76 REV. ARTHUR ELWIN ON ANCESTRAL WORSBIP. 



of Ancestral Worship." The Rev. Y. K. Y en, ti, Chinese 

 clergyman of great experience, referring to' Dr. Martin's paper, 

 said : — " The belief is an idolatrous belief, and the worship 

 is an idolatrous worship. The two ideas of paying human 

 honours and divine honours to ancestors are so combined 

 that we cannot separate them. I think that to allow the 

 Chinese Christians to perform the worship, and at the same 

 time to eliminate every idea of divine service, cannot be 

 done. The tw^o are so associated that if you do the one the 

 other is involved in it. The association has become so 

 hereditary among the Chinese that to prostrate and make 

 offerings bring up in their minds the feeling that the spirits 

 are present to hear their prayers, accept their gifts, and in 

 return will care for them, in short will do for them what God- 

 over-all can do." 



A well known Chinese missionary writes : " That the worship 

 rendered to their ancestors by the Chinese is idolatrous cannot 

 be doubted, and it forms one of the subtlest phases of idolatry, 

 essentially evil, with the guise of goodness, ever established 

 among men." 



When the Jesuit missionaries reached China about the year 

 1582, tliey sanctioned ancestral worship on the plea that it was 

 a civil rather than a religious rite. Eicci, who died in 1610, 

 in the rules which he left for the direction of the Jesuits, says 

 that the Ancestral Rites might be tolerated in the Chinese 

 converts, because these ceremonies weie merely civil and 

 secular. In the year 1651, the Dominicans followed the 

 Jesuits to China, and took the opposite -view; they declared 

 the rites to be idolatrous and sinful, and absolutely forbade the 

 converts to engage in them. A contest at once began which 

 lasted for many years. The case was of course referred to 

 Rome ; but the Popes seem to have found great difficulty m 

 deciding this important question. In the year 1699, the 

 Jesuits appealed to the Emperor Kang Hyi. "We have 

 always supposed," said they, " that Confucius is honoured as a 

 legislator, and in this character alone are the ceremonies 

 established. . We believe that ancestral rites are only observed 

 in order to exhibit the love felt for the departed, and to hallow 

 the remembrance of the good received from them during their 

 lifetime." The following year the Emperor's answer was 

 received ; it was short and to the point, viz., " The customs o 

 China are political." But this view of the case did not find 

 favour at Rome, and in 1704, Pope Clement XL issued a 

 Bull absolutely forbidding Ancestral Worship. The Chinese 



