images, that they worshipped relics, wore strings of beads, used bells and holy water, and had confession of sin. They believed that the devil, as the father of all mischief and deceit, had tempted these men to dress themselves in the clothes of Catholics and mock their solemn practices; whereas it seems likely that there had been some connection in the past, the younger religion borrowing from the older.

Mon

Of the strange mode by which the Tibetans, on the death of the Grand Lama, who is their high priest, and regarded as infallible, like the Pope, elect his successor, into whom they believe his soul passes, space forbids an account. asteries for men and nunneries for women still exist, and especially in Tibet, vast numbers of monks are found; while the huge and now deserted monasteries and temples cut in the solid rock, and of which hundreds exist in India, show how mightily a system, which had been thought to belong to Christianity only, had formed part of Buddhism two thousand years ago.

CHAPTER X.

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA.

ALTHOUGH we are still in the East, we leave its gorgeous dazzlements behind, and once within the walls of China come amongst scenes where song gives place to prose and golden romance to sober fact; where the people's faces, their houses, their junks and their hand-writing, seem made after one pattern.

On the soil of this great country there is crowded nearly half the human race. The man

ners and customs of the Chinese are those of their ancestors hundreds of years ago. Empires have risen and fallen around them, but they remain the same, nor have the races that have broken through their Great Wall and forced rulers upon them altered their laws or their language. The mariner's compass; printing; gunpowder and other arts, were known to them long before they were in use in Europe. Theirs is a land where every

thing seems topsy-turvy. The soldiers wear petticoats, use fans and fight the enemy at night with lanterns; the people have fireworks by daylight ; white is the colour used in mourning; boats are drawn by men and carriages are moved by sails; while visiting cards are four feet long and painted red! In the high honour paid to learning the Chinese teach us a lesson. The lowest among them can rise to the highest offices in the state, these being given, not to the best-born, but to those who have passed with the greatest merit the public examinations; so that knowledge is the road to power.

The ancient inhabitants of China, like the races with whom they are thought to be allied, were worshippers of the powers of nature and of the spirits of their ancestors, and these still largely enter into the religions of China. There is a State worship kept up by the Emperor and his court, in which sacrifices are offered to the heaven and earth, to the spirits of sages, rulers and learned men; also of mountains, fields and rivers; while each household has its family spirits to whom honour and reverence are paid. And behind

all this there looms a supreme power, lord of the sky, ancestor of all things,' who is however as vague a being to the Chinese as is Brahm to the Hindus.

China has three national religions; Buddhism, which was admitted as a religion of the State 65 years after Christ, the Chinese name of Buddha being Fo; Taoism; and Confucianism.

The three religions are often professed by the same person, and there is none of that bitter feeling between the believers in different creeds which exists so much among Christians, Muslims and others. This is, however, owing to the lack of earnestness; for they who feel deeply concerning what they believe cannot be careless regarding what they think are the errors of others.

Lao-tse, the founder of Taoism, lived between 500 and 600 years before Christ, and was an altogether different man from Confucius. He was a thinker, not a worker, seeking to unravel those same problems which perplexed Buddha, and what there is in the Chinese belief of a spiritual kind may have been aided by the teaching of Lao-tse. Confucius is said to have visited him

and confessed that he could not understand him. Taoism has become mixed up with magic and other senseless beliefs, and its priests are for the most part ignorant men, so that it has no great hold upon the Chinese.

Their great teacher and lawgiver, whose 'writings and life have given the law to Chinese thought,' is K'ung-Foo-Tse, the master K'ung,' whose name has been Latinized into Confucius. He is their patron saint; his descendants are held in special honour; the most famous temple in the empire is built over his grave, while hundreds of other temples to his memory abound, and thousands of animals are sacrificed on the two yearly festivals sacred to that memory. Each one of the thousands who compete in the great examinations must know the whole system of Confucius and commit his doctrines to heart.

This man, who was reviled in life, but whose influence sways the hundreds of millions of China, was born 551 years before Christ, not far from the time when Cyrus became king of Persia and the Jews returned from Babylon, and a few years before the death of Buddha. He lost his