122 The value of the old Book-religions

we, with our limited religious instincts, should not otherwise have sought. And in the growing assurance that the Gospel meets each real need of humanity, we shall find the highest conceivable proof of its final and absolute truth.

This then is one end of our inquiry; and the other is to apprehend the fatal course of the actual history of primitive Gentile religions. For so much will be clear that in each case the central idea from which they all start, the need of a harmony between man and the world and God, after it had at first found a popular expression through the voice of great teachers, became as time went on, more and more overlaid on the one side by speculation and on the other side by ceremonialism. That which originally found spontaneous acceptance among different races as a religion became universally a philosophy or a ritual.

Something of the same twofold degeneration can be seen in the history of the Christian Faith, but the preservation in the Church of the original records of the historic revelation provides in this case an adequate outward test of all later developments and an effectual source of reformation.

All that will be said will necessarily require to be carefully verified, and completed by more

to the Christian student.

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detailed inquiries. I can only hope that some who have the leisure will follow out lines of thought which seem to me to promise to this age a manifestation of Truth fuller in its assurance and more glorious in its promises than men have yet received. We are placed in a position in which it is first becoming possible to see that the Gospel is the answer to every religious aspiration and need of man and men. We must then, if we are to comprehend its scope, strive to hear and to understand every voice of those who have sought GOD, even if they be only voices of children crying in the dark.'

To this end we must endeavour to keep in view the ruling thoughts of different systems; and at the very outset of our inquiry we may, I think, characterise by three words the three groups of præ-Christian Book-religions-the Turanian, the Aryan, the Shemitic and such a characterisation will serve as a general clue to guide us as we go farther. We may say with justice, speaking broadly, that the Chinese (Turanian) religions are impressed with the stamp of order, the Aryan with that of nature, the Shemitic with that of history. So it is that the resemblances between these three groups of religions are greatest in their earliest stages. Then the peculiar influences of race begin to work; and their

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The religions of China.

original correspondences are slowly obliterated by developments in these three directions.

(i) THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA.

The indigenous religious systems of Chinaand here we must use the term religious in its widest sense-are, I have said, impressed by the conception of a supreme order. The two great contemporary teachers, Lao-tzu and Confucius, who lived in the sixth century B.C., took this conception and gave it shape in converse and complementary forms. Lao-tzů embodied it in a system of mysticism, and Confucius in a system of materialistic realism, or, in modern language, of positivism.

With Lao-tzu the order-the 'way' (Tâo)— pointed to absolute repose, so that the end of the wise man was to strip off every personal thought and want and joy and sorrow and yield himself to the invisible law of his being. With Confucius the visible order was the one sufficient sphere of the citizen's activity. Man could, he taught, find in himself the power to fulfil the perfect law, and also find in the past the unchanging and sufficient models for his action. In both cases the order which the teacher aimed at realising was something sovereign over the mutability of

The primitive religion.

physical nature and life.

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Both teachers again

regarded the earth as the one scene of human interest. Both wished for a return to the old paths. Both found their golden age in the past. Evil without and within was treated by them as something transitory and removable. Neither looked to any future existence as an occasion for just retribution; nor do they offer any direct doctrine on another state.

But both Lao-tzu and Confucius seem to have used many earlier thoughts, and there are striking correspondences in their physical views which probably represent the traditional opinions of their time. And even more than this: Confucius in spite of his practical bent, expresses now and then thoughts which answer to the quietism of Lao-tzů (Analects xv. 4; Shû King v. 3).

(a) Traces of the primitive religion.

It is still more important that Confucius and Lao-tzu alike left much in the popular beliefs and practices of their age unchanged and untouched. All that is properly speaking theological in the national Chinese religion is older than their teaching; and this primitive, præTaouist, præ-Confucian religion, which survives.

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The primitive religion

to the present time in great national ceremonies and in domestic worship, offers many points of the greatest interest. It has no priesthood, no mythology. The sacrifices which are offered represent dependence on the power to which they are made and gratitude for protection, but they include no thought of expiation or propitiation; and no essentially evil powers whose malevolence needs to be averted are recognised in this earliest faith. A fellowship between heaven and earth is established through the spirits of the departed which are placed in close connexion with the celestial hosts in the most solemn acts of worship.

The Shû-King, in which the chief traces of the primitive religion are preserved, gives a picture of patriarchal faith and worship which is singularly simple and reverent, nor is there any reason to doubt that it represents what were commonly held in the time of Confucius to have been the customs and opinions in the days of the early kings.

The first account of sacrifice seems to carry us beyond the limits of China. In this we are brought into the presence of a majestic spiritual hierarchy. The conception is essentially monotheistic and not polytheistic. Next to the Supreme Lord stand his foremost counsellors, to whom is committed the care of elements or