ON ITEMS OF CHINESE ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 67 



by the dead and incense buvned, but I do not think the origin of 

 that worship is to be explained otherwise than by tbe prescription 

 which Confucius himself obeyed and inculcated, namely, that you 

 shall serve the parent, dead, as though he were yet living ; that is, 

 you shall reverentially regard him ; and T think that by our mission- 

 aries there should be very tender treatment indeed of the question 

 of Ancestral Worship. If there is anything approaching an 

 infraction of the 1st or 2nd Commandment in it (which I do not, 

 myself, see that there is) we may be certain of this, that as the 

 Chinese get nearer the God of Eevelation they will put away such 

 things as being unimportant. In our own case think of the 

 number of occasions (and the usage has increased in the last 

 generation), on which we repeat the obsequies of the dead when 

 we have funeral commemoration services for them. For what 

 purpose ? Certainly not from a feeling of anything like idolatrous 

 adoration of the departed, but in token of the continuance, it may 

 be of the affection, or it may be of the respect we feel for them, or, 

 is it not also, of the reliance on the Power into Whose hands the 

 spirit has more immediately passed. I do not think it is worth 

 while, therefore, for missionaries to attack, headlong, that question 

 of Ancestral Worship. I think we must extend to it very much 

 the same tolerance that St. Paul enjoined upon early Christians in 

 the case of the Jews in respect of the ceremonies which they had 

 been brought up to observe and which they were, for the time, 

 unwilling to put away. 



To pass to " Benevolent Institutions," although Confucianism in- 

 culcates benevolence, I think that in the practice of benevolence a 

 vast deal is due to Buddhism. Buddhism inculcates philanthropy. 

 We must be on our guard, however, against the assumption that 

 the practice which we designate philanthropy, whether on the 

 part of the government or of private persons, bo wholly dis- 

 interested. You will frequently see in Peking, people who are not 

 remarkably well-to-do, going about with cumbrous copper cash in 

 their girdles to give to beggars, or to the helpless as they meet 

 them. We must admit that their action does not all spring from 

 the loftiest motives. They do believe that for their goodness and 

 charity in this way they will be rewarded both here and hereafter, 



F 2 



