64 



REV. ARTHUR EL WIN, ON CONFUCIANISM. 



Divine Saviour tells us, the underlying one of " the law and the 

 prophets." All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to 

 you, do ye even so to them. 



But such knowledge of God as the Chinese sage possessed there 

 is no proof that he thought out for himself without the help of any 

 current belief or tradition ; while there is strong reason, on the 

 other hand, to infer that at one time the Chinese at large wor- 

 shipped the Creator, and Him alone. The further we go back into 

 the history of heathen nations, the more prevalent do we find 

 the acknowledgment of, and reverence for one great Supreme 

 Maker of all things. Thus in Babylonia we find in the time of 

 King Khammurabi, contemporary of Abraham (as Hommel has 

 shown), that although the state religion was a pagan idolatry, a 

 very large number of personal names ended with the word ilu, 

 God, and contained ascriptions to God of power, wisdom or kind- 

 ness ; while very few are to be met with at that time in which the 

 name of a heathen god is imbedded : but, as the centuries advanced, 

 personal names, formed from those of heathen divinities, wholly 

 displaced the names that set forth the nobler tradition. In like 

 manner (as Hommel further points out) in Arabia the earliest 

 inscriptions of the Minaean kings, and the inscriptions that succeed 

 them through several centuries, show an abundance of personal 

 names ending with Hi, God, and ascribing mighty or gracious 

 conduct to Him ; but gradually the names of pagan deities worked 

 their way into the personal names of Arabia — Minaean and 

 Sabaean — until at length they ousted the truly Godfearing names 

 of old* 



So, too, as to Persia, a step nearer to China, if Zoroaster, the 

 reputed founder of the Parsee monotheistic faith, really lived at so 

 remote a period, as Clodd for instance assigns to him — namely, 

 before the twelfth century B.C. — there is no special reason for , 

 supposing that he evolved that faith after he and all his countrymen 

 had been used to a primeval worship of nature gods. Bather, in 

 the absence of evidence, and with the analogy of contiguous 



* It seems as if in their progressive rebellion against the true God, 

 the last thing that men dared to do was to withdraw their children from 

 His protection and put them under the protection of their fancied 

 deities. — M. L. R. 



