably," says this writer,[24] "had a much greater experience of the Ti-Ping religious practices than any other European, and as a Protestant Christian I have never yet found occasion to condemn their form of worship. The most important part of their faith is the Holy Bible,—Old and New Testaments, entire. These have been printed and circulated gratuitously by the government through the whole population of the Ti-Ping jurisdiction." Abstracts of the Bible, put into verse, were circulated and committed to memory. Their form of worship was assimilated to Protestantism. The Sabbath was kept religiously on the seventh day. Three cups of tea were put on the altar on that day as an offering to the Trinity. They celebrated the communion once a month by partaking of a cup of grape wine. Every one admitted to their fellowship was baptized, after an examination and confession of sins. The following was the form prescribed in the "Book of Religious Precepts of the Ti-Ping Dynasty":—[25]

Forms to be observed when Men wish to forsake their Sins—"They must kneel down in God's presence, and ask him to forgive their sins. They may then take either a basin of water and wash themselves, or go to the river and bathe themselves; after which they must continue daily to supplicate Divine favor, and the Holy Spirit's assistance to renew their hearts, saying grace at every meal, keeping holy the Sabbath day, and obeying all God's commandments, especially avoiding idolatry. They may then be accounted the children of God, and their souls will go to Heaven when they die."

The prayer offered by the recipient of Baptism was as follows:—

"I (A. B.), kneeling down with a true heart, repent of my sins, and pray the Heavenly Father, the great God, of his abundant mercy, to forgive my former sins of ignorance in repeatedly breaking the Divine commands, earnestly beseeching him also to grant me repentance and newness of life, that my soul may go to Heaven, while I henceforth truly forsake my former ways, abandoning idolatry and all corrupt practices, in obedience to God's commands. I also pray that God would give me his Holy Spirit to change my wicked heart, deliver me from all temptation, and grant me his favor and protection, bestowing on me food and raiment, and exemption from calamity, peace in this world and glory in the next, through the mercies of our Saviour and Elder Brother, Jesus, who redeemed us from sin."

In every household throughout the Ti-Ping territory the following translation of the Lord's Prayer was hung up for the use of the children, printed in large black characters on a white board:—

"Supreme Lord, our Heavenly Father, forgive all our sins that we have committed in ignorance, rebelling against thee. Bless us, brethren and sisters, thy little children. Give us our daily food and raiment; keep from us all calamities and afflictions; that in this world we may have peace and finally ascend to heaven to enjoy everlasting happiness. We pray thee to bless our brethren and sisters of all nations. We ask these things for the redeeming merits of our Lord and Saviour, our heavenly brother, Jesus. We also pray, Heavenly Father, that thy will may be done on earth as in heaven: for thine are all the kingdoms, glory, and power. Amen."

The writer says he has frequently watched the Ti-Ping women teaching the children this prayer; "and often, on entering a house, the children ran up to me, and pulling me toward the board, began to read the prayer."

The seventh day was kept very strictly. As soon as midnight sounded on Friday, all the people throughout; Ti-Pingdom were summoned to worship. Two other services were held during the day. Each opened with a doxology to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Then was sung this hymn:—

"The true doctrine is different from the doctrine of this world;

It saves men's souls and gives eternal bliss.

The wise receive it instantly with joy;

The foolish, wakened by it, find the way to Heaven.

Our Heavenly Father, of his great mercy,

Did not spare his own Son, but sent him down

To give his life to redeem sinners.

When men know this, and repent, they may go to Heaven."

The rest of the services consisted in a chapter of the Bible read by the minister; a creed, repeated by the congregation standing; a prayer, read by the minister and repeated by the whole congregation kneeling. Then the prayer was burned, the minister read a sermon, an anthem was chanted to the long life of the king; then followed the Ten Commandments, music, and the burning of incense and fire-crackers. No business was allowed on the Sabbath, and the shops were closed. There was a clergy, chosen by competitive examination, subject to the approval of the Tien-Wong, or supreme religious head of the movement. There was a minister placed over every twenty-five families, and a church, or Heavenly Hall, assigned to him in some public building. Over every twenty, five parishes there was a superior, who visited them in turn every Sabbath. Once every month the whole people were addressed by the chief Wong.

The writer of this work describes his attendance on morning prayers at Nan-king, in the Heavenly Hall of the Chung-Wang's household. This took place at sunrise every morning, the men and women sitting on opposite sides of the hall. "Oftentimes," says he, "while kneeling in the midst of an apparently devout congregation, and gazing on the upturned countenances lightened by the early morning sun, have I wondered why no British missionary occupied my place, and why Europeans generally preferred slaughtering the Ti-Pings to accepting them as brothers in Christ. When I look back," he adds, "on the unchangeable and universal kindness I always met with among the Ti-Pings, even when their dearest relatives were being slaughtered by my countrymen, or delivered over to the Manchoos to be tortured to death, their magnanimous forbearance seems like a dream. Their kind and friendly feelings were often annoying. To those who have experienced the ordinary dislike of foreigners by the Chinese, the surprising friendliness of the Ti-Pings was most remarkable." They welcomed Europeans as "brethren from across the sea," and claimed them as fellow-worshippers of "Yesu."

