RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS. V)l 



purest of liiiinau iiioralilics — that oi' Coiiruciiis. Tlio 

 most entire absence of prejudgments concerning the 

 future life, united with a diligent and thrifty industry, 

 makes China a model of social order, according to modern 

 notions, possessing peacefully, hy way of tradition, just 

 what we are painfully reaching after by way of innova- 

 tion. But now notice, for it is a marvellous fact, that 

 in withdrawing i)rivate life from the influence of the 

 religious idea, China has nevertheless deemed it impos- 

 sible to establish the system of public life on anything 

 but that idea. It claims to have relations with eternity; 

 it calls itself the Celestial Empire, and its sovereign 

 wears the title of the .Son of Heaven. 



[Returning from Asia to Europe, and pausing to consider the 

 great civilization of the Romans, and its Sabine and Etruscan 

 originals, Father Hyacinthe remarks their profoundly religious 

 character.] 



The manner in which cities were founded, according 

 to the Etruscan rite, is an eloquent witness to the con- 

 viction then prevailing that the civil order has no other 

 foundation than the religious order. The priests made 

 a careful scrutiny of the site, and, marking off a myste- 

 rious spot in the centre of the enclosure, they dug there 

 a pit in the form of the sky reversed. The lowest part 

 of it was consecrated, diis manibics, to the gods of the 

 departed, and the entrance of it was closed Avith a stone. 

 This pit was called mundus, the world, and, according 

 to the ideas of those nations, it was the communication 

 between the visible and the invisible worlds, the out- 

 ward allirmation of the fellowship of the living and the 

 dead in one commonwealth. Thrice a year, the mundus 

 was opened in solemn silence ; public and private busi- 

 ness was suspended, and the community beheld in its 



