The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-07-04

" wiz was II Tie = "a 4AAe AAAAAA FtNH
food. and tortured him until he revealed
the priests hiding place. Thereupon they
smoked him out and kept him three days
dying under the most frightful torments.
l saw the photograph OF the corpse in its
coffin and heard the account from the En-
glish naval officer who had to view the
body. There was not a single limb that
was not cruelty mutilated. On q hill not
far from Poyang lake there is a cross to
commemorate the cruciixion of a Catholic
priest within the last few years. and the
riots at Tien-Tsin in 1870 resulted in out
RACES which even now have not been for
gotten.
RELIGION PREFERRED IN CHINA.
CHINA.
1t is beyond doubt that the hatred of the
Chinese against missionaries is much
| greater than their feeling against any
other sort or condition of Europeans, and
this feeling is social and not religious. 1t
is the conservative aversion TO those who
wish to disturb the existing order, to in
~terfere in civic life. and to curtail the in
justice of the governing class. Religion in
China resolves itself almost entirely into
the worship of ancestors. the invocation
of demons and the practice of magic. In
the course of centuries the great religious
systems have become utterly debased and
have had to accommodate themselves to
the incrusted superstitions of the masses.
Buddhism, which in its essence is full of
truth and beauty, has lost in China all that
has attracted to ii many unsatisfied minds.
OF Buddhist temples there are plenty in
! every Chinese city, and on all the promi-
nent heights and pinnacleS Buddhist mon
asteries have been built, but everything
about them save their sites is grotesquely
hideous and u~nimpressive. Tawdry pic
lures and monstrous figures will panto-
mime masks whether at Buddhist or Taoist
shrines, are not calculated to inspire rev.
nrQnn nn6 - 0fx-nn I'll n0r10 ~ lf
by the Chinese, who treat the "josSes'
as so many personal demons, which have
to be propitiated or beaten, as the case
may be. Before each image stands a cop
per or leaden box full of gray ashes, into
which the worshiper may thrust his Joss
| stick to be set alight and burned down
so as TO insure him luck in his voyage
or venture. Buddhist services have ev-
erywhere, even in China, a curious resem-
blance TO Roman Catholic or Greek ritual.
The priests in red robes and crowned
with mitres, the Attendants bearing long
gilded STATS, topped by some emblem OF
worship. and the acolytes, with swinging
censers in their hands, are of quaint like
ness to the ceremonies of the Christian
churches, and there is no doubt that the
Chinese themselves recognize and appre-
ciate the resemblance. They like the gor-
geousness of the Roman service, and they
identify the virgin and the saints with
their own deities. 1t is not unfair TO say
that Catholic priests make the most of this
similarity. In a fine church recently erected
at Kui-Kiang the carving of the store is
entirely the handiwork of Chinese work.
men, and all the human figures on the col
umns are unmistakable Cinnamon, but the
windows AVE been manufactured in Eu-
rope. and it is noticeable that all the
scenes of Scripture are represented as II
the actors bad been Chinese. 1t is not alto
gether conducive to serious thought to find
that the most sacred episodes and person
ages of the gospel narrative have been
thus translated into Chinese characters.
A lf-4. c. D2%4- - . &c
but perhaps, after all, he is not more in
trinsically absurd than an early Christian
in the dress of a medieval Flemish burgh-
er. In the temples alteration of the dead
is everything, and in them are tables or
affairs covered with paper figures of
mounted men in absurd attitudes, and fam
tastic cuttings of houses, something like
Christmas crackers, which the pious son
burns in honor or in memory of his dead
father or mother.
OTHER RITES OF WORSHIP.
In every Chinese street there are shops
where these paper things can be bought,
and the representation of a defunct trader
as an ancient warrior in full armor is a
Enthusiastically quaint notion. Both
kinds of josshouse have other rites of a
peculiar character, and it is needless to
say that other sorts of ancient worship
have been introduced. If the Buddhists
have made their josshouses unimposing
and left them to fall into decay and dis
repute, they have always chosen for their
monasteries the highest crags and cliffs
that the hills of China can boast. Many
such are to be found, but, except on the
borders of Thibet, there are none that COM
mand a finer prospect or fill a grander site
than one or two opposite Ichang, at the
mouth of the Yang-Tse gorges. One of
them that l visited was built upon a mar
row ledge with a sheer drop of 1900 feet
or either side, connected with the hill by
which 1t was approached by an open stone
bridge about three feet wide, cast over
the chasm. From the temple parapet could
be seen all the splendid scenery around
the city, and in the distance was the
famous Needle of Heaven rising up in
the middle of the first gorge. Equally we'll
meditation, a temple and monastery in one,
called by the name of the Dragons Mouth,
at the very entrance to the gorge. A huge
cavern, with dark and winding recesses.
has been made into a josshouSe, and on
the farther side a sheer drop overlooks the
river hundreds of feet below. These old
Buddhists must have had everywhere a
great sense of the solemnity of nature and
of the harmony between the grandeur of
mountain scenery and the bounding i'm
pulses of religious emotion. 1t is difficult
to say whether the national sentiment leans
that way. The great teacher, Confucius,
was a pure agnostic, who, like the Positiv-
lists of our day, preached a general philan-
thropy for its own sake, and asked with
others of like mind what we know of a
future existence when we know so little
that this leads to, coupled with the gross
superstitions bred by ages of an arrested
civilization, that the Chinese world moves
and has its being.