I THE DAT J MISSIONS LIB^A^Y T,3o CONTRASTS IN SOCIAL PROGRESS BY Edward Payson Tenney, A.M. Sometime President of Colorado College 77 3 0 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1907 COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY EDWARD PAYSON TENNEY TO THE READER. The classified facts and authorities presented in this vol ume have been gathered in many years as a contribution towards the practical settlement of certain questions in com parative religion, mainly in application of the principle of natural selection and the survival of the fittest to the five great religions, or systems of moral philosophy, that have sprung up and gained wide sway over vast populations of different nationalities, throughout extended areas of the globe, during a period of from two to six scores of the gen erations of men. In addition to the Author's indebtedness to the corre spondents referred to in the text, he desires to express his gratitude to certain American scholars : — To George Foot Moore, LL. D., Professor of the History of Keligion, in Harvard University, who read through the entire manuscript, making valued suggestions; To Duncan Black Macdonald, M. A., D. D., Professor of Semitic Languages in Hartford Theological Seminary, for the revision of what relates to Islam; To Edward Washburn Hopkins, Ph. D., LL. D., Profes sor of Sanskrit in Yale University, for revising the text pertaining to the Religions of India. To Professor John S. Sewell, D. D., of Bangor, special obligation is due for most important service rendered in the Author's preliminary studies. Fitting acknowledgment should also be made for the revision of matter relating to Sociological Conditions : — To E. A. Hume, A. M., of Ahmednagar; to Dr. J. D. Davis, of Kyoto; to William Ashmore, D. D., of Swatow; and to an eminent publicist in the Chinese Empire for pertinent information and courteous corrections of the text. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTEE ONE: THE TIME-TEST IN COMPAEA- TIVE SOCIAL EVOLUTION. Page Unity of Method in Development, both Moral and Natural 1 Moral Evolution Throughout Long Ages 2 The Slow Development of Civilization 6 Moral Evolution of Christendom Illustrated by the Cosmic Development 7 The Tardy Unfolding of the Ethnic Eeligions 9 Social Value of Different Types in Moral Evo lution Tested by Time 10 Eelation of Ethics to Social Condition 14 Inherent Difficulties of the Present Inquiry 23 CHAPTEE TWO : CONTEASTS IN CIVIC CONDITION. Popular Civic Liberty for Individual Development 26 ' Southern Asia 26 The Japanese Empire 30 The Celestial Empire, 36 Islam 44 The Christian Idea of a Universal Kingdom of Love 47 Hebrew Contribution to Modern Crvics 50 Note upon "Christian" Slavery 53 The Idea of Individual Eesponsibility to God 55 Its Social Import 56 The Moral Basis of Self-Governed States 57 Eoman Eule Christianized 58 Its Influence upon England 60 vi table of contents. Effect of Popularized Hebrew Literature upon English Politics 62 Self-Governing Eeligious Bodies and Civil Free dom 65 Christian Liberty Eegulated by Law 67 Biblical Ideas and a Genius for Self-Government 68 CHAPTEE THEEE: CONTEASTS IN HOME BUILDING. Influence of Heredity and Breeding 72 Illustrated by the Jukes-Edwards Story 72 Homes in Hindustan 74-87 Physical Degradation of Stock Through Child- marriage 74 Inferior Position of Hindu Womanhood 75 Sacredness of the Husband 75 Influence of Patriarchal Family System 77 Seclusion of Women 78 Condition of Widows 79 Eeligious Sanction for Lives of Impurity 81 The Status of Women as Affected by Female In fanticide 82 The Foregoing Statements Qualified 84 Effect of the Depressed Condition of Motherhood on Hindu Stock 85 Buddhist Homes 87-95 Eelatively Improved Condition of Womanhood 87 Primitive Condition of Domestic Life in Siam 88 Note upon Effect of Buddhist Celibacy on Eaeial Stock 90 Women of Burmah 91 Womanhood in Japan 91 Confucianist Homes 95-99 Ancestral Worship as Eelated to the Status of Woman 85 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Vll Influence of Childhood Betrothal and Mercantile Marriage 97 Effect of the Patriarchal Family System 97 Domestic Vice, and Divorce 98 Female Infanticide 98 Influence of Ancestral Worship in Congesting the Population 99 Mussulman Homes 99-107 The Legal Status of Women 100 Child Marriage 100 The Patriarchal Family System 100 Plurality of Wives, Frequent Divorce, and the Concubine Custom 101 Influence of Heredity and Training on Eaeial Stock 105 Counter Considerations 106 Christian Home Life 107-124 Qualification of the Foregoing Statements Con cerning the Eeligions 107 The Eise of Eadically Different Conditions Through Christianity 108 The Unity of Judaic and Christian Ideas Eelat- ing to Womanhood 108-120 Love as the Basis of Marriage 109 Monogamy 111 Abandonment of Arbitrary Divorce 112 Divorce in Christendom 113 The Ideal of Domestic Purity 113 Note upon the Social Evil 114 Development of Woman's Individuality in the Hebraic, Early Christian and Mediaeval Usage 115 Note upon the Humane Treatment of Widows 116 Eelation of the Christian Status of Woman to an Improved Eacial Stock 120-124 Influence of Physical and Mental Maturity in Motherhood 121 Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS. Abandonment of the Patriarchal Family System as Eelated to an Improved Domestic Stock 122 Influence of Individual Home Life upon Child hood 123 CHAPTEE FOUE : CONTEASTS IN EDUCATION. Christian Schooling 125-131 Hebrew Instruction 125 Early and Mediseval Education 126 In the Eeformed Church 126 In the Modern Age 127 Slow and Limited Development of Educational Plant in Christendom Contrasted with Pres ent Activities 129 Hindu Education 131-133 Theory of the Brahmans 131 Comparative Illiteracy 131 The Education of Girls 132 Buddhist Instruction 133-138 Siam 133 Burmah 135 Japan 135 Education among the Confucianists 138-150 Confucius as a Eepresentative of the National Mind 138-141 The Civil Service Examinations 141 Popular Illiteracy 144 The Discipline of the Higher Education 146 The Broadening Curriculum 146 A New Era 148 Moslem Schools 150-156 Intellectual Quickening through Mohammed 150 The Study of the Koran 151 Illiteracy of Moslem Women 152 Christian Education in the Turkish Empire 152-156 table of contents. ix Philanthropic Extension of Christian Educa tion as a Social Power 156 Eelation of Moral Education to the Formation of Character 158 Illustrated in Borneo 159 In the South Seas 160 Philanthropic Educational Service in non- Christian Lands 161 The Elevation of Womanhood 162 National Leadership through Educational De velopment 162 Outworking of Philanthropic Energy in Promot ing Education 163 CHAPTEE FIVE: CONTEASTS IN LITEEATUEE. Provincial Limitations in the Concept of Liter ature 165 Sanskrit Literature 166-173 Intellectual Supremacy of the Brahman Caste 167 Enforcement of Caste Eules the Essential Thing in Hinduism 168 Literary Activity of the Hindu Mind 169 The Brahmanical Scriptures 169-173 Buddhist Literature 173-180 Personality of Gautama 173 His Spiritual Enlightenment 174 Ideal of the Mendicant Monks 175-178 Their Teaching 178 The Sacred Books ( 179 Secular Literature in Buddhist Lands 180 The Chinese Classics 181-185 Summary of their Teaching 181, 182 Note upon Filial Piety 182 Their Positive Influence 183 Literary Productiveness of China 184 x table of contents. Arabic Literature 185-193 Personality of Mohammed 185 His Sincerity 187 Eeligious and Political Conquest 188 Ceaseless War against Infidels forever Binding 188 The Koran 189 Other Literature 192 Limitations of the Koran 193 Literature of Christianity 194-201 Preponderance of Fact in the Bible 194 Antiquity of the Sacred Writings 196 Influence of the Hebrew Books upon Christian Literature 196 Intellectual Effect of the Bible in English 198 Influence of Christian Literature upon the Fine Arts 199 Prose Literature in Christendom 201 Comparative Literature as an Educational In fluence 201 Literature of Christendom Characterized by Gospel Ideas 202 Comparative Eeaders 203-205 Literature in Libraries 203 Circulation of the Sacred Books of the World 204 CHAPTEE SIX : CONTEASTS IN MOEAL THOUGHT. I. Eelating to Worship — the Idea of God 206-224 Hindu Ideas 206-212 The Buddhist 212-214 Confucian 215-218 Moslem 218-220 The Judaic and Christian Conception of God 220 The Tests of Natural Science and the Theology of Nature 222 Social Eesults of Theistic Misconception 22S TABLE of CONTENTS. XI II. Eelating to the Love of God 225-227 Moslem Thought 225 Babism 226 Social Influence of the Idea of God's Love 227 III. Eelating to the Moral Law 228-231 IV. The Nature of Moral Evil 231-238 Views Entertained by the Hindus 231 By the Buddhists 235 Confucian, Moslem, Greek and Eoman Ideas 236 The Christian Concept 237 Social Eesults 238 V. Non-Christian Views that Eelate to Erad icating Evil 238-254 Hindu Theories of Illusion, and the Avoidance of Moral Eesponsibility 239 The Doctrine of Eepeated Births, and its Social Influence 240 Buddhist Transmigration, and the Law of Karma 241 Note upon Heredity 245 The Theory of Accumulating Moral Merit 246 The Moslem Merit System 246 Hindu Salvation by Works 248 Buddhist Devices for Merit Making 248-254 VI. The Christian Concept of Eemoving Moral Evil 254-274 The Hatred of Evil, as a Social Influence 255 Social Effect of the Negations of Buddhism 256 Need of a Supreme Moral Governor in China 259 Christian Self-Consciousness and Sense of Indi vidual Eesponsibility versus Japanese Ideas and Chinese 261 Christian Ideal of Man's Individuality 263 Intellectual Supremacy of Conscience 264 Moral Amendment through Mercy to the Penitent and through a Divine Ee-enforcement 266 The Epoch of Divine Self-Sacrifice 266 Xll TABLE OF CONTENTS. The Person of Jesus Christ 267 Social Power of the Christian Concept of Man's Eenewal 269 Change of Character not Eequired by Islam 270 Sociological Value of Belief in a Divine In dwelling Energy 272 Christian Consciousness 273 VII. The Time Element in Forming Eacial Ten dencies in Ethics 274 VIII. Social Effect of the Conception of a Di vine Kingdom of Love with World-wide Sway 277 IX. The Kingdom of Heaven: or Final Eelease from Sin 284 X. Permanent Force of the Ethical Theories that Permeate Christian Literature 285 The Unities of the Spirit 286-288 CHAPTEE SEVEN: CONTEASTS IN ALTEUISTIC SEEVICE. Business Basis of a World-wide Philanthropy through Combinations of Thrifty Chris tian Laymen 289-292 A. Contrasts in the Attitude of the Great Eeli- GIONS TOWARD LABOR 292-307 Importance of Material Well-being 292 Continental Industrial Loss through Millions of Sacred Mendicants 292 Industrial Conditions in the Land of Confucius 294 Lack of Commercial Confidence 294 Poverty of Working Men 295 Obstacles to Advancement 297 Hindustan : Effect of the Caste System 298 Note upon the Industrial Effect of the Patriarchal Family System 298 Industrial Improvement under Christianity 301 table of contents. Xlll Condition of Working Men in Christendom 302 Note on German State Insurance of Workmen 303 Contrasts in the Honor Put upon Manual Labor 304 Optimism as a Social Power 305 Constitution of Leading Eaces in their Eelation to Labor 305-307 Equality of Opportunity 306 Superior Vigor of Workmen in Christendom 306 Eelation of Moral Qualities to Industrial Prosperity 307 B. The Attitude of Great Eeligions toward the Belief of Poverty 307-332 The Hindus 308 Buddhists 311 Japan 312 Confucianists : 313 Keang-soo Compared with New York 315 Hankow Compared with St. Petersburg 316, 317 Chinese Charities Compared with American 317 Christian Philanthropy in China 317-318 Islam : 318 Turkey Compared with Great Britain 319 With Pennsylvania 319 Constantinople Compared with London, and with Boston 319, 320 The Attitude of Christianity: 320-332 Hebrew, Eoman, and Mediseval Charities 320 Early Municipal Charities 321 Charities of France Compared with Kwang- tung 321-322 Italy Compared with the Northwest Provinces of India 322 Poor Belief in Germany 322-327 "Considering" the Poor 324 Westphalia 325 Chinese Province of Chihli Compared with Eng land 327 xiv table of contents. London Charities 328 The Church of England, the Free Churches, and the Nobility 329 The Christian Women of Great Britain 330-331 There should be 14,000,000 non-Christian Women Devoted to Philanthropy 331, 332 Christian Philanthropy in non-Christian Eealms 332 CHAPTEE EIGHT: PAEALLELS AND CONTEASTS IN SELF-EXTENDING ALTEUISTIC POWEE. Mediaeval Propagation of Christianity by a Com promise with Paganism 333-337 Advancing Brotherly Love at the Point of the Sword 337-342 The Cleansing Power of Persecution 342-344 The Proselyting Power of Islam: 344 Africa 344-346 India 346 The Hold of Islam on its Votaries 347 Its Limitations 349, 350 Buddhist Self-Extension 350-363 The Sangha, — or Monastic Order 352 Three Hindrances to Buddhist Self-Extension 354-358 The Adaptation of a Great Eeligion to a New Age 359 Buddhist Extension Compared with that of Christianity in Japan 360 The Number of Buddhists in the World 361 Note upon the Three Eeligions of China 362 The Empire of Confucius : 363 Its Boundaries 363 Its Social Limitations 363-364 Extension of Christianity among the Lower Classes in China 364-366 Lack of Confucian Missions 366 Changing Conditions and the Opportunity of the Hour 367-368 table of contents. xv Hinduism : 368 A National Eeligion 369 Inherent Difficulties in Propagating the System 370 Weakness through Sub-division » 371 Its Natural Increase 371 The Advance of Christianity in India 371-377 Christianity as the World-wide Kingdom of God: 377-388 Influence of Imperial Eome on the Christian Idea of a Universal Spiritual Kingdom 377 Its Machinery for Self -Propagation 380-384 Magnitude of Its Work 382 Statistical Eesults 382-384 The Social Advancement of Christian Peoples 384 Extent of the Christian Eealm 385 The Spirit of Self-Sacrifice 386-388 CHAPTEE NINE: THE TIME ELEMENT IN THE FUTUEE OF MAN'S MOEAL EVOLUTION. The Period of Present Cosmic Conditions Avail able for Man's Moral Evolution 389 Development of the Kingdom of God 390-392 Specialists upon the Future Length of the Cos mic "Age of Man,"— and Note 392, 393 The World's Early Population Small 393 Eelation of Time to the Future of the Kingdom of God 393-395 Illustration from the Geology of Chicago 395 The Law of Progress in Systems of Faith and of Morality 397 The "Natural" Development of Moral Power 399 The Heroic Age of the World 400 The Working Together of the Leaders of Man kind to Develop New Types of Christianity 401 The Dtvine Psychic Energy in Man's Moral Evo lution 401 xvi table of contents. APPENDIX A. The Monks of Christendom 402 B. The Decadence of Christian Monasticism 405 C. Nirvana 406 D. Karma 408 Bibliography 409 CHAPTEE ONE: THE TIME TEST IN COMPAEA- TIVE SOCIAL EVOLUTION. The Christian Scriptures represent the self-revelation of the Creator of the universe as manifest in four forms: (i) in man's reason and conscience, to which the Bible constantly appeals in set terms; (ii) in the providential hand appearing in human history, which our books illus trate throughout a long term of centuries; (iii) through nature or the things which God has made; and (iv) in our sacred literature. The Lord our God is one Lord, whether he reveals himself in the moral constitution of man, in the course of history, in literature, or in nature. "Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee." In the divine creative work the several parts appear to be so correlated that the method of evolution, which un questionably availed in the physical development of man, seems to be the law observed in man's moral evolution and in God's spiritual kingdom on earth. The facts in the unfolding of the moral powers of individual men and races of an early type point to a law of parsimony in the use of creative means to an end, and to a certain deliber- ateness in the divine action toward reaching this end, as if on the part of One unfolding plans far reaching from eternity to eternity. If the material universe appears to have been so created as to have seed within itself, or to have lodged within it the immanent divine energy, and to develop by a law or method of divine action that calls for little direction or interference, how can it be looked for that moral evolution should proceed upon a different plan ? In the use, however, of secondary causes in moral develop ment there must be immeasurable periods of time, and it is not unfitting that it be so, in the preparation of a morally 2 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. perfected race for the occupancy of this globe during so many ages to come as are commensurate with the cycles past in which the earth has been making ready for man. I. If an orderly plan has been carried on probably during some tens or scores of millions of years, or during a longer period, as some would have us think, in fitting our planet for human use, and if the physical nature of man has been, in the divinely chosen creative method, developed and modified during some hundreds of thousands of years in qualifying it to become the instrument of the intellectual and spiritual powers of man as he appears in historic times, we must easily believe that man's moral nature has been developed so slowly that it is impossible to fix the date when moral responsibility began for the entire race as such, or to affirm in what degree moral responsibility attaches to the most backward peoples. If the evolution of material things be by analogy the measure of mental and moral evolution, is it not probable that the dawn of human con sciousness and the development in the animal man of a moral sense and a capacity for immortality, or such nature as may be properly held responsible for moral activity, must have been not only very gradual, but have been differ ent in degree in the varied prehistoric tribes and peoples, and in individuals of the same racial stock ? Even if man, in our earliest definite knowledge of him, appears to have been a religious animal so far as to have that sense of rela tionship to the unknown, as a controlling element in his destiny, which specialists affirm to be the characteristic of all men, yet the time when a distinct moral consciousness appeared we cannot know any more than we can know when embryonic individual life reaches the period of moral responsibility. It is enough that at some time, somewhere, man began to have ideas which consciously actuated him in a religious manner, that he might intelligently adapt MORAL EVOLUTION. 3 limself to the conditions of his existence in developing that spiritual nature which exists outside the circle of natural movements and apart from it, — so manifesting a -capacity at least for spiritual development, — which at its highest and best came finally to a knowledge of the ¦self -revelation of God in nature and in the constitution of man, and prepared the human race at a later period for reading God's self -revelation in such spiritual life as came to be embodied in the most ancient sacred literatures, and prepared man to follow more intelligently the leadings of the divine spirit. To know for certainty so much as this, we do not need to go back to the earliest ages of our race to trace the story in detail from the birthplace of man through racial migra tions, yet we may better interpret the philosophical and religious phenomena of the last twenty or thirty centuries if we express ourselves in such terms as are commonly used in treating of natural causation. Shall we not gain the most light if we think of the development of the human race early and late as part of that cosmic process, or fixed method, which was selected by the divine wisdom for the manifestation of divine energy and the work of the divine spirit through the spiritual instincts of man? Do we not find man, when slowly emerging from the darkness of primal ages, at the very first transmitting ethical ideas from one individual to another and one generation to another as a heritage of cumulative moral sentiment ? Yet no one can read the story of the earliest historic savagery — as detailed by anthropologists — without thinking of the men as only a little elevated above the brutes that perish, nor without thinking of the early forms of the great reli gions — no matter how crude — each as the beginning of a higher spiritual life for mankind. Is there not a constant impression made by the anthropologists that man's intelli gence, superior to that of the highest brutes, at the first only made him a superior brute, with his higher and more spiritual capacities awakened in the slightest degree? * TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. The question of the duration past of man's life on our planet is of no practical import whatever, whether this be some ten or twenty-five thousand years', which seems most probable, or an indefinite longer period — as there certainly was for some being with the flesh and frame which we now know as man; there came, in any event, at some period, a new era. Instead of anthropoid apes with brains in size one-third that of man, the very lowest in the scale of man hood had upon first appearance brains at least five sixths the size of those of modern civilized races. That is to say, "Man's brain was a structure developed in anticipation of function." Yet, in saying so much as this, it is not need ful to claim for preglacial man aught higher than spiritual capacity, or needful to moot the question of man 's natural immortality. As his brain was developed in anticipation of function, may not his physical nature have been a moral structure developed in anticipation of an immortal career, which might come to the race or to individuals of the race whenever the spiritual function should become fully oper ative at a later period? As man's brain at first was so susceptible of development that mathematical calculations and musical skill might come later without having a differ ent brain, so his psychical nature may have been in antici pation of immortality. The essential moral nature of pre historic man, and his inherent power of moral development, stands by itself, and is not to be confounded with the other question of his natural immortality. A moral being may be subject to moral law and yet be mortal. Although Bishop Butler's reasoning in regard to natural immortality led him to think that the lower animals might also be immortal,1 we can but think of quaternary man as no more endowed with natural immortality than the lower animals ; the man primeval being susceptible of spiritual immor tality, having an undeveloped capacity for it to be worked out in subsequent evolution,— an endowment to be finally- partaken of by those whose moral development puts them in the spiritual attitude to receive it. That such spiritual "¦Analogy, p. 37, Gladstone's Edition, Oxford, 1896. MORAL EVOLUTION. 5 epoch was believed to be reached, at least by some portion of the race, at the indefinable beginning of the historic era, appears to be clear from the earliest records and traditions as interpreted by the highest authority. However this may have been, the main contention is true that for the evolution of man's moral sense an incalculable period of time must have been requisite. If unnumbered cycles were needful, in the plan or method which divine wisdom adopted, for perfecting the platform upon which man could appear, and in providing for his use the fruits of field and forest and fruits of the chase, must we not look for the passage of unnumbered ages in the divine perfecting of the spiritual creation? If the world was long the seat of merely natural powers, as cohesion, attraction, and crystalline forces, or if the lowest forms of vegetable and animal life, if the overhanging precipice in the mountains was worn away by the roots of lichens at work upon its face during thousands of years, if minute grains of granite were borne to the wheat fields, whose harvest should sometime wave just outside the shadow of the rocky ranges of the earth, — if such preparation of the earth for man has occupied time inconceivable, we must be prepared for the presentation in our Sacred Books of such natural symbols as the seed grain or tree growths, the bring ing forth of the bud, or the springing of a garden, to express the slow and sure development of the divine king dom in the earth. The impression made by the analogies of nature, used in the parables of our Lord and in the hortations of the Hebrew prophets, leads us to believe that there is a uniform law, that even if the power which builds a bud can finish it in a moment, yet the earth is long bare of blossoms, and that the divine energies await the slow movement of secondary causes until the set time of flowers. Did not the early singers of our faith constantly set forth the similitude of God's earth to indicate his processes in the spiritual world, his covenant with the mountains and the rain symbolizing the triumph of his moral purpose? 6 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. II. If it seemed "good" to the First Cause of all things, that. the orderliness of creation should be brought forth in pro cesses extending through periods of time that reach back, into the "frontiers of eternity," and if the human race is- at this moment so near the beginning of its historic develop ment, — with a record of only fifty centuries behind it of intellectual and moral life, and a period one or two hundred. times as long for the evolution of its animal powers, as if the moral world had just sprung into being, — how can it but be looked for that the history of civilization should. show the same slow and uneven course of development with, which we are made familiar in the story of evolution in the natural world? So unsteady has been the upward advance of our race- that the very term civilization has been ill understood: — - often so defined as to be applicable to the simple industries- and unique government of the Iroquois, or to any rude, inhumane, morally unsympathetic people, if at the fore in useful arts, commercial enterprises, and even in war ; appli cable to the voluptous, the vicious, the frivolous, if at the. fore in a social refinement of the tailor and milliner type; if applicable, how incompletely so, to peoples with civilized roads and barbaric sports, eminent in the fine arts and. savage toward criticism in morals. Is "civilization" a term of little value? Is it greatly improved by coupling- it with that other term, ' ' culture, ' ' itself so broad, so vague, so ill-defined? What is the boasted civilization of man? Must answers vary? Should it be restricted merely to a low degree of civic orderliness, to a convention of forms, to- industrial cooperation, to skill in handling natural laws for social convenience and material prosperity? Were it accu rate to speak of civilization as mainly mechanical, how should we classify the systematic development, through dis cipline, of the intellectual and moral capacities of great. peoples, — the unfolding of the national mind, the exalta- CIVILIZATION. 7 tion of the spiritual over the material, and the triumphant development of man's inward power? How can our human history be understood, unless our most advanced as well as our most backward nationalities are placed against the background of that low animal career from which the race sprang, and which has left the mark of the beast upon all mankind ? Nor can we reconcile with the highest reason what must appear as moral madness and confusion in the history of the so-called human civilization, unless we can discover in it a divine plan and purpose, like a traceable ocean current or ill-defined but resistless under tow amid all its turbulent tides. III. Might not the spiritual evolution of Christendom — in root and branch and fruit — be well illustrated in the evolu tion of physical nature, and the development of prehistoric man? Were the scope of this book such as to admit of it, seven ages of cosmic evolution could be easily depicted in following the lines of the matchless popular statement of the development theory in Genesis, — with God behind it or immanent in it, according to the most rigid scientific studies of to-day; and, in comparison, seven ages of the slow and seemingly wayward moral evolution of Christendom. Were this to be done, it would illustrate what must be anticipated in tracing the relatively backward development of all the great ethnic religions. Do not the earliest recorded strata, embedded like leaves in our Sacred Books, antedating the knowledge of Greece and Eome and substantiated here and there by excavations upon the Tigris and Euphrates, refer to the outermost verge of historic times when moral darkness wrapt the world? How fitly could such an era be figured by that creative epoch when a dim light first dawned upon the waters. Yet the eons of man primeval — of the giants which so quaintly appear in the ancient Hebrew etymology, — were no more wasted than the weary ages when the hesitating and doubt- 13 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. ful evenings and mornings were new to the earth. Could an observer of the works of God have been standing upon the Laurentian hills in that era, awaiting the completion of the world, how little could he have understood that "God's work must take God 's time, ' ' — a truth easily applicable to the densely obscure ages of the earliest recorded time. In both the physical preparation of the earth for man and in the beginning of his exercise of moral faculties, the eras were but prophetic; neither the moral possibilities of the race nor the cosmic changes in the universe about us being fulfilled in any short period of time. How then can it be otherwise than that the earliest moral ideas native to man should have been rude and relatively imperfect during the long succession of ages of patriarchal life in southern, eastern, and western Asia? And when there came an hour in which, according to the Hebrew story, the founder of their people believed that he had a divine call to separate himself from his moral surroundings, it but accords with the analogy of cosmic evolution if it proved to be a moral day-dawn rather than perfect day. Whether or not the patriarchal chronology was fixed before the Exodus is not important ; the long semi-barbaric period that is involved in the story of Israel in the wilderness and in the land of promise throws light upon the earlier gener ations of their people. And the monumental moral perver sity — perverting from the ideal standpoint — of the Jew ish nation during the forty-five generations of their national life is recorded in their historic and prophetic books. Yet the moral truth made manifest in those generations has proved to be of solid service to the social world since; as the lifting of the vapors that overhung the earth and the appearance of vast bodies of dry land, in the early geo logical ages, greatly advanced the cosmic evolution. And if, after the Christian era when the Light of the World appeared as the sun to rule the day, there followed ages of relatively low moral life, reptilian or brutal, the generations were yet vastly superior to all the earlier ages of man. CHRISTENDOM. IV. If the time element is important in moral evolution as it is in the cosmic processes, we cannot do otherwise than con sider all the great ethnic philosophies and religions of the globe in the light of age-long development ; nor can we other wise understand their relation to the world's social con dition at the present time. The beginnings of Brahmanism at its earliest and purest, and the ideas upon which Con fucianism was based, certainly run back to the primary period in India and China. These systems perpetuate some of the earliest forms of thought, as if, in these present day religions, primitive man at his best were still with us in the elevated conceptions that appear in the early Vedas, and in that standard of morals for the conduct of life which Confucius found in the earliest sages of his people. In any extended examination of the details of the development of the three great religions that occupied the attention of men before the Christian era and that still survive, we can but think of them as the manifestation of a moral evolution that follows closely the analogy of the cosmic process or established order chosen by the Creator, in which there was a coming and going of untold numbers of individual lives that had little distinctive right to be called religious in any elevated sense. If the religious cult, that differentiated itself from that of Assyria and Egypt through the worship of Jehovah, was advanced through a people stiff-necked, rebellious, blind, fanatical, from the prophetic point of view; and if the moral evolution denominated Christian by our early and mediaeval historians was age after age characterized by forms of life that constantly recall the crude moral code of the earliest peoples ; so, too, in the study of formative Bud dhist, Brahmanic, or Chinese thought, we can but find our selves in ceaseless contact with what is rude and elemental in moral evolution. Is it not the story of man with a capacity for spiritual life and an immortal destiny, but in 10 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. many respects not far removed from the prehistoric races ? Do not the details of Hindu and Chinese social life to-day, as depicted in characteristic sketches by literary artists who have lived many years among the common people of south ern and eastern Asia, certainly give the impression that the average man among them is not greatly removed from the type of early men pictured by anthropologists? If one reads several of these books upon man primeval, then at once reads those relating to village life in China and India, will it not appear that the superior intelligence of the mod ern man has often served only to make him a little more capable along the lines of a distinctively brutal life ? And if we turn to Christendom and the Moslem world, may not the same thing be said of multitudes, whose moral powers have been little developed? V. If we think to detect shades of difference in the social development of the varied peoples among whom the great religions have had the largest acceptance in the world dur ing many ages, it will be too much to hope that differences in the present day social fruits can be traced to a difference in their roots, but if a radical unlikeness is found in them, it will be for thoughtful men to inquire in what direction will be found most hope for the future of mankind. It is no part of the purpose of this book to enter into a dis cussion of the obscure ultimate causes of present day social phenomena, whether economical or religious : to debate these matters would be like entering the lists as to the origin of the moral sense, or to question whether altruism has come to its rightful place only through ages of philosophical observation upon the retroactive advantage of unselfish deeds to the individual, and incidentally its social helpful ness. The present inquiry rather deals with such results as appear to be connected with obvious causes; without mooting academic questions in themselves interesting and important, but in their present stage unconclusive. SOCIAL VALUES. 11. If there are sanguine social students who hope soon to settle all questions that pertain to the beginnings of society, to ascertain what are the primal ideas, how they came into- being, and the procession of their natural order, they may reach their desire as soon as the biologists who seek to solve the question of life itself, in what it consists, and its ulti mate origin. Meantime the inquiry made in this book can not fail of appearing to be at fault, insomuch as it will not seek to determine whether refigious ideas precede or follow certain other phases of man's advancement, or whether religious thought is the cause or the effect of the civic, domestic, and economic phenomena observed in social evolu tion. The contention is rather that, in the development of our race, certain pristine religions have been preserved during vast periods of time, through the long continuance of organized society and relatively undisturbed political cohesion, and that the experience of great peoples, through out all these generations, has shown that in respect to indi vidual civic condition, and the status of the home and the education of youth, in the formation of literature and the evolution of moral ideas, in philanthropic service and power of growth, five great religions have run a race side by side,, and it is now a fair subject of inquiry as to the character of the civilizations that have been bound up with them, and this inquiry need not be confused or diverted by interrupt ing its course through mooting the totally different question whether the religion was causal of the social condition or the effect of it. Yet the main inquiry can but reveal, at many points, what appear to be prima facie causes and effects, through the inter-relation of this religion or that and the local social condition. During periods varying perhaps from forty generations; to a hundred, the national and social leaders of Moslem and of Buddhist lands, and of India and China, who have- constantly shaped and modified the civic and domestic con dition of the common people, training their youth, deciding- their relations to literature and moral thought and tlieir 12 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. inter-relation in mutual helpfulness, have been themselves the creators, shapers, or modifiers of the native religion ; or they have been, — through heredity, through environment, and through their own individual culture, — so far shaped and modified by local religious influences as well as secular, that the resultant social condition of the common people has been throughout interpenetrated by the causal moral power of the local religion, as well as by local economic agencies, and other efficient forces most diverse. Were we to inquire in what relations the Brahmans stand to the story of human freedom, to the domestic life of the -common people, to education, to art and literature, to dis tinctive religious thought, to philanthropy or brotherly love among men, and to possible instrumentalities for its own self -extension in the earth; then, were we to test in like manner Buddhist, Confucianist, Mohammedan, and Chris- tion, we should have at once concrete exhibits which no philosophical abstractions could nullify. And for the pres ent purpose it is not needful to determine in every case how far the outcome is strictly derivable from early reli gious and philosophical thought, or whether, in part, the present fruitage is from roots economic, or otherwise inde pendent of moral theories and practice. Considered from a sociological point of view, we find T)ound up in the same bundle with Confucianist, Brahman, Buddhist, Moslem, or Christian philosophical and religious ¦thought, a certain relation to civil liberty, the home, child- training, literature and art, theories on the moral conduct of life, altruism and self -propagating power : and the social cult as such is to be taken as a whole and judged of in its totality, as of an advanced or a backward type ; the prac tical question being in what direction lies the future hope of mankind. It is like the legal contest between Choate and Webster on the car-wheels: Choate pleading finespun distinctions to show that his client did not infringe on a patent, and Webster saying to the jury, "There are the wheels, look at them." SOCIAL VALUES. IS It is within the scope of this book to point the reader to the civic and domestic condition of the realms where the five great religions have held the longest sway, to their intellectual development, to their artistic and literary influ ence, their most obvious moral theories and practices, their relation to self-abnegation for the good of others, and their purposes and activities for the control of the whole world; and to point the reader to the time element involved, which shows conclusively that there is some vital and relatively uniform connection between the different elements that go to make up the social state of a given people, even if we cannot tell precisely in a given ease whether the religious ideas are cause or effect, — that they are at one, age after age, is enough. As to the period for this inquiry, Brahmanism and Con fucianism antedate the Christian era by many centuries; and Buddhism by five hundred years, and more in some of its features ; and both Mohammedanism and Christianity are linked with the rise of Judaism. Practically, we have twelve Moslem centuries ; twice that period for the Buddhist. test; perhaps eight or ten centuries longer for the Brah man, and for testing the fruits that have come to Chris tianity through the Hebrews; and the first intimation of historic thought in China is the earliest of all. So that we have time enough in which to trace the outcome of the great social cults in which these philosophical and religious systems exercise predominating power. The story of the ancient ages of human history can surely be read as well, at least, as the geological record of the earth's making. We know without cavil that China has been dominated by Confucius for more than seventy generations of men, that Gautama has reigned as long, that Brahmanical ideas and the Judaic have controlled the lives of untold millions dur ing milleniums of history, and that Christianity and Moham medanism have seized upon extended peoples and wrought through them age after age, — surely now, if ever, we may know well enough for all practical purposes what their 14 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. leading ideas are which affect civic and domestic life. Nor is it needful to catch and label every prehistoric or antique custom, civic and domestic, and set this and that one aside as having nothing to do with the proper conterminous reli gious ideas. The main facts are clear: the co-existence among the same peoples, for ages upon ages, of certain social phenomena with certain moral philosophies and reli gions; an on-sweeping or stagnated life — of elementary ideas indisguishable in their connections, but well known as Chinese, Hindu, Moslem, or Christian. VI. So intimate is the correlation of the intellectual and the moral powers of man, — his moral ideas and conduct being but the direction of his intellect to moral ends, — that even if one seeks to make primarily no theological inquiry, and to avoid controversy as to what religion is intrinsically best for mankind, — in no wise to affirm that Christianity is the purest and the only divine religion, in no wise to gloss over the gross moral defects of Christendom, — and if one solely seeks for such ideas as bear upon social relations, asking what has produced the ingrained Hindu or Chinese char acter and society as we know them to-day, or what has wrought in making Mohammedan and Christian and Bud dhist states what they are now politically and socially, nevertheless, if we inquire for the grounds of such social results as we see after age-long and world-wide experiments, it will be seen that silently and swiftly, year after year, certain forecasting ideas, well known as to their effects in history, have been at work that have affected home life decade after decade, ideas that relate to the education and training of youth generation after generation, that pertain to governments century after century, that manifest them selves in literature age after age, ideas that affect the politi cal and social equality of men, ideas which outwork in philanthropic activities and in well-defined religious senti ments and in power for self -propagation during the millen- ETHICS. 15 iums of the world's life. The story of Egypt, of Babylon, of Assyria, of Greece, of Eome, of Gaul, of Germany, and of the modern peoples, together with the unfolding life of ancient Arabia, of Hindustan, and China, — what are all these fascinating histories but the revelation of ideas in life, philosophical and religious abstractions in concrete form ? If not in the ebb and flow of the current hour, then in the tidal inset of myriads of moons, noiseless and resist less, we find the logical outcome of the moral ideas that have possessed great masses of mankind, and — through heredity and environment — made national life and society what they are to-day in different parts of the world. "This is the most certain of all the laws of man's nature^ that his conduct will in the main be guided by his moral and intellectual conviction."1 All human society, accord ing to J. Stuart Mill, is grounded on a system of funda mental opinions: "To say that men's intellectual beliefs do not determine their conduct, is like saying that the ship is directed by the steam and not by the steersman ; it is the steersman's will and knowledge which decide in what direc tion it shall go. ' ' That is, the intellect directs the conduct. "According to M. Comte," says Mill, "the main agent in the progress of mankind is their intellectual development. ' ' This is because the intellect is "the guiding part" of our nature. "Hence the history of opinions, and of the specu lative faculty, has always been the leading element in the history of mankind."2 May it not- then be assumed that religious theories and practices are likely to be a prominent — if not predomi nant — factor in so shaping the conduct of life as power fully to affect the social condition of great peoples ; all that great bodies of men do, through community of interest, in satisfying the demands of human nature — the industrial, political, intellectual and ethical development of man in the aggregate, — being measurably wrought upon by religious forces. 'Argyle's Reign of Law, p. 432. London, 1867. "Mill's Essay on Comte, pp. 100-102, 104. London, 1865. 16 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. Adopting Jastrow 's definition of religion — as the natural belief in a power or powers beyond our control upon whom we feel ourselves dependent, which prompts us to organiza tion, to specific acts, and to the regulation of conduct, in. order to establish favorable relations between ourselves and the power in question,1 — we cannot conceive of religion as having other than certain theoretical beliefs and a practical. . outlook.2 Eeligion, in this way, acts upon a man through his own higher reason ; and individual freedom is regulated by moral considerations. By changing the internal man — the intellectual, the moral — society itself is affected by the relative adhesion of a people to their own sense of right "It is as real a power that changes a savage or lifts a ruffian into moral manhood, " it is said by Storrs, ' ' as that power which tunnels a mountain or makes a bullet traverse the air; and it is as real a power that lifts up a tribe into civilized society, into moral aspiration, into the dignity of moral character, as is the power which sends steamships out: upon the sea, or which transforms a bar of iron into steel. ' 'a If, therefore, we connect the Five Great Eeligions with the Social Condition of the Common People, it is only to affirm that among the formative influences that shape society the dominant religion of a country is a prominent power, directly and indirectly promoting human progress or so holding the multitudes in thrall as to hinder their advancement. Not to anticipate the countless illustrations that will easily recur to the merest tyro in history, note, for example, such a broad fact as the powerfully constructive social force of the predominantly religious character of the Hindu peoples; or note the far reaching beneficent influ ences of Buddhism when it was a new sociological power in the ancient East ; or the new formulation of antique thought and crystallization of custom by Confucius; or note the social revolution wrought in the Eoman empire by the intro duction of the idea of love as a principle of conduct among x27ie Study of Religion, pp. 171, 172; 130. London, 1901 'Ibid. 'Our Day, Vol. VI, p. 366. Richard S. Storrs, LL. D. ETHICS. 17 men ; the uplifting tribal transformations wrought by Mos lem thought, and the amazing changes that came through Saracen conquests and the Christian crusades; or note the development of new civic and social world-powers through some generations of contending for religious freedom; or the moral power that rises over against materialism, to-day, in the philanthropies of the modern age. Yet, so far to analyze the efficient causes of the world's advancement as to pronounce with certainty upon them, to set them apart and say of one — This is a religious cause, or, This is secular, — must be so difficult in a complex civiliza tion as to be practically impossible. As men act from mixed motives, there is also an interaction between the elements that enter into the progressive movement of any great people; purely economic causes cooperating with philo sophical ideas to elevate social condition, while, among the accumulated influences, literature and religion are aided by utilitarian art and science. So complex, indeed, are the so-called causes of social advancement that they are often, with much show of reason, confounded with the effects of the social uplift. Let him who will, undertake accurately to weigh the influences upon human destiny that have been exercised by the geological distribution of coal and iron and the precious metals, or by those conformations of physical geography which have decided the location of great cities. Then, too, in social development, who shall unravel the mixed motives which have eventuated in the great ethnic movements,— such as the peopling of Hindustan; or the barbaric waves that broke over southern Europe ; the for eign occupancy of the isle of Great Britain; the early colo nization of America, and the subsequent emigrations to a new, arable continent. How incalculable, too, in social evolution have been such forces as pertain to the natural man — a wild barbaric love of independence, individual prowess, unique capacity for 2 18 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. leadership, or a richly endowed spirit of adventure which effects national rivalry by land and by sea. Who, moreover, can overstate the influence of war upon civilization, changing quickly the social condition of extended areas of the world — as in the Alexandrine con quests, the Eoman, the Napoleonic, or wars for national independence and national unity, or the recent epoch-mak ing wars of eastern Asia. And in man's intellectual development no one thinks of anything religious in the invention of alphabetical writing, of the so-called Arabic numerals, and of printing, which have been leading factors in improving the social condition of man, and of advancing religion. And who shall say that the mariner's compass has not been one of the greatest of influences in changing the force of the social world — leading to new water-paths and open ing new realms ? Steam navigation and the railway, the telegraph and the telephone, have brought the world into neighborhood, pro moted mutual acquaintance, effected civic alliances, and through the goods of one land promoted the good of all. Who can determine social changes wrought by such dis coveries and inventions as relate to convenience in fire- kindling, and in artificial lighting? And for another illustration of economic influence, take the value of land in Great Britain, which has recently so declined as to diminish the wealth of ancient noble houses, during the very period in which the wealth of the manufac turing class has greatly increased, — so shifting the weight of pecuniary holdings, and greatly modifying social con ditions and customs. Such influences, whether physical, ethnic, political, indus trial and economic, have, throughout the globe and in all ages of time, powerfully transformed, to a greater or less extent, the religious condition of men, moulding religious institutes and affecting religious thought. To name but one illustration : the great modern discoveries in natural science ETHICS. 19 have given to Christendom a new heavens and a new earth, a new idea of God, and new conception of the place man occupies in the realm of nature. To name another: con sider the religious changes wrought in Buddhism itself by the local genius of the country receiving it, as Ceylon, Siam, Japan, China, Thibet. To name another : take note of the influence the Ottoman Turk has had upon Islam. Note, too, in Hinduism, the modifications incident to British rule in India. Making, however, every allowance for influences secular, the truth remains that progressive improvement in man's social condition chiefly depends upon the moral improve ment that goes forward within each individual man. What is the highest test of a civilized, a cultured, social condition ? Progress. If an advance in social condition is pictured as the jour ney of any great people, it must be determined by passing definite milestones. If it be like a beneficent stream, it must be in continuous onflow. Yet if we look for the springs of social progress, they cannot always be found in a vital accumulation of ethnic force that comes down as a heritage from the past. It is often an improved idea taken from some other people, and grafted upon the virile ancient stock. Borne about the world in a commerce of ideas, there is more of justice, more of material prosperity. Yet no true social progress is mere sheeplike imitation. If mankind is, in Pascal's phrase, "as one man who lives always, and who learns continually," then a unique racial vitality is radical to a normal and idiocratic growth. Eaces relatively at a standstill, waning civilizations, are renewed only through an inward power within the old stock to vivify the scion, by adapting the old culture to the new in the world of ideas. It is in this way that Japan has come to the world's front. And this has been so, at every upward step in social evolution — the introduction of fire, the use of metals, the. 20 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. domestication of animals, the upward trend from barbarism, greater skill in hunting, improving pastoral conditions, the development of agriculture and of the mechanism that secures larger aid from the powers of nature, — everywhere and always great peoples have profited by individual achievement through the adoption of new ideas. When, therefore, we come to inquire into certain phases of social condition, as of human freedom, the home, educa tion, literature, moral thought, philanthropy, and world wide extension of altruistic ideals of life, we see that what ever tends directly to improve the individual is of para mount importance; and in this the moral considerations come to the fore. In what does individual culture consist? What is the highest mental training, but the exercise of right views of scientific truth, of moral truth in its relations to man, and of religious truth ? Man 's intellectual nature is a unit, and in the development and training of his faculties not only are the sources of culture found to be closely connected, but religious culture is found to have the control among them. Hence the manifest importance of religion, and the need of investigating the religious condition of a people when making historical inquiries.1 Difference in moral ideas makes a difference in civiliza tion. The degree of civil and religious freedom, the rights of the common people ; the condition of the home, the devel opment of child life and of womanhood ; the state of intel lectual and moral education; the unfolding of the literary talent of mankind; the solving of social problems; the cooperation of vast bodies of men in highly organized religious service ; — all these depend upon what kind of moral ideas are entertained. If then, we think of the social world as a unit, and seek *For the underlying idea and a portion of the phraseology of this paragraph the writer is under obligations to President Theodore D. Woolsey. Tide the New Englander. Vol. XIX, p. 413. ETHICS. 21 to reduce the phenomena of society to general laws, we can but examine the philosophical and religious phenomena of our race in search for great underlying principles — prin ciples that have controlled the evolution of local society, upon this continent or that, for fifty or a hundred genera tions of men, and whose roots run back into the prehistoric usages and the germinal ethic development of varied tribes primeval, — principles operating in a manner analogous to that observed in cosmic processes — the moral evolution pro ceeding in an unhasting, unresting life, slowly rising age after age. Do we speak of races and religions ? Is not the perfect development of any human life as dependent upon one's personal relationship to society as the perfection of fruit is dependent on its relation to the parent tree ? We, therefore, speak properly in putting together comparative religion and comparative sociology, since there must be some comprehensive social science or practical scheme for classifying the principles that underlie the entire range of social phenomena, and for discerning the .relations that exist between man's thought and man's act in all moral matters that society has to do with. Is there not a vast generative force when a new moral idea comes into the world? Is it not possible to attempt to trace the funda mental ideas of the five great religions, not in pursuit of dogmatic questions, but solely as an inquiry for sociological results? What are the great religions in their internal spirit ? What in them has best developed man 's moral and intellectual powers in the most important human relations ? What of liberty ? What of home building ? What of edu cation? What of moral ideas? What of the hospital? What of industrial conditions? What of self -propagating power? What, in all these religions, is best adapted to world-wide extension. What religion — modified as it must be through the final acceptance of the great moral leaders spiritually enlightened among all nations — will be socially the best for the future of mankind ? Is it not worth while for anyone who is disposed to make the most of himself, — 22 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. to play well his part in the state, the home, the school, in an intelligent relation to the world of ideas, in society, and in the true Church of God — by whatever name it is called, — to take time enough to examine those great thoughts which have been the leading powers upon this planet, and then to appropriate to himself, for his own guidance, those ideas which will make him most thoroughly manly, and which will, through him, help to elevate the human race? If there is a strong presumption that much in what we call modern civilization has an ethical basis, shall we not study the moral forces behind the development? Are not the most important changes," that are involved in passing from savagery to society at its best, not only the fruit of intel lectual development but of that practical reason which guides moral conduct? Is there not a strong balance of probability that the moral ideas introduced into the world by Jesus Christ have been more helpful to man than any other influence known in history?1 "The creation of a new habit of thought," said Professor Huxley, when he gathered up the results of half a century of scientific studies, "is a greater achievement than any material invention. ' ' What this book is for is to discover the kind of ideas that are needed to be introduced into village and city, lonely farm-house, solitary ship, the peopled cellar and attic, the palace, the slums of Christendom, barbaric islands or con tinents, semi-civilized realms throughout the globe — to induce new habits of thought for the renewal of mankind — to select from the choicest religious and philosophical ideas that have influenced the human race those best fitted for social service. '"Never can any religious progress hope to rival the gigan tic step which humanity made through the revolution effected by Christ." — Strauss' Life of Christ, Vol. II, p. 49. Third Eng lish edition. DIFFICULTIES OF THIS INQUIRY. 28 VII. Yet the conduct of any inquiry along lines that reach back toward the dawn of historic time, and that in the present day circle the globe, can be nothing else than tenta tive, subject to vast errors through ignorance, and greater errors through unsuspected, prejudice. What writer upon sociology can claim a finality for his results ? The material is so fragmentary that his interpretation of the facts must be subject to review under a more perfect light. For world-wide relations in different ages it cannot be looked for that one should have the mastery of it all, or be equally well informed upon every part of it. Living as we do at a period when new and transcendent epochs of history are discovered, perhaps, in the morning paper, what can an author do? While he is verifying one fact, two more appear, to be verified. So vast is the territorial range involved, with national areas of hundreds of millions of diverse peoples, and so vast are the historical relations, that any inquiry — however great its practical interest — must be not only imperfect and unsatisfactory, but it may, through an unconscious bias on the part of the inquirer, be mis leading. Who does not remember Froude's apothegm, that the facts of history are like the alphabetical blocks of child hood, they can be made to spell anything by so arranging them as to spell what one wishes. Buckle's facts set out to mis-spell England. The intellectual and moral develop ment of Europe and the history of civilization upon the continent have suffered from mis-spelling. How then can it be hoped for that truth will be perfectly served by an effort to depict, justly and accurately, the phases of the world's religious thought and life during so many ages, with illimitable illustrations upon which to draw in the attempt to exhibit the underlying principles and the con current social phenomena. Yet Carlyle 's affirmation holds good : if no one can make a thing mathematically square, any good carpenter can 24 TIME TEST IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. make it square enough. The trend of events all over the globe, and the trend of events age after age in history, can never be concealed. He who runs may read. Men of affairs are apt to judge offhand in a large way without debating particulars: as Wendell Phillips once said, — "The answer to Confucianism is China, to Brahmanism the map of India is the answer." It is vain to ask whether the uplifting truths of Buddhism are best, and it is aside from the point to inquire whether Mohammedanism will prevail ; the inquiry is, rather, as to the present day effect of all the past centuries of experiment: that will decide. In the study of age-long experiments in moral evolution, it may not be easy at first to establish a working hypothesis supported by an adequate basis, — it is so in the study of questions of natural science. The social facts are to be classified. "No argument can overwhelm a fact."1 Eesults are to be studied rather than causes; actual accomplish ments rather than theological systems and philosophical speculations. And in the final outcome the most that can be done is to discover the balance of probability; but if that can be done, it is enough. Probability is the guide of life. "Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?" "Tell John what things ye have seen and heard." "By their fruits ye shall know them." /If in the study of races and religions we find that the nations most actuated by Christian ideals are now so far in the ascendency as to have a governmental control of forty-five in every hundred of the human race, having efficient armies and navies, having advanced industrial methods and products; and if under their rule there is the greatest liberty, and if in colonizing and home building, and in education, art and literature, they are most pro gressive peoples; and if in philanthropic endeavor and in self-extending moral ideas they bear the commanding part in the world,— then it may be suitably inquired whether 'Dr. Richard Salter Storrs. DIFFICULTIES OF THIS INQUIRY. 25 there is presumptive evidence that the moral ideas which dominate Christendom are better adapted to advance or to retard social progress. Or, to put it in a more practical way, we may inquire — at this hour of the waking up of great peoples from a relatively lethargic condition during many ages, — whether their seizing on the fruits of the most advanced and aggressive civilizations of the globe may not be accompanied by their seizing also on the religious and moral ideas which theoretically and to some extent prac tically characterize the most progressive nations. Yet, if the cock-crowing was never the cause of the dawn, it were a shame without fulness of knowledge to forecast the future of races and religions ; nor may any man wisely do so, who is now living upon a globe where the Confucians, the Buddhists, the Brahmans and the Mohammedans to-day number some eight hundreds of millions of people, who habitually look upon Christians as dwelling in a snail shell which they foolishly fancy to be the most splendid palace in the universe. — And it would be a still greater shame to enter on com parative studies in the evolution of man's moral ideas, without such enlargement of human sympathy as to annul the danger of distorted views, and to eventuate in the for mation of practicable schemes for mutual helpfulness among men. CHAPTEE TWO: CONTEAST IN THE CIVIC CONDITIONS. In observing the self-organized and self-governing vil lage communities of India twenty-three hundred years ago, a Greek writer spoke of the women as virtuous, the men valorous, honest, truthful, sober, industrious, skilful, with little litigation, no slavery, and living in political peace. The Hindu records, too, have given delightful pictures of the early ages. The custodians of the laws of ancient India were the Brahmans; they, too, were the counsellors of the native princes and the teachers of the people. Little by little, during immemorial ages, through the rise of the caste system and its development, — which can at no point be separated from Brahmanical1 influence, — the great mass of the people of the peninsula, comprising the lowest caste, were reduced to what was in effect serfdom. Their right to a superior condition was so long denied that they finally ceased to struggle against their servile fate. Equality of social opportunity has been for more than three thousand years impossible to nine-tenths of the people 'For the purposes of this book the author has not maintained that distinction between ancient Brahmanism and modern Hin duism which is justified by Indian theology and philosophy, but has used the former term to indicate that responsible unit of power in Hindu history which has created and administered modern Hinduism as it did the more ancient system. The sub stantial unity of the Vedic system and Hinduism is assumed. "If anything in history be certain, it is that Hinduism, with all it stands for, has descended without any break of continuity, though with cumulative accretions and ever increasing variations, from the faith held and the order observed by the Vedic men." — Principal Fairbairn's Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 260. London, 1902. INDIA. 27 of India through Brahmanism, which in respect to service due from the lowest caste has operated as a civic aristocracy as well as the sole religious authority. India's population is so dense, and intercommunication has been so difficult, that it is unsafe to generalize in regard to customs. What is true of one part of India may not be true of another part. Among the subdivisions of the people some are more highly civilized than others. Mr. T. W. Arnold1 states that in Travancore, upon the west coast, certain of the lower castes may not come nearer than seventy-four paces to a Brahman, and they are required, as they pass along the road, to give warning of their approach. In some of the great cities of India the gates were formerly closed at five in the afternoon and not opened till nine in the morning: the low-caste men were expelled before the slanting rays of the sun might throw their shadows upon some Brahman to defile him ; nor could they return until the rays of the sun were sufficiently per pendicular to protect the Brahmans from possible shadows. If, happily, such statements are exaggerated, or ill founded, it may be due to the coming into India of a new spirit in a new age. There has been apparently a great change in public opinion, in some portions of India, as to the rights of man, of every man of every caste. Although the Brahmanical usages and native customs of a hundred generations have been respected, for the most part, by the British administration, yet new laws have to some extent been introduced that represent in their humanizing influ ences the highest results of a Christian civilization, so far as practicable in India, where Hinduism has the right of way so long as it does not violate civil rights or prove intolerant of other faiths. An act of Parliament for the better government of India, and a penal code drafted under Lord Macaulay in 1836 and passed into law in 1860, have in many respects made a new world of that country. The most casual inquirer into the conditions of British %The Preaching of Islam, p. 220. Westminster, 1896. 28 CIVIC CONDITIONS. rule in Hindustan can but admire the spirit shown by vast numbers of the crown servants, who, as representatives of the government, recognize the claims upon them of incred ible multitudes of men. And the testimony of Macaulay is of great value as to the moral impression' made by Chris tian statesmen in recent generations: "English valor and English intelligence have done less to extend and to preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity ; no oath which superstition can devise, no hostage nowever precious, inspires a hundredth part of the con fidence which is produced by the 'Yea, yea,' and 'Nay, nay,' of a British envoy." British power in India, says Lord Curzon, is sustained "by the Christian ideal; seeking to retain by inflexible jus tice and stainless honor what was at first won by the sword of adventurers. An imperial mission indeed it is, to min ister to the civic wants of three hundred millions of people, with their mysterious civilization and their craving for ¦spiritual good. II. In diverging from Brahmanical habits of thought and life, the Buddhists renounced caste and proclaimed a com mon brotherhood among those wholly devoted to the pur suit of virtue; and since all Buddhist boys are early schooled for some length of time in a monastery, and since by theory the very princes expect sometime, in after ages of transmigration, if not now, to become monks, there has been a greater social equality in Buddhist lands for ages than in other portions of Asia. Any person of any family in the East, upon entering a Buddhist monastery, is the equal of every one he finds there. Yet it has been the leading dogma of Buddhism to extin guish all desire — even the desire for a better civic con dition ; so that the natural leaders of the people have exer cised no direct and positive influence upon government BUDDHIST LANDS. 29- save in the interests of peace; this, however, has proved age after age a great boon, .since no military civilization has ever been built up in a Buddhist country. The prin cipal philosophical theories of the system have never favored a progressive civilization; and the governments, whether in one Buddhist country or another, have fallen into the hands of this despotic dynasty or that, of an Orien tal type somewhat ameliorated by Buddhistic influences. Burmah has been almost purely Buddhist for nearly fifteen hundred years. Prior to its passing under the con trol of Great Britain the officials received no regular salary, and not uncommonly they were so rapacious and grasping that a local representative of the crown was popularly known as the "eater of a township." Lax was the judicial system, justice was sold, the criminal code was barbaric,, and the general administration of the despotic government was corrupt. All fruits of labor and the laborers were owned by the king, and of slavery there were seven grada tions.1 The practical friendliness and helpfulness to all men as brethren, which so glorified Gautama in a gloomy age of overbearing wickedness and hard-hearted oppression, but slightly influenced the daily life of the Buddhist court. Yet a protest was entered every year, when the Buddhist archbishop2 in the royal presence was seated in a place superior to that of the king, to remind him of the observ ance of the laws by which royalty should be governed, — to restrain anger, to be patient and gentle, to feed the poor, to bestow alms freely, to practise self-denial, to observe the rules of uprightness and integrity, and in no wise to oppress his subjects. The sacrifice of a king, said the Master, should be to repair all injustice. The most purely Buddhist country in the world is Siam ; and whatever it was fifty years ago was the best that Bud- lBurma under British Rule and Before, John Nisbet, London, 1901, contains much valuable information. For some of the statements in the text consult pages 192, 193, 153, 155, 177. 2 A title given to the ruler of the monastery in which the king was taught when a boy. 30 crvic CONDITIONS. dhism could do in more than twelve centuries toward pro moting popular freedom. Within half a century, the great political ideas that actuate Christian nations have greatly modified the absolute monarchy reigning there; slavery having been abolished, and religious toleration granted. An American professor of international law has been recently appointed legal adviser to the king. The relation of the country to other nationalities is being improved through new treaties. The crown prince has been edu cated in England. During many years the king has stead fastly sought to raise the people and the government to a permanently higher level. The printing press, the post office, the telegraph and the railway have been introduced through the king's initiative. The government has made gambling illegal, giving up its very remunerative tax upon it. So efficient is an enlightened despotism; the most momentous sociological changes being wrought in a moment through the changed will of a great-hearted king. And in this case the reigning sovereign has graciously acknowl edged again and again the practical value of the humane ideas introduced into Siam by American philanthropists.1 To speak of Japan as predominantly Buddhist is true, but Buddhism has not been the predominant influence in civic affairs or in forming national character.2 So religious are the people that the proportion of Bud dhist monks and Sninto priests to the whole population is greater than that of the clerical order in the United States, and three-fourths of them are Buddhists. The ancient Shintoism and more recent Buddhism are thoroughly inter fused, and they so far meet the popular demand for places of worship that there is either a Buddhist temple or Shinto '"The American missionaries," says the present king, "have done more to advance the welfare of my country than any other foreign influence." 2As to its present status, Buddhism, which had been the state religion for centuries, was disestablished and disendowed by the revolution of 1868, and the Shinto religion was put into its place. Since then, says Professor Chamberlain in Things Japanese, Bud dhism has been losing ground. THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN. 31 shrine for every three hundred and twenty-five of the population. It is no disrespect to the genuineness of the Buddhist and Shinto religious experiences to affirm that they never taught the value of man during many centuries in the Orient, when the rights of man were little known in the Christian despotisms of the Occident. That there was no Buddhist nation in the world that knew what liberty was, seems to be the opinion of advanced Japanese thinkers. As a youth, Joseph Neesima, the founder of the Doshisha College at Kyoto, ran away from home and reached Amer ica; in part, as he stated, that he might get away from an arbitrary government to a land where all men were free and equal. The great statesman, Marquis Ito, was another of the young men who in early life fled to the British Isles, that he might gain the ideas needful to promote a happier political evolution in his own land. With a degree of wis dom which indicates a great body of character and intrinsic national power behind it, Japan has eome into touch with the age; the liberal political constitution promulgated by the emperor in 1889 being modelled in important particu lars upon those of Christian nations. The readiness with which Japan has, — from a political point of view, — mod ernized itself, indicates a racial vitality that promises a great future for the nation as one of the foremost of the world-powers — the peer of any.1 Its motive in acting so 'To give rhetorical expression to the idea of an Oriental scholar, it may be said that the exquisite arts of Japan only led men of the West to speak of the artisans as "a semi-barbaric people;" but when the islanders arose and killed certain Christians who were for the time being somewhat out of favor with their national neighbors, Christendom exclaimed, "Now we know that the Jap anese are as civilized as anybody." Lady Yochiko Anegakoji has stated the new issue of their people in a recent poem: — "Land of the Rising Sun, in every clime Thy praises have been sung, distant and clear,* With roaring cannon, and exploding shells, To thunder forth a loud accompaniment." 32 CIVIC CONDITIONS. promptly was that of securing Japan to the Japanese; it having been feared that the nation might fall before that sham type of Christianity which had seized India and ter rorized China through the opium war. That the Japanese statesmen acted not a moment too soon, the recent fate of Burmah bears witness. Looked at from an evolutionary point of view, it is the survival of the strongest; and polit ically Brahmanism and Buddhism have been weak. How ever unjust have been many of the wars originated and carried on through the power of un-Christian ideas in so-called Christian nations, it is clear that human freedom and essential justice have been promoted by a change of government in the conquered realms. That Japan has sea sonably shaken off the mediseval spirit, renounced the policy of excluding new ideas that so long prevailed, and has availed itself of the political, military, industrial and edu cational appliances of the most advanced peoples — includ ing religious toleration — is a striking testimony to the indirect influence of the great nations of Christendom. It is, however, the native genius of Japan that has ren dered a most important service to the cause of human progress by calling a halt to an Occidental conceit for exploiting and dominating the northern Orient, through an outgrasping policy for adding vast unpeopled spaces to an empire which has not yet gone so far as to develop her own enormous resources at home, and which — in a reckless attempt to secure ice-free ports for a non-existent commerce — forced on Japan a war of self-defence, that may ultimately secure "Asia for the Asiatics," — a cry as just as that of "America for the Americans," or "Europe for the Europeans." No view, however, could be more mistaken than to think of the Japan of earlier ages as semi-barbaric; albeit, its civilization was like a pocket-piece, kept for its own delec tation. The predominant power in Japan for ages has been that of the samurai, the loyalists, body and soul devoted THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN. 33 to the state. To Japan loyalty1 has been the keynote of the national character, as filial piety has been to that of China. It is this spirit that has so interpenetrated the masses of the people that the rank and file of the soldiery are enrolled as the self-devoted, who are determined to die if need be for their country.2 If this ancient sentiment was not at bottom religious, it was apparently so ; the divine right of kings, as known to Christendom, existing in an exaggerated form among the samurai, who held that the mikado was of divine descent and clothed with sacred powers. So it came about that feudal loyalty as a positive ele ment was the nation-shaping power, rather than the Bud dhist repression of desire. The samurai, or ancient military class, comprised about one-twentieth of the population; other classes being the farmers, the artisans and the merchants. The men, to whom loyalty to the nation in the person of their sovereign was the first thought, led lives of simplicity. They thought little of money. Patriotism and right living, fidelity and strength of manhood were the main things. It is not to the present purpose to inquire whether the ancient ideal was fulfilled in life; it is to the point that there was an ideal. The military achievements of Japan have called world-wide attention to many delicate traits of national character aside from the heroic; traits formed by centuries of careful training. To illustrate, take these 'By -Mr. Jun Suzuki, a prominent publicist, it is stated as one of the objections to Christianity that it emphasizes the impor tance of the individual, placing it before that of the state. To cite another of the recent court poems of Japan: "A sweet perfume is on our master's sleeve, The perfume of the sweetest flower on earth — Loyalty, — growing in the nation's heart." — Lady Isao Seigenji. 'Professor George William Knox, in his Lowell Lectures in Boston, 1905, alluded to this contempt of life as an influential Buddhist dogma. 3 34 CIVIC CONDITIONS. passages written some two hundred and fifty years ago, and others three hundred: "No one is to act simply for the gratification of his own desires, but he is to strive to do what may be opposed to his desires, — to exercise self-control that everyone may be ready for whatever he may be called upon by his superiors to do."1 ' ' Evil is traditional, long-continued, and beyond remedy. Books full of lust, which should never be shown to a woman or a young man, lead to vice. They are of a class, vile, mean, comparable to the books of the sages as charcoal to ice, as the stench of decay to the perfume of flowers. Samurai must have a care of their words, and are not to speak of avarice, cowardice, or lust. Their joy is in talk of battles and plans for war. And they study how parents and lords should be obeyed, and the duty of samurai. To the samurai first of all is righteousness ; next life, then sil ver and gold. These last are of value, but some put them in place of righteousness. But to the samurai even life is as dirt compared to righteousness. ' '2 "Every one should assist with kindness and liberality the aged, whether widowers or widows, and orphans, and persons without relatives; for justice to these four is the root of good government. The principles of government are humanity, integrity, courtesy, wisdom, and truth. Eespect the gods, keep the heart pure, and be diligent in business during the whole life. When I was young I determined to fight and punish all my own and my ances tors' enemies, and I did punish them; but afterwards, by deep consideration, I found that the way of Heaven was to help the people and not to punish them. Let my suc cessors follow out this policy, or they are not of my line. In this lies the strength of the nation. To insure to the 'Ieyasu. Cited in Dickenson's Japan, Ch. VII. 2From the Japanese Philosopher, translated by Professor George W. Knox, pp. 120, 130, 129. Asiatic Society of Japan, 1893. These citations and those in Dickenson are to be found in Gulick's Evolution of the Japanese, pp. 251-253. THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN. 35 empire peace, the foundation must be laid in the ways of holiness and religion; and if men think they can be edu cated and will not remember this, it is as if one were to go to a forest to catch fish, or try to draw water from fire."1 In a nation where such sentiments were valued by the few, if not by the many, men competent to revolutionize their civic affairs were found a few years ago, who availed themselves at once of the political wisdom of Christendom. The old laws based upon the Chinese, and so modified that the lower classes had practically no rights ; the ancient pro cedure, so capricious; and the monopoly of the secrets of the law books by the judges;2 — -all were swept away at 'Ieyasu, cited in Dickenson's Japan, Ch. VII. It is to be observed how closely all this, from the ancient literature, is in accord with the chivalric and metric war counsel of his gracious majesty, the present emperor of Japan, — a ruler painstaking and laborious, conscientious and upright, whose heart beats towards his people with a father's love, and in whose judgment to do the thing that is right they may always confide: "The foe that strikes thee for thy country's sake — Strike him with all thy might: But while thou strik'st, Forget not still to love him." — Translated by A. Lloyd. For a portion of the phraseology of this note and for the poetic citations in this section, the author is under obligation to a press article prepared by Mr. Yone Noguchi. 'Europe and the Far East, by R. K. Douglas, p. 200. London, 1904. As to the practical working of the present constitution, it is stated by Dr. D. C. Greene, who was one of the earliest of the American philanthropists in this field at a critical moment. who well knew the old and who has observed the new, that the lives and the rights of the common people are now much safer than under the former order of things. It is pertinent to add in this connection the remark of Marquis Ito, that "Japan's progress and development are largely due to the influence of missionaries exerted in the right direction when Japan was first studying the outer world." So alert were the leaders of the people to catch at new ideas. 36 crvic CONDITIONS. once, and civic liberty was born in a day, — equality before the law, representative institutions, religious freedom, and universal education. III. More than to any other influence, the durability and unchangeableness of the venerable celestial empire has been due to the solidifying work of Confucius during twenty-five hundred years in forming the minds of the most intellectual youth and natural leaders of thought. If it were said that the Confucian system has had a more important relation to the state than it has had to any other Chinese interest, it would be near the truth. With not infrequent changes of dynasty, the government itself has been one of the most stable in the world, with four thousand years of authentic records, and a thousand years more of tradition. Age after age he has stood for God in China, representing him to the people, — the one person among hundreds of millions, — whose duty it has been to worship the Supreme Being in behalf of all. Eesponsible to Heaven for ruling in virtue,1 he has been the one source of law and power, and as the patriarchal head of the great Chi nese family he has been the owner of the entire national soil, and proprietor of all its resources. Nor has he ruled with unlimited power; but has been held firmly for ages within the iron grip of the Confucian system, not only held respon sible to the Sovereign of the Universe, but to the ancestral spirits to do as they did, held from age to age to a conserva tive respect for existing institutions, rarely venturing upon the new, and held to observe custom in the administration of the government through the six boards, — of civil office, of war, of rites (education and religion), of justice, of finance, and of public works.2 'The secret of good government is said by Confucius to be the cultivation of personal virtue on the part of rulers. — Martin's Lore of Cathay, p. 175. New York, 1901. 2For two authorities upon portions of this paragraph, consult Williamson's North China, Vol. I, pp. 9-11, London, 1870; and President Martin's Cycle of Cathay, 1896. THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 37 It has been a part of the theory that the rulers are less important than the people; there has always been local autonomy, even under the most despotic rulers, and theoret ically all the people have had an equal chance to compete in the civil service examinations for administrative posi tions. Confucius taught the right of rebellion,1 and the right of regicide was taught by Mencius. Criticism of the government has been constantly invited through a board of censors, who have not been without political influence. It was, however, a maxim of Confucius, which has been learned by every school-boy for three-score and ten genera tions, never to speak disrespectfully of the government, firmly established for a period most notable in history. The governing principles of the Chinese classics have tended also to strengthen the government by encouraging habits of content and industry on the part of the people ; and the ruling class has been so steadfastly held to maxims that lave found ample play within the empire, that, in all the ages, the Chinese government has never entered upon a system of national aggression and foreign conquest. And it was true, before the recent overturning in the empire, that the Chinese code of laws, and in many particulars the system of government, bore favorable comparison for prac tical wisdom with those of European nations, giving a high degree of security for life and property.2 "The great "'The divine right does not last forever." It is the theory that Heaven gives the sovereign his right to rule; and if his rule is wrong there is no heavenly decree in this case, and rebellion is right. This right to rebel is illustrated in a valuable paper sent to the author by the courtesy of Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D. D., of -the North China mission. In this paper Mr. Smith cites recent instances in which the people have rebelled against petty magis trates, and the imperial government has acquiesced in their right to do so under certain circumstances. Armed resistance in ah emergency, or petition for removal, is allowable. "Heaven hears through the ears of my people," it was said by the Emperor Shun. — Cycle of Cathay, p. 336. 'Vide Dr. Nevins' China and the Chinese, p. 279, New York, 1869; and revised edition of 1883. Consult, also, The Middle 38 CIVIC CONDITIONS. God," said Tang, the founder of the Shang dynasty, eighteen centuries before the Christian era, ' ' has conferred even on the inferior people a moral sense, compliance with which would show their nature invariably right. To make them tranquilly pursue the course which it would indicate is the work of the sovereign."1 Each Chinese province is, however, governed independ ently; under the central government but not by it, save through officials who have supreme power in the sphere assigned them. Practically the law in any given province is the will of the magistrate, a government not of laws but of men. There are, besides the viceroy, five officials whose authority extends over the whole province; others have charge of subdivisions called circuits, which in turn are subdivided into prefectures, which are subdivided into districts. The national government, says Dr. A. H. Smith, in the paper referred to above, is that of a carefully balanced oligarchy. "The only official with whom ninety-nine out of every hundred Chinese come into any contact is the district magistrate, who is to the people the direct and visible representative of the imperial power. Of these magistrates there are probably fourteen or fifteen hundred in actual service, and as theirs is only seventh among the nine grades of rank, looked at from above they appear to- be very insignificant officials. Viewed, on the other hand, from the standpoint of the people, the district magistrate is a much more important personage than the emperor, who to them is only a name in which taxes are collected, and which is sometimes found on coins and always in the nota tion of dates. The district magistrate is (vieariously) Kingdom, by Professor S. Wells Williams of Yale University, p. 95, New York; edition of 1848. These popular safeguards exist in the laws; their enforcement against hordes of robbers in every- district is diflicult. The Chinese government is revising its laws. at the present time, seeking to avail itself of the principles. which have been tested by generations of Western experience. 'Legge's Religions of China, p. 98. London, 1880. THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 39 called the father and mother of the people. Like the emperor himself, he is hedged about by restrictions, but within his limits his word is for the time law." The patriarchal system is in force throughout the entire administrative service. When a mandarin is seated under a canopy for the conduct of the affairs of the people, the legend upon the canopy is inscribed, — "Ye are all my children." Curiously enough, this patriarchal idea may, through the family council, supersede the work of the district magis trate. The grandsire, at the head of a very large family, may combine with others of the same stock (using the same glebe lands, the same cemetery, the same temple) for the control of a village, and be really indifferent to the civil government, sometimes going so far as to administer the death penalty in a furtive way.1 This illustrates what has been said of the present day survival of primitive customs among certain backward races, — in this case a custom forty or fifty generations earlier than Confucius. This survival of clan life gives an air of freedom to the villagers; no people in the world, says Martin, being more exempt from official interference. So powerful is the family that a provincial magistrate is forbidden by law to take a post within two hundred miles of his birthplace, or to marry within the district assigned to him, lest he acquire too great an influence that may be exercised against the government. The officeholders are ill-paid, and receive their stipend not directly from the government but they deduct their own pay when remitting taxes. Their term is limited to three years, in order that other men who have passed the civil service examinations may have a chance, — the educational system of the country always yielding a surplus of men waiting to take office. These men from all over China have given expensive years to preparing for their examinations, and when set up in a brief authority it is now or never to 'Cycle of Cathay, pp. 334-335. 40 CIVIC CONDITIONS. acquire a competency. The central government can always hire officials at a low figure, and it requires at their hands a certain income, and requires, moreover, that maladmin istration shall not be so excessive as to come to the ears of the emperor. Mandarins growing rich by improper meth ods are brought to an account.1 The Chinese writers assert that among the district man darins corruption is the rule, and integrity the exception.2 Professor E. K. Douglas, in the British Encyclopedia, says that the corruption of the provincial governments is due to the underpayment of the officials, and to the sharp lim itation of the official term; and that justice itself is in the market. There are other testimonies to match. Alexander Williamson,3 an intelligent, acute, and studious observer a third of a century since, says that the most part of the rulers did not in his day live according to the moral maxims of their classics; that officials bought their way to power, and then plundered the people. A mere handful of officials, a score or two out of thousands, had helpful notions of social and civil progress. The imperial government, need ing money, had disposed of the offices for money, rather than by the strict merit system contemplated in the scheme for competitive examinations; the officials were indeed selected from the literary class, but from the corrupt part of it. Those of the better sort understood this, and com plained of it. Eussell H. Conwell, LL. D., of Philadel phia, studied the Chinese question in China some years ago, and reported that the practical operation of the govern ment at that time (1870) was, in respect to justice, hin dered by bribery; that by it just laws failed of execution, that criminals with plunder enough to divide with the '"A merchant may keep his wealth, but not a mandarin, unless he conceals it with great skill." — Martin, Cycle of Cathay, p. 332. "'We all deserve death," said a mandarin to an Occidental friend, "but it would be no use for the emperor to kill us, as those taking our places would be as bad." — Private Letter from Dr. Stanley, of Tien Tsin, to the Author. "North China, Vol. I, pp. 4-8. THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 4:1 officers of the law were left to pursue their courses; that bribery for the sons of the wealthy interfered with the required civil service examinations; that money advanced ignorance over merit. Another authority is Lansdell 's Chinese Central Asia?- It represents the outcome of some thousands of years of Con fucianism in its relation to civil liberty. The author quotes from Dr. Seeland: "As for the administration (of Chinese Turkistan), it is enough to say that it is Chinese and of that the worst kind, by reason of its extreme distance from headquarters and of the despotism which so easily takes root in a conquered country." "The Chinese officials, civil and military, are composed of adventurers, generally very coarse and avaricious, whilst the private soldiers are recruited for the most part from the criminal exiles." This authority quotes Prjevalsky, journeying through the province of Sin Kiang in 1884: "Crying injustice, espion age, rapacity, grinding taxation, tyranny of officials, — in a word, entire absence of all ideas of legality in all adminis trative or judicial matters — such are the leading charac teristics of the Chinese rule. We ourselves," he adds — and he was a Eussian — "Witnessed scenes which made our very blood boil." Lansdell adds that English travelers, passing through, receive a more favorable impression than is given by the members of the Eussian consulate — as those above quoted — who have lived in the country for years. Now it is easy to see that Chinese travelers in England or America might easily misrepresent the facts in regard to provincial or territorial misgovernment; but no Warren Hastings trial has yet occurred in Pekin, nor does Confu cian public opinion demand it. It would be easy for Chi nese scholars to search the annals of Christendom, and select here and there the material for an appalling indict ment of Christianity for bribery and frauds and maladmin istration in civil affairs. To say nothing of the records of 'Vol. II, pp. 241, 242, 244, 245. London, 1893. 42 CIVIC CONDITIONS. reptilian centuries farther away from our time, he would pick up no small scandal in the first part of Trevelyan's. Charles James Fox. Yet if he were to do so, he would, in telling the whole truth to his countrymen, make a point to the effect that China is to-day worse than Christendom at its worst; and that the very capable statesmen of China have no small task before them in placing their nation abreast of this age in guaranteeing the civil rights of the average citizen. I will refer to only one more testimony, — that of one generation since, by Dr. Henry M. Field of New York. It relates to civil freedom as protected by the criminal court procedure : There is no trial by jury ; there are no lawyers or defense ; the accused stands alone, and is presumed to be guilty till he can prove his innocence; if it be a capital crime of which he is charged, he cannot be executed unless he confesses guilt, but he is tortured beyond common endur ance to make him confess. Concerning all of which, it is suitable to inquire whether our Confucianist brethren are not at least some generations behind their Christian contemporaries in respect to the safeguards of civil liberty. It was one of the sayings of Professor S. Wells Williams, who resided long in China, that life in the empire is like life in a stage coach; one can never know the moment in which it will upset. The nation, badly shaken by the late Chinese and Japanese war, and by the more recent war of the European powers caused by the Chinese Boxers, has however awakened to a new consciousness of power through the influence of Japan's recent military success, and ancient civic wrongs are likely to be righted. Nor can the student of European history be impatient if civic reform requires many generations. One thing which impedes the movement is the weakness. of the empire through lack of common interest. Contrary to a common idea that China is a unit, there are three main subdivisions: the ruling class of Tartars, once so warlike; THE CHINESE EMPIRE. 4S the true Chinese north of the Yang-tse-Kiang; and, soutk of the river, an assortment of provincials as different from. the Chinese and from each other in languages and customs. as the varied nationalities of Europe, controlled by the imperial government in accord with certain ancient feudal usages. The people, busy with their industries, leave gov ernment to the ruling class. Popularly there is little devo tion to the imperial government; no public spirit, no> enthusiastic loyalty, no patriotism pervades the multitude. The only union of interest between the common people of the different provinces is that of opposition to foreigners.1 To make the matter worse, as to the internal weakness of the empire, the literati during some ages have undervalued the importance of the military class, it being only since the Japanese-Eussian war that the armed power of China has begun to be organized upon modern lines. Taking into account all the conditions, the civic body has sustained such shocks within a few years as to have made it for a time seem doubtful to many European publicists whether the nation, if left to itself, could longer hold together and sus tain itself as an independent power. It being, however, to the interest of great powers to undergird the national unity, the empire is now entering upon a new career of life and of unwonted energy, through internal transforma tions wrought by the ablest men in the country, — civic reforms so radical that no backward movement is now possible. At a banquet in Boston, February, 1906, given to the- Chinese commissioners, who are to report to their govern ment the changes most needful for placing China in the front rank as to civic reform, Sir Chengtung Liang-Cheng, 'This is not due to religious sentiment; China is the most toler ant of lands towards Buddhists, Mohammedans, Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. (Cycle of Cathay, p. 326.) But it is due to an injudicious violation of most serious popular superstitions by foreigners, often through ignorance, and often through a care less disregard of what to the offender seems trivial; and due to the fear of industrial changes detrimental to the popular interest 44 CIVIC CONDITIONS. ¦Chinese ambassador to the United States, emphasized the ¦current revolution in civic thought by which China may already be spoken of as a modern nation, and no longer as the ancient empire. The brightest of the Chinese states men, however, must find it difficult to so handle their popu lation of hundreds of millions as to change the policy of ages in a day. Forty centuries of prejudice, entertained by a population more than twice as great as that of the -combined people of Great Britain and Germany and the United States, can be dealt with only by some generations ¦of patient education, through broad-minded and acute men, versed in affairs and actuated by an altruistic spirit, in order to coordinate the civic ideals of Cathay with those of Christendom. IV. "All the Sons of Adam are equal, like the teeth of a comb." "A man who appoints any man to an office," it is written, "when there is in his dominion another man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the state. ' ' Such was the civic ideal of the early Moslem state : both the democracy of desert rangers and a well-ordered life in the towns. In India, Mohammedanism has done much to break the bonds of caste by proclaiming the broth erhood of believers. Yet Islam politically — in the prac tical working of the ages in dealing with diverse peoples — has proved itself to be of cast iron; and the casting was made twelve hundred years ago. "The duty of unquestioning obedience," remarks Pro fessor Bryce, ' ' and the habit of blind submission to author ity dominate and pervade the Mussulman mind so com pletely that its only idea in government is despotism. Nothing approaching to a free ruling assembly, either pri mary or representative, has sprung up in a Mussulman •country. ' n This despotism is, however, the choice of Islam as such. ^Studies in History and Jurisprudence, p. 663. Oxford, 1901. MOSLEM LANDS. 4& As the pre-Moslem Arabic tribes elected their own chiefs, so, after Mohammed's death, they elected a leader of Islam; and to this day the leader must be elected by the Moslem community. "The democracy of Islam," says Macdonald, "is a real thing, but it believes that it can achieve itself best through giving complete control to one ; it is in a sense Carlyle's hero-theory." Although each new Ottoman sov ereign rules by hereditary right, his spiritual supreme lead ership comes through his election by the canon lawyers and divines of Constantinople. So elected, he is the ruler of the entire Moslem world. He must, however, rule under the divine law, and the people can depose him if he breaks it; "the despotism is modified by the sacred right of insur rection." The sultan can, however, never become a con stitutional ruler through setting up an assembly with rights that may be exercised against himself.1 In administering the government, the Church and state being one, it has been assumed by some that the Koran is an absolute legal code, but a study of the sources of Moslem jurisprudence shows that it is no product of the desert or of the mind of Mohammed, but a system elaborated by the early lawyers of Islam, who recognized their respon sibility for administering justice upon principles applicable to agricultural and town life as well as that of nomadic tribes. According to the principles adopted by the great minds of Islam the Koran is only one authority : prophetic usage being another, — the custom of Mohammed as handed down in tradition having overborne much that is perfectly clear in the Koran ; the analogy of the Koranic text and of tradition being the third well-defined principle of Moslem law; the other source is called the principle of Ijma, the agreement, — the prophet having actually or traditionally affirmed that God would not allow his people to err, — so that whatever the community of Islam has agreed upon at 'Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitu tional Theory, by Duncan Black Macdonald, LL. D., New York, 1903, pp. 8, 54, 55, 58, 59. 46 CIVIC CONDITIONS. any time is of God.1 The agreement effected by the con sultative councils of the immediate companions of Moham med came in the first generation to assume an importance .second only to, the words of Mohammed himself: their voice was accepted as the voice of the church, their agreement final. And never since has this principle been left to slumber. The common sense of the Moslem community — when once accepted as the common sense — has in the past set aside the undoubted words of the Koran. In this way laws have been made or abrogated. The agreement, in the end, is the final matter; half unconsciously, it settles everything. It is the principle of unity in Islam; in it is the possibility of progress.2 The government of Turkey, to-day, is a military occu pancy of non-Mohammedan lands. It rules by force. The subject peoples are political aliens. No rights are secure unless by purchase. Nor can there ever be equality of rights, since infidel evidence when opposed to Mussulman evidence can never be accepted by the state. And as to religious toleration: freedom of judgment, liberty of crit icism, candid and free investigation of the truth of Islam are out of the question, — the sword being by law inevitable. Persia, whose people are Moslems, warns Christians against proselyting. Certain points in the practical working of a Moslem gov ernment are noted in the United States Consular Eeports upon Labor in Foreign Countries (1884) : The Turkish 'These four sources of Islamic law do not appear to have been generally recognized by Occidental students who have not made a specialty of Arabic jurisprudence, — who speak as if the Koran alone were the unquestioned, unerring and unchangeable author ity, leaving the state for all time with no power to adapt itself to new conditions. Compare Muir's Mahomet and Islam, pp. 243, 240, third edition, revised, New York, 1895; Freeman's Ottoman Power in Europe, p. 63, London, 1877; Bryce's Studies in History and Jurisprudence, pp. 661, 662, Oxford, 1901. 