REV. ARTHUR ELWIN ON ANCESTRAL WORSHIP. 



83 



and is this the reason why they worship them 1 The lecturer says 

 in his lecture that their respect for spirits was due to their holding 

 property. There was a discussion al^out this some years ago, when 

 Dr. Yates said it did not exist, and Dr. Smith opposed, believing it 

 to be a mixture of fear and self-love, and that it is only a gradual 

 process that leads the Chinaman to become one who reveres his 

 ancestors. 



Then as to a child l)eing lucky who is l)orn with teeth. A child 

 was brought to me when in India some time ago, who had one tooth 

 when born, and it was considered to be extremely unlucky. I said 

 it did not much matter who thought so ; but the tooth was pidled 

 out, and no one would allow their child to marry that child when it 

 grew up. 



Then as to the ceremonial in regard to departed spirits in the 

 wards of the large hospitals of India, it is a common thing to perform 

 what they consider the necessary rites before the spirit is disem- 

 bodied and set free and no longer torments the living. That goes on 

 from generation to generation ; so that when a man performs the 

 ceremonial over his own father he also remembers his ancestors. 



The Chairman, in thanking the author for his paper, referred 

 to parallel cases of ancestral worship in India, Avhich were referred 

 to in the Greek and Latin classics. He had himself seen preserved 

 food for the spirits consisting of ears of corn, locusts and dried dates. 

 Their ideas of the spirit world appeared to be much the same — only 

 the Greek idea seemed to have sprung from the vision of Tartarus 

 that Ulysses had, and the idea that Homer must have taken from 

 the western fields of Asia had become the conception in all nations 

 of the future Hades. 



A Member. — Can anyone trace how this ancestral worship begun? 

 We are all agreed on this — that all worship begun with a knowledge 

 of the true God, and every form of idolatry and superstition is some 

 corruption of a deviation from the true path, which is not Herbert 

 Spencer's idea of evolution of religion by degrees. Does Mr. El win 

 know how ancestral worship began to come in as one of the forms 

 of deviation from true worship 1 



The Author. — I do not know that there is anything to go upon 

 certainly in China it is lost in far antiquity. They seem from the 

 earliest times to have had this ancestral worship. 



As to the question of expenditure of thirty millions on ancestral 