Though the Ti-Pings did not at once lay aside all heathen customs, and could not be expected to do so, they took some remarkable steps in the right direction. Their women were in a much higher position than among the other Chinese; they abolished the custom of cramping their feet; a married woman had rights, and could not be divorced at will, or sold, as under the Manchoos. Large institutions were established for unmarried women. Slavery was totally abolished, and to sell a human being was made a capital offence. They utterly prohibited the use of opium; and this was probably their chief offence in the eyes of the English. Prostitution was punished by death, and was unknown in their cities. Idolatry was also utterly abolished. Their treatment of the people under them was merciful; they protected their prisoners, whom the Imperialists always massacred. The British troops, instead of preserving neutrality, aided the Imperialists in putting down the insurrection in such ways as this. The British cruisers assumed that the Ti-Ping junks were pirates, because they captured Chinese vessels. The British ship Bittern and another steamer sank every vessel but two in a rebel fleet, and gave up the crew of one which they captured to be put to death. This is the description of another transaction of the same kind, in the harbor of Shi-poo: "The junks were destroyed, and their crews shot, drowned, and hunted down, until about a thousand were killed; the Bittern's men aiding the Chinese on shore to complete the wholesale massacre."[26]

It is the deliberate opinion of this well-informed English writer that the Ti-Ping insurrection would have succeeded but for British intervention; that the Tartar dynasty would have been expelled, the Chinese regained their autonomy, and Christianity have been established throughout the Empire. At the end of his book he gives a table of forty-three battles and massacres in which the British soldiers and navy took part, in which about four hundred thousand of the Ti-Pings were killed, and he estimates that more than two millions more died of starvation in 1863 and 1864, in the famine occasioned by the operations of the allied English, French, and Chinese troop's, when the Ti-Pings were driven from their territories. In view of such facts, well may an English writer say: "It is not once or twice that the policy of the British government has been ruinous to the best interests of the world. Disregard of international law and of treaty law in Europe, deeds of piracy and spoliation in Asia, one vast system of wrong and violence, have everywhere for years marked the dealings of the British government with the weaker races of the globe."[27]

Other Englishmen, beside "Lin-Le" and Mr. Meadows, give the same testimony to the Christian character of this great movement in China. Captain Fishbourne, describing his visit in H.M.S. Hermes to Nan-king, says: "It was obvious to the commonest observer that they were practically a different race." They had the Scriptures, many seemed to him to be practical Christians, serious and religious, believing in a special Providence, thinking that their trials were sent to purify them. "They accuse us of magic," said one. "The only magic we employ is prayer to God." The man who said this, says Captain Fishbourne, "was a little shrivelled-up person, but he uttered words of courageous confidence in God, and could utter the words of a hero. He and others like him have impressed the minds of their followers with their own courage and morality."

The English Bishop of Victoria has constantly given the same testimony. Of one of the Ti-Ping books Dr. Medhurst says: "There is not a word in it which a Christian missionary might not adopt and circulate as a tract for the benefit of the Chinese."

Dr. Medhurst also describes a scene which took place in Shanghae, where he was preaching in the chapel of the London Missionary Society, on the folly of idolatry and the duty of worshipping the one true God. A man arose in the middle of the congregation and said: "That is true! that is true! the idols must perish. I am a Ti-Ping; we all worship one God and believe in Jesus, and we everywhere destroy the idols. Two years ago when we began we were only three thousand; now we have marched across the Empire, because God was on our side." He then exhorted the people to abandon idolatry and to believe in Jesus, and said: "We are happy in our religion, and look on the day of our death as the happiest moment of life. When any of our number dies, we do not weep, but congratulate each other because he has gone to the joy of the heavenly world."

The mission of Mr. Burlingame indicated a sincere desire on the part of the sagacious men who then governed China, especially of Prince Kung, to enter into relations with modern civilization and modern thought. From the official papers of this mission,[28] it appears that Mr. Burlingame was authorized "to transact all business with the Treaty Powers in which those countries and China had a common interest," (communication of Prince Kung, December 31, 1867). The Chinese government expressly states that this step is intended as adopting the customs of diplomatic intercourse peculiar to the West, and that in so doing the Chinese Empire means to conform to the law of nations, as understood among the European states. It therefore adopted "Wheaton's International Law" as the text-book and authority to be used in its Foreign Office, and had it carefully translated into Chinese for the use of its mandarins. This movement was the result, says Mr. Burlingame, of the "co-operative policy" adopted by the representatives in China of the Treaty Powers, in which they agreed to act together on all important questions, to take no cession of territory, and never to menace the autonomy of the Empire. They agreed "to leave her perfectly free to develop herself according to her own form of civilization, not to interfere with her interior affairs, to make her waters neutral, and her land safe" (Burlingame's speech at San Francisco). There is no doubt that if the states known as the "Treaty Powers," namely, the United States, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, North Germany, Russia, Spain, and Sweden, will loyally abstain from aggression and interference in China and respect her independence, that this great Empire will step forth from her seclusion of fifty centuries, and enter the commonwealth of nations.