2As authority upon this entire paragraph, vide Macdonald's Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitu tional Theory, pp. 72, 73, 83, 84, 105, 107, 111, 113, New York, 1903. MOSLEM LANDS. 47 government takes almost no interest in anything that con cerns the welfare of its subjects: instead of a happy and prosperous people, one sees on every hand oppression and suffering, ignorance and degradation: the government is so administered as to be but an organized system of tyranny and robbery; it does nothing for internal improvements, and prohibits the introduction of foreign capital to develop the resources of the country; the working people pay one- fifth of the taxes but exercise no political rights, the few officers not appointed by the general government being chosen by the wealthy class: interest for ready money has no regular rate established by the government, but varies from thirty to one hundred per cent. ; farmers often paying from fifty to one hundred. The right to rule several million Mussulman has been lately purchased by the government of the United States. In British realms there are seventy millions of them; and through Mohammed Ali in Egypt, England is to-day show ing to the world what can be done by giving a good govern ment and western culture to a Mohammedan people. V. Before stating the relation of Christianity to civil free dom, the main idea underlying Christianity itself should be alluded to — the very foundation of all it has wrought. In the social evolution of the Christian nations there has been one idea germinating, growing, bearing fruit during three score and ten generations, nor has the writer been able to find its like in the sacred literature or the history of races actuated by other great religions: an early tradi tional and patriarchal idea set forth by the prophets and so firmly held that there was an expectation of universal dominion through the Hebrew Messiah. This idea, that the God of nature and of providence is also the Moral Gov ernor, enters into the whole texture of the earlier and later Hebrew books. This fundamental conception was made 48 CIVIC CONDITIONS. paramount by Jesus of Nazareth, who set forth this king dom as unworldly, a moral rule of righteousness. This doctrine was widely disseminated by the apostles. The Christian Church seized upon it, and during many centuries added to it the Eoman habit of thought, and the imperial aspiration for universal sovereignty.' Christian emperors and kings advanced it. The Germanic stock and the English speaking peoples, with their genius for self-gov ernment, finally became imbued with it, and other Chris tian peoples have felt its power. Through the social influ ence of this silent, invisible force, the nations of Christen dom have wrought out in recent generations the highest degree of human liberty, in a measure regulated by the principles that underlie the moral law, which the world has known in all the ages of history, and these ideas they are now advancing in every quarter of the globe. No such idea of domination has wrought among Brahmanical people. The Buddhists have studiously ignored politicaL relations. Confucian thought has never looked for a con trolling civic influence beyond the limits of China. Moham medanism has never conceived of a universal reign through moral principles embodied in a popular government. Many forces have worked to favor this idea: one is the principle of association, or the combination of those having a sense of likeness in kind, which has always been one of the greatest powers in social evolution. From a period as far away as that of Socrates till now, the Hebrew thought of a divinely ordered people, destined to serve as a divine instrument in the earth, has been held more or less firmly by no small body of people united by this idea. If Brah mans have to some extent associated in sub-castes, they have held themselves apart as of a different order from the average Hindu; Buddhism has flourished through festal days and a monastic order, but by its theory has pronounced! "The two great ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the ages that followed were those of a world-monarchy and a. world-religion." — Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, p. 99. A KINGDOM OF LOVE. 49 domestic, social and political associations undesirable ; Con fucius built up a literary order in China with no common bond of love among myriads of people; Mohammed never emphasized love as a motive. It has been left for Chris tianity alone to carry out the early patriarchal and pro phetic ideas of founding through popular association a kingdom of just rule and of brotherly love in society throughout the earth. It has been proved beyond cavil that the firmest law of social cohesion is the law of love. This was the theory of Jesus. The idea of love — God's love to man, man's answering love, and mutual love among men, — secures the most harmonious cooperation and dimin ishes the waste of social life. During all these centuries of its development, the power of association in Christendom in its essential bond of union has been enhanced by associate worship and stated fes tivities. Ancestral worship among the Chinese observes fixed occasions; both Brahmans and Buddhists maintain numerous feast days and pilgrimages; the Mohammedans have a weekly service, a long yearly fast, and a sacred journey at least once in a life-time to Mecca. As a social force the three yearly feasts of Judaism were of inestimable value. And their Sabbath gatherings as continued by the Lord's day Christian service, have throughout an unbroken succession of weeks for more than three thousand years affected vast multitudes of people, prompting moral and intellectual evolution in world-wide relations during a hun dred generations : and the underlying idea of a divine king dom among men has been made prominent by frequent gatherings at fixed times "about the Lord's Table" to com memorate the love of God to man, to renew with God the covenant of answering human love, and to renew the solemn vows of love between man and man : nor can anyone under stand one of the great sources of power in Christendom, who does not take into account the sociological weight of these customs so universally observed age after age. Like a fountain of living streams the altruistic spirit of Chris- 4 50 CIVIC CONDITIONS. tianity has been maintained in ceaseless outflow by the force of association in an orderly Christian society. To a measurable extent, these ideas of fraternity among men have been embodied in the civil institutes of Christendom. Indeed the law of love as set forth by Jesus Christ is much more than an ordinary -social well wishing and more than a love feast. It is a law of self-sacrifice for others. It is impossible to have society without an abnegation of part of one's individual rights in view of the higher good of being an essential member of the society, partaking of the benefits of mutual service. And so great is the sociolog ical value of combination that it may be fairly inquired, as between five great religions, which most encourages and facilitates not only an altruistic spirit but a spirit of self- sacrifice for others, some degree of which is essential to having society at all. The combination of individuals for mutual service is not only the best society but the most progressive. Where there is the most cooperation there is the least contending. Individual violence, and unwilling ness to bear burdens — share and share alike, — involve social waste. These ideas are the tests for the religions: which of them is at bottom doing the most for social prog ress at its highest and best? All problems of political life are solved by the law of self-sacrifice for others; and this principle, which has come down from hoary ages, is a life power in the activity of myriads of devotees in Christendom who seek for it universal sway among men. VI. Eude indeed were the sons of Israel when first appearing as an agricultural people — courageous, crafty, treacher ous, vengeful, fond of adventure, clannish, with little devel oped sense of nationality, yet sharply separated by certain crude ideas in spiritual things from Oriental tribes still nomadic, and from the nameless hordes who raised the massive tiers of the pyramids, or who baked the clay for HEBREW CIVIC THOUGHT. 51 Babylon, or who handled the memorial stones of Nineveh, — so rude in life, so crude in thought, and apparently so little distinguishable from the earliest men of other racial stocks, that it were a most difficult task to indicate with certainty the sequence of those civic ideas which were ultimately embodied in the Old and the New Testaments. If, in part, the sources were older than Hebrew thought, yet it was through the Hebrews that the ideas were widely diffused, and from more than three score of their manuscripts pre pared by less than two score authors, now bound together as so-called Sacred Literature — all having certain charac teristics in common, — we learn much concerning the ger minal ideas which entered into Christian politics in after ages. God was set forth in the early and late Hebrew books as the ultimate source of government. "There is no power but of God;. the powers that be are ordained of God." The magistrate is in the place of God, as to the conduct of civic affairs; and he is responsible to God for it. If he is a bad ruler, he is to be overthrown. Oppression is accursed. In all this, the state is recognized as a divinely appointed instrumentality, as truly so as the family or the church.1 Upon this point, essentially the theory of Christendom is not other than that held by Confucians, and only in some of its details is it variant from the other great religions of the world. This is not different from the dictum of Alger non Sidney, that the liberties of a people are from God and not from kings. It was assumed by the great seers of Israel that Jehovah was the Over-ruler of the Jewish kings, as once the national leader and guide in the earlier days of theocracy ; the tra ditions indeed protesting against a monarchy, and hedging it about with restrictions, — the king should not be a for eigner, should not establish a harem, that he should not 'Romans 13: 1-5. Titus 3:1. I Peter 2: 13, 14. Isaiah 60: 17. Deut. 25: 1; 2 Chronicles 19: 6, 7. Psalms 149: 6-9; Eccl. 5: 8; Jer. 5: 28, 29. Isaiah 14. I Tim. 2: 2. 52 CIVIC CONDITIONS. revel in silver and gold, should not create a military power by multiplying horses, that his heart should not be lifted up above his brethren, that he should be versed in the divine law and not turn from it.1 The Hebrew land was divided into tribal provinces, then subdivided among the families as an inalienable estate,2 and none could sell the use of land for crops for a term exceeding fifty years or until the year of jubilee, when the use returned, so that the poorest could start anew in landed equality with others. To this end the landmarks were ' rigidly preserved age after age. This establishment of the Hebrew people upon inalienable small farms, and this provision for reinstating the poor, carried out in practice for so many generations before the Christian era, was favorable to home building. And the purity and honor of home life were protected by law.3 During a period much longer than that since America was discovered, the Palestinian ideal made prominent the unfolding of domestic virtues and industry, the evolution of intellectual and moral power through a certain schooling for youth, and through a weekly synagogue service in which the commonality bore a part in exposition of the law and public discussion, and through a ritual that constantly brought to mind the relation of every household to God, and through national religious festivals three times a year, in which ultimately Jerusalem became the centre of a statedly transient population sometimes twice that of Eome. And as to wide social relations, there were constantly grow ing up in these Jewish homes young men of great capacity for doing business, who went out into all Oriental lands 'Ex. 19: 5-8; 24: 3. Hosea 13: 11. "I have given thee a king in mine anger. I Samuel 8: 7-22. Deut. 17: 14-20. 'This accorded with certain ancient usage. It was mentioned by Strabo that the Dalmatians redistributed the land every eight years. 3Leviticus 25: 14-16, 23, 10, 13, 28. A house in a walled city could be sold in perpetuity. Lev. 25: 30. Deut. 19: 14; 27: 17. Exodus 20: 14, 12. HEBREW CIVIC THOUGHT. 53 to traffic; there being a million of them residing in Egypt at the Christian era. The political ideas, which in a measure governed their social evolution included that of an impartial standing before the law. This, in the words of Dean Milman, "annihilated at once the artificial and tyrannical distinc tion of caste, and established political equality as one of the fundamental principles of the state." All men were held to be equal in value before God as his children : ' ' Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?"1 The first of rights is equality. Nurtured during hundreds of years, this bore fruit in the Christian dogma of the brotherhood of man : "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor" ; "Bear ye one another's burdens." Tending at first to break down social and political distinctions, it ultimately affected slavery and all civic disabilities.2 Its breadth of 'Malachi 2: 10. Lev. 25: 35-37 is in the same spirit of kind ness to the poor. 2The Mosaic Ideal, and Christian Slaveby. The principles involved in the Hebrew economy and in primi tive Christianity by no means, however, affected the entire popu lation of Christendom. As in Buddhist lands men are found who are not actuated by the purest and most uplifting ideals of their great religious founder, so unscrupulous publicists in Chris tian lands, age after age, have been the instruments of bigotry and intolerance, men of strife, stirring up infamous wars, and who, in respect to human slavery, have strengthened the hands of wickedness. Between the years of our Lord 1680 and 1780, nine hundred thousand slaves were borne from Africa to the West Indies by "baptized" Christians: and the people of the United States maintained slavery upon a gigantic scale until the late Civil War. This being so, it is of little avail to say that Chris tian Europe had no slaves after the fourteenth century, or point to the fact that caste or slavery is still maintained among diverse peoples now controlled by the great world religions. Although it is believed that at this time no Christian country maintains human slavery, the evolution of Christianity has been very uneven and very slow in this respect, taking nearly nineteen hundred years. Upon the other hand, note the abolition of slavery in his dominions by the Buddhist Asoka, B. C. 251. 54 CIVIC CONDITIONS. purpose was shown by the ultimate ruling, that "Ye shall have one manner of law as well for the stranger as for one of your own country."1 This hospitality of rights, and treating all men as of the same value before the law, and pertinent humane precepts of the New Testament, were referred to in the legislation of Charlemagne and the Anglo- Saxon laws, enforcing hospitality toward travelers and kindness to the shipwrecked and the unfortunate.2 Disputes, under the civic economy of the Hebrews, appear to have been settled by arbitration, and the law was so administered as to bear an even hand in guarding the inter ests of the poor. Not only was property protected from theft, but the law contemplated the repression of covetous desire ; and personal reputation was sheltered. Human life was guarded in its sanctity; yet the law was so humane that there were specified only three death penalties, — for crimes against parents, for treason, and for murder. Slay ing a night robber and killing in self-defense were jus tifiable.8 The synagogue was the most democratic of assemblies, a democracy that suggests if not popular political franchise, at least such common consent4 in the management of many affairs as to culminate finally in autonomous rule among Jews of the Dispersion. The pronounced attitude of the Jew toward his religion won for him certain immunities and rights under the Eoman power. Among the privileges was not only their religious self-government, but semi-political also. At Eome each synagogue was organized separately with its own officials. Everywhere the Jews submitted to 'Leviticus 24: 22. 2The contribution of the Church to the cause of human brother hood in Great Britain is referred to in Milman's Latin Christian ity, Vol. VIII, p. 167, of the New York edition, 1877. sExodus 18: 21, 22, 24. Exodus 23: 6, 7. Leviticus 19: 15. Deut. 1:17; 16:18,19; 24:9. Exodus 20: 15, 17. Exodus 20: 16. Exodus 20: 13. 4This thought coincides with such passages as Deut. 1: 13-15. PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY TO GOD. 55 the judgment of their own officials rather than the state in which they lived. To sum up the agreement of special students in ancient Hebrew economy, it may be said that there was free gov ernment, low taxation, and material prosperity.1 If the Hebraic economy did not contain the principle of government by representation, there was a principle so closely allied as to suggest it;2 in usage the elders and officers standing for the people, in a manner analogous to that of the bishops in "the early councils of the Christian Church, who were held responsible for their people, whom they were considered to represent in the councils.3 In respect to the English speaking race, it has taken a thousand years of history to bring the principle of representation where it is to-day. The rudimentary, or loosely constructed tribal confed eration, in the early story of Israel,4 was also suggestive to later ages; the democratic churches of colonial America looking to it as a precedent for religious and political federation. The most important contribution to the cause of human freedom made by the Hebrew literature is a thought which all the books have in common, — that of man's individual responsibility to God. This tends to make a man a good citizen controlled by moral motives and fit for self-govern ment. It is this, more than anything else, that has brought Christian nations to the front in the rivalry for supremacy. The moral evolution of the individual citizen is the basis 'George Foote Moore, LL. D., of Harvard University, in Lowell Lectures of 1905. 2Numbers 11: 16, 17. Joshua 9: 18-21; 23: 2; 24: 1. I Kings 8: 1. I Chronicles 13: 1, 2. "No such councils were ever held by any other great religion except the Buddhist, — in which, however, the mendicants com prising the councils were not considered as representatives of the people. 'Numbers 1: 2-8. Joshua 11: 23; 13:7; 14:5. 56 CIVIC CONDITIONS. of Christian civilization.1 If it is sometimes justly said that individuality is developed by the competitive strug gles of life, it is also historically true that the concep tion of one's individual accountability to God has had the mightiest influence in Christendom upon the evolution of civic bodies. The earliest Hebrew dramas, their lyrics, their proverbial philosophy, and the flaming messages of their prophets uniformly present the Moral Governor of the universe as never letting go his grip on the human con science, kings and subjects alike held to a sharp sense of responsibility to him. And in the writings of the founders of the Christian era, it is found that no earthly king can excuse a subject in disobeying God. This doctrine, by which each man for himself is con fronted with a personal judgment day, when once grasped and firmly held, has wrought an incredible revolution in portions of modern Christendom. For ages it had been said, "The king or the Church will shield you"; and when it was once known by the commonality that they could not do it, this doctrine of individual loyalty to the Moral Gov ernor of the universe gave weight to the battle axes by which men shattered the sham kings, hollow hearted and empty of royalty. Men rose up in great armies, demanding personal liberty to do right, and protection in doing it. "Whatever crushes individuality," says Mill, "is des potism." "Dei Gratia" is but a fiction, if royalty be graceless. This doctrine tended in every way to open up the resources of individual manhood. It involved educa tion, suffrage, the higher law, the revolution of kingdoms, and projected its mighty shadow of personal destiny into the eternities. Was it not Luther who arose, claiming for himself the "me," "my," "I," "thou" of the Old and the 'The Japanese doctrine of the repression of individuality in its relation to civic loyalty is not different from what is known as patriotism throughout Christendom; the Christian doctrine of individual moral responsibility to God goes further, in tending to so develop man's moral nature that he will be a godly citizen as well as a patriot. MORAL BASIS OF SELF-GOVERNED STATES. 57 New Testaments? He would abide in a personal relation to the Source of Infinite Life and Illumination. Was it not said by the Founder of the New Era of hope for man kind, — "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother"; every individual of the human race privileged with spiritual kinship and equal honors. That the earlier and later Hebrew literature makes it clear that the foundation of a state is religious is not to the present point: the great world-religions all claim for the state divine sanction and aid, and the cooperation of all right-minded men. The point is rather that it has been proved true, by sociological experiments conducted during a great period of time, that the little library of books, which Christians call sacred, promotes the formation of that individual character which fits a citizen to bear part in any commonwealth in which government proceeds from the common people through their authorized representa tives, — and that this is the height of human freedom, all being in an ideal state equal before the law, with equal social opportunity. It was not needful that the Jewish theocracy should succeed, but the lesson of it was of value. Is not that the truest theocracy in which citizens seek to reduce to practice, through the ordinary rules of jurispru dence such points of the Moral Law as are pertinent in civics? Were it possible to make the underlying princi ples of the kingdom of love the controlling factors in a Christian state self-governed, would not that be the politi cal and social climax of the evolutionary process which began in the civic ideas of our Sacred Books? Would there not be so formed for the advancement of mankind certain great nationalities morally consistent, through the steady burning of the divine fire of love to man in the breast of every citizen I1 'By no means, however, is this lofty ideal realized in any civic life upon the globe. So imperfectly are the so-called Christian states governed by the law of love, that they have not unfre- 58 CIVIC CONDITIONS. VII. When Christianity came to the Eoman throne and when the Eoman pontiff exercised temporal power, the juris prudence of the fallen empire was modified by the new religion. The ancient statutes of the nations which were conquered by Eome still governed the subject peoples so far as might consist with Eoman law. So it came about that Eoman administrators of justice were obliged to study the laws of all nations, much to the advantage of their system of jurisprudence, which ultimately represented an elevated, well-devised, carefully compacted system of justice, or code of moral principles, gathered from wide experience, — the principles which they had discovered to be just, whether originating with Greek or barbarian. It was like a silent deposit, formed quietly during many generations; a series of rulings, in the daily adaptation of the principles of justice to the necessities of clients. It offered a solid basis for modem jurisprudence throughout no small part of the civilized world. The philosophic apothegms of the stoic philosophy were embodied in the laws of the nations. Mar cus Aurelius Antonius — a man too great to have been an emperor subject to the necessities of state-craft in that dark age — conceived of a polity in which there is "the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech; and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed. ' ' quently proved notorious truce breakers when self-interest has seemed to demand it; and this is equally true of republics, con stitutional kingdoms, or despotisms. Any reader, incredulous, should consult such works as Jackson's Century of Dishonor, depicting the dealings of the United States with certain Indian tribes (New York, 1881),— or the records of European policy for a hundred and fifty years past, in dealing with weaker nations, a policy that has found footing in the New World. CHRISTIANIZING ROMAN LAW. 59- "From the moment," says Judge Story,1 "when prin ciples of decisions came to be acted on in chancery, the Eoman law furnished abundant material to erect a super structure at once solid, convenient, and lofty, adapted to human wants and enriched by the aid of human wisdom, experience, and learning." "As if the mighty destinies of Eome were not yet fulfilled," says Chancellor D'Agues- seau, "she reigns throughout the whole earth by her reason, after having ceased to reign by her authority." It is, however, true that the Eoman law to which these authori ties allude, Eoman law as it is traced in the institutions and customs of the modern age, was so largely indebted to tLj principles underlying Hebrew legislation and to the ethical teaching of the New Testament, as they appear in the codes of Theodosius and of Justinian, that the strictly Eoman sources are often lost sight of; the distinctive code of the empire being so modified by the Christian equities of Jus tinian, that the unsparing reforms really sacrificed in some measure the old to the new — the privileges of citizens yield ing to the rights of man, the pride and prejudice of Eome giving way to the genius of humanity as it was consecrated by the religion of Christ.2 When Charlemagne appeared, with that greatness of spirit which characterized the most ambitious of the Eoman emperors, he sought a far higher ideal. His laws were so imbued with the principles of Christianity that historians note the incoming of a new moral power; yet his ability and character were never matched by his fortune, since he could not easily bend to his will the turbulent barbarians of the West. Christianity as a living force in a steadily advancing civilization was ignominiously held back, gen- eraton after generation, by rude populations to whom the Christian homilies — of mediaeval ecclesiastical legislation — "Commentary on Equity Jurisprudence, Sec. 23. "Compare Legarg, Origin and Influence of Roman Legislation. Writings, Vol. I, p. 515, Charleston, 1846. The Rise and Devel opment of Christian Jurisprudence is the topic of Ch. V, in Vol. I of Milman's Latin Christianity. 60 CIVIC CONDITIONS. appealed in vain. They heeded nothing but the red right arm ; and after the sheathing of the sword of Charlemagne, the petty kings gave little heed to practical Christianity, oven if their consciences were in priestiy keeping. The confessors and the ecclesiastical courtiers knew, however, the civil law inherited from Eome better than others; in fact they alone stood for whatever erudition there was in that age of iron. They were compelled to know the prin ciples of the civil law, related as they were to the canons of the Church. This made the ecclesiastics indispensable to the semi-barbarians who wore the crowns and sported the sceptres. The legal principles suggested by Christianity obtained greater influence in England than among the peoples of Central Europe; British law, as we have it to-day, being less indebted to Eome than that of any other great nation ality. The tall and fair-haired people, stout of limb, who liad taken possession of Britain; the cattle thieves, the tamers of the wild herds; the sea robbers; the men with long knives, the Anglo-Saxons, — ready to tackle the wolf, the wild boar, or the Welshman of the West: these were the men whose dignified and stalwart kings jolted about the country in ox-carts, men who loved their liberty and their power, in whom dwelt so fierce a spirit of personal freedom that it made them, it is said, liefer to die than to be under the yoke of thraldom ; these, our ancestors of bar barian blood, a mighty and self-willed people, bent on un bounded loyalty to him alone who proved the strongest, — these were the men who yielded most pliantly to him who appealed to their sense of right, who dominated conscience, who stood as the Vicar of God. Down through the ages they pushed phrase upon phrase of Christian edict, stand ing behind the law with their long knives. Alfred, in the ninth century, reaffirmed and emphasized the legal words of the monks of earlier generations, words that abide with us to-day. "We know," said Edward the Confessor, a hundred years later, "that through God's grace a thrall INFLUENCE ON ENGLAND. 61 has become a thane, and a churl has become an earl, a singer a priest, and a scribe a bishop : and formerly, as God decreed, a fisher became a bishop. We have all one Heavenly Father, one spiritual mother which is called the Church, and therefore are we brothers." A much more kingly speech than that made by the curled and powdered pagan who sat upon the throne of the Franks seven cen turies nearer to our own times, that Grand Monarch who during half a century made good the automatic dictum — "I am the state." What book- work is more fascinating than that of running over the earlier laws of England, when legislation was being shaped by the Christian clergy men, whose work for king and country abides after eight or nine centuries? We talk about the evolution of the modern era, but he will never understand how justice has come into the English world, and fair dealing and kindness between neighbors, purity, and self-control, who does not detect the hoary heads of sermons upon the pages of its black-letter law books. That the Anglo-Saxon peoples are not still barbarians is due to Christianity, as can be shown in detail by thumbing the codes of our ancient kings. In the reign of Henry VIII, one hundred and sixty chancel lors, and all the masters of rolls, during the first twenty- six years, were clergymen; and in the same period there were twelve clerical justiciars.1 The moral rules of Chris tianity as elaborated during many centuries were thus transmuted daily into law, and principles of equity were fixed by statute; the clerical decisions in casuistry being reduced, with each advancing year, to an orderly classifica tion for governing a Christian realm. When the king was absent, he made some ecclesiastic his viceroy, not less than seven times. This was three hundred and fifty years ago. So, little by little, came to the front among Christian peoples "the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the 'Milman alludes to the great influence of the clergy in the time of Henry VIII, upon pp. 134, 137, Vol. VIII, Latin Christianity, New York, 1877. €2 CIVIC CONDITIONS. human intellect; which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected reason of ages, — combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of liuman concerns."1 And we have a new order of men, absolutely unknown to savagery or despotism, a body repre senting the highest intellectual fruitage of nineteen Chris tian centuries, who are studious of drawing a system of rules for the protection of civic liberty at every point, in forming a Christian state. When, therefore, we speak — as we did in the earlier part of this chapter — of the debt which India and Hinduism owe to English law, and the obligation of Buddhist lands to the jurisprudence of Great Britain or America, of the adop tion by Japan of Occidental forms of government, and of the adaptation of Western law and usage to China, we are speaking of the widespread influence of certain well-defined civic ideas that have been developed during a hundred generations of Hebrew and Christian history, and syste matically wrought into the state-craft of modern Chris tendom. VIII. It is not historically true that popular government as known to Greece and Eome had weight with the English emigrants to America, or with those who from time to time enlarged the limits of liberty in the Old Home. Glimpses, indeed, of these truths so precious had been vouchsafed to individuals in every age, a primeval revela tion, a natural political religion — which the hoary genera tions scoffed at as impracticable. All men, said Zeno, are by nature equal, and virtue alone establishes a difference between them. But the ancient Greek philosophy as such had no word for mankind.2 The outside world was of another kind: it was barbarian. Athens had three hun dred and fifty thousand slaves, and twenty thousand free "Burke's Works, Vol. Ill, p. 357. Boston, 1871. 2Max Miiller. THE ENGLISH BIBLE AND POLITICS. 63 men; the government was usually carried on by five thou sand voters. There was no general union of the Grecian states, and Greece was a political hell during one hundred and fifty years through the reign of the doctrine of state sovereignty. In Sparta war was the leading idea of the state. "Lycurgus," says a French writer, "wrote not for a people but an army: it was a barrack which he erected, not a commonwealth; and sacrificing everything to the military spirit, he mutilated human nature in order to crush it into armor. ' ' The self-government upon the Tiber was that of an aristocracy : in theory the Eoman people ruled, but during hundreds of years the patricians stood for the people, and they alone had the right to take part in the management of affairs. The earliest forms of popular government in England were the outgrowth of anterior Anglo-Saxon usages, and the separation of Britain from the continent was propitious for unfolding an indigenous political life. What Chris tianity they had was through churchly tradition; when, therefore, the common people received an open Bible through the printing press — the translations of Wyclif, Tyndale, and King James, — the people arose in their might to claim the rights that belonged to them ; nor has history a parallel to the popular uprising. What the few had known, the many now caught at. As Bacon asked men to look at nature and read the facts, the reformers of the Church now collated the Scripture texts and announced new social and civil laws : principles pertaining to political and religious freedom were found that had been forgotten for ages ; their full scope appearing dimly at first, then in clear vision that led the liberty-loving Anglo-Saxons and Normans to fill their isle with clamor, — "Let us have more of this, even if the throne and Church rock for it." "Here," they said, "are the eternal principles of right which underlie such liberties as we have ; our brother, the king, is wrong, we must be consulted ; our brother at Eome 64 CIVIC CONDITIONS. is wrong, the Church is more than a tradition." And ere long a crowd of men violent and wrathful began to attack the corruptions of the age, giving little credit to the drift of improved conditions. But if one of those ranters in the name of God could have stepped back a few hundred years, and penetrated the dungeons and torture vaults of medise val castles; could he have encountered the wild beasts in human guise, the savage, the lawless, the belligerent and barbarian hosts, the barefooted saints whose feet were never shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace; could he have known that system of feudal aggression and oppres sion which defied law for centuries — he would have been grateful for that Church which had stood for the common people, for law and for justice, against titled violence. He has read that old story amiss, who does not look upon the vicious ecclesiastic of the middles ages as a paragon of pro priety when compared with a vicious feudal lord; and he has read it all amiss who does not discern in the shabby treatment of humanity prevalent in the sixteenth and sev enteenth centuries in England, a vast improvement upon the unquestioned and unarraigned tyranny of preceding centuries — an improvement wrought by that Church which regarded no caste limitations. Nevertheless, the move ments of the Church were too slow for the age of the print ing press and the revival of ancient wit and the stir of discovery and the adventurous settlement of a- new hemi sphere, when the very ploughboys of England and the solitary workmen over the sea were permeated with the thought of political equality, and were mightily quickened in conscience through the knowledge of their individual relation to God, which had come down to them from the world's youth in the Sacred Books now first read by the Christian populace. The cumulative force of ages upon ages of altruistic instruction in weakening the hand of tyranny, the amazing effect of man's solitary communion with his Maker without the intervention of priestly func tion, and the quickening of the seed of the Word, after a SELF-GOVERNED CHURCH AND STATE. 65 time formed a great body of public sentiment well informed in the principles of a larger civic freedom. And there came a time when Bishop Burnet could safely affirm that ' ' There is not any one thing more certain and more evident than that princes are made for the people, and not the people for them; and perhaps there is no nation under Heaven that is more entirely possessed with this notion of princes than the English nation is in this age ; so that they will soon be uneasy to a prince who does not govern himself by this maxim, and in time grow very unkind to him." The principle of the association of those having a con sciousness of kind wrought powerfully among certain reli gious sects in preparing great masses of Englishmen for self-government. Whether or not they were right, not a few of the readers of the newly opened Bible made up their minds that much of their ecclesiastical machinery was unscriptural, and as needless for perpetuity as the Jewish ceremonial law: so it soon came about that local Puritan churches multiplied — small bodies of united Christians, unconformable to an established state church, — and they intensified the self-governing spirit of the English people at large, and improved upon the Anglo-Saxon heritage of local freedom in affairs. Many of these small religious assemblies were purely democratic. In America, self-gov ernment in religion and in local politics was practised dur ing a hundred and fifty years before the Declaration of Independence. A century and a half of actual self-gov ernment, in most things, a practice of freedom itself rather than theorizing about it, at a safe distance of three thou sand miles from king and parliament, — it was this which led to a republic when the hour struck. About five miles from the ocean crag where this sentence is written, an athletic Puritan preacher had a ten-acre lot upon a green knoll, overlooking the Chebacco marshes and a blue strip of sea, where he thought over the great problems of popular liberty. What he wrote in vindication of the method of church government in vogue in New England was reprinted 5 66 CIVIC CONDITIONS. and widely circulated as a political pamphlet before the Eevolution, to prove that "Democracy is Christ's govern ment in Church and state." When Jefferson drew up his Declaration, he was indebted, according to his own state ment, to the practice of self-government in a local Baptist church near his early home.. And the Declaration, a year before, at Mecklenburg, was that of the delegates of Pres byterian churches. In old England popular liberty owes a great debt to the non-conformist churches in the great cen tres of population. No student of Mills' Essay upon Lib erty can undervalue the influence of that free discussion of affairs so vital to the progress of society; and there is a vast educative power through active participation in a gov ernment — no matter how small — that is carried on by the people. A curious testimony to the sociological value of the small self-governing church appeared when members were elected to the first Imperial Parliament in Japan a few years ago: one member out of every twenty being a Christian, when one to five hundred was the proportion of Christians to the whole population. Not only had a good many prominent men, widely scattered throughout the empire, become Christians, but their participation in local church affairs had given them an experience in public life that was of recognized value. Neither the Brahman, the Buddhist, Confucianist, nor Moslem faith has anything answering to the independent local churches of Christen dom. We say churches, since in a large portion of Protes tant Christianity the Church is little else than a federation of local churches, federated for convenience. It is impos sible to exaggerate the important relation sustained by the local church or local religious assembly toward civil free dom. It statedly gathers the most thoughtful and influential people in every community, and accustoms them, generation after generation, to managing their own affairs : — • this is the very groundwork of national self-gov ernment. We live in a realm of ideas; and, looked upon wholly as a sociological experiment, there can be no doubt CHRISTIAN LIBERTY REGULATED BY LAW. 67 of the advantage to popular liberty of planting local Chris tian churches in non-Christian lands. Far-sighted states men, with their eyes wide open, in Japan, in China, in India, must welcome the systematic gathering of little hand- fuls of good citizens, for instruction in the principles of fraternal conduct, the principles of equality and justice; gatherings which will certainly diffuse the notion of a more equitable conduct of affairs; gatherings which will train men for the conscientious service of the state. IX. If it be as true in sociology as in nature that every seed brings forth fruit after its kind, it is to be expected that the vital seeds of orderly government and superior social state planted in the early ages of history will bear ripened fruit. "Every nation," says the Talmud, "has its special guardian angel, its horoscopes, its ruling planets and stars. But there is no planet for Israel. Israel shall look but to Him. There is no mediator between those who are called His children and their Father which is in Heaven. " " The kingdom is the Lord's," sang the Hebrew poet; "He is the Governor among the nations. The Lord is our judge. The Lord is our lawgiver. Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations."1 If the original patriarchal idea of a spiritual kingdom, and the idea of Jesus Christ of a reign of love in the earth, and the early Church idea of universal dominion, are ever to be fulfilled, it will be through the self-government of citi zens whose jurisprudence comprises the principles of the Moral Law, as between man and man. ' ' If any whosoever, ' ' thundered Oliver Cromwell, "if any whosoever think the interest of Christians and the interest of the nation two different things, I wish my soul may never enter into their secrets." Christian law, "the guardian angel of a hundred 'Psalms 22: 28. Isaiah 33: 22. Psalms 45: 6; 145: 10-13. 68 civic: CONDITIONS. generations," "the absolute justice of the state, enlight ened by the perfect reason of the state, ' n is little else than the attempt to reduce the Golden Eule to practice. "It is the pleasure of the gods," said Socrates, "that what is in conformity with justice should also conform with the law. ' ' ' ' In two minutes, ' ' said Governor Briggs of Massachusetts, ' ' I can tell you how to be a good lawyer — as good a lawyer as anybody. Just look over your case carefully, under stand it, then do what you think is right : and in nine cases out of ten you will have the law on your side."2 If this indeed were true, it would with emphasis be a perfect Christian liberty regulated by law. What else than this is the highest test of civilization? "To make a government," says Burke,3 "is one of the easiest things. It is only for one to command and for the others to obey. To give free dom is likewise easy. It is only to relax all control and let men do as they will. But to make a free government is the most difficult achievement of man's reason." It is effected only by great masses of men who have learned habitual self-control through the regulative force of Chris tian principle. Voluntary moral restraint, the orderliness of virtue, is the only safeguard of liberty. Freedom to act selfishly tends to disorganize the state ; the stability of lib erty is shaken by those who take liberties. The rights of man have correlate duties. The general good restricts the individual ; voluntary self-abnegation is at the basis of well- ordered society. The democracy of Athens finally ruined the state, by wilful ruling. There must be a government of laws and not of men. "The object of government," said Lord Bacon, "is to enforce among individuals the observance of the moral law ; and states are prosperous in proportion as this object is attained." "Suppose a nation in some distant region," wrote President John Adams, in his diary, "should take "Rufus Choate's Works, Vol. I, pp. 430-432. Boston, 1862. 'Life, by Richards, p. 68. Boston, 1866. 8Vol. Ill, pp. 559, 560. BIBLE IDEAS AND CIVIC GENIUS. 69 the Bible for their only law-book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. Every member would be obliged in conscience to temper ance and frugality and industry, to justice and kindness and charity towards his fellowmen, and to piety, love and reverence towards Almighty God. In this commonwealth no man would impair his health by gluttony, drunkenness, or lust: no man would steal or lie, or in any way defraud his neighbor, but would live in peace and good will with all men; no man would blaspheme his Maker, or profane His worship; but a rational and manly and sincere and nnaffected piety and devotion would reign in all hearts." "The general diffusion of the Bible," says Chancellor Kent, "is the most effectual way to civilize and humanize mankind; to purify and exalt the general system of public morals ; to give efficacy to the just precepts of international and municipal law; to enforce the observance of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, and to improve all the relations of domestic and social life." In all this application of the biblical principles to civil life, is there not a strong look as if the Divine Spirit were aiding the progress of mankind in the development of national well being, — a living and vivifying spirit within the wheels of progress? Certain it is that the law of the kingdom of Love is never unfolded in its fullness unless it is set forth as a great civil power in the earth, lifting up those who have fallen down and who are under the feet of oppression. If it were to be said that the distance of America from Europe is sufficient to explain the success of the experiment of self-government in the United States, rather than the influence of an open Bible upon the leaders of republican thought, it would be needful to show why Mexico and South American republics have not prospered equally well. There is a curious story of the clergy who followed Cortez to Mex ico. They baptized from ten to twenty thousand natives a day until within a short time they "converted" four 70 crvic CONDITIONS. millions of them : they then left them with a mere modicum of the thoroughgoing instruction that Charlemagne gave to his vanquished Germans after their enforced baptism. Ultimately the common people of Germany opened the Bible and fitted themselves for Christian liberty, but the Book gained no foothold in Mexico. Does not social efficiency rest upon certain qualities of character? The Teutonic people have wrought out those characteristics through attention to the moral ideas found in the sacred literature of Christianity. And as to their social evolution a vast popular energy has been developed in the lines of Teutonic stock. Political emancipation, social liberty, the opening up of intellectual forces, freedom of opportunity for unfolding special powers, and such goods as good homes, — all these are closely connected with casting the germinal ideas of the kingdom of Love into good soil; so that when we speak about races and religions, we inquire about the building up of personal character through per sonal relation to the highest themes of our faith. In say ing, therefore, that the Teutonic stock increased by one hundred and six millions in ninety recent years, as against an increase of thirty-one millions of the Latin races in the same years, we merely recognize the fact that genius for successful colonization is closely connected with genius for self-government, and self-government is best conducted in a state by citizens whose individual characters are vol untarily formed through biblical ideas — such as moral uprightness, altruistic energy, intelligent and determined devotion to duty, — qualities that cement associates when adjusting themselves to new conditions in new realms — the qualities which constitute an inherently expansive and advancing people. The power of the Germanic peoples to carry about with them local self-government all over the world — ready at any time to set up a nation, — is, at least in respect to the English speaking stock, through the habit of ages upon ages of self-government ; and the failure of colonization schemes BIBLE IDEAS AND CIVIC GENIUS. 71 of races differently trained is often by their inability to suddenly adopt that which has become a second nature through the expansion of England. As between all races and all religions, while we may not forecast the future, it is true that Brahmans, Buddhists, Confucianists and Mohammedans have yet to establish great national powers in which the entire body of the people actively participates in self-government, powers which have the faculty of self-propagation in all parts of the earth, and powers which so federate all parts as to present to the world a united front of empire.1 'The ultimate unifying effect of English law upon subject race3 is one of incalculable influence for civic good; preparing alien peoples for a more hearty union in one body, through bestowing a legacy of elaborately outworked principles upon distant parts of the globe promoting substantial justice, making safe the homes of the people and protecting individual rights. There is in this a prophecy relating to the civic, future of mankind. CHAPTEE III: CONTEASTS IN HOME BUILDING. "Heredity," it is remarked by Eibot, "is but one form of that ultimate law, which, by physicists, is called the con servation of energy."1 "Each generation," says Galton, "has enormous power over the natural gifts of those that follow." Studies in heredity show, not that nature main tains an average by always crossing characteristics between parents and children, but frequently the daughters resemble their father, and sons their mother; so often, indeed, as to mothers and sons, that a racial degradation of women results in breeding an inferior grade of men. The influ ence of parental stock and parental training appears in a handful of American college catalogues; until some recent date, the alumni, for the most part, have been comprised within a thousand patronymics. In some of these homes there have been a superior grade of women, as in the case of the Edwards stock and other eminent houses of early Northampton on the Connecticut. Out of fourteen hundred descendants of Jonathan Edwards and his wife, Sarah Pierrepont, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were — to speak approximately — five score lawyers, of whom thirty became judges ; five score clergymen or professors of theology ; five score professors in colleges, of whom thirteen became col lege presidents ; six score and fifteen books were written by authors within this family stock; five score persons held public offices, of whom six were governors of states or United States senators ; three score were physicians ; eighteen were editors; and seventy-five were men in the army or navy; of not far from seven hundred men of this stock, Yale College alone enrolled a hundred and twenty grad uates. About seventeen years after this Edwards roll began, 'Heredity, p. 391. London, 1875. THE JUKES-EDWARDS STORY. 73 there began, in New York state, the record of a family known as the Jukes. Out of twelve hundred descendants in one line the detailed story of seven hundred is known : — only twenty learned a trade, of whom ten learned it in prison; seven were murderers; sixty, professional thieves; one hundred and thirty were criminals ; three hundred and ten were paupers; four hundred and forty were viciously diseased. The thieving, trials, and prison life of this fam ily stock, the maintaining of their women of evil habits, the cost of disease, and loss of wages amounted in a period of seventy-five years, in which statistics were available, to $1,308,000.1 Such facts accord with the principle of the conservation of energy by heredity so well known in the breeding of domestic animals, which from a scientific point of view is so important that in advanced commonwealths the trans mission of the most profitable traits has been favored by legislation. Like produces like. To breed from the best is the rule. Good blood is paramount, of the strain that it is desired to perpetuate.2 It is the purpose of this chapter to inquire as to the status of women in homes dominated by Brahmans, Bud dhists, Confucianists, Mohammedans, and Christians, to see how racial stock has been affected by the laws of heredity, in an experiment conducted during a period varying from forty to more than a hundred generations. 'A. E. Winship's Jukes-Edwards, a Study in Education and Heredity, Harrisburg, 1900; and R. L. Dugdale's The Jukes, a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, New York, 1877. 2Consult: "The Horse: How to Breed, etc.," by William Day, pp. 170-186. London, 1888. "Cattle and Cattle Breeders," by McCombre, pp. 151, 152. Blackwood, 1867. "Animals and Plants under Domestication," Darwin. Vol. II, p. 194-205. London, 1868. Darwin's "Origin of Species." Vol. I, p. 36, 5th edition. London, 1888. It is here stated that in Saxony the sheep are, at three periods of growth, placed on a table and studied, and each time they are so marked and so classed, that the very best may be ultimately selected for breeding. 74 HINDU HOMES. I. If child marriage has been the universal Hindu custom since the Mohammedan conquest, and if it was common before that, should there not be by the laws of heredity an inferior race springing from parents whose higher powers of manhood and womanhood are undeveloped? If we may properly speak of any great people, with many highly civil ized traits, as still semi-pristine or little above the domestic animals in the transmission of their kind, we must say it in regard to a race in which the oldest son for ages has been born of parents who are mere children. Girls in India, says Professor M. Monier-Williams, are betrothed at three or four, married at eight or nine to boys of whom they know nothing, and very often become mothers at twelve or thir teen. Eighty generations ago, the Institutes of Manu named eight at the earliest age and twelve at the latest for a girl's marriage. It is now twelve at the youngest under British rule. Among more than two hundred and ninety millions of people the girls have no schooling, but are early initiated into certain religious ceremonies designed to pro cure to themselves husbands.1 An unwholesome atmosphere for the beginnings of life — feebleness of body, weakmind- edness, parental ignorance, — are incident to child marriage in India.2 The little maiden who said, — "You make my heart laugh," — did not live in India. Eukhmabai, who rebelled against her baby betrothal to a drunkard, who bought from the man that freedom which the law could not give her, states that laughing and running are not allow able to girls after they are nine years old. She never ran until she went to England. Even if customs differ in the various provinces, or between town and country, there are 'W. J. Wilkins* Modern Hinduism, pp. 340, 341. London, 1887. 'Compare Sir M. Monier-Williams' statement in the Contem porary Review, XXXIII, pp. 268, 269. Few girls reach full physi cal development before they assume the function of child-bear ing. — J. P. Jones' India's Problem, p. 154; vide, also, pp. 25, 26. HINDU WOMEN. 75> extended portions of India where the girls take up life's sorrows too early, and it makes their eyes heavy. Looked at from the standpoint of heredity, as to select ing the best breeding stock for the sake of an improved grade of men, the matter was made worse very early in Brahmanic history by permanently degrading motherhood in India, bringing it as nearly as possible to the condition of motherhood in domestic animals. Both by ancient pre cept and the common custom of the centuries, women are classified with cows, mares, female camels, buffaloes, and goats. The woman, however, is differentiated from inferior- animals in this, that through her husband she may find spiritual salvation.1 In the Hindu system, the husband as- related to the wife stand in the place of deity. A popular statement of this dogma has been made by an educated Hindu woman in the Calcutta Review:2 ' ' The husband is the wife's religion, the wife 's sole busi ness, the wife's all in all. The wife should meditate on her husband as Brahma. For her, all privilege should be con centrated on her husband's foot. The command of a hus band is as obligatory as a precept of the Vedas. To a chaste wife her husband is her god. When the husband is. pleased Brahma is pleased. The merit of waiting on the feet of her husband is equivalent to the merit of perform ing all the pilgrimages in the world. To obey the husband is to obey the Vedas. To worship the husband is to wor ship the gods. The husband is the wife's spiritual guide,. her honor, the giver of her happiness, the bestower of for tune, righteousness, and Heaven ; her deliverer from sorrow and from sin." All this is based upon Book V., Section 154, of the Institutes of Manu. "Though inobservant of approved usages, or enamored of another woman, or des titute of good qualities, yet a husband must constantly be 'It is a singular coincidence, showing the tendency of the human mind to revert to ancient types, that Mormonism in Utah. gives prominence to the same tenet. 2XLIX, p. 39. 76 HINDU HOMES. reverenced as a god by a virtuous wife." No sacrifice is allowed to women apart from their husbands, no religious lite, no fasting."1 "By a girl, or by a young woman, or by a woman advanced in years, nothing must be done, even in her own dwelling place, according to her mere pleasure. In childhood must a female be dependent on her father, in youth on her husband; her lord being dead, on her sons. A woman must never seek independence."2 "If," it is said in the laws of Manu, "a man goes on a journey, his wife shall not divert herself in play, nor shall she see any public show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress herself in jewels and fine clothes, nor shall see dancing, nor hear music, nor shall sit in the window, nor shall ride out, nor shall behold anything choice or vain; but shall fasten well the house door and remain private; and shall not eat any dainty victuals, and shall not blacken her eyes with eye- powder, and shall not view her face in a mirror ; she shall never exercise herself in any such agreeable employment during the absence of her husband." Who does not see that this suppression of Hindu women during four score generations has transmitted — among other hereditary traits — a certain submission and docility in yielding to fate, that has made the men, throughout the hundreds of millions of India, an easy conquest to Moslem warriors or to a band of adventurers from Christendom. "A man, 'Compare Professor E. W. Hopkins' citations from the Mahab- larata upon man worship, in his work upon the "Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India" (Am. Oriental Soc. Journal, Vol. XIII, pp. 364, 365) : — "It is the incarnate husband that makes the wife glorious. . . . The husband is the woman's god. Here and hereafter he is the woman's sole hope and possession." "She has no divinity equal to a husband; he is her highest divinity. When the husband is pleased, the divinities are pleased." "A woman has no sacrificial rite, . . . the wife obtains Heaven solely by obedience to her husband." . . . "Her husband is her refuge and her god." "The wife must do as her husband bids, whether right or wrong." — M. I., 104.30; 233.26; III, 68.19; .234.21; XII, 145.4; 148.7 ff. 'Dharma Sastra, V, pp. 55, 156, 162, 163. PATRIARCHAL SYSTEM. 77 both day and night, must keep his wife so much in subjec tion that she by no means be mistress of her own actions" : this was said by the Institutes four score generations since,. and the sons of these suppressed and docile, if not servile, mothers are to-day reaping the fruit of more than twenty- seven hundred years of heredity. Looked at from the point of Occidental sociology, does not the continuance of the patriarchal system in the homes. of India indicate the projection into modern life of one of the earliest historic races unquickened by a progressive society.1 Every Hindu household is managed by the patri archal head. The wives cook for the family, and as ser vants wait upon their husbands. The household relation of wife to husband is that of ser vant, rather than a social companion. In accord with the theory that the husband is a god to the wife, she never pro nounces his name. There is a sharp separation between them. While he partakes of the food she has prepared, the wife retires to a corner, turns her face to the wall, and sits in silence. If she were to sit and eat with her husband, it would be regarded by him as an insult.2 Curiously enough, this was one of the conditions in domestic life in Tahiti prior to 1815. "The Institutes of Oro and Tane," says Ellis, "inexorably required, not only that the wife should not eat those kinds of food of which the husband partook, but that she should not eat in the same place, nor prepare her food at the same fire. This restriction applied not only to the wife with regard to her husband, but to all individ- 'If this usage, so ancient, pertaining to the childhood of great peoples — as of the Hebrews — cannot be traced to any sentiment properly designated as religious, Brahmanical or Confucian, it is certainly true, as it will appear, that religious principles per taining to later Judaism and the New Testament Church hindered the custom from hampering Christian home life. The evils inherent in the Hindu Patriarchal Family system are alluded to in Jones' India's Problem, pp. 24, 25. Communication from the Rev. S. Paul, honorary chaplain to the bishop of Madras, Sachiapuram, North Tinnevelly. 78 HINDU HOMES. iials of the female sex, from their birth to the day of their death. . . . The men, especially those who occasionally attended on the services of idol worship in the temple, were considered sacred; while the female sex, altogether, was considered common. . . . The fire at which man's food was cooked was also sacred. . . . The inferior food for wives and daughters was cooked at separate fires, deposited in distinct baskets, and eaten in lonely solitude in little huts erected for the purpose."1 The same doctrine of the sacredness of .man, so sacred that a woman might not eat with her husband, prevailed in the Hawaiian Islands in pagan days.2 So intimately is modern Hinduism allied to man barbaric, or man primeval, in domestic affiliations, that we can but speak of India as semi-pristine in its civilization, in the same way in which we may speak of a semi-Christian civilization that is guilty of most un-Christian social enor mities. "The sanctity of the cow and the depravity of woman" is the one point on which all the sects of Hinduism agree. Women are — by religious precept and custom — looked upon as having no other than a servile function, or that of keeping the race alive. To this end, in city life, in wealthy homes, they are kept in seclusion ;3 in the patriarchal house hold, including the sons' wives, perhaps twelve or fifteen women in one Zenana.4 Nor are the women's apartments those that are well lighted with verandas overlooking the street: those are occupied by the gentlemen. The women are left, rather, to look into the quadrangle at the cows and the goats or at a vacant wall, where they busy themselves in mental vacuity. Of one hundred and twenty-five mil lions of women and girls in India, only one in eight hundred can read. How can such women — generation after gen- 'Polynesian Researches, I, pp. 221, 222. London, 1829. 2Jarves' History of the Sandwich Islands, p. 94. Boston, 1843. 2Jones, p. 151, says that in Southern India this seclusion is observed only among the most aristocratic. 'Three or four wives are legally permitted to the highest caste, but it is believed that the ordinary number does not exceed two. CONDITION OF WIDOWS. 79 eration for more than twenty-five hundred years — breed an intelligent, broad-minded, and high-spirited stock? Is it not a well-known fact that the illiterate and superstitious, so often herding in the great cities of Christendom, are con stantly propagating a progeny that recalls the frogs of Balboa — each half emerged, frog above and mud below ? Are there not some three hundred millions of people in Hindustan, who are in character the very opposite of a high-spirited people with all round capacity for the world's work? Heredity explains it. They have been born of women whose independent personality has been suppressed for thousands of years ; and each generation of descent has accentuated the character of the sons — the fathers of the next generation. It is like tree like fruit, by the inevitable laws of nature. There are two things further which may be alluded to as deeply affecting womanhood, in which Hinduism differs from other great religions : one the condition of widows, the other the dedication of daughters to lives of temple pros-: titution. It was written in the Institutes of Manu, that "It is proper for a woman after her husband's death to burn her self in the fire with his corpse." This was done to no small extent in India during three thousand years. Before it was forbidden by the British government in 1829, there were thought to be about three thousand widows a year so burned alive. In Bengal alone, by official figures, there were seven thousand, one hundred and fifty-four in the years 1815-1826. In 1803, four hundred thirty-eight were burned within thirty miles of Calcutta.1 This practice was 'Ward's Hindoos, Vol. II, p. 563. Serampore, 1816. Maine's Early Institutions, p. 335 (London, 1875), makes the statement that they were childless widows of the wealthier classes, who had life-time property rights, which were extin guished by the suttee fires. Note by Peopessoe E. Washbubn Hopkins. — The statement made by Max Muller (Chips, IV, 35-39. London, 1895), that the Brahmans falsified the Vedic text to support the custom, has 80 HINDU HOMES. in accord with the Hindu theory of the total suppression of the wife 's personality in the interest of her husband. It illustrates the theory that the Hindus are not only of primi tive racial type, but in some particulars arrested in their development. Among the early barbarians of Europe a like custom was known. Anglo-Saxon widows sometimes put themselves to death to accompany their husbands to realms unknown.1 Wife slaying, for a similar purpose, has been practiced to some extent by primitive races or tribes : as, for example, in the African kingdom of Dahomy.2 Since the abolition of the suttee in India, much has been written by philanthropic laborers in the country about the hard and even harsh condition of living widows who are not allowed to remarry; it being the theory of Hinduism that the sins of the wife in some former stage of existence are the ultimate cause of her husband's death.3 This, in multitudes of patriarchal households, subjects the widows to domestic abuse and unrequited drudgery. They are not, however, treated with equal harshness in all parts of India. The pathetic point about it, sociologically considered, is that so many are of tender age, fit only for nursery life in been shown to be erroneous. It does not appear that suttee was inculcated in the Vedic hymns, but was adopted at very early date, originally in royal families, and thence extended to other respectable houses. The rules in Manu for the conduct of vir tuous widows show that it was still optional for them to die or live. The older epic poetry implies the widow's right to sur vive her husband. 'Allen's Anglo-Saxon Britain, p. 79. 2So closely is the immolation of widows in Hindustan akin to barbarism, that Dr. John Geddies, of Nova Scotia, a pastor not long since at Aneityum, upon his arrival, found every married woman wearing a stout cord about her neck, by which she could be conveniently strangled upon the death of her husband. — Mission Stories of Many Lands, p. 371, A. B. C. F. M. Boston, 1885. The parents of the boy sincerely believe that it is her evil star which has killed him; and henceforth she is regarded as an accursed person, hated for what has happened to her husband, and a creature to be shunned. — Jones, p. 155. SANCTION OF INFAMY. 81 good homes. A recent census reported twenty-three mil lions of widows, of whom more than ten thousand were under four years old ; and more than six hundred and fifty thousand, under nine. It is a domestic peculiarity in India that no man, whose wife dies, is subjected to hardship by her kinsfolk; nor does the Hindu theology intimate that his sins, here or heretofore, have been the cause of her death. In no other part of the world is there any great people, dominated by one religion, in which widows — on account of their own sins in a previous state of existence — are held responsible by domestic circles for the death of their husbands, and subjected therefor to venomed tongues, ignominy and hard service: and so vast is the population of Hindustan that, to some extent, this inhumanity — based upon their religion — affects one widow out of every five upon the globe. The other thing affecting womanhood, in which Hinduism differs from other great religions, is that custom, so con ducive to national domestic degradation, the temple life- service of girls for priestly prostitution; a custom figuring largely enough in Hinduism to give the weight of religious sanction to impurity under the name of marriage to a deity. This reacts on the religious system itself, giving to non- Hindus the impression that it is — as a distinguished Amer ican 'traveler has said, — "Vile, filthy, obscene, and debas ing." This stamp of divine approval of harlot lives and the not infrequent Hindu maintenance of plural wives and concubines, give such tone to home talk and conversation,1 as to introduce to the youth of India the most infamous ideals, as if the land were indeed peopled by a semi-primi tive race with not a few of the ancient instincts of a bar baric stock, — the relation between the sexes in Hindustan recalling at many points the records of anthropologists in regard to customs of the tribes or races nearest man pri meval. But it should be said, in justice to the Hindus, that if there are proportionately twelve times as many 'The Rev. S. Paul. 6 82 HINDU HOMES. women of ill fame in Calcutta as in London1 they are in part maintained by pseudo- Christians. So far as the devotement of child life to religious infamy is concerned, it is, on the part of parents, through a desire to gain religious merit by so disposing of undesirable daugh ters ; it being more respectable than infanticide, which, as a not infrequent custom, is but the logical outcome of woman's hard lot in India. "Infanticide," says Tylor,2 "comes from hardness of life rather than from hardness of heart." To the poor in India, it is difficult to make up marriage dowries for their daughters, and girls can neither aid the father's work nor perform his funeral rites; these considerations, with the general undervaluation of womanhood, make the advent of female babes a matter of sorrow and taunting in a patri archal family.3 "There is," says the proverb, "a place. to stow everything away, but no place to keep a girl in." Early in the nineteenth century, Ward, who was associated with Carey, caused systematic inquiry to be made in regard to the destruction of child life, and it was found that the population of the province of Bengal was diminished a hundred thousand a year by this unnatural crime. And, to-day, the official publications of India recognize the fact that the systematic reduction of the number of girls is common now, in spite of the efforts of the government to hinder it. It is a striking comment upon the hoary cen turies of Brahmanical religious rule in India, that the attempt to break up this infamy was left till the arm of a Christian power made itself felt upon the plains of Hin dustan. Mr. Hobart, joint magistrate of Bustee, reported, 'Wilkins' Modern Hinduism, p. 412. London, 1887. 'Anthropology, p. 427. Alexander Sutherland's Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, London, 1898, gives many facts in regard to the prevalence of the custom. Vol. I, pp. 113-120; 131-145. "Native communications, sent to the writer through the cour tesy of the bishop of Madras, detail with great minuteness the ordinary household grief upon such domestic occasions. INFANTICIDE. 83 in 1868, the results of his own visitations. Among the Baboos of Khudawur Kalau, in seven villages visited there were one hundred and four boys, — and one girl ; in nine teen Baboo villages of Nagpore, two hundred and ten boys, and forty-three girls ; in two Baboo villages of Purtahgurh, thirty-one boys, and one girl; in nine Baboo villages of Eumgurh, seventy-one boys, and seven girls; in seventeen Thakoor villages, there were one hundred and fifty-four boys, and fifty-four girls. The Eev. J. T. Gracey wrote, in 1870, that the recent census of Amritsar reported three hundred children stolen by wolves — they were all girls. The Eev. W. A. Gladwin reported, in regard to the same census, that, of the youth in the Thakoor villages near his home at Cawnpore, it was found that but three to five per cent, were girls. The government, thereupon, stationed extra police in one hundred and sixty villages to prevent child murder. The difference between Hindustan and some Occidental land, like America, in respect to the sacred- ness of child life, cannot be more compactly stated: in forty-four villages, there were five hundred and seventy boys and only one hundred and six girls; we can imagine the storm that would be raised in New York or Ohio, if the census of 1900 had revealed the murder of three hundred girls in one community, as in Amritsar; or if the census had made it needful to send special police to watch the murderous homes of one hundred and sixty rural com munities in Maryland or Illinois. It is, however, stated upon eminent authority of recent date that the practice of infanticide has greatly dimin ished, certainly so in extended districts of India. The stamping of this custom upon the common people must have required a vast number of generations, since the result has been so to disturb the numerical equality of the sexes as to enhance the money value of women as wives,1 — 'Robert Needham Cust, LL. D., Pictures of Indian Life, pp. 339, 340. London, 1881. McLennan's Studies in Ancient History, second series, London, 1896, gives many facts as to infanticide in India, pp. 74-111. 84 HINDU HOMES. the census of India for 1880- '81 showing fewer women than men by five millions. The writer can, however, but fear that he has overstated the case. He would fain believe that the life of woman hood in Hindustan is not so dark as he has depicted, and he wishes to err upon the side of understatement. It is not in human nature but that many men should have appeared upon the peninsula worthy of wifely devotion who have duly reciprocated the adoration of their help meets. Of the innumerable matches made in Heaven, God has portioned out no small domestic felicity to India in all these ages. In many happy Hindu homes are wives who are models of docility. Is there not an ancient song, — "A wife is half the man, his truest friend"?1 Wilkins details the points given him by a native Christian Benga- lese gentleman in regard to married life in India : it accord ing with his observation that the Hindu woman has a good degree of domestic happiness, and practically more free dom particularly among the poorer classes than might be expected from the laws relating to women.2 "Life in an Indian Village"3 testifies that there is as much domestic affection as in more refined parts of the world, and that the women keenly enjoy the pleasures of village social life. Professor M. Monier-Williams says in regard to village life, that ' ' The wives of India, unless they belong to the upper classes, have complete freedom and are allowed to go any where. . . . They are generally loved; and cruel treat ment by brutal husbands is unknown. Indian wives often possess greater influence than wives of Europe ; and an old grandmother will sometimes rule a whole household with a rod of iron. . . . The women of India are generally satisfied with their position and desire no change."4 It is "Mahabharata, I, 3028. Sir M. Monier-Williams' translation. 'Modern Hinduism, pp. 356-8. "By T. Ramakrishna, B. A., pp. 100, 101. London, 1891. 'Brahmanism and Hinduism, pp. 387, 388. It is to be noted in this connection that the village population of India is twenty times that of the towns, so that the greater freedom of native women is of wide extent. EFFECT ON HINDU STOCK. 85 a pleasure, in this connection, to cite Dr. Jones, a highly honored resident of Hindustan during more than a quarter of a century: "The women of India compare favorably with the fair ones of any land in womanly grace, in beauty of figure, and in bewitching charm of manner. In her town and village, she finds ample freedom, and figures con spicuously at the great religious festivals. The Hindu women have as merry a laugh as their sisters in any other land.' They have learned to make the best of their lot and to rejoice in it.1 It is reported by the Eev. B. L. Day, in his work upon Bengal village life, tfiat, as a rule, the widows meet with much sympathy; and that in good fam ilies, a widow of advanced years acquires no small influence and respect. An educated Hindu does not think of his mother as wanting in mental culture and discipline through fier inability to read ; it is self-control, self-denial, the devel opment of character, which constitutes her practical educa tion.2 Monier-Williams speaks of the veneration in which mothers are held by their sons. A man adores his mother, even if he ignores his daughter and treats his wife as a thing. Yet, having said so much, to right up the impression made in regard to woman's condition in India, the facts still remain, — that by Hindu law and custom the woman is married when a mere child, v that she is by theory and often in practice in a servile relation to her husband, that she is kept upon a low intellectual plane, that in widowhood her life is made by religion harder than in any other part of the world, - that she lives in an atmosphere where social impurity is upheld by religious sanction, -^. and that the whole status of womanhood in India needs to be elevated on scientific grounds: not otherwise can 'India's Problem, pp. 146, 151. *Bipen Chandra Pal, in a recent address in Boston. 86 HINDU HOMES. the breed of men be improved; heredity is unrelenting. The wrongs of Hindu womanhood in all past ages have been avenged by the propagation of a race inferior to that which would have peopled Hindustan to-day had the domes tic and social status of the mothers of a great people been of a different character. And if it be true in view of all the facts that the village women keenly enjoy life, and are so generally satisfied with. their position as to desire no change, this very content is proof of the primitive condition of a society in which a woman is married without her choice when a child, in which the wife is subordinated as a servant, in which widowhood is treated with indignity, in which prostitution exists as an acceptable sacrifice to deity, and in which infanticide is- used to keep up the market price of girls. When the time comes in which well educated and widely traveled Hindus in great numbers can see the bearing of modern Hinduism upon womanhood, will they not assent to the affirmation of Sir Henry Maine,1 that the prime cause of the lack of national progress is the position the Hindus give to their women, the laws being harsh to excess ? Is it not true that, among the Vedic men, women were in better condition, that a wife or daughter might sacrifice as a husband or son, that women had sufficient education to understand the formulas uttered, and that property descended to daughters where there were no sons? There. was no child marriage ; no self-immolation or peculiar pri vation for widows, nor prohibition of the re-marriage of widows. That widows should be permitted to re-marry is now advocated by some advanced Hindu thinkers; and it must be that the whole status of womanhood in other par ticulars will some day be modified through the attention of educated Hindus to the great laws of a higher social evolu tion, — justice, fairmindedness, and the general improve ment of the race through improving the maternal stock. Will not this give to India Hinduism in a modified form, 'Early History of Institutions, pp. 340, 341. BUDDHIST HOMES. 87 the system adapting itself to a new age ? And through the hosts of philanthropic workers from all parts of the globe, who are now seeking to solve sociological problems in India, will not Hindu society be permeated with certain moral principles that experience has proved to be of value to Occidental peoples? With the great increase of native population, under peaceful British rule, and the improved industrial conditions incident to the investment of British capital, and the introduction of new ideas of domestic and social life and of helpful religious thought, it is to be looked for that the densely peopled peninsula will contribute greatly to the general good of the future ages of mankind through the upbuilding of still happier homes upon the sunny plains of India. II. In the Buddhist founder, Gautama prince of India, there reappeared all the intellectual acuteness and spirit uality of the early Aryan sages. He not only gave religious instruction to women, but it is even said that he thought to establish an order corresponding to the nuns of a later age in Christendom. Nothing could have better indicated his world-wide departure from the Brahmanical traditions. Among the early Buddhists, women were several times declared to have reached the stage of spiritual excellence, so rarely attained.1 In those countries, where Buddhism struck deep root, the condition of women was much improved ;2 certainly so in Southern Asia. This was really one ground of the deserved popularity of pristine Bud dhism, that women gained by it throughout the East.3 'Buddhist Birth-Stories, p. 204. T. Rhys Davids. 2Bigaudet's Life of Gaudama, Vol. II, p. 33, note. Rangoon, 1866. "Yet the civilization of Ceylon, although manifestly superior in some respects to that of Brahmanical India, has failed, after more than two thousand years of Buddhism, to elevate the homes of all the people. Tide Buddhism by Rt. Rev. Reginald S. Cople- 88 BUDDHIST HOMES. No country in the world is more purely Buddhist than Siam has been for twelve hundred years. Here we see what Buddhism can accomplish for the home, during thirty- five generations of absolute and undisturbed sway. As to the masses of people, can it be said otherwise than that their homes are not unlike those which we imagine in study ing, a primitive people uplifted to a certain plane and arrested in development? The native houses are raised upon low piles, to be out of the way of floods and of rep tiles. The sides are constructed of bamboo, and the roof of palm. There is no chimney ; but a fire is built in a box, filling the house with smoke. The table is a foot square and six inches high. It is the rule to eat whenever anyone is hungry, every one washing his own dishes. There are plenty of fingers but no forks. The refuse is dropped through cracks in the floor. A woman has little sewing to do in clothing herself, her husband, or her children. In an almost daily bath, the clothing is worn into the water, then dried upon the person ; this being so, no other family-wash is required.1 With domestic cares so light, there is plenty of time for women to work out of doors, — this being their principal employment. The Siamese woman as a rule looks as rugged as a man, and she is the stronger of the two in rural districts. Siam is the most beautiful region of the Eastern Seas, a perpetual summer land with fruits green and ripe appearing upon the same tree, a land of bloom and flowers. An overflowing, enriching river runs through its plain for four hundred and fifty miles, the vale being ston, bishop of Colombo, p. 483: it being stated that in whole districts marriage is unknown among the lower classes of Bud dhists, the rite being most respected in regions where native Christian homes are found. 'Neale, an Englishman in the Royal Siamese Service, residing long in the Bankok of half a century ago — to whom the writer is indebted for much information, — speaks of a bath as the first thing in the morning and last at night, with one at noon in very hot days. — Narrative of a Residence at the Capital of the King dom of Siam, by F. A. Neale. London, 1852. SIAM. 89 about the width of the American Eed Eiver country in the north. This arable land is intersected everywhere by cross canals of two or three score miles in length: the whole coun try is a garden of luxuriant vegetation, and so beautiful that words cannot express it. The bird plumage is the richest in the world, as if the very wild flowers were in flight. It is a country of amazing resources, for the most part undeveloped. Bankok is the Venice of the East, a city of canals; and fifteen thousand homes and shops are afloat, with nearly a hundred and fifty thousand people living in house-boats. At some points the city is seven miles wide, and it extends seven miles upon either side of the river, which is a quarter of a mile wide. The Siamese woman is treated as an equal by the man; and in marital relations, to Neale with his English eyes it appeared that if there was not love between them there was almost friend ship — as he quaintly puts it. Mr. Henry Alabaster,1 how ever, who knew the people well, says that there is a great deal of domestic happiness ; and that suicides, and husband or wife murder, are rare. Boys are schooled by the Bud dhist monks for a year or two : and at twelve each lad begins life for himself, with a canoe for an outfit and sometimes a little money. At fourteen he marries. A girl learns to keep house till eight, then to peddle in a boat on the river. At twelve she is married ; if not, at thirteen she is — among the great multitude of the poor who must all work — sold at auction for a serf to anyone appearing within a month. At twenty-five or thirty, the child-couple husband and wife, have grown old, with from six to ten children. Travelers in Siam picture to us the aquatic population as living like ducks. The parental boatman and his wife followed by a flock of babies, each one paddling a tiny boat; mere chil dren becoming expert in physical exercises, and early fitting themselves to set up establishments of their own, — with their own babies to care for, and to cast off with early neglect. This is not, however, the way the natives look 'Wheel of the Law. London, 1871. 90 BUDDHIST HOMES. at it. They are affectionate toward their children, who are taught to entertain respect for the aged ; and the Bud dhist beatitudes bestow a blessing on those who support father and mother, cherish wife and child, and follow a peaceful calling. Looked at from the point of view of the highest social evolution, does not such coming and going appear like the generations of man primeval ; save that the recent have their food more regularly than the earlier, and they wear more ornaments, and have more semblance of civilization? Among those well-to-do, there is the same modicum of education, a certain material ease, with mod erate aspirations in life. To Neale, fifty years ago, the people as a whole, to his Occidental sense, appeared to be, not only grossly ignorant and superstitious, but lost to all sentiments of moral virtue. Those having the highest out look in life, with spiritual longings, dwelt apart in monas teries, as they have done century after century. Their blood has not vivified the population.1 By theory they look upon domestic life as a snare for the soul. By theory they repress all desire, even for the improvement of society about them. They let things drift like the river. Many centuries ago they found primitive peoples in Southern Asia, and bade them treat their women well and live at peace with their neighbors, and in certain particulars ele vated the entire population throughout vast national areas, yet left them still in a semi-pristine condition. If to Siam 'The Effect of Buddhist Celibacy on Racial Stock: — If we consider the number of Buddhists to-day, and how many there probably have been in the less densely peopled districts of preceding centuries, and consider also the probable proportion of monks and lamas in any given generation, judging by what is true to-day, then the conclusion is inevitable that there have been, all told, many more men in the maturity of their powers withdrawn from society and leading celibate lives than the total present Buddhist population of the globe. The withdrawal of the wisest and the best in every generation from the progenitors of the race, when carried out on so grand a scale during sixty or seventy generations, must have exerted great influence in the hereditary deterioration of the race-stock in all Buddhist lands. WOMEN OF BURMAH. 9L the test of heredity be applied, it can but be looked for that the crowding generations coming and going need the touch of other ideas and ideals, that the individual homes of the people may afford the basis for a progressive society. It is needless to detail what are, in the main, similar social and domestic conditions in Burmah. This country, so long known to the West as farther India, is, next after' Siam, the best illustration of the ancient Buddhist civiliza tion, undisturbed during more than two score generations. by diverse influences, brought down intact to our own times. Burmese home life is in singular contrast with the Hindu. It is stated by Bishop Titcomb,1 who lived long in Burmah, that "The women in Buddhist countries are not confined to their own houses (as in parts of India and Turkey), or debarred the privilege of appearing fearlessly in public. They are seen in the streets freely walking about with their children ; they sit in the bazaars ; they ride publicly in carriages ; they are the companions of their male- relatives, and although, according to all Asiatic usage, they are regarded as an inferior sex by their lords, yet they are far more elevated in every respect than in other regions. where Buddhism is not established." Early marriage is the custom, but it is made by the parties and not by their parents. Polygamy is not common; the census showing plural wives in only one family out of every five hundred. Divorce is so easy as to be had for the asking ; yet it is not common. The women are independent to a degree unusuaL in the East ; not unf requently engaging in trade and accu mulating property upon their own account, and they man age all domestic finances. Certain features of the home. life that are pictured by Nisbet, appear to have come down from rude ages. In gaining a firm foothold in Japan, in the seventh cen tury, Buddhism effected no considerable change in the native ideas and customs relating to home life, which were not unlike those of India; and to this day has failed to 'Buddhism, pp. 122, 123. Religious Tract Society. London. 92 BUDDHIST HOMES. change them. Woman Was anciently considered as inferior to man as the earth is to Heaven, and treated accordingly. "Woman is the creature of man," it was said in a famous book, ' ' The Greater Learning for Women. " As a piece of property, she was wholly at the disposal of her male rela tives; and, among the poor, was subject to sale for a life of infamy. In "The Greater Learning," as cited by Dr. M. L. Gordon,1 it is said that "The customs of antiquity did not allow men and women to sit in the same apartment, to keep their wearing apparel in the same place, or to trans mit to each other anything directly from hand to hand." A daughter 's marriage was arranged by others without her ¦assent; and often at so early an age that her babe was but a new plaything to dress and admire. She could not by law hold property ; and, if left a widow, her unweaned son became the head of the house. "The only qualities that befit a woman," said the "Greater Learning," "are gentle obedience, chastity, mercy and quietness." "After mar riage woman's chief duty is to honor her father-in-law and mother-in-law. On every point she must inquire of them, and abandon herself to their direction." "A woman should look to her husband as Heaven itself and never weary of thinking how she may yield to her husband, and escape celestial castigation. " "Such is the stupidity of her character that it is incumbent on her in every par ticular to distrust herself, and to obey her husband." '"Woman's nature is passive (literally shade). This pas- siveness being of the nature of night, is dark. Hence, as viewed from, the standard of man's nature, the foolishness of woman fails to understand the duties that lie before her very eyes. " " Gusai ' ' — ' ' my ignorant wife ' ' — she is called to-day in popular speech. Buddhism in Japan teaches that women are greater sinners than men, and that they can never enter Nirvana unless first changed into men. 'Of the Doshisha College, Kyoto. Author of the American Mis sionary in Japan, and a series of valuable works upon the ¦country. WOMANHOOD IN JAPAN. 93. The Buddhist magazine, The Bukkyo, in 1892, had an article upon the "Nine Difficulties in Life"; it was the. second difficulty "To be a man and yet remain free from the evil influence of women": the writer urging that the women are simply obstacles to men, — this being really the monastic theory throughout Buddhism. Since Gautama himself forsook his wife, child and kindred, and led a her mit life, that he might find the greater good, it has been always held as the Buddhist ideal to annihilate love as well as anger, to cherish no desires for this world or the next. "Let, therefore, no man love anything. Loss of the beloved is evil. Those who love nothing and hate nothing have no- fetters."1 This doctrine tends easily to emphasize the dis abilities put upon Japanese wives by such teachings as have come down to the present generations from the ancient books of their nation. "At the present moment," says. Professor Chamberlain, translator of "The Greater Learn ing," "the greatest duchess or marchioness in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and carries for him; bows down humbly in the hall when my lord sallies forth ; waits upon him at meals, and may be divorced at his good pleasure." It is much to say of the Japanese matron that "she accepts her humble position with the utmost sweetness and grace, in faithful, self-forgetting devotion. ' '2 Divorce is allowed for any one of seven reasons, or prac tically an illimitable number. The law only requires that the husband erase the wife's name from the official register of his family and have it re-entered on the register of her family. On her part, the wife hesitates to divorce an unfaithful husband, since the law gives her children to their father. The official records show that the annual divorces for 1884^1890 averaged thirty-nine per cent, of the marriages;3 in 1897, thirty-four per cent.; in 1899, less 'The Dhammapada, Max Miiller's Sacred Books of the East, Vol. X, p. 211. 2Dr. M. L. Gordon. 'American Statistical Association Publications, III, 515. $4 BUDDHIST HOMES. than twenty-three. Concubinage does much to destroy Japanese home life; the mother of many children being sometimes divorced if she objects. Captain Golovnin of the Eussian navy, who was a captive in Japan, 1811-1813, says that houses of ill fame were not considered infamous, and that the keepers enjoyed the same rights as merchants.1 This was the outcome of Shintoism and Buddhism in Japan after ages of undisputed sway. Griffis, in his Mikado's Empire, says that in moral characteristics the average Jap anese is frank, honest, faithful, kind, gentle, courteous, confiding, affectionate, filial and loyal. To this he pain fully adds that love of truth for its own sake, chastity, and temperance are not characteristic virtues; and it is this point that was emphasized by Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop ;2 and by Neesima, the founder of the Doshisha College at Kyoto, — the Shinto and Buddhist habits inimical to domes tic life leading him, as a youth, to seek a better ideal for the homes of his people.3 In Sendai and the provinces the Japanese authorities voted in 1890 to put an end to the houses of ill fame ; three years being allowed to adjust property claims. This vote was not due to Shinto and Buddhist influence. At a festive gathering in honor of Dr. De Forest, an American mission ary, the editor of one of the large dailies said, "Look all over Japan. Our forty millions have a higher standard of morality than they have ever known. There is not a boy or girl throughout the empire that has not heard of the one-man-one-woman doctrine. When we inquire the cause, 'Memoirs of a Captivity, Vol. Ill, p. 22, second edition. Lon don, 1824. 'Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, II, p. 240. London, 1880. 'Story of Joseph Neesima, by A. S. Hardy, LL. D. Boston, 1892. As to the relations between the sexes in Japan, a few years ago, the United State Consular Reports upon Labor in Foreign Countries, Vol. Ill, p. 324, 1884, indicate how the whole matter appears to an intelligent foreigner, recalling what books on primitive customs say of the promiscuous herding of barbaric tribes. WOMANHOOD IN JAPAN. 95 we find it in the religion of Jesus Christ." It is now widely reeognized in Japan that the doctrine of chastity for man as well as for woman is one of the contributions of Christianity to national ethics. The rights of wife and child, says Dr. D. C. Greene, are now better secured than formerly. And in the present period of swift transition, the ideal of home life often more nearly approaches that of Christendom. Looked at in a large way, the position of Japanese women is better than it is in any other Eastern nation. The great change in the attitude toward them is manifested by the fact that the public school system of Japan employs twelve thousand women teachers and that in fifty-two of the higher schools two-thirds of the teachers are women.1 The population of Japan, which for a long time had remained stationary, has rapidly increased since Western ideas began to be adopted, — immorality having been checked, infanticide abolished, marriage encouraged, and food supplies made more certain ; the census increased from thirty-three to forty-two millions between 1872 and 1895. The blue book of 1905 gives a population of nearly forty- eight millions, and three millions in Formosa. III. The domestic customs of no other great people, so nearly homogeneous as the Chinese, more nearly approach those of a race little elevated above primeval condition. This is noted in ancestor worship, which the rest of the world shook off ages ago, except Japan and certain barbaric tribes. In no other country has this early cult held its ground so long and affected so vast a population. No other great people, except the Eomans, have maintained the custom for a very extended length of time in connection with a semi-civiliza tion. It has forty centuries behind it. It has been of value in upbuilding the family, giving to it permanence. The 'De Forest's Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom, p. 49. 96 CHINESE HOME LIFE. worship has served a religious end in the absence of a pop ular knowledge of God: of religious observances this has been the most sacred. The ancestral tablets are worshipped in the same manner as the popular idols. It is an expres sion of filial duty, discharging the debt due to one's. parents. It has kept alive a belief in immortality, and a belief that ancestral spirits still guard their posterity.. Men seek the approval of their witnessing ancestors. As a system of commemorative rites, which was all the meaning Confucius put into the custom, it is likely still to survive age after age. That it has persistently grown and gathered strength during so many scores of generations is due to Confucius. Single sentences of the Chinese classics have been among the most potent of literary powers. Upon a saying of Mencius every household in China has been built — ' ' Of the three offences against filial piety, the great est is to be childless." "The greatest sin is to have no son." Every man must leave sons to continue the ances tral worship generation after generation.1 For this purpose — to offer sacrifice for their parents — daughters are of no avail. They are not of value except to dispose of, to some other family, for the further propaga tion of the race. In Professor Legge's translation of the Book of Odes, one of the oldest of the classics, it is said of the daughters of the king: "It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good. ' ' The women to-day are by cus tom never counted in the census of a village.2 ' ' The mean. ones within the gate" is a common designation for woman. "Slave-girl,"3 instead of "daughter," is the word in ordi nary use. She is, by the injunction of the great lawgiver,. a slave to the three obediences: her father and elder brother; her husband; her sons. It is never for her to develop an independent individuality; and from this Con- 'Vide President William A. P. Martin's The Chinese; Lore of Cathay; Cycle of Cathay. 2Dr. William Ashmore, of Swatow. 8Ya-t'ou. Arthur H. Smith. CHILDHOOD BETROTHAL. 97 fucian condition none can release her. Even to the most saintly of the Buddhist women of China, no other reward is promised but to be born as a man in the next transmi gration.1 Yet since marriage — to secure the succession' of male issue — is the main business of fife, daughters are in regu lar demand : and in the desire to dispatch life 's main busi ness early, betrothals are universally made by the parents, binding children to marry, long before the character of the boy is formed. Not unfrequently the marriage occurs before the conventional age, seventeen and twenty for bride and groom. On the part of the bride's parents, in South ern China, it is practically a sale, as much so as the sale of cattle. In other parts a dowry may be given. Includ ing the provinces north and west customs differ, and the prices differ. Wives themselves are often sold among the vast multitudes of the poor, in hard famine years.2 Betrothed as children, the children rarely know it; the bride not seeing the groom till marriage. Love is not one of the antecedent considerations or thought of, although it may be developed after marriage. The best of the Chinese merchants, as known to the European traders, are devoted to their families ; and Professor E. K. Douglas testifies that there is a vast deal of quiet, happy domestic life in China. When married, the boy is as much under the control of his father as before, and his wife under the control of her mother-in-law. Under the patriarchal system, "the boy and girl who are married are not a new family," says Smith, "but the latest branch in a tall family tree, inde pendent of which they have no family existence." The sons bring their wives home, and finally the oldest brother 'President Martin saw two or three thousand women — modest, graceful, attractive, not stupid but ignorant, — at a Buddhist festi val, praying that (in their next transmigration) they might be born into the world as men. — Cycle of Cathay. 2Arthur H. Smith's Tillage Life in China; Archdeacon Gray's China; Lansdell's Chinese Central Asia; Rockhill's Land of the Lamas. 7 98 CHINESE HOME LIFE. succeeds the father as head of the house, ruling over his younger brothers, — all earnings going into the common fund. The bride upon coming into this household does not come as her husband's companion. There are no family meals in common, nor does the wife wait upon her husband as in India. The men in the morning are often seen break fasting by the roadside, squatting each in front of his own door. The house-mother within reigns supreme, this being the only opportunity she has in a lifetime to develop her own personality; so long as she lives, her daughter-in-law is always a ' ' child. ' ' If the ' ' child ' ' is capable of raising a domestic typhoon upon any and every occasion, she will hold her own with her mother-in-law and with her husband ; otherwise she relapses into silent submission, subject to ill- treatment until she in turn becomes a mother-in-law. As to domestic vice, it was stated by Professor S. Wells Williams that the Chinese "are vile and polluted in a shocking degree,". — but the untold misery of concubinage is not common unless to secure male issue. Confucian divorce may be for any one of seven reasons as to the wife, but the law recognizes no ground upon which the wife can divorce her husband.1 A divorced woman cannot return to her childhood home, there being no pro vision for her support, the land being for her parents and her brothers : on this account her family contest a divorce, unless she can be married elsewhere. The pressure of poverty in China is so great that infan ticide extensively prevails when parents cannot afford to keep a daughter till old enough to marry.2 The Con fucianists, the Taoists, the Buddhists, the great literary class, the governmental power, the moral maxims of revered 'Professor Douglas' China. London, 1882. 2Upon Chinese infanticide, vide Legge's Religions of China, p. Ill; Williams' Middle Kingdom, II, p. 98; Smith's' Tillage Life, pp. 308, 309; Doolittle's Social Life among the Chinese; Martin's Cycle of Cathay, pp. 107, 108; Professor E. H. Parker's China Past and Present, pp. 387-397. London, 1903. CONGESTING POPULATION. 99 sages, the hero worship and ancestral worship of forty cen turies, the official recognition of God once a year, — have all been powerless to protect the Chinese people from this crime, that illustrates the low value put upon womanhood. The great doctrine of Mencius — to leave "posterity" for the support of ancestral worship — has led the poorest, the most vicious, the most diseased, and the most criminal — whatever else they do in life — to make sure of sons to honor them after death. To do them this honor, every household remains near the ancestral graves, and the whole population is congested within fixed areas, — although there are districts to which they might remove. This is the gen eral statement: Chinese emigration to other lands being relatively limited, and, in the intent, a temporary expedient. In the awful pressure of poverty through over-population the Chinese woman is the drudge, ceaselessly bearing chil dren, ceaselessly at work by the way or in the fields as well as within the house — and ceaselessly contributing to the vast quota of female suicides in China, sweeping off now and then in an epidemic of self-destruction. Yet, however true, this fails to give a correct impression : Chinese home life is more cheery, — or it looks so to strang ers. The villagers appear to be of a happy race. But pes simism justly falls back upon heredity, and claims that the ingrained habits of four score generations have hindered the rise of new domestic ideals in the empire ; and that ani mal spirits are everywhere found among uncultured peoples. IV. The Occidental proverb, that there are no homes in Asia, finds no exception in Moslem lands ; and for the Turks, they have too recently come out of their primitive condition to easily honor womanhood. Female infanticide was common in Arabia before Mohammed introduced a new rule. Yet the women of the desert were relatively free. The old-time 100 MOSLEM HOMES. poems show that their personal standing was better than it has ever been under Islam.1 As to legal status : a daughter shares equally with a son in her father 's estate ; the property she has before marriage is always under her control; the courts are as open to her as to a man; her husband must provide for her a dowry, and this she has in tne event of divorce ; divorce is impos sible on the part of the wife, being wholly at the option of the husband without assigning any reason. The Koran, toward mothers, commends reverential and affectionate con duct, — "The son gains paradise at the feet of the mother"; and to those who bear and train children the same rank is bestowed in Heaven that is given to martyrs. By perpetual Koranic law women are separated from the outer world by mantle and veil upon the street, but great freedom of move ment is allowed if they associate only with women. By custom they do not attend public prayers in the mosques; it being thought not conducive to devotion. Mohammed's third wife, Ayesha, was but nine years old when married; she dropped her playthings when he came for her. The majority of Moslem girls to-day are married between nine and twelve ; and at sixteen have passed their prime. This is true at least among the fifty-seven millions of Moslems in India. In Turkey the age of marriage for girls is from eleven to fourteen, for boys seventeen or more.2 As in Hindustan, so in no small part of the Turkish- Empire the old-time patriarchal system is still in vogue; families of thirty or forty being not uncommon, in which every wife is almost literally the slave of her mother-in-law. Mohammed had, first and last, sixteen wives, and so many at one time that his followers found fault that they 'Studies in a Mosque, Stanley Lane Poole, pp. 23-25. London, 1883. 