Chinese religion

“ Such is the form of this religion which prevails in China, of which, however, the Chinese layman understands nothing. He goes to a temple, worships the gods with prostrations, lighted candles, incense, &c., to secure his particular ends at the moment; he may even listen to a service chanted in a foreign tongue and just as incomprehensible to the priests as to himself. He pays his fees and departs, absolutely ignorant of the history or dogmas of the religion to which he looks for salvation in a future state. ”

“ It has been customary in China, for many centuries, for the literati to be pure Confucians, sceptical in religion but not in morals, while the rest of the population believed and practised all three religions simultaneously. The Chinese have not the belief, which we owe to the Jews, that if one religion is true, all others must be false. At the present day, however, there appears to be very little in the way of religion in China, though the belief in magic lingers on among the uneducated. At all times, even when there was religion, its intensity was far less than in Europe. ”

“ The real power of a race lies in its religion; other motives inevitably tend to egotism, disorganisation, and national death, and China is no exception to the rule; the strength and the weakness of China lies in her religion and in its absence. There are few nations who set less store by the outward observance of religion and yet there are few nations with a greater belief in the supernatural. On the one hand, the temples are deserted or turned into schools, and the Chinese are believed to have no other motives than self-interest. ”

“ But hundreds of other foreigners in China, myself included, can testify that they have heard intelligent Chinese express a desire to embrace the Christian religion, and the fact that there are in China to-day over a hundred thousand Chinese, to say nothing of myriads of enrolled catechumens, who have publicly confessed their faith in Christ and who have tenaciously adhered to it under sore persecution is tangible evidence that some Chinese at least are disposed to accept Christianity. ”

“ The Chinese have, at least, three religions—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism; but the funeral rites of the three sects are almost, if not quite, identical. There are several reasons for this. The three religions are much alike, and are all largely founded upon Indian Buddhism. Moreover, religion is a very second-class affair indeed in China. The priests are not at all an honoured class; they are usually treated with open contumely. There are no religious dissensions in China, it is not a matter of enough importance. ”

“ This assimilation by the various religions of the essential features of others has made it practically impossible for it to be said that the Chinese belong to any particular religion. In reality Chinamen are pantheistic, and believe just as much as they please of as many religions as they please. There are innumerable minor deities, each having its own sphere of activity, beneficent or malign. ”

“ The nation may, in fact, be said to be without any religion whatever. They have neither religious instruction nor instructors, priests, nor any body of men, whose function is to encourage its cultivation, or by their conduct to set an example to the great body of the people. Every man is free to act in this matter as he thinks fit. The better sort affect to follow the precepts of Confucius. The theism of the Chinese is as cold-hearted and unaccompanied by feeling, as it is crude, undefined, and uncertain in its principles. ”

“ He also reminds us that the religion of China differs from all Pagan religions in this, that it encourages neither cruelty nor sensuality. No human victims have ever been offered on its altars, and those licentious rites which have appeared in so many religions have never disgraced its pure worship.
The Chinese citizen enjoys a degree of order, peace, and comfort unknown elsewhere in Asia. ”

“ During all the revolutions that have since elapsed, the doctrines of Confucius have retained their hold of the Chinese mind, and the religion of China consists in little more than an attachment to these doctrines, and a veneration for their founder. With abstract notions of the Deity, and of the destiny of man when he quits this life, the Chinese do not trouble themselves; a moral, correct life, and especially an honorable discharge of the duties of a son and a citizen, is the whole aim of their piety. ”

“ So many that it would be impossible to say, and the Celestials (as the Chinese are often called, from naming their country the Celestial Land) are not [64] particular how they worship them; Taouists, for instance, worshipping those who are peculiarly Buddhist divinities, and Buddhists invoking, in return, their gods. Indeed, the three religions have so borrowed from one another, and people have believed so much as they liked, that the Chinese themselves often do not know to which religion they belong, and are either all or none, pretty well as they choose. ”

“ The second sort of religion, adopted long after the first, and consequently when the Chinese were already embodied into a regular nation, is Idolatry, and Idolatry carried to such a length, that every one is free to make Gods according to his fancy, so that every head of a family has some of his own creation. ”

“ Christianity, on the contrary, comes to China with foreigners who have no intention of settling down as permanent members of Chinese society, who are classed as representatives of nations which are regarded as more or less hostile and unjust, and who preach their religion as a vital spiritual faith which opposes all wrong, uproots all superstition and aims at the moral reconstruction of every man. ”

“ No worship of God by the people is permitted. It was only by the emperor acting vicariously for the people that the Deity was adored in that country. The system of Confucius, wanting this, was more a morality than a religion.
"Buddhism came to fill this vacancy. Individual faith in God, with a rational mode of worship to accompany it, could not be a result of the religious teaching which preceded it in China, nor were they inculcated by it. In Buddhism, the Chinese found objects to adore of mysterious grandeur, and richly endowed with the attributes of wisdom and benevolence. ”

“ The Chinaman is apt to think twice before entering any society which demands the breaking up of his family in such a way. Another serious obstacle to the spread of Christianity is created by the numerous sects into which Christians are divided, and the conclusion at which the Chinese not unnaturally arrive is that a religion about which there is so much diversity of opinion among its followers cannot be so sound as it is claimed to be. ”

“ The Christian has indeed been for a long time alive to the importance of these developments, but the ordinary citizen with no strong religious views has usually neither displayed nor felt any interest in a country separated from us by so many miles and by such an untraversable gulf in thought and language. If the Christian has urged the importance of Chinese missions, his neighbours have answered by asking him why he cannot leave the Chinese to themselves and to their own religion. ”