The treaty between the United States and China of July 28, 1868, includes provisions for the neutrality of the Chinese waters; for freedom of worship for United States citizens in China, and for the Chinese in the United States; for allowing voluntary emigration, and prohibiting the compulsory coolie trade; for freedom to travel in China and the United States by the citizens of either country; and for freedom to establish and attend schools in both countries.

We add to this chapter a Note, containing an interesting account, from Hue's "Christianity in China," of an inscribed stone, proving that Christian churches existed in China in the seventh century. These churches were the result of the efforts of Nestorian missionaries, who were the Protestant Christians of their age. Their success in China is another proof that the Christianity which is to be welcomed there must be presented in an intelligible and rational form.

Note.

The Nestorian Inscription in China.[29]

In 1625 some Chinese workmen, engaged in digging a foundation for a house, outside the walls of the city of Si-ngau-Fou, the capital of the province of Chen-si, found buried in the earth a large monumental stone resembling those which the Chinese are in the habit of raising to preserve to posterity the remembrance of remarkable events and illustrious men. It was a dark-colored marble tablet, ten feet high and five broad, and bearing on one side an inscription in ancient Chinese, and also some other characters quite unknown in China.

Several exact tracings from the stone were sent to Europe by the Jesuits who saw it. The library of their house at Rome had one of the first, and it attracted numerous visitors; subsequently, another authentic copy of the dimensions of the tablet was sent to Paris, and deposited at the library in the Rue Richelieu, where it may still be seen in the gallery of manuscripts.

This monument, discovered by chance amidst rubbish in the environs of an ancient capital of the Chinese Empire, excited a great sensation; for on examining the stone, and endeavoring to interpret the inscription, it was with surprise discovered that the Christian religion had had numerous apostles in China at the beginning of the seventh century, and that it had for a long time flourished there. The strange characters proved to be those called estrangélhos, which were in use among the ancient inhabitants of Syria, and will be found in some Syriac manuscripts of earlier date than the eighth century.

Monument of the great Propagation of the Luminous Doctrine in the Central Empire, composed by Khing-Tsing, a devout Man of the Temple of Ta-Thsin.

1. There has always been only one true Cause, essentially the first, and without beginning, supremely intelligent and immaterial; essentially the last, and uniting all perfections. He placed the poles of the heavens and created all beings; marvellously holy, he is the source of all perfection. This admirable being, is he not the Triune, the true Lord without beginning, Oloho?

He divided the world by a cross into four parts. After having decomposed the primordial air, he gave birth to the two elements.

Chaos was transformed, and then the sun and the moon appeared. He made the sun and the moon move to produce day and night. He elaborated and perfected the ten thousand things; but in creating the first man, he endowed him with perfect interior harmony. He enjoined him to watch over the sea of his desires. His nature was without vice and without error; his heart, pure and simple, was originally without disorderly appetites.

2. But Sa-Thang propagated lies, and stained by his malice that which had been pure and holy. He proclaimed, as a truth, the equality of greatness, and upset all ideas. This is why three hundred and sixty-five sects, lending each other a mutual support, formed a long chain, and wove, so to speak, a net of law. Some put the creature in the place of the Eternal, others denied the existence of beings, and destroyed the two principles. Others instituted prayers and sacrifices to obtain good fortune; others proclaimed their own sanctity to deceive mankind. The minds of men labored, and were filled with anxiety; aspirations after the supreme good were trampled down; thus perpetually floating about they attained to nothing, and all went from bad to worse. The darkness thickened, men lost their sight, and for a long time they wandered without being able to find it again.

3. Then our Triune God communicated his substance to the very venerable Mi-chi-ho (Messiah), who, veiling his true majesty, appeared in the world in the likeness of a man. The celestial spirits manifested their joy, and a virgin brought forth the saint in Ta-Thsin. The most splendid constellations announced this happy event; the Persians saw the splendor, and ran to pay tribute. He fulfilled what was said of old by the twenty-four saints; he organized, by his precepts, both families and kingdoms; he instituted the new religion according to the true notion of the Trinity in Unity; he regulated conscience by the true faith; he signified to the world the eight commandments, and purged humanity from its pollutions by opening the door to the three virtues. He diffused life and extinguished death; he suspended the luminous sun to destroy the dwelling of darkness, and then the lies of demons passed away. He directed the bark of mercy towards the palace of light, and all creatures endowed with intelligence have been succored. After having consummated this act of power, he rose at midday towards the Truth. Twenty-seven books have been left. He has enlarged the springs of mercy, that men might be converted. The baptism by water and by the Spirit is a law that purifies the soul and beautifies the exterior. The sign of the cross unites the four quarters of the world, and restores the harmony that had been destroyed. By striking upon a piece of wood, we make the voice of charity and mercy resound; by sacrificing towards the east we indicate the way of life and glory.