'People of Turkey. Edited by Stanley Lane Poole, II, 79. Lon don, 1878. Dwight's Constantinople, pp. 123, 124. Dwight, p. 102, says that the consent of the bride is not essen tial, and she is never present at the marriage ceremony, her legal representatives signing the contract. PLURAL WIVES. 101 were limited each to four. The thirty-third Sura was inserted in the Koran to justify this liberty: "A peculiar privilege granted unto thee above the rest of the true believ ers. ' ' So, too, he had a special permit to justify his taking the divorced wife of Cyd, his adopted son : " No crime is to be charged on the prophet as to what God hath allowed him."1 Among the Arabs of the seventh century Moham med looked upon women, says Stanley Lane Poole, "as charming snares to the believer, ornamental articles of fur niture difficult to keep in order, pretty playthings ; but that a woman should be the counsellor and companion of man does not seem to have occurred to him. Mohammed was not the man to make a social reform affecting women, nor was Arabia the country in which such a change could be made, nor Arab ladies, perhaps, the best subjects for the experiment."2 The Koran permits to believers as many concubine slave-women as may be desired; but wives are limited to four at one time, — although it is easy by fre quent divorces to multiply them. Bishop Thoburn says that among Mohammedans in India, divorce is so common that a man may be married a great many times; and even for a limited time, as for so many months.3 "Polygamy is exceptional in the land of the Nile," says Lane's Modern Egypt, "but there are certainly not many persons in Cairo who have not divorced one wife if they have been long married," and "many have during ten years married twenty or thirty."4 Earely does a Turk have more than 'The motive for this multiplication of wives was doubtless the desire for male issue, and no one may speak upon it upon other ground. A notable Moslem tradition, says Professor Macdonald — as well authenticated as any tradition, — declares it to be a saying of the Prophet that "Adultery of the eyes is looking"; which is explained by Moslem scholars as meaning exactly what Jesus meant, — Uthman threatening a sinner of this sort with punishment if he did not repent. 'Studies in a Mosque, pp. 102, 103. "India and Malaysia. By J. M. Thoburn, thirty-three years a missionary in India, p. 368. New York, 1892. *Vol. I, pp. 199, 268, 273-4. Third edition, London, 1842. 102 MOSLEM HOMES. one wife -,1 it being too costly, since the wives by law must be treated with equality or the expense for one matched for that of others. Among the wealthy this is no obstacle, and the slave market is always open. The Koran main tains polygamy, divorce, and slavery as perpetual institu tions in Islam. Tamerlane, in conquering Bayazet I, cap tured his harem; and never since has the Turkish sultan had a wife, his harem being composed of slaves — every slave receiving freedom who has a son born to her. This court fashion is very influential with those who can afford the expense. The effect is to cast a stigma upon the reli gious system of the Mussulmans. Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, who has for years made a specialty of Mohammedan studies, a thoroughgoing English scholar of high rank in his depart ment, has spoken strongly on this point: — "As a social sys tem, Islam is a complete failure : it has misunderstood the relation of the sexes, upon which the whole character of the nation's life hangs, and, in degrading woman, has degraded each successive generation of their children down an increasing scale of infamy and corruption, until it seems almost impossible to reach a lower level of vice."2 Mr. Poole (page 107) cites the correspondent of a well-known 'Doctor Macdonald cites Malcolm's Five Years in a Persian Town, to the effect that the law of dowry was so worked in Persia, and in Malcolm's time in India, as to render divorce of the wife impossible; that is, if the wife's relatives were powerful enough so to arrange it. The man also might be put under bonds not to take a second wife. The general statement is made by Professor H. P. Smith: that comparatively few Mohammedans have more than one wife at a time; but there are comparatively few who have not put away more than one wife in order to take another. — The Bible and Islam; the Ely Lectures for 1897, p. 362. New York. 'Studies in a Mosque, pp. 101, 102. As to purity of life, it is said by the Prophet: "God wishes to make it light for you, for man was created weak. If ye avoid great sins from which ye are forbidden, we will cover your offences, and make you enter with a noble entrance." Sura IV, 30-35. As a comment, consult Dwight's Constantinople, p. 61. SLAVE WOMEN. 103 London newspaper: "Between Christianity and Islam, it is enough to notice that there is apparently no country where the first is the prevailing religion, in which woman is hindered by religion from obtaining a position almost, if not quite, on an equality with man ; and similarly, no coun try where the second prevails where woman is not in a degraded position. Under Christianity, she is everywhere free. Under Islam, she is everywhere a slave.1 In Tur key (to continue Poole's citation), "when a son is born there is nothing but congratulations; when a daughter, nothing but condolences. A polite Turk, if he has occa sion to mention his wife, will do so with an apology. He regards it as a piece of rudeness to mention the fact to you ; and it would be equally rude for him to inquire after your wife, or to hint that he knew you were guilty of anything so unmentionable as to have one. As the Turk never means to see much of his wife, intelligence or education is a mat ter of small account. If he can afford it, he will have a Circassian wife, a woman who has been reared with the intention of being sold; who has not an idea in her head, who has seen nothing, and knows nothing. She is beau tiful, and beauty is all he requires." Circassian slavery is a regular industry, the slave being reared for it, and voluntarily entering it at a price — -deliberately choosing a life of shame. "Concubinage," says Mr. Poole, "is the black stain of Islam. It is a system of white slaves passing from master to master. ' ' Mrs. Isabella Bird-Bishop reports that she was storm-bound or peril-bound in more than fifty women's houses in Oriental travel. "In a rich man's harem," she says,2 "there are women of all ages and colors, 'Broadly yet truly it may be said that the seclusion of Moslem women, with all its disastrous effects at the present day for a population of two hundred millions, runs back to the fact that A'Isha, the fourteen-year-old wife of Mohammed, once lost a neck lace under what the gossips of the time thought were suspicious circumstances. — Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, etc. By D. B. Macdonald, D. D. 'Address Ecumenical Conference, New York, 1900. 104 MOSLEM HOMES. girl children, and very young boys. There are the favorite and other legitimate wives; concubines, who have recog nized, but very slender rights; discarded wives, who have been favorites in their day and who have passed into prac tical slavery to their successors ; numbers of domestic slaves and old women ; daughters-in-law, and child or girl widows whose lot is deplorable, and many others. I have seen as many as two hundred in one house — a great crowd, privacy being unknown, grossly ignorant, with intolerable curiosity, forcing on a stranger abominable or frivolous questions, then relapsing into apathy, but rarely broken, except by out breaks of hate and the results of successful intrigue. It may be said that there are worse evils than apathy. There are worse evils, and they prevail to a great extent in upper- class houses. On more than fifty occasions I have been asked by women for drugs which would kill the reigning favorite, or her boy, or make her ugly or odious. In the house of the Turkish governor of an important vilayet, where I was storm-bound for a week, the favorite wife was ill, and the husband besought me to stay in her room lest some of the other women should make away with her. My presence was no restraint on the scenes of fiendishness which were enacted. Scandal, intrigue, fierce and cruel jeal ousies, counting jewels, painting the face, staining the hair, quarrels, eating to excess, getting rid of time by sleeping, listening to impure stories by professional reciters, and watching small dramas played by slaves, occupy the unbounded leisure of eastern upper-class women. Of these plays, one of which was produced for my entertainment, I can only say that nothing more diabolically vicious could enter the polluted imagination of man, and it was truly pitiful to see the keen, precocious interest with which young girl children, brought up amid the polluting talk of their elders, gloated over scenes from which I was compelled to avert my eyes."1 'For the same thing in Christian domestic circles, see St. John's Life in a Levantine Family. — Noted by D. B. M. INFLUENCE ON RACIAL STOCK. 105 Do we inquire what the principle of heredity is doing for Turkish society? During the formative years of life, little children of both sexes, the children of the wealthiest and most influential citizens, are brought up in an atmosphere of pollution. The wife and daughter of a British consul, residing here and there in the Turkish Empire during twenty years, prepared a book upon "The people of Tur key," which was edited by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, to whom Islam is so greatly indebted for laborious years in expounding their faith, customs and history. The language of this book is quoted, with slight modifications and re-ar rangement, for the sake of connected statement and clear ness upon the point in hand.1 The citation relates not so much to the great mass of the people as to the higher classes, the leaders in social life, and those through whom the government is administered. It appears that, so far as concerns the child training of the higher classes, a sedate deportment — for which the Turk is famous — is expected in the presence of his father and of guests; but the forma tion of moral character is left to childish impulse, directed by menials and slaves. In those early years spent at home, says this English matron, when the child ought to have instilled into him some germ of those principles of conduct by which men must walk in the world if they will hold up their heads among civilized nations, the Turkish child is taught only the first steps towards those vicious habits of mind and body which have made his race what it is.2 Each boy of the better class of families in Turkey has a dadi, a slave 'The People of Turkey. Compare Vol. II, pp. 153, 160, et al. 2It should, however, be held firmly in mind that — whatever the usage may be in too many families, — the theory of Islam places great stress upon the suitable moral and religious training of boys. — Tide an Article upon the Moral Education of the Young among Muslims, by Professor Duncan Black Macdonald, in the International Journal of Ethics, April, 1905. If there is discrepancy between theory and practice, the same is true of Christian lands. 106 MOSLEM HOMES. girl, to care for him from infancy; often an evil use is made of this intimacy. Besides, there is a lala, a male slave who has the oversight of both sexes when out of the harem. He takes them into the servants' hall, where the most obscene jokes are played upon them, and where the conversation is most revolting. Out of sight of their parents, and in the company of menials, they have no restraint placed upon them in the use of the most licentious language. There is no reserve of language observed by their elders before young girls. If there be truth in the saying of De Tocqueville, that the home is the corner-stone of the nation, how can Turkey become a highly civilized state? To recur to the Studies in a Mosque:1 "It is the sensual and degraded view of woman that destroys to so great an extent the good influence which the better part of the teaching of Islam might exert in the East. So long as women are held in so light an esteem, they will remain vapid, bigoted, and sensual; and so long as mothers are what most Moslem mothers are now, their children will be ignorant, fanatical, and vicious. . . . It is quite certain that there is no hope for the Turks so long as Turkish women remain what they are and home training is the initiation of vice." "In all civilized and wealthy countries, the social system of Islam exerts a ruin ous influence on every class, and if there is to be any great future for the Mohammedan world, that system of society must be done away." The writer's private letters of inquiry, have, however, elicited more cheering reports from different portions of the Turkish Empire.2 A medical missionary, with access to great numbers of native homes in Turkey in Asia, writes : "It is not true that either women or children are ill-treated in this part of Turkey. The Turk rarely marries more than one wife; and the affection displayed in the harem might often teach a lesson to homes in more highly favored 'Pages 108, 114. 2Bearing date in April, 1894. COUNTER CONSIDERATIONS. 107 lands." Another correspondent widely separated from the physician alluded to, describes a very delightful Moslem home, that of a Pasha: "The husband is kind; the wife intelligent, devout, and very good to the poor." And he cites his experience of twenty years, to show the sociolog ical gains through the increasing attention which Turkish husbands and fathers give to securing suitable medical attendance. Another letter, from an American philan thropist residing in Central Turkey, relates that within a. score of years, it has been noted, that the old patriarchal system is to some extent yielding to the pressure brought to bear by newly married youth of some education, who forsake father and mother, and set up their own home, to train their own children. It is very gratifying, too, that young men, not a few, of well-to-do families are gaining, through education in England, a much higher notion of women, and what service they are capable of rendering to men as companions. V. If the foregoing sections of this chapter have not over stated the ease, — still they may leave an exaggerated impression through lack of data for brief corrective state ments to make the generalizations more just: of some two hundred million families alluded to under the different religions, there must be among them more domestic love and happiness than appears in books of history or travelers' tales, and love must largely illumine the face of the world. Is not the heart of youth forever upspringing in purely animal vivacity, that gives a vast zest to living? The fes tal crowds in sunny lands have no such sense of domestic depression as might be easily inferred from general state ments that make little allowance for the immense fund of individual and conjugal happiness, found among all peoples — the gift of the All-Father provided in the very constitution of man, which, at its best and in normal con- 108 HOME BUILDING. dition, is always aspiring, hopeful and resolute. Would it not be possible to give an utterly false impression of home life in Christendom, by recording the infelicity of the poor est of the poor, and of the most vicious of the vile, and of abnormal erratic types, without balancing the statement by recording what the observer may not have noted in the lives of the better class of citizens — the unrecorded joy of myriads of homes ? It is, however, evident enough that the social evolution of mankind is in its elementary stages ; and to any unbiased student it will appear that Christianity has been very slowly and very imperfectly evolving those cardinal prin ciples which appear to differentiate home life in Christen dom from that of non-Christian countries. Perhaps the most that can be done is to inquire whether there has been in Christendom a tendency toward a continuously pro gressive development of the individuality of woman in her domestic life, and, if so, in what way it has been brought about, and what relation it sustains towards producing an improved stock of manhood in subsequent generations ; and to inquire what principles have been at work that have affected the home life of childhood in Christendom, tend ing towards the development of man 's higher powers. In pursuing these inquiries, it will be assumed that Christendom is at one with Judaism in respect to a certain line of ideas transmitted from generation to generation.1 These inquiries are tentative only; and a disclaimer is 'For a brief statement of the substantial unity of Hebraism and Christianity, with the points of difference, vide "The Philoso phy of the Christian Religion." By A. M. Fairbairn, LL. D., pp. 261, 262. Harnack's Expansion of Christianity, New York, 1904, refers to the Judaic background of the religious movement described in the New Testament: pp. 300, 301, 357-361, 363. "Christianity was a Jewish development." — Toy's "Judaism and Christianity," pp. 1, 370. Boston, 1890. Yet, like botanists working upon cut flowers, there are writers upon Christian society who neglect the roots. JUDAIC AND CHRISTIAN IDEAS. 109 entered as to unholy emphasizing any comparisons that may be made with non-Christian systems upon any point. It is not so important to question whether the principles that have been outworking in Judaism and Christianity have been also at work in other religions, as to ask whether the present difference in domestic life and social efficiency between Christian and non-Christian peoples is probably due in no small measure to the prominence given to those principles in Christendom. (1) As to the slow evolution age after age of a higher and higher ideal of the home, for one thing there has been in Judaism and Christianity a gradual change in the atti tude of the bridegroom, in ceasing to think of his bride as a chattel, and entertaining towards her a romantic love. By early custom the father acted as to a son's marriage. At first the bride's consent was not requisite, — the consulta tion of Eebeeca by her brother indicating no rule. Yet in later custom she was advised with, if of age ; if not of age, she could when older insist on divorce, so that her assent was needful in either case. Marriage, therefore, came finally to be contracted through personal choice alone, which implied mutual love as the basis. At first it had been like the purchase of a chattel by the groom, as among barbaric European tribes in later ages: so Jacob was said to have bought his wives by years of service. In early Hebrew custom the law exacted a payment to the bride's father of not less than fifty silver shekels. This was paid at betrothal, upon which the bride at once made her home with the groom ; the nuptials being celebrated later at con venience within a time fixed by law. In Judea a betrothal feast was observed.1 Little by little a change came about as to an invariable payment of money; romantic love appears as a motive, in the meager records, as indeed it had been in the days of bargaining,2 — the stories of Abra- 'For references upon customs, vide Gen. 24: 4; 28: 1. Judges 14: 2. Exodus 22: 17. Gen. 24: 57; 29: 18, 27, 28. Ex. 22: 16. Gen. 34 : 12. Deut. 22 : 29. 2Gen. 24: 67; 29: 18, 20. Judges 14: 1. I Samuel 18: 20, 28. 110 HOME BUILDING. liam and Sarah, Isaac and Eebecca, Jacob and Eachel, imply this. The existence of love as the ideal basis of the con jugal relation was implied by its being used in the early literature to illustrate the relation between Jehovah and his people.1 A striking phrase pertinent to this point is found in the latest of the Hebrew prophets, where it is said of "the wife of thy youth," that "she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant."2 This idea gained such sway that the apostle to the Gentiles had a background of Jewish domestic life behind him, when he turned to the Colossians : ' ' Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them"; and to the Ephesians, — "Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself up for it . . . even so ought husbands also to love their own wives. . . . He that loveth his own wife loveth himself. . . . Do ye also severally love each his own wife even as himself."3 This teaching was connected with that orderliness in the conjugal relation so essential to the control of children in the house, — there must be a head. Yet the "subjection" of the wife is to a husband who is governed by love to his wife, — "obedience" to a rule of love.* It would, however, be most unjust and unphilo- sophical to claim wifely loyalty and a husband's love as solely a Christian ideal. Although the Brahmanical and Confucian books put no small contempt upon womanhood, and strongly emphasize the subjection of the wife to her husband and fail to insist upon the husband loving his wife 'Deut. 7: 7. Jeremiah 2: 2; 31: 3. This symbol prepared the way for the similitude in Revelation 2:4; 19 : 7; 21 : 9. 2Malachi 2: 14. "Colossians 3: 19. Ephesians 5: 25, 28, 33. In Edersheim's Jewish Social Life, p. 145, there is a citation from the Talmud, much to the same effect: — "He that loveth his wife as his own body, honoreth her more than his own body, brings up his children in the right way, and leads them in it to full age — of him the Scripture saith, 'Thou shalt know that thy tabernacle shall be in peace.' " •Ephesians 5: 22-24, 33. Colossians 3: 18. I Peter 3: 16. MONOGAMY. Ill as the Master Spirit Jesus Christ loved his followers, yet it is not true to human nature at its highest and best to think of sixty million homes in India and more than that in China as empty of a husband's love to temper the rule of his house. And all the world knows that the early Christian ideal is still very imperfectly reached in a myriad of semi-Christian homes. Notwithstanding, it is true beyond the shadow of a doubt that Christendom has an ideal of love between husband and wife that has less prom inence in non-Christian lands; and it is universally agreed that marriage without mutual affection pertains to a bar baric or semi-barbaric condition, and that the children of such marriages partake of the parental temperament and characteristics. In its relation to social evolution, mutual love as the basis of marriage marks a racial advance in two particulars: it tends to produce an altruistic type of manhood; and by the exercise of individual choice it tends to multiply distinct personalities, without which good society is impossible. (2) In the evolution of the ideal home life among the Hebrews there was at an early period a fixed custom on the part of no small number to imitate Jacob in having two- wives. And this was so to some extent in later genera tions. The word for a secondary wife is common to all Semitic languages. Although the law forbade Jewish kings to multiply wives, the injunction was not heeded by those most eminent. As Gideon had many wives and sev enty sons, so David had several wives; and Solomon, that he might rival the most splendid of Oriental monarchs, had seven hundred. For concubines, the law seemed to forbid them; and a war captive could only be taken for a wife. Gideon, however, and David and Solomon followed patri archal usage.1 Nevertheless, the ancient books represent 'References for the earlier portion of this paragraph: — Deut. 2 : 15. Tide also I Samuel 1:2. II Chron. 24 : 3. Deut. 17 : 17. Judges 8 : 30. I Chron. 3 : 1-9. I Kings 11 : 3. Tide also II Kings 23 : 31. Exodus 20 : 14. Deut. 21 : 14. Judges 8 : 31. II Chron. 15 : 16. I Kings 11 : 3. Gen. 25 : 6; 35 : 22. 112 HOME BUILDING. Adam, Noah and his sons, Abraham and Isaac, as having each but one wife ; and the Jewish story of the creation of "one answering to" the man,1 for whom it was not good that he should be alone, implied that monogamy accorded with the creative purpose. And the Hebrew literature indicates that not later than after a few centuries, it became the general custom in Palestine to have but one wife, although polygamy was permitted till the end of the Mosaic economy.2 The practical fall of concubinage and polygamy so long before the Christian era, made it sub sequently easy to establish monogamy not only as the fixed ideal but as the law in Christian states. What the change did for Judaism and for all the Christian ages, had been to mark in home building a distinct advance; promoting as it did mutual love between husband and wife, greatly strengthening the woman's personal position and develop ing her individuality, — so affecting favorably her children and her children's children. (3) The evolution of the Christian homes of a modern age was advanced through the abandonment of that arbi trary divorce on the part of the husband which was the early Hebrew custom,8 but protested against in the pro phetic books,* and discountenanced by Christ at his com ing.5 The founder of the new dispensation taught that marriage was a sacred life-bond, divinely appointed, with equal rights and responsibilities, dissoluble only through 'Gen. 2: 18. The etymological idea is that of "a helper match ing him, as one part of a whole matches another." 2Had not monogamy been considered the normal type these pas sages would have been worded differently: — Psalms 128 : 3. Proverbs 12: 4; 18: 22; 19: 14; 31: 10, f. And, in the Apoc rypha, Ecclesiasticus 25: 1, 18; 26: 1-14; 28: 8. sDeut. 24: 1. Matt. 19: 8. The Mosaic rule was less rigid than that of Babylonia and Assyria, which allowed divorce only upon sufficient cause. — Jastrow's "Religion of Babylonia and Assyria," p. 694. 4Malachi 2: 14. ¦Matt. 5: 31, 32. Mark 10: 7-12. GROUNDS OF DIVORCE. 113 conjugal infidelity.1 Although Christendom has come short of the ideal of the Master, yet the tie between husband and wife has been immeasurably strengthened; there being no arbitrary divorce, and marriage being held by law and cus tom as the most important and sacred of social relations, not to be entered into save through mutual love and con- gruity and mutual helpfulness, nor legally annulled but for conduct that destroys it. In pages preceding reference was made to divorce in Japan and in Moslem countries. In contrast, the divorces recorded in the United States census for 1890 amount to one-fifth of one per cent, of the population. The statistics of 1867-1886, show the average for twenty years to be one divorced person to every one hundred and eighty-five mar ried persons: two-thirds of the divorces being upon the petition of the wives. The returns throughout Christen dom show that "the number of divorced persons is so small as not to be appreciable when considered as a percentage. ' ' For example, the per cent, of divorces to marriages in Aus tria, in five years, 1882-1886, is .004 ; in Great Britain and Ireland, in twenty years, 1867-1886, the per cent, of divorces to marriages is .00012.2 (4) The evolution of Christian home life has been 'Matt. 19: 9. "The family is, to Jesus, not a temporary arrangement at the mercy of uncontrolled temper and shifting desire; it is ordained for that very discipline in forbearance and self-restraint which are precisely what many persons would avoid, and the easy rup ture of its union blights these virtues in their bud. Why should one concern himself in marriage to be considerate and forgiving if it is easier to be divorced than to be good?" — Peabody's Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 159. Boston, 1900. The principles which underlie domestic stability are alluded to by Professor Peabody in his work, pp. 173-5, 181-2. Authorities: "Special Report of the United States Bureau of Labor on Marriage and Divorce," 1889; Article by Carroll D. Wright in the Forum (Vol. 17) for June, 1894; and Wright's "Outline of Practical Sociology,' p. 166. New York, 1899. 8 114 HOME BUILDING. favored by an ideal of domestic purity.1 The post-exile Hebrews represented marriages as made in Heaven; and that God dwelt in a pure and loving home. In Greece and Eome the highest circles of pagan society never set aside a woman upon the ground of immorality. Aspasia 's remark able career did not apparently suffer through moral con siderations; the great men of Greece deemed it no discredit to associate with her. This, in a sentence, speaks volumes concerning the home life of the most brilliant period of Greek history.2 Incredible as it appears to the moral sense of modern Christendom, it is true that the worst vices con demned in the New Testament were so common as to excite scarcely the notice of the pagan moralists, Greek or Eoman. Words once in ordinary use have now perished from human tongue and ear and memory. The ideas are detected ety- mologically. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the lewd ness of life which characterized Eoman society at its best. If sober historians have told but half the truth, the vices of the worst wards in our great modern cities3 would have excited little notice among the millions who dwelt in Eome, — which, however, was less infamous than certain cities in the provinces. No thoughtful person can read such facts, first in one historian, then in another, and exam ine as best he may the early authorities, and compare the old with the new, without reaching the conclusion that 'Ex. 20: 14, 17. Lev. 20: 10-19. Matt. 5: 27, 28. I Cor. . . : 15, 16, 18. II Tim. 2: 20-22. 2Compare Galton's Hereditary Genius, p. 343. 8 As to the existence of the social evll,vide Chap. VIII, infra — upon the nominal conversion of Europe — for the explanation of the abiding of a vast camp of unregenerate men to this day in Christendom; the religious statistics of every "Christian" coun try showing that great bodies of people are not in working sym pathy with the Church nor affiliated with it. The social evil in Christendom is not chargeable to essential Christianity, but to the want of it. So, by parity of reasoning, the domestic immorality of Japan (vide supra) is not chargeable to Gautama, but to the want of that purity of life which he exem plified and inculcated. WOMAN'S INDIVIDUALITY. 115 Jesus Christ opened a new moral era for mankind. The ideal of Christendom was fixed by the words of Jesus, the thought of Jesus, in respect to the sanctity of the marriage relation and purity of life, and by the apostolic New Testa ment words relating to the divine indwelling — the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit which is not to be defiled.1 (5) The evolution of the Christian home has been favored by the development of woman's individuality through her increased sharing of the rights and responsi bilities of social and domestic life. To the Hebrew mind, woman's equality as man's com panion was implied by the terms used: Ish man; Ishah, woman. Among the Hebrews there is no ancient trace of woman's isolation. In the simplicity of patriarchal life she was not shut off from the world of men.2 Her indi viduality of character was recognized and trusted by domes tic usage before the era of states and legislators. Not only attending the synagogue service, she always bore as prom inent a part in public rejoicings as in domestic festivals: virtuous women moving freely in mixed companies.3 The Babylonian, Assyrian and Phoenician religions, as well as the Jewish, gave to woman a prominent place.4 In the home the mother was always held in equal regard with the father.5 Girlhood was honored: it was common usage to 'Matt. 5: 28, 31, 32; 19: 3-9. I Cor. 6: 15-19. 2Gen. 24: 15-25; 29: 1-14. I Sam. 9: 11. Ex. 2: 16; 21: 22. I Sam. 9: 11. II Sam. 20: 16. sEx. 15: 20. Deut. 16: 11, 14; 25: 11; 31: 12. Judges 16: 27. Ruth 2 : 5 f . I Sam. 18 : 6, 7. Matt. 9 : 20; 12 : 46; 26 : 7. Luke 2: 41-8; 10: 38-42. John 2: 1; 4:7. 'Jastrow's "Religions of Babylonia and Assyria" affirms, p. 694, that — milleniums ago — the position of the women of the Orient before the courts was not different from that of the male popu lation, and that women could by law hold property and dispose of it. This makes it easy to see that the environment of the Hebrews, as well as their own desert training, led them to con sider women as socially man's equal. BEx. 20: 12. Lev. 19: 3; 20: 9. Deut. 21: 18-21; 27: 16. Matt. .5: 4. Col. 3: 20. 116 HOME BUILDING. speak of the Jewish people as the daughter of Jehovah, "the daughter of Jerusalem," "the daughter of Judah," "the daughter of Zion." If sons were the legal heirs, their sisters were to be maintained by them, and each endowed for her marriage.1 Jesus, the Christ, as the Son of Man, stood for woman as well as man, his bearing always indicating a tender respect, holding her in spiritual kin ship, with equal honor: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother, and sister and mother."2 To honor womanhood as much as manhood was a Jewish custom older than the Mosaic law; it blazes out in the historical books ; it illuminates Hebrew poetry ; it glows in the record of the founding of the Chris tian Church — the Acts, the Epistles, the Eevelation. From the first to the last, there was an equality in religious. privileges, and in the exercise of spiritual gifts.3 The New Testament put woman upon the same plane with man, his equal ; the woman and the man, each supply ing the deficiences of the other. Christianity did a new thing in the world, says President Woolsey, by exalting the passive or feminine virtues, by widening the idea of 'Edersheim's Jewish Social Life, p. 149. 2Matt. 12: 50. 8Gen. 16: 7. Num. 6: 2; 12: 2 .and Mic. 6: 4. Deut. 12: 12 Judges 4:4, 5; 13 : 20; 21 : 16-25. I Sam. 9 f. II Kings, 22: 13-20. Neh. 8: 2, 3; 12: 4, 3. Acts 1: 14; 2: 17, 18; 9: 36; 16 : 14; 18 : 26. Rom. 16 : 1. Phil. 4 : 3. It will be seen that the Hebraic and Christian thought and usage has been for nearly four score generations diametrically opposed to Brahmanical requirements, and, in the main, Moslem custom, — which accounts for the difference in the present atti tude of these great religions toward womanhood. It is pertinent here to refer, also, to certain passages Relating to tne Humane Treatment of Widows: — Exodus 22 : 22. Deut. 10:18; 14:29; 16:11,14; 24:17,19-21; 26:12,13; 27:19. Job 29: 13; 31: 16. Psalms 68: 5; 146: 9. Isa. 1: 17, 23. Jer. 7: 6; 22: 3. Zach. 7: 10. Mai. 3: 5. Matt. 23: 14. I Cor. 7: 39. I Tim. 5: 16. James 1: 27. The ideal, the customs, and the legis lation of Christendom have been profoundly influenced by these texts. woman's individuality. 117 perfection, so that not masculine character but female ¦excellencies also came to be admired.1 And the awakening power of far reaching religious truth is felt, unfolding the power of thoughtful womanhood. By women of the Patris tic church who received the crown of martyrdom, the dig nity which had been conferred upon Oriental womanhood by eminent names enrolled in Hebrew history, or immor talized in the records of the Christian era, was made the more illustrious. And early in the Eoman Church certain women widely renowned for their munificent charities were honored by spectacular funereal trains that recalled the fading memory of pagan pageantry. Nor is it unsuitable to note, as an influence tending to dignify domestic life, that, in the so-called "conversion" of Northern Europe, the effigies of holy women were offered to the barbarians to worship as saints, and the barbaric mind deemed them worthy of spiritual leadership. The honor, too, bestowed by the papal power upon the mother of our Lord — the adoration of feminine holiness — had no small effect in moving both the sunny South and the savage North to appreciate womanly worth. Yet in the evolution of a higher type of individual womanhood in Christendom, one of the most potent influ ences was that of the pagan women of Germany when •Christianized; women providentially fitted to become the mothers of that new racial Christian stock, the Teutonic, which so soon came forward to take a great part in Euro pean civilization, and to exert a world-wide influence in later centuries. In the time of Tacitus, monogamy was almost universal in Germany; and a worthy woman was the companion of her husband's dangers, a source of inspi ration, an on-leader sacred and prophetic, bringing to him the gift of arms, and arousing martial courage in the hour of battle. And as to the purity of their women, no other savage tribes were comparable with the early Germans. No one in Germany laughed at vice, says the historian,2 'New Englander, XIX, p. 880. 'De Germania. 118 HOME BUILDING. nor did they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be cor rupted. When this virile race became Christian, the pris tine Hebrew appreciation of the value and dignity of womanhood, and the early Christian customs and ideals, were reinforced by the ancient German reverence for women, and thereafter we find womanhood advancing to occupy the position of respect in which the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters, of Christendom are held to-day. Throughout the entire feudal period there was a distinct upward movement in what was most honorable in woman hood, when compared with the rioting and relatively lawless generations that had followed the fall of the Eoman Empire. The part taken by women in Central Europe in the practical management of affairs at this time, was matched by no precedent in the classic lands of the South. The knights of chivalry, too, for some three hundred years, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, included most of the young men at arms in the upper classes of Europe; and they permanently improved the morals and manners of all subsequent generations in their relation to womanhood. In the spirit of the Eastern crusaders, the youth who constituted the flower of nobility consecrated themselves in Christian churches to lives of danger and of devotion to an ideal. Well-balanced young men, of high social rank, relying upon supernatural guidance, became pledge-keepers and friends of the friendless, and they entertained an unselfish and pure-minded consideration for virtuous women. This Christo-militant influence — the Christianity of crusaders and warriors — of converted Gauls and Germans — steadfastly exercised during ten generations, when connected with the constant uplift in the position of women during more than seventy-five ante rior generations, Hebrew and Christian, elevated woman hood to an honored position never before enjoyed ; and this movement — so unique in the world's history — has pro foundly affected the .modern age, preparing the way for ENGLAND. 119 that chivalric sentiment toward women so characteristic of Christendom when contrasted with all the non-Christian portions of the globe.1 Yet the early Germans bought their wives, and they had power to sell them, beat them, or kill them ; and much that was unchivalric and essentially barbaric became a part of the common law as applied to women in Germanic England, under which the wife had no legal individual existence, her personality being merged in that of her husband; the law too recognizing wrongs as to her property rights, that have been finally so rectified by legislation and rulings in equity that there is now equality of rights. Through insular life, the early composite racial stock of Great Britain has prob ably been more purely kept during the last twenty-five gen erations than any national stock on the European continent where there have been more international marriages ; this — together with certain social and religious unifying influ ences — has produced a homegeneous body of women who have in recent years exercised a great influence upon poli tics, and in the great colonies of the South Pacific they have acquired the full right of suffrage. This has so favored the development of the English woman's individ uality, that it cannot fail to exercise ultimately a powerful influence upon womanhood in the nationalities of the Teu tonic stock. Throughout large areas of Christendom not only are the property rights of women fully protected, but there is an approach to an ideal condition of equality of personal, domestic, and social responsibilities and privileges, with the fullest liberty for the development of capacities, and for moral leadership and inspiration. This evolution of indi vidual independence which has made good society possible, has made possible the highest type of homes in the world. If it be a truism that mankind is feminine as well as mas- 'The songs of the Troubadours, during eight or ten generations, must, too, be reckoned with as a sociological influence of no mean order in its relation to the modern status of womanhood. 120 HOME BUILDING. culine, womanly as well as manly, has it not required many ages and high courage to finally recognize the duality of the race in the home, in law, in social custom ? China does not see it ; India has not the knowledge of it ; it is unknown to Turkey, and to multitudinous millions in rude parts of the world. Yet, unless woman is man's match, God made a mistake in the creation. The world needs the divinely appointed scheme for perfecting the race, — a well-devel oped womanhood. The regeneration of man must be wrought out in the home life, or it never will be. (6) As a study in certain elementary principles of sociol ogy in their relation to home life, suppose there be made a comparison of the world's sacred books in their relation to womanhood, and of the domestic history of Hindus, Bud dhists, Chinese, Mussulmans, and Christians, and it will be seen at once what races and religions are most likely, in competition, to survive as the fittest, — those most rapidly forging ahead through producing a superior racial stock. We have found in Judaism and Christianity the develop ment of mutual respect, mutual love, and equality in com panionship between husband and wife; the abolition of polygamy and concubinage; the diminishing of impurity; the strengthening of the marriage tie to give it more per manence ; and, above all, the evolution of woman 's individ uality through equality of social and domestic rights and responsibilities ; — and all these have during the past exer cised a most powerful influence upon breeding,— there being the cumulative force of nearly a hundred generations of a steadily advancing condition, as contrasted with the relatively stationary status of Asiatic womanhood age after age. Let this be continued for ages to come, and through the application of the ordinary principles of heredity, it is this that will be most potent and permanent as an influence upon the future of mankind, — effecting racial changes through Christianized homes. (7) Not only does the summary of the foregoing facts have a bearing upon racial stock, but there are two other MATURITY IN MOTHERHOOD. 121 facts that directly affect the principle of superior breeding. One is that of the age at marriage. By Hebrew and Christian custom during at least four score generations, youth have been wedded at a more mature age than among peoples. where child-marriage has been the immemorial cus tom: this has favored the hereditary transmission of a more mature mental character and the formation of a physically strong racial stock. Child-marriage, too, in non-Christian ¦lands has been commonly connected with infantile betrothals, without that mutual acquaintance for personal choice and bridal consent which custom has given to Hebrew and Christian unions for thousands of years : from a purely sci entific point of view this must, upon well settled and widely known principles of heredity, make a radical difference in the intelligence and personal independence of the progeny. And in regard to both child-marriage and infantile betrothal as contrasted with more mature wedlock and betrothal through choice and mutual love, the mere contin uance of these processes in the past during so many scores of generations — all the time creating a wider and wider divergence in the stock propagated through the con trasted customs — must in some measure account for the difference, — as to maturity of character, intelligence, and personal independence, — between Christian and non-Chris tian lands. And upon scientific principles, the great momentum already acquired, by ages after ages of diverg ence, will still more in the future differentiate these races. Upon the vantage ground of heredity, the Christian stock has acquired, over the stock produced by early marriage and infantile betrothal, certain leadership in maturity of char acter, independence and intelligence, that can never be over-reached in the race for filial supremacy. If a colt is more mature at two years than a child at twelve, and at four years than the average youth at twenty, then the prolongation of pupilage — as well as of infancy — pertains to man. To prolong pupilage marks that civiliza tion which is at the greatest remove from primeval condi- 122 HOME BUILDING. tion. Is not child-marriage, throughout great areas of Asia, but one custom of many, one idea of many, that pertains to semi-pristine condition ? Ought not well-developed intel lectual and moral qualities and a certain maturity of char acter to be the gift of parents to their children by heredity as well as by training? Are children fit to propagate a superior race 1 Will not India, Burmah, Siam, China, and the Mohammedan countries improve their stock of men and women, if they so change their customs as to defer mar riage, and give more extended schooling to the parents of the next generation ? It is a question of transmitting char acter by heredity.1 If it be a matter of selection and sur vival, will it not be worth the while for sociological students in Asia to consider the policy of keeping young men and maidens long at school or in learning the arts of livelihood, and deferring their marriage to years of maturity? Another fact that makes a difference between Christian and non-Christian homes as to the improvement of racial stock, is that of the early abandonment of the patriarchal family system by the Hebrews, and its never being adopted by European Christians, while it has been adhered to in Asia from age to age until this early family type numbers a present population of more than six hundred millions in India and China. The Hebraic mandate was this : ' ' There fore shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife."2 Upon this principle the Jewish and Chris tian ideal for nearly three thousand years has been that of a home in which the most important relation is the bond between husband and wife ; but in Eastern Asia from imme morial ages until now, the principal bond is between father 'Tide Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, June, 1890, for a paper by Doctor Ogle upon the late marriages of professional men. A curious list was published many years ago in America, based on the theory that mature parentage favors the youngest sons. In it the present writer found many eminent names; among them Benjamin Franklin, the youngest child of the youngest child of five generations. 2Gen. 2: 24. Matt. 19: 5. Mark 10: 7. Ephesians 5: 31. SEPARATE HOMES AND IMPROVED STOCK. 12$ and son. That soon after the Israelites ceased to dwell in tents, the common Palestinian home was separate for each. husband and wife1 is indicated by the legislation upon the parental instruction and training of children, the Mosaie theory of domestic discipline, the phraseology of Hebrew poets and prophets, the usage in village building, and per tinent points in rabbinical law. This gave parents an opportunity to impress their own personality upon child life, for mothers to minister in love, to promote kindness: of disposition and gentleness, to secure obedience to an ideal of conduct. That childhood should be shaped by the parents — and not by the grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins all in one family — was the Hebraic ideal. This is apparent from the precepts that relate to the responsibility of children to their parents.2 (8) If not in exact details as above, yet in some such way as this, individual home life came in the long process of ages to be the most efficient factor in the social evolution of Europe. Christianity, through Hebrew thought and hered ity, proceeded upon the theory that the propagation of the race should be only through regularly constituted families, that none might be born into the world unless in a way to- secure intelligent moral training throughout a prolonged infancy :3 so it separated itself from the domestic ideals of Greece and Eome. Had the classic models been followed, there would have been a difference toto ccelo in the concep tion of the value of child life.4 'The married son was enrolled as part of his father's family, but not necessarily as part of his household. 2Exodus 20: 12. Lev. 19: 3; 29: 9. Deut. 21: 18-21; 27: 16. Matt. 15 : 4. Col. 3 : 20. 'Consult John Piske's Outline of Cosmic Philosophy. Vol. II, pp. 340-344; 360-369. Boston, 1875. 4Upon the abandonment of children or their destruction, vide Jowett's Plato, III, p. 341. Oxford, 1875; Aristotle's Polit, VII, 14, 10; Quintillian Dec. 306, VI; Seneca De Ira, I, 15. Upon the other hand, there is no trace of infanticide in the Hebrew records: Consult Jewish and German customs in Tacitus Hist. V, 5; De Germania XIX. 124 HOME BUILDING. There were no children in Greek art, says Buskin. The world's ideal has changed. It has been changed by the Christ-child. The great religions that sprang up in South ern Europe, Southern and Central Asia, or amid the sands of Arabia bestowed no such honor upon childhood as that religion which was founded among the Hebrews by the Babe of Bethlehem. That Jesus blessed the children could never be forgotten by the Christian Church, which has con secrated its cradles to God as truly as its cathedrals. Through tendencies transmitted from parents to children for more than three score and ten generations, the altru istic sentiment, kindness of disposition, a mother's gentle ness, self-control, habits of obedience and respect for law, have become great powers today in the social life of Christendom. CHAPTEE FOUE: CONTEASTS IN EDUCATION.1 Among the ancient Hebrews prior to the exile, the youth of the foremost families so far received domestic or private instruction as to observe the early precept requiring it ; and, after the exile, village schools were commonly but not uni versally held in the synagogues. Children were kept at school from three to five years and advanced pupils for nine or ten. Teachers were paid by voluntary contributions ; not by fees, less instruction be limited to the wealthy. Whoever could not read was not counted as a true son of Israel ;2 and it was the boast of the Talmud, that, in the time of Heze kiah, not one unlettered person could be found by a search from Dan to Beersheba. Nearly five hundred schools were reported at Jerusalem at the time of its fall. The course of instruction was kept to the sacred books of Israel, and works of the rabbis: its effect being to intensify national characteristics, and so exalt the law that rabbinical energy finally expended itself in hair-splitting casuistry not unlike that of European schoolmen in a lated age. In the grafting of Hebrew thought, the Messianic hope and its fulfilment, upon Gentile stock, the schooling of children could not be transferred in the disturbed domestic and social life — the antagonisms and perils by which a pagan empire confronted the new faith. For fifteen hun dred years we hear of only spasmodic attempts to effect that upon a great scale, in changed conditions, which had 'In treating of education, it is assumed that this term com prises all that series of instruction which is intended to so dis cipline the understanding, correct and form the habits, as to fit those who are taught, in character and will, for complete living and for social usefulness. 2Deut. 6: 7. Judges 8: 14. Isa. 8: I;1 10: 19. Proverbs 10: 1; 17:25; 23:24. Ecces. 5 : 13 ; 51:28. 126 EARLY CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. been early achieved in Palestine. Greece and Eome had never taught the common people. The training of youth for public life made academies needful, and of these the Church Fathers availed themselves. The Emperor Julian forbade Christians to teach the Greek classics, saying that they might expound Matthew and Luke : — ' ' Keep to your ignorance, eloquence is ours; the followers of the fishermen have no claim to culture. ' ' There were, says Guizot, Chris tian primary schools in the fourth century. Too much occu pied was the Eoman Primate in manipulating temporal kingdoms to give a thought to the empire of child life. Gregory the Great rebuked the teaching of grammar, as "unworthy a prelate. Individual popes, however, thought otherwise: Sylvester II introducing Arabic numbers to Europe; and Clement V directing that monks should be taught the Oriental tongues. Town and village schools were opened by Charlemagne in every monastery for psalms, arithmetic, grammar, and the copying of holy books : great pride took the emperor in his Saxon schools, where he berated the sons of nobility for their indolence. Man of war that he was, he gathered up the heroic poetry of the conquered peoples, but his son burned his manu scripts for rubbish. The synod of Orleans, and the Council of Chalons, directed the priests to open free elementary schools, and the bishops to maintain instruction in literature as well as in the Scriptures. The Council at Eome in A. D. 826 authorized town and village schools, and a Council in A. D. 1179 appointed a master for instructing the poor in every cathedral Church. For eight or nine hundred years the classics were copied in many monasteries, until the revival of learning. The education maintained by monks and schoolmen accomplished little for the common people. The universities of Paris and Oxford and Cambridge were founded by the Church for the Church. With the dawn of the reformation, the discovery of print ing and the multiplication of Bibles, began in Christendom the modern development of popular education. John IN THE REFORMED CHURCH. 127 Stuart Mill uncovers the motive of Christianity in the mod ern age in all latitudes, when he says that, historically, the education of the poorest of the people has been based on the Protestant theory that every man is held to be answerable immediately to God for his conduct, so that he must be in position to inform himself.1 The foundation of the modern German system was laid by Luther and Melanchthon; the latter giving much time to the preparation of text-books. The ablest teachers in Europe in the sixteenth century were the Jesuits ; nor could they be surpassed. On the continent the Thirty Years War greatly hindered popular education. Parish schools flourished in Scotland, but they were not free or universal. The opening of the New World by English settlers opened a new educational era for the average man ; Hartford establishing the first town school, and Massachu setts the first free schools throughout the state. The schools were of a low grade, being what the people agreed to have by their own vote; it was, however, the glory of the era that they could vote, and that they made the rudiments of education as free as the air to every child in the land. Christendom has, however, been slow to make even ele mentary education universal. In England at the time of the American Eevolution, not one in twenty of the people of the agricultural districts could read or write. In 1851, three men out of every ten married in England signed the register with a mark only ; and there were nearly a million children in England and Wales between the ages of five and twelve out of school that year. The American Common School system as it is to-day is the growth of hardly two generations. What was once the privilege of the few has now become the right of all. Great masses of people have come to know that general mental culture is for the advan tage of the state, — "that the learning of the few is despo tism, that the learning of the multitude is liberty, that an intelligent and principled liberty is fame, wisdom, and power." In Australia to-day the graded schools retain 'Essay on Comte, pp. 112, 113 128 MODERN EDUCATION. their pupils till more than fourteen and a half years old, and one pupil in fifteen till seventeen years old, then one in every one hundred and sixty has four years more at the university. In the United States more than seventeen millions of pupils are now receiving free public schooling, each during an average period of forty-four months ; and this is made up to an average of fifty months through private and collegiate instruction.1 And so evenly is this distributed that the dif ference between the girls and boys enrolled is less than one per cent. ; and twenty-seven per cent, of the students in uni versities and colleges are women. By the public system the destitute are schooled at the expense of the wealthy. It is a daily process, during an average of seven months of the year, carried on in nearly two hundred and fifty thousand buildings — costing five hundred and seventy-five millions of dollars — dedicated to school use, each like a factory for the manufacture of character. It is a kind of industry which dwarfs everything else. More than two hundred and twenty-five million dollars a year are spent upon it. There are four hundred and fifty thousand teachers — in number far outranking all other liberal callings in the land, — who are carrying out the policy of the state to assimilate and nationalize the peoples of diverse tongues and races, which, in different stages of civilization, are so continuously trans ferred to our shores from other lands,2 and fitting our people at large to gain an increasing influence in the affairs of the globe. It is impossible, when this vast machinery is once set to running upon a continent, to stop it. It creates that public sentiment which gives to it a greater and greater power. Much might be added to the same effect, as to the ideal and the notable achievements of certain other countries in 'This private and collegiate instruction is, in America, endowed by at least $225,000,000. 2The American public school system, together with the socio logical work of an aggressive and self-sacrificing type of Chris tianity in promoting public morals, is the whole secret. INTOLERANCE OF PROGRESS. 129 Christendom, and in regard to the matchless opportunities for higher education in Germany and England. All this, however, goes to show that the great facilities which Christendom now offers for popular schooling are of recent date. If we search through the centuries running back to the pre-exilian Hebrews, educational evolution has been slow and uneven from age to age. The great modern universities run back only a few hundred years, and popu lar schooling is new to Christendom. Vast empires, denom inated "Christian," are without an efficient system for educating the children of the people. It is to be said, moreover, that Christianity has been nar row-minded, as was Judaism ; too conservative to be tolerant of mental progress, throwing the weight of Biblical inter pretation against freedom of thought, and adopting theories of inspiration that justified ecclesiastics in giving a cruel reception to scientific discovery, — and this has been so cen tury after century, the Church often maintaining a hostile attitude and policy of obstruction. It has been only of late admitted as conceivable that the divine government of the natural world should be commonly carried on through estab lished laws or modes of action. That the great scientific discoveries, which so largely sway the general thought of Christendom, are modern rather than having been made long ago may in part be due to the construction put upon its charter by the Christian Church. Indebted as it is, since the era of toleration, to those who have made scientific dis coveries, for the ability to show forth the things of God in a more reasonable way, Christianity has upon the other hand aided the students of nature through its discipline of the mind upon the highest themes ever considered by man. This has favored the discovery of the great laws which underlie the creative acts of the universe,1 the very ground- 'The influence of great religious truths in sharpening and strengthening the understanding, is referred to by Mill, when he speaks of the debt of the intellectual development of Europe to Christianity. — Essay on Comte, p. 113. 9 130 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. work of Christian thought in regard to the Creator having been such that the orderliness of creation at all points has more easily suggested itself to the scientific thinkers of Christendom than to those trained in the cosmogony of non-Christian lands; so that great progress was made at once, as soon as students were left at liberty to think by relatively peaceful years free from great political upheav als, and free from the hostile demonstrations of theologians who had made the mistake of supposing themselves mouth pieces of God. If by a slow and halting process Christianity has finally reached the point aimed at by Judaism more than two thousand years ago of giving to all the people the best edu cation available at the time, it is now rapidly making amends for dilatory ages by putting each new generation into universal possession of the most important knowledge of all the generations that preceded it, and so disciplining the general mind as to facilitate new discovery. And what is received by each generation is increased and transmitted to the next generation — that handed-down knowledge which is power in hands fitted to receive it. So the present is mastered through a grip upon the past. For the heavy drafts which the future of mankind must make upon a vast accumulation of highly organized knowledge, prepared aforetime by the most competent men of preceding ages, studious of the interests of the race as such and of myriads of generations yet unborn, Christianity aims at being an educator — to transmit a priceless legacy to after ages. And Christianity has already attempted to graft upon the non-Christian racial stocks of the world its own theory and practice. This is undoubtedly due to historic precedent. As the idea of the kingdom of God was transferred from the Judaic to Gentile stock, and as the modern vigor of Christianity is closely connected with the infusion of Teutonic blood that was barbaric for centuries after the Christian era, it has come to be the settled belief of great masses of the rank and PRESENT ACTIVITIES. 131 file of the Church that the ideas so helpful to Christendom will be of advantage to the youth of non-Christian peoples, who may best be reached through a well-balanced, sys tematic education. And this has been begun on so vast a scale as to mark a new epoch in social evolution. It was a remark of Lamartine that we cannot see the hand of God while under its shadow, and this new Christian departure is so recent that we cannot justly estimate its true propor tions, yet its nature and movement may be pertinently alluded to. This it is most convenient to do in connection with an inquiry into the educational work of the other four great religions of the world. II. It is now more than three score and ten generations since the Brahmans of India and the Jews of Palestine took dia metrically opposite courses as to the education of the people ; the reading of the Jewish sacred books being commonly taught, and the Brahmans allowing no one below their own caste to know their books. It is this principle of Hinduism, maintained consistently to the present time — with a few exceptions in recent years, — that has led the Brahmans in a faith that has come down from the heights of a hundred generations of pure blood and with no small native wealth at Brahmanical beck, never to raise one finger towards educating the manumitted victims of caste in America, although, upon the other hand, America has sent an incredi ble number of Christian teachers to India, the most of whom have devoted themselves to the intellectual and moral eleva tion of the lowest castes and outcasts.1 Another difference between Hinduism and Christianity is seen by a comparison of illiteracy, in the Indian census of 1891 and that of the United States in 1890; the figures 'Out of every hundred pupils in the Christian schools of India, twenty-eight are taught by Americans: no reckoning being made of Village Day Schools. Tide the figures in J. S. Dennis' Centen nial Survey of Foreign Missions. New York, 1902. 132 HINDU EDUCATION. being as eight hundred and ninety-one illiterates in India in every thousand of the population, to sixty-five in a thou sand in America.1 It further appears in the readiness of the people to avail themselves of schooling. The English government assumed the responsibility of education in India in 1854, yet the present enrollment of Hindu boys in proportion to a given population is as fourteen, to two hundred and seventeen boys in America ; and of girls where fifteen out of a given population go to school in India, the attendance of American girls is ten hundred and fifteen.2 Yet this experiment with fifteen girls out of every ten thousand in India has made so apparent the advantage of their education, that these are allowed to attend school till their eleventh or twelfth year. Hindu young men in Cal cutta University are now conducting a Female Educational Union, to promote the schooling of girls in the Bengal Presi dency. Educated Hindus of rank and wealth are begin ning to see the difference between a woman — wearing per haps a score and a half of heavy gold bracelets with many chains of gold and precious stones about her neck and a costly pearl for a nose ring — unwilling to take the trouble to learn to read, and an intelligent and well-educated English woman. The representative of the Brahmo-Somaj of India, Mozoomdar, who spoke in Chicago at the Parlia ment of Eeligions, was much impressed with the social position occupied by women. In a letter to his countrymen, he wrote: "The culture of the women of America deeply affects me when I contrast it with the condition of my beloved country-women. Without the American woman more than half the brightness, the refinement, the joyousness and character of the great republic would be gone." 'Based upon statistics in the U. S. Bureau of Education Report, 1899-1900; allowing for difference in items included, as that of sex. Were the late emancipated slaves in America excluded, it would be 891 illiterates in India to 38 in America, in every thou sand of the population. 2Based on statistics of U. S. Bureau of Education Report, 1899- 1900. SCHOOLING FOR GIRLS. 133 Among native Christians, the girls often attend school until twenty or more,1 and, out of all proportion to the number from Hindu families, they are availing themselves of uni versity courses, — those from lower castes, particularly the Kayasth or writer caste and the Vaisya or trading caste, being reported as far ahead of the Brahmans in gaining the higher education. With nearly five millions of pupils in the government and private Christian schools, of whom nearly a hundred and twenty-five thousand are in college or schools that fit for college2, may it not be hoped that within a few centuries a great social change will be effected in the education of the Hindus? III. Buddhism, upon entering Siam, supplanted cannibalism and demon worship; greatly elevating the social condition of the people. Here there has been no dissent for twelve hundred years. The natives love to call Siam the "King dom of the free. " As a whole they are indolent and impro vident; yet temperate, tolerant, benevolent, polite, hospita ble to strangers and to the poor, and they are not quarrel some. The government is easily supported by the well- to-do, in part through a generous taxation of theatricals and dancing — most cheerily contributed. A knowledge of reading and writing is given to the boys at the monasteries.3 But the monks of the present day are so far out of touch 'The Rev. S. Y. Abrahams. 2The government statistics of 1896-97; and J. S. Dennis' Tables for 1900, — the day school enrollment being a pro rata estimate. "Ages upon ages ago, when the Brahmans in India"were deny ing the right of the lower castes to read on religion, the Bud dhist monks were everywhere giving instruction to all comers of the youth of Asia, as a fair equivalent for daily bread bestowed upon them in princely profusion. So thoroughly did these wise and benevolent men commend themselves, that, in the most favored lands, it came to be good usage to require all youth, who should serve the state in any capacity whatever, to spend at least three months as novitiates in the Sangha. 134 BUDDHIST SCHOOLING. with the current life of the world, that the schooling they give is esteemed profitless, a jingling sound without sense.1 To give at a glance the educational difference between a Buddhist and a Christian state, the Siamese pupils in the Sangha schools are as one to one hundred and seven of the whole population, and in Massachusetts the pupils are as one to six of the population.2 The Buddhist rulers have, how ever, extended a hearty welcome to a suitable introduction of western ideas, more so than rulers dominated by other Oriental religions. Although it had been in vain that the English government sought to enter Siam in 1822, 1826, and again in 1850, yet happily the heir to the throne became the pupil of a missionary of the American Board in lan guage and sciences, and with the "beginning of his reign in 1857 a more liberal policy was adopted. From that day to this, American teachers have had considerable influence with the government. Arriving in the country in 1828, at first to labor among the Chinese, their schools commended themselves to the Siamese people, and after some years they were formally endorsed by royal authority :3 — ¦' ' The Ameri can missionaries have always been just and upright men. They have never meddled in the affairs of government nor created any difficulty with the Siamese. They have lived with the Siamese just as if they belonged to the nation. The government of Siam has great love and respect for them, and has no fear whatever concerning them. When there has been a difficulty of any kind, the missionaries have many times rendered valuable assistance. For this reason the Siamese have loved and respected them for a long time. The Americans have also taught the Siamese many things." Upon subsequent occasions the Siamese regent affirmed that ' ' Siam was not. opened by British gun- 'So it is characterized by a Siamese nobleman, cited in Alabas ter's Wheel of the Law, p. 4. 2Based on figures in the Statesman's Year Book, and the Massa chusetts statistics for 1885. sBy the king reigning, 1851-1868. THE JAPANESE EMPIRE. 135 powder, like China, but by the influence of missionaries." And the present king has said, in giving an audience at Petchaburee: "I always have and I always shall encourage the American missionaries. ' n In Burmah most of the men can read and write, being taught so much by the monastery schools ; and most of the boys, says Bishop Titcomb, are placed in the monastery itself for a few months of moral instruction.2 A certain skill in argumentation is gained in these schools, and a degree of aptness in speech. So little is the schooling, how ever, that no great number of pupils are enrolled at once ; the pupils for 1889- '90 being, when compared with a pro portionate population, but one pupil in Burmah to nine in New England. American Baptist teachers are engaged in so great a work in Burmah, that, if other denominations in the field are doing as much, Christianity has half as many pupils as the Buddhists,3 — and that with the base of operations across the globe. Japan, lying eastward of China, is called the Land of the Sunrise. The early Shinto training has filled the land with flowers. Climbing plants and arbor life are favored by the tropic heat carried so far north by deep-sea currents. The myriad little isles, and the larger with their picturesque coast outline and with their highland streams and rich valleys, are really but the crests of submerged mountains, so deep is the blue water flowing along this kingdom in the sea. It is as if New England, New York and Pennsylvania4 were afloat and anchored there, as to size, with two-thirds the present population of the United States packed into its numberless villages and the few large cities. The social changes wrought in Japan within the lifetime of Marquis 'Historical Sketches of Presbyterian Missions. Philadelphia, 'Buddhism, p. 126. Girls of the better class learn to read at home. — Pieldings' Soul of a People, pp. 191, 192. "This statement is based upon the U. S. Bureau of Education Reports as to Burmese education, and recent missionary statistics. 4Or England, Scotland, Ireland, and Greece. 136 BUDDHIST SCHOOLING. Ito is without a parallel in history. It has come about by the educative power of new ideas. When Neesima, the founder of the Doshisha, was a youth, his whole life was revolutionized by two papers printed in Chinese, prepared by Dr. Bridgman of Shanghai, — a brief history of the United States, and a brief story of the Bible. From read ing one, he came to the conclusion that the Japanese govern ment had no arbitrary right to cut off people's heads as if they were cats and dogs, and from reading the other, he learned of the Fatherhood of God.1 Ultimately, with his strong religious nature, he concluded to trust his Heavenly Father, and he ran away to America, praying : " 0 God, if Thou hast eyes, see me ; if Thou hast ears, hear me ; I want to be civilized by the Bible. ' ' A hundred years, ago, the Jap anese liberal party which desired intercourse with foreign nations used to call the conservatives "frogs in a well." The liberals came to the front after Japan was peacefully opened by Commodore Perry to the world ; and the govern ment then took the amazing policy of sending their choicest young men to various parts of Christendom to pursue thor ough courses of education, in order to change the face of the open minded Japanese society by bringing in a new set of ideas. "Knowledge shall be sought for throughout the whole world," was the Imperial proclamation. The stu dents who came to America were maintained by philan thropic aid when support from home was cut off by civil war. The Japanese common school system as it is to-day, enrolling more than five millions of pupils — of whom two- fifths are girls, — was one of the ideas imported from the United States. And whatever was done to furnish foreign moral education to Japan prior to 1887, was five-sixths of it American, as to the number of workers, — the Americans beginning a decade before any other nationality.2 For girls 'Hardy's Neesima, p. 31. 2It is stated by W. Elliott Griffis, D. D., late Professor in the Imperial University of Tokio, that the early American work for the Land of the Pour Seas, comprised also the geological survey THE JAPANESE EMPIRE. 137 no schooling is furnished in Buddhist Siam and Burmah, unless through very limited instruction at home; but in Japan there have been from ancient times private instruct ors for training girls in, 'etiquette, instrumental music, the arrangement of flowers, the giving of ceremonial teas, in sewing, simple epistolary writing, and sometimes the read ing of the Chinese Classics)) In the school of etiquette for boys, Joseph Neesima learned to make the most profound bows, and was trained in graceful manners and movements. It was a point also to acquire a polite style of conversational phrases. Neesima, too, learned cup bearing and to wait upon gentleman at meals. At home, the boy was taught expert penmanship by his father. He also learned to ride horseback, and practiced sword exercises. Later, under private tutors, he studied mathematics and the Dutch language. For some hundreds of years after Buddhism entered Japan, the monks conducted most of the educational work, but the Confucianists at a later period trained the leaders of thought and the most intellectual of the people. During two recent centuries the Dutch have educated many Jap anese surgeons and naval officers. Some sixty thousand young men are now in the schools for higher education; more than twenty-seven thousand being in technical schools, and nine thousand in colleges and universities. Had the Japanese Buddhists with their sea-going enter prise undertaken in advance of the Americans the social renovation of the Hawaiian Islands and Micronesia, or Poly nesia in advance of the British, and could they have done for those savage islands a few generations ago what the early Buddhists did for Siam in the removal of cruel customs, it would have evinced in a notable manner the educative value of their system and its adaptation to the modern age. of the islands, the organization of the internal revenue and the banking system, the preparation of a dictionary and the grammar work needful for studying the language, and a translation of the Bible. 138 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. With their neglect of such an opportunity and the question it raises of their requisite moral power, another question is brought up respecting the present value of their influence in the Japanese schools, as reported by an officer of the national department of education, who, upon examining a town in Northern Japan, found, of ninety-nine boys and nineteen girls averaging fourteen years old, twenty-five believing in the immortality of the soul, twenty-five in the existence of a soul but not in its immortality, and fourteen girls and forty-eight boys not believing in any soul what ever. Two-thirds of the children believed that the worship of the Shinto and Buddhist gods was a social custom only, relating to no power that could affect individual life.1 The Japanese department of public education has, how ever, begun to issue text-books with an ethical bearing that will be of great advantage to future generations.2 IV. The name of Confucius must always stand with that of Socrates the Greek and Moses the Hebrew, with Zoroaster the Persian and Gautama the Prince of India, with Moham med the Arabian, with thoughtful sages on the plains of 'Letter of Rev. John L. Deering, of Yokohama, in The Watch man. Boston. 2As to the present number of pupils enrolled in Christian schools, in Buddhist, Ceylon, Siam, Burmah, and Japan, it is impossible to speak with confidence. There are more than fifty- three hundred in universities, colleges and fitting schools; and nearly fifteen thousand in theological and training schools, board ing and high schools and seminaries, industrial training institu tions and classes, medical schools and schools for nurses, and kindergartens. If a pro rata estimate might be made of the attendance upon day schools, there should be added nearly a hundred and twenty-five thousand; but the conditions so vary in different parts of the world, that it is not so safe to rely upon such an estimate as in a country like India where the village day schools are favored; certainly the circumstances in Japan make the mission day-school system less needful. CONFUCIUS. 139" India whose dim vision of God endures when their names have perished, — in the ranks of the immortal few, whose fame will endure upon this globe so long as rivers run, so- long as roars the sea. However in the light of recent centu ries we may speak of the essential limitations of his intel lectual concepts and his lack of spiritual apprehension, it. will never cease to be a wonder in all ages that Confucius should seize upon the plastic millions of one of the mightiest empires of the globe and shape them at will. The reason is not far to seek, little as we understand it, and little as we. can analyze it. It is found in the character of the national mind, not made, but modified by him. Indeed, in many re spects he is to be accepted as the typical Chinaman, the na tion at its best.1 Whatever were the leading traits of the Chinese mind, critically decided upon and authoritatively announced by specialists after careful analysis and proof from the Chinese history, it is certain that there were emi nent sages before the time of Confucius, so many in number, so weighty in character as to form a sharply defined national mind ; and that the editor of the Classics took their work and added to it and subtracted from it, and fitted it for trans mission to subsequent ages;2 and that the national mind 'How literally true this is, appears in the saying of a Chinese emperor a thousand years ago, that Confucianism is adapted to the Chinese people as water to the fish. 2The relative rank and value of the work of Confucius may be settled by inquiring whether we can easily imagine the career o£ Socrates as consisting solely in editing earlier Greek notions, then leading by moral force the versatile Greeks to accept them and to take their stand upon them without advancing an inch farther for two thousand years; or whether we can imagine Gautama as taking the pith of the Hindu books of his age and compressing them into short compass, and then persuading the philosophic mind of his native land, so keen, so subtle, to stand upon them, without indulging in that interminable drift of thought so characteristic of the Hindus. Or, barring the ques tion of his inspiration, can we think of Moses as sitting down calmly upon the banks of the Nile, and there gathering up the wisdom of Egypt; and so stamping it upon the priesthood of 140 CHINESE EDUCATION. already formed in the more thoughtful people generation after generation, accepted the Confucian work as its own; and that the national evolution took place along lines already marked out. Confucius once spoke of himself as a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgot his food. He was essentially a student and a teacher. Confucius so embodied the philo sophical maxims of the earliest Chinese sages in his own life, as to serve for an example to all the ages ; it was his wis dom which made his own sovereign the most powerful among the provincial kings. These ideas he grafted upon the life of his people as a teacher, tutoring young men during forty- five years; among his three thousand pupils, five hundred became mandarins, and seventy-two achieved honorable rank in the literary annals of their country. When his very human king finally wearied of the sage and his insistence upon virtue, Confucius opened a peripatetic school, wander ing from city to city. His ideas, enforcing the accumulated wisdom of all the preceding ages, were suited to the genius of the most thoughtful people who knew him, and his edition of the Classics stood for the high-water mark of the Chinese literature. The studies of the Classics into which ie inducted so many youth, were maintained after him for seventy generations. These ideas proved in use so service able to society as it then existed, and of so great value to the state, that their study was made binding upon all who would hold office, — the matter being taken up by those in authority not long after the death of Confucius. This set tled the matter for subsequent centuries: the ultimate influence of the Classics being not so much due to the intrinsic value of their ideas as to their use in the national competitive examinations. The ideas were such that they Osiris and the lotus-eaters, and the leek and onion raising popu lation around him, and the very brickmakers who were lashed T>y the Pharoahs, as to compel its acceptance, and the main tenance of their civilization, already antique, at an even level for thousands of years? CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 141 all tended to conserve the state; and the state very judi ciously conserved the ideas. So the slow-molded, careful people of the empire, of enterprise in looking to their own interests, with sense to see the social value of certain well ordered moralities, with a high appreciation of the necessity for a strong government and of the efficiency of absolute power when limited by ancient custom and the influence of a powerful class of educated men; with a rigid determination age after age to keep the best ideas of the nation at the front by ceaselessly dinging them into all youthful ears that were open to receive them; with a determination to put a premium upon these lessons of antiquity; with as rigid a determination that the heart of Asia should beat true to itself, — this isolated people, whose ships could sail to no far-off seas, whose intellectual and moral superiority and rude armies could easily master neigh boring Asia, and whose wheelbarrows at one time lacked but little of trundling to the Atlantic; this people, so reverent toward superiors, so eminent in filial piety, so economically industrious, so patiently persistent, so self-contained, so content, and so justly conceited with the pride of perma nency in their power of immemorial generations; this peo ple so fertile in resources unlooked for by their Occidental neighbors ; a people receptive of new notions that are prove'd to be good, but impatient at being disturbed in their con servatism for trivial reasons; this people so monotonously capable and evenly balanced — of no nimble wit, but acute and astute and practical in their intellectual operations — stood behind Confucius to perpetuate his fame. By bestowing government office upon those only who suc ceed in a competitive examination upon the Classics, great coherency has been given to the nation through unifying the ideal of the foremost youth and making it for the inter est of the individual that the government should be main tained. This ideal of an education, the best known to the nation, the student forms in early life ; but its finally lead ing the individual to public employment always depends on 142 CHINESE EDUCATION. the maintenance of the public order, so that every class of literary graduates has proved another support to the sta- "bility of the empire. Even if literary aspirants do not all obtain office, those completing the examination constitute a iighly privileged class in relation to those in authority. It is also to the advantage of the nation as such, that the humblest can compete with the highest. Youth of the lowest families, through a certain intellectual force, have been con stantly reaching exalted station during more than a score of centuries. The common people constitute a factor always to be taken into account by their superiors. There is no hereditary nobility ; nor is there anything like a priest hood among Confucianists. Education stands in lieu of feudal rank, and the literary class is constantly recruited from the agriculturalists, the mechanics, and the tradesmen.1 There is a small tuition for the teacher, although to some extent free schools were established by the emperor in 1730. The children of the mercantile classes and the wealthier of the agriculturalists usually learn to handle an accountant's wire and block frame, and to write, and to read more or less of the Classics in an unspoken language. Teachers are abundant, being often those who have failed to pass the higher examinations. All over the great inland provinces, along the broad rivers, on high table-lands, among the mountains, and by the side of the sea, the more dense popu lations have had schooling for ages ; from generation to gen eration the boys have entered, first reverently bowing to the tablet of Confucius; each successive series of boys at work on the Classics in a dead or unspoken language ; then from each school a list is made up of those most apt and most ambitious and who can afford to go forward, who become 'Incidentally, it may be noted that this fact, of the constant ¦building up of the literary class from the ranks of the common people is not without great import as to the future of China, since the Western philanthropists at work in the empire win their principal following from the lower ranks in which capable persons are always to be found. CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 143 candidates for degrees in the more advanced schools which are opened by the government. All have a right to the first examination, but the second is never open to one who did not pass the first, and the advanced degrees are limited by the government as to the number which can be conferred in any given year. There may be two thousand students in one district examined for the first degree, during five days in succession at one stage, and five at another; and a like number of days for more advanced examinations. Those of the second degree gain civil privileges, exemption from certain punishments; but the number is so sharply limited that in a population of twenty millions there may be ten thousand competitors, yet only ninety degrees conferred ; nine thousand, nine hundred and ten missing it. All told, says Martin, there are about two millions of candidates every year ; but only two or three out of every hundred receive the coveted degrees. That is, the annual candidates are as one to every two hundred of the total population of the empire, of whom one out of every ten or fifteen thousand of the census is — through the lim itation imposed by the government — successful. Some times those who fail, compete again and again. President Martin, of the University of Wuchong, instanced one exam ination where there were ninety-nine who succeeded ; and at an average they were over thirty years old; fourteen were over forty, one sixty-two, and one eighty-three. The com petition for the third degree occurs at the capital. There are, perhaps, six thousand candidates, to whom three hun dred and fifty degrees are open. The names of the suc cessful become at once the pride of the provinces ; they are the picked men, through whom the nation itself is to be kept to its standard. With all its drawbacks, says Presi dent Martin, the civil service examination has done more than anything else to hold China together, and help her maintain a respectable standard of civilization. The liter ary class, so called, throughout the empire aggregates from two to three millions. This would be as if — we will say — 144 CHINESE EDUCATION. one man out of every one hundred and sixty-six of the total population, is a very highly educated man, according to the Chinese standard; and all together, they constitute a most conservative influential body supporting the existing order of things. Success in the examinations mainly hinges upon one's ability to hold in mind the Classics that have been studied during so many years. It is an astonishing train ing of the memory. One effect of this is the transmission of disciplined memories from father to son. The average pupil in a Christian mission school in China is found to have by heredity an aptitude to memorize not found among Occidentals. And it is to be said with an emphasis, that the diplomats of foreign nations have found that the Chi nese system of competitive examinations has brought to the front picked men of fine culture, keen of intellect, and of great native capacity, for the conduct of national affairs.1 As a national plan to educate all the people, the Chinese system is a failure. It is in no sense public education, but a public use of the education of the few. Although nine out of ten can read a few characters required in their business, not one out of twenty can read a newspaper, and one out of fifty can pick up an ordinary book and read it intelligently.2 'It would be difficult to state briefly the authorities upon this unique system. Professor Douglas' China is one of the best books, in popular style, and of the highest authority; there is a New York edition. The educational chapter in Professor S. Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom is very full and explicit. Edkins' Religion in China, third edition (London, 1884), and Archdeacon Moule's New China and Old (London, 1891), are very valuable books; p. 40 in the one, and pp. 261-267 in the other, relating to education. Then there is that curiously interesting work, The Chinese Painted by Themselves, by Colonel Tcheng- ki-tong (London, 1884), p. 64, referring to education. Schmidt's Geschichte der Pwdagogik, Dittes and Hannock's edition, contains the best account. Consult also President Martin's Lore of Cathay, Chap. XVII. Authorities are substantially agreed upon this estimate. If this be correct, it is much worse than India; although little worse than Christian Equador. POPULAR ILLITERACY. 145 A minute fraction of the whole number of boys — and no girls — ever see the inside of a school room, and only a microscopic part of these ever continue their studies to such a point as to make them of practical use.1 Yet, since edu cation is the way to power, all families who can afford the tuition send their sons, from sunrise till ten, and from eleven till five, daily, save that in summer there is no second ses sion. Every boy studies aloud, at the top of his voice. The whole course, ten years or more, should be taken, to be of any real value. In reading, the characters are different from those in common use. If one fails to attend school for at least five or six years, he rarely finds a book thereafter that he can read. Memorizing the Classics is begun so early that a boy does not understand the ideas, and the teacher does not explain. The boy is not taught to think, but to repeat. If he fails to push on to an examination, he forgets what he once recited without understanding it. Yet the school boy gains this : "He learns obedience and respect for authority, and learns to be industrious."2 As a scheme for educating a class of literary men from which government officers may be selected — in China pre eminently the leaders of the nation, — the system is like what we should have in England, Germany, or America to-day, if there were no other education than that of taking such lads as can afford to pay tuition and drilling them to memorize the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, or, for that matter, Kent's Commentaries or Blackstone written in Latin or some language unknown to the common people; and then putting them through repeated examinations to test their memories, and their skill in reproducing in essays and poems the ideas they have gathered, and then systemati cally parceling the public offices for a brief term among a few of the most successful.3 'A. H. Smith's Natural History of the Chinese Boy and of the Chinese Girl, p. 27. 1883. 2Arthur H. Smith. "It does not seem fair to mention the abuse of the system as an argument against it. In America or in Great Britain there would 10 146 CHINESE EDUCATION. The tests in Chinese literary composition required in the examinations presuppose an extraordinary memory trained through years of study, an extensive knowledge of the writ ten characters of the language, and an arrangement that is to the Chinese ear musical ; this, and a thorough grounding in the maxims of the sages of two thousand years ago, with habits of obedience and of industry, constitute the practical outcome of a period of fifteen to twenty-five years' study to the few who can take the time for it. Yet the fact of fifteen to twenty-five years' study for public men during forty generations is of surpassing interest. Philosophy, classical literature, cultivated manners, an orderly govern ment, and varied industrial arts flourished in China during many ages in which the Germanic peoples were still bar baric. It is no wonder that the most eminent scholars of the empire have until recent years thought it little worth while to make the acquaintance of the outer world. Sir Eobert Hart, for so long a period the honored Chief Inspector of the Chinese customs service, stated a few years ago that there were only ten or twenty men in the whole empire who thought that western appliances were valuable ; that not one Chinaman out of one hundred thou sand knew anything about such inventions ; and that, taking the whole population, not one out of ten thousand knew any thing about foreigners. Yet in the long and illustrious reign of Chien Lung in the eighteenth century, the Eoman Catholic missionaries were tolerated on account of their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, which proved useful for the correction of the calendar; and that Occi dental knowledge has been welcome to the few able to appre ciate its value, has been amply proved since so many philan thropic educational workers of Christendom have resided he more or less corruption — through favor or the payment of money — to vitiate the working of it as a scheme for perfecting civil service, and that is the way it works in China. Tide the chapter on education in S. Wells Williams' Middle Kingdom; and Douglas' China, pp. 104, 105. Compare, however, Cycle of Cathay, p. 329. THE BROADENING CURRICULUM. 147 in China in recent years. When it became known that Dr. Happer was about to plant a new college, some four hun dred of the officers, gentry, and scholars of Canton and vicinity asked that it might be located in that city. Of the signers of this petition ten were members of the Imperial Academy, and more than a hundred and twenty were scholars of the first and the second degree, and a hundred of them were holding official positions under the government. President Martin's career as an educator has been most notable. To China he has given translations of Wheaton 's International Law, and of legal codes French and English, works upon history, natural philosophy, physical geography, physiology and anatomy; and for thirty years he was pro fessor of international law at Tung Wen College. In appreciation of his service, the government made him a mandarin at first of the third rank, then of the second. Li Hung Chang was the firm friend of new education in China. His own sons were tutored by that eminently wise educator who now presides over Tien Tsin University; whose privilege it has been to organize a modern graded school system leading up to the university, in the metro politan province, — so creating a model to be copied throughout the empire. The schools planted by Occidental philanthropists in China now enroll about thirty-five thousand pupils in their various grades. This may be increased by a pro rata esti mate of seventy-five thousand village day pupils, if such schools in China enroll as many as they average in the other fields of the Orient. In 1860 the government established two naval schools; and in 1885 a military school and medical school. Since 1887, the civil service examinations have been slightly modi fied by the theoretical introduction of a modicum of modern science and essays upon the government and history of China and of the western nations ; in practice, however, an optional in mathematics appears to have been the only modification prior to 1900. 148 CHINESE EDUCATION. Since the coming in of the new century, says President Charles D. Tenney, of Tien Tsin university, who is acting as Educational Commissioner for the Chinese government in placing students in the higher institutions of Eng land and America, there has been a most earnest move ment for a general improvement in educational matters, and the entire system has been thoroughly reorganized. In 1905, an imperial edict directed the opening of new schools throughout" the empire to give instruction in the topics required by Western systems of education, and the prepar ation of appropriate text-books; the decree further direct ing that the same rewards be given in these modern schools of learning as have hitherto been granted only to the old style literary competitions. So in less than a score of years this system is changed, which has been such an amazing power in the empire during so many ages. The new government schools now enroll a hundred and ten thousand pupils in the metropolitan province. And within a year the ladies of Pekin have opened educational work for girls. Postal and telegraphic service upon an extended scale has been established by the customs department, which has made easy the distribution of news and of books. Newspa pers are springing up everywhere. Eager young men in great numbers have gone to Japan to study. And every where the Japanese, who understand the language and the people, are entering in, as merchants, as soldiers, and nota bly as teachers. So the old social order of one-fourth of the human race is, little by little, changing. Yet hundreds of millions of people can be reached but slowly, and the modern nation, that is to be, will be evolved only through the disturbed on-going of years and of generations. One of the conditions that must retard the general move ment, is inherent in the written language and the spoken dialects. The primitive ideographic language — whose characters express ideas rather than standing for letters or A NEW ERA. 149 syllables based on the sounds of a spoken language, — is quite unfitted to meet the exigency of representing the varied activities of western civilization, based as so many of them are upon arts and sciences new to the world. Then, too, the dialects of the realm are so diverse that there is no general connection between the idioms of dense populations quite near each other. This, however, tends to develop communication in other languages, foreshadowing possible linguistic changes in the future which will make world-wide learning more accessible to the ambitious youth of the empire. English, by the use of all Europeans in China, is the language of commerce. The ideas embodied in the ideographic script of the Chi nese, cannot be expressed phonetically; so that the ancient forms, which were fixed by the early poets and sages, will abide for all distinctive literary uses. Of all foreign influences upon education in China, Christian philanthropy has been first in the field ; the Prot estant missions having been a hundred years in the service and the Eoman Catholic much longer, — all far in advance of the general movement of to-day. If this work can be at once so reinforced as to furnish upon an enlarged scale not only a further diffusion of medical knowledge and healing, but the needful moral education, it will greatly aid in the reorganization and renovation of the empire. His Excellency Tuan Fong, the Viceroy of Fukien and Che Kiang, at the banquet given in New York to the Chi nese Imperial High Commission, February, 1906, graciously referred to the American missionaries in the Chinese empire, saying: — "We take pleasure in bearing testimony to the part taken by American missionaries in promoting the progress of the Chinese people. They have borne the light of Western civilization into every nook and corner of the empire. The awakening of China, which now seems to be at hand, may be traced in no small measure to the hands of the missionary. For this service you will find China not ungrateful." His Excellency, also, in an address when 150 MOSLEM SCHOOLS. visiting the Mission rooms of the American Board in Boston, referred to the excellent results in China of the tactful, prudent work of the men sent out, and their good sense, saying emphatically, — "Send us more like these you have sent." Educationally, the Mohammedans have been as much in advance of the Brahmans and Buddhists as they have been superior to them in ideas that relate to the Supreme Being. The transformation wrought in connection with the work of Mohammed was a notable instance of that quickened intel lectual life which is always connected with a great religious impulse,— like that which visited Europe in the Eeforma tion of later centuries, or that Japan saw upon the incoming of the Confucian morality and semi-religious philosophy, or that marked the early triumphant march of Buddhism through kingdoms and empires. If the new fire was called Arabic, it was the steel of Islam striking the flint of varied nationalities, every one of which was intellectually superior to the newly united tribesmen of the desert. Awakened by war, Syria, Persia and Egypt gave to the world univer sities in which the new science was called Arabic and the new philosophy was designated as Moslem, and that new scholarship which created Arabic literature. The civiliza tion of the conquered peoples was, however, no product of Arabia. In and of itself, the Koran stifled scientific inquiry, and the new world of letters flourished through no genius of the Prophet, and in spite of the limitations he imposed.1 Yet there opened to the new Moslem peoples a new era, characterized by a unique system of jurisprudence based nominally or really upon the Koran, a system of the- 'Tide The Problems of Mohammedanism, a paper by Duncan Black Macdonald, LL. D., read before the Mohammedan Section of the International Congress of Arts and Science at St. Louis, September 23, 1904; published in the Hartford Seminary Record, pp. 86-89. STUDY OF THE KORAN. 151 ology, grammatical and lexicographical studies, poetry and romance, the introduction of Greek learning, historical treatises, and works upon geography, astronomy, and math ematics, — all these surounding their Prophet as the central figure ; and to the admiring nations, dazed and enslaved by the arms of Islam, Mohammed appeared to be as helpful to the human intellect as to the spiritual nature of man. Amid the Occidental nations of to-day, however, it is not easy to appreciate the vast quickening of Oriental life that followed the triumphant progress of the arms of Islam, in the centuries preceding the Norman conquest of England. And even if the great Arabian civilization, with its art, its science, its literature, was finally narrowed to the limita tions of the Koran, it is greatly to the credit of Islam that its religious faith has never failed to look constantly toward extension through teachers as well as warriors, those imbued at least with the Prophet's knowledge and something of his spirit. The ten thousand Moslem students at Cairo to-day have come from the Malay peninsula, from India, Persia, Zanzibar, Algiers, Morocco, and some have crossed Africa on foot from the West Coast. Many are too poor to pay fees: and the three hundred instructors bed and board cheaply, with little more than the fare of the students — coarse bread, a blanket and a floor. Their zeal justifies the ancient Mohammedan maxims : "To learn to read is worth more than fasting, to teach it more meritorious than prayer;" "The ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr." Although it is true that in more than two-thirds of the Moslem world at this hour the common education is, at its best, not other than the study of the Koran and knowledge enough to read and write its text — and this was all that could be found in the Turkish Empire when the educational philanthropists of America first went there, — yet through the competition of Christian education, based upon modern principles, the Turkish government has now opened graded schools in all the larger cities. 