“ Everybody, therefore, who knows the strong feeling of the Chinese for their own teachers, will admit that nothing more efficient could be found in order to fix the dogmas of the Christian religion in the mind of the Chinese than the demonstration that these dogmas agree with their own books. ”

“ The extraordinary feeling of hatred and contempt evinced by the Chinese nation for missionaries of every denomination who settle in their country, naturally suggests the question whether Christianity is likely to prove a boon to China, if, indeed, it ever succeeds in taking root at all. That under the form of Roman Catholicism, it once had a chance of becoming the religion of the Empire, and that that chance was recklessly sacrificed to bigotry and intolerance, is too well known to be repeated ”

“ Chinese religions are somewhat a farce, a convention and not a force, but the Chinese strictly speaking religionless, are intensely and vitally religious, and they worship but two gods: ancestors and beauty. The technical gods of China are among its servants—hewers of wood, drawers of water—engaged often by the year or the day, treated and paid accordingly, punished when recalcitrant or slothful, dismissed without a character if too unsatisfactory. ”

“ Filial piety and other social and domestic virtues are strongly inculcated. It would be well for the Chinese of the present day, if their conduct corresponded to the maxims of their great teacher, whose morality, though often defective, contains much that is to be admired. It is a proof, if any were needed, that human motives are too weak to have any lasting influence on the passions of men; and the Chinese, particularly the followers of Confucius, seem to have lost even the last traces of natural religion.
Ques. Why then do they persevere in his worship? ”

“ This is the essential feature of the rite, and this it is which makes the rite an act of worship pure and simple; so that only superficial observers could make the mistake of classifying ancestral worship, as practised in China, with such acts as laying wreaths upon the tombs of deceased friends and relatives.
With reference to the spirit or soul, the Chinese have held for centuries past that the soul of every man is twofold; in a popular acceptation it is sometimes regarded as threefold. One portion is that which expresses the visible personality, and is permanently attached to the body ”

“ Just as an anti-foreign Chinese commentator on the Christian religion might utilise certain texts in the Old Testament to show that the Christian God was neither just nor merciful, and certain texts in the New Testament to show that Jesus of Nazareth shared the superstitions of his age and was sometimes lacking in self-control, so European expounders of Confucianism have seized upon a few passages in the Confucian canon to prove to their own satisfaction that the great Sage of China did not always speak the truth. ”

“ The religion of the Chinese was a modification of the older and simpler forms of nature worship practised by their ruder forefathers. The principal objects of veneration were still heaven and earth and the more prominent among the destructive and beneficient powers of nature. But a tide of personification and deification had begun to set in and to the spirits of natural objects and influences now rapidly assuming material shape had been added the spirits of departed heroes whose protection was invoked after death by those to whom it had been afforded during life. ”

“ The Chinese do not appear to be governed by fixed and solid principles of religion, such as the Christian faith, produced by conviction or reason. They have a superstitious reverence for certain ceremonies, rights, and ancient customs, which have prevailed for ages ”

“ As a general rule Chinese religions are regarded as three in number, namely, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, and into these is woven the all-prevalent ancestor-worship. Whatever its creed or conglomeration of creeds, every family or clan has its temple, in which are placed the tablets of the dead, supposed to be inhabited by the souls of departed ancestors ”

“ We also read of Heaven's raising up the great ancient sovereigns and teachers, and variously assisting them to accomplish their undertakings; but all this need not be more than what a religious man of any country might affirm at the present day of direction, help, and guidance given to himself and others from above. But while the old Chinese books do not profess to contain any divine revelation, the references in them to religious views and practices are numerous; and it is from these that the student has to fashion for himself an outline of the early religion of the people. ”

“ Those who went there and became professed Buddhists were exempt from punishment.
The educated classes despise both Taoists and Buddhists. Nevertheless in sickness, or in death, they patronize them. This shows that our religious instinct is so strong that a man will worship anything rather than nothing.
As I said, there is nothing in Chinese religions corresponding to the Christian Sabbath. In none of our festivals, holidays or anniversary celebrations, does the idea of rest enter. Instead of churches, we have temples which embody the highest architectural skill of the Chinese. ”

“ The gods also indulge in amusements, marry, sin, are punished, die, are resurrected, or die and are transformed, or die finally.2
The Three Religions We have in China the universal worship of ancestors, which constitutes (or did until A.D. 1912) the State Page 100religion, usually known as Confucianism, and in addition we have the gods of the specific religions (which also originally took their rise in ancestor-worship) , namely, Buddhism and Taoism. (Other religions, though tolerated, are not recognized as Chinese religions.) ”

“ Even to-day, the only vigorous element in the heterogeneous religious systems of China consists in that expansion of the ideal of filial piety which takes the form of the cult of ancestors: a cult which has done so much in the past to preserve, consolidate and multiply the Chinese people and make them peaceful, law-abiding and home-loving, and which has nevertheless been condemned as idolatrous by the two great branches of the Christian faith. ”

“ It is somewhat as if we Americans were at the same time Protestant, Romanist and skeptic. The Chinese support the priests of all religions, worship in all their temples, and believe in the gods of each and all. ”

“ Whatever may have been the past success of medical missions as an indirect means of introducing Christianity into China, there can hardly be a doubt that they are of all methods the best calculated to attain the objects for which they have been organised. The Chinese are pre-eminently irreligious, I mean with reference to their own nominal creed—Bhuddism. They are too keenly intent on minding their worldly affairs to have any thought to spare for higher considerations. They are entirely free from the fanaticism which animates other pagan races. ”