Our ministers allow their beards to grow, to show that they are devoted to their neighbors. The tonsure that they wear at the top of their heads indicates that they have renounced worldly desires. In giving liberty to slaves we become a link between the powerful and weak. We do not accumulate riches, and we share with the poor that which we possess. Fasting strengthens the intellectual powers, abstinence and moderation preserve health. We worship seven times a day, and by our prayers we aid the living and the dead. On the seventh day we offer sacrifice, after having purified our hearts and received absolution for our sins. This religion, so perfect and so excellent, is difficult to name, but it enlightens darkness by its brilliant precepts. It is called the Luminous Religion.

5. Learning alone without sanctity has no grandeur, sanctity without learning makes no progress. When learning and sanctity proceed harmoniously, the universe is adorned and resplendent.

The Emperor Tai-Tsoung illustrated the Empire. He opened the revolution, and governed men in holiness. In his time there was a man of high virtue named Olopen, who came from the kingdom of Ta-Thsin. Directed by the blue clouds, he bore the Scriptures of the true doctrine; he observed the rules of the winds, and traversed difficult and perilous countries

In the ninth year of Tching-Kouan (636) he arrived at Tehang-ngan. The Emperor ordered Fang-hi-wen-Ling, first minister of the Empire, to go with a great train of attendants to the western suburb, to meet the stranger and bring him to the palace. He had the Holy Scriptures translated in the Imperial library. The court listened to the doctrine, meditated on it profoundly, and understood the great unity of truth. A special edict was promulgated for its publication and diffusion.

In the twelfth year of Tching-Kouan, in the seventh moon, during the autumn, the new edict was promulgated in these terms:—

The doctrine has no fixed name, the holy has no determinate substance; it institutes religions suitable to various countries, and carries men in crowds in its tracks. Olopen, a man of Ta-Thsin, and of a lofty virtue, bearing Scriptures and images, has come to offer them in the Supreme Court. After a minute examination of the spirit of this religion, it has been found to be excellent, mysterious, and pacific. The contemplation of its radical principle gives birth to perfection and fixes the will. It is exempt from verbosity; it considers only good results. It is useful to men, and consequently ought to be published under the whole extent of the heavens. I, therefore, command the magistrates to have a Ta-Thsin temple constructed in the quarter named T-ning of the Imperial city, and twenty-one religious men shall be installed therein.

10. Sou-Tsoung, the illustrious and brilliant emperor, erected at Ling-on and other towns, five in all, luminous temples. The primitive good was thus strengthened, and felicity flourished. Joyous solemnities were inaugurated, and the Empire entered on a wide course of prosperity.

11. Tai-Tsoung (764), a lettered and a warlike emperor, propagated the holy revolution. He sought for peace and tranquillity. Every year, at the hour of the Nativity (Christmas), he burnt celestial perfumes in remembrance of the divine benefit; he prepared imperial feasts, to honor the luminous (Christian) multitude.

21. This stone was raised in the second year of Kien-Tchoung of the great dynasty of Thang (A.D. 781), on the seventh day of the moon of the great increase. At this time the devout Ning-Chou, lord of the doctrine, governed the luminous multitude in the Eastern country.

Such is the translation of the famous inscription found at Si-ngau-Fou, in 1625. On the left of the monument are to be read the following words in the Syriac language: "In the days of the Father of Fathers, Anan-Yeschouah, Patriarch Catholicos." To the right can be traced, "Adam, Priest, and Chor-Episcopus"; and at the base of the inscription: "In the year of the Greeks one thousand nine hundred and two (A.D. 781), Mar Yezd-bouzid, Priest and Chor-Episcopus of the Imperial city of Komdam, son of Millesins, priest of happy memory, of Balkh, a town of Tokharistan (Turkistan), raised this tablet of stone, on which are described the benefits of our Saviour, and the preaching of our fathers in the kingdom of the Chinese. Adam, Deacon, son of Yezd-bouzid, Chor-Episcopus; Sabar-Jesu, Priest; Gabriel, Priest, Archdeacon, and Ecclesiarch of Komdam and Sarage."

The abridgment of Christian doctrine given in the Syro-Chinese inscription of Si-ngau-Fou shows us, also, that the propagators of the faith in Upper Asia in the seventh century professed the Nestorian errors.

Through the vague and obscure verbiage which characterizes the Chinese style, we recognize the mode in which that heresiarch admitted the union of the Word with man, by indwelling plenitude of grace superior to that of all the saints. One of the persons of the Trinity communicated himself to the very illustrious and venerable Messiah, "veiling his majesty." That is certainly the doctrine of Nestorius; upon that point the authority of the critics is unanimous.

History, as we have elsewhere remarked, records the rapid progress of the Nestorian sects in the interior of Asia, and their being able to hold their ground, even under the sway of the Mussulmans, by means of compromises and concessions of every kind.