152 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION Islam has never favored the education of women.1 Only one out of every thousand of the Hindu Moslem women in the Bengal Presidency can read or write. Of men, only six out of a hundred can read in Mohammedan India. Within a decade, Gaza in Syria, with a Moslem population of thirty thousand, had no native instruction whatever for women. The ignorance of many communities at large, in the Turkish Empire, can with difficulty be matched among African tribes, although the women are in native ability the peers of their sisters in the Occident.2 This is not alto gether due to Islam; not a little of it relates to the degener ate Christian peoples of the Turkish Empire. Here schools have been opened by Western philanthropists. Local Mos lem governors have been as a rule most friendly. His Excellency, the Keeper of the Bolls, recently made an admirable address, upon Commencement, at the Marash Girls ' College. Civil and military officers of high rank have attended the examinations of girls' schools, and expressed their approval. In one city of twenty thousand girls and women, very few are now without schooling, where, a gen eration since, only two could read.3 An eminent educator in the Orient relates that the old men at first looked upon this work as a great joke: — -"If you educate the girls, the next thing you will want to do will be to educate the donkeys. A donkey can learn to read as well as the girls can. And there is just as much use in having a donkey that can read, as to have a girl that can read. There is nobody that will marry a girl that can read. She will think, and talk back; her husband cannot do anything with her. We shall have our houses full of old maids." "But when the girls began to go to school, the young men soon found it out," 'Note by Peofessoe D. B. Macdonaxd. — Along with the small number of literate women in Islam, there have been, however, several women-scholars, even professors in universities. That is part of the paradox; universities having flourished in Islam at the expense of the common school. 2Special correspondence, Western Turkey in Asia. President Fuller of Aintab. , IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. 153 adds this educator; "and there is to-day no fairly educated girl but has so many suitors as to interfere with her attempt to teach or engage in anything else than home building. And after all, Turkey needs Christian homes more than any thing else."1 As applied to the Orient the term "education" must be broadly comprehensive; not only relating to the enlighten ment of the understanding, but the discipline of the tem per and the formation of manners. "Whatever we teach or do not teach," says one deserving the meed of inter national fame, the heroic Corinna Shattuck of Oorfa, "we train the girls to self-control, which means very much, in the sometimes stormy homes of the Orient. One effect of the schooling of girls is this, that they win the respect of their fathers and brothers, and have more freedom to express their opinions and wishes as to marriage proposals. And in Protestant families girlhood is prolonged ; it being, now, no greater shame to be married so late as eighteen or twenty, than so late as fourteen, twenty years ago. Mar riage at twelve was the old rule; yet now, even the non- Protestants seldom marry before fifteen, and often not till twenty. ' ' Again, says this queenly woman, who has devoted herself for the love of God to making homes for other people, ' ' I notice that the social life of the people has been greatly stimulated by the schools. The parents travel between their widely scattered homes and the school towns, so that girls now more frequently marry outside their own village. ' ' The village girl catches a new idea, a new life ; a new world of religious thought opens to her, a new world of cleanliness and of discipline. The fetters of her mind, the legacy of hundreds of years of ignorance and supersti tion, drop off. Better lighted houses follow the formation 'In President Barrows' Christian Conquest of Asia, pp. 57, 58 (New York, 1899), there is cited the testimony of a Syrian Mos lem, who said to the teacher of a Christian school: "You have trained my wife well. I have been in all kinds of iniquity; when I married her, I expected to beat my wife, and then divorce her. But this girl has won my love, and I have no other wife." 154 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION of reading habits, and the neighbors who cannot read follow the fashion. And if they do not see to read, they at least see the dirt, and they fall to and clean up their rooms. And if there is a window, they open it and let in pure air. Forty odd years ago there was not a glass window in Aintab. Forty thousand people lived, for the most part, in the dark and the dirt. If Christian philanthropists have carried no other light to Turkey than "lights" of window-glass, they deserve well of humanity. The outward appearance of the towns and villages has appreciably changed through the improvements introduced by the Christian educators who have made their homes in the empire. "Mothers who had a girlhood and have been educated," says one of them, "straighten out the crooked and intensify the right." "Husbands begin to be considerate of their wives, and wives of their husbands. Hands once indifferent, if not cruel, now reach out in helpful ministration to the sick and the poor." This work, initiated by those who have trav ersed several thousands of miles in order to be in a position to do it, leads the people to ask: "Who of our own ever so cared for us before?" These sociological workers are American, and their col leges for young men are by far the best institutions in Tur key. The graduates of Eobert College1 at Constantinople occupy government positions in Bulgaria and Eoumelia. The colleges in Asia occupy strategic points to which the students come from distances of two, five, or eight days' journey. Here the text-books of experienced Occidental educators are used. The Turkish minister of public instruc- 'Pounded by Cyrus Hamlin, D. D., LL. D., it bears the name of Mr. Christopher Robert, of New York, who contributed one half the cost of its building. The real estate is held upon a deed directly from the Sultan. The fireproof edifice is placed under the protection of the United States; having the right to fly the stars and stripes over the Bosphorus. Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks, in nearly equal numbers, constitute the average of two hundred students, whose educational standing is that of classes in the smaller New England colleges. IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE. 155 tion has introduced into the schools of the empire the ele mentary mathematical books prepared by Dr. Hamlin of Crimean fame. The far-reaching character of this work is; seen in the Syrian Protestant College at Beyroot, where the players upon the athletic field are from Egypt, from Persia,. from the Greek Islands, from Damascus or Lebanon. Here- Catholics Greek and Eoman, Druses, Armenians, Copts, Jews, Protestants, and sons of Islam, are learning the prin ciples of ethics, truth, honesty, justice, politeness, ideals in business life, the fundamental principles of society. These men have found government positions in Syria and Egypt, in hospitals, in the Egyptian army, in the Soudan, and three have become bishops in the Greek Church. There were once great crusades to the lands of the Turks. During two hundred years all Christendom was shaken by the tread of martial hosts moving eastward. During the past two generations there has been every way a more notable movement: it has been the peaceful occupation of different quarters of the Turkish Empire by the crusaders- of a great moral force, who have crossed several thousands of miles of blue water for the love of God and the love of the Turkish Empire, and who have, all told, furnished an average of two years' schooling to two hundred thousand young people in Christian schools. It seems likely that this; means a permanent uplift in the condition of at least a hundred thousand homes. There are, according to Dr. Jes- sup, in the Ottoman Empire to-day nearly nine hundred Protestant schools with more than forty-three thousand pupils; the colleges enroll more than twelve hundred stu dents. Eighteen hundred native assistants are engaged in Christian work. There are not less than five hundred American missionaries in the open field, leading in this crusade. And there are supporting this distinctive work, more than a million members of Christian churches in America. Without reward or hope of reward from earthly kings or kingdoms, this great body of philanthropists have put into this crusade more than ten millions of dol- 156 CHINESE EDUCATION lars of hard-earned money, the gifts, the most of it, of relatively poor people, rich in their purpose to make this world over again, so far forth as to bless the nations with good homes.1 Those who are thoughtful students of the world's progress cannot easily express their appreciation of this inestimable good, wrought by those who reside in foreign parts perhaps half a hundred years, with no other purpose than to elevate the social and moral condition of another nationality.2 VI. Even if Christianity has not advanced rapidly in its cen turies of educational development, it has finally proved itself not only a progressive power but the present educa tional leader of the world; certainly so in the realms of Brahma and Buddha, of Confucius and Islam. As the legitimate heir of the great ideal of a Kingdom of Divine Love upon earth — in all the ages of its promise, its prep aration, its continuous moving forward toward fulfilment, — Christianity has not only aided the unfolding intellectual powers of certain virile backward races, but has looked on all men as of one blood and the most savage stock as capa ble of being ingrafted with such principles of social life as -conduce to a wholesale fruitage. To this end, Christian philanthropists take the results of ages of culture and bear them throughout the world, making over to stranger nations their own heritage of accumulated knowledge. This they do for the larger Christ — the larger human conception of 'his beneficent work : this they do for the greater Church, for the broader, deeper, higher conception of the divine plan in 'The author is indebted to Mr. C. N. Chapin of Boston for ser vice in compiling statistics of American philanthropic work in the Turkish empire. 2That this Christian sociological work upon a national scale should have been seriously interrupted by Moslem mobs and mas sacres in recent years is not perhaps to be wondered at. The very theory of Islam demands it. AS A SOCIAL POWER. 157 all human life. Historically, the clerical profession was once the only educated calling in Europe ; the medical and legal professions of to-day, the schoolmaster's service, and what we should now call the editorial function, were all carried on by the clergyman, so far as they existed in the earlier age. The State to-day is debtor to the Church of yesterday. The teachers, physicians, counsellors, jurists, statesmen, journalists, men of affairs, administrators, philanthropists of modern times, are but following a divine call in the larger apprehension of Christ and his beneficent work as applied to society, and that organized Christianity which insists upon practical righteousness in every calling. Manliness in merchandising, skill in healing, the protec tion of liberty by law, purity in politics, international right dealing, and friendliness to the average man, whether he be called a lord or a laborer, — these are the aims of education in the modern era, aims reached through multifarious call ings Christo et Ecclesiae. An examination of the lists of alumni in the great schools of Christendom show them to have been great on every side in serving Christian society, and in introducing divine principles into the marts of business. This marks the scope of the supreme service which Chris tianity is seeking to render the non-Christian nations and peoples at this hour. Everywhere it is planting its univer sities, in India, in Japan, in China, in the Turkish Empire. These universities exist to advance science, to keep alive philosophy and poetry, to draw out and cultivate the high est powers of the human mind; and this science is always face to face with God ; this philosophy brings all its issues into the one word — duty ; this poetry has its culmination in a hymn of praise ; and in the drawing out of the highest powers of the human mind a prayer — man face to face with God — is the transcendent effort of intelligence.1 'For this sentence, compare the citation from President Eliot, of Harvard, in Dr. Alexander McKenzie's Lowell Lectures, — The Divine Force in the Life of the World, p. 297. Boston, 1899. 158 MORAL EDUCATION. All education is ultimately related to moral life. The human mind made in the divine image cannot be awakened and disciplined without arousing a sense of one's own per sonal dignity as related to Infinite Intelligence. Mere knowledge of the multiplication table does not effect the reformation of man. The creation of the social man is possible only through the knowledge of men as morally inter-related. It is, therefore, undeniable that the underly ing motive for all this altruistic education, on the part of Christendom, is religious. If there were not intensity of conviction on this point, the men and women would not go. Not else would Moffat and Livingston, John Paton, and scores of the consecrated sons of Scotia — that fruitful mother of Christian heroes — have endured burning heats and martyrdoms for God and humanity. The ending of all knowledge, said Sir Philip Sidney, is virtuous action. There is no knowledge of use without this ending. Dr. Seeland says that the experiment has been made for half a century to raise the Kirghiz by education to the level of civilization, and that it cannot be done.1 Eminent Quaker philanthropists experimented on the American Indians for years, giving them education as a civilizing force ; it proved utterly in vain : they had to introduce Christianity.2 This agrees with Herbert Spencer, who, when in America some years ago, was currently reported as saying, in reply to a question whether the diffusion of knowledge would fit men for free institutions, — "No; it is essentially a question of character, only in a secondary degree a question of educa tion ; the idea that mere education is a panacea for political evils is a universal delusion. ' ' Yet no permanent upbuild ing of Christian society is possible except through develop- 'The doctor is the chief of the Russian Army Medical Depart ment, long dwelling among the Kirghiz. — Lansdell's Chinese Cen tral Asia, II, pp. 257, 258. 'Christian Missions. By Julius H. Seelye, D. D., President of Amherst College, p. 39. New York, 1876. The reference is to "Evidence on the Aborigines," before the House of Commons, 1833-'34, p. 187. BORNEO. 159 ing intellectual force, and the training of youth: this was proved by the experience of the American Board in the Hawaiian Islands, and in their earlier work in India.1 It was educational work, in its highest sense, which took Bishop McDougal to the Dyaks of Borneo. Three human heads, fresh killed for the occasion, decorated the table at the feast made in his honor : yet the Dyaks believed in God, — they said that He slept and cared nothing for men. When persuaded that God was a Father, they listened, and ceased to propitiate evil spirits by removing the head of any one who might step out of the usual path. Never were a people more ready to receive moral instruction, and to obey it. The sober missionary annals of the Church of England thrill the reader, as if a strange, wild story of magical transformation, — a radically changed life in sav agery, wrought through their new ideas of God. Thanks to the great mother heart of the Church of England which has sought in every corner to find the world's neglected children, the seeds of truth caught and sprang up on every side, even before the arrival of more teachers. The Orang Kaya taught the Updop Dyaks, and this led other villages to ask for teachers. The chief of the Skerang Dyaks conversed cautiously with the teacher, then said : "I have tried birds, and I have tried spirits. I have listened to the voices of the one, and have attended to the demands of the other, and made offerings to them, but I never could see that I gained any benefit from them, and now I shall have no more to do with them. I shall become a Christian. ' ' So welcome were the words from over the sea, that the Dyaks of Lundu upon building a home for a teacher, produced copies of ele mentary moral instruction, saying, ' ' These are worth more than any wages he can give us. ' '2 And now, says Horna- day the traveler, nowhere in the world is life and property 'Report of Annual Meeting, A. B. C. F. M. Madison, 1894: the Address of Secretary N. G. Clark: also Address of Secretary Creegan. 'Digest of Records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, p. 682 (1892); pp. 689, 690, 692 (1893). London. 160 MORAL EDUCATION more securely sacred than among the once fierce head hunters. In the South Seas, the cruel islanders were actuated by moral ideas that needed rectifying; and when the tribes once trusted the British philanthropists who told them what was better, they did better. When the Friendly Islanders, who supposed that their earthquakes were produced by a Polynesian Atlas who shifted the globe from one shoulder to the other, found out that they were probably mistaken, they reasoned at once that they might also be mistaken in idol worship. They were led to this by native evangelists from other islands, before they saw teachers from England. They then gathered ten thousand children, and placed them in Christian schools. And their king gave a well ordered government upon Christian principles. It is estimated1 that the evangelizing of three hundred and fifty of the South Sea islands cost $10,000,000, paid mostly by the average man in Great Britain. It is a good illustration of the altruistic spirit of modern Christianity. The British Encyclopedia says that, in respect to reading and writing, and the elements of arithmetic, education in Polynesia is more general than in the British Isles; then, too, there are advanced schools and colleges in the larger groups. No portion of Christendom is better supplied with religious instruction than the Christianized islands of Polynesia, says the encyclopedic authority; and, taking into consideration the short time they have been under Christian influence, they compare favorably with any Christian people in the world. In their relation to moral education, the ecclesias tical affiliations of the people afford a well-compacted body of public opinion, created in these lately savage lands, on. the side of good government and in favor of the ten com mandments, to say nothing of a rigid determination formed by the natives, to carry their new notions of what life is for to the islands where idolatry, theft, treachery, murder, 'By an Australian clergyman, with easily obtainable statistics at hand. IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS. 161 and domestic degradation are still the rule and not the exception. The population, about half that of Australia, has already forgotten the old heathen rites, and they are busy with commerce and agriculture. Twenty-seven of the most important groups of islands are now politically allied to Christian powers, and are reckoned as a part of Christendom. This story of social revolution through the educative power of new ideas is to be found in a library of some sixty volumes, many of which are of great merit and well illustrated. Is not he indeed an ill-educated person, who knows all about the atolls, the tropical butterflies, and the differences in war clubs and canoes, who has no knowl edge of the mighty domestic, social, and commercial changes wrought by putting Christian ideas into the heads of Papuan, the Sawaiori, and the Tarapon peoples of the Pacific Island world, — that mighty work which makes commerce the safer, marine insurance the cheaper, and which leads the shipwrecked seamen to breathe the easier when they see a church rising amid the palms. The indefatigable philanthropists of Christendom are educating to-day in non-Christian lands a great many more pupils1 than the average school attendance of New Eng land ; two-thirds of them being trained by British teachers. Most of these pupils are of good racial stock, capable of holding their own with the world. The social possibilities of this movement will be apparent when it is considered that the number of these pupils is more than eight times the number of the original emigrants from their home land to New England some seven or eight generations since. There are one-tenth more pupils of non-Christian realms now annually taught in Christian schools than there were inhabitants of Eome at the Christian era.2 They are half as many as the people of England in the eleventh century. •Based upon mission statistics in Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions, J. S. Dennis. 2The estimate being that of Dr. Beloch for A. D. 14, in Mul- hall's Dictionary of Statistics. 11 162 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF WOMEN. This work, upon so vast a scale, is carried on amid popu lations that have been least progressive, by those most advanced; and it can but mark a crisis in social history, affecting the destiny of the future of mankind. The very dog-trainers and stock-breeders and bird-fanciers of the world must know this : it pertains to the principle of hered ity; it will ultimately change the face of society upon extended areas of our planetary surface. Three points may now be named, which, from an educa tional point of view, will greatly affect the social evolution of mankind in future ages. One relates to the future improved status of womanhood throughout the world. In the preceding chapter, that upon Home Building, much was said of the condition of woman hood in non-Christian lands. In its influence upon the future, it is to be added that school girls constitute one- third of the pupils just referred to: this marks an appre ciable beginning of changed conditions. The improvement also will be accelerated by the fact that of the total number of philanthropic Christian workers who are promoting secu lar and moral education in non-Christian lands, two-fifths are women, working specially among women. It is also worthy of note that, of the philanthropic women workers of Christendom now engaged in uplifting womanhood in non-Christian realms throughout the world, more than ninety-three per cent, of the total number are of that Ger manic stock, which was alluded to in the preceding chapter as being most influential in the social evolution of Chris tendom. It is, also, to be noted that the education of women is recent in Christendom, and totally neglected in non-Christendom: by the time the non-Christian women of the world are generally educated, the leadership of highly-educated women of altruistic spirit, in Christendom, will have acquired still greater social force.1 Another thing which has appeared, quite incidentally, in 'The statistics in this paragraph are based upon tables in Den nis' Centennial Survey. NATIONAL LEADERSHIP. 163 this chapter, is the relative inferiority of the intellectual and moral standards maintained by certain non-Christian peoples. The world's leadership has already been acquired by those Christian nations which have during many ages been making the most of their intellectual and moral endow ments, — enlarging the resources of kingdoms and increas ing the economic power of endless generations. One curious effect of this appears in summing up the population of the little island of Great Britain; it outranks China, — the British home steam power is equal to the labor of four hundred millions of men. The effect is the same as if men had been brought in from other worlds, or the genii of the air, to work in English factories to clothe this planet better. As, in the struggle for existence, the other animals stand no chance with man, so the uneducated populations of other countries stand no chance with educated Christendom. Knowledge is power : and the nations that will not take the hint, and the help of the hour held out to them by Christian philanthropists looking toward promoting the intellectual and moral education of their youth, will certainly perish in the ultimate struggle for existence. They must adapt themselves to the demands of this age, or be forever left in the race by the advance of Christendom. For another point : it is a fact which augurs well for the future of mankind that great bodies of men, now numbered by scores of millions in Christendom, are actuated by gen erous ideas toward their fellow men in other lands, seeking to improve their intellectual and social condition, both now and as related to the after ages of the world. And the nations that have the most vitality in doing this, the most enterprise to get up and go abroad on moral errands worth going for, will certainly be the nations of paramount power in the future. The physical energy of China is admirable ; yet the Chinese system of intellectual and moral education, the Confucian-Taoist-Buddhist philosophy of life — as the ages go by — will become absolutely extinct unless it has vitality enough to propagate itself in philanthropic enter- 164 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. prises. The Hindu faith cannot maintain itself on this globe unless it has power to renovate India, and to reach into other climes as a beneficent power — and to thrive upon other continents. And so we might go the rounds. That system is doomed by moral law — as certain in its outwork ing as natural law — which has not its seed in itself, with power to bear fruit in all realms in all ages. In this era of time, the words of Napoleon are true — as to intellectual and moral force in the social evolution of mankind — that the army which remains in its entrenchments is beaten. CHAPTEE FIVE : CONTEASTS IN LITEEATUEE. The contribution of any people in literary form to the world's thought is the chief index of their intellectual power, and the ultimate measure of their sociological value to the future of mankind. The literary productiveness of the great peoples of India, China, Japan and Arabia is of stupendous promise when viewed from the standpoint of social evolution. Through the study of comparative lit erature, this is easily verified. No student of Western learning can examine the evidences of mental activity dur ing hoary centuries, in the formation of the Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic literatures, without the uprising of a great hope and a well defined expectation con cerning these virile peoples, and the ages to come, in their unfolding intellectual life, that will ultimately prove most helpful to the whole human race. Do not the burdened libraries of Christendom show the immaturity and slow growth of what is styled "learning"? Give but time enough, and the races, that are sometimes called "back ward," will contribute their full share to the world's thought. Is not Christendom provincial? Does the thrilling life of a thousand millions of people outside of it enter little into the popular "Christian" imagination? So, too, in man's littleness, the purest aristocracy upon the globe, the Brahman, is provincial: Confucianists and Moslems are provincial. Will it not indeed advance the intellectual evo lution of man, when the great races and great religions become so far acquainted as to study each other's litera ture ? In Christendom, the literary output of two-thirds of mankind is popularly believed to consist almost solely of a few so called sacred books, and even of these there is no popular knowledge as to their distinctive contents. Yet the intellectual creations of the non-Christian peoples in poetry, 166 SANSKRIT LITERATURE. romance, philosophy, in historical perspective, in biographi cal studies in natural science, indicate an amazing activity that elevates at once our conceptions of their power to grap ple with religious problems and produce unique literatures fitted to the genius of every nation. Among all the changes in Christendom wrought in recent years, what is more help ful and hopeful than the discovery of the fundamental tenets of two-thirds of the human race to popular appre hension after so many dark and silent centuries, by which it is now possible to learn the mighty moral truths and pos sible intellectual errors which underlie the social state in non-Christian lands.1 If that man is ill-educated who knows no language but his own, then he must be counted as a mere zealot in reli gion, who in the twentieth century does not care to entertain cosmic views and know about the religious faith held by the great masses of those to whom he would extend a brother's greeting. "We have always something to learn," says James Martineau, "until we have traced the beliefs, which we disown and others trust, up to their inmost seat in human nature; and detected what good and holy thing it is which they poorly struggle to express. ' ' Hinduism has two staying features, the institution of caste, and the national Sacred Books;2 were either to be utterly undermined, the religion would fall. These books, as living authorities with the populace of to-day, are con stantly appealed to by the Hindus, as indicating what is definitely fixed ; they do not appeal to mere traditions. The 'Will not future generations in every land crown with honor the early Western students of Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Ara bic? They are in cosmopolitan work. When Professor Max Miil- ler was critically ill, the priests and pundits of Madras and of Benares offered public prayers for his recovery. 2Not in this chapter, but in the next, will inquiry be made as to the ethical contents of the Hindu books and those of the other great races and religions. BRAHMAN SUPREMACY. 167 rigidly enforced rules of caste, and the supremacy of their sacred writings stand for that intellectual domination which has been exercised by the Brahmans, almost without a break, since an early period of Indian civilization. The Brahman of to-day occupies a unique position, as the type of a purely intellectual aristocracy which is without a par allel in human history. No order of secular nobility has borne sway during so many milleniums. The Brahman has been father and son; the Buddhist mendicants and the monks or priests of Christendom and the members of the literary class in China have been but successions of individ uals without hereditary power, and Islam has been ruled through the state. The Brahmans alone by sheer intellect ual supremacy without secular power, or physical force, have maintained themselves without putting their hands to servile work during more than eighty generations.1 It is not a case of one family doing so, or of a few individuals, but of a large body — a caste comprising many tribes and numbering nearly fifteen millions — who constitute an intellectual oligarchy.2 The Brahmans are often charac- 'Theirs is the literary occupation, — they are fit for offices, to. act as clerks, or pundits; they may be bankers but not merchants, nor may they lease the land. They are often poor, begging for work with pen and books; and those who graduate at the govern ment schools are eager to serve the crown, — to-day, indeed, monopolizing the offices in Western India. Hunter's Indian Empire, p. 179, states, however, that in many parts of India the Brahmans act as porters, shepherds, cultivators, potters and fish ermen, — while others starve rather than engage in such work. Note by Pbofessoe E. Washburn Hopkins. — It should be added that the various statements made in the legal Sutras (c. 200 B. C.) show, at that early date, that there were numerous Brah mans who were employed in all sorts of occupations just as they are now. In fact, the legal books prescribe what a poor Brah man should do "in time of distress," showing that the actual condition of the class was quite different from its theoretical status. 2Dennis gives one-twentieth as the proportion of this caste to the whole population. Christian Missions and Social Progress, I: 246. 168 SANSKRIT LITERATURE. terized by a noble aspect in their walk, and by such detailed features as thin lips, broad foreheads, sharp eyes, faces that express their sense of hereditary superiority undis puted for some thousands of years, and every muscle, — even to their long finger tips, — keenly alive with the con sciousness of a divine incarnation. Certain tribes, as in Kashmir, are fair and handsome, with a certain refinement and regularity of features. There has been no time for nearly three thousand years in which the Brahmans have not claimed for themselves the intellectual qualities of Brama or Brahm, the supreme impersonal arranger of the universe, while other castes represent only inferior quali ties. As the "man of prayer," the Brahman has special ized in all that has tended to maintain a religious grip on the Hindus, holding that, in some proper sense, all com munication between Brahm and the lower castes is a Brahmanical perquisite. Through their sacerdotal require ments the Brahmans regulate the most minute details of the daily national life, domestic, social, and individual. This is carried out in detail by village residence and paid service throughout India.1 Brahmans alone have the right to sacrifice for the expiation of sin. This grip on India is commonly thought to be religious; it is, however, but the ecclesiastical enforcing of conformity to social, or, more strictly, caste rules;2 this being the most essential thing in Modern Hinduism, that elastic system by which the lead ing caste a thousand years ago finally fortified itself against all comers. What any Hindu believes is not impor tant if he conforms to usages which ultimately give Brah mans the precedence and financial support of the other castes.3 'The Brahman acts as the village clerk, — this caste so keeping the accounts of nineteen-twentieths of the Hindu population. 2This is religious in the pristine sense, early forms being often ritualistic, without ethical content. sTo this effect are the words of the late Lieutenant Governor Sir Charles U. Atchison: "So long as the supremacy of the priest hood is not meddled with, and the rules imposed by Brahmanism THE HINDU SCRIPTURES. 169 The literary activity of the Indian mind has manifested itself in works on law, medicine, mathematics, music, rhet oric and the drama; in the elaboration of six orthodox philosophical systems, and many heretical; in epics; in lyrical, descriptive, and didactic poetry; in the ancient Vedas, the more modern Shastras, and Puranas, that con stitute the authoritative religious literature of the Hindus. The Indian Sacred Books of to-day were transmitted orally from one generation of Brahmans to another, so that these sacred men were living Hindu Bibles, and their word was religious law. The books are held as the exclusive on the life and conduct are observed, it matters little what the personal belief of the Hindu is, or under what form or name the deity is worshipped." To the same effect, the late President Bar rows, of Oberlin, cited his conversation in Calcutta with Babu Guru Sen, who has written: "It is perfectly optional with the Hindu to choose from any of the different creeds with which the Sastras abound, or from any other creed not a trace of which can he found in the Sastras or any other book. He may choose to have faith in a creed if he wants a creed, or to do without one. He may be an atheist, a deist, a monotheist, or a polytheist, a believer in the Vedas or Sastras, or be skeptic as to their author ity, and his position as a Hindu cannot be questioned by any one on account of his beliefs or unbeliefs, so long as he conforms to social rules." (Barrows' Christian Conquest of Asia, p. 105.) To be more specific: the secretary of the Christian Literature Society of India, Dr. John Murdock of Madras, says that the Hindu "may worship anything in the Heaven above or in the earth beneath, or nothing. He may charge God with the greatest crimes or he may deny his existence. He may be guilty of lying, theft, adultery, murder; but so long as he observes the rules of his caste, he may live in his own home unmolested, and have free admission to Hindu temples. But let him visit England to study, let him marry a widow, dine with a person of another caste, or even take a glass of water from his hand, and, according to Hinduism, he is excommunicated." The same thing in substance is stated by Dr. Mitchell, one's belief being unessential if he observes caste requirements. (Hinduism, Past and Present, by J. Murray Mitchell, M. A., LL. D., p. 166, second edition.) All this is not without scientific value, related as it is to the question of ultimate selection and survival in religions; throwing light on that social system which is based on Sanskrit Literature. 170 SANSKRIT LITERATURE. Brahmanical heritage; held for the sharpening of their own understanding, and kept from the people, — no member of the dominant priesthood being allowed to teach a man of the lowest caste or the so-called un- Aryan people even the laws of expiating sin, or allow him to hear one of the Vedic verses.1 The sacred books are never expounded to the people, and when Brahmanism was unhampered by British law, there was a death penalty for a man of servile caste, were he to read them. Among the most eminent San skrit scholars it is the present prevailing opinion that the oldest of the Vedic Scriptures were written about a thousand years before the Christian era, certain hymns being some centuries older at a time when there was a tolerant spirit in religion. The earliest hymns set forth the value of wis dom, goodness and religious meditation, in an ideal life; the religious service was patriarchal, the head of the house was priest of the household; there was no caste in the modern sense. Between the unknown era of the closing lines of the Eigveda and the birth of Gautama the caste distinctions had become more firmly outlined, that system being far advanced in the process of evolution. Slight authority has attempted to so date the Laws of Manu as to indicate that they were in force at the time of Gautama, but the claims of the priesthood, which appear in this code as it now exists, are based upon a recomposition of older material by relatively recent writers, who have made the text suit later doctrines than were in vogue B. C. 500, when a portion of the laws were in force; there were, undoubt edly at that date usages of long standing, which indicate a well-settled literary power then in the hands of the Brah mans, and a priestcraft so strong as to lead many Hindus to 'Note bt E. Washbukn Hopkins, LL. D. — The two castes below the Brahmans were, however, obliged to learn certain Vedic verses. And it may be added that in the time of Gautama the intellectual activity of India was found rather in the warrior caste than in the priestly. The priestly records show many new ideas introduced from the aristocrats. The Vedic hymns were not all priestly. THE HINDU SCRIPTURES. • 171 follow the Buddhists, who divided India with the Brahmans; for a thousand years, after which modern Hinduism took the ground and perpetuated many of the original ideas of both Brahmanism and Buddhism. The influence of Bud dhism was noticeable in the abolition of ancient sacrifice, in the tenderness toward animal life, in an intensified belief in transmigration, in the efficacy of moral self -culture, self- control, and self-denial as a source of power in accelerating- progress toward final emancipation.1 The Shastras, or divine laws of religious and civil duty,. revert in their oldest form to the second century B. C; but the most were probably later than the second century of the Christian era; and the Puranas, containing a Brah manical legendary and speculative history of the universe- — to promote the worship of this or that deity or relating to some sacred place, — revert to about A. D. 500, although some portions appear to have been written after modern Hinduism, a little more than a thousand years ago, had become well established.2 To the Hindu books an undying- interest is given by the hymns of the earliest Hindu sages r and who shall venture to fix moral blame upon Indian saints who entered their reward ages ago?3 The doctrines-- "Tide Monier-Williams, Hinduism, p. 80. 2The Hindu books deemed sacred are so voluminous as to be- unmanageable by a single student, if he be kept to the Sanskrit text. "Very few Hindus," says Dr. Mitchell, "are acquainted with. their own Shastras, even the most learned Brahman can hardly have read more than a fiftieth part of them." (Hinduism, p. 13.) The style of the Sutras, or legal manuals in prose, about 20C B. C, is often so involved and hard to understand, that the opin ion has gained ground that it was made so by intention. The? Shastras are metrical, and not difficult. From a modern point of view, and in its relation to selection and survival, it is of inter est that the Puranic writings speak authoritatively upon natural science; it being taught in India to this day that the world is composed of seven concentric islands or continents, surrounded by as many oceans, consisting respectively of wine, clarified but ter, milk, etc. 3In the Mahabharata, the priests are represented as living retired and quiet lives, sedate, humble; elevated by religious. 172 SANSKRIT LITERATURE. and practices of modern Hinduism are not due, at their full length, to this generation or that, yet generation upon generation of hereditary bias and careful instruction have made it possible for the Brahmans to retain their intellect ual dominion as an ecclesiastical trust over nearly two hun dred millions of their countrymen to this day, formulating a ritualistic system of which the Brahman must be the sole priest and interpreter, and for the maintenance of which ie must be maintained. This is through an intellectual mastership; during scores of generations the Brahmans have met the Hindu tribesmen in keen dogmatic contest, never failing to defeat them at every turn. The Brah manical firmness of purpose in early generations became, after hundreds of years, the most inflexible and arrogant self-will; and after the on-going of other centuries it hecame a pertinacious obstinacy, against which intellect ually inferior tribes now find it impossible to erect them selves. The ablest of the Brahmans to-day are not only quick of intellect, but energetic and acute administrators, of great practical power in handling affairs ; this, with their learning unsurpassed in India, gives them an easy leader ship. Sharpness, cleverness, subtlety, characterize all Brah manical activities.1 Their religious work, it is right to view from their own standpoint; it being at no time a question whether the popular apprehension of God may be made ¦clearer and more correct, or whether personal duty between man and man may be more accurately discerned ; it is rather a question of details considered fundamental to the well- knowledge, morally useful; content to beg for food; satisfied with a little rice, cows and a hut; without worldly ambition; regarded with love or awe by the common outside world, and honored by the nobles. — Hopkins' Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, p. 72. 'Not a little detailed information concerning the Brahmans may be found in Rev. M. A. Sherring's Hindu Tribes and Castes. London, 1872. For certain statements in the first and third para graphs of this section of the text, compare Sherring, pp. 3-5, 9, '77, 78, 109. PERSONALITY OP GAUTAMA. 173 being of an orderly society — the faithful following of wholesome rites and usages coming down from immemorial ages, — and a question of keeping the brightest and most spiritual men in India in their hereditary and rightful position as the intellectual incarnation of Brahma, at the peril of national confusion and social disaster if it be other wise. For the devout stranger from a far country, looking upon the social organization instituted by the Brahmans, let him be content if he can but detect in the earliest San skrit words in the Indian books a delicate fragrance of precious prehistoric beliefs: which, indeed, to a certain degree, permeate the most ancient writings of the whole human race, as a subtle aroma of the teredo tells the story of a prehistoric ocean. II. Among the great religious leaders of mankind, Gautama is, of all men, foremost. The continents and the centuries witness to his mighty personality. None so beautiful as he, in his gentleness, in his purity of life, in his self-abnegation, none so sweet-spirited, none so worthy to be tenderly loved by women as well as by men, as the Prince of India, — who left his father's palace at twenty-nine to lead the life of a poor hermit for six years, and who then spent fifty years in making known the truth as he understood it, by teach ing and preaching, and in organizing his disciples for the conquest of Asia.1 He, indeed, is to be lauded for the sim ple truths he uttered, and admired by all generations of men for his elevated moral maxims, which were sustained by a life that drew men to himself. Seeking to solve life's problems in religious solitude, there came a day, to be thought of always with reverence, when he decided that the discipline of his own soul and an outgoing love would be better than to afflict the flesh through long fasting. It is not needful to debate the ques- 'In the rainy season Gautama lived under shelter with his dis ciples, the remainder of the year was spent by all in preaching. 174 THE BUDDHIST BOOKS. tion whether or not the Brahmanical system was rigidly fixed at that hour, Gautama laid the axe at the root of the tree by renouncing the Vedic books as a binding religious authority, and began his new life without them. He renounced the Brahmanic theory of the soul's life, and freed himself from all anxiety for continued existence, set tling it once for all that life's self -contending must be car ried to self-conquest here and now. To be calm, pure, loving and wise, though earthly life be a weariness — this was the triumphant purpose of Gautama.1 When he once became conscious of spiritual enlighten ment, he hesitated not long to apply to himself the term — the Awakened or Enlightened One, — the Buddha; and to announce that "He that is pure in heart is the true priest, not he that knows the Vedas. ' '2 It was at first but an intel lectual contest. When he found himself freed from the incubus of his early faith, and all his inner doubts and fears were resolved, disease and old age and death had lost their terror. He did indeed pause a moment before com mitting himself to set rolling the wheel of a new ethical movement upon the earth, but, once decided, he drew after him a third part of mankind.3 Those to whom he addressed himself felt, perhaps more than he did, the pressure of the Brahmanical monopoly of truth,* their overbearing exac tions and denial of human rights. So gentle was Gautama, so self-sacrificing, so thoughtful, so devout, and so great was his personal magnetism as he conversed upon spiritual themes and the emancipation of the soul from all evil, that enthusiastic disciples soon gathered about him. And these he sent out to preach the new doctrine. By them it was said, that the prince — in an age when princes were no 'Compare Hopkins' Religions of India, pp. 316, 317. 2Cited in Religions of India, by E. W. Hopkins, Professor of Sanskrit, Yale University, p. 319. Boston, 1895. sTo the devout Buddhist it is a source of constant joy and gratitude that Gautama so decided, through love and pity for humanity. — Compare Rhys Davids' BuddhUm, p. 4. London. 4Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 55. London, 1875. THE MENDICANT IDEAL. 175 friends of the common people, — had turned aside from the fascination of an Indian court to introduce a spiritual reform without caste distinctions; that he was clear as to his own enlightenment; that the scheme of salvation which the prince outlined was simple and free from the old time burdens; and that all men were henceforth to stand upon the same plane of religious opportunity and obligation. When Gautama, the high born and preeminently intel lectual religious leader, addressed himself to the organiza tion of his followers, the already hard and fast caste lines were abandoned forever. It was not thought at first, that this would really re-form national life.1 To seek the supreme good was the main thing; and if the blessed life should win men to itself, this would renew the world. As the Brahmans had received alms, and gifts had poured in upon them that they might distribute worldly goods to the needy, Gautama himself received food as a gift that he might devote himself wholly to his spiritual work; and while he built up no' order of priesthood he did establish a recluse class of religious men, who as mendicants should receive their daily food from door to door. It had always been the doctrine in India that those who so contributed to maintain religious men were spiritually the gainers for it. From the beginning till now there has been no Buddhism outside the Sangha, or order of mendicant monks, and their lay associates or supporters; the congregation of monks being the kernel of the community itself.2 This institute was thoroughly organized, and governed by fixed rules.3 'Compare Buddha, by Dr. Herman Oldenberg, p. 153. London, 1882. 2Kuenen's Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 268. 'A historical parallel of great interest in the social development of the Occident is found in the monastic experiment made in Christendom several centuries later, which — however largely it once figured in Europe, — ultimately proved so little essential to the permanent onsweeping advance of Christianity as such, that, as an organic body, it is but casually referred to in the text, although briefly treated of in Appendix, A, infra. 176 THE BUDDHIST BOOKS. The ideal of mendicant life included simplicity and self- denial, and many amenities of spirit that finally modified the social life of myriads of people in Asia. The mendicant should attend to the Law, and not be careful about food and a luxurious bed. He should not receive gold and sil ver; nor wear ornaments — not even a flower. Song and all manner of music and dancing he should ignore.1 He should not procure a new rice bowl, so long as the old one could be kept from leaking. In making a new seat-cover, he ought to patch it with an old piece, to destroy any appearance of finery. ' ' I regard the dignities of kings and princes as the dust motes in a sunbeam, ' ' it was said by the princely Buddha; "the value of gold and jewels as that of a broken platter; dresses of the finest silk I regard as the scraps of silk given as presents. " "To abstain from expen sive dresses," was the rule. Yet it was written: "He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquility, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is an ascetic. ' '2 To live free from hatred among men who hate, free from ail ments among the ailing, free from affliction among men who are sick at heart, free from care among the busy, free from yearning among those who are anxious, living happily though calling nothing their own, — this was the ideal of the Sangha.3 "As the bee — injuring not The flower, its color, or scent — Flies away, taking the nectar; So let the wise man dwell upon the earth," ' ' The restrained in hand, restrained in foot, Eestrained in speech, the best of the self-controlled ; He whose delight is inward, who is tranquil, And happy when alone — him they call mendicant. 'Davids' Buddhism, pp. 157-160. 'Dhammapada, p. 39, verse 142. Max Muller's translation. "Phrases from the Dhammapada. Compare citation in Rhys Davids' Buddhism, p. 130. MENDICANT MISSIONS. 177 The mendicant who controls his tongue, speaking wisely, and is not puffed up, Who throws light on worldly and on heavenly things — His word is sweet."1 ' ' His thought is quiet, quiet are his word and deed, when he has obtained freedom by true knowledge." Anger, pride, suspicion, pretension of holiness, all ill-speaking, back-biting, and controversy,— these were repressed by rule. Though cursed, to cherish no ill-will ; though struck, to strike not in return; though innocent of evil, yet to endure reproach and bonds, — this was the rule for those who would drink of the water of a life of seclusion.2 "A man who foolishly does one wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love," said the Master; "the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me." This dictum of the Master was beautifully illustrated by the merchant Purna, who determined to go upon a mission to a savage tribe. Gautama sought to dissuade him : — "The men of Sronaparanta are violent, cruel, passion ate, fierce and insolent. When they address you in wicked, brutal, gross and insulting language, when they storm at you and abuse you, what will you do, 0 Purna?" "When they so address me, this is what I will think,"' replied Purna. "These men are certainly good and gen tle, who do not strike me with their hands or with stones." "But if they strike you, what will you think?" "I will think them good and gentle, because they do not strike me with cudgels or with the sword." "But if they strike you with the sword?" "I will think them good and gentle, because they do not completely deprive me of life." 'Sacred citations from Davids' Buddhism, pp. 129, 154. 2Compare phrases from the Pitakas, as cited by Professor Davids, pp. 155, 156. 12 178 THE BUDDHIST BOOKS. "But if they deprive you of life, what then?" "I will think the men of Sronaparanta good and gentle, for delivering me with so little pain from this body of vileness." "Go, thou, 0 Purna, thyself delivered, deliver others; thyself arrived at the other shore, help others thither ; thy self comforted, comfort others; having attained complete Nirvna, guide others to it. ' ' In such spirit Purna entered upon his mission, which was, says the record, most successful with the savage men of Sronaparanta. Going forth to preach this life, the initial energy gave to it great effect. The early mendicants were apparently the most winsome, friendly men, brethren to all who were in any trouble; they went hither and thither to heal the wounds of the world; they proposed to dry up the very fountain of earthly woe, to annihilate passion, cruelty, evil desire, to quench ultimately a life of anguish, — these were the men whose beaming faces, whose words of love, so new and unlooked for, appeared in the dark realms of primeval paganism like rays of light. They kindled the Light of Asia. The rulers of petty tribes and of wide kingdoms, even of an empire like China, found that the doctrines of these men were adapted to make more obedient subjects,1 and that the monks did not meddle with politics (as the Christian monks of Europe did) ; and so it came about that the Sangha became a fixture, a recognized power for good among hundreds of millions of people. The most ancient inscriptions found in India teach obedience to parents, kindness to children and to animals, teach self- control, generosity of spirit, and absolute toleration: was 'Northern Buddhism is more positive in tone than that of the South: President Martin, in his Lore of Cathay, thinks that upon the whole the doctrines it has promulgated have been helpful to the Chinese people. To love others, to live an orderly life, and to obey the laws, — this was the early Buddhist refrain upon gaining a foothold in Japan. THE SACRED LITERATURE. 179 not he indeed worthy to rule, Asoka,1 who gave such counsel to his empire?2 The mendicant monks of Buddha have undoubtedly stood among those who have been morally the best in a densely peopled district, in a narrow area during twenty-three hundred years, and in a wide area from twelve to twenty centuries. If there have been any persons in these vast realms who were sincere in spirit, pure in heart, and inclined to righteousness, who loved such intellectual pursuits as their generation offered them, and such philo sophical contemplation as their seclusion might suggest, they must have been found, the most of them, among the brethren of the Sangha. The words of Gautama, as they were iterated during half a century, were long remembered and reported, — the didac tic, the allegorical and the metaphysical; and after three hundred and thirty years they were recorded. The Pitakas of Ceylon, excluding the repetitions, are probably not more voluminous than the Bible.3 There are also commentaries that carry great weight, — as that of Buddhaghosha some fourteen hundred years ago. The books of the Northern Buddhists are less known. Of Tibet the holy books are two: one of which, the Kanjur, consists of one hundred volumes folio, comprising ten hundred and eighty-three dis tinct works; and the other, the Tanjur, consists of two hundred and twenty-five volumes folio, each of which weighs nearly five pounds in the Chinese edition. The '"The Constantine of India." — Max Miiller. 2Cunningham's Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (as cited by Berry in Christianity and Buddhism, the Donnellan Lecture, 1889-90, London, p. 103), renders the pillar edicts of Asoka: — VI. "I pray with every variety of prayer for those who differ from me in creed, that they, following after my proper example, may with me attain unto everlasting salvation." VIII. "This is the true religious devotion, this the sum of religious instruction, that it should increase the mercy and charity, the truth and purity, the kindness and honesty of the world." "Rhys Davids' Buddhism, p. 20. These books were reduced to writing 88 B. C, p. 234, Davids. 180 BUDDHIST LITERATURE. Nepalese Buddhists, who live upon the eaves of the Hima layan roof of the world, say that their sacred books number eighty-four thousand volumes. Ancient monastic records appear to comprise a portion of the venerated books.1 The Buddhist teaching of more recent ages, especially in the North, is thought to represent the original words of Gau tama, not more accurately than the words of Socrates as reported by Plato.2 By the very theory of Gautama, in founding the Order, no prominence could be given to distinctive literary pro duction; and with their ablest men drawn into the monas teries, the secular literature of Buddhist lands in Southern Asia has rarely risen above the romance or legendary tale, gross and unprofitable.3 In Japan and China, there have been other influences in the formation of the national mind. Western ignorance of the Japanese dramatists, novelists, essayists and poets is matched by such contempt as the Orient formerly put upon Occidental learning ; what is now the Imperial University at Tokyo having been in its germi nal state the "Place for the Examination of Barbarian Writings." It is stated by competent Western authority learned in Things Japanese, that Buddhism at its incoming was of service to the country through introducing art and medicine, moulding its folk-lore, creating its dramatic poetry, deeply influencing its politics and every sphere of social and intellectual activity.4 Yet as to the merit of literary productiveness, Professor Chamberlain affirms that all the laurels are for the Shinto cult, the Buddhist contri bution being of little value. The recent literary output 'Tide citation in Monier-Williams' Buddhism, pp. 541, 542. London, 1889. 'Chinese Buddhism, by Joseph Edkins, p. 38. London, 1880 Arnold's Light of Asia is not based on the Tripitaka, but upon biographical material of later origin than the Christian era. — The Bishop of Colombo, in the Nineteenth Century. 1888. "Tide The Wheel of the Law, by Henry Alabaster, p. 4. 'Things Japanese, by B. H. Chamberlain, p. 71, third edition. London, 1898. THE CHINESE CLASSICS. 181 of the country has been mainly the work of young men of Occidental education, who have written upon Western lands and customs. III. The Chinese Classics, or so called Sacred Books1 of the Empire, are not religious but philosophical. Confucius was an agnostic, nor would he talk about spiritual being.2 As "the throneless king," he reached supreme power, not as a warrior, not as a prophet, but by making a wise and edi fying selection from the ancient wisdom of his people, seiz ing upon the formative ideas already crystallized through ages of heredity, putting them into literary form, and trans mitting them. It may all be summed up in this : through faithfulness in self-culture and faithfulness in domestic duties, one is equally fitted to serve or to reign ; obedience to patriarchal rulers is based on filial obedience, and filial obedience is based on the right discipline of one 's self. To this end, the positive gathering of knowledge and wisdom is made life's leading aim. Moral merit is set forth as the only thing for China to measure by; this alone marks the distinction between men. Eevenge was forbidden by Con fucius, and humanity he made the principal virtue. Fair dealing, the keeping of good faith, practical benevolence, the suppression of vices that injure one's self or others, filial duties, — obedience and honor to one 's parents while living, long mourning for them, and keeping alive their memory by tablets and ceremonies; like recognition of all national heroes and sages; obedience to all superiors, — the child to the parent, the wife to her husband, the subject to all in 'They are esteemed so sacred that the admitted textual errors of ancient copyists may not be amended. — Martin's Lore of Cathay, p. 247. ¦Wu Ting Fang, late Chinese Minister to the United States. Address before the Society for Ethical Culture. New York, December 9, 1900. Tide also Pung Kwang Yu's paper in the Parliament of Reli gions, to the effect that Confucianism is not a religion but an ethical system, pp. 378, 379. Chicago, 1893. 182 CHINESE LITERATURE. authority; all virtues which lead to loyalty, — that fidelity to the state which is the safeguard of a thousand genera tions : — this is Confucianism at its highest and best, — let it be called a philosophy, it is so useful that it is without impropriety, commonly classified as one of the great reli gions of the world. At three score and ten, Confucius, hav ing finished his writings, led his disciples to a hill top, erected an altar, and placed upon it an edition of the books ; and there kneeled, devoutly returning thanks to Heaven for the life and strength to complete them, and imploring that the benefit to his countrymen might not be small.1 Of the seventy-two sages who were enrolled as disciples of Confucius, the greatest was Mencius, the St. Paul of the Confucian school, actuated by the zeal of an apostle, and rebuking vice in high places with the courage of a Hebrew prophet. The "Book of History," from which Confucius made compilations, was first written forty-three hundred years ago, and the "Book of Bites" thirty-one hundred:2 the one is the foundation of the Chinese system of government and of religious ceremonials; the other is a guide to every-day etiquette and propriety of conduct in domestic, social and public duty, — affection and virtue being regulated, as to the proper forms to be observed. The Book contains three thousand rules of etiquette to be memorized. Minute atten tion is given to the care and training of children, and to the detailed points of filial obligations.3 'Lore of Cathay, p. 175. Among the sages of the pagan world, says Martin, Confucius comes nearest to Christ in virtue and influence. — Cycle of Cathay, p. 287. Confucius distinctly recognized that human life and the mate rial world were under the care and guidance of Heaven, or of Providence as we should say. 2Professor Douglas. "Note upon Filial Piety. — This demands much more than the support of one's parents. In the patriarchal family a man's wife is devoted to his parents; her first duty is to them. A son so long as his father lives is treated as a child. He should not enter a room unless invited by his father nor retire without per- FILIAL PIETY. 183 Not in vain are these requirements of the Sacred Books, used so largely as they have been during more than two thousand years, and as the only text-books during forty mission, neither should he speak unless spoken to: this disci pline is observed in spirit if not literally. No room is left for independent action or personal judgment; a man cannot exercise his independent powers of manhood until he is too far advanced in years to have their exercise productive. So, throughout China, to-day is kept in the bonds of yesterday. There is one curious circumstance relating to this, in direct opposition to the maxim that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined, — Chinese boyhood running wild, and Chinese manhood reverting to the hereditary type and yielding to the national trait of filial obedience. There is no discipline of children, they are not taught to obey their parents, and they have no idea of prompt obedience, — this is a matter of common experience. Dr. Yates, at the Missionary Conference, Shanghai, 1877, remarked in a paper upon ancestral worship, based upon thirty years' observation: "Of all the people of whom we have any knowledge, the sons of the Chinese are most unfilial, disobedient to parents, and pertinacious ia having their own way from the time they are able to make known their wants." Dr. Legge sharply dif fered, stating that his experience had been different. The truth seems to be this: parents at first worship their sons, then demand worship from them. Male issue, needful to maintain ancestral worship, is so greatly desired that sons are left to grow up as they will; yet the patriarchal family system, and the "Book of Rites," ultimately prevail, and the sons usually exercise filial obedience not only in supporting their parents but in making old age honorable. "One of the most pleasing features of Chi nese home life is the deference and respect shown to their elders by the younger members of the household." Looked at in a broad way, the term "filial piety" does not so much indicate the obedience of the child as the authority of the parent which is the grand law that underlies the entire patri archal system of the empire, that has existed immemorial ages. As the family is obedient to its patriarch, the district must obey the patriarchal mandarin, and all obey the patriarchal emperor. Thus obedience is the bond of social order. This doctrine was powerfully enforced by Confucius. Authorities upon this note: — Douglas' China, p. 94; Chester Holcombe's Real Chinaman, pp. 89, 90. N. Y., 1895; Smith's Chi nese Characteristics, p. 173. N. Y., 1894; Martin's Cycle of Cathay, pp. 334, 198. 184 CHINESE LITERATURE. generations in the annual civil service examinations, and so thoroughly learned by the literary class and the publicists of the nation: they have proved a most beneficent force.1 Not in vain have risen temples in every city to honor the compiler and editor of the Chinese Classics, not in vain has a tablet to his memory been placed in every schoolroom for the daily salutation of the school children during milleniums of history. Not in vain has Confucius been exalted as "in word and deed a constant manifestation of ideal excel lence. "2 " Wherever, ' ' asks a revered sage, ' ' wherever ship or chariot can go, wherever sun and moon give light, wher ever frosts and dews descend, who does not honor and love such a man?" It is the positive teaching of Confucius, rather than the negative scheme of Gautama, that has been of moral value in China ;3 an inestimable power for good over his own peo ple having been exercised age after age, — China having been literally "governed by maxims."4 The incorruptible manhood of Viceroy Chang Chihtung has been formed by Confucianism. Professor Legge was once confidentially questioned by the Chinese Ambassador to St. James, whether he did not think the Middle Kingdom more moral than England. What is worst under Christianity is widely known, what is best is more private: the same is true of Confucianism. The sage himself had less literary skill than some of the authors from whom he made his compilations ; yet the elab- 'If this intellectual and moral system has probably had too little influence on the formation of youthful character, it is because the main service of the ideas is thought to be their use for the annual civic examinations for ofiice holding, rather than for their reproduction in life. — Suggested by ihe President of Tien Tsin University in a Lecture at Harvard College, 1906. 'Lore of Cathay, p. 246. 'Chinese Buddhism, Joseph Edkins, p. 201. Bishop Schereschewsky, late of Shanghai, expressed himself to the same effect, in the New York Tribune. 4"No nation, no race, was ever better outfitted with admirable moral precepts than the Chinese." — Arthur H. Smith. LITERARY PRODUCTIVENESS. 185 orate civil service examinations of China have developed more literary aptitude than could have been looked for from the model of the Master. A vast number of works upon jurisprudence, science, education, biography, and history have been produced, but they are not of great value to the Western student;1 the most creditable book-making has been that of the encyclopedias upon historical and literary topics, which are marked by careful investigation and based upon authority, — one of them constituting a library of some six thousand volumes. Although printing was invented in China, A. D. 593, it has exercised less influence upon the world at large than the invention in Europe nine centuries later; it being apparent that the national literary level has been reached through the perpetual re-studying of Confucius and Mencius. There is not less nor more of intellectual power, adapted to foreign peoples, than that found in the Nine Classics. IV. The personality of Mohammed is in many respects pecul iarly attractive ; and must command the enthusiastic adher ence of those unacquainted with a more perfect ideal of wider range of sympathy and better adapted to win a universal following.. Mohammed's own character was accepted as proof of his mission. He was singularly affa ble : ' ' The Most High has not raised me up to strive with any one."2 He was, says the Persian account, "not rough in manner, nor loud in his conversation, nor did he utter opprobrious and uncourteous words. He domineered over 'The same may, not without truth, be said of the more ephem eral literature. If the Sacred Books are characterized by their purity, the novels and jest books are unspeakably filthy. — Cycle of Cathay, p. 83. 2"Mussulmans," cried the Prophet from the pulpit one day, "if I have struck anyone of you, here is my back that he may strike me. If anyone has been wronged by me, let him return injury for injury. If I have taken anybody's goods, all that I have is at his disposition." 186 ARABIC LITERATURE. no one, nor inquired after the faults and failings of men. He bestowed on each of the company a portion of favor and kindness, and so conducted himself that every one present thought himself the dearest of all mankind to the prophet. There were no loud voices and no slanders uttered in his presence. ' ' Most gracious was the prophet to the humblest of men, being at one with them all, covered by the common dust in the midst of them. He sat upon the ground to mend his shoes and his clothing. Attentively he listened to any one who addressed him. ' ' He never, ' ' says Aboulf eda, "withdrew his hand the first from the hand of one who saluted him. ' ' To eat on the ground with servants and to salute children1 were two of the five things Mohammed said he never would abandon. He loved his horse and his camel, and wiped off their sweat with his handkerchief. When there died a negro sweeper of the Medina mosque, the prophet inquired for the grave and went there to pray, as if he had been a dear friend. When Djafir, his standard bearer, was slain, he went at once to the home of the mar tyr, and took upon his lap an orphaned child, caressing his head in pity, — so communicating to the widow the great sorrow that had come to her. It need not be questioned whether or not these accounts be true; that they are related of the Prophet by his followers shows what traits were believed to be the secrets of his power. The most marvelous stories are told of his practical benevolence, — giving most imprudently to the poor, prodigally borrowing to give to the needy, and trusting God for a return ; and we are grateful to read that through God's bounty a hundred camels were sometimes given him at once. "So generous was he, that a piece of money never stopped with him." Had not Gabriel advised that it was better for him to choose 'He played with the children of Ali, the husband of his daugh ter Fatima. One of these little ones, Hossein, having crept upon his back while he was prostrated in prayer, the Prophet remained in this attitude till the mother came to remove the child. — Related in Lamartine's Turkey. If but a tradition, it accords with the Prophet's known characteristics, as accepted by Islam. THE PROPHET'S SINCERITY. 187 to be a prophet and a "servant," rather than a prophet and a "king"? How far it was Oriental imagination we know not, but he is reported to us as of remarkably fine figure and delicate features. The beauty of the sun at his- rising, and the beauty of the moon in her glory, were com pared to him. Best of all, in an idolatrous age he had faith. "What are we two against so many?" asked his companion in the cave. "There are three." "Who is the third?" "God." That Mohammed was sincerely religious, intent upon rid ding himself of evil in his own life, with a great longing for spiritual righteousness, must be assumed.1 He found that Israel in Arabia had fallen away from the simplicity of the patriarchal religion, and that image worship of the saints prevailed among Christians, so that when his heart was hot against the idolatry of his people, he selected such elements of faith as approved themselves to him, whether Judaic or Christian — putting new life into dog mas that had long been powerless, — and fell back upon what he believed to be the religion of the nomadic Ishmael and Abraham, adapted to his own times and to future ages.. The earnest seekers after God rallied to support his mission,. and out of a few desert tribes a nation arose at once through forming a brotherhood of believers, where blood relationship had been formerly the sole bond of union — and often the cause of tribal dissension.2 'If any say otherwise, it is not in relation to his early career. The lectures of R. Bosworth Smith upon Mohammed and Moham medanism (second edition, Boston, 1876), well offset the counter statements often made by those less well informed. As a full exhibit, however, would not the lectures have been more satis factory, if the author had discussed the Prophet's idea of God, and the relation of Islam to the state? Certainly the truth upon. these points affects the ultimate value of Mohammed's mission. zSo competent an authority as Stanley Lane Poole affirms that Mohammed in part destroyed the Arab when he created the Moslem, and that, so far as the Arabs alone are concerned, he effected a temporary good and a lasting harm. This must be true in regard to their free and wild desert life, in which a 188 ARABIC LITERATURE. Islam made slow advance by moral means: for twelve years persecution dogged the steps of the Prophet and a few followers. This being so, for the next eleven years the prophet of Allah took the sword and conquered all Arabia. Intense and hot hearted, this seemed to him the best; God would have it so: "Fight against them, until there be no opposition in favor of idolatry ; and the religion be wholly God's."1 The instrument of God was at hand, created for world-wide hospitality and certain manly virtues and a better -condition of womanhood were more marked characteristics than in the Moslem-zealot Arabia of later years. — Compare Studies in a Mosque, pp. 32, 33. 'Ceaseless Wab Against Infidels is Fobeveb Binding. Note: — Compare Koran, Sura 48. "Ye shall fight against them, or they shall profess Islam. . . . Fight against them who believe not in God nor the Last Day . . . until they pay tribute hy right of subjection, and they be reduced low." This was said primarily concerning the Arabs of the desert: the course of Ish- mael in Arabia being not unlike that of Israel in Canaan. Such Capitulations (laws embodied in chapters) of the Otto man Empire as relate to dealings with foreign nations, were published by the United States in 1880 — being Executive Docu ment Number Three of a Special Session of the Senate, — by which it is made clear that it is still the binding duty of Mos lems to make war upon unbelievers, for the propagation of the faith or laying tribute, so that no truce is to be made except so far as it is for the Mussulman interest, and then no lasting truce.— Pp. 25, 26. It is apparent, however, from the Koranic texts, that, at the first, Mohammed, recognizing the truth of the revelation under lying Judaism and Christianity, intended to make no war upon the Jews or Christians, or at the least they were not classed as infidels against whom war was never to cease. The substantial unity of Moslem, Jewish and Christian faith in God and the Jewish revelation, is noted in Sura II, 59, and III, 198. Say (to the Jews), "Between us and you let there be no strife" (XLII, 14). "Dispute not, unless in a kindly sort, with the people of the Book; save with such of them as have dealt wrongfully with you: and say ye, we believe in what hath been sent down to us and hath been sent down to you, our God and your God is one" (XXIX, 6, Rodwell's translation). The direction in IX, 29, was apparently one of the latest of the revelations, war being made THE ERA OP CONQUEST. 189 this purpose, in the view of the prophet ; and he took it, — the wild warrior tribes ready at his beck. The neighbors of Confucius and Gautama, the early Hindus, and the fisher men of Judea, were not warriors on horseback. The system of Confucius was propagated by schoolmasters, of Gautama by monks, of Brahma by peaceful priests, of Christianity by preaching and the practice of virtues needed in the Eoman Empire, but the Mohammedans for centuries relied on multiplying the faithful by political conquest rather than by spiritual regeneration, — so greatly did the Arabs contrast with the people among whom other great religions. had birth. The Prophet's 'amazing personal magnetism awakened an enthusiastic loyalty. When Abu Chathama. went home from the army to get grain, the day was hot, and he found that his wives had pitched the tents in the shade of his garden. These they sprinkled for coolness, and they prepared refreshing meat and drink. But when he looked at it all he said : ' ' The Apostle of Allah is exposed to the sun and the wind and the heat ; and shall I spend my time with my wife in the cool shade before a spread table ?' That is not right. I will not enter your tent, but follow Mohammed." He turned away, and as soon as his grain was ready mounted his camel and sought the desert. It would, however, be a great mistake to think of the ultimate conquests as prompted solely by religious zeal, as much so as to think of Alexander's wars as primarily designed to propagate the Greek mythology. The Sara cens were warriors bent on plunder and the creation of an empire, and with their widening secular power they carried their religion. It was the red right arm of Ishmael.1 They swept along the lines of least resistance. No religion of power nor nation of force stood in their way. There was a relatively open field for a positive faith and the upon the Jews for treachery; they were not to be "converted," but to be humbled and subject to tribute. And this seems to have been the rule after that. 'Genesis 16: 12. 190 ARABIC LITERATURE. progress of armed bands of fanatics. Military adven turers flocked to the Saracen standards; and tens of hun dreds of cities, towns, castles were reduced, and thousands of the churches of what they believed to be an idolatrous Christianity were destroyed. Within four score years fol lowing the Hegira, the Saracen proved to be a mightier military power in Northern Africa, in Asia Minor and .Syria than the armies of ancient Eome. Spain in the Far West, and India in the Far East, received the Koran at the point of the sword, so that a vast multitude of Moslems settled down to dwell amid diverse nationalities ; and every where a coherent system was organized, and a newly sub jugated world responded to the ideas of the Prophet of Arabia. As to the Koran, it is to be borne in mind that the prophet was an Oriental visionary rather than a thinker. Bhetorical emotion is to be looked for rather than the bal anced work of a well-disciplined mind.1 He was of a nerv ous temperament, full of passion, with no small vigor of imagination. He could not write; but what he devoutly thought or saw in ecstatic vision was dictated to disciples, sometimes the same material with slight changes to dif ferent scribes, who in part kept it in memory, and part was written upon skins, upon shoulder blades of mutton or camel bones of the desert, on leaves of slate or polished stones, on leaves of palm, on bits of wood, which were thrown into boxes for preservation: and when finally arranged, no order was attempted, save to put the longest compositions first.2 The work was twenty years in the making, yet there were no dates affixed, or clues by which to determine them; and, in the order that was at last adopted, material of different dates was perhaps inserted in the same chapter, the transitions being so abrupt as to 'Renan calls the Koran a collection of the Prophet's sermons, or orders of the day. 2Compare Reginald Bosworth Smith's Mohammed and Moham medanism, pp. 176, 215, 216. Second edition. THE KORAN. 191 make the work less attractive to Occidental readers.1 Car- lyle took pains to give the world to understand that he had a special pique and growl against the Koran: "A weari some, confused jumble, crude, incondite ; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement, insupportable stupidity, in short."2 And the polished Edward Everett, President of Harvard, and Minister to St. James, confessed that he could not read it through as a literary task.3 It is, how ever, affirmed by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole that this tedious- ness was due to the bad translation by which it was first made known to Englishmen; that it is only two-thirds the size of the New Testament, as to the number of verses, and, by the omission of the Jewish patriarch' stories, only so long as the four Gospels and the Book of Acts ; and yet, he says, ' ' There is probably no book that is more talked about and less read than the Koran."4 The beauty of the style, according to another authority, consists mainly in a fre quent informal rhyming by the use of words of which the closing syllables are similar ; as if, in English, words should end with "-ing," or "-ose." With his Oriental contem poraries, there is no doubt that his literary merit gained great influence for the Prophet: and to the Eastern mind it has been a delight to think of the Koran as coming down from Heaven, where it had always existed as a tablet by the side of God's throne. The Arabs, so easily won by the matchless beauty of Mohammed's style, were a singularly poetical people before the advent of the Prophet, and copies of the poems that won the prize at the great National Fair were "suspended" in every part of the peninsula, some of which have come 'Professor H. P. Smith's The Bible and Islam, p. 27. Of the Koran, Professor E. H. Palmer's translation is the best; in Max Miiller's Sacred Books of the East. Lane's Selections are arranged under subjects. The Translation by Rodwell sought to arrange the chapters in chronological order. 'Heroes, p. 59. (II. The Hero as Prophet.) London, 1840. 'Orations and Speeches, Vol. II, p. 272. Boston, 1850. -¦Compare pp. 115-121, Studies in a Mosque. 192 ARABIC LITERATURE. down to us. If there were not great poets, the poetic gift was widely extended among the people. The verses were chanted or sung, passing from lip to ear, and stored in the memory of youth to be rehearsed in after years. Nor were the poets mere idle players at rhyme and metre; their hands were hardened by the sword-hilt and smoothed through hurling the spear; and their musical words sug gested the freedom of the encampment, the gleaming of the sun, and the winds and rains of the desert.1 The Arabic literature comprises works of romance, of biography, theology, mathematics, astronomy, botany and chemistry ; and the intellectual empire of Islam was widely extended; Tabari, of Baghdad, composed forty pages a day of Koranic commentary and of history, it was said, for forty years. The most important literary work, how ever, outside of the Koran, was that of gathering the tra ditions that related to the Prophet; to this is due much of the coherency of Islam, it being what the earliest Mussul man thought befitting the Prophet, what perhaps he would have said in regulating the national policy upon points where the Koran is silent. This body of tradition was gathered up during two hundred years, some of it at fourth hand, it being said that it was said that it was said that it was said by the Prophet. Mohammed himself opened wide the door for the traditions of men, in the one-hundredth verse of second Sura: "Whatever verse we shall abrogate or cause thee to forget, we will bring thee a better than it, or one like unto it." There are two hundred and twenty- five verses in the Koran which the Moslem doctors, learned in casuistry, pronounce to be now abrogated in spirit.2 It was only by such adaptation, that the Koran was in some measure fitted for the wider promulgation that came to it through the Saracen conquests. That magnificent move ment of wild tribes — taking to themselves a rude disci pline, and suddenly breaking out upon an astonished world 'Tide Article in The Nation, December, 1904, by D. B. Mac donald, LL. D. 2Haines' Islam, p. 32. London, 1889. LIMITATIONS OF THE KORAN. 193 and offering to its affrighted people immediate killing or the Koran, — pushed the Prophet's idea and his book far beyond his original intention; and the limitation of his original intention clung to the sacred writings in their widely extended reign.1 His religion was designed to be local, and wherever it gained a warrior's foothold it never lost its original armory, so pinched and quaint. And the work of Islam, so helpful for ages to so many widely sep arated peoples, has been so restricted by the limitations of its original charter as to do less for the domestic and social and intellectual needs of the races under its guidance than a progressive civilization requires. As a literary influence, in its relation to the Moslem mind, the Koran has been hampered by two limitations, — its lack of variety and freedom. Comparing it with the Bible : it was twenty years in the making instead of sixteen hundred, and the product of one mind instead of the minds of more than two-score principal writers besides certain minor poets and historians; and it relates to a narrow nomadic life instead of a cosmopolitan; and while the Bible commends a spirit of inquiry, the Koran precludes mental freedom. Mohammed insisted upon it that his work was to be accepted as an unerring and unchangeable rule in all departments of Moslem life and thought, and although there has been more freedom than was at first contemplated and a changing of rules through the agree ment of the Moslem people, yet the final result of it has been that during the last five centuries slight contribution to the intellectual wealth of the world has been made by Islam.2 'Mohammed was a poet rather than a theologian, a prophet rather than a legislator: as soon as the Moslems paused in their career of conquest and began to think at all, they thought of this. — Macdonald' s Development of Moslem Theology, Jurispru dence, and Constitutional Theory, p. 128. 2Compare Bryce's Studies in History and Jurisprudence, p. 659. Oxford, 1901: the phraseology of this sentence being in part that of Professor Bryce. 13 194 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. In dealing with the beginning of Hebrew story, and with the origins of peoples slowly emerging from the obscurity of remote antiquity — as China, India, Egypt and Assy ria, — it is to be looked for that literary processes must be extended through many hundreds of years for reducing to orderly historical form the masses of early tradition writ ten and oral, fragments of national annals, the body of ancient social customs, documents that reveal the civic usages of many generations, the relics of centuries of song, the life-like legends of warriors and kings, and the kin dlings of early sacrificial fires, — so that the very earliest attempts to arrange the imperfect data will be at first rewritten at later periods ; and then, later still, the approxi mate determination of the true order of events, and the separation of the authentic from the legendary, must be finally fixed by the interpretations agreed upon by special students of the literature in the clearer light of subsequent ages : it is only in this way that there is finally formulated that revised conception of a limited and local history which fits into that which is universal — the plan of God — authenticated by imperishable testimony. From this point of view, whoever opens the Sacred Books of the great religions of the world will be at once impressed by the comparative preponderance of fact in the Christian Bible. The Hindu books are composed of hymns and chants, prayers and formulas of service, discussions upon the divine nature, heroic poems, legendary and speculative histories of the universe.1 The Buddhist books comprise "'The Sanskrit language contains nothing of genuine history, no national annals, no biography of eminent patriots, statesmen, warriors, philosophers, poets or others, who have figured on the theatre of Indian life public or private. Not a single page of pure historical matter unmixed with monstrous and absurd fable is extant, or probably was ever written in it." — Calcutta Review, V, pp. 12-14. Upon this point, Professor E. W. Hopkins remarks: — That for the earlier period the annals of India were perpetuated by HISTORIC MATERIAL. 195 the sayings of Gautama, a great number of treatises, rules of discipline, statements of controverted points, stories of the saints, lyrical and didactic poems, poems by monks and by nuns, tales and fables, and books upon spirits and their abode and the conditions of life in different worlds. The Nine Chinese Classics are constituted by one book of briefly stated events that occurred in the court and state of Loo during two hundred and forty-two years, two books of the acts and words of Confucius and Mencius as detailed by their disciples, and all the other books are made up of treatises and directions on manners and customs, the con versation of kings and ministers upon the principles of patriarchal government, and a selection of odes. The Koran contains moral reflections and theology, hortations and proclamations, ceremonial and civil law, condemna tions of idolatry, grotesque fables and traditions, and leg endary stories of Hebrew prophets and patriarchal saints who were made mouthpieces to reprove the sins of Arabia in the time of Mohammed. The Bible, upon the other hand, is more than half of it historical, or gathered up literary material for history. The influence of this differ ence in the world's sacred books has made itself felt in the distinctive intellectual training of Christendom ; giving a certain respect for facts, and creating a demand for facts to go upon. — the very veracity of the New Testament biography being supported by the historical matter out of which it grew. And the non-historical and non-biograph ical portions of the Bible have exercised a greater influence in the intellectual life of Christendom on account of their inscriptions and not by historic literature; that the older Sans krit has no history save a romantic biography of Buddah; that there was, however, an attempt at preparing chronicles of the kings, A. D. 1200-1600, more or less tinctured by romance; that much valuable material is to be found in the history of Kash- mere; that the late Professor Buhler, an eminent authority, maintained that veritable history is to be found in India;- and that "monstrous and absurd fables" appear also in the records of Livy. 196 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. connection with a body of facts that have proved to be of surpassing sociological interest in their relation to the moral development of mankind. It is of interest that the great religious books pertain to antiquity so remote, manifesting themselves as moral powers in educating the historic childhood and youth of mankind. It is more than a hundred and twenty genera tions of men since the earliest date of events recorded in the Chinese Classics. The earliest well authenticated event referred to in the Sanskrit Books is as distant as the Hebrew Exodus. Confucius is by thirty generations ante dated by the Mosaic epoch. For two thousand years before they were heard by Mohammed, the Hebraic stories of the patriarchs were told around nomadic camp fires. To Greece and Eome the Hebrew Bible appeared to be the oldest book in the world,1 relating to the earliest events; the Jewish settlement in Palestine having been more than six centuries before the founding of Eome or the first date that can be fixed in Greek history. VI. The influence of the Bible upon Christian literature is but a story of yesterday. The patristic apologies for the faith and the discussions of mediseval schoolmen sufficed for the centuries that had no printing press. For all these ages the dogmatic contents of the Bible were kept from the common people : when, therefore, by translations and by the press, the common people finally got hold of it, the Bible effected a social and moral upheaval, not unlike that in force which is wrought by cosmic energy when pent up inner fires shatter the crust of the globe. Or, if this be not a just statement, let it be said that the Bible manuscripts, in peril from the pagans, were piously preserved in monas teries and slowly multiplied by devout hands, and read by the spiritual guides who could not entrust illiterate laymen 'Harnack's Expansion of Christianity, pp. 14, 354, 358. INFLUENCE OF HEBREW THOUGHT. 197 with the written charter of the Church, — yet, when the popular conscience was aroused and rectified by a written moral law, when the people discerned God as actively administering a kingdom among men, when they felt the touch of a sympathizing Saviour and the renewing power of the Spirit, when every man had access to an open Bible, the great truths that had given primitive Christianity such power in the Imperial Empire and that had nurtured the spiritual life of the few during twelve hundred years of Christianized Eoman power, now took possession of the common people and effected the shaking off of venerable churchly traditions throughout Northern Europe, creating a new Germany and a new England.1 Whatever may have been the happy influence of the revival of classical learning upon Southern Europe, awak ening new tastes, new arts, new philosophy, it is certain, as to the Germans and the Anglo-Saxons and the Hugue nots, that they received their great impulse toward a new life by popular acquaintance with those great Bible truths which proved to be gigantic powers in awakening the slum bering North. Not all that was best in mediaeval literature, nor the immoral productions of later Eome, nor the philoso phy of the great sages who looked out on the blue Mediter ranean, availed to reach the hardy and hardly civilized sons of the sea pirates and Saxon warriors in their dark forests, and on the foggy islands of the Baltic and the stormy tides of the West. So far as concerns the revival of learning, it was to them the most important thing in it, that ' ' Greece arose from the dead with the New Testament in her hand." It is a striking illustration of the merely ritualistic char acter of what the classic lands called religion that they gave to Europe no Greek and Eoman religious literature. When Gaul and Germany and Britain first saw the stand ards of the Eoman legions — and possibly a little later a 'A new France and possibly a new Spain might have been added, could to-day's light have shone on yesterday. 198 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. few Greek vases, — the conquering cohorts carried about with them no religious ideas. The Hindu sages and Gau tama and Confucius gave religions or philosophies of prac tical life to myriads of men, who perpetuated their thoughts during milleniums of history: even Arabia took the cue, and put forth a Prophet armed with a book and a sword. But Greece and Eome bequeathed to the nations of Europe neither a religious literature nor a popular practical phi losophy. Delphi had no words for after ages, and the pontiffs on the Tiber prepared no Bibles. Aristotle was esteemed by the scholars for his physics, his rhetoric, his logic; and the stoical apothegms of Antonius, Epictetus and Seneca delectated occasional hours for a handful of readers. Cicero had no valuable religious counsel to offer. Socrates, with an intellectual method that will endure as long as life upon our planet, spoke with uncertain sound concerning those great truths which Paul proclaimed on Mars' Hill and in the Mamertine prison; and the sweet words of Plato, no wiser than his master, were mainly for gotten in the grim centuries that followed the fall of Eome. Whatever were the elements of intellectual and moral life which ushered in the new age to Northern Europe, they were inherited from the sacred literature of the Hebrews and the Apostolic Christian Church, — and their popu larization by translations and printing revolutionized the thinking of the Germanic nations.1 The first effect in England was the creation of a vast body of dramatic and poetic literature unique in its rapid development, and unique in its sources. Classical learning 'Can it be said that he is a thoughtful student who ventures to affirm that the great changes wrought in the North Land in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sprang from the experience of mankind? Africa and China also had experi ence; Southern Asia, too, Japan and Arabia. The evolution of the moral sense in Northern Europe was the direct outcome of the sacred literature of Christendom, when for the first time it was brought before the eyes of every one who could read, with. liberty to read it. LITERARY EFFECT OF THE BIBLE. 199 was made to contribute, the mediseval imagination was seized upon, Christian ideas were made prominent, and the portrayal of current life formed the main stock, — all being rooted in the plays of churchly tradition that had long entertained the populace, so, at first, drawing their vital ity from ecclesiastical dramatic usage. Sharply contrasted with all this was the course of the more serious minded, who gave themselves to sermons, and to preaching in print through controversial pamphlets. The modern methods of absorbing the surplus energies of a people were not then largely developed, — as the legal calling, medical learning, the educational function; the swift traversing of the seas, the railway, and varied manufacturing interests; the lead ers of mind took, rather, to bespattering each other with printer's ink. From all this was evolved the modern news paper, and the less ephemeral popular literature. The formation of an enlightened Christian public opinion, to which kings give heed and demagogues bow, is due largely to the quill driving propensities of the English, and, in respect to secular affairs, it has ultimately proved a factor in civilization not second to the pulpit. The modern press represents the consolidated public opinion of Christendom. The power of the news-press to focus the eyes of a hundred million people upon an individual gives to every man that sense of living in publicity which leads him to exercise care how he lives ; he finds that, will or nil, he must be measured by a Christian ideal of character. So it has come about in the modern age that a mechanical invention has appeared in the drear chronology of the nations to dispute rank with royalty ; the steam press serving as a preacher of righteous ness, and voicing the minds of millions of men.1 It is this intelligent public sentiment that has afforded a working basis and popular support for a most influential literature. The cultivation of the fine arts is — as truly as litera- 'The recent news-press establishment in most of the large cities of China, and the power already achieved by a popular press in Japan, promise much fou the future of Eastern Asia. 200 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. ture — an expression of intellectual life among all peoples, conveying moral ideas before the age of printing. In the portrayal of emotions in marble, Christian art has sur passed the Greek, dealing with a higher order of spiritual life. The painter and the sculptor have worked upon a more elevated plane in depicting the Virgin rather than Venus, the glorified martyr instead of the gladiator, and the Last Supper in place of a bacchanalian feast. The artistic imagination of races into whose conception there has never entered the All-Father, has to do with lower artistic ideals than those which relate to the self-sacrificing divine love in all its earthly incidents. Even in the master building of the religious world — so unique and effective in Hindu temples, Buddhist pagodas, the sacred edifices of China and the mosques of Islam, — there has been a certain freedom of thought, stimulus to the inventive faculty, and a discipline of the imagination, connected with the superior Christian idea of God, that has had indubitably a most salutary effect upon domestic structural contrivances for the convenience and comfort of the common people, who as the children of God are better housed by Christianity than among the most backward races ; while the educational and industrial buildings of Christendom have greater merits as works of art than most contemporary non-Christian palaces. Then, too, the majestic creations of the music- loving, hopeful, joyous, triumphant, singing people of Christendom have been formed upon themes which make glad the average man. In music the great Eoman people made no perceptible advance over the Greeks, who had no use for melodious sounds except for choral dancing. The Hindus have made little progress in the art during hoary generations; and there are no people in Asia who have more than a rudimental knowledge and practice of this most popular and most influential of the fine arts. Neither the mythologic gods of music, nor the votaries of Brahma, Buddha, Confucius, or Mohammed, have carried this art of arts to any such length toward perfection as every-day PROSE COMPOSITION. 201 people in Christian lands. In poetry, the fifth of the fine arts, there is, with one exception, no rival people to dispute the claim of the Hebrew and the Christian to the first rank ; and the conditions of life have so changed since the days of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Homer, that in respect to ideas most helpful to the highest manhood, the home, the social and the religious life, and in respect to variety and perfection of metric forms, the immortal Greeks are quite removed from popular interest in the current life of the modern era. For the first rank in artistic prose composition, through out that vast range of book work, which in an easy sense is classified as literature, there is a broader competition. Whether the student devotes his hours to the wisdom of Persia and India, the shrewd apothegms of Stoic philoso phers and of Chinese sages, the moral maxims of Buddha, or the undying fables of Oriental story, he can but rejoice that the literary faculty has been developed among so many peoples, during so many ages; yet when he once begins to search the libraries of the world and to analyze their contents, to pace up and down the long galleries of the World of Books, which we are fain to designate as some sort of literature, he finds that Christendom is rich beyond all comparison in romance, in the essay, in philosophy, in history, in biography, in natural science, in descriptions of the continents and the races by the ink-horn of the traveler, and in Sacred Books which are the fountains of life in every age. Whether the world-wide non-Christian litera ture is compared with the Christian, in respect to the sub jects treated, the range of topics, the intrinsic merit of the work, or its influence as a popular educator, it is inferior at every point. Literature, in its widest and in its highest sense, is to be looked at as a part of the world's educational appliances; the average man's schooling outside the alphabet being, indeed, less important as a quickening force than the ideas he receives by heritage from the literature of his people, 202 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. which embodies the collected wisdom of all generations. The intellectual and moral power of any people bears some direct ratio to their assimilation of the most valuable thoughts of their predecessors, and they stand near the head of the world who can avail themselves of the best ideas of all mankind and embody in their literature every intellectual conception on this globe that is adapted to the genius of their own people. Conversely, those people are near the foot of the world who have little or no literature, or who, through lack of popular education, are unable to read what they have, or who oppose the local populariza tion of those ideas of other national literatures which have proved to be helpful to vast populations during some cen turies. Nothing is so amazing to the philanthropists who go out of Christendom as to find that the world's peoples have nothing to read. Confucius and Gautama, Mohammed and the Vedic ¦ sages, cannot compete with the Hebrew prophets, teachers, and apostles, unless they have better ideas. That race- stock which writes what a competitive examination shows to be the best literature in the world, and which has the power to assimilate that which is best in the literature of other nations, will certainly dominate the world's thought to endless generations. The imperishable quality of our Christian literature will give it an easy ascendency upon every continent and isle, whenever the world's peoples sit down to read it, including as it does, incidentally, those thoughts of other literatures which are most vital to moral and social progress. A critical analysis of the modern book shows that, at its best, it is shot through and through with Gospel ideas that have come to be the heritage of the common mind through out Christendom. Its writer assumes Christian truth, assumes what are really the thoughts of God, assumes immortality, human brotherhood, and the conforming of the race to Christlikeness. As, upon the coast, the tone of the sea is always in the air, there never fails a voice from COMPARATIVE READERS AND LIBRARIES. 20S out the Spiritual World in all modern literature. If the spirituality is not prominent, "it is still present in ever- recurring suggestion, as we feel the presence of the sky- when we look into the heart of the summer flowers and know that without it they could not have been. ' n It is the presence of this spiritual element, as a moral power in daily living, that differentiates Christian literature from. that of all non-Christian lands. VII. There is no point of difference between Christian and non-Christian literature more notable than that relating to the popularization of books. The Turkish Empire would have to-day ten millions of books in local libraries, scat tered here and there in different cities and towns, if Islam favored popular education by literature as much as Chris tianity did in Great Britain in 1880. Take Persia, where the people are nearly all Mohammedans: that kingdom would have to-day eight hundred libraries with six and a quarter millions of books in them, if their religion favored popular reading as much as Christianity in the United States. Two hundred millions of books would be upon the shelves of native libraries in India open to the reading of all castes, if Brahmanism were the match of Christianity in America for diffusing education by books. Here is Bud dhism : there ought to be more than thirty-five hundred libra ries here and there in Japan with almost thirty millions of volumes in them, and there ought to be more than ten mil lions of books in the native libraries of Ceylon, Siam, and Burma to-day, if their faith were as good a popular educa tor by books as Christianity is to-day in the United States. China, the most literary of the non-Christian nations, has no books to speak of, aside from one library of one hundred and sixty-eight thousand volumes, and small libraries in the eighteen provinces, and little gatherings of books in the 'Hamilton W. Mabie in the Andover Review. October, 1886. 