Christ and Confucius i73 



is to be callous in regard to moral teaching, and hence to 

 be dependent on Western charity for their spiritual food. 

 Hortatory works urging men to reform their lives are 

 perpetually being circulated by benevolent individuals, in 

 addition to which the people are stimulated by open-air 

 exhortations by paid preachers. A common sight in Chung- 

 king in the evening, after the day's work is over and the 

 shops are closed, is an elevated stand at the street corner, 

 consisting of a raised table draped in red cloth; upon it 

 two flaring red candles, and behind it a man in full cere- 

 monial dress, with the stiff official hat and silk ma-kwa, 

 addressing the crowd. At first sight one would, but for his 

 careful costume, take the man for a story-teller, surrounded 

 as he is by a group of silent listeners, until, on a nearer 

 approach, you find he is expounding the doctrine of the 

 native classics, and exhorting men to repentance. No nation 

 has so many wise saws and moral maxims always at its 

 fingers' ends as the Chinese; scarcely a sentence but is 

 interlarded with a proverb or a text from the ancient sages. 

 That a people so generally well read as are the Chinese, 

 and possessing in the teachings of Confucius a doctrine which, 

 unlike Christianity, has survived unquestioned throughout 

 all the wars and commotions of twenty-five centuries ; to 

 expect that a people so unemotional and so eminently 

 practical in the application of their ethics to the wants of 

 daily existence, should ever pin their faith to a work like 

 the historical books of the Old Testament, seems to a 

 layman a hopeless conclusion. That the Chinese fail to 

 live up to their standard is only to say that they are human. 

 Their civiUzation, not long since, so far before all others, 

 has failed to keep pace with ours; but so have their physical 

 and mental faculties. If they are ever to be raised to our 

 level, it will be by secular contact with the West during 