Setting out from the banks of the Tigris or the Euphrates, these ardent and courageous propagators of the Gospel probably proceeded to Khorassan, and then crossing the Oxus, directed their course toward the Lake of Lop, and entered the Chinese Empire by the province of Chen-si. Olopen, and his successors in the Christian mission, whether Syrians or Persians by birth, certainly belonged to the Nestorian church.

Voltaire, who did not like to trouble himself with scientific arguments, and who was much stronger in sarcasm than in erudition, roundly accuses the missionaries of having fabricated the inscription on the monument of Si-ngau-Fou, from motives of "pious fraud." "As if," says Remusat, "such a fabrication could have been practicable in the midst of a distrustful and suspicious nation, in a country in which magistrates and private people are equally ill-disposed towards foreigners, and especially missionaries, where all eyes are open to their most trivial proceedings, and where the authorities watch with the most jealous care over everything relating to the historical traditions and monuments of antiquity. It would be very difficult to explain how the missionaries could have been bold enough to have printed and published in China, and in Chinese, an inscription that had never existed, and how they could have imitated the Chinese style, counterfeited the manner of the writers of the dynasty of Thang, alluded to customs little known, to local circumstances, to dates calculated from the mysterious figures of Chinese astrology, and the whole without betraying themselves for a moment; and with such perfection as to impose on the most skilful men of letters, induced, of course, by the singularity of the discovery to dispute its authenticity. It could only have been done by one of the most erudite of Chinese scholars, joining with the missionaries to impose on his own countrymen."

"Even that would not be all, for the borders of the inscription are covered with Syrian names in fine estranghélo characters. The forgers must, then, have been not only acquainted with these characters, but have been able to get engraved with perfect exactness ninety lines of them, and in the ancient writing, known at present to very few."

"This argument of Remusat's," says another learned Orientalist, M. Felix Neve, "is of irresistible force, and we have formerly heard a similar one maintained with the greatest confidence by M. Quatremère, of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and we allow ourselves to quote the opinion of so highly qualified a judge upon this point. Before the last century it would have been absolutely impossible to forge in Europe a series of names and titles belonging to a Christian nation of Western Asia; it is only since the fruits of Assemam's labors have been made public by his family at Rome, that there existed a sufficient knowledge of the Syriac for such a purpose; and it is only by the publication of the manuscripts of the Vatican, that the extent to which Nestorianism spread in the centre of Asia, and the influence of its hierarchy in the Persian provinces could have been estimated. There is no reason to suppose that missionaries who left Europe in the very beginning of the seventeenth century could have acquired a knowledge which could only be obtained from reading the originals and not vague accounts of them."

The sagacity of M. Saint Martin, who was for a long time the colleague of M. Quatremère, has pointed out in a note worthy of his erudition, another special proof, which is by no means to be neglected.

"Amongst the various arguments," he says, "that might be urged in favor of the legitimacy of the monument, but of which, as yet, no use has been made, must not be forgotten the name of the priest by whom it is said to have been erected. The name Yezd-bouzid is Persian, and at the epoch when the monument was discovered it would have been impossible to invent it, as there existed no work where it could have been found. Indeed, I do not think that, even since then, there has ever been any one published in which it could have been met with.

"It is a very celebrated name among the Armenians, and comes to them from a martyr, a Persian by birth, and of the royal race, who perished towards the middle of the seventh century, and rendered his name illustrious amongst the Christian nations of the East." Saint Martin adds in the same place, that the famous monument of Si-ngau-Fou, whose authenticity has for a long time been called in question from the hatred entertained against the Jesuit missionaries who discovered it, rather than from a candid examination of its contents, is now regarded as above all suspicion.

Chapter III.

Brahmanism.

§ 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones.

It is more than forty years since the writer, then a boy, was one day searching among the heavy works of a learned library in the country to find some entertaining reading for a summer afternoon. It was a library rich in theology, in Greek and Latin classics, in French and Spanish literature, but contained little to amuse a child. Led by some happy fortune, in turning over a pile of the "Monthly Anthology" his eye was attracted by the title of a play, "Sácontala,[30] or the Fatal Ring; an Indian Drama, translated from the original Sanskrit and Pracrit. Calcutta, 1789," and reprinted in the Anthology in successive numbers. Gathering them together, the boy took them into a great chestnut-tree, amid the limbs of which he had constructed a study, and there, in the warm, fragrant shade, read hour after hour this bewitching story. The tale was suited to the day and the scene,—filled with images of tender girls and religious sages, who lived amid a tropical abundance of flowers and fruits; so blending the beauty of nature with the charm of love. Nature becomes in it alive, and is interpenetrated with human sentiments. Sákuntalá loves the flowers as sisters; the Késara-tree beckons to her with its waving blossoms, and clings to her in affection as she bends over it. The jasmine, the wife of the mango-tree, embraces her lord, who leans down to protect his blooming bride, "the moonlight of the grove." The holy hermits defend the timid fawn from the hunters, and the birds, grown tame in their peaceful solitudes, look tranquilly on the intruder. The demons occasionally disturb the sacrificial rites, but, like well-educated demons, retire at once, as soon as the protecting Raja enters the sacred grove. All breathes of love, gentle and generous sentiment, and quiet joys in the bosom of a luxuriant and beautiful summer land. Thus, in this poem, written a hundred years before Christ, we find that romantic view of nature, unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and first appearing in our own time in such writers as Rousseau, Goethe, and Byron.