204 CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. Buddhist monasteries ; but if Confucianism were as good a patron of books as Christianity in America, there would be in the Celestial Kingdom to-day more than twenty-nine thousand libraries, each averaging eighty-five hundred vol umes. Christianity is a reading religion. When Saul, in the old story, saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took him unto himself. Strong and valiant books are in demand throughout Christendom. The mighty men of valor are the men of ideas. The mental on-going which is so characteristic of the Christian peoples is through their conquering so many books, and taking to themselves some thing of their mighty personality, as savage tribes believe that they grow stronger for every new scalp of a hero. The mightiest of the sons of men await the readers in small oountry libraries throughout the most favored areas of Christendom; the voice of the orator is heard, and the songs of the poet, and here the historian rolls up like a scroll the story of the ages, and hands it to every schoolboy ; to the wondering eyes of the world's youth the student of natural science pictures the work of God in laying the foun dations of the globe ; and hither come the seers and apostles of faith to proclaim the love of God and the coming down of the New Jerusalem out of heaven to beautify the earth. To take up another point as to the diffusion of literature, the non-Christian faiths may be asked to match these two statements : — The American Board in seventy-five years issued so many pages of Christian print for distribution in foreign parts, that the leaves bound up as books would fill eight miles of ishelf-room : Not until the Brahmans, the Buddhists, the Confucian ists, and the Mohammedans of the world unite together and annually flood Christendom with 381,166,106 pages of non- Christian literature, will they do just what the united mis sion presses are now doing with Christian literature for non-Christian lands. To take up another point — the comparative circulation COMPARATIVE CIRCULATION OF SACRED BOOKS. 205 of Sacred Books. Not until the erudite scholars of China send forth Mencius and Confucius in four hundred and twenty-six translations,1 and scatter them broadcast throughout Africa and among the American aborigines, as well as among the white barbarians, shall we believe that their philosophy of life will prevail among all nations.2 Not till the monks of Buddha translate the life of Gau tama into every tongue under heaven, and their wealthy votaries in Burmah, Siam, and the Isles of the Eising Sun send the story to America and Europe for popular distri bution, and to the dwellers upon every sea, shall we think that their system of faith will win the approbation of all men. Not until the Brahmans of India annually circulate, as a whole or in part, 3,286,834 copies of their Sacred Books, will they match the Christian yearly reproduction of the Bible. Not till Islam circulates throughout the world three hundred million copies of the Koran, in whole or in part, will they do what Christians have done with the Bible.3 There are a thousand philologists to-day engaged in translating or reviewing translations of the Christian Scriptures for use in non-Christian lands. Nearly thirty thousand dollars a week, year in, year out, are expended by the English speaking people in distributing the Bible throughout the globe. When we speak of the comparative literature of the dif ferent peoples and religions, there is a notable virility in Christianity, as to the character of the literature produced, the popular use made of it, and its altruistic circulation. 'This is the number of Bible translations listed by Dr. Robert Needham Cust. 2The Confucian books are distributed as a matter of business, and not otherwise, in China. 3Five translations of the Koran have been made by Moslem scholars, always interlined with the original Arabic. — Stanley Lane Poole, personal letter. The Arabic is used in all countries in public readings at the mosques. CHAPTEE SIX : CONTEASTS IN MOEAL THOUGHT. The ethical contents of the world's Sacred Books, even by casual examination, reveal the most striking contrasts in those great motives which underlie moral conduct. The bearing of these ideas upon practical life is of no small interest from a sociological point of view. In considering them, it is to be noted that each of the great religions is much more than a system of theology. For example, in India, domestic customs and the caste system are vital to Hinduism, and in China ancient usage has more weight than any ethical theory. It is no part of the intent of this chapter to present a complete view of the dogmatic or philosophical systems of the great religions, which is out lined in every good encyclopedia, but allude only to certain contrasted phases that are practically related to daily life. I. RELATING TO WORSHIP, THE IDEA OF GOD. What, for example, can be in greater contrast, than the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman that neither in holy mountain nor holy city should men worship the Father, but everywhere worship God, the Spirit, in spirit and in truth,1 and the record2 made by Sir Alfred C. Lyall in India : — The extraordinary religious confusion that still prevails throughout India leads one to think of that land as one in which the primitive paganism with all its incoherency, 'John 4: 21, 23, 24. 'Asiatic Studies. London, 1882. This work contains most careful observations made during twenty-seven years' residence. The paragraph following in the text, — with the specifications (1) to (11), — is based upon pp. 2-28 passim, and 287, 288; the wording being changed in part. HINDU THOUGHT. 207 deficient in organic structure and dominant ideas, has sur vived. Extinguished as it was centuries since in Europe and Western Asia, we find the disorderly supernaturalism of pre-Christian ages in India. Stepping out of our mod ern western world, we there find, going on before our eyes, what we have read in ancient books. It is the nearest sur viving representative of a semi-civilized society's religious state, as it existed in Western Asia and Europe before Christianity and Mohammedanism. To those who collect their notions of the Indian religion out of the sacred books of India, the Brahmanic mythology and ceremonial may appear to furnish a comprehensive system. But closer observation discovers a jumble of contradictory ideas and practices, a medley of popular superstitions underlying authoritative ritual, and that total indifference to plan or unity which indicates a religion rudimentary and unorgan ized. It is not only disorganized but dilapidated, as to any system; owing in part to varying political conditions, as that of the Mohammedan conquest. Some of the deities abhor a fly's death, others still delight in human victims. It is a tangled jungle of disorderly superstitions relating to ghosts and demons, demigods and deified saints, household gods, tribal gods, local gods, universal gods. In Europe men associate religion with the idea of a church, a settled organic form, and they assume that the Hindus have built up a definite system, while really there is no common bond. It is an ancient religion1 still alive and powerful, which is a mere troubled sea without shore or visible horizon, driven to and fro by the winds of boundless credulity and gro tesque invention. The Province of Berar in Central India, as it was in 1868, illustrates these statements; there being in this district one hundred and fifty-five thousand Mos lems with two million and ninety-five thousand Hindus. 'Modern Hinduism is the direct outgrowth of the Brahmanism of the earliest historical ages, without a break in the continuity, a religion in unceasing flux. — Compare Chapter II, p. 26, note, supra. 208 THE IDEA OF GOD. The everyday religious practice of the middle class Hindus falls within one or more of the following divisions : — (1) Those who worship stocks and stones, and local con figurations of unusual or grotesque size, shape or position; this worship reproducing itself and extending in Berar, under the eyes of the observer — an oddly shaped jutting bit of rock, a huge boulder lying alone in the plain, a circle of stones, a peculiar mark on a hillside, a hummock on a hill top, an ancient carved pillar, a milestone marked with strange hieroglyphics unexpectedly set up where none was before, a telegraph post, fossils with their shell marks, — all being objects of worship; in every case, an expert Brah manic explanation being always at hand and producible — some signification being contrived or sanctioned to justify and authorize the custom ; the common people, at first with out a second meaning in their adoration, paying reverent attention to the unaccountable and startling expression of an unknown power : (2) Those who worship inanimate things with mysterious motion: brooks; springs; rivers; rushing, roaring torrents ; the sun, a tribal god among the northern hills of Berar; trees, waving branches, and weird out-sounding of tree or branch in the wind, solitary trunks, dark groves: (3) Those who worship animals that are feared, — as tigers, wolves, serpents: (4) Those who worship things animate or inanimate that are directly or indirectly useful or profitable, or which pos sess any incomprehensible function or propriety, — as tool. worship; the Thugs worshipping the pickaxe carried for burying their victims, the farmer praying to his plow, the weaver to his loom, the fisher to his net :x (5) Those who worship a spirit, or vague impersonation. of the uncanny sensation that comes over one at certain places ; when cutting wood on a hillside, a clump is left for the elf abiding in that wood: 'Compare Habakkuk, 1: 16. HINDU THOUGHT. 209 (6) Those who worship the spirits of persons once known to the worshippers : (7) Those who worship at the shrine of persons of note who died in some unusual way, — as M. Baymond, the French commander, who died at Hyderabad; and General Nicholson of Delhi, 1857 : (8) Those who worship in temples persons of note, as demigods or subordinate deities; or who worship the shrines raised to anchorites and those dying in the odor of sanctity, of which the numbers are very large in Berar, and constantly increasing, some having already rank in richly endowed temple worship : (9) Those who worship manifold local incarnations of the elder deities and of their symbols : (10) Those who worship departmental deities : (11) Those who worship the supreme gods of Hinduism, and their ancient incarnations and personifications as handed down by the Brahmanic Scriptures. Yet the old order has been continually though slowly changing, giving place to new manifold deities, which press upon the earlier divinities of creation, preservation and destruction; the direct or primary worship of these three divinities, espe cially of Brahma the creator, being comparatively rare, their original names having gone mostly out of ritualistic use.1 Conscious of his own intellectual supremacy and moral uprightness, desiring the knowledge of God, inquiring after 'The History, Literature and Religion of the Hindus, by Will iam Ward, third edition, in two volumes, London, 1817, devotes two hundred and eighty-eight pages to a most impressive exhibit of the objects of Hindu worship. Professor M. Monier-Williams' work on Brahmanism and Hinduism has also a very (full statement. The Free Church of Scotland Quarterly adds to the specifica tions in the text, supra, the worship of the moon, stars and sky; of clouds, rain, thunder, lightning, and the rainbow, the earth, the sea, the fire; the ox, cow, dog, kite, crow, peacock, lizard! and rat; the fish, tortoise, and crocodile. 14 210 THE IDEA OF GOD. God, the Brahman recognizes the presence of divine power in everything, and actuated by a sense of loyalty to the truth he encourages the people to worship everything, so multiplying rites. On the part of the people, Brahma is neglected, because his work being finished nothing more can be obtained from him j1 and the sacred books for ages have represented the newer gods as crowding out the old ones, — and there are sharp words of rivalry, denouncing this god or that.2 While the Hindu masses are divided into sects with rival deities, the more intelligent, a few among the great multi tude, cling to the older and purer faith of the fathers, who worshipped without idols or temples an energetic Aryan battlegod of marked personality,3 the supreme organ izer of the world and of inferior deities.* Vet so accus tomed is the Hindu mind to having some symbol in the hour of worship, that Lyall speaks of a very shrewd native officer of fair education who in his devotions addressed five round pebbles, from the bed of the Narbada river or the Gaudaki, which are employed in the worship of Siva and Vishnu. It was by the devotee thought of as representative worship;5 in his mind it might not have been essentially different from the devout use of the cross in Christendom as the sym bol of the Divine Mercy. It is the theory of the Brahmans that all the worship of the inferior castes is symbolical and that it is better for the untrained people to have idols and 'He is unloving and unloved. The popular heart turns to the inferior deities who can be moved by human wants. — Hardwicks' Christ and Other Masters. 2Consult W. J. Wilkins' Modern Hinduism, pp. 54, 399, 45, 46. sProfessor E. Washburn Hopkins, — manuscript notes. 'Mitchell's Hinduism, pp. 20, 21, 249, 201, 202. Also Monier- Williams' Hinduism, pp. 22-25, 31, 32. 1885. EFor representative worship, consult Monier-Williams' Brah manism and Hinduism, pp. 69, 70. New York. "If God is everywhere, he is of a truth in the idol. Where there is faith, there is God." — R. A. Hume, D. D., Parliament of Religions, II, 1271. HINDU THOUGHT. 211 sacred places.1 The idea of one God in India was never developed beyond the point of being the First Cause, or more exactly the Arranger of all existent things ; this in the late Vedic period, degenerated into a conception of deity who was to be primarily thought of as both Arranger and Arrangement of all things — Itself the Order of the World.2 From it there arose the Hindu system of panthe ism; it being taught that the original Arranger can be known only through subordinate deities, or the powers of nature, or in man; not that nature is truly God or the expression of a divine life, but God is all and in all, and out side Him there is no reality in the universe. It is true that in the going by of the ages the Brahmanical priesthood has been supported by offerings made to this idolatry or that, and that the Brahmans have never brought the millions into touch with their Creator as a God with whom they have to do,3 — nor has the average man in India been practically led by polytheistic worship — based upon a spiritual pan theism — into any clearer perception of that impersonal 'Lyall's chapter in The Great Religions of the World, New York. Yet this was met by Cicero with the question, "Who can tell but the people may come to believe that these stones and pictures are the gods themselves?" 2"To the Hindu there is in the universe but one — call it being, call it essence, call it thing — there is but one, the Pan, the All, the Universal, Brahma. No man, no thing is so separated from it as to have been created by it. There never has been creation, only emanation from the Universal It. It is ignorance to say that there is a God. There is no essential difference between man and a stone." "To philosophical Hinduism the Infinite Brahma, a word of neuter gender, is the Universal It, without those attri butes which we have in mind when we use the imperfect word 'personality'; therefore without holiness and incapable of expressing or receiving what we call love." — Rev. R. A. Hume, D. D., of Ahmednagar, paper read at the Parliament of Religions. "So in Christendom the clerical order has from apostolic times been maintained by the laity; and, where the faith has been cor rupted, the laity have been taught to approach God only through ecclesiastical formulas. 212 THE IDEA OF GOD. Power dimly conceived of as his ultimate Origin.1 The very sincerity of myriads upon myriads of Hindu devotees — based upon what is true in their faith — haunts an out side beholder like a horrible nightmare : the naturally reli gious peoples being in a moral quagmire, the outcome of scores upon scores of generations of Brahmanical guidance.2 To the Buddhist founder the keen sighted Prince of India, emerging from what seemed to him the Brahmanical darkness in which he was born, there was vouchsafed no vision of God as a fixed personality ; if he did not think his pantheistic, polytheistic, idolatrous neighbors right, neither in his judgment were the early sages right. He saw the inward beauty of many moral duties : had he as clearly seen God, then indeed the light that is brighter than the sun would have dawned in the East. During fifteen hundred years before his time, the Vedic faith had so degenerated that when the Prince of India came to think it all over, during six years, he did not believe in that Brahmanical pantheism which alone in his day stood in the place of the conceptions of deity which had been held by the primitive sages of his nation. He saw the boundless errors of the crude polytheistic worship, based always upon the intel lectual error of pantheistic notions, and he cut clear of the whole of it, and gave to the teeming millions of the East '"The ordinary Hindu who practices the most corrupt form of polytheism is never found to deny the doctrine of God's unity. He will always maintain that God is essentially one, that he exhibits himself variously, and that he is to be worshipped through an endless diversity of manifestations, incarnations, and material forms." — Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, pp. 475, 476. Fourth edition, Macmillan, 1894. In like manner the common man holds also to pantheism, believing himself to be a part of God. — Mitchell's Hinduism, p. 177; W. J. Wilkins' Modern Hinduism, p. 319. 2The self-contradictory characteristics of the Hindus are thus summed up by Barth: — "They are at once sensual, superstitious, and speculative, with an equal appetite for theosophy and coarse exhibitions, and they have never been able to rest satisfied with faith in one God, or reconcile themselves to the worship of many." BUDDHIST THOUGHT. 213 for more than sixty generations a world without a God.1 That is, so far as his thought controlled them: since ulti mately his followers, particularly in the north of Asia, wor shipped him as the Enlightened One, the earthly incarna tion of the Supreme Deity, at peace in Nirvana until a new Buddha shall visit the earth.2 As Hinduism is divided into sects following divers gods, so Buddhism has many schools with various interpretations of their primal theo ries, as of Nirvana, and as to the worship of Buddha ; there being seven principal sects in Japan, subdivided twenty- two times.3 The Singhalese Buddhist catechism says that a personal God is regarded by the Buddhists as only a gigan tic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the imagina tion of ignorant men ; yet the Buddhists of Ceylon — out side their books — believe in a personal God.4 The Bud dhists of Burmah, representing the cult in its most pure form, still regard Gautama as the "enlightened" man: repeating the formula, — "I venerate the doctrine of Bud dha," rather than "I worship Buddha."5' There is, how ever, no doubt that in popular Buddhist theology, the 'For the Gautamic denial of a Supreme Being, vide Max Miil- ler's introduction to the Buddhaghosha Parables, pp. 38, 39. 1870; Chips from a German Worship, I, 227; Monier-Williams' Bud dhism, pp. 121, 122, 537, 539; vide also the citations in Professor Kellogg's Light of Asia, pp. 176-183. London, 1885. There is in Buddhism, says Koppen, "no God, no spirit, no eternal matter; there is only an eternal Becoming, no eternal Being." In the Buddhist philosophy, the idea and expression of a begin- ningless and endless cause and effect seems more reasonable than that of a self-existent First Cause. 2Bishop Titcomb (pp. 108, 109) affirms that the images of Buddha are not worshipped, but contemplated as an aid to rever encing the virtues and memory of Gautama. The Thibetan wor ship of the primal Buddha as the only God is thought by Bunsen to be not older than the tenth century A. D. — God in History, I, 369, 370. "Missionary Herald. Boston. August, 1892. 4The Rt. Rev. Reginald S. Copleston, Bishop of Columbo, Bud dhism, pp. 478, 482. "Nisbet's Burma under British Rule, p. 109. 214 THE IDEA OF GOD. apotheosis of Gautama is so secure in the hearts of hundreds of millions of disciples that it cannot properly be said that they are as godless as their Sacred Books.1 The massive images of Buddha have been for a thousand years counted among the wonders of the world ; and the pagodas of Japan, Burmah and' Siam are the most elaborately adorned build ings in Asia. The Siamese voluntary contributions for the temples and the monks are some twenty-five million dollars annually in a population of but six millions. Many Bud dhists are deeply imbued with religious feelings.2 "I am old and I am a woman, but I will tell you what thoughts I have," said an aged Japanese, of the Shin Shin sect, to Dr. A. H. Bradford, of the American Board deputation. "I am weak and sinful and I have no hope in myself ; my hope is all in Amida Buddha. I believe him to be the Supreme Being. Because of the wickedness of man, and because of human sorrow, Amida Buddha became incarnate and came to the earth to deliver man; and my hope and the world's hope is to be found only in his suffering love. He has entered humanity to save it, and he alone can save. He constantly watches over and helps all who trust in him. I am not in a hurry to die, but I am ready when my time comes, and I trust that through the gracious love of Amida Buddha I shall then enter into the future life, which I believe to be a state of conscious existence, and where I shall be free from sorrow. I believe that he hears prayer, and that he has guided me thus far, and my hope is only in his suffering love."3 "'Buddha is the joy of the whole world, the helper of the help less, the very compassionate, more powerful than the most power ful, able to bestow Nirvana on him who only softly pronounces his name, or gives in his name a few grains of rice. The eye cannot see anything, the ear cannot hear anything, nor the mind think of anything more excellent or more worthy of regard than Buddha." — Hardy's Manual, p. 360. 2Monier-Williams. Buddhism, p. 552. !Dr. Bradford in The Outlook. New York, 1896. As Christian ity has sometimes done, Buddhism appears at times to have taken on the color of its local surroundings, assimilating prevailing CHINESE THOUGHT. 215 It was the lack of the religious element in Confucianism that gave the Buddhists a foothold in China.1 ' ' Honor the gods, and keep them far from you," is a saying of Confu cius.2 The sage, says Professor Douglas, did not deny the idea of God, but ignored it. Confucius, to avoid irrever ence, designated the Supreme Power by the vague term "Heaven." To him it is due that the official worship still survives ; yet his general attitude was such as to infect the Chinese philosophy with atheism; and the worship of Heaven has degenerated into the bestowal of honor upon the impersonal spirit of the world and the powers of nature.3 It was said by Pung Kwang Yu, in the "Parliament of Eeligions, ' '* that Confucianism teaches its followers to keep aloof from spirits, but holds them in respect; and that doing them reverence is to refrain from giving them annoy ance; and that religion has not been considered as a desir able thing for the people to know or for the government to sanction, since it tends to dissension. China has had the knowledge of God for four thousand years,5 a Supreme God with administrative subordinate dei- ideas and customs, adapting itself to Siam, Tartary or Thibet. It appears as if the ideas of the early Nestorians in China had been perpetuated in certain Buddhist monastic liturgies of to-day in Southern China. (Consult Beal's Catena, pp. 397-409.) In like matter the citation in the text made by Dr. Bradford sug gests ideas quite foreign to Gautama. Dr. Iyenaga, in a lecture course in Boston, 1904, stated that Buddhism in Japan is in some features like Catholicism. 'Probably every Chinaman believes in the philosophy of Con fucius and ancestral worship; and there are few who do not also worship at the Buddhist and Taoist temples. 'Tide Martin's Cycle of Cathay, p. 228; Lore of Cathay, p. 178. This sentiment is often cited by gentlemen in Japan. — Griffis' Religions of Japan, p. 105. 'Lore of Cathay, pp. 166, 169, 176, 178. 'President Barrow's Report in Two Volumes, p. 384. The idea of one God was stereotyped in the Chinese language by a character invented at least five thousand years ago; the divine name is familiar in the earliest historical documents. — Legge's Religions of China, pp. 8-11, 59-62, 244, 245. 216 THE IDEA OF GOD. ties, yet for more than thirty centuries the hundreds of millions of the people have not worshipped Him.1 This is in effect not unlike the monotheism which earliest appeared among the Aryans — so soon, however, lost in degenerate Indian worship; in agreement also with the testimony of resident missionaries and reputable travelers concerning Africa, that the natives everywhere believe in a Supreme God, yet render to Him no honor. The Chinese Emperor has for four thousand years worshipped the true God, in an official, formal, ritualistic way, in behalf of his people, and for more than thirty centuries twice a year ; and by the custom and rule of the realm he alone performs this service.2 It is said by the wise that their reverence hinders their wor ship of Heaven, that the emperor alone is worthy.3 And there has never been popular instruction in the knowledge of God. The literature of the sages gives to God scant rec ognition. In the five relations of life, which comprise the whole duty of man, there is no relation to the All-Father. The common people, unless with rare exceptions, have no direct communication with the deity, and make no offering or. service. From time immemorial the people have sought 'Doctor Legge, Religions, pp. 22-29. 2Dr. Legge's Religions of China, pp. 33, 43-51; and Life and Works of Mencius, p. 263. Philadelphia, 1875. i Compare Edkins' Religion in China, p. 60. Legge's Religions, p. 54, cites a Chinese Record, B. C. 1766, that illustrates the worship of God by the emperor as the representa tive of his people, standing between their sins and the Judge of all. T'ang having overthrown the dynasty of Shang, in announc ing the rules of a new life under the new reign, said: "When guilt is found anywhere in you who occupy the myriad regions, let it rest on me, the one man. When guilt is found in me the one man, it shall not attach to you who occupy the myriad regions." When therefore drought and famine came, it was sug gested that a human victim should be offered to Heaven, and prayer offered for rain, and T'ang said, — "If a man must be the victim, I will be he." Fasting, and guised as a sacrificial victim, he went into a mulberry forest, with confession and prayer; and the rain descended. "Lore of Cathay, p. 167. CHINESE THOUGHT. 217 to satisfy their religious longings only through the expres sion of filial piety toward their ancestors and national lieroes,1 and in later centuries through the worship of such images as the Buddhist2 and Taoist philosophers have given them. During more than four thousand years the average man in China has been ' ' without God in the world. ' '3 'There are fifteen hundred temples in China for the worship of Confucius. The emperor, for more than two thousand years, has officially worshipped him twice a year, as one of a trinity with "Heaven" and "Earth." (Lore of Cathay, p. 179.) More than sixty thousand animals a year are provided by the government for sacrificial offerings at the Confucian temples. China, by Robert K. Douglas, p. 165; Hardwick Christ and other Masters, II, p. 32. London, 1863. Whether "worship" or "reverence," this is one of the grounds for classifying Confucianism as a popular "religion," rather than a "philosophy" as it is often designated by Chinese scholars. 2The Chinese government has not objected to Buddhism, since It makes no attempt to regulate the family, or the state, or to disturb the peace of the world. — Pung Kwang Yu: in report of Parliament of Religions. 'Tide Edkins' Religion in China; Confucianism and Taoism, by Professor Douglas. London, 1879; and particularly Legge's four lectures on the Religions of China (London, 1880) pp. 22-56; and his work upon the Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits, pp. 24-31, 38, 57, 59, 61. Hong Kong, 1852. Concerning ceremonial worship by the emperor, the Author received a letter a few years ago from Doctor Legge, in which it is written: — "I have said that 'the people were debarred from the worship of God,' and that they were 'cut off from the worship of God for themselves.' It would seem then that at one time, a very early time, it was allowable for them to worship God. I suppose the debarring grew up by immemorial custom; and the ceremonial worship of each party in the state was regulated according to its social position. In the fourth century, B. C, so great a writer and teacher as Mencius could say, 'Though man may be wicked, yet if he adjust his thoughts, fast and bathe, he may sacrifice to God.' Even now you may sometimes see an old man, poor and somewhat ragged, with smoking incense in his hand, looking reverently up to the sky, and bowing reverently nearly to the ground; and if you ask him what he means by all his demonstrations, he will reply that he is 'worshipping God,* 218 THE IDEA OF GOD. It is, however, to be said of Confucianism in Japan that the acute philosophers who were attracted to the Chinese Classics seized upon Confucius' doctrine of Heaven, or Providence, and so developed it that the world itself was conceived of as instinct with a divine life which abides also in good men of all ages, a goodness that is best manifested in loyalty to the imperial line of divine descent. This doc trine not only found expression in the high ideals enter tained by the noblest men in the nation,1 but it was so accentuated by singularly illuminated minds as to voice clearly that doctrine of God which was never declared by Confucius : — "There is a great Lord over all. This Lord is the great and only spirit. He is the Lord and Father of heaven and earth and all things. From the mighty universe to the tiny mote, from the eternity to the moment, there is nothing outside of his glorious regard. His mystery fills all space — God of God, spirit of spirit. "2 " God is not distant, the heart is the house of God. ' '3 It was with a passionate conviction that Mohammed believed in the One God, as a Spirit, self-existent, eternal, and perfect in all of his attributes: from the beginning down, this truth nerved his followers to ceaseless effort to overthrow idolatry, whether purely ethnic, or masquerad ing in Christian attire.4 This Ishmaelite revival of the pri or, 'colloquializing the Supreme Name,' 'worshipping and appeal ing to His Heavenly Worship.' " At wedding ceremonies, all bow before Heaven. By some, a stick of incense is burned every evening under the open sky. — Lore of Cathay, p. 166. 'Compare Chapter II, pp. 34, 35, supra. 2Nakal Tojio, a prophet of old Japan, cited by Miyagawa in Dr. De Forest's paper added to President C. C. Hall's Christian Belief Interpreted by Christian Experience, p. 251. "Muro Kyuso. 'Henry O. Dwight, LL. D., Constantinople. Compare Poole's Studies in a Mosque, pp. 91, 92. "It was because Christianity became so corrupted and debased in the ancient Syrian world, originally beginning as a pure insti- MOSLEM THOUGHT. 21& mal revelation of God to the Hebrew patriarchs has won for this truth the cordial acceptance of vast multitudes who would never have otherwise received it. This doctrine — a part of every prayer five times daily, "I extol the perfec tion of God the Great, ' ' — has outworked favorably in many lives. A son of Islam is always deeply religious, his reli gion pervades his whole life and his life is more or less shaped by it; if there is one characteristic that stands out above all others it is his devotion to his faith, — he will do anything for it as the supreme faith and is never ashamed of it.1 Dr. Wilson A. Farnsworth affirms that, in propor tion, he has found during fifty years in Turkey, more honor able, upright men among Moslems than among Armenian Christians.2 Everyone, says Professor Henry Preserved Smith — intimate with Mohammedan life, — will testify that men are not rare among them, earnest and conscientious, who live in the fear of God, who strive to do his will, and whose kindness, benevolence, and fidelity to principle are the outworking of sincere faith in Him.3 President Washburn, of Eobert College, bears striking testimony to the honesty, truthfulness, and benevolence of certain Mos lems, of whose sincere desire to do right there can be no- doubt.4 And this indeed should be so from the moral ideas set forth in the Koran, which exalts virtue and condemns vice. Pride and presumption are rebuked, egotism and harshness of spirit are denounced. Uprightness of charac ter is demanded. The justice of God, as between neighbors, will compel everyone (even though he be one of the holy martyrs) who has injured another to restore to him his due at the judgment day. Lane, in his Modern Egyptians,5 tution, that Islam, as in some respects a superior faith, was able to choke it out." — Curtiss' Primitive Semitic Religion, p. 240. 'Personal letter from Secretary James L. Barton of the A. B. C. F. M., for many years a resident in the Turkish Empire. 2Personal letter. "The Bible and Islam: Compare pages 317 and 229. 'The Message of the World's Religions, p. 83. New York, 1898. "Vol. II, p. 471. Third editon, London, 1842. 220 THE IDEA OF GOD. says that he has often heard blessings bestowed by Moslems when abused by their brethren; to every angry blow, the answer being, — "God bless thee, God requite thee good." It is impossible to form even a slight acquaintance with the Arabic history and literature, without receiving the impression that many among the leaders of the Moslem world have been most devout in seeking to serve the Most High, according to their best knowledge. A beautiful illustration is found in Al-Ghazzali, whose quaintness of apothegmatic speech recalls Saint Augustine. "What rigidity of grasp the hand of Islam would have exercised, ' ' says Macdonald, "but for the influence of Al-Ghazzali, might be hard to tell; he saved it from decreptitude, and opened before the orthodox Moslem the possibility of a life hid in God."1 The moral value of the Sacred Books of Judaism and Christianity is found in what relates to the development, during nearly fifty generations, of the idea of God: the Eternal Spirit, the First Cause, the Infinite Intellect, the Holy Will, the Moral , Governor, the just and the loving All-Father, perfect in wisdom, caring for his children. The matured Hebraic idea of Jehovah was that of Supreme Wisdom, the source of orderly thought from which proceeded all created things. Whether this idea was reached earlier than the similar thought in the matured Greek philosophy, it is not important to inquire. The ¦Supreme Good of Plato is represented as the Supreme Eea- 'A. H. 450-505. As a lecturer at Baghdad, he left the most brilliant position in the Moslem Church, at the age of thirty- eight, and devoted himself to a contemplative or mystical life, for the attainment of spiritual truth by direct vision. This course he pursued for ten years before returning to Baghdad to teach: seeking to follow the true path to the knowledge of God. "A complete purifying of the heart from all but God is the path; a seeking to completely plunge the heart in the thought of God is its beginning, and its end is complete passing away in God." — Tide The Life of Al-Ghazzali, by D. B. Macdonald, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, XX. HEBREW AND CHRISTIAN CONCEPT. 221 son, intelligently contemplating possible Types or forms prior to the construction of Things.1 Our Occidental phil osophy grew out from this Hebrew and Greek concept of a self-conscious Intelligence in which the Thinker is detached from his thought. The difference between this concept and that of the Hin dus makes the difference between India and England. In all that pertains to civic theory and scientific thought, to the training of youth, to moral theory, to philanthropy, and to expansive moral energy, the root of their diverse growths is found in this. The entire material universe, including whatever is of spirit in humanity, is represented by Hindu thought as the outward expression of the Supreme Princi ple of Life which is related to nature and to human life as the soul to the body. Opposed to this is the thought of Christendom, that God is the conscious directing mind, not so much expressed by the universe as limited by it in his self expression, seeing the end from the beginning, and intent upon carrying out his thought and plan for the high est well-being of the moral universe. What is cosmic evo lution but the all-pervasive tideflow of theistic energy, intel ligence and will? So near is the modern scientific idea of the universe to the Brahmanic thought of God — so near and yet so far. It is the difference of personal power, per sonal intelligence, personal will, — or so expressed as to sug gest personality through the self-imposed limitations of cre ative and sustaining power. So profound were the early philosophic sages of India, — so nearly stating, so closely missing a theistic interpretation of the evolution of the universe. It- is said by Huxley, that the object of natural science is the discovery of that rational order which pervades the universe.2 That the "order" is — throughout Christen- 'The truths of reason are at once the laws of thought and the archetypal norms of all existence. — Samuel Harris, The Philo sophical Basis of Theism. New York, 1883. "Lecture on the Progress of Science in the last Half Century. 222 THE IDEA OF GOD. dom — held to be "rational," is the secret of the advance ment of natural science among such peoples as are philo sophically actuated by the Hebrew and Greek thought con cerning God. Modern science is but the development of the idea of the government of nature by the reign of law — or fixed rational modes of action — discernable by reason. Of ancient and modern men of science of the highest rank, five have been materialists, says Dr. Dennert of Ber lin: fifteen, agnostics; thirty-eight have given no opinion in regard to theism; and the two hundred and forty-two remaining, in the roll of three hundred, have accepted the ism as the philosophic basis of natural science, — and their greatest discoveries have been through their search for that "rational order which pervades the universe." If the appeal be made to natural science, it must be said at once that the manifold polytheism based upon the spir itual pantheism of India, the negations of the Buddhist books and deification of Gautama, and the practically athe istic or agnostic attitude of the Confucian philosophy con nected as it is with popular conceptions of secondary spirit ual causes more or less efficient in natural causation, are all so little in accord with the thought of Christendom about the First Cause of all things, as to be without value in form ing a hypothesis for studying the facts of the universe. Throughout the non-Christian world, scientific investiga tions in the nineteenth century have absolutely, once and forever, done away with all mythological notions of subor dinate deities, making them impossible or unthinkable to any well informed person in any part of the globe; and these studies have at the same time closed in upon the advanced thinkers of Christendom, and shut them up face to face with the idea of one Primal Force with attributes of what may, by an accommodation of terms, be called per sonality — without thereby limiting the Infinite, — the God with whom we have to do, who made all that is made, — so that the basis of all Christian scientific thinking is as RAMAITE THOUGHT. 223 firmly established as the foundations of the universe.1 India and China at the dawn of history had an idea of God not unlike that of the Hebrew founders and the Pla tonic wisdom, but India and China in popular thought lost sight of it for forty centuries.2 Through the Hebrews we have the beginnings of a historic self -revelation of the moral attributes of God, which culminated in the Christian era. It is possible indeed — if not at first then at last, — that the devout Hebrew thinkers knew more about God than Yao 'It has been remarked by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that "You can not take up any problem in physics without being quickly led to some metaphysical problem which you can neither solve nor evade." — Life Everlasting, by John Fiske, p. 50. Boston, 1901. 2If this be so as to the popular thought of India as such, it would be unjust not to give prominent recognition to that very powerful sect of South India, which has made itself known throughout the North — the Ramaism of Ramanuja; which, dur ing more than seven hundred years, has taught that the All-God is a creative, personal, supreme God, that thought is not an attri bute of Brahma, but Brahma is thought, — the one and only toeing, omniscient, omnipotent, the all-wise and will-ing God, whose spirit permeates and animates this world. While the individual soul springs from Brahma and is never outside Brahma, it is held to enjoy a separate existence, and that it will remain a personality forever. This remarkable Ramaite sect, founded by Ramanuja or one of his followers, is, in respect to personal salvation, divided into two parts: the one holding that God saves a man as a cat takes up a kitten which exercises no free will; the other, that a man, In order to be saved, must reach out and embrace God as a monkey does its mother. Both, however, agree that in salvation the individual departs from the earth forever, without being involved in endless trans migrations; to remain forever in paradise in undisturbed per sonal bliss. Tide Hopkins' Religions of India, pp. 497, 498, 500, 501. Also In Vol. XXXIV of Muller's Sacred Books of the East, see Thi- bauts' Introduction to the Ted&nta- Sutras, pp. XXX, XXXI. Remark by Professor Hopkins: — This important aspect of Hindu thought, which comes nearer than any other to our own, is a purely native theology, untouched as Sikhism is touched in the North, by Moslem influence. 224 THE IDEA OF GOD. and Shun, and those who first sang the Vedic hymns, and that their better knowledge led them to transmit it with care to unending generations as the most precious heritage- of mankind. The being of God is held by the Christian Scriptures to be a tenet of natural religion, the invisible things of him being perceived through the things that are made, his everlasting power and divinity.1 It is to the present point that those who "hold down" this truth in unrighteousness are put to a final moral disadvantage2 through the natural operation of selection and survival in the age-long rivalry of races and religions. Customs, man ners, morals ultimately become as rigid as iron through what the world thinks: and the polytheistic thinking of India, and the negations of Gautama, and the practically godless influence of Confucius place Asia by the side of Africa as to theistic ideas, with eight or nine hundred mil lions of men who knew God ages ago and have not glorified him as God. Are not people known by the company they keep ? The precious conception of the Supreme God, or the lower con ception of the Divine Arranger of the Universe, was entrusted to a priesthood in India who separated them selves from the commonality as a divine caste ; and for more than three score and ten generations they have literally sub sisted upon the multiplication of subordinate deities and the multiplication of manifestations of God, and upon the upbuilding of the most highly elaborated idolatrous poly theism, rooted in pantheism, which the world has ever seen : and the inferior castes are — what they are to-day, — as to social and moral development. 'Romans 1: 19-20. 2Romans 1: 18, 21-23. KRISHNAIC DEVOTION. 225 II. RELATING TO THE LOVE OF GOD. Eelating to the idea that ' ' God is love, ' n there is another contrast between the Sacred Books of the world. Not one outside the Bible represents love as the leading moral attri bute of the Supreme Being. Hinduism — to make a gen eral statement — is not a religion of love but of fear; and the anger of the gods is dreaded at every step ;2 the Krish- naic doctrine of devotion or love of God has, however, had an immense influence on modern sects in India.3 Buddhism knows nothing of God as a Father and a Friend.4 And nearly one-fourth of mankind, with no knowledge of Infinite Love, are little affected in their lives by the semi-annual ceremonial worship of Heaven by the Emperor of China.5 The Koran makes the impression of a very imperfect, fragmentary Bible, disproportionate, as if one were to select harsh passages in the Old Testament without balancing them by the voluminous texts, old and new, that express the love of God. Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, so learned in all 'I John 4: 8, 16. Ex. 19: 4. Deut. 7: 8; 32:10,11. Zept. 3: 17. Is. 63: 9. John 3: 16; 16: 27. Romans 5: 8. Eph. 2: 4. II Thess. 2: 16. I John 3:1; 4: 9, 10, 19. ^Bishop Thoburn's India and Malaysia, p. 364. This is in accord with all authorities upon Hinduism. "Professor E. Washburn Hopkins in personal comment. To the text, also, Dr. Hopkins adds this Note: — "If this Krish- naic doctrine runs to erotic mysticism, so did Christian love in mediaeval saints. Its purest form is without eroticism, as it is found in the Bhagavad GIta. Hinduism is a religion of love to the extent that in the GIta he who has a loving devotion to God is the true worshipper; he who serves by rites coming lower in the scale." 'Consult Sir Monier-Williams' Buddhism, p. 544. B"I have been reading Chinese books for more than forty years, and any general requirement to love God, or the mention of any one as loving him, has yet to come for the first time under my eye." — Professor Legge. 15 226 THE LOVE OF GOD. that relates to Mussulman literature, says that while there is much of the loving-kindness of God in the Koran, yet this is not the main thought in Mahomet's teaching; that the fear rather than the love of God is the spur of Islam ; that it is nearly certain that the love of God is an idea foreign to most of the races that have accepted Islam ; that the dan ger of Islam lies in the stress laid on the power of God which has brought about the stifling effects of fatalism.1 "It practically discourages the desire for a direct relation between the Deity and his servant; it draws the picture of that God in overharsh outlines, and leaves out too much of the tenderness and loving-kindness of the God of Christ's teaching, — and hence it has been the source of more intol erance and fanatical hatred than most creeds.2 If the intol erance of the worst of the sons of Islam is based upon a misconception of the Divine character, it is to be said of the best that they are more enlightened than their Book, and that, in respect to this point, the traditions soften the asper ity of their faith: — "People are not assembled together in Mosques to read the Book of God without light and comfort descending upon them ; the favor of God covers them, angels encompass them around about, and God reckons them among His angels."3 The Babists place much stress upon the love of God and love to God; yet the sect is too recent and too limited to make much figure in Islam, — -their founder, humble, gen tle, patient, having died in 1850, at thirty years old. His martyrdom, and that of Mirza, Ali Muhammad at Shiraz, 'Studies in a Mosque, pp. 89-91. 'Ibid, pp. Q9, 100. "The God of the Arabian prophet is not a God of love who desires that his children should become one with him and should yield him their affection. He is a God of will and power, with drawn from the human world, the highest relation to whom attainable by man, is expressed in the well-known name the reli gion bears — 'Islam,' that is, resignation." — The Faiths of the World, St. Giles Lectures, p. 400. By J. Cameron Lees, D. D. Edinburgh, 1882. "Cited in Professor H. P. Smith's Bible and Islam, p. 26. THE BABISTS. 227 show how bitterly Islam resented the new doctrines of the Bab, — "the Gate" of sacred mysteries and spiritual truths. The Babis voice the need of a fuller revelation to meet the requirements of a progressive human race ; being averse to various archaic beliefs of the Moslems. They are opposed to the use of the sword to propagate the faith : and prefer to be killed rather than kill. Their women do not wear the veil, but observe an Occidental freedom. It is recom mended to take but one wife, even though two be allowable. The Babis read about Christ, and seek to perfect the law of Christ by their own superior revelation. They know more about Christianity than other Moslems, and entertain a friendly regard for Christians.1 In its relation to the type of character formed by habit ually contemplating the love of the everlasting Father,2 and his yearning love for his children, it is not certain that, as a factor in moral evolution, the Christian type3 is more help ful to the human race4 than the negations or the silence or the unpurposed misrepresentations of the All-Father in the non-Christian books? The sociological influence in Europe of the idea of the love of God is emphasized by Crozier :5 the essential Eoman idea having been that of mastery — mastery over wife and child as over states, — -much as the gods were the masters of men ; but Christianity introduced the principle of love — love toward wife and child and towards all men, as God the Father has loved men. 'Consult B. J. Browne's "Year in Persia," and his translation of "The Episode of the Bdb." "Psalms 68: 5; 103: 13. Is. 63: 16. Jer. 31: 9. Matt. 5: 16; 6: 1, 9, 32; 7: 11. II Cor. 1: 3. Eph. 1: 3. I Peter 1: 3. "No naturalistic evolution can account for such a conception as the love of God. — Toy's Judaism and Christianity, p. 84. 'In this, the divine wisdom wrought a greater work than in creating worlds, by being the teacher, lover and saviour of the race. — Curtiss' Primitive Semitic Religion, p. 246. New York, 1902. ^History of Intellectual Development, pp. 151-8. London, 1897. 228 MORAL LAW. III. RELATING TO THE MORAL LAW. As a further contrast between the non-Christian and the Christian Sacred Books as to moral thought, it is notable that the Bible does not leave the love of God to slumber as an inert force, but sets it forth in the basis of Moral Law. If Mohammed had a glimpse1 of the all pervading prin ciples of the Moral Law, were they so put forward as to make love to God and man the touchstone of all earthly values? Is not the idea of universal love utterly foreign to the Mussulman mind? Does not the Koran set forth God's providential care as extending to Mohammedans only?2 Brahmanism knows nothing of a fundamental law of lov ing service rendered to the Supreme God,3 or of love as a law to guide the conduct of every man of every caste toward every other man whatever his caste. Does the theoretical and practicable amiability of Bud dhism in Southern Asia insist upon an upreaching love toward the Moral Governor of men, and outreaching, active benevolence towards mankind? 'Bochari, I, p. 9, may refer to the first table of the Moral Law of the Gospels: "None of you believes until I am dearer to him than his father and his child." And p. 8 refers with a limitation to the second table: "None of you believes, until he loves his brother (of Islam) as he loves himself." Cited in Smith's Bible and Islam, p. 224. "This is not other than a petrified form of that crude Judaic thought which at first conceived Jehovah to be a local deity, paternally pleading by the earliest prophets for justice between Jewish brethren. "The exercise of an emotional love to Krishma is, however, taught: — Caitanya (c. A. D. 1485) saying that the devotee should feel such affection as is felt by a young man for a girl; to inspire this mystic devotion, recourse is had to singing and dancing for arousing religious fervor. — Tide Hopkins' Religions of India, p. 504. CONFUCIAN THOUGHT. 229 Shintoism in Japan has never taught moral duty. To observe nature worship — the gods and goddesses of the mountains, of the rivers, of the ocean, of the wind, of fire, of food, — and the worship of ancestors, of heroes, of princes ; to follow one 's natural impulses ; and with loyalty obey the mikado's decrees: — this is the Shinto man's chief end. Confucius never taught that one should love God with all the heart and mind and strength. If he stated the Golden Eule between man and man in its negative form, did he give to it prominence as a law to regulate the conduct of all men? Legge's Chinese Classics1 gives a most strik ing statement of the doctrine of Mih Teih : — ' ' Suppose that universal mutual love prevailed throughout the empire : if men loved others as they love themselves, . . . one state not attacking another, and one family not throwing another into confusion ; thieves and robbers nowhere existing ; rulers and ministers, fathers and sons, all being filial and kind ; — in such a condition the empire would be well governed." This being urged on the ground of expediency, it was thought by Mencius to be impracticable, and it has never since been well received by the literati.2 The Christian Scriptures make the Moral Law the sum mary of the whole duty of man, the royal law, the ruling idea, the moral dynamic of the world: — "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" ' ' This do, and thou shalt live : — I. ' ' God is love : the Lord loveth you : thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might : II. "And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. The whole law is in this one word: all things whatsoever ye would that 'Vol. II, p. 105. Hong Kong, 1861. 2Legge's Classics, II, p. 120. This is, however, not other than the course pursued in Christendom by those who teach that the Golden Rule is an "iridescent dream." 230 MORAL LAW. men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, — this is the law and the prophets. ' n In the unfolding Hebrew self-consciousness of God expressed in their literature, the prophetic period advanced the idea from that of the righteous Jehovah of Israel to the God of human history, the Moral Governor of mankind. And when this thought began to get a grip upon the nations through the zealous proselyting power of Judaism, the idea of one God, — the Creator, the Supreme Spirit, — was wel come to the most thoughtful minds in the Eoman Empire.2 The proselytes were, however, held to have only limited rights in Israel; and the Gentile world gladly received the more hospitable preaching of the Christian apostles, — -"Ye are the sons and daughters of the Almighty." And the Moral Law, in this great religious movement, was received as the foundation of the new faith: — • God is love ; love God supremely. Our God is the God of the whole human race ; all men are brethren: therefore love thy neighbor as thyself. "So act, as if the maxim of thy action were, through thy will, to become a universal law. ' 's Is not this Moral Law the true fountain of the altruistic life in all the Christian centuries, — made illustrious as it was by the life and dying of Jesus the Christ, and set in the forefront of the world as the prime factor in social evolu tion, that carries in itself the principles for renewing man kind? As a perfectly unselfish social scheme, what can surpass it, and for individual character who can form a superior type? Did the gods of Egypt, Assyria, Greece 'The Jewish literature is iterant and insistent: — "What thou wouldst not," says Hillel, "do not to thy neighbor." Compare such texts as Luke 10: 25, 28. I John 4: 8. Deut. 7: 8; 6:5; 11:1; 10:12. Matt. 22: 37, 38, 39. Luke 10: 27. Lev. 19: 18, 34. James 2: 8. Romans 13: 8, 9. Gal. 5: 14. Matt. 7: 12; 22: 40. Consult also Micah 6: 8. Matt. 5: 44. Rom. 12: 14, 20. For love as the universal bond of discipleship, vide John 13: 34,35; 15:12,17. I Peter 1: 22. I John 3: 11, 23; 4:7,11,12. "Consult Harnack's Expansion of Christianity, pp. 11, 12. "Immanuel Kant. CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 231 and Eome claim the love of their worshippers? Did they dictate a law of universal love among men? Was this double law — one law of love in two tables, love to God and love to man — ever put forth, as a solvent of the problem of evil, by the Vedic philosophers, or dreamed of by Gau tama? Did it enter the mind of the astute Confucius, or Zoroaster the seer ? Was it made the foundation of a moral kingdom by Mohammed ? This was the thought first made known to the world as a practical power — a moral obliga tion binding upon all men — in the writings of the Hebrew historians, their poets, their prophets of the old dispensa tion, and uttered with emphasis by the Son of Man and exemplified in His life ; it was this which the Apostles car ried to the pagan world, — the strange story of the Divine love to man and of man's answering love, and the idea of an unselfish love between all men as the sons of God. IV. RELATING TO MORAL EVIL. For another contrast between the ethical contents of the Christian and the non-Christian Books there is a world wide difference in their ideas of the nature of sin,— the one relating to ritualistic error or neglect, and the other to one's moral attitude toward God and man. Through attention ta priestly guidance in forms of wor ship, a Hindu need not be pure in heart, nor truthful towards one's neighbor, and may violate nearly every pre cept that falls under the Golden Eule,1 and yet he may be 'The laws of Manu forbid Brahmans to drink spirituous liquor, to kill a Brahman, or steal gold from a Brahman, to commit adultery in specified relations, or to associate with any one guilty of such crimes.— Monier-Williams, Hinduism, p. 64. It should, however, be stated that the theory of the Hindu Books is better than the practice of the people, — as so often occurs in Christen dom. The Institutes of Tishnu (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. VII, p. 13), specify among the duties common to all castes, — "Forbearance, veracity, restraint, purity, liberality, self-control, not to kill, obedience towards one's teachers, visiting places of 232 RELATING TO MORAL EVIL. upright and religious in the Brahmanical sense; in this Hinduism appears to be based upon very ancient beliefs and customs, in which the ritual is the whole of the religion and quite independent of ethical ideas.1 There may indeed be moral inspiration in observing the very letter of the ceremo nial law, yet it is a characteristic of primitive society, that the religious formula should be commonly quite distinct from ethical thought ;2 the union of ethics and religion indi cating an advanced type — as in Judaism and Christianity the ethical ideas are not only distinctly religious but the outcome of religious thought developed under ethical influ ence,3 — Christianity, however, illustrating the relative immaturity of its development by frequently divorcing ethics and religion.4 Among the Hindus, says Bishop Tho- pilgrimage, sympathy with the afflicted, straightforwardness, freedom from covetousness, reverence towards the gods and the Brahmans, and freedom from anger." 'Compare Chapter V, pp. 168, 169, supra. Annotation by E. Washburn Hopkins, LL.D.: — "It is true that ceremony is more than moral purity, yet it should not be overlooked that — although in practice the ceremony is and always was the one thing needful — the early lawgivers expressly state that a pure heart is more important than litur gical observance. Practically, the statements in the text are quite correct; theoretically, the Hindu was not so blind that he did not see — at least at times and perhaps under Buddha's influence — that purity is purity of heart, not of ceremony. Many mediaeval sects such as the Siddhas or Saints were founded on this idea that rites are ineffective and a pure life the one all important thing." So true is it that the Hindu mind, so profoundly religious, has, in many particulars, from time to time, caught glimpses of the highest truths, which some devotees have sought to express in the life. "In the early Semitic conception, the term holy had no ethical significance. — W. Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites, p. 90. "Tide Jastrow's Study of Religion, p. 220; compare also pp. 211, 224. 4See Professor Toy's Judaism and Christianity, p. 18. The Toy list might have been almost indefinitely extended, if a detailed statement were required. HINDU THOUGHT. 233 "burn, falsehood, impurity and dishonesty are not sins; but it is a sin to omit some rite, neglect a gift to a temple or priest, or break an old custom. The gods are thrown into the shade, and the rites have become the great divinities, says Mitchell; the moral character of the worshiper is of no consequence, if the sacred texts of the Brahmana are rightly uttered by the priest and the ceremony duly per formed the incantation is complete j1 religion is transformed into magic: the ordinary Hindu, seeing the distinction between right and wrong, is not told to do the right and shun the wrong, that he should worship God and not injure his neighbor, but he is perplexed and confused by ceremonial duties; for ages past, the most heinous sins could be com- mited, without injury to a man's position in society, but excommunication has followed the violation of caste rules.2 Thomas Twining 's Travels in India, a hundred years ago, depicted the most revolting, cruel, indecent aspects of Hindu worship, and sacrifice of human life — the children at Sangar Island, the aged women at Allahabad, crushings by idol cars, burnings alive, — as the outcome of the undis turbed reign of ages of Hinduism. During all these grim generations the people were religious and this was their religion.3 Ward, one of the earliest of the European com mentators on Hindu manners, says that as a whole the people were lascivious, covetous, and perpetually deceitful. 'A historical parallel would be that of Christian adherents finding the essence of acceptable sanctity in a certain key for intonation and an exact ritual. Professor Lanman, so felicitous in phrasing, speaks of the sac rifice itself as apotheosized and invested with supernal power. — The World's Religions, p. 89. 2J. Murray Mitchell's Hinduism, noting in this order of pages, — 41, 204-5, 209, 180, 85. Tide also citations in note upon p. 169, Chapter V, supra. "If any one, however, is to stone the Brahmans for this, it will not be a Christian well-versed in the. story of persecutions in Christendom by zealots who divorced religion from ethics. 'Writings, etc., of the Hindus, Vol. I, p. 100; IV, 311-3. 234 RELATING TO MORAL EVIL. Sir William Jones said he never knew a Hindu who would not perjure himself: courts of justice abounded in "four annas men, ' ' ready to swear to whatever might be required to win a case. Said Dr. John Scudder, a resident in 1819-1853, "I never saw a man in India whose word I would be willing to trust." The Duke of Wellington, in the supplemental despatches 1797-1805, said in his utter despair of the Hindus, that they were without one redeem ing quality. If this pertained to that period when the natives were restive under new rule, certainly the state ment would not be made now by officers of the British crown. The impression, however, made at this day upon thoughtful and sympathetic strangers, is unfavorable: Mr. Moncure Conway, after years of the appreciative study of Oriental faiths, stating, upon his disillusioning' visit to India, that Occidental peoples have no conception of the degradation of Hindu society. And it is stated by Sir Monier Williams, who studied Hinduism for forty years, that ' ' The present characteristics of Brahmanism are poverty, igno rance and superstition. Whatever profound thought lay about the roots of Hinduism, it held and still holds the two hundred and eighty millions of India in the bondage of degradation, cruelty and immorality. ' ' Yet the Hindus are a most religious people, faithfully observing the rites due, through immemorial ages of domestic custom and of Brah manical instruction : nor can they technically be called sin ners, save through the neglect of due ceremonial observance. Nor is it possible that there should 'ever be a public opinion interpenetrated by the principles of the Golden Eule among men until the essential nature of moral evil is more per fectly understood by the Hindus. The Secretary of State and Council of India have expressed the great obligation of the government of India to the missionaries, who "have given to the people at large new ideas, not only on purely religious questions, but on the nature of evil, the obligations of law, and the motives by which human conduct should be regulated; through which insensibly a higher standard of BUDDHIST THOUGHT. 235 moral conduct is becoming familiar to the young, preparing them to be in every way better men and better citizens of the great empire in which they dwell. ' n In Buddhism, the monks or mendicants are held to certain wholesome moralities — to abstain from taking life, theft, adultery, lying, slander, vain conversation, coveting and malice, — the observance of which is related to that per fected moral state which they seek ; the violation subjecting them to discipline.2 Aside from this, there is no prescribed moral attitude toward men; and, for God, there is no per sonal Supreme Will for guidance. The theory of Bud dhism, moreover, denies the continued existence of the human soul after death, and so denies, as we should say, all personal responsibility; one's moral merit or demerit pass ing on, at death, to another individual entity in the cycles. of transmigration, — this being now held — through an illu sive Buddhist mystery — to represent a quasi identity from one generation to another. Of many schools of Buddhists, if some inculcate observances for the laity, supposed to be of merit in relation to their next birth in a series of trans migrations, these relate to the support of the mendicants, temple building or adorning, and festivals, rather than to moral character. Eites and ceremonies were denounced by Gautama, who designated such moralities as have been alluded to as the standard for all disciples.3 Among the "Report on the Condition of India, ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, April 28, 1873,— p. 129. 2That this is so to this day, vide Warren's Buddhism; Vol. Ill, of the Harvard Oriental Series. "The liturgy now used in the South of China is thought by Beal to be due to early Christian missionaries, introduced about A. D. 1412 (Tide Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese.' Lon don, 1871.): — "We by reason of grievous sins, have lived in. ignorance of all the Buddhas, and of any way of escape from the consequences of our conduct. We have strengthened the power of the three sources of sin, and added sin to sin; a wicked heart has reigned within. Filled with fear and shame and great heart- chiding, we repent, and would separate ourselves from evil. Oh, would that the merciful Kwan-yin would receive our vows of amendment!" 236 RELATING TO MORAL EVIL. Buddhists of North China, says Dr. James Gilmour, rites are prescribed, which have, however, no relation to moral conduct: and the moral perception of the people is so blighted that they follow the lamas implicitly in things reli gious, although they know them to be intensely worldly, dis- fionest, and guilty of unblushing wickedness.1 Among the Confucianists in China, the common people have no ceremonies relating to the worship of Heaven; and so far as there is any religious system whatever, as distin guished from a moral and civic philosophy, its only stand ard of uprightness consists in observing rites in ancestral worship. In Islam, aside from blasphemy, sin consists in disobe dience to the commands of God as they appear in the Koran ; acts are not inherently right or wrong, their quality depends on the commandments.2 These chiefly relate to daily prayers, alms, ablution, keeping the great fast, and the pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime, — and such mandates as pertain to civic condition, enforced by the state. So sin is related to an external form, rather than an internal moral state. In the Greek and Eoman religion there were no positive moral precepts; it was not different from a natural reli gion. The only immorality known was that of neglecting certain religious rites or violating civil law.3 Nowhere is sin spoken of so little as in Greek and Eoman literature, and in no books in the world is so much said about sin as in 'Among the Mongols, pp. 152, 153. London, 1883. 2Note by Peofessoe Duncan B. Macdonald. — This can be put more absolutely. Sin depends upon the will of God; it is not an entity by itself, knowable by man through his nature as such. This is the formal dogmatic doctrine. Compare this with the Babist doctrine that there is no abso lute good, no absolute truth; that good is what God ordains, and truth is what God reveals. — Browne's Year Among the Persians, p. 406. "It was the judgment of De Quincy, that the Greeks and ^Romans had not the faintest vestige of an idea of what in Scrip tures is called sin. CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 23T Hebrew literature. So clearly was this made manifest in the early centuries that Christianity was ridiculed as the poor-sin religion.1 The Christian theory in respect to moral wrong relates solely to the attitude of a man or a nation toward the Moral Law of perfect love to God and an unselfish love to man; he is a sinner who merely neglects to love God supremely, and neglects to observe the Golden Eule of conduct toward his fellow-man. He is living at odds with the universe who thinks to live outside the law of love — that eternal law of moral rectitude which demands that every thought and word and deed of every human being should be such as to harmonize not only with the Holy Will of the Infinite, but with the well-being of every finite personality in all worlds. And in respect to every man 's attitude toward Jesus Christ. whose life was the embodiment of the Moral Law, Christian ity represents the Son of Man as so related to every human being that no one can become acquainted with him and be in the same mental posture as before; the man is straightway for or against him whose moral character is the universal touchstone, discovering to every man what manner of man he is. There is nothing so characteristic of the Christian Scriptures as the view that is always taken of sin as the transgression of the Moral Law of love. "The Church," says Cardinal Newman, ' ' regards this world and all that is in it as a mere shade, as dust and ashes, compared with the value of one single soul; she holds that it were far better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are in it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin."2 The heinous char acter of sin consists in its violation of the basal law of exist ence: the neglect of loyalty to God — the supreme choice 'Ackerman's Christian Elements in Plato, p. 57. Edinburgh, 1861. 'Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, p. 210. Fourth edition. London. 238 ERADICATING MORAL EVIL. of something else than God — tending to overturn his moral government; and that selfish non-observance of the Golden Eule, which so far tends to destroy society as to make the Kingdom of Love impossible. Is it not clear, that in its relation to the fashioning of human character all over the world, the Christian idea of the nature of sin, as contrasted with the non- Christian, must create a superior type of citizens, more capable of organizing and supporting good government? If sin is the omission of rites prescribed by a priestly caste, — by Brahmans, by mendicants, by Shinto or Taoist priests, by ancient sages, by domestic progenitors or national heroes, by the word of Islam, by medicine men or witch doctors, — whatever be the mode, if sin is related to ceremonial observ ance, the worshiper fancies himself able to earn at some future time or in some future life, whenever it is convenient to him, his final acceptance with God, with Karma, with spirits of the air, through accumulating merits by the observance of rites enough to offset all old scores of neglect, — and meantime in his moral relations he may be a bad neighbor, and as bad a citizen as he can be and keep out of the clutches of the law : but if sin is the violation of that Moral Law of Love which is fit for the guidance of the entire moral universe, — then man as a sinner, were his sel fishness fully developed, would be a traitor toward heaven and an anarchist toward earth, and this man must volunta rily and radically change his moral purpose or it will be ill with the world. To recognize clearly the essential nature of evil, and to cultivate a keen sense of right and wrong, is fundamental in all moral evolution and the development of human society. V. NON-CHRISTIAN VIEWS UPON ERADICATING MORAL EVIL. The scheme for getting rid of sin offers another contrast in theory and practice, between non-Christian and Chris- HINDU THOUGHT. 239 tians, in life, and in their Sacred Books. The fundamental Hindu position is this i1 Since all that appears to be is essentially God, there can be but one, and this one cannot be a personal being. No Hindu word, nor any from the Sanskrit-derived languages of India, would convey to any native the western idea of personality; "vyakti" is used, but the masses do not know it, and to the learned it has to be explained that a meaning is put into it which it has not to their minds. As the One is not personal, he has no will to serve as a standard of right ; if there is such a standard, it must be found in man. The English word "ought" cannot be translated into Hindu. The word popularly used means "the desirable." Neither is there in Hindu any word to represent "con science." The late Dr. Wenger, translator of the Sanskrit Bible, asked his Brahman pundit for a word by which to render "conscience," explaining to him its meaning. "Sir," was his reply, "when a people have not the thing, how is it possible that they should have any word for the thing ? "2 To these conceptions must be added the concept of Maya or "illusion," by which is universally meant that in virtue of which one thinks of this world with all his expe riences in it as having no substantial objective reality apart from God. Maya affirms the untrustworthiness of the tes timony of consciousness as to one's self and the world, implying that if ever consciousness seems to suggest a moral law, this too is due to Maya, and one may, if he 'The following paragraph is the embodiment of a communica tion received by the Author from the late S. H. Kellogg, LL. D., of Allahabad. 2Yet Manu (8: 84, Miller's translation) speaks of the spirit in the human breast which seems the action of the wrongdoer. Note by Pbofessoe E. Washburn Hopkins. — Be it said, also, that the "man within" is a good equivalent for "conscience." Even if no one sees, says the Hindu judge, remember that the "man within" sees the crime. It is the spirit pure and untram- meled by earth that is meant. 240 ERADICATING MORAL EVIL. chooses, treat it as an illusion.1 This results in universal untrustworthiness in society ; there being no such thing as Hindu public confidence. The people do not believe in each other. This is illustrated by the rates of interest, — from twenty to twenty-four per cent, or more : and rather than lend money at this rate to natives, the moneyed classes in the Punjab prefer to take three and a half per cent, from the Indian government, — this being the relative estimate by Hindu gentlemen between native and British probity. If, moreover, continues Dr. Kellogg 's letter, all that I am, all that I shall ever experience is absolutely and irre vocably predetermined by an unconscious Being eternally evolving through the power of Maya the appearance of a world and the being in it ; if there is, as even the most igno rant villagers have often stoutly argued, the same kind of necessary connection between my position in life, my acts and experiences, and previous acts and experiences in pre- 'Vedantism is the most widely prevailing system of Hindu philosophy; teaching that there is no material world save in appearance, that an eternal illusion projects itself, that right and wrong are mere semblances. A murder committed by a sage is. an illusion. So subtle, not to say evasive, is the Hindu mind that a philosophic distinction is made by the Sankhya teaching between eight kinds of illusion, and ten kinds of extreme illu sion. — Consult Mitchell's Hinduism in this order of pages, — 207,. 208, 51, 58 note. This is based on the idea of God as the impersonal Arranger or Arrangement of the universe. The Hindu conception of the Universal soul appears to be that. of a vague diffused essence pervading nature, without thought,. emotion, will, self-consciousness, or other quality except extension. and life. — Compare Crozier's History of Intellectual Develop ment, I, 85, 86. If, therefore, the human soul is made an object of philosophical thought, it is conceived of as having a spiritual side and a mate rial side, and in philosophizing it is possible either to think of the material side of the soul as illusion, or of the spiritual as unreal. To the introspective Hindu mind, therefore, the sub stantive value of the soul is its use to philosophize upon; as, to a normal English engineer, it is said that the chief use of the? rivers is to feed the canals. HINDU THOUGHT. 241 vious births, that there is between the seed of a given tree and the fruit which it shall produce, then what is the use of doing anything to better my condition, or of trying to have my children rise in the world? Whatever I may do, will not affect the issue. This is what, over and over again, is heard from high and low. This pantheistic fatalism is one cause of the Hindu lack of that push and enterprise which is so characteristic of Christian nations, and the absence of which in India is one of the most impressive contrasts between the Orient and the Occident. To judge from repeated conversations on this matter with all classes, this is what they themselves universally bring up as a sound justification for the apathetic acceptance and endurance of every variety of social and moral evil. Dr. E. A. Hume, a native of India and for some thirty- five years a philanthropic worker in the country,1 says the same thing as to the moral relations of any individual : "To the popular mind in Hindustan, sin is a matter of fate, or, more properly, the result of guilt incurred in some previous life of the culprit."2 As to the ultimate cause of moral error in this life, it runs back to lives antecedent: and no escape from it can be looked for save in fives subsequent. Holding to no personal God, there is no firm sense of one's own personality. If Hinduism speaks of Maya as illusion, Buddhism speaks of Karma, as impersonal law of moral retribution, — the work done in this or in a former life — or the character which is the sequence of former moral action — that must go on producing effects,3 a law of the entire universe with- 'By Queen Victoria, Dr. Hume was presented with the Kaiser- i-Hing gold medal for public service in India. 2"The results of one's works in a former existence are no more to be stayed than the waves of a mighty river." — From the Upan- ishads, cited in Lanman's Beginnings of Hindu Pantheism, p. 17. Cambridge, 1890. "Max Muller, Natural Religion, p. 112. Professor Rhys Davids calls it the moral power working in the universe, p. 150, Bud- 16 242 ERADICATING MORAL EVIL. out a personal lawgiver behind it which inflicts trouble for sins committed in previous lives, and from which there is no escape: — "I am what I am, because I was what I was; I was what I was, because I had been what I had been ; and I had been what I had been, because before that I had been something else, — and so I do what I do because I am in the inexorable grasp. " This is Karma in the popular view, but it is a mystery beyond the reach of reason. Strickly speak ing, Buddhist scholarship affirms that there is certainly not a continuous life of the same sentient being: the man dies, there is no immortal soul, no rebirth, but his good or evil doing, his Karma, does not die, the effect of his doing, desert or merit, is concentrated in that new sentient being that is produced in his stead at the instant of his death, — a new sentient being as to its part and powers but myste riously as if the same in respect to its heritage of essential doing: its nature, its locality, its future, being determined by the Karma of its antecedent sentient being.1 In this view, the only possible liberation from an evil Karma is through merits accumulated in a cycle of lives which will ever be in higher and higher forms if release is to be finally won. The doctrine of transmigration, in India, originating with the Brahmans, was — with a difference — caught up and stoutly maintained by Gautama, Buddha the Enlightened One; the Brahmans maintained that it was the same soul traversing the seas of sorrow in rebirths age after age ; the Buddhists that it was the same Karma, or work done in the former life, possessing a different sentient being at each new birth.2 In its practical working, one life is said to dhism. The total moral action of an individual during his life time constitutes the Karma which he transmits to his successor. 'Barth's Religions of India, p. 112. David's Buddhism, pp. 101, 103, 104, 106. Warren's Buddhism; Vol III, of the Harvard Ori ental Series, pp. 210, 211. 2Bishop Titcomb, Buddhism, pp. 48, 49, says that Karma trans mits "an identity of moral being, without identity of personal BUDDHIST THOUGHT. 243 be related to former and to future lives, as one flame is related to another flame antecedent or subsequent, — the blowing out of one flame and the kindling of the next being separated, not by appreciable time, but by the order of nature. Not literally, but by accommodation, it is said that the flame of a relighted lamp is related to a flame that has been extinguished. Mr. Spence Hardy' once asked a native pundit to search the Buddhist books and report to him the states of existence which Gautama went through before reaching the perfected life. He made a catalogue of six hundred and six states, including the state of a serpent, a frog, a jungle fowl, a pea cock, a water fowl, a rat, a dog, a pig, a horse, a lion ten times, a golden eagle, an ape eighteen times, a gambler, a thief, a nobleman twenty-three times, a monarch fifty-eight times, an ascetic eighty-three times. Gautama once pointed to a broom in a corner, which, he said, had been in a former birth a novice in a monastery who had neglected to be dili gent in sweeping.2 During more than a hundred generations of men, transmi gration of the soul, or of the Karma, has been taught in the Orient by Brahmans and Buddhists; and it is still taught and ever kept uppermost in the popular mind, — the one thing religious that is vividly apprehended ; with such moral being." If it is diflicult for the Western mind to understand how this can be, it is to be said that to the evasive Hindu intel lect, familiar with metaphysical subtleties, it presents no greater difficulty than certain Christian tenets that are confessedly mys teries. To the Buddhist, it is the way the universe is made. And the Hindu mind easily holds (according to Mitchell, Hinduism, p. 55), or believes itself to hold, at the same time, two or more opinions which appear wholly irreconcilable. 'Manual of Buddhism, p. 102. London, 1853. 2It is, however,, to be noted that, while the authenticity of cer tain early Buddhist books was settled earlier than the Christian era, many traditions have been embodied in later literature upon which criticism may throw some doubt as to what Gautama really said. 244 ERADICATING MORAL EVIL. motive power as there may be in it.1 Does not this concept of human life, constantly interchangeable between inani mate things, men, beasts, or demons, diminish greatly the possible power of manhood in that third of the human race holding it ? Will not that remain as now an inferior racial stock which is perpetually haunted with the notion of man's reappearing again and again upon earth as a ghost or in animal form or as a thing devoid of manly consciousness? Is not this idea a relic of a primitive age, having much in common with the folk-lore stories of every land, a survival of ideas left behind some generations but not some ages ago by those peoples which have made the most intellectual prog ress? And in its relation to moral life, in its effect upon society, is it not fatal to any sharp sense of individual present responsibility for wrongdoing;2 and fatal to any sense of urgency about repenting, or turning to obey the Moral Law ? Is it not the old story, repeated for five or six scores of generations — ' ' I am what I am, not on account of what I have done here and now ; and pain and penalties or rewards will not visit me here and now?" And is it not, for the conscientious, a theory of despair, a pessimistic scheme, which insists upon millions of successive lives,3 during which moral retribution, or Karma, acts on, from 'The Buddhist candidate for perfection must avoid all sins that, through the law of Karma, may cause him to be born as a woman in his next transmigration; and if indeed he is to become per fected, in future ages not too far distant, he will never, it is affirmed, be born as any kind of vermin, or in a lower life than that of a snipe (Spence Hardy). That this doctrine may be used as a motive appears in the Jesuit relation of one wno was baptized, that he might rid himself of the royal post-horse des tiny, which the Chinese Buddhist mendicants had assigned to him in his next life, with sundry exhortations to travel well and not stumble, wince, or bite. 2At the very basis of civilization — as of good government and good homes — must be the idea of personal responsibility. 'Mitchell's Hinduism, p. 50, speaks of 8,400,000 transmigrations, unless one's merit sooner releases him. Thirty millions have been exaggeratingly spoken of, concerning Buddhist teaching. HEREDITY. 245 birth, age after age, as the shadow follows the sun? And when will a man repent, if he is to have from five to thirty millions of life chances? Is not the way difficult and full of swirling eddies? With what keen sorrow he must be filled, who struggles with his fate through all the eons of his transmigration, his flame of life perpetually relighted to light up new paths of moral obliquity? Whatever may be said of the hopeless and hardened, the Oriental peoples are profoundly religious. "The one pervading idea with the Hindu is how to get rid of future births and obtain eternal beatitude. ' n Life is but a peril, a maelstrom of evil, from which it is well nigh impossible to escape, birth after birth.2 "I have done nothing but sin; how many births must I undergo ? where will thy sorrows terminate ? " So asks the dying Hindu, awaiting his final reabsorption in Brahma.3 'T. Ramakrishna, Life in an Indian Tillage. 2The Hindu theory implies that there is no forgiveness with God, the transgressor must himself drink to the lowest dregs the cup of bitterness which he has filled. — Mitchell, p. 264. "Yet this fundamental life theory is Orientally held to be based on sound philosophy; and is it not at bottom suggestive of the teaching of modern Occidental science as to Heredity? "One event," said a Bechuana chief, "is always the son of another, and we must never forget the parentage." (Cited in Tyler's Primitive Culture, I, p. 5.) If European scholars do not say that they are what they are because they were what they were in former lives, they do say that they are in a measure what they are because their ancestors were so and so, that every man is heir to traits from far away generations; and for the future of man kind they have no hope save through the improvement of the individual age after age — as the Orientals say that individual improvement must come about through myriads of new births. Occasionally, a very intelligent Buddhist monk may be found to say that he no longer teaches the dogmas of Karma and of trans migration, but teaches "heredity" — inexorable as fate. For a carefully matured statement, seeking further to reconcile the Oriental and Occidental philosophies as to Karma, vide Appen dix D, infra. And as for transmigration, do not Western psychologists note occasional mental conceptions which suggest in a shadowy sense 246 ACQUIRING MORAL MERIT. THE THEORY OP ACCUMULATING MORAL MERIT. As to a further point in the non-Christian scheme for get ting rid of moral evil, we are now brought face to face with the Sacred Book theories and human life practices of more than nine hundred millions of people in accumulating moral merit, whether or not during ages of transmigration : this being characteristic of four1 of the five great religions, or moral philosophical systems, of the world. What is Islam? It might be spoken of as a ceremonial righteousness: the recitation of a creed expressing belief in God and Mahomet, punctilious ablutions and prayer, the giving of alms, and the observance of certain fast days and pilgrimages,— in this routine every man for himself being accountable to God. There is nothing else to be believed, nor are there other duties to be done.2 The most devout of the Moslems, however, hold that faith to be complete must show itself in works.3 And if on the part of great multitudes that one's present experience is not unlike what he has known before? This admitted psychological phenomenon has now and then led a metaphysical student in Christendom to believe in transmigration, — • a famous American author now living being one of them. 'Professor M. Monier-Williams stated in an address before the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1886, that he had devoted his time for forty-two years, to the study of the Oriental Sacred Books — the Vedas, Puranas, the Zend Avesta, the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Chinese books, and the Koran, — and that he found one key-note running through them all, — salvation by works. — Compare original address, Missionary Herald, October, 1886, Bos ton, and the author's revision, The Holy Bible and the Sacred Books of the East, p. 24. London, 1887. 2Any standard work upon Islam will affirm this. Consult the writings of Mr. Stanley Lane Poole; and Dwight's Constantinople, p. 58. The statement in Stobart's Islam (p. 236, London) in regard to the Mohammedan requirements in India tallies with other authorities. aFaith — acknowledgment with the heart, — must be supple mented by works. This is the normal statement. Tide Macdon- ald's Muslim Theology, pp. 127, 296. ISLAM. 247 these duties seem to be stereotyped and performed almost mechanically, without a sense of the need of repentance, or need of self-denial for the good of others, is not the same thing true of great populations of so-called Christians? Is not Christendom crowded with nominal Christians who are in practical sympathy with Moslems who cite the Koran, — "God hath not laid on you any hardship in religion?"1 "Each step taken by the devotee towards the Kaaba blots out a sin. " It is not long since a pilgrim of Northern India set out for Mecca: he bought a ticket to Bombay, then paid for himself as freight, — he wore six hundred pounds of iron chains; to the reporters he said that he began in youth to put away his sins, and he added one chain to another as often as he broke his good resolutions. This pil grimage he was bound to, unless he could secure another to make it for him. The few simple things that the Koran commands, one cannot evade: it is his salvation. Under the law of Islam a man is as much bound to perform the ablution as he is to pay his taxes.2 A prayer is a merit, a satisfaction, an atonement for wrongdoing :3 yet that it is a merit does not impugn its sincerity in the hearts of a great multitude who listen to the intoned and musical call to prayer, ringing age after age in the cities of the Orient : — "God is most great. I testify there is no God but God. I testify that Mohammed is the messenger of God. Come to 'The fast throughout the month Ramazan illustrates this: — food must not be partaken of by day, but feasting is lawful by night. — Dwight's Constantinople, p. 66. And the obligation to perform the great pilgrimage is suitably tempered by the doc trine that one must go, if he can afford the expense. The Bedouin Arabs say: "We bathe not, because we must drink the water of ablution; we give no alms, because we have to ask them; we fast not the Ramazan month, because we starve throughout the year; and we do no pilgrimage, because the world is the house of Allah." — Burton's Pilgrimage, III: 80. 'The Bible and Islam, by Professor Henry Preserved Smith, p. 308. New York, 1897. 'Bible and Islam, p. 246, with citations from the Koran. 248 ACQUIRING MORAL MERIT. prayer. Come to salvation. Prayer is better than sleep. God is most great. There is no God but God. ' n Salvation by works and a pessimistic view of life are the two characteristics common to all sects of Hinduism :2 salva tion by merit somehow acquired.3 As sin is held to be a neglect of prescribed rites, deliverance is through observ ances of worship and keeping many feast or fast days and making pilgrimages. Seven holy towns, seven sacred con fluences of the Indian rivers, six river mouths, four holy residences of Hindu deities, twelve places sacred to Siva, five divine lakes, four shrines of goddesses, and twelve other sacred places are mentioned by Monier-Williams.4 In Buddhism, while the various schools are not alike in details of practice — customs in Northern China differing from those in Thibet, and Burmah from Japan, — it is first and last a matter of balancing sin by merit. Says Dr. James Gilmour:5 — "A man may have many sins: that does not matter, if he has plenty of merit. So he pays attention more to making merit than to avoiding sins, believing that there is no difficulty in the matter ; he can turn up a little 'R. Bosworth Smith's Lectures, p. 29, Note. The night call to prayer, as rendered in Constantinople, is given by Dwight, p. 52: — "Oh Mighty God! Oh Glorious God! Thou art peculiar for great ness and graciousness. Thou dost not slumber while thy ser vants sleep. Wonderful the watch which thou dost ever keep. "Oh slumbering servants of God! I am amazed at you who slumber while God wakes. How long will you sleep? How can you sleep before the God who keeps watch? Awake from sleep, be up and praise." That such calls awaken a response in many a heart truly devoted to God, appears supra pp. 219, 220. 2Professor M. Monier-Williams' Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 77. Fourth Edition. 8Dr. R. A. Hume, of Ahmednagar. 'Brahmanism and Hinduism, pp. 177-189. Forty-four places are named in Ward, in the second volume (pp. 28-33) of The Writings, Religion, and Manners of the Hindus, 1816. sMore About the Mongols, p. 296. London, 1893. BUDDHISM. 249 more merit and it will be all right. And thus it comes that the most religious man in a community, that is, the man who pays most attention to the things of religion, may be the most sinful, — just as the richest man can afford to spend most money. A Mongol thinks that at the end of his life, there will be a sort of judgment in which his merit will be balanced against his demerit." Among the followers of Gautama, in the Middle Kingdom, the exact mercantile mind of the Chinese is advised by sagacious instructors to keep a strict debit and credit account daily, and to carry the balances into the next year. A text-book expounding this system of moral bookkeeping has been published in China, — Merits and Demerits Examined.1 Some of the makers of merit engage in works for the pub lic benefit. "I have seen miles of stony road," says Dr. Gilmour, "cleared and smoothed, and the stones piled up in pyramids by the pious hands of one man."2 There was religious merit in it. Not long ago a Church of England missionary in Cheh-Kiang reported that of certain Buddhist converts to Christianity one had impoverished himself by the meritorious ' ' building of bridges. ' ' A Burmese woman, Mah Yu, expended hard earned money upon gifts to the mendicants, made offerings to idols, bought idols, gave feasts, made pilgrimages to great pagodas, and then dug a well — working at it alone for months — so deeply digging 'Rev. George Owen, of Pekin, has made a report from the moral account books kept by his' Taoist neighbors — Taoism actuated by Buddhist ideas, which is so common in China. If a man loves his wife more than his father and mother, he is charged a hundred demerits for it, and the same number of ill marks if he eats roast dog or boiled beef. On the other hand, to exhort a mother not to commit infanticide counts thirty marks credit; and to save a child's life, fifty. To destroy the plates of obscene books counts three hundred credit. Life-long chastity counts credit of a thousand marks. Yet it is impossible for the most conscientious to get ahead much; it being reported of one who tried it for forty-seven years, that he accumulated only 4,973 merits, as against 298,000 black marks. 'Among the Mongols, p. 219. 250 ACQUIRING MORAL MERIT. as to insure a perennial fiow; and she saw processions of priests and her neighbors and strangers from far-away lands pausing to drink at the well she had dug, — yet all this gave her no spiritual peace. There are certain phases of the Buddhistic merit-making which suggest the inquiry already alluded to, whether this form of faith does not pertain to a pristine type of religious development, — the same thing being true of rude Christian types with ascetic customs and relic worship. Witness Wu T'ai Shan, the Mecca of the Buddhist Mongolions, in the Province of Shansi, in Northern China. Here, in addition to three hundred ordinary prayer mills, there is one large revolving tower sixty feet high, which has on it not only the common supply of prayers but a vast number of idols, which are worshipped as a whole by turning a crank, instead of bowing to them one by one. Besides, this tower has more sacred books in its niches than one could read in a lifetime, and two or three pilgrims go into the cellar below and wheel round the tower by handspokes, so gaining as much merit as if they had read all the books, as well as said all the prayers, and bowed to all the images. One pilgrim age to this spot gains so much moral credit with Karma as to count for one meritorious life in one future transmigra tion, and two pilgrimages for two lives, and so on. The pil grims are there to-day, working that wheel in that cellar.1 Similar revolving libraries are also found in Buddhist tem ples in Japan, and in different parts of China.2 The volu minous sacred books are bulky, — two feet long, eight inches wide, and four thick. They are kept in the temples, and loaned out by the cartload, or transported by a train of camels. Doctor Gilmour found a wealthy Mongol who had 'Gilmour, Among the Mongols, pp. 141-146. Religious Tract Society, London. M. Hue saw men, women and children flat on their faces, crawling in the mud around the walls of monasteries, with enor mous piles of prayerbooks upon their backs; this counting to them as much merit as if they had recited all the prayers. 2Miss Gordon-Cumming, Wanderings in China, Vol. II, p. 195. Blackwood, 1886. BUDDHISM. 251 ten volumes in his tent. Once a year he hired ten lamas to read them through for him by the day's work, each reading aloud, simultaneously, without listeners.1 By it he earned religious merit. Some gain merit by hearing sermons; and some by the repetition of — "Om mani padme hum," "Ah, the jewel is in the lotus." This, "the six syllable prayer," is used, much as Julius Ceasar muttered a charm whenever he entered a wheeled vehicle.2 It is inscribed over and over again upon paper rolls, which are placed in a metallic cylin der, whose whirling accumulates, by each turn, as much prayer merit as if the devotee were to repeat the words orally as many times as the inscription is made. The sylla bles refer to an old tradition of a miraculous living Bud dha who appeared from out a lotus flower.3 Men, women, children, repeat these syllables whenever they get time, from morning till night, and take a turn at the prayer- mill crank when they can. The Buddhist monks or lamas, who have leisure for it, write or print the words some mil lions of times, and enclose them in cylinders' as large as bar rels, which are set up in temples or places of resort, so that any passer-by can twirl them. Baron Schilling reports the preparation of a hundred million copies of the six syllables for one cylinder in Thibet. Sir Monier Monier-Williams saw an old lady, at a Himalayan resort, who twirled a small cylinder in her left hand, as one would shake a child's rat tle, and she turned a barrel cylinder with her right hand, and meantime she was uttering the six syllables sixty times a minute.4 Clockwork power, wind-mills, and water-mills 'More About the Mongols, p. 286. 2Pliny, Natural History, XXVIII, 2 (4). sThe self-creative force in the kosmos. — Rhys Davids' Bud dhism, pp. 210, 211. 'Tide Buddhism, pp. 371-381. While conversing with her call ers, a woman, thrifty at accumulating merit, will turn the prayer wheel, much as a countrywoman in rural Christendom may take up her knitting. Dr. Gilmour says that the Mongolians, not knowing the meaning of the words, repeat the prayer incessantly while performing the ordinary domestic duties. 252 ACQUIRING MORAL MERIT. are common for turning the crank of a prayer machine; and one Zassak lama, in the P'u Sa T'ing temple at Wu T 'ai, is reported with a paper prayer-mill running day and night by the hot air rising from his brazier, as we sometimes see toy wheels whirling near a stove pipe. It is another device to fly the six syllables upon flags, a whole village devoutly gaining merit with flags from half the houses. They utilize every available motive power, and would use steam if they could get it. Miss Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan1 describes a Buddhist idol which was pro tected by a wire netting, against which paper spitballs were thrown by the worshippers, the paper having been first inscribed with a prayer. If the wet ball caught in the net ting, the prayer would not be answered.2 Much more might be said to illustrate the hypothesis, that we have, in the practical daily life of Buddhism, religious activity of a primitive type. An intelligent Pan jab Sikh told Sir M. Monier-Williams3 that his ordinary morning and evening prayer was the "Jap-jee," occupying six pages of print; and that he once made a pilgrimage to a holy well near Amritsur, where, descending eighty-five steps, he bathed, then ascended one step and repeated his Jap-jee, then, bath ing again, he ascended another step, and repeated the Jap- jee, and so for the whole eighty-five steps. It took fourteen hours; from five in the evening till seven next morning. ' ' I hope, ' ' he added, ' ' that I have laid up an abundant store of merit, which will last me for a long time. ' ' Yet that which is grotesque in any system is not to be held up to caricature the founders of the faith. Diogenes was "not the typical Greek philosopher : Aristotle and Plato and Socrates did not live in three tubs. The mighty Prince of India, who sent forth his peaceful and well-disciplined and 'Vol. I, p. 71. intelligent monks in Japan affirm that while the idols and charms are not of intrinsic value, they are of value to the com mon people, who cannot understand the profound truths of the Buddhist system. 'Buddhism, pp. 546, 547. BUDDHIST DEVOTION. 253 enthusiastic hosts to the heathen, and who broke up the primeval idolatries of Southern and Eastern Asia, is not to be ridiculed for the prayer-mills of Thibet or the Sunrise Kingdom. The difference between the Prince of India and. the crank-turners of high Asia is only matched by the dif ference in Christendom between Jesus of Nazareth and Simeon Stylites. And even if pages might be filled illustrating the mechan ical way in which Christianity is held by the ignorant — as, when the cooking of eggs is timed by the recitation of Pater Nosters, — it would prove nothing against the religious sys tem as such. Does not the world's merit-making make for itself a place in Christendom, in its salvation by works?1 Yet the calculation to a nicety how much to do, and how much can be safely left undone, does not characterize the highest types of manhood. Did not the Eoman find it easy, by punctilious attention to his ritual, not to pay too much to his religious account? Yet he must be indeed cold blooded and self-conceited who would set at naught the prayers of two-thirds of mankind throughout the millen niums of history. Although it might be easy to show that devotees have crude ideas, yet there must be often a sin cere seeking after the Infinite by the finite, according to the best finite knowledge and belief. Dr. Legge1 affirms that, although Confucian prayers and oblations express no. sense of guilt or of dependence, they are the tribute of duty and gratitude. They are good so far as they go. Eockhill, in his Land of the Lamas,2 has told us that in the large vil lages and towns, as night falls, the Buddhist temples light. their altars, and there is a chanting service ; and at the same moment, all over the town, people ascend to their flat roofs and burn aromatic juniper boughs and sing a hymn or litany. Every morning, too, there is a burning of juniper, and offerings are placed before the household gods. It must be that the All-Father has discovered, during many 'Religions of China, p. 53. 2Page 248. New York, 1891. 254 TO ERADICATE MORAL EVIL. ages, many devout persons turning the quaint wheels, the creaking and cumbersome machinery voicing a true yearn ing for the moral beauty once imaged by the jewel in the heart of the lotus. VI. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT FOR REMOVING MORAL EVIL. The contrasted Christian scheme for dealing with moral obliquity pursues a course diametrically opposite: — Belying on God's mercy and not on man's merit; engag ing in good works, not for their merit, but from the motive of love to God and love to man : And to this the condition precedent is a clearly defined apprehension of God as the Moral Governor, and perception of man's personal responsibility for sin as the violation of the law of love. The non-Christian systems deal with no personal God, or they misapprehend his love. The devout Prince of India is represented by his disciples as saying : "In everything I am without a spot. I am with out desire; a delivered one. By my own power I possess knowledge. I have no teacher. None is compared to me. In the world, including the heavens, there is no one like unto me. I am the Supreme Master, the perfect Buddha." Gautama did not look for superior help nor set forth any God whatsoever : self-sufficient, he taught men by the hun dreds of millions to look to themselves, never to a Divine Helper,1 but plod on through millions of lives of transmi gration in heroic struggling for self-mastery and the extin guishment of all earthly desire. With a firm grip upon the idea of God's personality and his love; a clear idea of the Divine Moral Law — love to 'It is noteworthy that prayer is not prominent in Siam, where Buddhism is purest. Although the efficacy of prayer is not acknowledged, there is recognized a subjective value in the exer cise of altruistic desires. — Tide Rhys Davids' Buddhism, pp. 168, 170, 171. