mulberry tree. The exchange of commodities-the practice of commerce on a small scale-was, moreover, early developed among them. It was long, indeed, before they had anything worthy of the name of a city; but fairs were established at convenient places, to which the people resorted from the farms and hamlets about, to barter their various wares.

In addition to the above endowments, the early Chinese possessed the elements of intellectual culture. They had some acquaintance with astronomy, knew approximately the length of the year, and recognized the necessity of the practice of intercalation, to prevent the seasons, on a regard to which their processes of agriculture depended, from getting into disorder. They possessed also the elements of their present written characters. The stories current, and which are indorsed by statements in the later semi-classical books, about the invention of the characters of Ts'angkee, in the time of Hwang-te, are of no value; and it was not till the Chow dynasty and the reign particularly of King Seuen (B.C. 825-779) that anything like a dictionary of them was attempted to be compiled. But the original immigrants, I believe, brought with them the art of ideographic writing or engraving. It was rude and imperfect, but it was sufficient for the recording of simple observations of the stars in their courses, and the surface of the earth, and for the orders to be issued by the government of the time. As early as the beginning of the Shang dynasty, B.C. 1765, we find E Yin presenting a written memorial to his sovereign.

The habits of the other settlers were probably more warlike than those of the Chinese, but their fury would

exhaust itself in predatory raids. They were incapable of any united or persistent course of action. We cannot wonder that they were in the long run supplanted and absorbed by a race with the characteristics and advantages which I have pointed out.

The chiefs and rulers of the ancient Chinese were not without some considerable knowledge of God; but they were accustomed, on their first appearance in the country, if the earliest portions of the Shoo can be relied on at all, to worship other spiritual beings as well. There was no sacerdotal or priestly class among them; there were no revelations from heaven to be studied or expounded. The chieftain was the priest for the tribe; the emperor for the empire; the prince of a State for his people; the father for his family.

Shun had no sooner been designated by Yaou to the active duties of the government as coëmperor with him, than "he offered a special sacrifice, but with the ordinary forms, to God; sacrificed purely to six Honored ones; offered their appropriate sacrifice to the rivers and hills; and extended his worship to the host of spirits." Subsequently, in the progresses which he is reported to have made to the different mountains, where he met the princes of the several quarters of the empire, he always announced his proceedings with them by "presenting a burnt offering to heaven, and sacrificing in order to the hills and rivers." I do not refer to these passages as veritable records of what Shun actually did ; but they are valuable, as being the ideas of the compilers of the Shoo King of what he should have done in his supposed circumstances.

The name by which God was designated was the

Ruler, and the Supreme Ruler, denoting emphatically His personality, supremacy, and unity. We find it constantly interchanged with the word heaven, by which the idea of supremacy and unity are equally conveyed, while that of personality is only indicated vaguely and by an associa tion of the mind. By God, kings were supposed to reign, and princes were required to decree justice. All were under law to Him, and bound to obey His will. Even on the inferior people He has conferred a moral sense, compliance with which would show their nature invariably right. All powers that be are from Him. He raises one to the throne and puts down another. Obedience is sure to receive His blessing, disobedience to be visited with His curse. The business of kings is to rule in righteousness and benevolence, so that the people may be happy and good. They are to be an example to all in authority, and to the multitudes under them. Their highest achievement is to cause the people tranquilly to pursue the course which their moral nature would indicate and approve. When they are doing wrong, God admonishes them by judgments, such as storms, famine, and other calamities. If they persist in evil, sentence goes forth against them. The dominion is taken from them and given to others more worthy of it.

The duke of Chow, in his address on "The Establishment of Government," gives a striking summary of the history of the empire down to his own time. Yu the Great, the founder of the Hea dynasty, "sought for able men to honor God." But the way of Këĕ, the last of his line, was different. He employed cruel men, and he had no successors. The empire was given to T'ang the Successful, who "greatly administered the bright ordi

nances of God."

By and by T'ang's throne came to

Show, who was all violence, so that "God sovereignly punished him.” The empire was transferred to the House of Chow, whose chiefs showed their fitness for the charge by "finding out men who would reverently serve God, and appointing them as presidents and chiefs of the people."

It was the duty of all men to reverence and honor God by obeying His law written in their hearts, and seeking His blessing in all their ways. But there was a solemn and national worship of Him as ruling in nature and providence, which could only be performed by the emperor. It consisted of sacrifices, or offerings rather, and prayers. No image was formed of Him, as indeed the Chinese have never thought of fashioning a likeness of the Supreme.

Who the "six Honored ones," whom Shun sacrificed to next to God, were, is not known. In going on to worship the hills and rivers and the host of spirits, he must have supposed that there were certain tutelary -beings who presided over the more conspicuous objects of nature and its various processes. They were under God, and could do nothing, excepting as they were permitted or empowered by Him; but the worship of them was inconsistent with the truth that God demands to be recognized as "He who worketh all in all," and will allow no religious homage to be given to any but Himself. It must have always been the parent of many superstitions, and it paved the way for the pantheism which enters largely into the belief of the Chinese of the present day, and of which we find one of the earliest steps in the practice, which commenced with the Chow

dynasty, of not only using the term Heaven as a synonym for God, but the combination Heaven and Earth.

There was also among the early Chinese the religious worship of their departed friends, which still continues to be observed by all classes, from the emperor downward, and seems of all religious services to have the greatest hold upon the people. The title given in the Shoo to Shun's minister of religion, is that of "Arranger of the ancestral temple." The rule of Confucius, that "parents when dead, should be sacrificed to according to propriety," was doubtless in accordance with a practice which had come down from the earliest times of the nation.

The spirits of the departed were supposed to have a knowledge of the circumstances of their descendants, and to be able to affect them. Events of importance in a family were communicated to them before their shrines; many affairs of government were transacted in the ancestral temple. When Yaou demitted to Shun the business of the government, the ceremony took place in the temple of "the accomplished ancestor,” the individual to whom Yaou traced his possession of the supreme dignity; and while Yaou lived, Shun on every return to the capitol from his administrative progresses, offered a bullock before the shrine of the same personage. In the same way, when Shun found the toils of government too heavy for him, and called Yu to share. them, the ceremony took place in the temple of "the spiritual ancestor," the chief in the line of Shun's progenitors. In the remarkable narrative, which we have in the sixth of the Books of Chow, of the duke of Chow's praying for the recovery of his brother, king Woo, from