He who translated this poem into a European language, and communicated it to modern readers, was Sir William Jones, one of the few first-class scholars whom the world has produced. In him was joined a marvellous gift of language with a love for truth and beauty, which detected by an infallible instinct what was worth knowing, in the mighty maze of Oriental literature. He had also the rare good fortune of being the first to discover this domain of literature in Asia, unknown to the West till he came to reveal it. The vast realm of Hindoo, Chinese, and Persian genius was as much a new continent to Europe, when discovered by Sir William Jones, as America was when made known by Columbus. Its riches had been accumulating during thousands of years, waiting till the fortunate man should arrive, destined to reveal to our age the barbaric pearl and gold of the gorgeous East,—the true wealth of Ormus and of Ind.

Sir William Jones came well equipped for his task. Some men are born philologians, loving words for their own sake,—men to whom the devious paths of language are open highways; who, as Lord Bacon says, "have come forth from the second general curse, which was the confusion of tongues, by the art of grammar." Sir William Jones was one of these, perhaps the greatest of them. A paper in his own handwriting tells us that he knew critically eight languages,—English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit; less perfectly eight others,—Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; and was moderately familiar with twelve more,—Tibetian, Pâli, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese. There have been, perhaps, other scholars who have known as many tongues as this. But usually they are crushed by their own accumulations, and we never hear of their accomplishing anything. Sir William Jones was not one of these, "deep versed in books, and shallow in himself." Language was his instrument, but knowledge his aim. So, when he had mastered Sanskrit and other Oriental languages, he rendered into English not only Sákuntalá, but a far more important work, "The Laws of Manu"; "almost the only work in Sanskrit," says Max Müller, "the early date of which, assigned to it by Sir William Jones from the first, has not been assailed." He also translated from the Sanskrit the fables of Hitopadesa, extracts from the Vedas, and shorter pieces. He formed a society in Calcutta for the study of Oriental literature, was its first president, and contributed numerous essays, all valuable, to its periodical, the "Asiatic Researches." He wrote a grammar of the Persian language, and translated from Persian into French the history of Nadir Shah. From the Arabic he also translated many pieces, and among them the Seven Poems suspended in the temple at Mecca, which, in their subjects and style, seem an Arabic anticipation of Walt Whitman. He wrote in Latin a Book of Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry, in English several works on the Mohammedan and Civil Law, with a translation of the Greek Orations of Isæus. As a lawyer, a judge, a student of natural history, his ardor of study was equally apparent. He presented to the Royal Society in London a large collection of valuable Oriental manuscripts, and left a long list of studies in Sanskrit to be pursued by those who should come after him. His generous nature showed itself in his opposition to slavery and the slave-trade, and his open sympathy with the American Revolution. His correspondence was large, including such names as those of Benjamin Franklin, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Monboddo, Gibbon, Warren Hastings, Dr. Price, Edmund Burke, and Dr. Parr. Such a man ought to be remembered, especially by all who take an interest in the studies to which he has opened the way, for he was one who had a right to speak of himself, as he has spoken in these lines:—

"Before thy mystic altar, heavenly truth,

I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth.

Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay,

And life's last shade be brightened by thy ray,

Then shall my soul, now lost in clouds below,

Soar without bound, without consuming glow."

Since the days of Sir William Jones immense progress has been made in the study of Sanskrit literature, especially within the last thirty or forty years, from the time when the Schlegels led the way in this department. Now, professors of Sanskrit are to be found in all the great European universities, and in this country we have at least one Sanskrit scholar of the very highest order, Professor William D. Whitney, of Yale. The system of Brahmanism, which a short time since could only be known to Western readers by means of the writings of Colebrooke, Wilkins, Wilson, and a few others, has now been made accessible by the works of Lassen, Max Müller, Burnouf, Muir, Pictet, Bopp, Weber, Windischmann, Vivien de Saint-Martin, and a multitude of eminent writers in France, England, and Germany.[31]

§ 2. Difficulty of this Study. The Complexity of the System. The Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra-Spiritualism.

But, notwithstanding these many helps, Brahmanism remains a difficult study. Its source is not in a man, but in a caste. It is not the religion of a Confucius, a Zoroaster, a Mohammed, but the religion of the Brahmans. We call it Brahmanism, and it can be traced to no individual as its founder or restorer. There is no personality about it.[32] It is a vast world of ideas, but wanting the unity which is given by the life of a man, its embodiment and representative.