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT. 255 God and man; a conception of sin as the neglect of love; a sharp sense of one's own personality; a conviction of the urgent necessity for settling moral questions here and now, rather than during five millions or thirty millions of chances in transmigratory life ; and looking to God for mercy rather than to self for merit; — these points are involved in the Christian thought of removing moral evil from the world. Christianity first and foremost apprehends God as the Moral Governor, the God ' ' with whom we have to do ; " who will enforce the Moral Law, holding every man responsible if he fails in love to the All-Father or in love to his children — the whole family of man, — making love the rule by authority not by a bureau of advice. These ideas, as an influence upon racial stock, during twenty-five centuries, have formed an alert and decisive character in men who are consciously and steadily held by Infinite Personal Power to a life of universal love, and for its neglect constantly arraigned at the bar of conscience and the bar of God. The neglect of love is held by Christianity as engaging a man in a contest with his Maker, an attempt to overthrow the Supreme Euler so far as the man's selfish, insignificant, finite will can do it ; the neglect of love, in the second table of the law, engaging a man in a war with all mankind — could his personal selfishness have full sway: so man is held in bonds of guilt, responsible, needing at this hour to make peace with God and amends to his fellows. Men made on this model are good haters of evil : perfect love being inimical to all that injures the objects of love. Was it not this, that Thomas Arnold taught his Eugby boys : "Do not I hate them, 0 Lord, that hate thee ? ' n How could Arnold do otherwise? Without goodness, says Bacon, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin.2 Without a rigid line between right and wrong, society is impossible; without it the globe itself is but a 'Psalms 139: 21; 97: 10. Amos 5: 15. Romans 12: 9. Hebrews 1:9. 2Essays XIII. 256 MORAL GOVERNMENT. suburb of the world of woe. Must not ineffable spiritual loss follow him in all worlds, who does not accept the law of love and guide his life by it ? As an influence upon racial stock, the adoration of Krish na's image, with his stolen butter ball, has confused the sense of right and wrong generation after generation in the households of India.1 The Dnyanodaya, a native paper, published in Bombay, calls attention to the fact that there is no text in the Hindu Sacred Books which affirms that God hates sin and desires that men should be saved from sin and made pure in heart, and calls upon any person who has found such a text to point out chapter and verse. Gautama counselled his disciples to control passion and forgive inju ries, but never taught them to become hearty haters of evil and to remain in society in order to combat it: they were rather to withdraw from the world. When, however, the early Buddhists went to Ceylon, it was with the terrors of the law, so vividly depicted in the frescoes of Dalada Mali- gawa, at Kandy : yet the teaching of the Master to repress desire finally had its effect in quenching the desire of the monks even for the moral reformation of the common peo ple. Nor is it too much to affirm that during age after age, Buddhism has been the opiate of Asia. Not for centuries has the moral sense of Burmah, Siam, or Japan been dis turbed by moral austerities, duties, or discipline unwelcome to the natural man. Comfortable, amiable animal enjoy ment, with never a twinge of conscience, for the laity, with apathy and self-satisfaction for their religious leaders, — 'Pictures are often found in Hindu homes representing the immoralities of Krishna. The story of his early life has exer cised an immense influence for evil in debasing the Hindu mind. (Mitchell's Hinduism, p. 115.) In the Indian books, Krishna is habitually unchaste. Siva, too, and his wife were constantly at. odds over his domestic infidelity. No wholesome life, no national integrity can come through the worship of such deities. The shameless course of the river Brahmans, in dealing with defense less pilgrims, follows the worship of gods to whom sinful acts- are but sport. THE NEGATIONS OP BUDDHISM. 257 this has been the outward aspect of Buddhism, since the opening of the Orient to European observers. The popular sense of the enormity of social wrongs has been so dull, and many rampant vices have met so little check, that no steadily glowing wrath has been kindled against evildoers. In Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent observed the practical working of the system half a century ago, after an undis turbed and supreme Buddhistic rule of more than twenty centuries : — "In their daily intercourse and acts, morality and virtue are barely discernible as the exception. Neither hopes nor apprehensions have proved a sufficient restraint on the habitual violation of all those precepts of charity and hon esty, of purity and truth, which form the very essence of their doctrine. Jealousy, slander, litigation, and revenge prevail, to an unlooked-for excess. Falsehood is of ubi quitous prevalence. In the courts of law the testimony of every magistrate is concurrent that perjury on both sides is habitual. Theft is equally prevalent with prevarication, and deceit and fraud is so notorious and habitual that the feeling of confidence is almost unknown." These charges are suitably completed by quoting the manuscript testimony of the Baptist missionary Davies, that "in a Singhalese vil lage licentiousness is so universal that it has ceased to be opprobrious."1 This accords with the testimony of the government more recently, that there are probably more murders in Ceylon, in proportion to the population, than in any other country in the world.2 Meantime, the monas tic power has not made itself morally felt; the peasantry knowing little more religion than that it is the custom now and then to lay a few flowers before a certain Bo-tree, that there is a temple and a monk, that it is the custom to give food to the monk, who gives no instruction in reli- 'Christianity in Ceylon. By Sir James Emerson Tennent, pp. 193, 228, 229, 251, 252. London, 1850. 'Buddhism, in Magadha and Ceylon. By Rt. Rev. Reginald Stephen Copleston, Bishop of Columbo, p. 461. London, 1892. 17 258 MORAL GOVERNMENT. gion. This lack of dynamic force, moral aggressiveness, on the part of those who are preeminently the makers of Buddhism, produces, as a social effect, an unprogressive civilization, with absolutely no popular sense of duty to others. Man looks out for himself alone, seeks his own merit, and repudiates all else. As a negative system, the better a man is in Gautama's eye — an repressing all desire, — the more thoroughly he will let society alone to shift for itself as best it may. The social outcome of all this, age after age, is indicated by Tennent:1 "No national system of religion, no prevailing superstition that has ever fallen under my observation presents so dull a level, and is so preeminently deficient in popular influences, as Buddhism amongst the Singhalese." What is it but quietism gone to seed? Energy and expansion find no place. Will not Asia be always "weary-hearted,"2 so long as the brethren of the Sangha sit still with undisturbed equanimity, amid unnam- able vice, wretched poverty, social misadjustments, crowd ing up to their sacred doors. There was never a time when the European monks of the middle ages ceased to be a positive element in the civilization of the continent, yet Christianity rid itself soon of the system, save a few old endowments; monasticism was a temporary expedient, an experiment in Christendom, but the Buddhists have had twenty-five hundred years of it.3 Gautama, with his singu larly penetrating moral insight, could see no way out of the religious tangle of Brahmanism, with its endless rites, save by a change in the moral life itself, yet, in rejecting popular pantheism and polytheism, he thought of man as without a moral governor outside himself; therefore, amid the hope less wrangling of the peoples, he counselled peace and qui etude of life. The better he was himself morally, the more force did his mighty personality exercise in taking out from society — when Buddhism was most prosperous — not less than ten millions in a single generation of those who were 'Christianity in Ceylon, p. 229. London, 1850. ^Bunsen's phrase, God in History, Vol. I, p. 375. London, 1868. 'Tide Christian Monasticism in Appendix A., infra. CELESTIAL NEED OP A MORAL GOVERNOR. 259 the most spiritual, bidding them quench all desire, even for the betterment of the world; several hundreds of millions of monks, all told, first and last, being so withdrawn from moral contests in Asiatic social life. As a race factor, this has made a vast difference as to the repression of what is worst in the Orient ; it being probable that the gross number of monks during seventy-five generations must be reckoned by hundreds of millions, and these men, whom we believe to have been, as a whole, morally the best natives of Eastern and Southern Asia, have not only impoverished society by withdrawing themselves from effecting an improvement of society through heredity, but by withdrawing their influ ence from contesting moral evil. As another illustration of the difference between Chris tian and non-Christian racial ideas upon moral government, in its relation to getting rid of moral evil in the world, take China. God is known in China, — "Heaven" being wor shipped twice a year by the patriarchal emperor in behalf of all his people ; but God is never known as the Moral Gov ernor, — the theory on which life is carried on in China being that men are responsible to the emperor, but it is not taught that they are amenable to "Heaven," so that if anything is forbidden by civic law it must not be done, and in what the law does not prohibit a man does what he pleases. It is the common belief in China that Confucius justified lying at convenience when deception might be advantageous, by affirming that, since the gods did not hear a forced oath, it could be broken ; the end is, therefore, held all over the empire to justify the means; when a lie is proved it is said, "Yes, as you say, it is a lie; it is." The average man — unrestrained by Moral Law — is not actu ated by the fear of wrongdoing, but of the consequences of being caught ; the stupidity or bungling management which leads to the discovery of wrongdoing, being universally blamed, and the crime itself scarcely mentioned.1 Samuel 'In a personal communication from Dr. C. A. Stanley, for more than thirty years a resident of Tien Tsin. 260 MORAL GOVERNMENT. Wells Williams, LL. D., Professor in Yale University, lived in China forty-two years, first as missionary in 1835, then as secretary and interpreter to the American legation at Pekin. He wrote a book on the empire in 1848, and revised it in 1883. He was conservative and careful in the expres sion of his matured judgment upon the Chinese character, based upon the observations and studies of two score years ; he speaks of "deceit everywhere," "the universal practice of lying and dishonest dealing, ' ' the want of public and pri vate charity, and ' ' a kind and degree of moral degradation, of which an excessive statement can scarcely be made, or an adequate conception hardly be formed."1 Was it not more than sixty years ago when Samuel Kidd2 wrote that "false hood, duplicity, insincerity, are national features remarka bly prominent?"3 Williamson said, in regard to the Celes tial Kingdom, ' ' There is no truth in the country. ' '4 Profes sor Eobert K. Douglas, LL. D., — of the British Museum, and Professor of Chinese at King's College, — has stated in the British Encyclopedia, that dishonesty and untruthful ness are national Chinese Characteristics.5 Lansdell, after saying that Hanchow, with its half million people, is at the present day full of abominations that cannot be mentioned, adds that the most painful statement was the deliberately expressed opinion of an Englishman who had lived for many years in the northwest of China proper, and who went so far as to say that the Chinese people, there, were the most wicked, filthy and abominable people, he thought, upon the face of the earth. These were not the words of an enemy. He had, moreover, exceptional facilities for knowing the 'Middle Kingdom, Vol. II, pp. 96-99. Early edition. New York. 2A clergyman and principal of the London Missionary College at Malacca, and afterwards Professor of Chinese in the University College, London, who in his time, was considered the first Chinese scholar in England. "China, p. 205. London, 1841. 'North China, Vol. I, pp. 4-8. ¦Professor Douglas resided some years in China, and has made a specialty of Chinese studies during forty years. MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. 261 Chinese of the interior.1 Is this the outcome of the Con fucian centuries of a popular ignorance of God ? Yet stating too briefly is stating too strongly. The Chi nese live below their Classic ideals: — "When you see the right, do it. When you know a fault, correct it. Neither yield to excess, if rich; nor swerve from right, if poor." Missionary Lowrie found nobility of life in the better class of villagers. "We are alone, no one knows," said one who would bribe an upright official. "Heaven knows; earth knows ; you know ; and I know, ' ' replied the incorruptible. Yet besides advice, the nation at large needs a Moral Gov ernor holding men personally responsible for moral choice and action. CHRISTIAN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSE OP INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. To illustrate more fully the difference between Chris tianity and the non-Christian faiths in their ideas as to the riddance of moral evil, take the point already alluded to, — personal responsibility ; and contrast the views that are held of the intellectual supremacy of conscience, which is the practical reason relating to the moral conduct of life. A well defined idea of man's direct moral responsibility to God underlies all Christian literature. Sharply formed personalities are the component parts of human society, the very fibre of a civilized state.2 "I AM" is the God of a pro gressive social evolution. At the very basis of a wholesome individual life is a firm sense of one 's personal identity, — •' ' I am, and I know it. ' ' Besides matter and force, says Hux ley, there is a third thing, consciousness ; our one certainty is the existence of the mental world.3 This third factor is 'Chinese Central Asia, II, pp. 240, 241. 2Compare Moral Evolution, by George Harris, LL. D., President Amherst College, pp. 49, 53. Boston, 1896. "Essays upon Some Controverted Questions, pp. 220, 221. Lon don, 1892. 262 THE REMOVAL OP MORAL EVIL. not good for anything unless it can be depended upon as much as matter or force. Its affirmations are as solid as granite, and its dictum is as forceful morally as gravitation is physically. If there is any one thing settled and clear in the Western mind it is this, as contrasted with Eastern Asia, — the separation of man from nature in his intellec tual powers and freedom of will: and this idea has been firmly held in a continuous line, during more than a hun dred generations. The personal God addresses the indi vidual man in the Sacred Books of Christendom, which are filled with personal pronouns, — I, my, me, thou, thy, thee. The evolution of the sense of human individuality is one of the greatest achievements of Occidental civilization. This is based upon the sense of the personal responsibility of every man immediately to God.1 The most interesting char acters of history have been nurtured upon the Hebrew liter ature, permeated as it is, through and through, with the idea of human accountability to the Moral Governor of mankind. These great personalities have lived with a sense of acting for God and living to God, undergirded and strengthened by celestial power, in their attempt to make the world con form to God's law of love. To their individual lives this has imparted a certain dignity, a development of personal traits, an awakening of faculties, — without which the unique Occidental civilization would have been impossible. It is this that has made the Western nations aggressive, and apt in defying difficulties ; since they believe in the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, who holds them responsible for what they do or do not do. Contrast Asia. In Japan it is never said "since the cre ation," but "since the development of the universe;" and whatever occurs in practical life, it is popularly said "there is no help for it." Individuality is of little value in countries where any and every human life is thought of as being but one passing phase out of three score lives within two thousand years past, one out of millions more in 'Tide Mills' Essay on Comte, p. 112. SENSE OP INDIVIDUALITY. 263 ages to come, many of which life-experiences may not be in the form of man. So feeble, indeed, is the sense of individ uality in Buddhism, that the validity of self-consciousness is denied, and the continued existence of the soul; only a quasi personality being maintained through the Karma, or the moral doing of one person passing on to another person after death, — which, however, in popular speech is referred to as if what a man's antecedent did he himself did.1 In India, if all that exists is but the out-manifestation of Brahma, how can individual manhood find free play? In China, the Confucianists hold individual life as habitually subject to ancestral domination; perhaps this is remote — to-day bound fast to the limitations imposed by former ages; the personality, too, of every man repressed by the patriarchal family system, — every son being a boy so long as his father lives. The very fibre of society — individu ality of character, — is lacking in Asia.2 There is no per sonal basis to build on. In the Christian concept God is everywhere represented as calling to men, — ' ' Come, let us reason together. ' ' Jesus of Nazareth respected the individuality of his disciples; laying down no iron rules, but giving principles by which men could guide their own conduct ; and he taught that no matter how little developed a man's mind might be, every one can come into touch with God as the source of more abundant individual life. From the beginning to the end of the Sacred Books of Christendom, there is an appeal to the hard business sense of every individual man, each being treated as a person by a Person. Nowhere in the Bible is any one called upon to go counter to his best practical reason in things religious. The only possible spiritual 'Tide Rhys Davids' Buddhism, pp. 105, 87-89, 150, 128, 103, 102. By De. Forest, an eminent authority, it is stated that in recent years new ideals are appearing in Japanese life, based on the worth and dignity of the individual. 2"You will find no society in the East," was the remark Secre tary Seward made to President Seelye when setting forth for the Orient. 264 THE REMOVAL OP MORAL EVIL. progress is based upon the right and duty of private judg ment, and the entertaining of views that appeal to the indi vidual as rational; every man first yielding himself to the divine will and guidance, then by his own intelligence and judgment interpreting the divine will and guidance in a self-decision for which he is responsible to God alone. For more than a hundred generations in one line of Hebraic and Christian moral thought, the Occidental mind has been trained and held fast to the doctrine that, as true spiritual life is through the unfolding inner experience of every man, rather than merely observing the letter of the law, this indi vidual development must be free, — constantly varying between man and man through differences in temperament and intellectual idiosyncrasies, — so by variation forming moral characters of the most pronounced individuality of manifold types. In this way the spiritual experience of the Western world is progressive, — as in the very formation of the Sacred Literature of Christendom there was an expand ing divine revelation through unique personalities. The cosmic development is crowned only by the perfected devel opment of individual human life. As an influence upon civilization, "personality is the lever of the world's his tory. ' n As it is true that if a man were to act against his best judgment in business affairs, he would imperil every thing, so he cannot act against his best spiritual judgment without peril to his spiritual good. Any one who will not follow his highest sense of moral obligation will break any law of God or man, if he have sufficient motive. This accords with the early representation that every man — as a token of his manhood — was made in the moral image of a personal Creator, who holds him personally responsible for obedience to the law of love. Conscience, the practical reason for moral guidance, is, in Occidental thought, set forth as God's prophet in every human soul — that highest sense of moral obligation which differentiates him from the lower animals ;2 it is through his 'Bunsen.'Tide Darwin's Descent of Man, Vol. I, p. 70. SUPREMACY OP CONSCIENCE. 265 moral sense that man sides with God in his mandate to gov ern life by the law of love to God and love to man. "Who can but look with awe on the human race, bound and writh ing through all history in the sense of guilt, like the Laocoon in the embrace of the serpents, the marble anguish unchang ing through all the ages. ' n A sense of the clinging power of sin, of its corrupting power, and its power to fill the soul with wretchedness, — what is all this but the awakened con science ? Christianity is — for one thing — differentiated from other great systems of religion and religious philoso phy by its making a specialty of developing, educating, training conscience.2 Other religions testify to the power of conscience, and continue to exist through the demands of conscience for something to satisfy the cravings of man's moral nature. Brahmanism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and the fetish or idolatrous worship of barbarians, are wit nesses to the religious nature of man, — a certain sense of right and wrong and some sort of moral accountability. Confucius voices certain principles relating to the social state, which are approved by the universal conscience. The civic conscience of the Japanese has been made the basis of the highest degree of military efficiency, the ethics of the empire putting duty first, even if it ends in death. Buddhism has relied upon it during more than seventy generations, that men in every generation will feel the need of self-contend ing or gaining merit. Yet some of the great systems of morality and religion are apparently defective in moral truth by which to aid the development, the education, and training of conscience. The revealed truths of Christian ity • — as the doctrines relating to God, the moral law, the nature of moral evil, and the scheme of redemption, — come 'The Kingdom of Christ, by Samuel Harris, LL.D., Professor in Yale University, p. 49. Andover. 2Bishop Copleston (Buddhism, p. 99) affirms that the idea of conscience has no exact counterpart in Buddhism, as implying moral responsibility, or transgressing the commands of a Person. How foreign the idea is to Hinduism has been referred to by Professor Kellogg, supra, p. 239. 266 THE REMOVAL OP MORAL EVIL. to the aid of natural religion, and aid in forming that con scientious character, which, when duly enlightened by the well-rounded orb of truth, is the mainstay of modern civilization. As an influence upon racial stock, is it not clear that the peoples that most effectively develop and educate and disci pline man's sense of right and wrong will finally come to be the moral leaders of mankind? MORAL AMENDMENT THROUGH MERCY TO THE PENITENT AND A DIVINE RE-ENPORCEMENT. Christianity, having many moral precepts in common with other faiths and philosophies, is not only differentiated from them all in its central concept of redemption from the power of moral evil through divine mercy toward the peni tent, but is distinguished from them in its idea of a divine re-enforcement of the penitent in his formation of a new purpose to live by divine help in obedience to moral law. From a sociological point of view, this is most helpful in moral amendment, promoting the altruistic service of man kind in carrying out the beneficent principles of the second table of the moral law; this being attempted upon the unique vantage ground of a free pardon for all past omis sions of duty to God and man, in virtue of which the peni tent begins his life over again, as a new man actuated by motives of love to God and man. The human conscience looks in vain to the unpitying eth ics of natural religion, the relentless necessity for a law of moral retribution; and no human philosophy dreams of a deity to whom it is a necessity to pardon the penitent. But the love of God is voiced in the holy hymns of the Hebrews : Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Everlasting Father pities those who can but cry incoherently, heeding their inarticulate wants.1 "As one whom his mother com- f orteth will I comfort you, " is in the book of the prophets ;2 'Psalm 103: 13. 2Isaiah 66: 13. THE PERSON OP CHRIST. 267 and no mother's love is more tender than that expressed in the Gospels. "The Father himself loveth you."1 The method of the divine mercy, in the Christian scheme, is revealed in the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world, — how, the philosophy of the atonement, we need not ask : that ' ' God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have eternal life,"2 — that Christ is in some proper sense the expression of God's love and mercy to man kind, all Christians are agree. If we speak of Christianity as historically distinguished from other systems of belief, the Christian world, as such, has believed that God's love is in Christ, by the Incarnation, for man's redemption; when we consider the power of Christian ideas to reno vate society, this is to be taken into account as a fact — the common belief in a scheme for man's moral redemp tion through the love of God in Christ. Historically, it is the Christian concept that the moral attributes of God are best apprehended in Christ — the personal love of a per sonal God to those made in his moral image, — the divine friendship as a factor in human life, underlying all Chris tian civilization. Passing over those incidents which relate to the lowly condition of Jesus the Christ — as a child seek ing the knowledge of a trade, as a child obedient, listening to the prompting of the inner life, as to his personal charac ter and purposes living to God and devoted to man, sup porting his mother out of his own earnings as a working mechanic, as a philosopher exercising wonderful self-control and exhibiting the content of patient waiting, as a sociolo gist leading a life in sympathy with the common people, participating in the social life of Pharisees as well as sin ners, — his wonderful balance of character, his well- rounded manhood, his sinlessness which even Judas did not arraign nor Pilate challenge, have led the world of unbe lievers, as well as the devout, to testify to the perfection of 'John 16: 27. 2John 3: 16, 17. Hebrews 9: 26. I John 2: 1, 2; 3:5. 268 THE REMOVAL OP MORAL EVIL. his moral character, a moral character never appreciated by the Nazarenes, a character standing out the more strongly from its contrast with his life of hungering and thirsting, of ineffable scorn by the rich and proud and self-righteous, a character ideal in its devotement to the service of others, a character notable in that age and an example to all ages; he came unto his own and his own received him not, he finally clashed with the high priests of his people, and his symbolic death, as if that of the paschal lamb, to him seemed fitting. "He ought," he said,1 "to have suffered according to the Scriptures. ' ' And whatever this all meant in suffer ing and sacrifice, it was interpreted in the early as it has been in the late Christian symbols as being the loving act of a divine self-sacrifice. It is this that is unique in the world's thought. Neither Brahma, Buddha, the Confucian sages or the Heaven they ceremonially worship, nor the God of Islam, have been represented as engaging in an act of supreme self-renunciation and such self-sacrifice as that depicted in the Gospels for the sake of others.2 It is this belief in a scheme of redemption through the self-sacrificing love of God in Christ, which has turned the tide of human wretchedness, and created a new era for mankind. If it be true that the genealogy of the ideas of humanity answers to the epochs of actual history,3 then the age which marked the beginning of this exhibition of divine love to man is suitably set apart from all other epochs. A hun dred thousand years from now, the historian, in looking back to trace the story of the moral evolution of mankind, will mark the Christian era as the dawn of an age when a new ideal of moral character ¦ — of supreme love to God and unselfish love to man — became a power in the earth chang ing domestic customs, social institutes, and the laws of 'Luke 24: 26. 2The self-sacrifice of the world's religious ascetics has not been for others. sBunsen's God in History, Vol. I, p. 28. AID OP THE DIVINE SPIRIT. 269 ancient realms.1 The self-sacrificing imitation of this divine love,2 toward all men, is unceasingly set forth in the New Testament as life's highest ideal in moral charac ter, in the attempt of every disciple, in his measure, to reproduce upon the earth the character of Jesus Christ. This is wrought out through practical penitence on the part of every beneficiary of the divine mercy, — the forma tion of a new purpose to live by the divine help in the obedience to the law of love to God and love to man. With marvellous perception in a dark age, Gautama saw that salvation must depend on a change in the man's inte rior life : self-denial as to worldly wealth, purity, self-con trol, integrity, rendering good for evil, earnest moral self- culture, charity, and love to others.3 The change of pur pose, however, introduced by Christianity not only, con templated all the relations between man and man as based upon the Golden Eule, but made first the rule of supreme devotion to God — the God of Love, the Moral Governor of the universe whose very existence finds no place in Bud dhism. Gautama recognized no Divine Helper in man's attempt to lead a changed life, while, in its very theory, Christianity claims that a man's moral reformation will be '"Christianity has been the main source of the moral develop ment of Europe, . . . not so much by the inculcation of a system of ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attracting influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind can never cease to be distinctively and intensely Chris tian as long as it consists in a gradual approximation to the character of the Christian Founder. There is indeed nothing more wonderful in the history of the human race than the way in which this ideal has traversed the lapse of ages, acquiring a new strength and beauty with each advance of civilization and infusing its beneficent influence into every sphere of thought and action." — Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, Vol. I, p. 312. 2"It was oneness with God in spirit, which Jesus announced as the controlling principle of the religious life."— Professor Toy, Judaism and Christianity, p. 418. "Monier-Williams, Buddhism, p. 551. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 40. 270 THE REMOVAL OF MORAL EVIL. successful only through the constant energizing aid of the Divine Spirit, which is an essential factor to be habitually counted on in the scheme for the moral redemption of the world.1 To renew individuals is the way to renew society: last and first, this was the primal idea of Jesus, — this once wrought, all else would follow, changing society, root and branch. To renew the individual, the man not only needs to purpose the same thing with God, but to have his past and present failures wiped out by divine mercy; since his present attempt to obey the moral law is good only for itself and in nowise affects his accumulated disobedience, but if his moral imperfections are- pardoned outright he starts upon his new course without handicap, — attempting good works from unselfish love to God and man rather than from a desire to win moral merit ; according to the Christian books, therefore, the penitent is through the divine mercy treated as if without moral blame. In Islam the divine compassion is made prominent;2 but 'Dr. James Gilmour, who lived among the Northern Buddhists more than twenty years, encountering great numbers by an itin erating medical mission, reached the conclusion (Among the Mongols, pp. 191-197) that the people of the country make no claim that their system produces holiness of life, or even ordi nary purity; although the priests are constantly consulted as to days and deeds, and religious rites are constantly observed (pp. 210-213). "Well-informed persons," he says, "who are really desirous of making spiritual advancement, discern the bearing of the merit system. It tends to militate against the renewal of the moral nature; so that, if they become convinced that Western Christianity is helpful to people morally, as the Western medicine helps them physically, they will accept it." 2When Abuzer died upon a pillow of sand in the desert, he was asked where was his pain: "For my sins," he answered. "What do you want?" "The mercy of God." — Mohammed, by James Lyman Merrick, p. 366. Boston, 1850. It was said to Mohammed: "You, also, O Prophet! will you not enter into paradise, except by God's compassion?" The Prophet put his hand on his head, and replied: "I shall not enter, except God cover me with his mercy." This he said thrice. — Mishcat ul Masabih (Eng. tl.), I, p. 280. Cited in Bible and Islam. MOSLEM IDEA OP RENEWAL. 271 it is confusing to one's sense of right and wrong, since it is not connected with a radical change of character in the •devotee. There is no doubt on this point, as to the general impression made by the Koran in its requirements through out; although the Prophet recognized the principle which ie so little insisted upon, — "Those who ask forgiveness for their sins and do not persevere in what they did, the while they know,— these have their reward."1 The Prophet's leading thought was that of opposition to idolatry : and he left it this way, as to the great weight of his teaching. To affirm God's unity, and to accept his prophet — this or the sword — required no change of character.2 Nor is God 'Sura III: 129, 130. A theologian building upon isolated texts rather than the tenor of them all, might deduce the doctrine of Tepentance from this passage. The trend, however, of the Koranic teaching is to this effect: — sin calls for punishment not reform; future suffering will wipe it out in any event, as to the Mussulman. — Dwight, pp. 65, 66. 'Esaas Effendi, cited in Dwight's Constantinople, p. 57, speaks of one's acceptance of the creed as an act of faith, fixing in his heart and proclaiming God's unity and his belief in the Prophet: by that act he becomes submitted (Muslim), and has found Divine Grace. If the "submission" is to man, the case is differ ent. With the sword at one's throat, as it is in Africa to-day, It is no time to discuss dogmas or balance propositions. Tide Chapter V, pp. 238, 239, supra. If, however, as it often may be, in the Moslem training of youth age after age, the submission is voluntarily made by the devotee, as his own deliberate choice in accepting the moral purpose of God as his own, this would be analogous to the Christian attitude in "conversion." No act of faith is, however, implied unless through individual choice. That it is exercised by some is indicated by what was said supra, pp. 276-8A, 286. And if the creed acceptance carries with it no change of character, has it not been true of vast bodies in Christendom that unregenerate men have been baptized as Chris tians? The Biblical texts, however, give no countenance to their enrollment, insisting rather upon a changed spiritual life as the test. The Scriptures, to be like the Koran, would have to place the emphasis upon certain outward rites. 272 THE REMOVAL OP MORAL EVIL. emphatically set forth in his love as man's energizing helper in self -conquest.1 The Christian books, however, not only place great stress upon salvation as wrought out in the individual character but upon the efficient reinforcement of man 's will-power by divine energy, — man's will and God's will coming into accord: as in telegraphy the magnetic poles must be so related to each other as to favor the current. With misad- justment of the human will, it is impossible for God to help man morally. When man's will harmonizes with the- divine, it is well with the world. To the panitent, in the Christian concept, the divine mercy not only pardons but extends moral aid through a divine indwelling.2 It is this which Professor Drummond referred to, in illustration of the point that the spiritual life of man is aided by the divine power :3 — 'Yet the idea was not wholly foreign. Sura XXIV, 21. "But for God's grace upon you and his mercy, not one of you would be forever pure." Were the trend of the Koranic texts in accord with this, it might be said that the prophet set forth a doctrine analogous to the Christian conception of the work of the Holy Spirit. Note by De. D. B. Macdonald. — Points in this paragraph can- be emphasized. The element in Christianity which Mohammed failed to grasp was the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. I have some times wondered whether the Christian influence upon him was of a sect in which that doctrine had little place. "The Lord and Giver of Life" he did not know. But later mysticism tried to> make up. 2John 14: 23. Rev. 3: 20. I John 2: 24; 4: 16. II Cor. 6: 16.. I Cor. 3: 16. Phil. 2: 13. I Cor. 15: 10. Heb. 13: 21. "In all my study and experience in India, the land of my birth. and lifework, I have not found in Hindu thought, the Christian. doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God whose supreme' title is 'the Holy,' whose special function is to make men holy,, who makes both the bodies and souls of men his temple, that he' may apply to them the things of Christ and make them holy." — The Rev. R. A. Hume, D. D.; paper at the Parliament of Reli gions, Chicago, 1893. "Natural Law, p. 267. THE IDEA OP DIVINE AID AS A SOCIAL POWER. 273 "Whatever amount of power an organism expends in any shape is the correlate and equivolent of a power that was taken into it from without. . . . Each portion of mechan ical or other energy which an organism exerts implies the transformation of as much organic matter as contained this energy in a latent state. ... No such transformation of organic matter can take place without the energy being in one shape or other manifested. ' n To the self-contending, conscious of his high relationship to God, a new power comes sweeping in, with what Chalmers called "the expulsive power of a new affection," to cleanse and renew the soul,2 — a divinely enforced law of love to control the passions, to regulate life, to transform the earth to the likeness of the heavenly city ; so final moral salvation is wrought through a mental change by character-forming in this life. The Scriptures in a large way represent Jesus Christ as the Life-giver, imparting his own energy to those who receive him, breathing into them new life, that they may live Christ-like lives through him. Instead of a series of transmigratory experiences and final absorption in Brahma, the individual, in the Christian scheme, is here and now at one with God in affections and purpose, and spiritually united to him. The Christian Scriptures call the disciples not servants but friends, and the relation between God and his people is represented as that of Bridegroom and Bride. It is this that satisfies one 's consciousness ; he who knows what Christianity has wrought for him in his own interior life becomes a good witness, who tells what he knows and cannot be broken down. In esti mating what Christianity has achieved, Christian conscious ness admits of no appeal from its testimony : one who knows that he has new life and acts from new motives, that a mighty change has taken place within, that he sees what he was once blind to, that he has come into a new and surpris- 'Spencer's Principles of Biology, pp. 57, 58. London, 1864. 2I John 3: 3. Every one that hath this hope set on him puri- fietb himself, even as He is pure. 18 274 THE REMOVAL OP MORAL EVIL. ing relation to God, — he is a moral power among men. Some of the coolest-headed, the ablest, the best men in Christendom know this; they are not more sure of their own being than they are sure of the moral effect of Chris tianity upon their own characters and lives. "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen."1 "Sup pose," in the words of one fitly called the Golden-mouth of the modern age, "suppose I am told that Naples is not, but the memory of the vision of its beauty none other than a dream, that Venice, lying anchored at her lagoons, and Mont Blanc raising its dome to the sky as if it were the Great White Throne itself, are naught, shall I disbelieve what my own eyes have seen? So men who have not been able to find God tell me that there is no God. But I put over against the negative that is in them the positive that is in me, the revelation which this soul of mine, illumined by the Spirit of God, has had of Him and I stand invinci ble in my faith upon Him. You may reason the blue of the heaven that is above us, you may untwist the strands of the ray of light as it comes to us from above, and prove it to be but darkness, you may dispute that there is any air to breathe, but not till then may you wrest from me the knowl edge that has been vouchsafed me of this God of love and truth. Against this knowledge the shaft of argument can not prevail, but falls shattered like the lance before the unyielding bronze."2 VII. THE TIME ELEMENT IN FORMING RACIAL TENDENCIES IN ETHICS. To inquire whether the concepts embodied in the Chris tian books are true is far from the present point: the sole question is whether these ideas, as compared with non- Christian, are likely to give leadership in the world-wide 'I John 3:11. Romans 8:16. I John 5:10. II Cor. 1:22; 5: 5. Eph. 1: 13. Gal. 4: 6. 2The late Richard Salter Storrs, LL. D. RACIAL TENDENCIES. • 275 rivalry of races and religions in the attempt to rid the world of moral evil. For a period varying, say, from forty to a hundred and twenty generations of men, the ethical princi ples and philosophical theories of the great racial stocks have been outworking for the formation of national char acter, — giving ceaseless expression to certain ideas of moral inter-relation between man and man for the conduct of life : which now, of these races and religions is most likely to gain the moral leadership of the world through inherent fitness? Eeview in brief the contracts presented: — (1) Brahmanism, the fountain of Modern Hinduism, for four score generations has trained the youth of India to believe that one's own personality, as apart from God, is an illusion, that man is of the same identity with the imper sonal first cause or Arranger of all things, that worship is to be prescribed by Brahmans as the highest exponent of Brahm, that sin is but the neglect of rites, that there is no moral government over men save an impersonal law of moral retribution whose demands are satisfied through ceremonial merit seeking, and that one's final release from evil is possible only through the gradual perfection of life after many generations of rebirth — perhaps millions of them, — when one will be reabsorbed in the Brahm. (2) Buddhism has trained the most thoughtful youth, throughout vast areas of Asia, for more than seventy gener ations, that there is no God; and no soul of man, and no continuity of individual life after death ; and that the prac tice in self -strength of certain wholesome moralities com prises the only wisdom, and that, in these, final perfection is to be found only in a secluded life, separated from domes tic and social relations; and that one's individual virtues and vices affect the world, perhaps for millions of genera tions, only through their reappearance, by the embodiment of moral antecedents in a thing or a sentient being not identical with one's present personality but mysteriously related to it through an impersonal identity of moral action. (3) Confucianism has gathered up the earliest instruc- 276 THE TIME ELEMENT. tions of the Chinese sages, and held a great people to their ancestral concepts and usages, this being the racial ideal for perhaps thirty-five hundred years; with no popular knowledge of God, and no sense of moral responsibility to him for obedience to the law of love to God and man, and no popular religious custom save that relating to ancestral worship and reverence for the national sages. (4) Islam, exalting God as against idolatry, represents him as adequately served by ablution, reciting a creed, a fast, and a pilgrimage, on the part of the natural man with out moral change of purpose,- — this at least in popular use and apprehension; the creed, however, expressing, on the part of some, a religious faith, devout dependence on God, and almsgiving remembrance of the Moslem poor. (5) Christianity has taught, throughout all its genera tions, the personal moral responsibility of every man imme diately to a personal God, (i) who can be honored only through a man's obedience to the law of supreme love to his Heavenly Father, and perfect love to all men as equally the children of God, (ii) who holds all men amenable to this moral law of love upon pain of ineffable spiritual loss, (iii) who hates disobedience to the law of love with a per fect hatred, (iv) who yet devotes himself in self-sacrifice for the moral salvation of the penitent, (v) and who aids the penitent through spiritual reinforcement in his attempt to keep the law of love, — the penitent being so renewed in tem per and spirit, becoming so at one with God in moral intent, as to make it his life purpose to honor God through promot ing love as the rule for the conduct of life among all men. It is not to the question, whether the five life theories here alluded to have entered wholly into the souls of the races holding them : it is a question of tendency, of type and gen eral conformity to type. So held, which is likely to produce the best racial stock, which will most effectively deal with moral evil among men, which will survive in the struggle for moral leadership ? RACIAL TENDENCIES. 277 Is it true that Christianity, as a scheme of redemption, is unique and unapproachable in its attempt to rid the world of moral evil? Has not Christianity so disciplined and developed man's moral faculties, as to stamp its char acter upon the racial stock that is now in the civic, domestic, educational and philanthropic leadership of the world? Is it too much to say, that, if the moral ideas of Christian ity will not renew the world, there is no other power yet known in man's moral evolution to do it?1 Here are the five great religions or religious philosophies of the world: look at them. Which, in its inner structure, in its charac ter-forming power as related to the conduct of life, is most likely to win supremacy? Instead of saying, "By their fruits ye shall know them," it is to be said, "By their seeds, and by their roots, by their cardinal ideas and theories of life as related to a progressive development of human facul ties and potent personalities ye shall know them : ' ' look to the law of heredity, let such ideas have full sway for hun dreds of generations, let the seeds and roots bear fruit after their kind, and ye shall know them. VIII. SOCIAL EFFECT OP THE IDEA OP A DIVINE KINGDOM. In contrasting the contents of the Christian and non- Christian Sacred Books, there is further difference, — relat ing to the Divine Kingdom in this world. Long before the Christian era, during a greater period than that since the discovery of America till now, the idea of a divine kingdom on earth, appeared in the Hebrew liter ature, at first as rudimentary, then unfolding, and culmi nating after some centuries in the conception of a spiritual kingdom governed by the law of love, — God's love to man, 'In asking this, no question is raised as to whether Christianity is of divine origin: it is, for the present inquiry, but a part of man's unfolding of powers — no matter where the ideas came from, Christianity has them. 278 A WORLD-WIDE KINGDOM OP LOVE. man 's answering love, and fraternal love between men : an idea pushed to the fore through the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and of his disciples who believed him to be the Hebrew Messiah. So in the evolution of moral ideas, it came about that the First Cause of all things began to be apprehended by men as if in personal relations: — as the Divine Father who so loved the world that through Christ men should no longer perish as the brutes, but have ever lasting life;1 as the Divine Moral Governor to whom all mankind — -having a natural susceptibility for spiritual life and power to become the sons of God2 — were held responsible for obedience to the law of supreme love to God and the golden rule of love toward man ; as the Saviour of men through a scheme of redemption in which the mercy of God treats the penitent as if they had not sinned; as the Divine Spirit informing and renewing man's nature in its inner principles of moral conduct, then strengthening, comforting, and indwelling — as if man, renewed in the temper and spirit of his mind, were the temple of the Holy One. It is not to the present point to inquire whether these ideas were well based, it is pertinent that they were firmly held by the founders of what they believed to be a new divine dispensation, yet essentially at one with the spiritual illumination of an epoch earlier than Moses; these elemen tary moral ideas being held by their projectors to be a super natural revelation made known in Judaic law and history and literature, a revelation supplemented through the Divine Mercy in Christ and the Divine Spirit, as purposed by Jehovah, who had raised up Jesus from the dead, and brought life and immortality to light, that henceforth the children of men might become the sons and daughters of the Almighty in a Divine Kingdom now and world without end. None other than these were the ideas, endued with the power of an endless life, that shook the realms of paganism, 'John 3: 16, 17. 2I John 1: 12. SOCIAL POWER OP THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT. 279 and gave new hope to men who were tired of Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian theology, tired of the Greeks and very tired of the typical Eomans : and these were the very ideas that became of such force in the daily life of the Eoman empire that within ten generations Christianity mounted the throne of the Caesars. No facts in history are better established than these basal facts of the origin of Christianity as the kingdom of love among men, the law of love as the central point and power. One man is no man, said Aristotle. An inborn tie fastens every man to his race : this is the teaching of Christianity and of social science. It is a truth as broad as the realm of mankind. Upon it is based the possibility of a universal reign of the law of love, the Divine Kingdom in this world. World-wide sway has never been the expectation of Brahmans, Buddhists, or Confucianists, nor have they engaged in activities to promote such a consummation. Mohammed claimed at first to be the Prophet of Arabia, and adapted his teachings to that end, — by the width of the world a different plan from that adopted by Jesus of Nazareth. Had Jesus set out to reform the Jewish religion alone, and so shaped his course as to be a Jew instead of the Son of Man, and so given instruction of little pertinence outside of Judea, he would in this have done what Moham med did in Arabia. But Christianity has from the begin ning planned for universal dominion through the kingdom of love. There are, says the Master, only two command ments. Nor is there any Christian obligation outside the authority, the sanctions, the logical antecedents and infer ences, and the coordinate truths, that pertain to love to God and love to men : love is a unit, with these two objects of affection; nor is there an iota of religion in anything else. This fundamental Moral Law is adapted to perfect human society ; it is good for all ages and all worlds. Those actuated by Christian principle are held by their charter, for life's main business, to promote the moral government of 280 A WORLD-WIDE KINGDOM OP LOVE. God among men. Love as an energy in human history, extending its domain, redeeming men from the power of an evil life, consecrating new generations of disciples to an unselfish service, — this has been the chief factor in the moral evolution of Christendom; the progressive acknowl edgment of human rights, the equality of men, the triumphs of justice and right, — have outsprung from the Moral Law. Marks of the underlying divine government of the world are easily discernible in history; like the watermark in paper which indicates the maker, whatever be the ink marks on the paper itself. Christianity looks upon the human race as a unit, under one moral government, with one Father. To bring men into a common brotherhood and secure mutual cooperation, is to create a new social world ; nor is any society progres sive — in a world-wide sense — that is content with less. Far is all this from the thought of Celsus, who scoffed at the idea that Greeks and barbarians should ever unite in one doctrine. Far is all this from the caste system of the Hindus. Far is all this from the Buddhistic ideal of obliterating man as a social being.1 Far is all this from the brotherly love of Islam limited to the circle of the faith.2 Yet the trend of Christianity is toward less of the ology and more of fraternity, the cultivation of the loving power to change the lives of men by meeting their ethical wants. Bishop Patteson did not go to the South Seas to tell the cannibals that their course was wrong. "I teach," he said, "positive truth, and trust that this truth will lead them to abandon the evil." Paton, who saw fourteen thousand cannibals Christianized, said that, in speaking to them, he did not talk to them much about their wickedness, but he told them of the divine redemption, and urged them to 'Monastic isolation so influences the common people in Burmah, that even if one is in danger it is assumed that he knows what he is doing, so that no one will warn or help him unless he asks for it.— Fielding's Soul of a People, pp. 249, 252, 253. 2Muir's Life of Mahomet, IV, p. 321. SOCIAL POWER OP THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT. 281 leave their sins and to live for God, — and this they did. The Governor of Bourbon said to the first missionaries, that the people of Madagascar were mere brutes, that it was impossible to make them Christians; yet there are to-day more than a quarter of a million of these once brutal men, whose consciences have been developed and trained by Christianity, who now gather statedly for Christian worship and for further instruction in moral truth. There are Christian audiences of six hundred to a thousand people. "'If I could," said a petty thief among them, "I would restore fourfold, but I have not got the money. I can restore twofold and here it is. ' ' That is the way to change the face of society. In China, a manufacturer of rice whiskey journeyed twenty-three miles to attend a Chris tian service at Fukui. Having borrowed Doctor Mar tin's Evidences of Christianity, he then destroyed his dis tillery and went to farming. A well-to-do and reputa ble Ningpo Chinaman astonished a missionary by appear ing for instruction in Christianity. "Have you heard the Gospel before?" "No, but I have seen it. One of my neighbors was a terror. When angry he would curse for two days and nights. He was a wild beast, and he was a bad opium smoker. When he became a Christian, he was gentle, moral, not soon angry, and he left off opium." "Is that woman an angel?" asked the baffled woman in the Turkish bath at Marash, when, in malice, she tried in vain to ruffle the spirit of a Christian at her elbow. Here is a sociological experiment by which to determine how the peace of God may be brought to the earth. ' ' Every man, ' ' says Emerson, ' ' takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun." This is easy enough when a man forms right moral habits toward God and man. "Here is your knife," said a Protestant finder to a Mohammedan muleteer. The reply was this: "A Moslem would not have given back such a good knife 282 A WORLD-WIDE KINGDOM OP LOVE. as that. ' ' And down in the Garenganze country Mr. Swan overheard the men in the traveling company say: "Look at those boys in Bailundu. They will not keep a needle, if they find one, without trying to find the owner. Jehovah taught them that." When Mr. Nott, at Tahiti, preached to the new converts on theft, they brought him next morn ing the goods they had been stealing for years. This is the kind of religion to take round the world; and, from a humanitarian point of view, those men are in good business who teach Turkey and Africa and the South Seas to ex change their burden packs for the "chariots of the sun." The changed life, shining out amid the surrounding dark ness, is a "gospel in the largest capitals, which all can read:" so testifies the venerable Paton, who conducted the sociological experiment in the Southern Seas. Nations which hold the great secret of the power to produce social morality, which know how to enlighten the human con science, which are entrusted with carrying out God's plan for the redemption of mankind, — these are the progressive nations with a future before them, nations that are but the provinces of the Kingdom of Love. The children of the kingdom are read and known by their neighbors. Here is a letter from the Et. Eev. Edward Ealph Johnson, late Bishop of Calcutta,' who had oppor tunity to observe the effect of Christianity upon the natives during some twenty years, throughout an extent of country fifteen hundred miles by five hundred, among a population of thirty millions, there being one hundred and eighteen missionaries, including native clergy, and one hundred and seventy-three missionary schools in his diocese, so that the testimony is based upon fullness of knowledge : — "I have your letter asking about the improvement in the Christians of the second and third generations. There can be no doubt whatever upon the point. As you go through a mission village, you can tell at once, by the appearance of the people, who are the Christians; their countenances tell 'Personal letter of May 7, 1894. SOCIAL POWER OP THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT. 28S of the brighter life. The Christians increase more rapidly than the non-Christians, as shown by the last census. And the government reports having taken note of the advance the Christian natives have made in social position, as com pared with the natives of other religions." "When people become Christians," remarked a religious teacher twenty years in India, "their physical condition is so much improved, their thrift and capacity for self-help so devel oped, that it is noticeable at sight. In going to a village I do not have to ask who are Christians, I can pick them out at sight. It is true, in visiting hundreds of villages, that you can see the physical improvement wrought by Chris tianity. " Is it a consciousness of the divine indwelling, or the indwelling of a new purpose, a sense of citizenship in the Kingdom of Love, that illuminates faces once dark with despair? "I can pick out the Christians as soon as I see them, whenever I go to a new village in India," — so a Telugu missionary reports, having tried it for a score of years. "The Hindu of all castes," says Dr. Pentecost, "carries the low lines of hopelessness and despair in his face. The Christian is known by the transfiguration of his face. You might pick them out in any place in India, amongst any people. You could tell them by the lines in their faces." All this is discerned by the world's great artists. They never weary of experimenting upon spiritual outlines. With acute discernment and matchless skill they depict innocence or guilt, fear or shame, hope, peace, love, by this or that turn of the eyelid, the brow, the lips, the contour of the features. So true is it that self-control and self -development are artists; he who exercises himself in guilty or in holy choices is always modifying his own fea tures. So true is it that Christianity is beautifying the faces of the young people in every clime, and in every quar ter of the globe. And if all this is but a slow process, it is of matchless might as the generations advance, slowly changing the homes of the world, renewing the face of soci ety, and bringing in the Kingdom of God. All that is 284 THE KINGDOM OP HEAVEN. needed in this world-wide sociological experiment is the reeling off of a few hundreds of years, and then it will be seen what character has been imparted to the racial stocks of the world. IX. THE KINGDOM OP HEAVEN, OR FINAL RELEASE PROM SIN. Another point of divergence between the Sacred Books of Christians and non-Christians is their concept of the future life, the Kingdom of Heaven. Brahmans and Bud dhists teach that none can find release from the toils of transmigration until after millions of generations, when the perfected soul may be reabsorbed in Brahm1 or enter Nir vana.2 As a rule, the Confucianists in China and Japan do not believe in the immortality of the soul; the ancient sages, whom they have studied so faithfully, say almost nothing concerning a future life.3 The Koran pictures the heavenly world as the place where one is licensed, as to all carnal pleasures, to do what is here forbidden as a test of obedience.4 The Christian view is alluded to only in its relation to its prospective influence upon the racial stock trained in its belief for many scores of generations. "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise," and kindred 'Consult Mitchell's Hinduism, p. 134. When man can lose consciousness of personality and say, "Aham Brahma,'' that is, "I am the Universal It," then he has attained true wisdom and his true goal; he passes from conscious existence into the Universal It. — Hume, Parliament of Religions, II, 1275. 'Tide Appendix C, infra. "Tide Edkins' Religion of China, p. 142. London, 1878. Confucius ignored or denied the immortality of the' soul. — Martin's Lore of Cathay, p. 17. The Taoists affirm a corporeal immortality; the bodies of those who are actuated by the high est reason, being etherialized, but the souls of others are dis solved. — Lore of Cathay, pp. 182, 193. 4For example: Sura LVI, 10-35. Consult Dwight's Constan tinople, p. 68. PINAL RELEASE PROM MORAL EVIL. 285 texts, have been interpreted to indicate that the realms of conscious and blissful immortality are not far away, and that a new career for the unfolding of human powers is at once opened to him whose present activity is transferred to the heavenly world. "The powers of the world to come" afford an immeasurable uplift to the human spirit, giving to every thoughtful man a sense that his own consciousness is related to the divine energy that is manifest throughout the material universe. Death is but the change from life to life. When love has had its perfect earthly work, supreme toward God, unselfish and self-sacrificing toward man, — this spiritual attribute gathers new force and seeks new fields for expansion. It must be so, unless intellectual confusion is the law for governing the universe. Is not the soul's immortality held to be the very climax of the cosmic process?1 As a mere motive power in the ethical world, Christianity depends upon "the immense importation it makes from worlds of glory outside."2 X. PERMANENT FORCE OP THE ETHICAL THEORIES THAT PER MEATE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. If this book were theological rather than first and last and at every turn a practical sociological inquiry, it would be easy to amplify the points of difference between the dog matic contents of the Christian and non-Christian books, yet enough has been said to illustrate the ethical theories which are permanent forces in social life. In comparing the world's thought, as expressed in the books of the '"Immortality is not some vast, vague, all obliterating term of being, into which departed souls pass to be absorbed as rivers lose themselves in the sea into which they empty. Immortality is the projection of personal identity on into the other world; the preservation of individuality, in all its varieties of intellect, toil, and aptitude." — The Rev. Edward Abbott, D. D. 2Bushnell's phrase. 286 PERMANENT FORCE OF ETHICAL THEORIES. nations, is it not easy to see that Christian literature is per meated with ideas relating to the divine love and helpful ness, to conscience, the law of love, and the coordinate truths most helpful to man; ideas made luminous that appear dimly, if at all, in the philosophic and ethical sys tems, mythologies or theologies of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Eomans, Persians, Brahmans, Buddhists, Taoists, Shinto priests, Confucianists, Moslems, and fetish worship ers. Looked at as literature, is not the Christian the fullest and best, the most suggestive to the moral nature of man, having in it more evident power to raise the fallen, strengthen the weak, inspire the strong, and better eon- forming, as a whole, to the reason of man in his highest development in recent centuries? Is there not something suggestive of arrested development in the moral evolution of certain great races ?1 When those residing long in foreign parts tell us that in China, neighborly acts, the giving of cups of cold water, are not common, unless merit can be gained by them, and that the same acts are denied in India, lest caste contamination result from them, do we not gain the impression that certain great religions pertain to the rude peoples of a former age ? Yet the childhood of the nations must have been unspeak ably precious to the All-Father, who has from the dawn of religious consciousness upon the earth, looked with Infinite pity upon the anguished hearts of the hundreds of millions in all the millenniums of history, — so much of being born, of struggling for existence, of seeking a pittance of merit before death should close the scene. With what eagerness has one generation after another sought out new methods of '"To-day," says Professor M. Monier-Williams (Brahmanism and Hinduism, pp. 296, 297), "a cow, duly decorated, is brought to the bedside of the dying man in India; he is made to grasp the tail, under the notion that by the sacred animal's assistance he will be safely transported over the Vaitarani, the river of death." The cow is the primeval Aryan type of the all-yielding earth. We have to do in India with the very earliest notions of our race; the Brahmanical priesthood perpetuating the tradition. THE UNITIES OF THE SPIRIT. 287 merit-earning, all ignorant of God's love. The records of altruistic adventure in non-Christian lands bring constantly to light great numbers of individuals who call to mind the words of Esdras, — "They have seen no prophet, yet they shall call their sins to remembrance and acknowledge them." "If," says Bushnell, "they were only such as seek after God of their own notion, they might be very few, but since God is seeking after them, after all men everywhere, it should not be incredible that some are found by him and folded in his fold, which they do not so much as know."1 Is it not, in many respects, but an ungrateful task to study the sacred books of the nations in order to note their points of difference ? It would be a happier lot to seek to discern the unities of the spirit, and the persistent force of certain great philosophical and religious truths — spiritual intui tions • — ¦ that constantly appear in the early religious litera ture of all peoples, — the affinities of the religious systems, the rays of that supernal light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.2 'The Burmese missionaries report persons who have been inquiring after God during many years. The Karens, without idols or Buddhist notions, have an ancient tradition of one God, and that he will yet save them; so they have been accustomed to pray: "If God will save us, let him save speedily. We can endure these sufferings no longer. Alas, where is God?" (The Karen Christian teacher, Sanquala.) These are the people of the jungle and the mountains, — once greatly oppressed by the Burmese. 2Dr. Hume gives a striking illustration of this, in certain points of likeness between Christian and Hindu thought, which even if verbal rather than real — on account of the dominating pantheistic philosophy of India, with its doctrines of "illusion," "fatalism," and "transmigration," — yet show how near together those may be who are still so far apart: — "Both Christian and Hindu thought recognize ah Infinite Being with whom is bound up man's rational and spiritual life. Both magnify the indwelling of this Infinite Being in every part of the universe. Both teach that this great Being is ever revealing itself; that the universe is a unit, and that all things come under the universal laws of the Infinite; that to men the Infinite 288 PERMANENT FORCE OF ETHICAL THEORIES. "These religions are ladders," says Bishop Carpenter, "and they go up to God, and the angels of God will sup port those who seek to climb them.1 Did not Attar, the Persian poet, twenty generations since, represent Gabriel as overhearing the divine answer to the prayer of a wor shipper, then flying to find the saint who was bending before an idol; and it was said by the Heavenly Father, — "I consider not the error of ignorance, this heart amid the darkness has the highest place. ' '2 Is not this in full accord with the Christian Scripture, that ' ' In every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him."3 especially reveals itself as 'Word,' because the word is the chief human expression of thought; that man is the highest element in the universe, and most nearly allied to the Infinite; that in, his present state man is not only in an imperfect condition, hs is in an evil plight; that the invisible and spiritual is man's ultimate goal; therefore, that the soul has rightful authority- over the senses; that present evil is transient; that spiritual gains are to be won only through suffering; that the Infinite has become incarnate to aid men to attain to the higher good; that the higher good is to be gained through obedience to divine con ditions, hence obedience is the foot of the soul; that faith, seeing the invisible, the true behind the apparent, is the eye of the soul; yet that a love, which is beyond the thought of constraining law, is higher than simple obedience, hence love is the wing of the- soul; that moral penalty is inevitable, yet that there are remedial energies in the universe; that prayer, as intercourse of man with God, is helpful; that after this world there is a future for the. soul; that the Infinite has revealed his will to man through Scriptures which they should study and follow. In the sacred books of both religions are found certain statements of ethics not very unlike." — Address, Parliament of Religions, II, 1274. 'The Permanent Elements of Religion. Page 167. London, 1889. 2Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman happily refers to "The Accents of the Holy Ghost in India" in the Hindu Sacred Books, even when not excusing self-interest in the priesthood. — The- World's Religions. New York, pp. 87, 89. "Acts 10: 35. CHAPTEE SEVEN: CONTEASTS IN ALTEUISTIC SEEVICE. Is not Christianity essentially a preaching religion? Of worshipping congregations, that speak English, there are, by a most conservative statement, more than fifty millions of people attendant upon nearly a million local religious gatherings every year for religious instruction and wor ship.1 It is impossible to overestimate the sociological value of this factor in moral advancement ; since it implies the existence of a sufficiently large body of laymen per meated with Christian principle to give effective support to such altruistic advance movements as commend them selves to sound business judgment. It has been only within relatively recent times that the business talent of the layman has been largely available for advancing the interests of the Church. The value of the layman is his business training. Upon a large scale, on different continents, during a sufficient range of years, it has been proved that the vast and varied resources of the" clergy, exhibited in a leadership of many centuries, are supplemented, greatly to the advantage of the Church, by the active cooperation of eminently qualified laymen ; whose practical success in handling secular affairs has given them a special aptitude in looking at social problems and Church work from a layman's standpoint, and in rendering inval uable service in modifying the altruistic activities of the Church and adapting them better to the work to be done. As a rule, the average clergyman, in point of scholarship, 'This estimate is, for the United States, based on census statistics. The estimates should suitably be so extended as to include the non-English speaking peoples of Christendom. 19 290 PHILANTHROPY. is so much above the masses as to be somewhat out of touch with them, although not intentionally so; the average lay man is more in sympathy with the crowd, and his religious activity offers to the Church a distinct gain in its adapta tion to the common people, particularly to those least favored in schooling. The Christian layman of the modern era is a very different personage from the ancient or the mediseval man ; he has been made so by popular education, by the new sciences that elbow him, by new political con ditions, by the religious responsibility that the open Bible places upon the individual conscience, by the variety of employments that call to him in this age. The multiplica tion of the so-called learned professions, the development of manufacturing interests, the discovery of the demands and the furnishing of supplies for vast populations, the open ing of new areas of commercial enterprise, the improved transportation business which brings distant communities into neighborhood, the grasping of the planet as if it were a mere village for the purposes of business; — by such dis cipline we have a new laity, a well-proportioned manhood, capable of advancing the work of the Church. The demo cratic Church government, that so widely prevails, has helped the layman, making it easy to gain the prominence for which he is fitted. The new conditions in which the Church is placed in the new age demand new methods: these the layman has been helpful in discovering, and his aid in their development and application to the ease in hand is characterized by the ability which he gives to his private business. The integrity of the merchant and his breadth of view, the shrewdness of the counselor, the financial knowledge of the banker, the far-reaching outlook of the statesman, — these are at the service of the humanitarian work of the Church. That Christianity has secured the active support of a vast multitude of business men throughout Christendom is of the greater sociological importance, since the ultimate moral elevation, upon a continental scale, of the depressed THE SERVICE OF LAYMEN. 291 races of the world is at bottom a business enterprise, pos sible only upon a material basis. For conducting moral enterprises in distant parts of the world, there must be an unfailing supply of silver and gold — the very ' ' sinews of war." From the Christian point of view, a world-wide extension of those forces through which society is con structed and upon which it must securely rest is imprac ticable, unless there is a generally diffused altruistic spirit affecting both capitalists and men of small means. More important, indeed, than their benefactions is their altru istic attitude in holding their accumulations for social uses, so commending to all men that spirit of self-sacrifice for others which actuated the Founder of Christianity. When, however, native business sagacity is combined with a keen appreciation of moral values and business men recognize the priority of spiritual motives, the wealth is transmuted into Christian power, with its gift of education and the social betterment of the world. And when this result is so reached as to enlist a great many millions of laymen, Chris tianity, as compared with the non-Christian faiths and philosophies, is in a position of unique advantage, if a ques tion be raised of the survival of the fittest in social com petition. As to a possible contrast : — it may be said that the very theory of Brahmanism precludes the earnest and devoted priesthood from systematically utilizing to the utmost the practical talent of the lower castes, and so they are debarred from securing their cooperation for the possible extension of Hinduism as a world religion ; and the mendi cant monks of Buddhism, with all their spiritual qualities, have never so organized the laity as to have a large working body at hand to advance their faith, either in aggressive social reform or in the businesslike propagation of their system throughout the world; nor has the Chinese literary class so eminent in its intellectual discipline — occupying a position in regard to Confucianism analogous to that of the leaders of organized religions, — ever made an extensive 292 THE ATTITUDE TOWARD LABOR. enrollment of able men in other callings to extend to the four quarters of the globe the philosophy of their Classics; yet in Islam there are men of affairs, who in considerable numbers during different ages have sought most zealously to proclaim the prophet in those new lands into which they have entered in a business way or through military con quest. No other great religion is so well equipped as Chris tianity, through the activity of a great body of laymen, for ameliorating the social condition of mankind, and for the steady propagation of its own faith throughout the world: Christendom having a vast army of trained business men who are more interested in promoting an altruistic life than in anything else. CONTRASTS IN THE ATTITUDE OP THE GREAT RELIGIONS TOWARD LABOR. Must there not, however, be first a generally diffused material prosperity, and an accumulation of large capital in the hands of men most capable of effecting the organ ization of industry, as the material basis of society, and establishing a base for distant aggressive moral operations? Capital is no more needed for commercial adventure across the globe than for distant altruistic enterprise. The indus trial development of great races, and the accumulation of capital for promoting civilization, are essential factors in social advancement. Might not a question be easily raised, whether there has been an unspeakable loss to industrial Asia in the fact that, all told, some hundreds of millions of able bodied men, intellectually the brightest and morally the best — the nat ural leaders in social and industrial advancement, — during more than two thousand years, have been systematically relegated to a recluse life, living by Buddhist beggary rather than by intelligently developing the natural resources of their continent? Take it as it stands to-day. The LOSS THROUGH SACRED MENDICITY. 293 amazing statements are made by Eockhill that there are three lamas to every family in Thibet,1 and by Gilmour that more than one-half the present male population of Mongolia are lamas, and that the rule requires every third man.2 The withdrawal, throughout great nationalities, age after age, of vast numbers from industrial callings — the sweat of the brow at bread earning, — and their systematic support by the voluntary contributions of their neighbors, is a viola tion of that universal wholesome law of labor which is at the foundation of an advancing civilization. Nor can it be said that they fairly earn their living by the slight amount of education they give to their neighbors' children; and in respect to giving instruction in moral precepts, as far as they do so, it is not reasonable that it should take one man out of every two or three to tell the others how to behave, and get his living out of them for merely telling them. Not, indeed, that it is looked at in this way. The laity think rather or should think, according to what Gautama said, that withdrawal from the world is needful to a per fected life, and that extinguishing desire is the chief good, — and where such is the ideal scheme of the universe it is meritorious to feed monastic brethren : it being, in the the ory, not of the slightest consequence whether they render any equivalent whatever, even so far as to promote good morals in the communities about them, — the quiescent laity little thinking that the extinction of desires, if success ful, would put a stop to all possibility of an advancing civilization. To the eye of the traveler, what contrast is more obvious between Christian and non-Christian races than that of the relative material well-being of the industrial population? Does it not appear, upon the face of it, that the non-Chris tian systems have developed civilizations less progressive, as to furnishing remunerative industries, and improving the condition of the common people? Is he not an essen- 'Land of the Lamas, p. 215. New York, 1891. 'Among the Mongols, p. 221. 294 LABOR IN CHINA. tially uncultivated man whose life is so petty as to be unmindful of the fact that, beyond the horizon, there are more than two hundred and fifty millions of people who have no home and practically no clothing, and an addi tional population of more than six hundred and fifty mil lions who are half clad and who live in impoverished huts? So far as this relates to the working men of China and India, is not the fact connected with conditions precedent, intimately concerned with the religious systems held by a population of between six and seven hundred millions in these two countries? The powerful racial stock of China will never become rich through material products, until first made rich in Chinese individual character. If a great capitalist is so related to a multitude of small investors that their welfare may depend on his integrity, any lack of this moral qual ity stands in the way of industrial development. Is not this the trouble with China? There is reported to be little basis of commercial confidence on which to build up busi ness; mercantile honor existing through a system of guar anties, which is relied on rather than personal probity ; the conduct of business enterprises that depend on large pro duction and small profits being made impossible through widespread unreliability and private peculation.1 Jap anese cotton mills have, however, paid well in China, through being in charge of foreign management. Yet, upon a national scale, no success is possible in legitimate business enterprises without the cooperation of greater bodies of faithful and intelligent laborers than are available with their present hereditary traits and racial tendencies. Another thing which hinders the industrial development is the Chinese system of txation; by ages of custom, the collectors of revenue deduct their own pay before remitting, and this proves unfavorable to the establishment of new business, through the tendency of officials to secure the 'Tide Colquhoun's China in Transformation, pp. 256-9. New York, 1898. POVERTY OP WORKING MEN IN CHINA. 295 profits by a great and variable extortion. By this, work ing men are rendered unambitious about accumulating, and capitalists are compelled to league to some extent with violence rather than attend solely to manufacturing or mining. Were these obstacles removed, the business pos sibilities of the empire would sooner benefit the workmen by more remunerative employment. The elevation of the millions, their more comfortable feeding, clothing, housing, and the working of more than four hundred thousand square miles of coal-producing territory and exhaustless supplies of pure magnetic iron ore, would make a new China and in some respects affect industrial conditions throughout the world. Yet instead of this, the masses of the people of China are poor with a poverty of which the Western mind has no conception.1 The price of skilled labor is from ten to thirty cents a day, and unskilled from eight to ten cents. A carrier will walk with a letter thirty miles for eight cents. Boatmen will pull a boat against the current a hun dred and twenty miles, and walk back, for fifty cents. Throughout a vast population, the failure of one day's work is the failure of food.2 Meat is cheaper in China than in the United States, yet a Chinese laborer does not eat a pound of meat in a month. Steamed rice is the staple food, with a little cabbage in a great deal of water, and minute 'This paragraph is based upon the statement of Hon. Chester Holcombe, in the Youth's Companion, Boston, May 17, 1888, the writer being at that time Secretary of the American Legation at Pekin. Tide also Holcombe's "The Real Chinaman," pp. 310- 329. Intelligent travelers give it as their judgment that there is no time when one family out of four is not scant for food, — perhaps ninety millions being underfed. Secretary Wishard says, — "I never saw such poverty as I saw in China." 2The Hon. S. L. Gracey, late Consul at Poochow, says that there are multitudes who live on a dollar and a half or two dollars a month. A writer in Macmillan's Magazine states that in winter, when wages are so low that sufficient food cannot be bought to repair the muscular waste incident to labor, men sometimes hibernate by avoiding exertion, so getting on with little food. 296 LABOR IN CHINA. fragments of raw turnip for relish. The average meal does not cost over two cents for each person. There are two hundred millions of people in China whose food consump tion does not average, for each, over five cents a day. A workman's summer wardrobe costs three dollars. If he is not at work, he gets on for the season with twenty-cents' worth of rags. The house is one room1 for a family of five or six, with no floor, and no furniture save a table, one or two stools, and a brick bed. There is no chimney, and, except for cooking, no fire, even in winter, in a climate as cold as New York or Philadelphia.2 Dr. C. A. Stanley, of Tien Tsin, in a private letter to the present writer, says that in North China the houses are of mud or brick, constructed without regard to ventilation and dryness, but facing the south for winter heat ; that the average home has a kettle, a few bowls and chopsticks, a knife for cutting vegetables, a bread board and rolling pin, and gourds or dishes to hold water, oil, and salt; that the more wealthy are careless of cleanliness and the require ments of health; that a wardrobe and cupboard, box and table, bench or chair, are in most houses, although seldom found among the poor. 'The Eighth Census of Scotland (p. XXXIII), however, states that, of the entire population, one-third live in houses of one room, and that more than sixty-nine per cent, live in houses of one or two rooms. In Edinburgh thirty-three per cent, are in one room; thirty more in two rooms; and only nineteen out of a hundred in houses of more than four rooms. — Cited in Mitchell's Past in the Present, pp. 176, 177. 2A careful resume of the facts as to Chinese wage earning is to be found in Simcox's Primitive Civilizations, Vol. II, Chapter XXVII. As a contrasted condition, it is stated by the Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor (No. 53, July, 1904, pp. 704, 705) that 25,440 families of workingmen (comprising more than five persons each), in leading industrial centers in thirty-three states, averaged annually $827.19 income; and $768.54 expense, of which $326.90 was for food: the food items and details of other expense indicating that the average man has a degree of comfort unknown to China. OBSTACLES TO ADVANCEMENT. 297 The Chinese race as such is indomitable in its industry; persevering, economical, docile and contented;1 and the hard workers of the nation are deserving of a larger and more practical help from the literary or educated class, the officials and leaders in life, who really do little in the way of relief except in a sporadic way.2 Although there is no caste in China, yet the boundaries and spheres of the vari ous classes are clearly defined, and so practically recog nized and enforced that there is very little chance for any one to get out of the groove in which he moves.3 And if one attempts it, he is handicapped by the patriarchal fam ily system which prevents independent individual earning, and which compels him to conduct his own business in the interests of all his relatives without regard to their fitness to participate in his work. The prevailing ancestral wor ship not only tends constantly to over-populate the empire, but it leads the masses to abide near the graves of their ancestors which must be annually visited and decorated, so keeping workmen in constant close competition with each other for the scant means of living. The highly organized intellectual system which has mastered China and sustained the imperial throne, during twenty-five centuries, has from the beginning so crystallized conservatism as to effectually retard popular advancement along industrial and social lines, as well as the literary and civic and progress in the moral life of the people at large. When, however, com mercial confidence and modern methods of intercommuni cation open up the resources of the vast expanse of Asia, and assimilate the diverse interests of the varied popula- 'Address in Boston, April, 1895, by Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D. D., of the North China Mission. 2An agriculturalist, with two acres and a half, has about twenty-five dollars a year income above his living; his farm helper does well if he saves three or four dollars. He has no seventh day for a rest day. "United States Consular Reports upon Labor in Foreign Coun tries, III, 348. 1884. 298 LABOR IN INDIA. tions, the opportunities of a new era will favor the manual toilers of the empire. In India is not the caste system inimical to the interest of working men? The devout and philosophical leaders of thought and shapers of life in Southern Asia have so held down the great masses of the people by religious regulations maintained since the dawn of history and in force to-day, as to hamper not only their civic, intellectual and moral freedom, but limit also their industrial activities so that every man is held to what his ancestors have done for cen turies. Every carpenter's son must be a carpenter, and every shoemaker's son must stick to his father's last, not only for centuries but for millenniums. The lower of the four principal castes is perpetually subdivided ; there being, for example, forty-eight kinds of cattlemen, and ninety- eight kinds of carpenters. It would be in Europe much as if one man were to do nothing but drive nails, and another be always out of work unless using the cross-cut saw. Iron custom keeps a man in that social status in which he was born, each generation adding new links to the chain that is to be hung about the neck of the next generation. It is no question of what is right and best, but what custom approves.1 Individual will is merged in the will of the caste. A man acts not in adjustment to the needs of to-day, but in accord with the custom of past ages. This limits the means of living ; forbids a varied industry ; shuts up the desire for knowledge, there being no use in learning any thing else, since a blacksmith's boy at five must begin to make nails.2 The caste system, too, so extinguishes human 'For a full yet condensed statement of the impossibility of social progress under the caste system, vide Jones' India's Prob lem, pp. 26, 27; 46, 47. 'Industrial Effect of the Patriarchal Family System in India. — The incubus of caste in hindering industrial individual effort is made the worse by the Hindu joint-family or patriarchal system; which denies to individual members separate possessions or privileges, which fosters idleness, dissension, improvidence, and puts a ban upon individual activity. — Tide Jones' India's Prob lem, pp. 24, 25. EFFECT OP THE CASTE SYSTEM. 299 kindness between laborers, that when an Ahmednagar workman fell from a building, the other workmen, being of different caste, would not help him; an English soldier offered him water, and because he took it, he was disci plined by his own caste as soon as he recovered, and it was only at great expense that he kept himself from being turned out.1 In this way society is maintained at a stand still.1 No one really knows how many castes and sub-castes there are in India. In respect to legal codes there are three hundred unhomogeneous castes.2 Bruce, in his early letters, numbered a hundred and fifty, which would not eat nor drink with each other, nor associate with each other in any way. Mitchell enumerated four hundred and twenty in Travancore.3 It is often said in India, that there are a thousand castes. There are eighty principal subdivisions of the Sudra, with an incredible number of variations.4 These divisions are believed to be divinely instituted ; the Brahman being as unlike a Sudra, as a horse is unlike a donkey. Did not the upper caste proceed from the mouth of the Arranger of the. Universe? The soldier caste proceeded from his arms: and the merchants from 'Letters from India, by Henry J. Bruce, p. 84. Privately printed. Satara, 1879. "It is well enough," say the Hindus, "for God to ignore social distinctions, but not for man." — Cited in Hopkins' Religions of India, p. 507. 2The British Encyclopedia. "Hinduism, by J. Murray Mitchell, p. 192. •In the Madras Census Report for 1881, Sir William Hunter says that there are three thousand separate classes among the Hindus, so minute are the subdivisions. When it is taken into account that the natives of India are also divided by more than three score languages, and widely extended dialects as divisive as if distinct languages, and that every village is split by diverse religious service, it must appear that Hinduism has no social power for elevating a great people. From a sociological point of view, never did so many hundreds of millions of people ever stand in greater need of the unifying principles that underlie Christian civilization. 300 LABOR IN INDIA. his thighs. The serving class1 was created from the feet of Brahm that they might be obedient to the Brahmans, who have the right to command their hands, and — by the laws of Manu — to take their property. Before the Brit ish occupied India, the Sudras, in many parts of India, were not allowed to walk the public roads. The penalty for murdering one of the Sudras was the same as if he were a dog.2 Every seventh or sixth family of the two hundred and eighty registered millions in India is an outcast ; or, to use the term invented by the census bureau, there are forty or fifty millions who belong to the "depressed" classes, who are below the line of social respectability. In the Madras Presidency they comprise a fourth part of the pop ulation. The non-caste people live apart from the village. They are poor beyond description, ignorant, weak, down trodden, squalid, despised. There are two principal divi sions, — the Malah or Pariah, and the Madega or leather workers. Very rarely there is one who leases a little land, but the others work generation after generation for those who own the soil or those who commonly lease it, their ser- 'Twice-born are the Brahmans, the Warriors, and the Mer chants who keep cows and trade in money and goods; and the Sudra, the so-called un-Aryan people, are to serve the twice-born. 2The present every day condition of vast numbers of the Sudras, the laboring class of India, is pictured by missionary Gutterson of Melur, who, when camping near Mangulam, saw the going forth of the laborers from the village: — "Do they begin work with a hearty meal? Not they. A cup of cold rice gruel, or a handful of cold boiled rice, seasoned with red pepper, is all that they have, and they are glad enough to get even that. A dozen men and some young women are the first comers. They are sharpening their bill-hooks on the broad root of a banian tree near our tent, preparatory to their day's work of wood-cut ting in the mountains four or five miles away. The men are naked except a scanty cloth about the waist and a few rags over their shoulders. The women are not much better off. They will work all day, returning at nightfall with as much fire wood as they can carry on their heads, and to-morrow they will carry it from seven to ten miles to market, and receive from seven to ten cents for two days' labor." RECENT IMPROVED CONDITIONS. 301 vice being due by custom, although they are not hereditary , laborers or slaves. There is no fixed compensation, so much a day, but wages are at the will and discretion of the mas ter, after the annual harvest. The propriety of classifying the Hindus with the "back ward races" of the world is emphasized by their clinging so long to the caste system, which originated in what is so common, — the aiding of a father's work by his sons, gen eration after generation, until the parental calling comes to be considered as a heritage. This point of view was known to ancient Eome, to early France and England, and to the primitive peoples of America; in progressive civilization it was, however, soon lost sight of. Since, therefore, the pre dominant religious system of India is so entrenched within caste observance that it cannot exist if separated from it, Hinduism must be classified as a "backward" religious development, closely related to what is essentially the primi tive culture period of a great people. The industrial development of India has been favored by Christian occupancy, not only through public works, as road and bridge building and irrigation, but by English com mercial enterprise, railways, mining, the growth of cotton and tea, and the expansion of Indian commerce. The gov ernment of India, too, is interested in having useful trades taught to the young men of the country, and to this end liberal grants are made for industrial buildings and tools. This work has been supplemented by foreign philanthro pists residing in the country, there being established, as a gift from far away peoples in Christendom, nearly fifty industrial schools. Low caste children, through Christian ity, have been able to attend the public schools, so removing the stigma of their social degradation. Under culture they develop superior character and intelligence, — among the Telugus notably so ; some are successful teachers in North ern India; in various localities they rival the Brahmans in obtaining positions under the government, in railway service, or in the professions; non-caste women, when edu- 302 WORKING MEN IN CHRISTENDOM. cated, are greatly in advance of uneducated high caste Hin dus, or the women of Islam.1 As to the relation between Christianity and the hand- toilers of Christendom, the only pertinent inquiry that can be made is whether the average man may not be better situ ated than in non-Christian realms. If very much better conditioned now, the greatest improvement has been in recent centuries. Has it not been in social science, as it has been in the extension of commerce, in founding sys tems of finance, in the improvement of modes of travel, and in the practical application of scientific discoveries? The greatest advance has been made within a few genera tions. Is it not, however, true that the history of Christen dom shows that the laboring man has gradually come into new relations to politics, to schooling, to the social morali ties, to health and home, and that this has been wrought by the application of the principles of Christianity to the adjustment of labor problems? If, through silent revolu tions, in diverse circumstances, upon a large area, equality of condition has been more freely given to the average man in Christendom to enter upon the competitions of life, this improvement of his chance is the main thing. Does not the workingman in England, for example, live in a new world ? After the coming of the Bible into the hands of the populace in Christendom a few generations ago, it took time to determine whether the kings should rule the people or the people the kings ; that being happily settled, the peo ple began to debate what would improve their own condi tion. In more recent generations, those who have a com petence have cooperated with their fellows in the way of self-help through the introduction of a larger self-govern ment in the nation; this has tended to protect the legal rights of workingmen and to give them greater freedom of opportunity. The middle classes and leading peers of the realm have worked together in this mighty movement, — seeking to promote the permanent harmonious work of self- 'Chapter XXX, in Bishop J. M. Thoburn's India and Malaysia. GERMAN STATE INSURANCE. 303 governing bodies of citizens, that harmony which allows freedom for industrial development; and to-day Christian England is fully aroused to the work of elevating every one bearing the name of man in their happy isle, by the practi cal application of Christian principles to social life. Into the homes of the most thoughtful people has come a higher conception of what life is for. The public mind has become so sensitive to the wrongs under which working people have suffered in former generations, that the relief of those inju ries has come to be uppermost as a practical motive in directing the course of legislation and the conduct of gov ernment. To aid the manual laborer in his calling, to befriend him in misfortune, to minister to his intellectual and moral needs has come to be a paramount claim in the minds of those who shape national policy1. That every human being should have the means of exercising the pow ers and affections of man — self -culture, progress in knowledge and virtue, the means of health, comfort, and happiness, — was the ideal set forth by William Ellery Channing: the world has not far advanced beyond this statement of the highest social truth. If man is essentially 'An imperial illustration of this point is seen in the system of German State Insurance against accident, sickness, age and invalidity. Almost all of twenty millions of German workmen with their wives and children are protected and insured. The system is based on active Christian love, and the ideal of a king dom of social welfare. It was founded by the first German emperor and his great chancellor, Bismarck. It has been improved through the long and minute labor of the government. Especial progress and enlargement have taken place under the present secretary of state, Dr. Count von Posadowski Wehner. Such pre cautions against accidents are provided, that their number is much diminished. Invalids' homes, hospitals, consumptives' homes, and dwellings for workmen have been built. The rate of mortality has decreased because the people, not having to pay for their physicians, call on them more promptly and make more extended use of them. — Address at Harvard University, by Dr. Theodore Lewald, imperial commissioner to the St. Louis Expo sition of 1904. 304 WORKING MEN IN CHRISTENDOM. social by nature, created for friendship with his kind; if primitive forms of association have prepared the way for society in later ages; if the division of labor and mutual aid, found among the cells and organs of living bodies, are not more needful than the spirit of mutual aid in the social life of man;1 — at is to be looked for in an economic stage of civilization, that a highly organized society should so avail itself of the service of varied laborers that no one work ing apart need clash with the interests of others, but consti tute a part of a harmonious whole — a vital part of that progressive humanity which is but "a man who lives and learns forever. ' ' Christendom has come to know that those combinations of capital, and of honest, faithful, capable, and well-paid workmen, which alone make possible the world's great industries, can be made only where there is a certain degree of civil freedom, based upon principles iden tical with those which underlie the moral government of the universe. There are certain further points of contrast between the Christian and non-Christian attitude toward the working- man. Be it said, however, of Islam that labor is so highly honored that there can be no social caste; Mohammed not only partaking of the common labors but treating all men as equals, and so enforcing this doctrine in the Koran that among Moslems everywhere all men are on the same foot ing. Although Buddhism dissolved the bonds of caste, no mendicant was ever a hand-toiler. Jesus of Nazareth worked as a carpenter, supporting his mother. The Apos tle Paul earned his living at tent making.2 This ideal, so honored in the very founding of Christianity, is diametri cally opposite to the common usage of the Brahmans. And 'This point . may be further illustrated by that association among animals, which favors evolution and survival — every individual benefitting by the experience of all. — Consult M. Kro- potkin's Mutual Aid Among Animals, in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 28. 1890. 2Acts 18: 3. I Cor. 9: 18. I Thess. 4: 11, 12, and 11: 9. OPTIMISM AS A SOCIAL POWER. 305 it is with the literary class in China, from whom the rulers are selected, that Confucius has been always identified. Christendom has established many Institutes, Peoples' Palaces, Peoples' Clubs, and Associations for improving dwellings of workmen;1 and the training of skilled labor has been undertaken upon a large scale; these movements are practically unknown in non-Christian lands. Christian philanthropists have, moreover, opened a hundred and sixty-seven industrial schools, with an enrollment of more than nine thousand pupils, in the non-Christian parts of the world. Christendom, too, is the land of hope for working men. The literary class in China entertains no roseate view of the life chances of that immense population which is pre vented by poverty from schooling their children and gain ing the social and political prizes of the empire. The morning hymns of the early settlers of Hindustan have long since become but a tradition. The Sudras and outcasts of India expect nothing better from Brahmanism than what they have to-day. Christian philanthropists in India do not at first allude to life everlasting, they wait rather till their hearers find this life more desirable. The European ancients believed that the happiest era had gone by; the Hebrews and Christians reversed it, and set the Golden Age as the future goal. Will not the races that are the most hopeful, achieve most, — energetically planning for social, commercial, industrial conquest and leadership ? For a study in social science, what is of greater interest than the constitution of the leading races of mankind as related to the condition of their manual laborers and the 'The United States census of 1890 reported 6,141,892 families as owning their own homes, and there were 6,066,417 resident owners of land. There is probably no other country in the world that so favors the condition of the average man as America, where four hundred and seventy-eight families out of every thousand are freeholders. There are not less than five hundred and sixty local building and loan associations in the United States, with a million and a half stockholders, and gross assets to the amount of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars. 20 306 RELATION OP LEADING RACES TO LABOR. development of human society as seen from the standpoint of working men : — (i) Is not national thrift closely connected with equality of opportunity between citizens ? Is not the highest degree of material prosperity attained through individual liberty to make the most of one's insight into the possibilities of industrial success in new lines of achievement, and the power to adapt means to ends? These conditions are not favored by caste.1 How can the Hindus hope ever to win in any sharp industrial competition with races unhampered by caste? (ii) It has been remarked by Professor Alfred Marshall,2 that men of the Anglo-Saxon race, in all parts of the world, do more work in the year than others. An American work man accomplishes two or three times as much as an Asiatic in a day.3 The children of more than seventy generations of child-marriage and of depressed womanhood cannot com pete with the sons of the virile Germanic stock. How can it be otherwise than that the less enterprising peoples will be finally weeded out by a natural process? Not in a day, but it is finally inevitable. The difference, in the relative physique and mental energy and intelligence, between racial stocks, is based on causes that have been operative for more than two thousand years, and the difference has been notice able during some generations, and the long continued main- 'Does not the caste spirit characterize a low grade of civiliza tion? "One peculiarity," says Sir Henry Maine (Ancient Law, p. 183), "invariably distinguishes the infancy of society. Men are regarded and treated, not as individuals, but always as mem bers of a particular group. Everybody is first a citizen and then as a citizen he is a member of his order, — of an aristocracy or a democracy, of an order of patricians or of plebians; or, in those societies which an unhappy fate has afflicted with a special per version in their course of development, of a caste; next he is a member of a gens, house, or clan; and lastly he is a member of his family." 