The age-herald., 1900-08-08
RELIGION OF
 THE CHINESE

rom the Philadelphia North American. In the course of centuries the great relig- ious systems have become utterly debased and have had to accommodate themselves to the encrusted superstitions of the masses Buddhism. which in its essence is full of truth and beauty, has lost in China all that has attracted to it many unsatisfied minds. Of Buddhist temples there are plenty in every Chinese city, and on all the prominent heights and pinnacles Bud dhist monasteries have been built, but everything about them save their sites is grotesquely hideous and unimpressive.
 Tawdry pictures and monstrous figures with pantomime masks, whether at Bud- dhist or Taoist shrines, are not calculated to inspire reverence, and given little enough of it by the Chinese, who treat the 'josses'' as so many personal demons, which have to be propitiated or beaten, the case may be. Before each image stands a copper or leaden box full of gray ashes, in which this worshiper may thrust his ''Joss-stick,' to be set alight and burned down so as to insure him luck in his voy- age or venture
 Buddhist services have everywhere, even in China, a curious resemblance 10 Roman Catholic or Greek ritual
 The priests with red robes and crowned with mitres, the attendants bearing long gilded .staffs, 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 appreci- ate the resemblance. They like the gorge- ousness of the Roman service, and they identify the Virgin and the saints with their own deties. It is not unfair to say that Catholic priests make the most of this similarity.
 In d fine church recently erected at Kiu- kiang the carving of the stone is entirely the handiwork of Chinese workmen and all the human figures on the columns are unmistakably Chnamen, but the windows nave been manufactured in Europe and 1t is noticeable that all the scenes of Scrip ture are represented as If the actors had been Chinese. It is not altogether conducive to serious thought to find that the most sacred episodes and personages of the gos- pei narrative have been thus translated into Chinese characters. A Chinese St Pe- ter IS wonderful object but perhaps, af- ter ali' he is not more intrinsically absurd than an early Christian in the dress of q. mediaeval Flemish burgher.
 In the temples adoration of the dead is everything, and in them are tables; or al tars covered with paper figures of mounted men in absurd attitudes, and fantastic cut tings of houses, something like Christnoas crackers, which the pious son burns in honor or in memory of his dead father or mother.
 Both kinds of joss-house have other rites or peculiar character, and it is needless 10 say that other sorts of ancient worship have been introduced. If the Buddhists nave made their and left them to fall into decay and disre- pute, they have always chosen for their monasteries the highest crags and cliffs that the hills of China can boast of Many sucn are to be found, but, except on the borders of Tibet, there are none that com mand finer prospect or fill a grander site than one or two opposite Ichaug at the mouth of the Yangtse. gorges. One of them that I visited was built upon a narrow ledge with sheer drop of 1,2O0 feet on 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 mid- dle of the first gorge.
 Equally we'll chosen is another place of worship and meditation, temple and the monastery in one, called by the name of the Dragons Mouth, at the very entrance to the gorge. huge cavern, with dark and winding recesses. has been made into a joss-house, and on the further side 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 impulses of religious motion. It is difficult to say whether the national sen timent leans that way
 The great teacher, Confucius. was pure agnostic, who, like the Positivists of our day, preached general philanthropy for it's own sake and asked with others of like mind what we can know of future existence when we know so little of the present. It is in the materialism that this leads to, coupled with the gross supersti- tions bred by ages of an arrested civiIiza- ton, that the Chinese world moves and has it's being.