But what a system? How large, how difficult to understand! So vast, so complicated, so full of contradictions, so various and changeable, that its very immensity is our refuge! We say, It is impossible to do justice to such a system; therefore do not demand it of us.

India has been a land of mystery from the earliest times. From the most ancient days we hear of India as the most populous nation of the world, full of barbaric wealth and a strange wisdom. It has attracted conquerors, and has been overrun by the armies of Semiramis, Darius, Alexander; by Mahmud, and Tamerlane, and Nadir Shah; by Lord Clive and the Duke of Wellington. These conquerors, from the Assyrian Queen to the British Mercantile Company, have overrun and plundered India, but have left it the same unintelligible, unchangeable, and marvellous country as before. It is the same land now which the soldiers of Alexander described,—the land of grotto temples dug out of solid porphyry; of one of the most ancient Pagan religions of the world; of social distinctions fixed and permanent as the earth itself; of the sacred Ganges; of the idols of Juggernaut, with its bloody worship; the land of elephants and tigers; of fields of rice and groves of palm; of treasuries filled with chests of gold, heaps of pearls, diamonds, and incense. But, above all, it is the land of unintelligible systems of belief, of puzzling incongruities, and irreconcilable contradictions.

The Hindoos have sacred books of great antiquity, and a rich literature extending back twenty or thirty centuries; yet no history, no chronology, no annals. They have a philosophy as acute, profound and, spiritual as any in the world, which is yet harmoniously associated with the coarsest superstitions. With a belief so abstract that it almost escapes the grasp of the most speculative intellect, is joined the notion that sin can be atoned for by bathing in the Ganges or repeating a text of the Veda. With an ideal pantheism resembling that of Hegel, is united the opinion that Brahma and Siva can be driven from the throne of the universe by any one who will sacrifice a sufficient number of wild horses. To abstract one's self from matter, to renounce all the gratification of the senses, to macerate the body, is thought the true road to felicity; and nowhere in the world are luxury, licentiousness and the gratification of the appetites carried so far. Every civil right and privilege of ruler and subject is fixed in a code of laws, and a body of jurisprudence older far than the Christian era, and the object of universal reverence; but the application of these laws rests (says Rhode) on the arbitrary decisions of the priests, and their execution on the will of the sovereign. The constitution of India is therefore like a house without a foundation and without a roof. It is a principle of Hindoo religion not to kill a worm, not even to tread on a blade of grass, for fear of injuring life; but the torments, cruelties, and bloodshed inflicted by Indian tyrants would shock a Nero or a Borgia. Half the best informed writers on India will tell you that the Brahmanical religion is pure monotheism; the other half as confidently assert that they worship a million gods. Some teach us that the Hindoos are spiritualists and pantheists; others that their idolatry is more gross than that of any living people.

Is there any way of reconciling these inconsistencies? If we cannot find such an explanation, there is at least one central point where we may place ourselves; one elevated position, from which this mighty maze will not seem wholly without a plan. In India the whole tendency of thought is ideal, the whole religion a pure spiritualism. An ultra, one-sided idealism is the central tendency of the Hindoo mind. The God of Brahmanism is an intelligence, absorbed in the rest of profound contemplation. The good man of this religion is he who withdraws from an evil world into abstract thought.

Nothing else explains the Hindoo character as this does. An eminently religious people, it is their one-sided spiritualism, their extreme idealism, which gives rise to all their incongruities. They have no history and no authentic chronology, for history belongs to this world, and chronology belongs to time. But this world and time are to them wholly uninteresting; God and eternity are all in all. They torture themselves with self-inflicted torments; for the body is the great enemy of the soul's salvation, and they must beat it down by ascetic mortifications. But asceticism, here as everywhere else, tends to self-indulgence, since one extreme produces another. In one part of India, therefore, devotees are swinging on hooks in honor of Siva, hanging themselves by the feet, head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of prickly thorns, jumping on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime in other places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, and companies of abandoned women are connected with different temples and consecrate their gains to the support of their worship.

As one-sided spiritualism will manifest itself in morals in the two forms of austerity and sensuality, so in religion it shows itself in the opposite direction of an ideal pantheism and a gross idolatry. Spiritualism first fills the world full of God, and this is a true and Christian view of things. But it takes another step, which is to deny all real existence to the world, and so runs into a false pantheism. It first says, truly, "There is nothing without God." It next says, falsely, "There is nothing but God." This second step was taken in India by means of the doctrine of Maya, or Illusion. Maya means the delusive shows which spirit assumes. For there is nothing but spirit; which neither creates nor is created, neither acts nor suffers, which cannot change, and into which all souls are absorbed when they free themselves by meditation from the belief that they suffer or are happy, that they can experience either pleasure or pain. The next step is to polytheism. For if God neither creates nor destroys, but only seems to create and destroy, these appearances are not united together as being the acts of one Being, but are separate, independent phenomena. When you remove personality from the conception of God, as you do in removing will, you remove unity. Now if creation be an illusion, and there be no creation, still the appearance of creation is a fact. But as there is no substance but spirit, this appearance must have its cause in spirit, that is, is a divine appearance, is God. So destruction, in the same way, is an appearance of God, and reproduction is an appearance of God, and every other appearance in nature is a manifestation of God. But the unity of will and person being taken away, we have not one God, but a multitude of gods,—or polytheism.