'Principles of Economics, Vol. I, p. 730. London, 1890. 'United States Consular Reports on Labor in Foreign Coun tries, Vol. 3, pp. 265, 346. Washington, 1884. MORALS AND LABOR. 307 tenance of the difference can have but one ending in final permanency of racial characteristics, and a permanent re manding of the weaker types to a lower grade of civilization. (iii) If a man's moral qualities put him to a disadvan tage with his fellows, his industrial opportunities are less ened; and if there are races spiritually defective through moral error, the very untrustworthiness of individuals in national groups must operate against them when industrial selection and the survival of the fittest come into play. Is not social progress impaired by what hinders intimate asso ciation and mutual helpfulness among men? Does not moral error ultimately diminish earnings and involve finally an irrevocable industrial loss ? (iv) If Christianity has been so many ages in reaching the present ground in its relation to labor, is it not proba ble that the non-Christian backward races will advance through voluntarily changing the conditions inimical to their highest prosperity? If not, can they escape perma nency of industrial loss ? B. THE ATTITUDE OP GREAT RELIGIONS TOWARD THE RELIEF OF POVERTY. A kindred contrast between Christian and non-Christian races, that appeals instantly to the eye of the traveler, is the difference in their attitude toward poverty. Is not the liberal gratuitous relief of individual cases of physical des titution, distress and infirmity, more common than benefi cence upon such a scale as to place great bodies of the human family permanently in circumstances more favorable for self-help ? We may, perhaps, say that unthinking bene factions to the poor, prompted by a generous desire for the well-being of others, are to-day as characteristic of the bet ter class of Chinese merchants and the best of the Brahmans as of the better class in Christendom in a former age. Yet 308 CONTRASTS IN POOR RELIEF. in Christendom the slow development of a beneficent mental habit during many generations has so affected the common alty, that an individual skeptic has no power of resistance but falls into the altruistic custom ; so that the hard business sense of Christian realms has been long at work in seriously attempting to solve the problem of poverty, working at it with a system and success utterly unknown to the non- Christian countries, — the movement rallying to its sup port many most efficient philanthropic helpers who do not yield an intellectual assent to the dogmas of Christianity. This, to be matched in China or India, would call for the general diffusion of an altruistic atmosphere throughout the marts of trade, to alleviate social sorrow and wretched ness by a myriad philanthropies as systematically adminis tered as mercantile business, in lieu of casual gifts to beggars. Are not the problems world-wide that pertain both to the improvable and to the unimprovable poor? Their solving belongs to the centuries, to the great races and to the great religions. Is it not, however, true that Christianity is the only wide-spread religion, or philosophy of life, that has seriously undertaken to solve the problem of the poor — seeking its own advancement as a scheme of faith solely through its sustaining a helpful relation to humanity? If late in coming to this position, what other great religion has been in advance of it ? "He who destroys the pride which says 'I,' 'mine,' passes into a world which is above the gods. ' ' Despite this ancient saying of their people, the Hindus of a hundred years ago were described by the first English philanthropists visiting their country as "exceedingly wanting in compassion and benevolence." And Bishop Heber wrote in 1823, that he never before had met a race of men who took so little interest in the sufferings of a neighbor not of their own caste. Yet no country in the world, containing nearly one-fifth of the human race, is in so great need of self- sacrificing service for the poor. There are always some mil- THE HINDUS. 309 lions among the forty or fifty millions of non-caste peo ple who are hungry. The President of an American theological school, residing twenty years in Southern India, reported to the author that it was not uncommon to look out upon his house lawn and there see fifty people liter ally crying for bread: — "They were persons habitually underfed. They point you to their sores, — some are lepers; there is a skeleton of a woman pointing you to her skeleton children. You know that if you feed them they will be hungry tomorrow; you know that if you feed them, there are a hundred thousand more as hungry beyond your sight. When I go touring, and take my food outside the tent to eat it, the hungry people gather and eye the food like jackals, eagerly snatching at a bone if one is thrown to them. There are multitudes who have only one meal a day for weeks together, and that is a kind of hay seed mush, like bran. ' ' Bishop Thoburn, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who has lived in Northern India for thirty years, states it as his belief that one person out of every four in India has never had sufficient food to satisfy him since he was born.1 One reason of this is found in that hopeless competition for a livelihood in which the dense Indian population is involved, in its pinched quar ters: the Aryans, who crossed the Himalayas and entered upon the fertile plains of the peninsula, not having been crowded for room until a relatively recent period. The census has more than doubled under British rule, through checking famine, pestilence, and intertribal wars; but the agricultural and industrial development of the country has not been so rapid as the increase of population. This con dition is aggravated by occasional drought. Hindustan depends on the southwest monsoon, bringing equatorial moisture; its failure is famine. Aside from Burmah and Assam in the east, and small areas near the Bengalese Eiver 'That one-sixth part of the Hindus go through life with insuf ficient food, is the statement of Sir William Hunter. — Report of the Tenth Indian National Congress at Madras, 1894, p. 49. 310 CONTRASTS IN POOR RELIEF.' mouth, and a narrow strip between Cape Comorin and Bom bay, India may be without rain, one, two, or even three years. If there is drought longer than one year, there is famine. Irrigation avails along the upper Ganges and in portions of Southern India, yet it has not been practicable on a large scale to introduce water upon remaining lands. Still, in a country where two crops, or even three, can be raised in a year, sometimes off the same land, two-thirds of the men of mature age, in a population of nearly three hundred millions, think that they have more chance to live comfortably upon their torrid plains than to migrate in large numbers, — from which indeed they are practically precluded through consideration of caste and immemorial custom. The government opens relief works, and the char ities of all the world pour in, upon famine years.1 The greatest sufferers are the outcasts, a fifth or a sixth of the whole population; and the Sudras next. And the caste — fifteen millions strong, — which for four-score generations has represented the intelligence of the Arranger of the Uni verse, and which is held to be by nature different in kind from the lowest of the people, is not only out of touch, but with rare exceptions out of practical sympathy with those upon whom poverty bears the hardest.2 There is indeed 'Some twenty-five years ago or more, the government spent more than six million pounds for relief in a small area easily reached; but soon after, through difficulty of communication, an expenditure of eleven millions could not hinder the starvation of more people than then resided in London. Yet, there is more water to be had for irrigation; and it is hoped that through a humane policy, the drought districts will be in some way per manently relieved. However dreadful it all is in detail, it is incident to the peopling of regions in advance of introducing the means for taking care of them, which not unfrequently occurs in Christendom; as in the south of France there were fifty periods of famine in the twelfth century. (Journal of the Statistical Society, June, 1889, translation from Naymarck.) 2"In times of need, in famine, in plague, or similar disasters, Hinduism offers no help." "Pass through a plague-stricken town day after day, and a dozen times a day, but you will never find THE BUDDHISTS. 311 among upper caste Hindus a flourishing "Society for the protection of the Cow," but none to protect men of lower castes. Meantime, Christianity is caring for more than thirty-two hundred Hindu lepers, seventy-seven per cent. of them by private benefaction ; Christian homes have been made for more than seven thousand Hindu orphans; and medical attendance by Christian philanthropists is now given to 842,600 Hindu patients in 2,453,020 treatments annually. Is not this work silently revolutionizing Hindu thought in many minds, preparing the way for a more rational treatment of disease and promoting the adoption of Christian modes of charity? Not yet, however, has Brahmanism extended like relief to the Hindus of lower caste, or the needy of other nationalities. That the peaceful religion of Gautama was so great a boon to Southern and Eastern Asia, breeding a certain courteous fraternity and gentle humanity in hundreds of millions of men during three-score generations, is a marvel ous tribute to the elements of truth in that system ; and cer tainly, in far away ages, had despairing paganism and the rampant wickedness of idolatrous peoples continued to bear sway until recent centuries, the sum total of social wretch edness would have been greater and the grinding of poverty harder to bear. With all the beautiful acts and words of Gautama — decrying luxurious living, putting contempt upon money, and commending deeds of kindness, — it is to be looked for that testimony should be borne to the benefi cent practices and open-handedness of Buddhist lands to-day, as it is so emphatically stated by Fielding in his delightfully sympathetic book on the religion of Burmah, The Soul of a People; the Burmese not being ambitious a Brahman priest visiting the sick, or comforting the bereaved." — Missionary Herald, Boston. It is, however, to be Said that Brahmanism is radically opposed to charitable organizations and institutions, affirming that all giving should be in secret; and it is claimed that of this indi vidual secret giving there is a great deal, — both as to the amounts bestowed and the number of the needy who are relieved. 312 CONTRASTS IN POOR RELIEF. about laying up money, very charitable, and giving largely for religious purposes.1 This happily coincides with the affirmation of a United States Consul in Siam a few years ago, that the monks support orphans and care for the child less aged, and that they are industrious, faithful and loyal in administering all charities which ancient usage has com mitted to them. It would be of interest, could we know more in detail of Burmah, whose population is one-half more than that of Sweden in an area slightly smaller. Sweden by law cares for all who are unable to support themselves, whether the diseased, the aged, or young chil dren; maintaining eighteen hundred and fifty houses of relief for some fifty thousand persons. In the volume of consular reports referred to, it is stated by Consul-General Merrill, that in Burmah there is no systematic method of distributing alms; that the blind, lame, and deformed live by begging on festal, funeral, and marriage occasions. The Et. Eev. E. S. Copleston, Bishop of Colombo, states that ordinary humanity is not to be found in Buddhist Cey lon, that kindness to a person wounded by an accident is a rare thing, although the monks have recently begun — through the pressure of competing faiths — to visit the pris ons and hospitals. Yet more than a hundred thousand medical cases are treated in Buddhist lands annually as the fraternal gift of Christians in America, besides one-third as many more by other gifts from Christendom. The attitude of Japan toward the poor is a model to all Buddhist lands, the government having given in 1893, through the central and local authorities six hundred thou sand dollars for poor relief, besides the regular poor tax of four hundred and fifty thousand more. The difference is seen, however, between an ancient Buddhist realm, the beloved land of flowers amid her perfumed seas, now awak- 'Pp. 117-121. Second edition. London, 1898. This charming book would more perfectly command confidence, could there be discerned in it a somewhat more accurate knowledge of Chris tianity in certain references the author makes to it. THE SUNRISE KINGDOM. 313 •ening to new philanthropic life, and a small commonwealth, planted in a virgin forest within a hundred years, Ohio, not one-third so large as Japan, and with a population only one-thirtieth as large. This American state gave to her poor in 1890 a larger sum than that of the Japanese tax; paying out two and a half million dollars for charity, including care for the insane and feeble-minded, the deaf, dumb and blind, for sailors and soldiers, asylums for orphans and children's homes. When Professor W. E. Griffis went to Japan in 1868, "Hospitals, orphanages, asy lums for the insane, for the blind, for the dumb, and sys tematic famine relief, were practically unknown; now the Christians of Japan have thirty-one orphanages, four homes for discharged prisoners, three blind asylums, three leper hospitals, two homes for the aged, five schools for the Ainos, four free kindergartens, ten industrial schools, ten other schools for the poor, ten boarding-houses for students, and fourteen hospitals : that is to say, a fraction, one two-hun- dred-and-fiftieth part of the population of the empire, sup port about one-fourth of the organized benevolence of the land, and that fraction of people consists of the Chris tians. ' n It is, however, to be said in regard to the Sunrise Kingdom, that it has almost ceased to be classified as Bud dhist; and that in the philanthropies, which constitute the glory of the western nations, it is likely soon to win a fore most place. In China, while Confucianism is the religion of the learned, the common people have a compound faith in part Taoist, in part Confucian, and in part Buddhist. There are, therefore, in China, a great many Buddhist mendicant monks, with their temples. At Canton, Bishop Smith found the Buddhist monks living in the suburbs near the 'Dr. Griffis was the first foreigner called to Japan under the charter oath of the mikado, to assist in relaying the foundations of the empire. As an educator he was four years at Nippon, one in the interior, and three at Tokio. The citation from his words in the text, is therefore the testimony of one in a position to know the old as well as the new. 314 CONTRASTS IN POOR RELIEF. most pitiable sights of human want; living in idleness, without humane interest or care to relieve the wretched.1 One of the saddest sights in Pekin is that of the houseless poor huddled together at the Beggars Bridge, not far from the Imperial palace and near the quarters of a great num ber of Buddhist monks. At Urga, the Buddhist sacerdotal town of Northern Mongolia, with a population of seven thousand, there are vast numbers of living and dying beg gars. In that cold country they winter in the open market place; when dead, their bodies are dragged to some ravine and eaten by the dogs.2 That an animal indifference to suf fering on the part of others is a Chinese characteristic is gen erally agreed upon by Western residents in the empire ; yet they cannot be worse than the ancient Greeks, so polished, so callous, and the highly civilized, hard hearted Eomans. In the great Celestial cities there are swarms of beggars everywhere ; they go into the shops armed with gongs ; some times there is a beggar king, like Fuhchan, whose business it is to keep the gongs away from a shop at so much a year. ' ' One cannot pause on the street or in the doorway without being solicited for alms by the wretched, the blind, the deformed;" "tramps and beggars are a recognized body, and have a certain place in the affairs of this empire ; they are formed into guilds, with a leader, rules, and compacts. ' '3 The Hon. Chester Holcombe, late Secretary to the United States Legation at Pekin, in stating that there is no public care for the poor, remarks that two-thirds of the popula tion would apply for admission to almshouses within a month, if any were opened in which they could be as well fed as in America, and that if the Chinese prisons were as good as those in Europe, two-thirds of the population would 'As in India sanitation is practically unknown among the natives, so it is in China. The intellectual leaders of Asia, the Brahmans, Confucianists, and Buddhist monks, agree together to neglect sanitation among seven hundred millions of people. 2Gilmour, Among the Mongols, p. 130. 3At Hong Kong, and at Ningpo. United States Consular Reports on Tagrancy and Public Charities. Washington, 1893. KEANG-SOO AND NEW YORK. 315 plan to go to jail and to stay there. While there are no taxes for the relief of the poor as in Christian lands, the emperor gives a small sum to each province to relieve the friendless aged. And in times of scarcity, says Dr. Doo- little, there are wealthy natives who sometimes provide for the sale of rice to the poor at a greatly reduced price. There is a native asylum for the ragged poor on the east side of Canton, and there are Cantonese soup kitchens in winter. The province of Keang-soo, which contains Nankin and two treaty ports, is not quite so large as the state of New York, and has more than six times the population. Consul- General Leonard says that there is at Shanghai1 no general legislation, and there are no regulations affecting begging or dispensing charity, that a beggar chief is held responsible for the conduct of beggars in a given district, that on the first of each month he collects from the houses and shops within his district a voluntary contribution, varying from ten to fifty cents, for which he gives a formal receipt, to be posted within the house or shop, exempting the holder from importunings for the balance of the month. On stated days the chief doles out to the beggars what he has collected, — less his commission. This does not interfere with begging at city gates, temples, and public places. There are various refuges for the poor, but they are, as a rule, supported by guilds or private societies. There are homes for the aged, the insane incurables, and the blind. There are also estab lishments for destitute children. In New York, however, where (with Pennsylvania) there are more foreign-born poor than in any other equal area in America, the state has established a plant for country poor houses and city alms houses which in twenty-three years cost sixty millions of dollars, and the poor relief in one year amounted to $3,319,- 864. During a recent period of twenty-three years, the sys- 'This city has an export and import trade amounting to $225,000,000 a year; being the emporium for the Yangtse valley, which contains a third part of the Chinese population and a third part of the resources of the empire. 316 CONTRASTS IN POOR RELIEF. tematic poor relief averaged more than two million and six hundred thousand dollars a year, it being in the last year of the series more than three millions and a fourth; in the relief plant the state has invested more than seven and three- fourths millions of dollars. Two hundred and seventeen charitable institutions in New York State hold real and per sonal property amounting to about twenty-six millions; their receipts in one year were more than seven millions and a quarter, and they supported more than fifty- three thousand persons, of whom more than half were under sixteen years of age.1 Beside these we have seventy-seven New York hos pitals, with a plant costing $17,483,151 ; and net receipts for 1890, $3,399,502, of which $1,288,316 came in private gifts within the year. The New York City hospitals have six thousand beds, and there are thirty-four dispensaries, with 504,990 free patients in 1890. New York City gives away eight million dollars a year in charity through eight hun dred and fifty relief agencies;2 three hundred and thirty institutions dispense four millions, besides the municipal charities of a million and a half. Or, instead of Keang-soo, take the province of Shan-se, a little larger than New York State in area, with a population nearly three times as large ; this commonwealth of the Hudson and the Mohawk is not three hundred years old; the Chinese province is of hoary antiquity, and it is poor and often famine stricken, although it has within its doors the most remarkable resources in coal and iron to be found anywhere upon the globe. Subscriptions in the larger cities of China maintain por ridge kitchens, "warm-houses," orphanages, and homes for widows, as reported by the President of Tien Tsin Univer sity. Consul Leonard of Shanghai speaks of native hos pitals and homes for the aged, as provided by private gifts in most cities. 'Figures of 1890: of these institutions, eighty-seven are for children and twenty-five for the aged. 2There are sixteen hundred and twenty-four philanthropic 'organizations in New York City, as listed by the Charity Organ ization Society. HANKOW AND ST. PETERSBURG. 317 Missionary Hill reports thirty-five hundred and eighty- three subscribers in Hankow who support six institutions by monthly payments ; that one institution has an income of forty-three hundred dollars a year, paid in by five hundred and eighty-three subscribers ; and that sixty-five tons of rice were given by native charity to the poor of Hankow in 1892. This missionary believes with Consul Leonard that the other great cities of China maintain, to a greater or less extent, similar charities. Hankow would, however, have given six ty-four times as much if it had been a Christian city, and had been as benevolent as St. Petersburg. The Eussian city is but one-third larger in population, yet their charities cost $6,680,000 in 1889 ; there being in the city not less than one hundred and forty-six asylums for children, ninety for unfortunate adults, and fifty-five hospitals. Were the Celestial Empire as systematic and generous in its charities as the United States, there should be two hun dred native blind asylums in China to-day and more than nine hundred hospitals for insane patients. Were Confu cian China, were Taoist and Buddhist China, as self-helpful as Christian America, there would be to-day only five per sons to each thousand in the empire enrolled among the dependent classes. Such facts must be known to well-to-do Confucianists, who are among the most capable men in the world in matters of thrift, but who have been so occupied as to give less attention to social problems than if studies in social science, history, ethics, civics and political economy had earlier gained an honored place in civil service examina tions. The most progressive merchants, scholars and states men in China welcome such Western philanthropists as help solve their social problems.1 Christianity has planted thirty-two medical schools, and sixty hospitals are 'It scarcely need be said that European residents in the treaty ports speak of the average Chinese merchant as comparing well with men of his class in other parts of the world, as to his neighborly good will. That he is generously disposed is appar ent; and when the intellectual acumen of China is given to social studies, a new era will open in Chinese philanthropy. 318 CONTRASTS IN POOR RELIEF. maintained. In the missionary life of Dr. Kerr of the Presbyterian mission in China, over seven hundred and eighty thousand patients have been treated, with more than forty-eight thousand surgical cases. More than a million and a half patients now annually receive Christian care. It is a matter of much interest that the Empress Dowager has recently given $7,500 to the new Union Medical College; her attention to western medical practice having been for some years secured by the excellent service of the London Mission Hospital corps in the palace. There seems to be some doubt whether Islam, although it is intrenched in the northern and western provinces of China, will ever effectively help solve the local poverty problem; neither in relative point of numbers nor positive moral influence has it greatly affected the bulk of the Celes tial population. Yet Islam is throughout the world emphatically a religion of almsgiving. Its fundamental relation to the system appears in the very earliest chapters of the Koran. Of the first disciples many were poor, says Macdonald, and they were better eared for than poor Chris tians of the same period; and if their charities have been unorganized, system too is wanting, in many other things Moslem; yet if beggars have always abounded, there has been relatively little want in Islam.1 Very little, when com pared with Confucian peoples and the castes of India. This Moslem almsgiving was once compulsory, now it is expected that, of the faithful, every one will give a fortieth part of his yearly income.2 The gifts are for the benefit of Mos lems only.3 In the empire the collection is made by the Turkish government. This is not, however, needed in India, where the Mussulman care well for their poor.4 In 'There are no paupers, says Eliot (Turkey in Europe, by Odys seus, p. 190, London, 1900) ; giving alms is not a mere theoretical obligation, but an essential religious duty really discharged. 'Studies in a Mosque, by Stanley Lane Poole, p. 95. "Sura IX, 60. 'The Faith of Islam. Edward Sell, p. 222. ISLAM. 319 the Turkish empire, there are individual givers who are most generously disposed. An Irish famine has been relieved by Turkey as well as by America. Of the varied requirements of Islam — the bath, the creed, prayer, pil grimage and almsgiving, — the latter is the only one affect ing the condition of others ; so that, if the religion had been to an extraordinary degree altruistic, would not much more have been made of it by the very capable men who have managed its affairs during more than thirty-eight genera tions ? The population of the Turkish empire to-day is not very far from that of Great Britain. The annual charitable con tributions of the empire, outside of Constantinople, ought to be fifteen million dollars every year, were Islam as thoughtful of the poor as British Christianity. Yet in all Asia Minor there are no public institutions for the sup port of the poor or the unfortunate; there are no work houses, no asylums for the insane, the blind, the deaf and dumb, or the idiotic, although the larger cities maintain certain hospitals by subscription.1 If Constantinople were as helpful to the poor as London, in proportion to popula tion, the city on the Bosphorus should have some five hun dred and fifty charities, a hundred and seventy of which should disburse annually more than three and a half million dollars : among other things there should be twenty-five hos pitals, nineteen charities for the blind, twenty-four orphan ages, and twenty-one industrial schools. The population of Pennsylvania is not far from that of Turkey in Europe : were Islam as philanthropic as Pennsylvanian Christianity, there should be to-day, scattered throughout European Turkey, not fewer than ninety hospitals at a cost, for the plant, of some twenty millions of dollars; and eighty- eight institutions for the aged, and for needy children ; and the annual expenditure for the dependent classes should be some six millions of dollars. Were Islam a match for 'United States Consular Reports, Labor in Foreign Countries, p. 267, Vol. 3. 320 CHRISTIANITY AND POOR RELIEF. Christianity in caring for the sick poor, there should be a quarter of a million cases of free medical attendance annu ally in Constantinople, as in Boston, a smaller city. Chris tianity to-day is giving free medical treatment to more than a third of a million cases annually in the Turkish empire. In further contrast between Christian and non-Christian peoples in their relation to poverty, note the slow develop ment of the altruistic attitude of Christendom. Inheriting the Hebrew Sacred Books with their ideas of a Moral Gov ernor, a Suffering Messiah, a divine kingdom, and other fundamental tenets, Christianity inherited also the Hebrew idea of providing generously for the poor. The Jew dedi cated to God not only a tenth, but with his ecclesiastical and civic tax, his annual altruistic payment amounted to> nearly a third of his income. That the individual should live for society was fundamental in the Hebrew common wealth. Orphans were cared for by system, and a dowry was provided for female orphans. Christianity, as to char ity, learned nothing from the Eoman Empire: although. three hundred and twenty thousand men fed upon the public corn, the tribute of conquered, peoples, in the time of Julius Caesar; and money was poured out of plethoric purses when the Fidenaen theatre fell, and when Pompeii was buried ; yet there was no system in caring for the poor, as such, till Christianity organized the work.1 When Julian, the apostate, sought to revive the heathen cult, and exhorted a debauched pagan priesthood to go to preaching like the Christians, he also announced to his empire that their mythology could never recover itself and compete with Christianity, unless those who believed it should take better care of the poor by the erection of almshouses and hospi tals. In the time of Justinian, it appears from the Insti- 'Uhlhorn's Christian Charity in the Ancient Church, pp. 4, 5.. New York, 1883. Athens was the only community known to classical history in which there was systematic municipal or organized charity; the lame, the halt, the blind, whose property was less than a specified sum, receiving a daily portion from the public treasury. EARLY MUNICIPAL CHARITIES. 321 tutes that the Christians had established charitable homes for the aged, for widows, for foundlings, for orphans, for strangers, and for the sick. It is a matter of history, that, from the time of our Lord till near the close of the Middle Ages, the Church alone was the almoner of God's bread- giving to the poor. There are certain watermarks of Chris tian activity in behalf of the unfortunate, found in the records of the councils and in the general laws of the Church, which testify, in the absence of statistics, to the point. It was, relatively, not long ago that the .municipalities of Europe became so Christianized as to undertake the work borne so long by the Church ; this is the general statement, although there were exceptions, like Norway and Sweden, which cared for the poor by some system even before the advent of Christianity. The action of the state in England, first traceable in the ninth and early in the fourteenth cen turies, did not get fair footing till the time of Elizabeth, and it was almost a hundred years later in France, under Louis XIV. It is impossible even to allude to the fascinating literature of poor relief in Austria, in Bavaria, in Belgium, in the low- lying windmill lands, and in the world of Olaf and the Vikings. So great is the contrast to medieval Europe and the pagan centuries, that Lief de 's Charities of Europe reads like an Arabian tale; and faces, like those of Immanuel Wichern and Father Zellar, appear to us as glorified by their self-devotement. The story is every way more won derful than that of the knights of chivalry. The feudal lords of charity during some generations past in Europe are deserving of the fealty of all mankind. In France, hospitals in great numbers have been supported throughout the nation since the time of the Crusades. The Chinese province of Kwang-tung, in which are the treaty ports of Canton and Swatow, is about two-fifths the size of France, and in 1886 the difference in population was less than half a million. Kwang-tung is one of the most productive of the 21 322 CHRISTIANITY AND POOR RELIEF. Chinese provinces, with a vast output of silk, tea, coal and iron. If the doctrine of Confucius were as productive of humanitarian good works as Christianity is in France, we should find that single province of China paying $2,260,000 a year for the relief of neglected childhood, and $34,965,000 a year for the direct relief of the poor, supporting eleven hundred and ninety hospitals and hospital homes, and employing a hospital force, with assistants and servants, of more than thirty thousand persons.1 Italy in 1886, had three-fourths of a million people less than the Northwest Provinces of India in 1872. If the sociological results of Brahmanism were as good as Christianity produces, there would be in Northern Hindu stan, to-day, at least fifteen thousand charitable institutions (other than educational or religious), long since founded by the Hindus, and now sustained by them at an expense of $16,000,000 a year. In 1880, the gross investment of the Italian charities, in real estate and cash capital, was $359,- 217,254 ; of which $310,616,269 was for philanthropic pur poses not educational or religious. The sum total was in creased thirty-three millions of dollars in ten years follow ing, and must, at this time, somewhat exceed four hundred millions of dollars. How intensely alive is the Italian spirit of Christian charity is shown by the increase in the amount given to create new foundations. About three and one- third millions of dollars a year were given during the decade prior to 1892. Of these new funds, nearly twelve millions of dollars were for hospitals, four millions for poor- houses, three millions and three-fourths for day nurseries and kindergartens, and more than five millions and a quar ter to institutions for distributing alms. In England and Wales twenty-two persons out of a thousand receive aid; in Italy twenty-six out of a thousand.2 'The figures upon French charities are found in the report to the International Congress, Chicago, 1893, presented by the eru dite M. Herbert Valleroux. 'Ibid; in the peculiarly satisfactory report of Egisto Rossi. ELBERFELD. 323 About half a century ago, Daniel von der Heydt, a Ger man banker in Elberfeld, invented a system for the care of the poor, which diminished the local paupers from four thousand to ten hundred and sixty-two, during the time in which the city increased from fifty thousand to seventy-one thousand, and it effected a saving to the city of some $25,000 a year. By this system every four paupers are classed in a precinct with an overseer, whose acceptance of the office may be legally enforced; it is his business to see the four once in two weeks. He records their circumstances, he is their friend and advisor, he requires their good behavior, and promptly brings them before the court if they are vicious and idle. The precincts are united in districts. The precinct overseers and their district chairman decide what aid shall be given to each man 's four paupers for two weeks to come, and only for that time; every case coming up new once in two weeks. There is then a Central Admin istrative Board, in which the municipal government is rep resented; they oversee the districts. There is, besides, a Business Department, which maintains a bookkeeping sys tem, recording all the facts about each pauper, and the relief given. This department pays out all the money and gives all orders for supplies. The officers are unpaid, except so far as a few are required to give all their time to these duties, and that for considerable length of time. This system, or such modification of it as may be requisite to suit local conditions, has been widely adopted in the princi pal cities throughout Germany. In Hamburg, with six hundred thousand population, there are fifteen hundred precinct overseers, ninety district chairmen, nine circuit chairmen, a central board of twenty members, and a busi ness department of sixty officials and twenty clerks: a total force of sixteen hundred and ninety-nine persons. In Dresden, with a population of 276,522 (1890), there are four hundred overseers for fifteen hundred and eighty- three paupers. There is a society of four thousand mem bers to prevent pauperism and street begging ; they have a 324 CHRISTIANITY AND POOR RELIEF. central office to which all applicants for relief can be referred, and where there is kept full information concern ing destitute persons. There is also an institute for volun tary helpers, and a large body of women have entered into the work. A rent savings-bank has been established; and workshops opened for those needing employment; and houses have been built for free rental to needy people. There is also in Dresden a Central Bureau for Poor Belief and Charity, with which more than fifty local benevolent societies cooperate. This Central Charitable Bureau has been also introduced into several large German cities.1 By the law of the empire, all citizens are maintained who need it. Through the scientific administration of charity, Berlin has in effect banished poverty, having no slums, no starv ing or shelterless people, and no beggars. The German emperor is the leader in supplying work and relief, in estab lishing popular recreation-gardens, pension funds for the aged, insurance for working men, and asylums. A general movement like that of Elberfeld, in extending throughout a great Christian empire, marks a new era. The energies of the benevolently disposed in Christendom have been so concentrated, for many ages, upon the great ques tions of human rights, of civil and religious liberty, of slavery, of peace and war, and the agitations of social reforms upon a great scale, that there has been little leisure for considering the problem of poverty except in its rela tion to momentous present questions in debate; but the present possibility of finding one business man to act as a good Samaritan for four families of poor neighbors, and to do this in the length and breadth of one of the mightiest political powers in the world, and to do it during a long term of years, indicates that Christendom has indeed set to 'These facts are compiled from valuable papers by Dr. Mun- sterburg of Hamburg, by Dr. Thoma of Freiburg by L. F. Sey- ffardt, and by Dr. Victor Bohmert, chief of the Royal Saxon Statistical Bureau, Dresden, pp. 191-209. Report of International Congress of Charities. Chicago, 1893. "considering" THE POOR. 325 itself the task of solving the poverty problem. The devel opment of Social Science Associations, the covering of the great Christian nations with a network of Charity Organ ization Societies, the rapid growth of the University Settle ment work, indicate that the trained intellectual force of Christendom is now being brought to bear for the system atic relief of the improvable poor. Great bodies of phil anthropists throughout the most progressive portions of Christendom, now meet statedly to discuss the prevention of pauperism, what to do with the children of the poor, the establishing of homes for the homeless, industrial training, and whatever relates to juvenile crime, vagrancy, reforma tory training and discipline, and the upbuilding of schools for nursing and hospital service. The personal sympa thetic identification of the most intelligent and most thrifty with those who lack knowledge as well as bread, and doing it steadfastly throughout the year in very extended dis tricts; and the employment of experts for the study of the causes of poverty and social distress; and the attempt to put the improvable poor into a permanent condition of self- support by some plan carefully thought out by practical people accustomed to do business; — these are the aims sought through the cooperation of all charitable agencies, whether private, ecclesiastical, corporate, or municipal; so bringing the rich and the poor into mutually helpful rela tions, — all the poor who are willing to work being thought fully sought out, and those unable, but willing to work, carefully cared for. The nineteenth century was the work ingmen 's century, said Gladstone; it was also the century of the hopeless poor. There is no finer illustration of the trend of Christian charity in the new age than that which has appeared in the Teutoburger Forest, relating as it does to a purely agricul tural district. It will interest every one who has seen Thur- man's magnificent picture of the Eeturn of the Victorious Germans from this ancient realm of the wood. It is not many ages ago that this part of Westphalia was peopled 326 CHRISTIANITY AND POOR RELIEF. by the most competent savages on the globe, who generation after generation contended fiercely against Christianity. In the Eavensberger land is Bethel, whose map is dotted with Bible names which mark the cottages of mercy. Heermann, the blind peasant, introduced here the forces which promoted the spiritual life of his neighbors. Hither came Pastor von Bodelschwingle, who made a practical application of Christianity to this densely peopled agricul tural district. Here upon a hill in the beech wood we find a Colony of Epileptics. It is no asylum or charitable insti tution, but a collection of cottages for fourteen hundred afflicted people, who have an opportunity to earn their live lihood by a great variety of industries, by such work as they can do between the attacks of the disorder that brings them here. And their living is pieced out by thousands of Chris tian farmers, who delight to load up their great German wagons with food for God's sick folk. And here, as natu rally as the springing up of the wheat, we find concomitant charities. Not to speak of the Labor Colony, and the Asso ciation Workman's Home, experiments in practical soci ology, we see, in the immediate neighborhood of the epilep tic cottages, the Westphalia Brotherhood of Nazareth, a 'house of trained nurses who are ready to serve God at the sick bed. The men, too, are specially fitted to engage in a variety of other services. They are self-devoted to lives of usefulness, living for others, and not hired to do it. Here, too, is Sarepta, the Westphalian Mother-house for training Deaconesses. They become experts at nursing, and in various forms of parochial helpfulness; five hundred of them having gone from this house to Africa, America, Holland or France.1 In this German Holy Land, there is scarcely a family that has not a son or a daughter who has 'There are in Germany fifty houses of deaconesses, comprising ten thousand ministering women, all trained to do nursing, and to be useful in various forms of parochial or educational service. Of the Moravian Deaconess House at Emmaus, their workers are in the Himalayas, in Syria, and in Central America. WESTPHALIA. 327 gone forth to become a ministering one in some form of lay service ; not to make money by, but to follow a calling from God. Many of them have become foreign missionaries, and those who do not go deny themselves to support those who do go. A peasant girl has been known to walk ten miles to a missionary meeting, and fast for the day to save half a penny for the contribution box. This happy land is peo pled by musical hosts, with all kinds of instruments and well-attuned voices; they are practicing to join the celes tial choirs. They rise at two o'clock of a summer morning and journey from distant farm lands, coming up to Bethel with hundreds of instruments, and their singing is like lis tening to the angels of God, so simple it is, and so heart felt, and as unassuming as the caroling of birds. And they pay as well as pray. Here, a little while ago, they raised two thousand pounds in a fortnight for a Baby Castle to house a hundred epileptic little girls. The money was given in pennies, four hundred thousand pennies were brought in, each one a thank-offering for one healthy child of the Eavensberger stock, and sometimes two pennies for a child now gathered to the Heavenly fold. This shows the power of Christianity to-day ; and, in respect to the history of Germany, it is related to the baptism of Wittekind at the gate of Westphalia.1 The Chinese province of Chihli is the one in which Pekin is situated. It is six hundred and twenty-nine square miles larger than England and Wales. The population is about the same. If the outcome of Confucianism is as good as that of Christianity, then there must be to-day some forty millions of dollars a year given to relieve the poor in Chihli, of which seven-eighths is paid by the government, and the remainder by endowed charities representing (at four per cent.) a capital of $113,386,700 laid by for the perpetual use of the poor. If Chihli cannot make this showing, Con fucianism is not so good as Christianity, as a humanitarian scheme. 'Consult A Colony of Mercy. J. Sutter. New York, 1893. 328 THE CHARITIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. It is estimated that the total amount raised in England annually for charitable purposes is not less than fifty mil lions of dollars, seven-tenths of it being London charity.1 The annual cost of the London charities, says Mr. Arnold White,2 is more than that of the Swedish government, — the king and his court, the army and navy, the school system, the Church, and the interest on the Swedish debt. The mere index to the Charities Eegister and Digest of London comprises seventy-seven closely printed pages in double columns, and there are eight hundred and twenty-three pages of descriptive text. Within a small area, not far from the size of Michigan, and with fifteen times as many people in it, there are not less than twenty-eight hundred and fifty-three charitable institutions, besides nine hundred and thirty-four small endowed charities in the parishes of London. In the analysis of 3,283 London charities, there are found : — for relief in physical affliction, 234 charities (115 of which are for the blind) ; for relief in sickness, 522 ; for relief in distress, 1,011 (including 143 orphanages, 452 other homes for children, 177 charities for the aged) ; for relief in moral infirmity (including 694 for women), 908; to befriend young women, 405; to befriend working men and women, young men and lads, 194; to protect animals, nine. Free medical consultation is annually given by the London dispensaries to more than a million patients, if not indeed practically to all the sick poor in the city as occa sion may require.3 Half a million London patients are annually furnished an average of thirty-one days of the 'Mr. Frederick Martin, and Edward Dennison. 'Problems of a Great City, p. 245. London, 1887. Upon pp. 257, 258, are tables relating to a thousand and thirteen charities with an annual disbursement of twenty-one and a half million dollars. "There were from four-fifths of a million to a million patients annually, with thirty-five dispensaries, about fifty-five years ago in a smaller London. — British Encyclopedia. There are now forty-one free dispensaries, and forty-four with many free patients. THE CHURCH, NOBILITY, AND FREE CHURCHES. 329 best medical care in four hundred and ninety-six hospitals.1 This English care for the poor pertains to a small area. Japan is two and a half times larger than England and Wales, with a population a third larger: with forty thou sand monks as leaders, what commensurate charities can Buddhism show? India is twenty-three times larger, with nine times the population, what has Brahmanism done for the poor in thirty-five hundred years ? Turkey is larger in population, what has Islam done for the poor to match Eng lish philanthropy? Three features are notable: the share wrought by the English Cfiurch, by the Nobility, and by the Women of the nation. The work of the Church is united, compacted, easily handled. Its efficient workers busy themselves in helping the cooks, the laundry and dairy women of the north of England ; in providing homes for the waifs and the strays of society; in reclaiming tramps, criminals, inebri ates ; in rendering help to the deserving unemployed, and in furnishing a score of homes for them in advanced life; in caring for more than three thousand hopeless women picked up from the street within one year; in systematic work in preparing whatever will divert the weariness of hospital patients, and make life more bearable to the inmates of workhouses. The three great societies for women and girls are found in all the larger parishes in the kingdom. In twenty-five recent years, the Church of Eng land gave nineteen millions and ninety-one thousands of dollars to maintain nursing institutions, cottage hospitals, convalescent homes, orphanages, sisterhoods, deaconess insti tutes, reformatories, penitentiaries, and as gifts on Hospital Sunday. Fifty-three societies are reported in aid of various forms of domestic humanitarian service. Similar work is conducted by the Nonconformist bodies, which are so strongly intrenched in the history of their country, con nected as they have been with great providential move ments which have been of definite good to the nation. 'Mulhall. 330 THE CHARITIES OP GREAT BRITAIN. Their devotion, their intensity of life, their practical work ing at the problem of the age — what to do with the improvable and the unimprovable poor, — rally to their sup port a vast army of philanthropic women. This great movement is but the intensifying of the traditions of every noble home in England, which have never failed in dealing with the poor in great liberality. The castles and halls of England still maintain hospitable rites that have never been omitted since the feudal ages. By force of hoary centuries of custom the hungry are fed, the ragged are clothed, and the sick neighbors are nursed. This universally recognized obligation goes far to create a basis for a generous philan thropic service in accordance with modern scientific meth ods. And there is never a lack of titled persons well known throughout the kingdom as spiritually minded, devout and thoughtful philanthropists, to take the initiative in any new humanitarian movement that is commended by reli gious authority. Frances Power Cobbe once testified that nine women out of ten of the better class in England would, if they had the choice, oftener speak of duty and religion than on any other themes. And, says Miss Louisa M. Hub bard,1 it is an immemorial custom for women of wealth and leisure to devote a considerable portion of their time and substance to the benefit of their needier neighbors. As an illustration, the Needlework Guild enrolls seven thousand women, mostly of the upper classes, who agree together to make garments for the needy. The Mildmay Association of Women Workers in London is composed of fourteen hun dred deaconesses without vows, who give their entire time to work among the poor. They sustain twelve principal missions, with nearly a score of special forms of service. Nor is this Association a beggar at the doors of British benevolence. It is itself British benevolence personified, a personal ministration of God's money in the hands of its members. Women of wealth, or at least of ample means, join this Association to bless the poor, instead of squander- 'Woman's Mission. THE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OP ENGLAND. 331 ing money in fashionable follies, and it is a holy fashion among the well-bred people to give them all the money they need without being asked for it. Woman's Mission, as prepared by the Baroness Burdett- Coutts for the Chicago Exposition, and published in Lon don, 1893, is a remarkably well-made book; a handsome royal octavo volume of nearly five hundred pages, devoted to the details of woman's work in England. In preparing it, out of some thousands of societies, 1,164 were selected as most likely to respond to inquiries ; for example, — 362 societies in aid of children, 102 in aid of girlhood, 130 for the friendless, 200 to aid womanhood, and 62 orders of sis terhoods, or deaconess houses. Satisfactory returns were received from only 390. Two hundred and ninety of those reported 84,129 voluntary workers, and 4,814 paid assist ants. Three hundred and sixty-three reported 2,546,984 persons as benefited in one year. One hundred and eighty- seven reported the number benefited since the organization of the societies, — • 19,046,967. Eighty-one societies reported their expenses, since foundation, at between ten and eleven million dollars.1 There are, by a carefully prepared and most conservative estimate, in the English-speaking world of to-day, in the Greater Britain, not less than a million and a half women who are locally known as workers to be depended upon in all philanthropic movements. Including America and the Australian continent there are probably two millions of women so situated in respect to their home duties that they can contend with the dirt and hunger of the outside world, and this they do. The great standing armies of Europe are no match as to numbers, and the women are learning the points of organization, of drill, and discipline. They are watching, and eager, and willing to work, and they will some day diminish the dirt and the hunger in great cities. "What is civilization?" asked Emerson: "I answer it is the power of good women." There should be a million 'Report of Miss Louisa M. Hubbard, Woman's Mission, p. 361. 332 CHRISTIAN CHARITIES. philanthropic native women workers in the Turkish empire, five millions of native Hindu women devoting themselves to philanthropy, six or seven millions of native women at work in humanitarian service in China, and three-quarters of a million in Japan, if the other great religions of the world are as fruitful of practical schemes for aiding the poor as Christianity. If the non-Christian religions had developed the highest powers of womanhood, as Christianity has done, travelers would tell us what fourteen millions of native philanthropic women are doing outside their own homes — contending with dirt and nakedness and hunger, in the world of the Orient. The attitude of Christianity throughout Christendom toward poverty is emphasized by a comparison of the great religions, as to their surplus altruistic energy in aid of the poor : Christianity is maintaining in non-Christian realms to-day not less than a hundred institutions for lepers and homes for the untainted children of lepers, with 7,523 inmates; 247 institutions for foundlings, infants, and orphans, with 16,916 inmates; 651 training schools for nurses and medical students; 379 hospitals, 783 dispensa ries, with an annual average of 85,169 in-patients, 2,347,780 individual patients, and 6,442,427 consultations and treat ments.1 In its scientific bearing upon the question of Eaces and Eeligions — • their selection and the survival of the fittest, — racial vigor is indicated by the power of a people to vivify its own stock by reenforcement from its own depressed classes. If Christianity can so strengthen itself by the ¦gradual betterment of its own people in their relation to material well-being, and if it can reach out into non-Chris tian realms to help the poor, it is achieving success in a department of social beneficence, in which the other great religions have not yet made notable advancement. Nor is benefiting the poor the sole result, there being beside a dis tinct social advantage in the altruistic training of Chris tendom. 'Dennis' Centennial Survey. CHAPTEE VIII: PAEALLELS AND CONTEASTS IN SELF-EXTENDING ALTEUISTIC POWEE. I. During certain ages of the Christian Church, in the attempt at self-extension, two unchristian mistakes have been made in Christendom with which the true spirit of Christianity had nothing whatever to do, which, however, abide with us to this day in their mischievous social results : namely, — the multiplication of Christians by compromis ing with the errors of baptized but unregenerate paganism, and what was in effect the propagation of brotherly love by the sword. (i) When Christianity was once firmly seated upon the throne of the Caesars, multitudes were baptized who had never been regenerated. As Brahmanism became less pure when it adopted as its own all the errors of Modern Hin duism, as Buddhism suffered by receiving to itself the Con fucianist and Taoist errors of China and of Shintoism in Japan, as Confucianism in its pristine power was modified by Taoism and Buddhism, and as Islam adapted itself to the errors of its proselytes whose distinctive Mohammedan duties interfered little with entertaining Arabic, Ottoman or Hindu notions and customs, so it was a far-reaching error to attempt to engraft upon Christianity principles alien to it and to vivify unwholesome leaf and fruitage by Chris tian root and stock. Sociologically Christendom has not yet recovered from it. It is incredible that the corrupt the ories and practices of heathenism should not have poured into the current of the Church life, like the mud of the Missouri fouling clear water. How could the society shaped by Jesus of Nazareth and the Apostle John be quite the same after receiving Constantine, and one after another of the great pagan families, the pride and the fashion of the empire, without due washing and cleansing? 334 THE NOMINAL CONVERSION During that long period in which the great religious force of Christianity was shut up in monasteries, it was less oper ative upon society as such, since society itself was little else than nominally Christian ;" the documents showing, in the seventh century, territories where the recitation of the Lord's prayer and a yearly sacrament apparently comprised the sum of both popular religious instruction and duties.1 The so-called conversion of many nations did not imply the regeneration of the individual life. Kings and their courts were baptized, and the most loyal of their people ; their only Christian "experience" that of being wet somewhat scantily by the waters of baptism.2 And henceforth all their pagan 'Compare the records of the Synod of Trosley at the beginning of the tenth century. Tide also the strictures of Hildebrand upon the pagan character of Roman, Longobard and Norman Chris tianity, and the conduct of the bishops of the Church. It is, however, true that this mistake, so injurious to the purity of the Church, proved to be in the interest of good government: as in the early barbaric conquests of the south the condition of the barbarians themselves was improved, so now their own yield ing to the presentation of the cross made them more amenable to Christian law, and they profited by mere contact with a higher civilization, which did not need to be very high to be above them. 2Grotesque, indeed, were some of the old methods of "convert ing" the heathen; they are much like the experiences of a modern era among peoples as artless as children. Jortin, who picked up so much that was out of the usual course, relates that in the year A. D. 799, "Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg, converted many of the Sclavonians, who became very fond of him. He used to make all the Christian slaves come and dine at his own table, and gave them drink out of gilt cups; whilst their pagan masters sat with out doors on the ground, like dogs, and had meat and drink placed before them. When they asked him why they were thus treated, the answer was, 'As you have not been washed in the salutary bath, you are not worthy to sit and eat at table with those who are regenerated.' Upon this they desired also to be instructed and admitted to baptism." "This finesse," says Jortin, "was, how ever, more Episcopal and Christian than the usual method of bullying, beating, fining, and massacring those who would not quit paganism." (Remarks on Ecclesiastical History. John Jor tin, D. D. Vol. Ill, p. 81. London, 1805.) The Pomeranians were Christianized at the beginning of the OP PAGAN EUROPE. 335 ¦superstitions and heathen immorality and barbaric violence were called Christian. The spirit which was responsible for Woody persecutions instituted in the name of Jesus Christ, and much else that was demoniacal, were no part of essen tial Christianity, although baptized and enrolled as such. In the conversion of England, Ethelbert received the monk Augustine and his clergy in the open air, lest royalty be hurt by Christian enchantment; but when the religious invaders advanced, bearing a silver cross and singing the litany, the king was enchanted and became a Christian. He gave his own palace to Augustine for a residence; and a Christian church was built hard by, upon the spot where the Cathedral of Canterbury now stands. The people, too, heeded the divine message; and upon Christmas Day ten thousand of them were baptized.1 They became Christians because their king had set the fashion; nor were they pre viously under rigid instruction. The monks took the pagan temples and sprinkled them with holy water; and then gathered the people into Church festivals, to repeat the same carousals they had used under the worship of Woden. This was about a hundred years after the aristocrats of Eome gave in; the Christianization of England, such as it was, being so near the complete triumph of the new faith in the capital of the world. After the death of the monk Augustine, the Anglo-Saxons north of the Humber were converted under the reign of the pagan Edwin, who became a Christian. The king's nobles gathered in counsel. Coifi, the high priest, said that their deities did not reward the good, and if any better doctrine could be taught he would adopt it. Another said that twelfth century by Bishop Otto. He travelled crosier in hand, clad in the robes of his ofiice, and surrounded by ecclesiastical attendants and a squad of soldiers. His wagons rumbled from village to village; and everywhere he baptized the astonished natives. 'This story is told in a letter from Pope Gregory to the Patri arch of Alexandria. Consult Palgrave's History of the Anglo- Saxons, pp. 49, 50. London, 1867. 336 THE NOMINAL CONVERSION man's life is a swallow's flight, — whence it comes, whither it goes, we know not ; if this new doctrine can teach us any thing certain of our destiny we should follow it. CoiS himself was the first to hurl a defiant spear against the fane of their pagan worship, at Godmundingham, the Goodman- ham of to-day, at Harthill Wapentake, in the East Eiding- of York; this was in A. D. 628. And the missionary Pauli nus, whom the Archbishop of Canterbury had sent to King Edwin, was employed from morning to night for thirty-six days in baptizing the multitude who, taking their cue from the king and the nobles, abandoned idolatry. They were received to the Church, with pagan superstitions eradicated. only in part. It resulted in introducing into English. Christianity a certain intellectual confusion as to just what it was to become a Christian, whether it involved more than baptism. The Anglo-Saxon forests were alive with ghosts. Charms and incantations were as needful to those baptized English heathen as they are to-day to the unbaptized pagans in Africa. To this nominal Christianization, it is due that three thousand witches were executed in England within a. score of years in the seventeenth century. As late as 1751 an English mob killed two pauper witches ; and in hunting for them looked in a salt-box. Lyall reports that an aged Frenchman was drowned in Essex on suspicion of sorcery in 1863. The pagan ancestry of these men was answerable for it. The expulsion of the Jews from England, some centu ries since, is another instance in point; for downright bar barity not surpassed — unless to-day by so-called Christian peoples. In fact, it is impossible to open up English history at any point without stumbling upon evidence of the merely nominal Christianity of the descendants of those who were baptized by Augustine, Paulinus, and other prelates. Are there not Britons in the slums of the great cities of England to-day, whose ancestors have stood by their pagan habits of thought during thirty-five generations ? Two-thirds of the first emigrants to New England were but nominally Christian; and generation after generation OP PAGAN EUROPE. 337 to this day many of their descendants have held aloof from the Church. Could the ancestry of the unchurched masses of Old England be traced, it would be found that they never were other than nominally Christian. Who can understand the social defects of Christendom without taking these facts into account? Upon the other hand, the great body of devout and self- sacrificing Christian disciples early and late, in Old Eng land and the New, attests the faithful education and train ing and true conversion of a great multitude of the early baptized wards of the Church. (ii) If, to put the matter mildly, it is to be said, that the missionary methods pursued by the Church were defective during more than a thousand years, it cannot be mildly stated that the advancement of Christianity in what was quaintly called the conversion of the Northern Nations, was greatly forwarded by the use of the sword. "Eome," says Heine, "always yearned for sovereignty; and when her legions fell she sent dogmas into the prov inces." Were not the dogmas more dreaded than the legions by some? Vanquished foes by the thousand took death rather than dogma, when they had their choice. That they did so was better, since but a little more of bap tized heathenism without admixture would have been the death of the Church. When the princes of this world did propagate Christian ity by the sword, Mohammed himself and the Saracens did not engage in religious conquest with more zest. It was an age of blood; generation after generation the sword was never sheathed. With no choice for the ablest men but the Church, the battlefield, or the throne of a king, the Church was served both by kings and warriors. And it was through the so-called "Christian" conquest of pagans by the sword that bundles of pagan superstition were tumbled into the open door of the Church. For example, no country in Eu rope was ever more thoroughly saturated with the blood of witch-murder than Germany. And was it not Charlemange 22 338 EXTENSION OP CHRISTIANITY who "converted" Germany in eighteen campaigns without spiritual regeneration? This was perhaps a hundred and fifty years after the nominal conversion of England. Charlemange was, indeed, the first after the fall of Eome, to bring order out of confusion in Europe: in him the Eoman conquest of the world reappeared. His stalwart character imparted unwonted dignity to the earlier Middle Ages, so monotonously barbaric. He was a conqueror by heredity, the blood of Pepin and of Charles Martel flowing in his sword arm. At the outset his wars were begun in an attempt to fend off barbarism which was always threatening his kingdom; and they ended in bringing the barbarians into orderly submission. The wars were a political neces sity. And in baptizing the vanquished, will or nil, the holy water was applied as a political clincher, it being from Charlemagne's standpoint, a token of submission like an oath of allegiance in the name of the Triune God, that henceforth they would be Christian subjects of a Christian king. From the New Testament standpoint, however, his ultimatum to the Saxons was this : "Love your enemies : do good to those that hate you ; whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them : — take your bap tismal oath to do this, or I will kill you. ' ' Wittekind was a Saxon king who dwelt in a castle whose ruins still stand upon one of the red sandstone hills, or gate-posts of the "Westphalian Gate," where the river Weser breaks through the mountains which form a step between upper and lower Germany, and flows down into the plains of Westphalia. It is about three miles above the modern town of Minden. In A. D. 772 Charlemagne destroyed this castle. It was not, however, till a year later, that his obstinate and bloody and treacherous foes com pelled the conqueror to return and waste the land till the Saxons submitted to baptism. Charlemagne beheaded four thousand who preferred death, — with Saxon pluck delib erately choosing to die as his enemies rather than live in submission. The war was not over, and die they did. BY THE SWORD. 339 Wittekind still held out, battle after battle. When defeated, he came to camp for baptism. The ceremony took place near his ruined castle; the tradition pointing to the spot where the traveller now sees the ruins of a chapel on the Wittekindsberg above the Westphalian Gate. The conqueror of the Saxons then had the hardihood, to send them up a quantity of sermons translated into Ger man, to introduce new ideas into their baptized, hard, heathen heads. He then, with singular practical wisdom, filled the conquered Anglo-Saxon territory with churches and religious houses to educate the Saxon youth. So there was introduced into the nation a genuine Christian element, which succeeded in partially tempering the savageness of the people, making the nominally Christian barbarians less barbaric than peoples not yet conquered or baptized. Thus the light, which lighteth every man, broke into the dark northern forests. And when there came relatively peaceful ages, or even a few halcyon years, the kingdom of God grew apace, as the forests themselves gave place to smiling gardens under the tranquil energies of nature and the craft of man ; so a divine purpose appeared, explaining the meaning of diverse events, — much as our knowledge of mathematical science has explained certain movements of the heavenly bodies, which were formerly deemed erratic. Irresistible moral prowess was ultimately wielded by the Germanic people ; the leading minds receiving most heartily those principles of Christianity which have undergirded the great nations of the modern era.1 The "Christian" wars of Charlemagne followed closely after the wars of the Saracens ; the massacre of the Saxons 'The change effected by Christianity in the Germanic people is referred to by Samson Reed in his suggestive booklet upon the Growth of the Mind. Boston, 1886: "To revelation it is to be ascribed that the genius which has taught the laws of the heavenly bodies, and analyzed the material world, did not spend itself in drawing the bow or in throwing the lance in the chase or in war; and that the vast powers of Handel did not burst forth in the wild notes of the war song." 340 EXTENSION OF CHRISTIANITY being but a hundred and fifty years after the death of Mohammed. About two hundred and fifty years later, there opened another scene in the drama of the so-called "Conversion of the Northern nations." Did not Olaf the Saint win his saintship in strange fashion ? The old chron icles of Norway1 tell us that King Olaf once went through a portion of his country and summoned to him men from the greatest distances. "And he inquired particularly how it stood with their Christianity; where improvement was needful, he taught them the right customs. If any there were who would not renounce heathen ways, he took the matter so zealously that he drove some out of the country, mutilated others of hands or feet, or stung their eyes out; hung up some, cut down some with the sword ; but let none go unpunished who would not serve God. He went thus through the whole district, sparing neither great nor small. He gave them teachers, and placed these as thickly in the country as he saw needful. In this manner he went about in that district, and had three hundred deadly men-at-arms with him ; and then proceeded to Eaumarige. He soon per ceived that Christianity was thriving less the farther he proceeded into the interior of the country. He went for ward everywhere in the same way, converting all the people to the right faith, and severely punishing all who would not listen to his word." We need not wonder that the next thing we read in the Chronicle is this: "Now when the king who at that time ruled in Eaumarige heard of this, he thought it was a very bad affair." The Chronicle relates that two robber brothers with a troop joined the army of Olaf the Saint when he would retake his kingdom, and that the king would have them baptized or send them away. Gauker-Thorer said : " I and my comrades have no faith but on ourselves, our strength, and the luck of victory ; and with this faith we slip through 'Sturleson Heimskringla; or Chronicles of the Kings of Nor way. (Translated by S. Laing.) 3 Vols. London, 1844. BY THE SWORD. 341 sufficiently well." But when it was found that the king would not have them without baptism, this self-reliant fel low said to his brother : " If I go into battle I will give my help to the king, for he has most need of help. And if I must believe in God, why not in the white Christ as well as in any other? Now it is my advice, therefore, that we let ourselves be baptized, since the king insists so much upon it, and then go into the battle with him." So the robbers were baptized with their thirty followers, who had been waiting upon a hill-top overlooking the hostile camps. Olaf the Saint is represented in old sagas as sometimes praying all night, and singing psalms when riding through the country; and he argued like a minister with the idol aters. And he was very cunning in war, which was his great weapon. Both Olaf Trygyvesson, the father, and Olaf Haroldsson, the sainted son, were fierce missionaries, propagating Chris tianity by the sword as the Mohammedans did their reli gion. Not indeed devoting their lives to it, but they hated the forms of paganism most heartily. The fierce Norse pirates were not pagans. Were not the chiefs of the Jornsburg vikings wont to drink the health of Jesus Christ, and fill their bowls to the memory of St. Michael? Looked at as a matter of moral evolution, the "conver sion" of the barbarians, in such fashion, explains much. Even if the doctrine of love was what Christians taught the savages when they once got them under their thumbs, and even if they built up a Christian civilization, the funda mental principles were left in such shaky condition that even to this day in many imperfectly regenerated Christian communities, an overbearing public spirit, intolerant of opposition, will back up wicked wars that may extend Christian empire, in violation of the plainest principles of Christianity. So near are we to-day to man primeval, and so far away is the perfect reign of the kingdom of love. No reader can review the details of the merest sketch of 342 THE CLEANSING POWER Christian history without being constantly thrown back upon the story of man primeval for further illustrations of the "spirit of the age" in the Christian centuries. Not even yet in moral evolution has Christianity cleared itself of the ' ' old man, ' ' the body of sin — not yet has it wholly put on the "new man," and become wholly "a new. crea ture" in Christ Jesus,1 nor has the kingdom of love yet , triumphed in the earth. May not a non-Christian critic of Christianity well question: How did it all come about that Christian nations have acquired a governmental grip upon vast areas of the world's surface, to-day densely occupied by Brahman, Buddhist, and Mohammedan populations? Did it come about through the normal outworking of the principles of the spiritual kingdom of love? Or was it through the aggressive violence of that part of Christendom which has been imperfectly imbued with the spirit of the Prince of Peace — the red right arm of man-primeval merely "baptized" into Christianity? May he not also ask if such modern conquests had occurred in the "middle ages" of Christian Europe, the subject populations would not have been baptized as Christian right and left, as the monks who followed Cortez baptized the Mexicans by the million? Had the British conquest of India, as a purely commercial enterprise, occurred three hundred years earlier, Hindustan would thereafter have been known as a " Chris tian" country, and would have been as truly so as Mexico and Peru after their conquest by Spain. One great boon has, however, during many ages, early and late, befallen Christianity — which is always to be spoken of as no synonym of the Church: it is the constant sifting process of persecution. The vast enrollment of merely nominal followers has been less injurious to Chris tianity than to the other great religions, since the truths of the system have been held by a vast body of tested disci ples ; their experimental knowledge proving itself a vitaliz ing power age after age. The ten persecutions of Chris- 'Col. 3: 9, 10. II Cor. 5: 17. OP PERSECUTION. 343 tianity by pagan Eome was a test to which no other widely diffused religion was ever put. The Confucian system was that of the government itself. The Brahmanical faith was never persecuted. The Taoists in China, and the great Buddhist movement (aside from its being driven out of India by the Brahmans) were never seriously beset by fire and sword. And there was no great world power to attempt to crush out Mohammedanism.1 So thoroughly, moreover, was the organization of the Christian Church hampered by the tradition and influence of Imperial Eome — so firmly did the scheme of a Holy Eoman Empire hold the ecclesiastics and Christian roy alty,^- that the original ideas underlying the spiritual kingdom of love were not given full force as the centuries went by: and the interpretation put upon the Christian ideal by the Friends of God, by Waldenses, by Huguenots, by such thinkers and workers as Savonarola, Huss of Prague, Martin Luther, and that great moral reformer and organizer John Calvin, led to a long, hot battle on the part of Eome before the protesting men gained the right to live. And before the adherents of the old. or der of things would be quiet, France and Spain were nationally weakened, beyond recovery age after age, by removing from their soil through death or exile their most active-minded citizens and most valuable industrial population. Yet as the fear of Attila created Venice the Queen of the Seas, so the Ger manic nations were built up by the policy of the Latin peoples: The faith also of the Germanic stock, once tested 'Christian wars against the Saracens were defensive. The cru- sadal wars had a local intent, and were not directed against Islam as such. As to the crusades, be it said, in passing, that in conducting these great military movements the dominant ecclesiastical pow ers granted remission of "penances"; and civic power exempted from the jurisdiction of secular tribunals, such criminals, vaga bonds, and outlaws, as would take part in the holy war. — • Tide Dollinger's Studies in European History. London, 1890. 344 EXTENSION OF ISLAM by persecution, was in a limited way further tested by the events that peopled the New England over sea. Through these influences, Christianity has been able, to a certain extent, to overcome the handicap put upon it by the early and long continued admission of the errors of pagan ism in the nominal conversion and sometimes violent conver sion of great peoples. At least, Christianity has thereby, to some extent at least, reverted to its early ideals more perfectly than some of the other great religions which have not been tested by adverse powers. II. After such preface, — relating to the erroneous methods for Christian self-extension adopted by missioners, unre generate, unsanctified, or ill-instructed in the principles of pristine Christianity, — we are in position to allude to the relation in which each of the other great religions — • having its seed in itself after its kind — stands toward the self- propagation of its theoretical altruism by system. The Prophet of Arabia had no distinctly formulated con ception of universal sway, unless through conquest. Con cerning this, the mandate was positive in Islam.1 Contra- rywise, the propagation of Christianity by the sword, if resorted to, is expressly against both the letter and the spirit of the Gospel. Aside from the use of the sword, how ever, it is a mistake to think of the Mussulman as always eager for proselyting. ' ' Of what use would it be to convert a thousand infidels? Would it increase the number of the faithful? By no means. Their number is decreed by God. ' '2 Yet wealthy sons of Islam furnish money for the extension of their faith in Africa to-day. Since the con quest of Northern Africa by Akbar of Damascus, the work has never ceased. Notable Moslem missions have been at times greatly advanced by ambitious chiefs, and by certain 'Freeman's Ottoman Power in Europe, pp. 61, 62. 2Lane's Modern Egyptians. Vol. I, pp. 428, 429. London, 1842. BY THE SWORD IN AFRICA. 345 warlike fraternities in Islam,1 carrying the creed at the point of the sword — either crushing or converting; and this work has been followed by the incessant labors of the schoolmaster to thoroughly Islamize the natives.2 If such conquests have been looked upon as offering providential openings for the spread of the faith, it is a view not without precedent in Christendom. This mission work is greatly furthered by the far-reaching operations of Mussulman merchants. Through improved methods of travel new allies have penetrated the interior of the continent, and the work has been carried to such an extent that the number of adherents is estimated at eighty millions.3 It is a matter of the utmost simplicity. Islam adapts itself to the native genius. No question comes up of moral regeneration, or a radical change of life-motives. The recitation of the creed, the daily prayers, the legal almsgiving, the Eamadan fast by day and feast by night, the great pilgrimage if one can 'There are more than four score well organized Moslem frater nities, each as obedient to its sheik as his hand would be; some of them most efficient propagators of the faith for more than twenty generations, others formed in recent years. Some are most devout mystics, seeking to commune with God in desert solitudes, and all are zealots for their faith. 'Great Religions of the World, chapter on Mohammedanism by Oskar Mann, Orientalist in the Royal Library, Berlin, pp. 27, 28, 63. 64. New York, 1901. Tide also D. — A. Forget's L'Islam et le Christianisme Dans L'Afrique Centrale. Paris. 1900. Blyden's Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race, London, 1887, enters more fully into details than other authorities. Tide pp. 199, 357-360. Many tribes have received Islam peacefully, among them the most powerful tribes in the Soudan. During two genera tions these tribes have made holy wars against the heathen, with wonderful activity and success. About fifty years ago, large dis tricts of the upper Niger were so reduced. "Anxious for the spoils of time and the rewards of eternity," the Moslem warriors have brought to their faith the most powerful tribes, seeking to win all Africa north of the equator to Islam. And everywhere the most irrational and debasing superstition has yielded to the more reasonable tenets of Mahommed, and the schoolhouse haa been erected in every village. sOskar Mann, p. 69, Great Religions of the World. 346 THE EXTENSION OP ISLAM. afford it, — it is this that transforms the vanquished mil lions. Notwithstanding the decisive reports against the influence of the Arabs in Central Africa, by Emin Pasha, Sir Samuel Baker, and General Gordon, as they had occa sion to know them, there is good reason to believe that, in other districts, sobriety and industry, tribal unity, and a relatively civilized life have been the result of Mohamme dan instruction, and this upon the testimony of travelers who reported otherwise concerning other regions. These favorable conditions exist westward; Mohammedanism exerting a salutary influence, and displacing nothing so good as itself. For hundreds of miles along the west coast the influence of Islam has been against the slave-trade, and the villages and towns with Moslem teachers are in advance of others; the converts exhibiting unwonted self-reliance, energy and self-respect.1 One of the best results is the erection of a barrier by temperate Islam against the inflow of the rivers of rum, that the baptized pagans of Christen dom are seeking to pour into Africa.2 In India the lowest castes are in a state of unrest after ages of submission to Hindu ceremonial law, from which they are freed at once by Islam. They are relieved, too, from the burden of sins believed to have been accumulated in former states of existence. Into the brotherhood of believers they are at once received upon terms of social equality, being done with caste forever.3 Yet Sir Eichard 'Tide Contemporary Review, December, 1886; Lane Poole's Studies in a Mosque, p. Ill; Dr. E. Blyden's People of Africa, passim, New York, 1871, and the edition of 1887, under the title of Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race, London; Reginald Bosworth Smith's Lectures on Mohammedanism, pp. 42-51, Sec ond Edition; and H. P. Smith's Bible and Islam, p. 318. 2Walker of the Gaboon mission, in Missionary Herald, Boston, February, 1870. In 1885, ten million gallons of intoxicating drinks were shipped to Africa from the United States, England, France and Germany, most of it in that year from Germany. — Report of London Missionary Conference for 188S, II, p. 550. industrially they are advantaged, and the standard of sanita tion is improved. In life and morals, Indian Islam is, however, not better than Hinduism. — Jones' India's Problem, p. 57. ITS GRIP ON ITS VOTARIES. 347 Temple's observation upon Islam in India led him to speak of it as establishing a "narrow and exclusive character "; which accords with the testimony of Professor M. Monier- Williams, that "there is a finality and want of elasticity about Mohammedanism which precludes its expanding beyond a certain fixed line of demarcation; having once reached this line, it appears to lapse backwards, to tend towards mental and moral slavery, to contract within nar rower and narrower circles of bigotry and exclusiveness." No other religion has, however, a firmer hold on its vota ries than Islam. It is largely a matter of tradition from father to son. And the father is to kill the son outright if he abandons his faith: this is according to the funda mental law in all Mussulman states, — slaying the hardened apostate for the safety of others. It is not other than the Judaic rule perpetuated.1 So Islam holds its own, not by force of reason, but by law and penalty. While, therefore, it is true that individuals are led to Christianity through the Old and New Testament Scriptures which are com mended by the Koran,2 or, more commonly led to it, through the silent influence of the British Christian merchant,, "who, mid the temptations of trade, to crookedness, duplic ity and corruptness of native merchants and officials, have maintained their integrity untarnished,"3 yet it cannot be looked for that Islam will easily yield to Christianity in the Orient. There is so much religious truth in the system that the most spiritual cling to it with a tenacity that is all the greater from their knowledge of the practical idol- 'Tide Deut. 13: 6-10. 2These writings were apparently accepted as authority by the Prophet, who ranked Jesus as a divine messenger, inferior to himself. Consult Sir Milliam Muir's Life of Mahomet, I. LXX. English Edition. The Prophet had no direct knowledge of the Jewish and Chris tian Scriptures, but accepted them on general principles as part of the scheme of revealed religion. — D. B. Macdonald, LL. D, 'The Mohammedan Missionary Problem, by H. H. Jessup (for forty years in Syria), p. 81. Philadelphia. 348 ISLAM. atry of many of the old Christian churches in the East;1 and the penalty for open apostacy hinders any popular movement for the abandonment of their faith. Then, too, it is the habit in the East, inbred from immemorial genera tions, for men to do as their fathers have done time out of mind. The reign of Islam is as little likely to be disturbed during many centuries as the permanency of the sands of the Sahara, which are kept within certain boundaries because the attraction of gravitation is stronger than the vagrant winds. It has been observed by an acute special ist in matters Arabic, Professor Macdonald of Hartford Seminary, that there is an inbred necessity for the Moslem to rule; which is a constant cause of irritation in China, as it is feared it may be in Bengal.2 This is on account of the basic relations of Koranic law which keeps a firm grip on all the dealings of Mussulman with non-Mohammedan political organizations, — as to civic and criminal rulings, their industries, social life, and the homes of the people. 'There is more religious truth in Islam than there was in some of the early Christian heresies in the Orient. So far did some of the heretical sects depart from the normal Christian type, and so ungodly was the living of many who styled themselves Orthodox and so revolting was their image worship, that historians have sometimes spoken of the rise of Islam as in some respects not a new religion, but the appearance of an eccentric heretical form of Eastern Christianity; Mohammed accepting the Hebrew Scrip tures, Old and New, and adding the newer revelation made to him as the last and the greatest of the prophets. This view was entertained by Dean Stanley, Eastern Church, p. 363. New York, 1876; and by Dollinger, Reunion of Churches, p. 7. Oxen- Tiam's tl., 1872. 'Tide Spectator, LXXI, p. 541. The Indian census of 1891 revealed a Mussulman majority in Bengal proper, as the result of missions maintained for centuries by that Moslem sect which is most rigid, — the character of the Bengalese being so changed that the problem of their control will be more difficult. W. W. Hunter's Indian Mussulmans, third edition, London, 1876, gives a detailed statement of Moslem grievances against the British administration, and the political danger from the Wahabis. ITS LIMITATIONS. 349 In this way, the mental habit of the individual is so formed as to lead him to fall out of his rightful position if he is so situated that he cannot enforce the Koranic law. The Turks allow none but the faithful in their military service, and the war with Greece indicates that as "fighters on the path of God" their ancient valor has not died out; yet the relative armed importance of Islam has changed forever since the days of the Saracens ; and the nationality of Tur key is maintained solely by Christian political influences, as a make-shift for the existing balance of power.1 As contrasted with the ancient propagation of Buddhism through the force of ideas, Islam has never made great advances, and if it be not strictly true that its enlargement has been uniformly through the sword, it is true that there has been such a sharply defined boundary to its expansion as to indicate decisively that it will never dominate the world. A brilliant French writer speaks of the Koran as offering a religion for the tent and caravan, adapted to nomadic life, and limited by fixed lines of latitude. Vam- bery, the great Asiatic traveler, says that Mohammedanism never flourished above forty degrees north. It never made good a position in Europe outside of Turkey. Does not the system as such lack the vital seed of future development? '"For at least a century the Turkish Government has been so bad and so weak that it ought to have perished, and would have perished had it been left to itself. Russia would have prac tically annexed at least the European parts of it but for the jealousy of some other European Powers, and especially of Great Britain. Mehemet Ali would have overthrown the House of Oth man in the first quarter of the present century had not the Euro pean Powers intervened. And latterly European money, bor rowed by the Turks, has enabled them to keep down their dis affected subjects by modern European weapons in a way that would formerly have been impossible." — Professor James Bryce. England's responsibility for strengthening the hands of Turkey is discussed by W. S. Blunt, Fortnightly Review, Vol. 34, p. 23. Concerning all this, however, it is to be noted that the early dissolution of the Turkish empire has been discussed in Chris tendom during four centuries. 350 BUDDHISM Sir Alfred Lyall remarks that Islam has made relatively little progress in India during two centuries; that is, through its own inherent energy. A natural increase, above the native average, has appeared, however, through the Moslem restrictions in diet, and the greater care of child life; the gain in twenty years, as reported by the Indian census, being more than seven millions. In the Dutch East Indies, Islam is also advancing by natural increase and by the constant reduction of paganism under its sway. It cannot be learned that there is an increase in China; their number is variously estimated, — President Martin calling it ten millions.1 The number of Moslem adherents throughout the world is probably not far from one hundred and eighty-five millions, although the estimate of two hundred millions may be not without warrant. III. In Gautama's purity of purpose and sincere desire to benefit mankind, he did not think of his own teaching as a finality: and the appearance of another Buddha after the lapse of ages was a part of the early belief.2 At a time when the Greek philosophers and Eoman religionists, high spirited Brahmans, and even the Jews, made little attempt at proselyting, the peace loving disciples of the Prince of India went out into all Eastern Asia proclaiming doctrines that ameliorated the condition of society in widely extended realms. Through commending itself to rulers, it was repeatedly made the religion of the court in despotic gov ernments. In the North of India it became the state reli- 'Cycle of Cathay, p. 196. The Moslems have been — in certain particulars — less assertive and more tactful in the Celestial Empire than in some other realms, compromising with old customs so far as they may, and leaving off the minaret from the mosque lest it seem to overtop the native temples. — Great Religions, p. 72. New York, 1901. 2Rhys Davids' Buddhism, p. 180; Monier-Williams' Buddhism, p. 557; Bunsen's God in History, Vol. I, p. 371; Barth's Religions of India, p. 121, Wood's tl. London, 1882. AS A SELF-EXTENDING POWER. 351 gion within a hundred and fifty years after the death of Gautama. It flourished, too, in Central India for a thou sand years. In Ceylon, it was preached three hundred years before Christ; it entered China A. D. 65; Burmah in the fifth Christian century; Siam in the seventh, and Thibet at about the same era. For two or three hundred years it was known to Japan, and finally it gained the ascendency there in the ninth century. During twelve hun dred years it was a steadily advancing religion in Asia, exer cising great influence upon a densely peopled district one- half larger than Europe. It allied itself to the prevailing religion of each country it entered, whether spirit worship pers in Burmah, Shintoists in Japan, Taoists and Confu cianists in China : much as Christianity allied itself to the paganism of Northern Europe by baptizing unregenerate peoples. Its ameliorating influence was everywhere felt. While Confucianism provided the moral basis of Chinese character, the supernatural elements wanting were sup plied by Taoism and Buddhism: to Gautama is due the elevation of the popular mind from the too exclusive con sideration of mundane affairs, to contemplate a future state, to value more highly purity of life, to exercise self-con straint, to forget self, and to practise love and charity toward others.1 The self-extending power of the Sangha — the community of Buddhist mendicant monks — was, how ever, limited from within: when prospered and enriched the monastery ' ' gradually ceased in great measure to be the school of virtue and the most favorable sphere of intellec tual progress, and became thronged with the worthless and idle."2 Buddhism was driven out of India by the Brah mans, after it had maintained itself ten centuries; before it went out, however, the Sangha had become wealthy, idle, corrupt in doctrine, and in practice reverting to pagan types. In like manner it reached its limit as a peculiarly 'The statements in this sentence are based upon Professor R. K. Douglas' China, pp. 328, 329. 2Rhys Davids' Buddhism, p. 153. 352 BUDDHISM. beneficent power throughout Asia; as an altruistic social factor lacking the power of continuous advancement, sooner or later reaching a standstill. If, however, the light of Asia suffered an eclipse, were there not also dark ages in Christendom? The possible vagaries of ill-informed and unbalanced Buddhists in far-away ages, upon a distant continent, in obscure historic periods, will be looked upon leniently by those who are forced to exercise their charity in reading Christian history. At the present day an official head presides over each monastery, and every mendicant monk takes vows to be free from lust, from the desire of property, from taking life, and from the assumption of supernatural powers.1 To sow discord in the Sangha is sin. In Southern Asia the conduct of the Brotherhood — their self-restraint and observance of the decorum of their profession, — is universally esteemed by the people.2 After making due allowance for rogues who came into hospitable monastery doors carelessly left open, the Sangha must have had within its walls for many cen turies, the most spiritually minded men in the distinctively Buddhist lands of Eastern Asia. This period varies in the different countries from perhaps thirty to sixty-five gener ations ; it being socially a great power through the presenta tion of an ideal of conduct, which made itself felt even among the intensely practical, industrious, and virtually godless Chinese. By no means, however, must it be thought that this power has been very positive in all these ages. The monk by the very theory of his life must take no interest in worldly affairs.3 The Sangha brethren are not shepherds with pastoral care. The chief imperative duty, which brings them into contact with the world outside the monastery, is that of seeing to it that the laity acquire so much merit as they can earn by giving daily food and alms 'Fielding's The Soul of a People, p. 131. 2Fielding; Bishop Bigaudet; Nisbet in his Burma under British Rule. 'Soul of a People, p. 133. THE SANGHA. 353 to the mendicants, who go by thousands every morning to every door in their district. In return for this, however, it is expected by their patrons that they will receive the boys of their neighborhood, teach them to read, and instruct them in the rudiments of their faith. As to religion, in no sense are these brethren priests. There is no duty of inter cession. In any given monastery there are always pure- minded, zealously affected brethren, who faithfully read and expound the Buddhist books upon stated occasions, like festal days: and to those who do it, there is an incre ment of moral merit. In Southern Asia the mendicants abide in temporary rural quarters in the hot season, and on moonlight nights they read the sacred books to the peasantry. To the Western mind the number of monks seems incred ible. The Siamese gifts to the mendicants amount to half a million dollars a week.1 This would be two hundred mil lions a year in a population as large as that of the United States. There are ten thousand monks in Bangkok. Bur mah has more than fifteen thousand monasteries, — one to every ninety-three dwelling houses.2 There are extended districts in Western China, where the lamas compose one- third of the male population. Looked at with a view to its universal extension, is there not reason to doubt whether this monkish system, — the very kernel of Buddhism — which sets forth life without work as an ideal, an eating solely of the bread of beggary, is so well adapted to the West as to the East? Is a progressive civilization possible under such leadership? The monastic feature of with drawal from society was one of the causes that led to the overturn of Buddhism in India. It cannot be imagined that Confucius, with his hard good sense, should either have lived as a recluse for years or set anybody else to doing it. Confucians, as representing the intellectual and 'Historical Sketches Presbyterian Missions, p. 244. Philadel phia, 1891. 2Nisbet, Burma under British Rule, p. 128. 23 354 BUDDHISM. civic power in China, have never taken kindly to the celi bate life recommended by the Prince of India, or the with drawal of so much working force from the world of work as the Sangha makes needful; idleness and the neglect of social duties they cannot put up with; and their orderly sense of the fitness of things is disturbed by the fact that the Sangha not only draws young men away from filial duties, but points to the destruction of ancient families by the loss of sons. There are three considerations that militate against the adaptation of the monastic system to world-wide sway : — One is the legitimate outgrowth of their dogmatic litera ture, — the repression of desire as a basal tenet, the utter absence of interest in all the affairs of society : this operates like a narcotic, the opiate of Asia. The brethren in South ern Asia to-day are reported by English residents as sitting all day cross-legged, yawning or dozing, and for the most part not engaged in intellectual exercises. This has been, to a great extent, the Sangha custom in Eastern Asia for a period varying from one to two thousand years. The monks appear to Europeans to be ill-informed, not studious, and separate from any active interest in the social evolu tion of their own people. In China, the mendicants are, as a rule, mere idlers, with a few painstaking students among them. For another thing, the self-extension of Buddhism, in former ages, led to a permanent alliance with incongruous systems of thought, and of life practice diametrically opposed to that entertained by Gautama. Witness the hier archy of Tibet, with its six priestly grades. Nor is Islam in any part of the world more bigoted or intolerant than Buddhism in Mongolia and Tibet.1 The monks of Tibet are not only indolent and corrupt, but the people hope lessly poor and the government despotic. Such phases of Buddhism to-day are to be reckoned with when the question 'Tide Dr. James Gilmour's Among the Mongols, pp. 196, 208; and Rockhill's Land of the Lamas, passim. London, 1893. ITS PRESENT FAILURE AS A SOCIAL FORCE. 355 comes up of the adaptation of the system to universal acceptance. Yet the worst defect, and .that most fatal to self-extend ing domination in this age, is the lack of an efficient provision for examining applicants for admission to the monasteries. The Sacred Books of Buddha make no such searching provision for monastic purity as the Bible makes for the moral purity of the Christian Church and ministry. The Old Testament demanded it, the New insisted upon it. Gautama, the Prince of India, was rigid with himself, exacting the uttermost virtue of which he was capable, yet the safeguards which he provided against the reception into the holy fold of irresponsible persons,1 whose presence is inimical to the well-being of the monastic community, were not maintained in subsequent ages. Bishop Bigaudet, residing for some years in Burmah, states that there are many worthless monks unfit for their calling, since all com ers are received without examination. Bishop Smith tells the same story of China, that many persons of immoral life have been received as holy men to the monasteries where they get a comfortable living by begging with their brethren.2 Doctor Gilmour cites cases known to him in Mongolia, in which men went to live as lamas with the lamas when out of other work, and then returned to secular service when they could do better. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop Sche- reschewsky, late of Shanghai, testifies: "For more than twenty years I have been a student of Buddhism; I have thoroughly studied the Buddhist books, which in them- 'Coveting and theft, malice and the taking of life, adultery, lying, slander and vain conversation were forbidden in early mendicant rules. Note bt Dk. E. W. Hopkins. — Buddha expressly provided that no known sinners should be admitted into the Order, and that no one should be admitted who sought it as an excuse for idleness, and that no youth should be received without parental permis sion. 2Compare the statements in Appendix B., upon the Decadence of Monasticism in Christendom. 356 BUDDHISM. selves constitute a vast literature ; I have talked with hun dreds of Buddhist priests, — Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan; I have visited many Buddhist temples, and have even lived in them. Therefore, laying aside all mock modesty, in a matter so closely concerning the Church, I feel competent to state that a more gigantic system of fraud, superstition, and idolatry than Buddhism, as it is now, has seldom been inflicted by any false religion on man kind." This was through his personal knowledge of the Monastic Order, as it exists in China. President W. A. P. Martin affirms that Buddhism is no longer doing any thing to strengthen or renovate Chinese society; that the priests, whose ideal of a future bliss is to think of nothing and to feel nothing, are not intellectual, are men of foolish faces, and eyes fixed on vacuity — that they are lazy, igno rant, and immoral, indelicate, vicious, filthy, — that with few exceptions the priesthood has sunk into the condition of an ignorant and despised caste.1 Urga, the headquarters of Buddhism in Northern Mongolia, with seven thousand inhab itants, is notoriously the wickedest town in that country.2 One of the worst towns in Japan, morally, Onomichi, has one Buddhist temple for every three hundred and seventy- five inhabitants.3 Two years ago Doctor Thorold, fresh from journeying with Captain Bower across Tibet, made special inquiries as to Buddhism, and he affirmed that the people were not so much immoral as unmoral, having no conception of virtue.4 Lansdell, in his work on Chinese Central Asia, speaks of it as generally assumed that the Kalmuck lamas are immoral. Of the patients treated in a foreign hospital 'Cycle of Cathay, pp. 38, 227, 244. Lore of Cathay, p. 241. 2Gilmour's Among the Mongols, p. 140. "Land of the Lamas, p. 91. New York, 1891. *Yet unworthy monks are subject to discipline in Tibet as in Southern Asia. And it is gratifying to note what is said by Rockhill (Vol. I, p. 259. London, 1893).— "While I do not believe the standard would be considered very high by us, there are large numbers who observe moral lives. Not a few strictly adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty, and truthfulness." ITS DECADENCE. 357 in Japan a few years ago, one out of three, treated for dis eases resulting from immorality, was a Buddhist monk.1 It is one of the curious features of the case, that monks rarely take the vows for life,2 that one may leave at any time and be amenable only to the rules that govern the laity ;3 so it is made easy to escape discipline and be re-ad mitted. All of which goes to show how hard it is to attempt to realize personal purity of life, and to follow the self- sacrificing spirit of their Prince. Nor have twenty-three centuries produced vital force and spiritual power enough to meet the conditions ; with a great continent to work in, Buddhism has failed to make Asia what Europe and America have been made by Christianity. It is like a spent force. So it looks to foreign residents, long conversant with the Orient, who are in position to be well informed concerning the moral efficiency of the mendi cants.* Yet the Eastern mind clings to antiquity. The positive elements in Confucianism contrast strongly in the Chinese mind with the Buddhist negations; and, for moral advice, they both have it. Yet China to-day thinks of Bud dhism as an ancient system, widely held in Asia, never in China interfering with the government, possessing a vast number of temples, having a great body of Sacred Books, and it is believed that there are many living Buddhas, rein carnations, in the grand lamas of to-day. Meantime, some of the most thoughtful of the Chinese look askance at Christianity, and at the different forms of it — Eoman, Greek, and Protestant. Nor can they be dislodged from their position, unless through living proof that Christianity is better in renewing moral character. Much more is this true of Southern Asia, where Buddhism exists in a more 'Report of Missionary Conference in Japan. Tide also testi mony of Professor Gordon of the Doshisha, p. 1294, Vol. II, Par liament of Religions. Chicago, 1894. 'Soul of a People, pp. 147, 148. 'Nisbet, II, 134. 'Tide President Martin's statements, The World's Parliament of Religions, II, p. 1139. Chicago, 1893. 358 BUDDHISM. pure form. That the favored lands of Gautama evince in some quarters a revived interest in their faith,1 at least to hold their own against an aggressive Christianity, is of great sociological interest. The altruistic service to human ity rendered by Singhalese mendicants follows along lines already opened by Christian philanthropists. More zeal is displayed in education, and in transmitting the ancient texts in their purity. And the versatile, alert Japanese, in readjusting their antique realm and fitting it to the needs of a progressive people, have undertaken to make Buddhism more worthy of its ancient mission as a social reform. Instructions have been issued by the government, within a few years, addressed to the Shinto and Buddhist mendi cants: "Priests who are charged with the grave duty of propagating religious doctrines, ought to combine both learning and virtue so as to command the respect of the peo ple. It is nevertheless commonly reported that of the priests now in holy orders not a few are distinguished neither by learning nor by virtuous conduct, and are entirely unfitted for their posts. ' ' The instructions then go on to say that the cause of decay of the old religions is to be found in the low educational and moral grade of the priests. They are urged to require the education of all priests to a degree equal at least to the colleges of America in addition to a thorough training in the tenets of their religion. This act of the government will doubtless have considerable effect in raising the standard of scholarship.2 What is needed, however, is far more than this, if this ancient cult is to become a match for Christianity in seek ing universal dominion. Buddha is revered in Southern Asia, but not worshipped. In China, Buddhism lost its distinctive features eighteen hundred years ago, and became hopelessly intertwined with Confucianism and Taoism. Yet in Japan, among more than a score of divergent Bud- 'Rhys Davids in Great Religions of the World, pp. 42-49. 2J. L. Deering, D. D., of Yokohama, in the Independent. New York, July, 1895. ITS POSSIBLE REVIVAL. 359 dhist sects, some give high place to the worship of Buddha, apparently finding in it a motive power unknown to those who more nearly approach the agnostic attitude of Gautama himself, whose outlook upon society is negative and desire- less. If, now, there is anywhere in Buddhistic realms the power to enter seriously upon the work of self-extension throughout the earth in the centuries close at hand, is it not here that we are to look for it ? What better test is there of a system of faith or philoso phy than its ability to adapt itself to a new age without utterly cutting itself off from its own past, or rather to create a new age by normally unfolding new life and unsus pected powers, so gaining a new hold upon mankind ? Let Brahmanism, let Buddhism, be put to this test; can they return to the earliest and purest fountains? And if they do, can they, by doing it, meet the wants of this identical hour? The Eeformation of Christianity in the sixteenth century was but a return to the primal principles of the charter of the Church, in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, which based the kingdom of love upon regenerated individual lives, lives upon a spiritual plane with God as to life's main purpose, individual lives the humblest energized by the divine touch. Not other than this was the ideal entertained by the most spiritual minds in the Church, for centuries upon centuries, prior to the Eeformation. It was Voltaire, who, upon looking over the history of Europe, attested to the fact that the denounced ecclesiastics were better than the average of the people. The moral evolution was inside the Church. The worst of the Christian pontiffs was a pattern of propriety when com pared with contemporary potentates, and the Church a very lily among thorns. There is no historical position more tenable than this. The Eeformed Church did not break with its own past, but seized upon the principles which governed the early ages when individual regeneration, rather than the wholesale baptizing of pagans, was the method of advancing the Church. Let Japan then see to 360 BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN it that whatever is best in Shintoism and Buddhism be brought forth. Of Buddhist or Shinto parentage, and, trained from their youth up, in these ancient faiths, let the men of moral power adapt these philosophies and religions to a new age, and test whatever ethical power is in them. Out of nearly seventy thousand Shinto and Buddhist priests in Japan, seventy-six out of a hundred are enrolled as disciples of Gautama. There is already a moral awaken ing among them. They are tactfully adopting Christian methods in promoting Young Men's Associations. Shaka, the great Shinto founder, is arousing an unwonted popular enthusiasm. The Eeformed Buddhism of Japan has already shocked the shade of Gautama by allowing priests to marry.1 Suppose, now, that in a purely altruistic spirit, the Japanese Buddhists duplicate in Christendom, what Christianity has already wrought in Japan : — Were this to be so, should we not find, among university students in America, England and Germany, a great many youtfi becoming Buddhists? Then, too, we should find, within the next forty years, three hundred and sixty-five Buddhist monasteries established within the present limits of Christendom ; ninety-two of them in New York, London, or Berlin. We should find nine-tenths as many mendicant monks in America — if this be the field for concentrated effort — as there are Congregational pastors in New Eng land. We should find enrolled among American Buddhists not fewer than forty judges of superior courts, some of them in the supreme court, together with prominent members of Congress. We should find eminent Buddhist educators visiting miscellaneous assemblies in England or America, 'Lore of Cathay, p. 263. Certain Japanese Buddhist sects that arose in the thirteenth century, A. D., have continued to this day. They won multitudes to their faith, which differed greatly from that of Gautama: the idea of a Western paradise taking the place of Nirvana, a mythi cal Amida replacing Buddha, and the monks giving up celibacy. These are the progressive Buddhists of to-day. — Tide Knox's Fourth Lowell Lecture. 1905. EXTENSION IN JAPAN. 361 and picking out the Buddhists by their brighter, more thoughtful, more purposeful faces. These figures represent what Christianity has already wrought in Japan. Let Bud dhism duplicate this work in Christendom.1 If this cannot be done, it would not be unlike the agile Japanese, so self-reliant, so progressive, so independent, to push to the utmost verge liberty of conscience, — disillu sionizing their nation concerning forms of faith that have long had a hold on the general mind — which have, how ever, been long unfruitful of new ideas, powerless for ethical regeneration, — and promote the general acceptance of Christianity, which has already proved to be singularly adapted to the genius of their people.2 Has not He who made all nations of one blood, set to flowing the vital cur rents of renewed life among diverse peoples? Japanese Christianity will be forever different from the Puritan type, the Eoman type or the Greek, the Hebrew, or the Anglican, rendering for itself a unique service to the Kingdom of God, in a spirit of self-sacrificing loyalty and leadership making known the love of Christ throughout the most densely peopled provinces of Asia. The present number of Buddhists in the world, it is difficult to estimate. Of the four hundred and twenty millions, which European statisticians are agreed upon as the Chinese population,3 incalculable numbers are of mixed 'It took Christianity three centuries to effect in the Roman empire changes that Christianity has wrought in Japan in less than one generation. As to domestic life, there has come in a new idea. Public opinion has a new standard. There is more Christianity in the Japanese government to-day than there was in Rome under Constantine. 2Already Christianity is recognized as one of the three forces shaping the new nation, and in spite of the known moral defects of Christendom, a profession of Christianity has come to be fash ionable in Japan. — Tide Chamberlain's "Things Japanese," p. 240; De Forest's "Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom"; and Dr. Sidney L. Gulick's Lecture in Boston before the Schoolmasters' Club, April, 1905. SR. K. Douglas' Europe and the Far East, p. 33. London, 1904. Compare Martin's Cycle of Cathay, p. 460. 362 THE NUMBER OF BUDDHISTS faith.1 The tenets of Confucius, says Martin, form the bed rock of Chinese civilization; every Buddhist and Taoist is first of all a Confucianist, but the converse is by no means true, the more educated rejecting the other sects; hence a common error in estimating the number of Buddhists in the world.2 Professor Ehys Davids, in summing up the present influence of Gautama,3 estimates five hundred mil lions of people as offering flowers upon Buddhist shrines, "not one of whom is only or altogether a Buddhist." Pro fessor M. Monier-Williams4 states that there is a popular error in regard to the total number of Buddhists. By com- 'Edkins' Religion of China, pp. 58-60. Third Edition, London, 1884. Monier-Williams' Buddhism, p. 552. 'Lore of Cathay, p. 241. Note upon the Three Religions or China. — Chinese Buddhism is idealistic, its modes of thought and phraseology prevail widely throughout the empire (Samuel Beal). Its priests administer funeral rites, and say masses for the soul. The Taoists are well organized, with a high-priest: they are materialists, they are magicians; to secure freedom from annoyance by spirits they select localities for building or burial; they exorcise evil spirits, when visiting the sick. Popular worship of the spiritual types of animals — as the snake, the hedgehog, the weasel, and in Peking the fox, — is Taoist. The religion of the women is affected by Buddhist and Taoist; but aside from the priests the men almost without exception prefer to be classed as followers of Confucius, whose image they reverence in their school days, and whose word is forever cited by the publicists of the empire. Although the imperial patronage avails for the three religions in their joint sway over many minds, and although the people say that the three constitute one religion — that part having most sway over one for which he has peculiar affinity, — yet Confucianism undoubtedly stands forth as the leading religion of the empire. inculcating not only orderliness within the state, but the worship of the powers of nature, the worship of ancestors and of national heroes. Consult Martin's Lore of Cathay, pp. 178, 184, 191; and Cycle of Cathay, p. 289. These statements must effectively dispose of any claim that Buddhism has the right to enroll the entire population of China. 'Buddhism, p. 8. 4Pp. xv, xvii, Buddhism. IN THE WORLD. 363- paring his own judgment with that of Professor Legge of Oxford, and most eminent authorities, as to the per cent, of Buddhists in China, he reaches the conclusion that some what more than a hundred millions for all Asia would be the proper estimate. This reckoning was based upon the assumption that, for the most part, the Chinese are first and last Confucianists, and that their classification as Taoists and Buddhists is altogether secondary, nor can it be other wise unless each of the Chinese be counted two or three times. The natural increase of Buddhism in expanding popula tions where the births have been for a long period in excess of the deaths, has been the only manifestation of self -ex tending power during many centuries, there having been no new peoples brought within sway for nearly a thousand years. This throws light upon the question whether or not Buddhism is likely to obtain universal dominion. ' IV. The exclusive policy adopted by China and pursued con sistently for a hundred generations, is answer enough to the question whether Confucianism is ever likely to extend itself to all nations. Through their ordinary intercourse with neighboring peoples, the statesmen and merchants- carried the teachings of Confucius, ages ago, to Formosa, half as large as Ireland; to Cochin China, as large as; France; to Corea and Japan: in every instance it was of definite advantage in raising the standard of morals. Within the nation, moreover, every class is dominated by the spirit of Confucius, and "his work is recognized as law to the most august emperor on the throne, as well as to. the meanest peasant at the plow. ' n It has, however, eome to pass that China is filled with the sins of her youth. Peculation and extortions have been too. 'Wu Ting-fang, late Chinese Minister plenipotentiary to the United States.— New York Address. 364 THE EMPIRE OF CONFUCIUS. long considered as rights by the official classes. The sale of justice or of injustice has too long passed without rebuke. The wickedness of one generation has been the capitalized wickedness of the next. With money in hand anything could be accomplished. Public offices were bought and sold ; robbers, pirates, rebels, bought off and taken into public service. Has China lost the power of recuperation? Are her moral resources exhausted? Has she no expedients for self-deliverance ? Are the ethics of her sages a spent force — her nomenclature of morality without significance ? She retains the words, such as benevolence, wisdom, rectitude, righteousness, uprightness, truthfulness and good faith ; but are they clouds without water, carried about of the winds ?x There are eighteen provinces in the empire: fifteen hun dred subdivisions, each of which has a chief town; and in each subdivision there are hundreds of "villages" or petty cities, in some of which there are thousands of families. Amid all this dense hive of people, love to God and love to man is not an element in any religious system indigenous to China; yet with their ages of seclusion, antique supersti tions and scantiness of information, the strong and sturdy people, — of fine physique, amazing vitality, great intellec tual capacity, inured to hard labor, practical, patient, cheer ful and industrious,— look upon Christian foreigners as uncultivated heathen. The auditors of any missionary are — ninety-five per cent, of them, — loafers, coolies, farmers, and small tradesmen.2 It is not uncommon, however, to find able men among these uneducated classes. And among the untaught and undisciplined common people are to be found women of great intellectual capacity.3 Although the general opening of China to Western philanthropists was hardly fifty years ago, the extension of Christianity is already notable. To compare present results with a well known district of six millions of 'This paragraph is suggested by an address at the Ecumenical Conference, New York, 1900, by Dr. William Ashmore, of Swatow. 2Arthur H. Smith. "Lore of Cathay, p. 83. THE PRESENT CHRISTIAN PLANTING. 365 people in America, it may be said that the Congrega tional churches are peculiarly strong in New England, — Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Ehode Island and Connecticut. There are as many members of Christian churches in China1 as there are resident Congre gational church members in Vermont and New Hampshire ; and they give, to promote Christianity, more than those two states and Maine give to the American Board of Missions. The Christian families in China comprise a population approximating the total number of resident Congregational church members in Massachusetts, Ehode Island and Con necticut. The Congregational churches in Boston do not give so much to the A. B. C. F. M. as the Christians in China give to support the Gospel in that empire; and the Celestial church members outnumber those of Boston churches three to one, and four thousand to spare. These converts are mechanics, shopmen, and farmers. Miss Gor- don-Cumming speaks of them as unsurpassed in self-denial, zeal, and devotedness. The influence of these natives is systematically multiplied by schooling from their teachers.2 By this means every foreign philanthropic worker rapidly expands his work. In 1883, at Wei Hien, six workers, so established, extended their work in eight years to ninety- seven outstations, gathering fourteen hundred and sixty- nine communicants, and six hundred and sixty youth into schools. Lord Wolseley has been cited, in the Strand Maga zine, as believing that in respect to staying quality, the Chinese is one of the greatest races in the world; of great physical power, with a contempt for soldiering, but capable of becoming a conquering power under suitable leadership. The Hon. James B. Angell, President of Michigan Univer sity, late United States High Commissioner to China, has 'The statistics here given relate to the Protestant missions: the Roman Catholic enrollment is given by Bliss' Cyclopedia, as about half a million; by the Statesman's Year Book, a million. 2Dr. Hunter Corbett, of Chefoo, has written to the Author, of eight different centres for such instruction by trained helpers: this work having been made prominent for thirty years. 366 LACK OF CONFUCIAN MISSIONS. said that the Chinese "are a slow, steady-moving people, with pluck and endurance. They never give up. When they set their faces toward an end, they go to it, if it takes centuries."1 "They have great staying qualities, and I have always thought that if they should become well estab lished in Christian belief, they would be among the strongest disciples. The habits and intuitions and traditions of a people, especially in regard to moral and spiritual things, cannot be fundamentally changed in a day. The upbuild ing of Christian character in China is a slow process, which requires time."2 By President Charles D. Tenney it is stated, that in natural ability, the Chinese is one of the finest of the races. When once imbued with moral power, it will be of measureless influence in all that makes for righteous ness. The foregoing statements are not without significance, as indicating the present contrasting attitudes of Confucian ism and of Christianity in respect to self -extending power. Western philanthropists in China speak of systematic work for the extension of Christianity within the empire for a future period of five or six centuries.3 To match this, Chinese philanthropists must work fifty or seventy-five years, content with humble beginnings, to establish a Con fucianist plant among the natives of some Christian nation, and secure as substantial results as Christianity can now show in China, and then plan to steadily advance the work during several hundreds of years. If the literary class in China will do this, Confucianism will again advance upon that path of foreign moral conquest which has been abso lutely abandoned by their philosophers and sages; there having been no evidence of self-extending power since the Confucian philosophy was introduced to Japan fourteen hundred years ago. From a sociological point of view, it 'Address before A. B. C. F. M., 1883. 2President Angell's personal letter to the Author. 3Only one walled city out of every six in China is now occupied by a Christian mission, and only one provincial county out of every five. THE DAWN OP A NEW AGE. 367 is wholly a question of races and religions. No nation on earth is more keen than China for trade and a cunning out look for the main chance. A new era is now dawning upon that ancient realm. It is mainly a matter of transportation, and of safety for capital in developing the amazing resources of the country. The astute merchants and far- sighted statesmen qf the empire will be factors in that industrial evolution which will change the face of the com mercial world, — through the development of the coal and iron mines, the manufacturing interests, and the steam and electrical transportation business of one-fourth of the human race. The industrial struggle for existence which has already developed so great intellectual acumen in the northern temperate zone upon other continents will produce captains of industry to master unfavorable conditions in Northern Asia. It is therefore now or never for Confucius and Meneius. Let this venerable moral power put forth its strength for influencing distant nations; else, by the mere continuation of processes already begun and far advanced, it will be Christianity which will win in the world-contest for moral supremacy and the leadership of great peoples. The absence of any popular religious enthusiasm in China, which among other peoples is to be depended upon as a motive power, is an element of national weakness. The lack of spiritual life in the Confucian body1 is an ele ment of weakness that must tell, when we question as to the future expansion of this philosophical system. It is probably true that there is nowhere in the Celestial empire opposition to Christianity as such, and that the altruistic enthusiasm of Western philanthropists will win if conducted upon the lines of practical wisdom. So shot through and through is China with the superstitions that are fostered by Taoist magicians, which have received the imperial sanction, that he indeed must be a wise man of the West who will never needlessly disturb celestial suscepti- 'Cycle of Cathay, pp. 288, 289. 368 THE EXTENSION OP HINDUISM. bilities, or needlessly cross venerable beliefs that are so often harmless. Popular tumults and mob law spring out of a bitter anti-foreign prejudice, when the native faith is rudely shocked, as it may be by so building a railway or a church building as to disturb the earth spirits, or by the introduc tion of radical industrial changes that alarm day laborers.1 A statesmanlike presentation of the fundamental truths of Christianity so rarely meets opposition, that it is now thought by most intelligent Chinese that Christianity will supersede Buddhist and Taoist instruction. And by some of the most eminent Occidental philanthropists who have intimately known Confucianism in high places for forty years, it is believed that there is no necessary conflict be tween Christ as a religious teacher and Confucius as a phil osopher, any more than between Paul and Plato. Believ ing, as they do, that the character of the literary class will eventually be greatly changed through the introduction of Western science into the civic examinations, it is also believed that there is nothing to prevent a sound Confu cianist from accepting Christ as the Light of the World, without abandoning the most essential positive tenets of Confucius as a special teacher for the Chinese people.2 V. That Brahmanism is a present day survival of one of the earliest systems pertaining to a primitive people, is clear from the Hindu idea of a national deity and national reli gion. If their thought concerning Brahm, the Arranger of the universe, does npt necessarily limit the divine power to the Hindus, yet nothing was ever formulated by the 'Consult Cycle of Cathay, pp. 197, 446. 2For the points made in this paragraph, consult Cycle of Cathay r pp. 326, 455. Lore of Cathay, pp. 247, 248. If the reader will review the points of Confucian instruction in Chapter V, supra, pp. 181, 182, he can better judge how far, as a constructive system — not of negations and omissions, — the positive tenets need modification to comport with the teachings of Jesus. A NATIONAL RELIGION. 369 Brahmans to indicate any divine relation to other peoples. For Hindustan, Brahm is local ; from his mouth proceed the Brahmans, from his feet the Sudras. The Brahmans have therefore never suggested the possible expectation of a world wide extension of their faith, or an aspiration for it. But they have always made the claim that their faith is good for India; and, in their own country, they have sent mis sions to the hill tribes, and to the native princes they have appealed upon patriotic grounds to stand by the divine revelation happily made known to those who abide in their favored peninsula between the mountains and the seas. So they have held their own through the ages, content with such natural increase as might come through growth of population. The leaders of religious thought in India, upon becoming acquainted with Christianity, have asso ciated this European faith with war and aggression, with intemperance, and with the lives of nominal Christians in India who are strangers to the imitation of Christ. To the great masses — scores upon scores and other scores upon scores of millions, — Christianity is still but a mere name which suggests the presence of the haughty beef-eating conquerors of India, whose so-called religion in no way commends itself to them. And while the native rulers of India and officers of the Crown, the heads of great com mercial houses, and men wise in the learning of the Orient, all appreciate what Great Britain is doing for the material prosperity of their land and the amelioration of social con ditions, yet as to religion they fall back upon old custom, and with much show of reason affirm that, while Christian ity may be good for Europe and America, Hinduism is best adapted to India. And as to the Brahmans, the intel lectual leaders of Hindustan, if, through their hereditary culture during thousands of years, they are deficient in well- proportioned mental discipline, it is little discerned by them that their unbounded mental pride admits of no dis trust of their ability to settle finally all questions of phi losophy and of faith. The slightest sense of intellectual 24 370 INHERENT DIFFICULTIES OF EXPANSION. perplexity, or slightest sense of humility in view of the limitations of the human mind, has not come down to the Brahmans from the heights of a hundred ancestral genera tions. So far is this caste, as a whole, from a hospitable attitude towards possible new truth. Amid tidal waves of a swiftly advancing higher civiliza tion and culture that have caught up so many great peoples in our modern era, Hinduism is anchored fast to the primi tive concept and custom of caste, to a sacred literature radically at variance with modern knowledge, and to sys tems of philosophy fatal to social progress; and this, it is claimed, is good enough for India. Were the leaders of Hindu thought, however, disposed to attempt the wide propagation of their faith, they would instantly discover certain considerations that militate against it. To some, it would not seem possible that the Western mind can, by reasoning, view things from the Ori ental standpoint. When President Barrows of Oberlin asked a Brahman priest in the temple of Parbati, — "How can I become a Hindu, ' ' the reply was made, — ' ' It is impos sible. To become a Hindu, one must be born a Hindu."1 So rigid are the barriers which might intervene, if Brah manism were seriously to consider the extension of their faith to Christendom. Then, too, they would question whether their ritualistic religion, their representative wor ship through the use of idols, the institution of caste, the inferior position of womanhood, and their pessimistic views of life would be adapted to the needs of the Western mind at the present era. Besides this, caste restrictions are such that it is practically impossible for a Brahman so to mingle with other peoples as to exercise a long continued personal persuasive influence over them.2 The lack of religious 'Christian Conquest of Asia, by John Henry Barrows, p. 230. 2Youth are dissuaded from visiting England. One cannot travel without daily risk of losing caste. When once lost, the cost of securing a restoration has been, within a century, as high as twenty thousand pounds: it is now quoted as ranging from forty pounds to sixty. HINDU WEAKNESS THROUGH SUB-DIVISION. 371 unity is another thing that would be an obstacle to Brah manical propagandism. In certain districts, every village differs in its deities from every other.1 Then, too, among perhaps a thousand castes in India, the Brahmans them selves are divided into several hundred sub-castes, perhaps a majority of all that exist; so that the unity of action needful for a successful propagation of Brahmanism in for eign parts could not be secured even if desired. So weak is Brahmanism as a world-power. With several hundred kinds of Brahmans who will not eat with each other,2 there must be not only an unprogres sive society, but a state bordering on national disintegra tion. Happily a national bond of unity is found in the even administration of justice, and the exercise of a humane policy by the British government, which with its provisions for education, its diffusion of medical science, its sanitation of cities, its irrigating works and famine relief, — stands serenely for the best interests of the entire body of the people without distinction of caste; being as little moved by the endless petty divisions of the Hindus as the Hima layas are disturbed by varying wind currents. Brahmanism under British rule has multiplied, by the excess of births over deaths, more rapidly by one-tenth than Christian converts have been made through philanthropic missions; so that Modern Hinduism is to-day two hundred millions strong. It is not, however, timely to insist upon this fact during the identical period in which Christianity is putting in its Hindu plant, — since by parity of reason ing, it might as well be said that the idol worshippers of the Eoman Empire were multiplying during the thirty years of the Nazarene life of Jesus. At the beginning of 'Mitchell, p. 192. 2Sherring, Hindu Tribes and Castes, London, 1872, enumerates eighteen hundred and eighty-six tribes of Brahmans. When it is considered that the total number in the caste is probably about fifteen millions, the common saying in India is credible that there are seven hundred subdivisions, each claiming a peculiar sanctity. 372 ADVANCE OF CHRISTIANITY any new movement the ratio of increase is very great, and the natural increase of an opposing movement may be easily so stated as to be misleading. For example, during the century, 1792-1892, the missionary societies of Christen dom increased two hundred and eighty-fold, and the con tributions for their support 35,153 fold. It cannot be claimed that the non-Christian population of the globe, within the same century, increased in so great a ratio as the Christian appliances for propagating the Gospel. Or if it be said that there are in the world somewhat less per haps than seventeen thousand mission stations and outsta- tions, it is to be remembered that a few years ago there were none ; that Christianity could not get into Japan, Tur key, nor China, and that India was not long since totally Moslem and Hindu. In an address before a committee of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, a few years since, the Eev. Eoger Dutt, a Bengali clergyman of Cawnpore, gave four decadal returns of native Christians in India:1 in 1851 being 91,092; in 1861 being 138,731; in 1871 being 224,258; in 1881 being 417,372: the per cent, of increase being respectively fifty-five, sixty-one, and eighty-six, for thirty years. These apparently were of the figures published by the Calcutta Missionary Conference, which also detailed the per cent, of increase in the various provinces. The Indian census for 1891 showed an increase of 10.5 per cent, in the population; 8.3 increase of Hinduism; 14 per cent, gain for Islam ; and 23.6 as the gain in native Christians. That Christianity increases more rapidly than the population, seems to be supported by the statistics during a consider able period of time.2 No figures can, however, justify prophecy : and it is pertinent to recall the conversion of the 'This refers to the Protestant enrollment. The current States man's Year Book includes the Roman Catholic population, giving a present total of 2,284,380 Christians in India. 'Church and State in India, by Sir Theodore C. Hope. London, 1893. Also Dr. George Smith's Conversion of India. IN INDIA. 373 Anglo-Saxons which was merely nominal at the end of two centuries after the attempt was first made. In some dis tricts the number of the lower caste people seeking Chris tian enrollment, has to be limited by the insufficient number of missionaries and native helpers to instruct them.1 At the Decennial Conference in Bombay in 1892-3, it was reported of the Hindu alumni of the University of Madras that one in twelve was a Christian, although at the same hour there was only one Christian in forty of the entire population of the Madras Presidency. "As far as I am able to gauge the attitude of the cultured and refined Hindu gentleman towards the Christian faith and its professors, it is one of profound respect; he is anxious to be taught and enlightened": this is the statement of the situation made by Judge Vavada Eao Avergal of Madura, one of the highest Hindu officials in Southern India, in an address before a large assembly, upon the occasion of the recent visit of the Deputation of the Aemrican Board;2 the atti tude of the Brahmans was not, however, presented. Hindu society is so permeated with the idea of classify ing the population by caste, it is now said that a new caste has arisen, the Christian. In any event, a few years ago, the Hindu who became a Christian was treated as an out cast. He has won for himself a standing; native Chris tians having now a recognized social status. "They are not straw and paper converts, ' ' says Sir William Muir, for merly Lieutenant-Governor of the Northwestern Provinces, "but good and honest Christians, many of them of high standard."3 "The native Christians," says Sir Eichard Temple, "now occupy whole tracts and districts of coun- 'Bishop J. M. Thoburn. 'Missionary Herald, June, 1902. Boston. sIn referring to the great changes since he went to Hindustan more than sixty years ago, Vice-Chancellor Muir of Edinburgh University, formerly Lieutenant-Governor in India, has written to the Author: — "One cannot help observing the distinctly ame liorating influences of Christian work on society at large; and especially on the classes, which, in the large cities, have come immediately within the atmosphere of missionary schools. The 374 ADVANCE OP CHRISTIANITY try; they behave as well, on the average, as Christians in any land; if you appeal to the magistrates in India, they will give the native Christians everywhere a good charac ter."1 The substantial sociological value of this work appears in a communication from the Eight Eev. Frederick Gell, D. D., late Bishop of Madras2: — "Those who become Christians show a greater desire for education, and to rise in the social scale ; they are more cleanly in their habits and better dressed ; they improve their dwelling houses ; a spirit of self-respect is increasing among them; they are more moral, and purer in their lives, more truthful and faithful, than non-Christians of the same caste." "I have governed a hundred and five millions of the inhabitants of India, ' ' it was remarked by the late Sir Eich ard Temple, ' ' and been concerned with eighty-five millions more. I thus had acquaintance with, or authentic informa tion regarding, nearly all the missionaries laboring in India. during thirty years. A more talented, zealous, and able body of men does not exist in India." The course taken by these European and American philanthropists in the Christian drill of native converts inspires confidence in the stability of their work.3 The result of this is a new India work of lady missionaries in Zenanas has made an entire trans formation, so far as it has extended, in spreading knowledge, and raising the status of women. No one who knew India fifty or sixty years ago, but must have observed this." 'Address, New York, 1882. 2Personal letter to the Author, enclosing the report of the Rev. James Stone, of the Church Missionary Society. 8Take, for example, the America Madura Mission: — Here are twenty -four churches: they are not one whit behind England and America in respect to the avoidance of idolatrous and caste usages, and of intemperance; in the exercise of care in church discipline, in the formation of habits of secret prayer and of family devotions, in attendance upon church prayer-meetings, in women's weekly prayer-meetings, in the observance of the Sab bath, in the training of children in Christian schools, — great pains have been taken during more than half a century, not only in minute attention to forming right spiritual habits but in the cultivation of intellectual gifts. IN INDIA. 375 so far as concerns the native Christian families. In the new Christian home, both the wife and husband have attended school, and, socially, they are competent to win, — when compared with the non-Christian home with its child marriage, its degraded womanhood, its polygamy, and its nameless abominations. The Moslem and the Hindu cannot keep pace with the advancement of the Christian. In sheer ability, the Christian man of the second, or, now, of the third generation, is more than a match for his idola trous Hindu neighbor in the village. This is so notable that the official reports of the Indian government allude to it. The most loyal subjects are the native Christians, and they are the most intelligent. As to influence and posi tion and wealth, they are gaining; this means very much for the next generations. Once the high castes furnished most of the government officers, but native Christians equally well educated have proved to be so efficient in pub lic service that the Brahmans have relatively lost ground.1 The Christian natives are found particularly well fitted to serve the state in routine administration, and in school work for civilizing rude tribes, like those among the Garo hills. All this points to the fact that Christianity has taken such firm hold upon India that it will stay there, and grow. That it will grow through native power is attested by the Indian Witness of March 31, 1894, which contains the statement of an American missionary, who, through sick ness, was absent from his field for six years. When he left the Bijnor district, only a hundred villages had been reached; on his return fifteen hundred and fifty new vil lages had been occupied through native agencies. So great are the calls for philanthropic service in all parts of her world-empire, that Great Britain has wel comed to the Indian field spiritual workers from all parts of Christendom. There are now sixty-nine missionary societies operating in India as one field of labor, at an annual expense of some sixty thousand pounds. 'Tide the statements made by George Smith, LL. D., in his Conversion of India. 376 CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. It will be seen by this that as a point of sociological strategy, the Western philanthropists have executed a flank movement upon the Brahmans, similar to that put into effect by General Grant in his final advance on Eichmond. Constantly confronted by General Lee, Grant moved con stantly on Lee's flank pressing on toward Eichmond. Mis sionaries in India are constantly instructed to avoid con troversy; the Brahmans are ignored, the advancing Chris tian hosts steadily push by them, toward the end sought — the elevation of the lower castes. Lecky, in his "History of European Morals"1 draws attention to the failure of the great Eoman philosophers and historians to discern in the rise of Christianity any thing that would change the face of the world. And it well may be that the Brahmans, the Buddhists, the Confucian ists, the Moslems, do not discern any cosmic changing power in the advance of Christianity all along the lines where rival religions come in contact, yet not more surely did Christianity change the face of Eome than it is now chang ing India. "More progress has been made in a hundred years toward the conversion of India," says Dean Farrar, "than was made in the conversion of the Eoman Empire during the first Christian century." Is it not possible to foresee the time when Brahmanism will have as completely passed away as the faiths of Eome, of Greece, of Assyria, and Egypt? "The spirit of Christianity has already pervaded the whole atmosphere of Indian society," said Chunder Sen; "and we breathe, think, feel, and move in a Christian atmosphere. Native society is being roused, enlightened, and reformed under the influence of Christian education." " It is Christ who rules British India, and not the British Government," said the same reformer.2 "England has 'Vol. I, p. 359. 2In his Address before a thousand people in the town hall, Cal cutta, April 9, 1879. Keshab Chunder Sen, 1838-1884, denied the deity of Christ, but received him as the greatest of all Asiatic saints. IDEA OF GOD'S KINGDOM INFLUENCED BY IMPERIALISM. 377 •sent out a tremendous moral force in the life and character of that mighty prophet to conquer and hold this vast empire. None but Jesus, none but Jesus, none but Jesus, ever deserved this bright, this precious diadem, India, and Jesus shall have it." VI. At the Chicago council of all the world in religious con ference, or Parliament of Eeligions, Christianity was the only one that made, then and there, any open claim of being adapted to universal sway. ' ' In thy seed shall all the fam ilies of the earth be blessed" was the ideal set before Abra ham. "Go ye into all the world, lo, I am with you," was the mandate of our Lord. During seventy generations there has been the clear cut conception of a universal divine kingdom upon the earth. From the outset Christianity — based upon the love of God, love to God, and love to all men, — -has deliberately planned to take moral possession of the world. The earliest propagation of Christianity was through men to whom the idea of the reign of the unseen God upon the earth came with the weight of divine author ity manifest during some centuries of the preceding Hebrew history. The Gentile Church Fathers dealt with Chris tianity as a graft upon the old stock, having its vitality in the ancient divine dispensation.1 Vet the mighty outwork ing of their idea and its surpassing hold upon men could never have been carried so far as it was, had it not been handled by the Eoman Church, which inherited certain imperial ideas from the empire ; an imperial habit of mind fitted the Eoman Church for making wide conquests; and the Eoman ecclesiastics inherited a genius for organization and governing through well defined statutes. The spiritual 'Tide The Homilies of Augustine, Chrysostom, and others, passim. The idea of a divine kingdom on earth, rooted in Judaism, received a great impulse through Christianity.— Consult Toy's "Judaism and Christianity," pp. 303-8, 368. 378 A WORLD-WIDE DrVINE KINGDOM. ideas which they received as having come down from imme morial ages, from Abraham the Hebrew, Moses the law giver, David the poet, Isaiah the seer, and from the divine self -revelation in Jesus Christ, were taken up by men fitted to propagate them through mental characteristics formed by the Caesars. Looking at it from a secular point of view, as a sociological phenomenon, the system and orderli ness and magnificent power to reach and to direct and control divers peoples, which characterized the Western Church, was a prime factor in the moral development of the modern age. When, therefore, we speak of the present day Christendom as a moral evolution, we have to do with a force that has, in some of its elements, come down through a hundred generations of well defined religious sentiment, and three score generations of special genius for self-exten sion and organization and government adapted to moral and religious' relations. The development of religious thought in Israel was but the conception and growth of their thought of God as the Moral Governor of men; it was closely connected with the evolution of the prophetic and priestly orders, through which the Jewish literature has come down to us. When the early idolatry and kingcraft of the Hebrews perished, the literary craft came into power ; and when the most worldly minded Jews voluntarily remained in the lands of exile, the chosen few who nourished in their hearts the hope of Israel came to the fore, reviving whatever of moral senti ment and civic custom had been of supreme value among their people during a score of generations, and giving to the priestly order that preeminence which they never lost till the time of Titus, — henceforth making the moralities and questions of casuistry matters of the highest moment in Judea. During this lapse of time, which was longer than that of the English ages since Chaucer, the Old Testa ment literature was put into the shape in which we now have it. When we consider the changes in the intellectual and moral development of Europe that have taken place THE FORMATION OP CHRISTENDOM. 37& since a few generations before Luther, it is credible that, within a period so long, great moral discoveries and new revelations of the things of God were made by the devout thinkers of Israel. And so great was the impetus they gave to new truth, so great their enthusiasm in bringing Him who is invisible to the knowledge of men, so absorbed were they in the thought of advancing the Kingdom of God, that their proselyting attracted the attention of the Eoman empire, and two royal edicts1 were issued to prevent the accession to Judaism of any not born to the faith. From this time forth the doctrine of a Living Spirit within the wheels of human history, energizing and guiding both individual life and racial movements to higher and higher ideals, has been one of the chief factors in the moral progress of humanity. The thought of Jesus, and of his followers from that day to this, has indeed come down to us handicapped by human infirmities, accompanied by a rude force of unholy ambitions, most irreligious activities and moral inconsistences, but it has eventuated in forming the Christendom of to-day, — a compacted body of peoples, holding theories of great similarity in respect to interna tional law, civic forms and freedom, domestic customs, a community of interest in educational standards and scien tific attainments, and in a religious faith derived from the same Sacred Books, and actuated, moreover, in some meas ure by altruistic ideals on the part of a vast number of individuals, even when corporate, commercial and civic con duct have been little affected by the Golden Bule or a sense of amenability to a divine law above all human legislation. Throughout the dark and dreary ages of European his tory, to Christianity alone was due the doctrine of a moral law rising above all physical force, a law that little by little has proved to be a constructive power in society, slowly and by silent advancement bringing the kingdoms of men under its resistless control. The spiritual condition of 'Of Hadrian and of Antonius Pius. — Harnack's Expansion of Christianity, p. 11. New York, 1904. 380 THE SPIRITUAL KINGDOM. individual men, the kingdom of God within, has been in this way so brought into accord with the Law-ordaining Power in matter and in mind, that the love of God, love to God, and love to men have found a permanent place among the motives paramount in the minds of vast numbers throughout Christendom, who little by little cooperate for modifying civic, commercial and corporate conduct in the interest of that universal Kingdom of Love, which seeks to unify the race as brethren, the children of God. To this — ¦ it is held — all human industry is tributary, to this all human science, to this all use of civic liberty, — to elevate men to a worthy citizenship in the City of God in the world's coming Golden Age. To carry out this plan for a universal Spiritual King dom, there are now enlisted, throughout Christendom, large numbers of business men in comprehensive, well organized altruistic enterprises to advance the ideas underlying the Kingdom of Love, among great peoples that comprise more than half the human race, of whom hundreds of millions have been enrolled in the votive service of non-Christian faiths during thousands of years. Christianity has been always attempting, century by century, to evangelize the world, after such fashion as the intellectual and spiritual enlightenment, and the local environment of the Church in any given century might allow. To speak otherwise, beto kens lack of information in regard to the historical condi tion of the Church and of the world, and the hindrances in former ages. The present activities could not have been carried on in Japan and China two generations ago when those nations were closed to foreigners; nor in certain African fields prior to their discovery ; nor in India, nor in Moslem realms, when they were inaccessible. The Euro pean problems that called for Christian solving were urgent in the earlier ages. Looking at it as a home mission field, •Christianity was well occupied in Europe prior to this cen tury. If the present age may be called preeminently a missionary era, it is because providential events favor it. THE MACHINERY FOR SELF-EXPANSION. 381 Continental Europe maintains twelve hundred Protes tant missionaries at five hundred and fifty stations, at a cost of fifteen hundred thousand dollars a year. Great Britain, Canada, and Australia have more than a hundred and twenty missionary societies; the annual income of the Church Missionary Society being nearly three hundred thousand pounds. Cardinal Manning once said that the English people had their choice, whether to be the beasts of burden or the evangelists of the world. They chose to become the evangelists. Seven million dollars a year are contributed by the United States for distinctive foreign missionary service. There are fifty-one principal societies engaged in the work; and eighty-two auxiliary societies independent and working in special departments or indi rectly aiding. The total Protestant Foreign Missionary Societies in Christendom number five thousand and fifty-eight, with an annual income of $19,598,823.1 There are 18,164 mission aries; of whom 6,027 are ordained as clergymen. Of ele mentary or village schools there are maintained 18,742; with 904,442 pupils. There are 1,632 academic, medical, and industrial schools, with 141,867 pupils. Of universi ties and colleges there are ninety-three, with 35,414 stu dents. There have been gathered 13,039 children into 213 orphanages, foundling asylums, and homes for infants. There are 711 missionary physicians, ministering in 355 hos- 'The figures in this paragraph relate to the end of the century, and are found in J. S. Dennis' Centennial Survey of Foreign Mis sions, New York, 1902; a work invaluable to the sociologist. It has proved impracticable for the author to obtain a suffi cient body of such statistics as he has desired, in regard to the great work of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world; and an imperfect presentation would be misleading. In stating* however, that the annual collections for the Society for the Pro pagation of the Faith average not far from one million and a, third dollars, he can but take a pardonable pride in the fact that the Boston Diocese is the largest contributor. The total collec tions in eighty-four years have been seventy millions of dollars. 382 THE MAGNITUDE OF THE WORK. pitals and 753 dispensaries to 93,705 in-patients, 2,579,651 out-patients, giving 6,647,840 annual treatments. Of Women's Foreign Missionary Societies in Christen dom there are a hundred and twenty, of which eighty-eight are auxiliary. These societies are ministered to through local auxiliaries in churches and parishes, there being not fewer than thirty thousand of these minor auxiliaries in the United States. There are 7,285 women missionaries in the field. As wives, mothers, teachers, physicians, they aid the women of India, China, Turkey, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, in the evolution of a higher type of domestic life. As a sociological experiment these figures are of great interest : a free gift from the business men of Christendom of more than twenty million dollars a year; maintaining more than eighteen thousand philanthropic specialists — seven thousand of them well educated women, — in altru istic service in foreign fields; giving annual schooling to more than a million pupils; and giving medical assistance to two and two-thirds millions of patients upon six and a half millions of occasions in each year : — this is the volun tary offering of Christianity year by year to aid in the moral evolution of the non-Christian races, by extending practical help in the hour of need to the poorest of the poor and to those stricken with disease, and introducing to all minds the idea of Our Heavenly Father 's love to his earthly children and our returning love, and making known God's peace and good will to all men of good will — so gladly laying the foundations of the Kingdom of Love among all peoples, — in a life of unthanked self-denial for the good of others. As the divine love, the divine redemption, was for man, for man is the divine instrumentality of the King dom of Love, wide as the intent of heaven and wide as the needs of humanity. It is too early to look for results. Vet a vital seed has been planted by Christianity in non-Christian realms all over the world : — The work is carried on at 31,818 stations, each principal ITS STATISTICAL RESULTS. 383 station having usually five sub-stations.1 The Christian native contributions for advancing the work amount to $1,841,757 : Of the beginnings of churches (14,221) there are more than four times as many as there were in all the United States in 1800 ; there are more in number than in the ten ecclesiastical bodies which comprised all branches of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1885 : The total number added to these native churches, in the last year of the report, was greater than the population of Geneva and Berne, greater than Hartford and New Haven, and nearly one-third as many as the total increase of Protestant communicants in the United States in 1894: The total number of native communicants (1,531,889) exceed the enrollment of the entire ten branches of the Pres byterian body in the United States in 1885, together with the Free Church of Scotland in 1878 ; there are four times as many native Christian church members as there were in the churches of the United States in 1800, and one-tenth as many as there were in 1894 : Of these native churches one member in twenty gives his entire time to altruistic service ; the number so* employed being more than one-half as large as that of the population of the state of Delaware: The native Christian community or number of adherents in Christian families (4,514,592) is very nearly equal to that of the combined population of Pekin, Tokio, Constan tinople, St. Petersburg, and Berlin: — yet of this native community one-third are church members, which is as great a proportion as that in the early settlement of New Eng land by the Puritans ; the Christian total native community, as it now exists in non-Christian lands, is larger than the population of Holland or of Turkey in Europe, being nearly the same as the population of Sweden ; this Christian native community is 85 per cent, of the population of the United States in 1800, yet with this smaller gross population the 'Dennis. 384 THE SELF-EXTENSION OF CHRISTIANITY. native church members are four times as many as there were in the United States at that time ; the native Christian adherents are already about one-tenth of the Christian adherents in the United States in 1890; this native com munity now gathered in the non-Christian lands is within two hundred thousand as many as that of the census enroll ment of the New England states — Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Ehode Island, and Connecticut, — in 1890, yet the Protestant Church members of New Eng land would have to be multiplied by 2.3 to equal the mem bership in the native Christian community of nearly the same total population: If these total results — of a trifle more than a hundred years of modern Christian missions, — are small, yet they are of great importance in their relation to the coming cen turies ; and in the historic light of the results of the earlier missionary activities of the Church, they presage a great social and moral change in elevating depressed peoples. Christianity is a religion of ideas that rise to such moral grandeur as never entered into the heart of man to con ceive ; its votaries believe that they have been suggested by the All-Father for guiding his children. They are so held as to limit the authority of despots and contribute to the greatest degree of civil freedom; so held as to encircle the sanctity of home-life by law, protecting childhood, and elevating womanhood. Under their reign have been devel oped the material resources of the earth to a degree unknown to non-Christian races, through a knowledge of natural science that has not been attained by rival peoples. The best educational methods, the most general intelligence, the best systematized altruistic humanitarian work, and the most thoroughly organized and aggressive religious power upon the planet, have characterized the races of Christen dom. If, therefore, we say of the lower races of animals; that a certain sagacity favors the preservation of some, that keen vision or sharp hearing favors others, that fleetness; of foot or muscular strength and adroitness tends to secure to others victory in the struggle for life, how then can. EXTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN REALM. 385 inferior religions but perish, and races that cannot make good their places at the front fall still further into the rear ? Is there not a constant process of religious and social selection going forward generation after generation, in which some are all the time failing and being supplanted by those better fitted to survive. In yesterday we read to-day; in to-day we read tomorrow. The extermination of the unfit is an everyday affair in nature; how then can the highest hopes for the future of mankind depend upon the least helpful and the most stagnant of the religions, and those races most lacking in energy and practical power to get on in the world I1 Would it not be easy to show by dry statistics — blossoming in beauty like the miraculous rod of Hebrew story — that Christianity has won the nations of the future? Have not the great Protestant powers of Christendom, at the present moment, political control of a third part of the human race? Add to these the peoples under the control of the Greek Church and the Eoman Church, and Christianity now dominates races that number three-fifths of the population of the world. Christianity, too, in its own right, is numerically the foremost religion upon the globe. By a phenomenal expansion within two hundred years, Christendom now has a population of nearly five hundred millions. The advance, too, in the vitality of Christianity — the number of communicants — in Christen dom itself, appears from the fact that in the United States, within the nineteenth century, the communicants increased fifty fold, while the total population of the country increased fourteen fold.2 'Do we say, that, in the early stages of religious thought, among barbaric or semi-barbaric peoples who have but a perverted moral sense, a race may be greatly advantaged by a religious system, essentially incorrect in its radical notions, if it has truth enough in it to check the evil tendencies of some and nourish the piety of others? In so saying we appreciate warmly all the good wrought by it, yet nothing hinders our recognition of the tem porary character of its services to humanity. 2The onpushing aggressive power of the American churches in their own home field is shown by their expenditure of a hundred 25 386 THE SPIRIT OF SELF-SACRIFICE. Yet such numbers are not of present importance or to be insisted upon. Of most importance is the self-sacrificing spirit of Christianity in its effort to extend the reign of the law of love throughout the earth.1 As between man and man, what we call moral conduct is comprised for the most part in duties that relate to others. Concerning this, it was a fundamental idea at the Christian era that the lower life should be sacrificed to the higher, the lower good for the higher, and self — in an overflowing measure of love — for the well-being of others. "Whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister ' ' : your minister in a ministration that is the very opposite of a cold, calculat ing prudence, planning to obtain every time quid pro quo, — a ministration that does not limit self-sacrifice to what is just enough to get on with, a ministration that never thinks what society can do for a man but what he can do for society — -imparting his own life for the lives of others, — it is not mere devotion to an unselfish plan of life but readi ness for heroic moral venture since it can never be known beforehand whether the venture will accomplish all that is hoped for.2 If this be not so, it is like it. And in setting forth this ideal Jesus Christ provided the means of social advancement in the administration of the Kingdom of Love. millions dollars a year to maintain religious services and work, and tneir investment within the nineteenth century of $365,- ©00,000, in home evangelization. Providentially this work has, within a hundred years, increased the Protestant communicants from a ratio of one in thirteen of the total population to one in four. '"The history of self-sacrifice during the last eighteen hundred years, has been mainly the history of the action of Christianity upon the world." "It is always extremely important to trace the (direction in which the spirit of self-sacrifice is moving; for upon the intensity of that spirit depends the moral elevation of an age, and upon its course the religious future of the world." — Lecky's History of Rationalism. 2The capacity for sacrifice with intelligence and cheerfulness, to useful ends, is the great social and public requirement of our times. — Charles B. Rice. THE HEROIC ELEMENT IN MODERN LIFE. 387 Is not this the living moral principle which is most effica cious in promoting the social evolution of all the races? The heroic age is not behind us. Is it not the chivalrous quest of human wretchedness to be alleviated, which gives matchless distinction to the present hour? What inscrip tion can be more triumphant than that on General Gordon's monument in St. Paul's Cathedral? . He, indeed, was the man, — "Who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, and his heart to God." What other truth than that of Christ crucified has ever led to so much self-denial ? Has not the ideal of heroic character been changed by Chris tianity ? Once it was physical, now it is spiritual. Would men left to themselves have ever invented a system based upon self-sacrifice as the leading principle to govern a man's life ? Are not duties irksome, dangers extreme, — the rally ing cries of the Kingdom of God? Men and women leave all, to heed the call of humanity. This heroic element in modern life, this self-sacrifice for others as an ideal of life, will some day gain sway among all peoples. Is not this the law of human progress? Is it not this which coordi nates all Christian experience, which unifies the Christian body, which mobilizes all forces, which enables Christianity to secure the cooperation of its membership upon every con tinent and in every isle to promote that for which the Church exists, — the evangelization of the world, the build ing of the New Jerusalem, the fraternity of man, and loy alty to God? So.it has come about that self-sacrifice for the sake of others has become the leading principle of prac tical conduct in the lives of multitudes of men. It is this heroic mold of life, never wanting to Christian ity, that has been the secret of its power — a divinely inspired enthusiasm for humanity. Brahma and Buddha have never lacked ascetics, nor Confucius his literary sages and astute administrators of civic affairs, nor Mohammed for self-devoted heralds of his prophetic mission; nor has Jesus Christ ever lacked men of amazing organizing power, 388 PROCLAIMING THE LAW OF LOVE. a match for emperors and kings, who have been actuated by self-sacrificing love for mankind, proclaiming the univer sal law of love and so far enforcing it as to work moral miracles and build up mighty nations of Christian freemen whose lives are — to a degree never before known upon the earth — regulated by wholesome moral law. Is it not this spirit of the Master, embodied in multitudes of disciples, that will ultimately sweep all before it, and subject the world? Its intensity of movement, its moral elevation, its stupendous philanthropic machinery, will dominate this planet, bringing in the kingdom of Him whose right it is to rule. CHAPTEE NINE: THE TIME ELEMENT IN THE FUTUEE OF MAN'S MOEAL EVOLUTION. Were the story of Christianity to be divided into seven ages,1 the seventh would be that period which our Sacred Books refer to as the Millennial Eeign of Christ in his Kingdom upon the earth, and its geological counterpart would be the present "Age of Man." This geological age has already existed during some hundreds of thousands of years past, in which there has been no great change in climatic conditions;2 and it will continue to exist without material change of the atmospheric conditions, needful for man's occupancy of the earth, during some hundreds of thousands or millions of years to come. This is the agreed upon judgment of the most eminent physicists, represent ing the geological and the astronomical departments of our great universities. Some millions of years to come, is the expression in the most authoritative astronomical books; and the geologists who have traced the past look for no material change during more than fifty thousand genera tions of men in coming ages. Said Agassiz, — the earth is in its infancy still.3 What, then, shall be said of five or six score generations past, in which Hebraic and Christian ideas have been so crude, in which Brahmanism has degenerated into Hin duism, in which Gautama has failed to enlighten Asia, in which the Confucian philosophy has proved of no avail to uplift the masses of China, and in which Islam has found 'Tide Chapter I, p. 7, supra. 2L. Agassiz, Geological Sketches, p. 18. Boston, 1866. 3Guizot, as a historical student, expressed the same thought as to the world's civilization.— H istory of Civilization, I, p. 18. London, 1846. The same thought I have found in Charles Sumner's Works, Vol. II, pp. 119-122. Boston, 1870. 390 THE FUTURE OF MORAL EVOLUTION. itself unadapted to world-wide extension. As sure as the continuance of the diurnal revolution of the earth, and its movement around the sun, will be the continued moral evo lution of mankind. And the moral experiments already made upon so vast a scale during five thousand years past throw great light upon the ultimate social outcome of the progress of our race during a future period one or two hundred times as great. What is the Divine Kingdom1 on earth other than that combination of individuals for mutual service which is fundamental to a progressive state of society; and the perfecting of society through the vol untary acceptance of the moral law of supreme love to God and perfect love to man as the ordinary and inevitable rule for daily living; the human race being made a unit through mutual helpfulness and through following the same moral aims and imitating the same moral ideal. Is not the promotion of all this, at this very hour, the leading aim in life of a vast body of thrifty business men who plan to win the world for the spiritual reign of Jesus Christ? If it be considered what has been wrought in a few scores of generations past, is it not certain through the continu ance of processes already begun, that during some thou sands of generations to come the idea of the Kingdom of God will pass from the realm of Christian rhetoric into a triumphant reign with historical record? Will not the godlike nature of man, when renewed by divine energy and animated by divine love, become finally subject to the sec ond table of the Moral Law during the beneficent reign of the All-Father age after age? Throughout evolutionary processes during ages so vast as to suggest the cycles of eternity, this globe will be peopled by generations that will voluntarily seek those higher and higher moral ideas for the earth, as the outer court of Heaven, which are befitting the heirs of an immortal heritage. The entire moral train ing of mankind has had this in view, — the creation of a 'Chapter II, Section v; Chapter VI, Section viii; Chapter VIII, Section vi; supra. THE KINGDOM OP GOD. 391 new era of fraternal love. Our sacred theories, Hebraic and Christian, during four score generations have held to this thought ; and it has now become one of the foremost of evolutionary forces, effecting changes upon a vast and expanding scale in the domestic and social and civic condi tion of continental areas of the globe, and to the isles of the earth it has given a new law. So a radiant hope for the social future of mankind is held out by Christianity. "The earth is given to God's people in trust to fit it for his reign."1 "The Kingdom of God is but the true fulfil ment of human life and society. ' '2 The sublime prophecies of the early seers of our faith are now interpreted by the self-revelation of God in nature. The uncounted millenniums of the present geological and astronomical era of our planet make reasonable the calm and intelligent planning of the Son of Man, as he announced the principles upon which his disciples — ener gized by the Holy Spirit — should proceed, in order to bring in the harmonious reign of God as earth's benedic tion. "The hope of good for this earth," says Maurice,3 "is essentially involved in all the promises of God; we must suppress the most obvious statements in Scripture4 if we refuse to cherish it." The Christian Books evince no divine plan to crush out the hopes of humanity, but every where call upon us to listen for the stately steps of man's Eedeemer. It is not in Christianity, that civilization shall perish amid cries of pain and despair. What is more rea sonable than the vision of Bishop Butler, in which he sup poses a society perfectly virtuous for a succession of many ages, in which injustice by fraud or force would be 'Dr. Alexander McKenzie. 2Phillips Brooks. 'Lectures on the Apocalypse, Second Edition, p. 303. London, 1885. 'Without citing the earliest passages in that effulgent succes sion of texts that betokened to the Hebrews the coming of Mes siah and his reign, such citations as these may be noted: — Ps. 2: 7, 8; 22: 27-28. Isa. 2: 2-4; 11: 6, 9; 60: 21; 66: 23- Micah 4: 3. Zech. 9: 10; 14: 9. Heb. 8: 10, 11. Rev. 11: 15. 392 COSMIC CONDITIONS. unknown, in which cunning, false self-interest and confed eracies for evil-doing would have no place, but in which wisdom, public spirit and fidelity, would make such a king dom or society superior to all others, and which would ulti mately win to its allegiance all mankind.1 It is this ideal that is the animating hope and aim of our faith, which enters into the daily prayer and practical planning and patient effort of scores of millions of disciples: and will not the salt of the earth some day season it, and will not the Light of the World some day enlighten it? Is our atmosphere to be depended upon? A certain degree of heat and of cold? A certain humidity? The conditions for man's life upon the globe? They have been so unvarying, during hundreds of thousands of years, that there has never yet been any atmospheric accident to which the animal man has not been able to adapt himself. So, too, for vast stretches of time in the future, it can be depended upon that a morally perfected race will maintain its footing upon this globe. Man, says Dean Shaler, may not be of long life or of stronger physique than now, the human constitution is not likely to change, man will be short-lived and weak; man's intellect may gain accumu lated wisdom, but in native power not expand beyond that of the great man of former ages, the builders of the pyra mids and the most notable of the Greeks ; but in moral life the race will make advancement.2 In likeness to the moral image of the Son of Man, the perfectability of the race has not reached its limit; and in moral evolution the ages are before us. If Princeton astronomy is reasonable, a hun dred thousand generations of an improved type of man may follow the reptilian and beastly types of those who have lived in the dawn of human history.3 'Analogy, I, iii, Sections 29, 30. 2A conversation: October, 1903. 'Compare Professor Charles A. Young's Sun, revised edition, p. 318. New York, 1895; and his Astronomy, p. 524. Boston, 1893. Newcomb's Astronomy, p. 516 (compare revised edition, p. 501. AGES AVAILABLE FOR MORAL EVOLUTION. 393 "There is nothing to indicate," says Shaler, "that the clock is running down." Our planet was intended for ages. If not just now made habitable for man, it is only just now that it has been actually taken possession of by man intelligent enough to record his own history ; and only just now the earth has had any large human population upon it. It has been given over to wild beasts for innu merable cycles of time. At the dawn of man's historic era — China five thousand years ago, the Aryan race before India was occupied, the early Assyrians, early Egyptians, and the hunting tribes of Europe, Africa and earliest America, — the total human census could have comprised only a few millions. In the slow process of evolving his physical constitution, but' few specimens of the animal man can be traced through surviving remains ; and in the periods of time we call historic, the worst men morally have been so few when compared with the world's population during scores upon scores of thousands of generations to eome, that any comparison would be like that of a single leaf com pared with all that wave in the world's forests, or like a few drops of spray compared with our planetary oceans. Take England, — read what Macaulay says of the unre deemed areas of land within a recent period. Think for how long a period before that, it had been so — for an inestimable time prior to the cave-dwellers. Look over the New York, 1880), assumes that our earth will be habitable for some millions of years. Lord Kelvin (Popular Science Monthly, May, 1887, p. 26) implies a period quite as long. To the writer, in questioning, the Director of Harvard Observatory gave his assent to the reasonableness of a period of hundreds of thousands of years as the legitimate expectation of man's possession of the earth: and a period of millions of years was deemed by the head of the Geological Department as probable for the future age of mankind. Professor Williston of Chicago University, and Dr. See of the national Naval Observatory, are at one, in specifying certain millions of years for human life upon our globe. Charles Darwin (More Letters, II, pp. 260, 261), speaks of man's progress as continuing during millions of years, with every continent swarming with good and enlightened men. 394 THE DrVINE PURPOSE island morally to-day, the "Darkest England" part of it. In moral evolution, it is not perfected. Yet the regener ative processes that have been already at work for forty generations — if carried on during a hundred thousand generations to come that the scientists promise, — will make England a heaven upon earth to dwell in. Less than forty generations ago, Great Britain was a savage state ; that it is not now, is due to Christianity; give this religion forty thousand generations more to work in, and by that slow process which God has chosen for the moral evolution of man, the ideal of that state which was imagined by the Bishop of Durham in his Analogy will certainly be fulfilled. We have to do with cosmic conditions, the future is assured. Here is a man in power, pompous and unjust. In the perfected ages of the earth, he will, if known about, be thought of, as we now think of a man primeval standing out against the suggestions of an incipient conscience. Man's moral life is the direction for his expansion: in this alone is he worthy of the eons to come and the realms of immortality. Is not human life now in a cosmic setting, as in a frame? Man's moral evolution is for the ages, as much so as if it were part of the frame of nature; the Creator choosing to have it so, — the divine energy being immanent alike in material and in moral development. What therefore Professor Eoyce calls "the Invisible Moral Order ' ' demands time for its unfolding — the divine purpose in human history. Not yet can Tolstoi's dreams of peace be fulfilled ; but they will be : the Golden Eule will yet govern. In a hundred thousand years from now, it will be said that we, who lived so near the dawn of the historic era, made war upon our brother Christians that we might possess ourselves of what belonged to them. In that age, to-day's moral grossness in India, in China, and in Christendom, will excite pity and wonder, unless the imma turity that now characterizes moral evolution upon the globe may be happily forgotten by the scores of thousands of generations that will possess the earth before present cosmic conditions are disturbed. IN HUMAN HISTORY. 395 Men do not think of the vastness of the plans of God, as he develops his Kingdom through the centuries and millen niums of history : plans extending from everlasting to ever lasting, and embracing the countless worlds now in silent evolution around us — a hundred million suns. Do we, indeed, wonder why for a moment he tolerates wrongs, and impatiently ask "Where is the promise of his coming?" Had we been inhabitants of some other world through millions of years past, as we shall soon be the inhabitants of some other world for millions of years to come; and if we were acquainted with all the events transpiring upon this globe; and if we had lived to see the creation and his tory and the consuming of one globe and another in the universe around us, — could we so have looked upon a thou sand years as one day; — we should better comprehend the varied movements upon this earth, during any brief period of history. Has the Creator of the worlds, by an orderly process of his choosing, guided the physical and moral evo lution of man? Is the growth, too, of his moral kingdom upon earth like the growth of a globe, slow and with painful revolutions and seeming reverses, but age after age prepar ing for the habitation of a perfected race during myriads of ages? To make clear what has been said, — concerning the slow and sure evolution of our planet, during the eons of geo logical time to illustrate the divine method in moral devel opment, — an allusion may be made to the geological his tory of Chicago. So far as relates to America, we are to think of the primeval ocean as broken only by the appear ance of the Laurentian hills of Canada, the first permanent- land upon the globe, and by the Appalachian mountains,. and by the elevation of California above the sea. Silurian Chicago was at that time a coral reef white with breaking billows, a reef two hundred thousand years in building. It was but little above sea level at the close of the Silurian period. And there is no further story till the time of the ice drift. Probably at the close of the Silurian age a low 396 THE GEOLOGY OF CHICAGO. mountain range had been uplifted, extending from what is now Lake Superior to Chicago, thence east into northern Indiana, — this range being planed off in the ice age. The great lakes were the product of the ice age, there being vast valleys before that, which were deepened and filled by the melting ice sheet. Huron, Erie and Ontario were one lake pouring into the Ohio. Lake Michigan poured south, making a depression of some two thousand feet in the rim of the lake. This it was which determined the present location of Chicago. When the receding water finally poured eastward instead of southward, a low watershed was subsequently formed in the depression made by the old southern outlet, over which the American aborigines passed between the lake and the Illinois river into the valley of the Mississippi. It was at this point of the passing over, that the city was located. Onward and onward rolled the weary ages, during which, from a business man's point of view, the site of the city had no economic value. Slowly but surely rose the con tinent to such a height near the surface of the primeval ocean, that during ages of wild agitation the sea could beat upon the coral reefs of the future city. Slowly and pain fully some fifty geological periods then passed, represent ing millions upon millions of years. So remote, indeed, was that geological period when Chicago was first thought of, that it seems to us to reach almost back to the realms of chaos and ancient night. If during all this period the site of the city has been preparing, who shall wonder if, from a moral point of view, it may take many an age now to lift Chicago once and forever out of that sea of rum under which it is now submerged, and to rid the city of a few ¦citizens who are morally not unlike the reptiles of the Silurian period? The idea underlying the Christian tem perance reformation is not yet a hundred years old, and it is too soon to expect for it a sweeping and final triumph in the great cities of Christendom, whether Chicago or Lon don. As in the geological periods long past, one set of LAW OP PROGRESS IN FAITH AND MORALS. 397 animals overlapped the next life era, so now many reptilian social customs, that Christianity ought to have killed out long ago, still survive. But when Christianity has reigned a hundred thousand years upon this globe, the historians will point back to us as the creatures who were three thou sand generations nearer than themselves to the apes and the brutes. Our Christianity makes no claim for representing a fairly perfect moral evolution, it does, however, claim to make moral progress, by a slow and orderly development. It seems to be the law of progress that systems of reli gious faith, and of morality, which develop throughout long intervals of time, appreciably advance only through a succession of gradual stages or by epochs, each marked by the prominence or emphasis given to some new idea, which is, however, rooted in the past. In this way continuity is preserved, and the generations are bound together. The ethnic stock brings forth fruit after its kind. The future. will spring from the present, as the present sprang from the past. Great changes follow the rule of a slow progres sion. The future course of history can in nowise be dis cerned unless through the indisputable changes that have already taken place. No great epoch is a mere disconnected leap. It is prepared for, and happens with reason; and it is related to what follows. It is so in the evolution of the globe itself, in the succession of geological epochs; it is so in human laws, and in morals, and in the religious beliefs of mankind. In the moral evolution of man, we have to do with vast races and long periods. The confessed deficien cies of Christianity require time for correction — a great deal of time, if we judge from the story of past centuries. And the other great religions of the globe cannot be greatly modified from within, or changed from without, except through gradual processes whose roots find life and nour ishment in the nature of the great ethnic stock from which each religion has sprung. The ontramping innumerable hosts of God, with all their diverse racial characteristics, 398 THE LAW IN MORAL PROGRESS. must advance through methods that accord with the genius of their own people under the leadership of the Divine Spirit. The greatest changes are wrought only through grafting new ideas upon an old stock; to graft a new scion upon a wild olive tree was an early simile. To eradicate the old stock is not the method. Eeligion is, however, of the soul's life — the vital current in its relations to God and man, — as distinguished from intellectual tenets held by philosophy. Eeligions, therefore, which are separated in their radical ideas cannot be intergrafted by living scions. No student of the geological history of the earth; no student of the slow growth of nations, of governments, of cities, of literatures, — the Hebrew, Greek, Eoman, French, German, English, or the Oriental; no student of the sublime Scriptural prophecies of the long ages in which the perfected human race will abide upon this planet, — will be impatient if many generations come and go before all wild places are transformed into the garden of the Lord. Unless Christianity appreciates whatever is vital and genuine in the religious experience of non-Christian peoples, and can so present its own essential verities to all truth-seekers as to meet the most urgent international moral needs of the varied children of God throughout the earth, it can never be the universal religion. It can extend only through an orderly change, through the gradual acceptance by a people of new views for the conduct of life, — the principles introduced by Jesus Christ, the love of God, love to God and love to man, — • which must be so expressed as to accord with the mode of thought native to this race or that. It is the glory of Christianity that an independent Chris tian experience must be correlated by an independent inter pretation of the essence of the faith under the illumination of the Divine Spirit, and the orderly development and application of the truth so interpreted to individual life and society according to laws growing naturally out of a racial past. Eeligious forms are transitory. In a world-conscious- NATURAL" EVOLUTION OF MORAL POWER. 399 ness of the truth of God's love in Jesus Christ, there can be such credal and liturgical unanimity only as may consist with individual and racial differences. Asia can therefore never be carried by storm through a "hustling" type of Christianity, nor can Christianity itself be made conform able to the moral type of the Master through evolutionary processes that are at war with that law of slow but sure progress which was adopted by the Creator in forming man's mental constitution in his own image. The present springs from the past, and the ideal of to-day is the law of tomorrow. As the geological forces, representing the divine immanence in nature, are still modifying our planet, so in the moral development of the human race there is a gradual elevation like that which is inappreciably uplifting moun tain ranges at this hour. By the all penetrating energy of the Divine Spirit, making itself felt through subordinate agencies, the serene ages of God 's peace will some day dawn npon the earth. And this final triumphant sway of the Moral Law, transforming the earth to the likeness of Heaven, is represented by the Christian Scriptures as pro- ducable through a divine method that manifests itself in the ordinary course of God's providential government and through the gradual extension of his Kingdom in the earth. It is in this sense that "the road to the millennium is a passable road."1 It is a road that can be traveled by humanity. If spontaneous development is sometimes spoken of, it illustrates what appears, upon the surface, to be the process in the distinctive evolution of the moral kingdom of God; a process in which the underlying divine energy is secre tive, — we say that the method is naturalistic. If cannot so properly be said that we do not appreciate the majesty of those mighty movements of which we ourselves are a part, as that we scarcely notice the movement, — still less think of it as the manifestation of the hidden divine power in carrying out the divine purpose. By human discussions 'Professor George N. Marden's phrase, in an unpublished paper. 400 THE PRESENT HEROIC AGE. and daily experiences that seem to us as common and nat ural as the springing of the grass or the unfolding of bud and blossom, the Kingdom of God among men is carried forward without ostentation, and so silently as to pass. unheeded by the careless observer. If through the heroic service of the choicest spirits in the Church during some centuries ; if through infinite toils and self-sacrifice during five hundred or a thousand years of patient progress in Christianizing China, India, Africa; even though the majestic movement of the Kingdom of God is discerned only by eyes blinded by human sorrow, gener ation after generation of living martyrdom, in proclaiming Christ and Him crucified to peoples as stolid at heart as; their idols of clay, of stone, of bronze or gold ; even though the homely houses where Christianity is first proclaimed are not hastily rebuilt in the splendor of celestial pattern, — yet the redemption of the world will hasten in His time who made it, and the beauty of the Lord God will crown the earth. How greatly will be envied in the future those who are now privileged to be the founders of new institutes in new realms of the Divine Kingdom on earth, — to do deeds never possible for those who come later, to encounter diffi culties that will never disturb the later if not happier lot. In a thousand generations from now, these very years in which we live will be included in the heroic ages of the world, the ages of surpassing moral endeavor to walk in the steps of the Saviour of men in blissful self-sacrifice for the sake of others. The vast industrial changes, that are at this moment taking place in Japan, China, India, and all southern Asia, betoken the dawn of a new era in the civilization of one- half the human race. The Occident is welcome to the1 Orient in its tools, in its capital, in its trained workmen, in its ideas for the development of natural resources, in its new ideals of domestic life, in its educational methods, its- sciences, its literatures, its moral thought, and in its phi lanthropy. DIVINE ENERGY IN MORAL EVOLUTION. 401 Is not the miracle of the early church, in this way, repeat ing itself in suiting the genius of Christianity to every man's own language? What race can escape from its own early environment? Do not the Orientals think of Christ as an Englishman? Through ages of heredity the ancient peoples of every type, that receive Christ as Master and Lord, will never become Anglo-Saxons. The spiritual har monies of coming ages will be voiced in a myriad tongues, and new types of Christianity adapted to new disciples of old racial stock, will gladden the earth. So will be coor dinated those elements of eternal truth which have been expressed by the great faiths of the world during the mil leniums of history. "The spirit of God," that first moved upon the waters, bringing forth the order and beauty of the creation from chaos, "is to be depended upon as a factor in this world's moral progress."1 Through this Divine Psychic Energy, exercised in a manner analogous to the energy put forth in material evolution, and with a grandeur and breadth like that of a vast cosmic movement, the earth's populations will little by little be drawn to the Son of Man, and volun tarily take his yoke upon them, and learn of him. In this will be found the seed germ of all social reforms, through processes extended during the ages. Is not the trend of his tory toward the imitation of Christ? Through this move ment, continued age after age for scores of thousands of generations, an illuminated and purified race will rejoice in the spiritual splendor of the closing days of human his tory, — in a divine spiritual reign appropriate to the pure character of the Son of Man. 'Dr. R. S. Storrs. APPENDIX, A. The Monks of Christendom.' The tendency on the part of some to enter into a hermit or monastic life is too deeply rooted in human nature to be easily eradicated, expressing as it does the soul's desire to bid the world stand aside, that one may be alone to solve life's highest prob lems. Were there not recluse Jews before John the Baptist? Did not Elijah glorify his hermitage? Austere were the haunts of the Nazarites, and the great Herald of Messiah. In advance of their age were certain ideals of the Essenes, separate in their city life or in their holy wildernesses. If, in part, these ascetics antedated Gautama, none of them lived so early as anchorite Brahmans at a period so remote as that in which the plains of India were covered by forests. Have not our Aryan saints had a genius for solitude during a hundred generations? As an enduring type for all ages, therefore, it was easy for Gautama to make the monastic life the very kernel of an Oriental system. Yet in founding the spiritual world of the West, the Son of Man taught his disciples that the light of holiness should never be liidden under a bushel; and the apostolic founders of the King dom of Love mingled in the society of their times, seeking to purify it as the salt of the world. Nevertheless, early in the Christian ages, with the growing spirituality of some, came a growing distaste for the world as it was; most eminent saints reverting to the Oriental type, entertaining pessimistic views of life, as Gautama did, as the early Aryan sages did. They fled from men, and hid themeslves in deserts solitary as the watery waste of the middle sea. Nor is there any more beautiful picture in history than one that might be made of the faces, surpassingly sweet, aglow with the light of God, of well-to-do young men and maidens, who gave their goods to the poor, and retired into lonely places that they might be alone with God. Such was St. Antony, of noble blood, with life far nobler than Mark Antony, whose name he bore. His life story related by Athanasius was one factor in leading Augustine to make a sharp turn in his youthful life. This movement was, in part, the protest of the few against the wearing of the robes of paganism by the most. The low plane 'To illustrate the historic parallel referred to In Chapter V, p. 175, supra. THE MONKS OF CHRISTENDOM. 403 of the average Christian living, the merely nominal Christianity of the great mass, the conformity to the world, led not a few devout persons to abandon society, at least for a time. Some returned to it with singularly elevated aims in life; and some still tarried in the deserts, — of whom a few became not only vis ionary but insane. Among the most eminent men of the Church were those who tried this experiment a few years; so long only as it was helpful to them. Great influence against the custom was, however, exerted by the most powerful preachers of the age: — With society inconceivably corrupt, why should men fly from it? It was but the day-dawn of the Christian Church, and the men could not see their pathway clearly. So, to-day, the ascetics of India have little light to go by. Many of these devotees in the early Church had slender wants, and could abide in the wilder ness as easily as Elijah and John the Baptist. Some fled to the deserts to escape persecution, — preferring the cool stars, the hurtless fires of God, to serving as fagots to light the gardens of Nero. Then, too, the imminent fall of the Roman Empire drove some from the haunts of men; they heard beforehand the crack ling warnings, and made good their escape. This early hermit life really bore fruitage in the monasticism of later generations. Artificial solitudes were early built in the cities or haunts not far from civilization, monasteries, which proved to be more convenient to most who desired a recluse life than to abide in a desert. _ These religious houses, when bar barism was tearing Rome to pieces, proved to be strongholds for the conservatism of religious life, for morality, for ecclesiastical art, as well as a centre for authoritative influence when the civil government was weakening. Indeed, during some centuries, there was little religious force outside the monasteries, — even when the masses of people outside were baptized. The convent and the monastery drew to themselves the most religious of the people, who craved the mysterious spiritual good which they believed to be found beneath the veil of that tonsure which sym bolized the crown of thorns. "It is good," quoth St. Bernard, "for us to be here; for here a man lives more purely, falls more rarely, rises more swiftly, walks more carefully, rests more securely, dies more happily, is cleansed more speedily, is rewarded more abundantly." Who can gaze upon the saintly Bonaventure without a thrill of reverence? He stood silently pointing to his crucifix, when he was asked to tell how he acquired his vast stores of learning. Mad crowds in the cities were rioting, great lords were wrangling and waging their private wars for plunder, but he was content 404 APPENDIX. to gaze on the cross, finding in it the profoundest motive to lead a loftier life. Others might shine in the court or play a great part in European politics, but the seraphic doctor was content with his books and his crucifix, and the noiseless round of homely monastic servitude. He was found washing pots and kettles by the messengers from Rome who brought to him his cardinal's hat. "Six things you must observe," said St. Benedict, "or you can not abide with me: three virtues, — silence, humility, obedience; three occupations,— worship, study, labor." As the great religious houses were prospered, new forces of selt-denying men came to the front, eager to form brotherhoods of a stricter sort. The Dominican order was founded by one who in his youth gave away all he possessed; and when he desired to redeem a widow's son, he had nothing left but his poor body, which he offered to have sold into slavery for sweet charity's sake. The doctrine of celibacy was a protest against the lust of the world. The doctrine of voluntary poverty, a protest against lux ury, against the bribes which ensnared so many prelates, against the lust for gain, that covetousness which is the curse of the Church in all ages. To-day and yesterday and to-morrow, gen eration after generation, a multitude of sick folk are cared for and comforted in hospitals founded ages ago by the mendicant monks. The mediaeval monks furnished medicines and nursed the sick. They taught masters to free their slaves. They built great churches that were sanctuaries for the unfortunate which no one might assail. A watch was kept day and night for those who sought refuge. They furnished homes for the poor. They were hospitable; to every monastery travelers resorted, and no money was exacted. Aside from spiritual activities they were most useful men. The agriculture of modern times owes to them a debt: as a class they were industrious; monkish muscle held the plow; they wrought in flower gardens and fruit orchards. St. Gall raised the woodman's axe in place of the battle axe among savage warriors. St. Columban felled the timber and broke the glebe, like an Ohio farmer; and maintained a night and day song- service for years among the hill pines of Vosges. As every convent made tapestries and beautiful vestments for the sacred houses, so too the monasteries were manufactories, — they made books. Men became copying machines for the good of future ages. An immense obligation from the students of to-day is due to the obscure copyists and keepers of monastery archives, who preserved classical learning for the renaissance of an after age. Sacred manuscripts were greatly multiplied, many of them DECADENCE OP MONASTICISM IN CHRISTENDOM. 405 being illuminated by artistic skill. "Do not," said Thomas a Kempis, "trouble yourself at the fatigue of your work, for God will give the reward in eternity; if he who gives a glass of cold water does not lose his reward, he who gives the living water of wisdom will receive recompense." And with anthems of thanksgiving every holy house was vocal. Many a dull day in the narrow cell was glorified by the splendor of celestial visitation. Young men with hearts of fire, studiously repressed all longings for the earth, for earthly companionship, for domestic love, and fastened the mind upon God only, and the everlasting rest. B. The Decadence of Monasticism in Christendom.' The monastic life in Europe eventually fell into an ill-repute parallel to that of the Buddhist monks in portions of Asia. The creative genius of an advancing civilization looked upon the great religious houses as of an abnormal type; and the Church itself sought to. check their growth. A committee of cardinals in 1538 recommended that all should be abolished by forbidding them to receive novices; and in 1650, the Venetian ambassadors at Rome reported to their government an interview with Pope Alexander VII, stating that, in his view, many should be suppressed, having degenerated, lost their discipline and in some cases caused scan dal. Although most of them had ceased to be living powers for good, they had, however, vested funds for their maintenance; and for hundreds of years the monks or nuns were like pensioners upon old foundations. Had the brethren been obliged to go for their daily bread from house to house as the Buddhists do, the monasteries would have been broken up at a much earlier period. When Henry VIII of England took possession of some six hun dred religious houses in a district half the size of Italy, their revenues were not far from three-fourths of a million dollars a year. This was when the English population was not far from that of Burmah now, where there are at this date twenty-four times as many monasteries as there ever were in England. More than a thousand religious houses were suppressed in France at the time of the French Revolution near the close of the eight eenth century, their revenues at the time aggregated some nine teen millions of dollars. A generation and a half later, nine hundred monasteries were suppressed in Spain, and five hundred in Portugal. Twenty-two hundred and fifty-five were suppressed in Italy, when the political states of that country were unified. All these, however, made a 1 To illustrate the historic parallel referred to in Chapter VIII, p. 855, supra. 406 APPENDIX. total of only about one-third so many — amid national European populations exceeding eighty millions — as Nisbet reports as still flourishing amid a population little larger than that of greater London in the Burmah of to-day. If we now add to the Burmese the total number of religious houses in Siam, Japan and the broad heart of Asia, it is evident that Asiatic Buddhism has made the Sangha its principal feature, while in comparison, European monasticism has been but an incident in the advance of Christianity. C. Nirvana.' If the Buddhist Nirvana is but extinguishing the flames of pas sion (Professor Rhys Davids, in the Great Religions of the World, p. 38; also in Buddhism, pp. Ill, 115), is it not, in Pro fessor John Fiske's phrase, the complete quiescence or absolute zero of being? The answer, of so great difficulty, is very clearly stated by Pro fessor Davids: — the concepts that one may be forever free from delusion and sorrow, and that a new being is formed consisting of certain bodily and mental qualities in the five aggregates after the old karma is exhausted, must be modified, as to an unending conscious state, by the transitory nature of the constituent quali ties singly or in groups; so that if life in Nirvana be an apparent exception to the general law of dissolution, the state would seem to be one of negative rather than positive happiness. (Compare, in their order, pages 149, 113, 111, 87-93, and the Buddhist saint, p. 104, Buddhism.) T. Sterling Berry (Christianity and Buddhism, pp. 87, 88. Lon don, 1890) cites three passages from Max Mtiller's writings to show that he entertained different views of Nirvana at different times: — (1) Buddhists and Buddhist Pilgrims, p. 53 (2) Pref ace to Buddhagosha's Parables, p. 40; (3) Translation of Dham mapada, in Sacred Books of the East, X: 9. To the erudite Barth, Nirvana is extinction of being. Predi cated of a state of perfect calm, in which all passion and every movement of egoism are extinct, it is in this sense obvious that it can be attained in this life; but it is so used metaphorically, the condition being taken for Nirvana itself. From all we know of Buddhist ontology, the state can only be provisional and must come to an end, and perfection consists in ceasing to exist. From the moment of death the individual will have disappeared entirely and without return. Doctrinally Buddhism is the con fession of the absolute vanity of all things, and, as regards the 'Referring to Chapter VI, p. 284, supra. NIRVANA. 407 individual, an aspiration after non-existence. — Tide The Reli gions of India, pp. 79, 110, 113, 114. London, 1882. Little is known by Western scholars of the books of the North ern Buddhist canon (p. 116, Davids' Buddhism), but varying views concerning Nirvana are apparently entertained, from abso lute annihilation, to that of a sensuous heaven held to by certain sects in Japan. (Compare Professor Douglas' China, pp. 325, 326.) Joseph Neesima's grandmother was led, by the Buddhist school to which she belonged, to expect to enter Nirvana, as a state of conscious spiritual bliss. Tide Hardy's Story of Neesima. "A good action done in this world," it is said in the books of the North, "will receive its reward in the next; even as the water poured at the root of a tree will be seen aloft in the fruit or the branches." President Martin states that in China, Nirvana was found to be too subtle an idea for popular contemplation. And it is doubt less true, that, take the Buddhist world throughout, aside from the monks, the popular mind does not deal in abstruse matters and make metaphysical distinctions, and it is probably the popu lar impression that there will be in some proper sense a con tinuous existence after the whirling cycles of transmigration cease, and that Nirvana is a higher condition of life. Alabaster's Wheel of the Law says that Nirvana is held by the Siamese to be a state of comfort without care. (Note G,Life of Buddha.) Save from a scholastic point of view, the interpretation is of less practical importance, since, of record, only two laymen are reported to have attained Nirvana, and only one or two mendi cants later than Gautama; at the present time such an event being unheard of (p. 125, Davids' Buddhism). The Goddess of Mercy, whose worship is so popular in the Orient, is said to have reached the verge of Nirvana; she chose, however, not to enter, but to remain with such as still abide in this world of change to protect them in their self-contending throughout their varying lives of transmigration. — Tide Lore of Cathay, p. 187. To the writer it appears to be in no degree probable that Gau tama meant to predicate extinction of being in promising Nir vana. His whole theory was to the effect that there is a world of absolute being, and that this evil world with its distressing changes is but a preparation for attaining the absolute perfec tion of that superior world, and that the perfected man is rewarded by flight from this evil world to the real world — the ideal world, the painless, the sinless. If we speak of the cessation of consciousness, is not the term used in a technical Oriental . sense, that differs from what an Occidental means by consciousness? 408 KARMA. Warren, in his altogether admirable studies upon Buddhism, naively states that a large part of the pleasure he experienced in the study of Buddhism arose from "the strangeness of the intellectual landscape." From this point of view, Nirvana is a topic of unceasing interest. It can, says Warren, be only under stood by a thorough comprehension of the philosophy of which it is the climax. "When the fire of lust is extinct, that is Nir vana; when pride, false belief, and all other passions and tor ments are extinct, that is Nirvana." It is a release from the miseries of rebirth, — "the abode of peace." "The incomparable security of a Nirvana free from corruption," is the phraseology often repeated. "Our deliverance is unshakable; this is our last existence; no more shall we be born again." Of the priest, who has entered on the cessation of perception and sensation, it is said that the bodily karma, vocal and mental karma, have ceased and become quieted, but vitality has not become exhausted and the senses have not broken up. Tide Buddhism in Translations (from the Pali writings of Ceylon and Burmah), Vol. Ill, Har vard Oriental Series, in this order of references: pp. 283-4, 59, 333, 346, 389. D. Karma.' Once assuming the doctrine of transmigration — to give an opportunity for moral perfection, — while there is, in the Buddhist mode of thought, no Ego, yet it would seem that one's character, or karma as it is called, is to the Buddhist what Ego is to the Brahman or the man of the West. This character, or karma, must be constantly re-embodied, until it is finally perfected. Does not this Buddhist expression in effect mean what Brahmanism means, when it speaks of the Ego as constantly reborn until perfected? 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