Having begun this career of thought, no course was possible for the human mind to pursue but this. An ultra spiritualism must become pantheism, and pantheism must go on to polytheism. In India this is not a theory, but a history. We find, side by side, a spiritualism which denies the existence of anything but motionless spirit or Brahm, and a polytheism which believes and worships Brahma the Creator, Siva the Destroyer, Vischnu the Preserver, Indra the God of the Heavens, the Sactis or energies of the gods, Krishna the Hindoo Apollo, Doorga, and a host of others, innumerable as the changes and appearances of things.

But such a system as this must necessarily lead also to idolatry. There is in the human mind a tendency to worship, and men must worship something. But they believe in one Being, the absolute Spirit, the supreme and only God,—Para Brahm; him they cannot worship, for he is literally an unknown God. He has no qualities; no attributes, no activity. He is neither the object of hope, fear, love, nor aversion. Since there is nothing in the universe but spirit and illusive appearances, and they cannot worship spirit because it is absolutely unknown, they must worship these appearances, which are at any rate divine appearances, and which do possess some traits, qualities, character; are objects of hope and fear. But they cannot worship them as appearances, they must worship them as persons. But if they have an inward personality or soul, they become real beings, and also beings independent of Brahm, whose appearances they are. They must therefore have an outward personality; in other words, a body, a shape, emblematical and characteristic; that is to say, they become idols.

Accordingly idol-worship is universal in India. The most horrible and grotesque images are carved in the stone of the grottos, stand in rude, block-like statues in the temple, or are coarsely painted on the walls. Figures of men with heads of elephants or of other animals, or with six or seven human heads,—sometimes growing in a pyramid, one out of the other, sometimes with six hands coming from one shoulder,—grisly and uncouth monsters, like nothing in nature, yet too grotesque for symbols,—such are the objects of the Hindoo worship.

§ 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia.

We have seen how hopeless the task has appeared of getting any definite light on Hindoo chronology or history. To the ancient Egyptians events were so important that the most trivial incidents of daily life were written on stone and the imperishable records of the land, covering the tombs and obelisks, have patiently waited during long centuries, till their decipherer should come to read them. To the Hindoos, on the other hand, all events were equally unimportant. The most unhistoric people on earth, they cared more for the minutiæ of grammar, or the subtilties of metaphysics, than for the whole of their past. The only date which has emerged from this vague antiquity is that of Chandragupta, a contemporary of Alexander, and called by the Greek historians Sandracottus. He became king B.C. 315, and as, at his accession, Buddha had been dead (by Hindoo statement) one hundred and sixty-two years, Buddha may have died B.C. 477. We can thus import a single date from Greek history into that of India. This is the whole.

But all at once light dawns on us from an unexpected quarter. While we can learn nothing concerning the history of India from its literature, and nothing from its inscriptions or carved temples, language, comes to our aid. The fugitive and airy sounds, which seem so fleeting and so changeable, prove to be more durable monuments than brass or granite. The study of the Sanskrit language has told us a long story concerning the origin of the Hindoos. It has rectified the ethnology of Blumenbach, has taught us who were the ancestors of the nations of Europe, and has given us the information that one great family, the Indo-European, has done most of the work of the world. It shows us that this family consists of seven races,—the Hindoos, the Persians, the^ Greeks, the Romans, who all emigrated to the south from the original ancestral home; and the Kelts, the Teutons, and Slavi, who entered Europe on the northern side of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. This has been accomplished by the new science of Comparative Philology. A comparison of languages has made it too plain to be questioned, that these seven races were originally one; that they must have emigrated from a region of Central Asia, at the east of the Caspian, and northwest of India; that they were originally a pastoral race, and gradually changed their habits as they descended from those great plains into the valleys of the Indus and the Euphrates. In these seven linguistic families the roots of the most common names are the same; the grammatical constructions are also the same; so that no scholar, who has attended to the subject, can doubt that the seven languages are all daughters of one common mother-tongue.

Pursuing the subject still further, it has been found possible to conjecture with no little confidence what was the condition of family life in this great race of Central Asia, before its dispersion. The original stock has received the name Aryan. This designation occurs in Manu (II. 22), who says: "As far as the eastern and western oceans, between the two mountains, lies the land which the wise have named Ar-ya-vesta, or inhabited by honorable men." The people of Iran receive this same appellation in the Zend Avesta, with the same meaning of honorable. Herodotus testifies that the Medes were formerly called Ἄριοι (Herod. VII. 61). Strabo mentions that, in the time of Alexander, the whole region about the Indus was called Ariana. In modern times, the word Iran for Persia and Erin for Ireland are possible reminiscences of the original family appellation.