TWENTIETH CENTURY IMPRESSIONS OF HONGKONG, SHANGHAI, ETC. 337
THE ANCIENT FAITHS OF THE CHINESE.
By the Rev. T. W. Pearce, London Missionary Society, Hongkong.
Writers on Chinese religion are wont to distinguish clearly three great systems — Confucianism. Buddhism, and Taoism — and it is the practice to treat of these as if all the units of a vast population, numbering not less than 350,000,000, through out the provinces and dependencies of the empire could, for the purposes of an article, like the present, be grouped as followers of Confucius, disciples of Buddha, or believers in an outward and corrupted creed, associated in its original purity with the "Old Philosopher," Laotzv.
The academic discussion of religions in China, with sharply drawn distinctions derived from the ancient books, canonical or heretical, is often the reverse of convincing to the student of "things Chinese," who has been in a position to verify allusions, to test citations, and to gauge the accuracy of much descriptive writing by daily contact with the people. To study Chinese religion at first hand is to see it everywhere in contact with life.
The general effect is fraught with complexity and singularity, aptly compared to the impression made on the mind by a group of trees, of outstanding girth, height and lateral extent, giants of the forest, that, during the decades and centuries, have grown and flourished, quickened by the spring rains, warmed into fullest life by the summer suns, strengthened by the blasts of autumn, and hardened by the frosts of winter.
They stand to-day as they have been growing during the passing of the generations of the Chinese race. Boughs are intertwined above, roots are interlaced below, a living mass grown together inextricably ; and not only so, but grown together beyond the power of the untrained observer to distinguish the smaller and more recent growths so as to assign each to its own proper tree trunk, or main branch. Such are Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism in the inter-relation of their growths as trees of religion deep-rooted in the soil of China.
The illustration may be carried considerably further. Under the shadow of these trees is undergrowth of many kinds, a veritable forest, so dense as to be wellnigh impenetrable; a closed dank tangle that owes its existence to the fostering shelter of the trees, and could not survive for one moment their uprooting and downfall. Thus is it in the living inter-relation of manners and customs with the ancient faiths of the Chinese people. Religious motive determines the trend of social observance; sacred ceremonial blends with the administration of law. In the ordered and settled government of China's millions, religious factors are prominent and potent.
As are the giant trees to their undergrowth so are the religions of the land to the family and social, the political and national, life of the people. A bewildering mass of observances is knit, compacted, bound up in vital ways with religion. Herein is the twentieth century problem that lies before Christendom and China. Movements of the new time in the old empire make for an uprooting. What may one day seem the sudden is, in reality, the gradual freeing of the ground for new growths. To plant these under favouring conditions of soil and climate will be the task of the missionary Church in the hundred years period.
The greatest of Chinese religions is
Confucianism.
The all-pervading presence and potency of Confucianism are without parallel among Oriental religions. There are those who account for its predominant position and its abiding character by denying its claim to be called one of the chief religions of the world. To them the ages return an answer, final, decisive, irrevocable. Voices of emperor and statesman, of seer and sage, assign Confucius his place among objects of worship. Adoring multitudes through the centuries have joined in "one according cry." Divine honours are paid at his shrine, and the worship of the teacher who, as a moral guide, has the pre-eminence, gives to his system the binding force of religion. To-day the religious faith of most Chinese appears to themselves inseparable from the divine sanctions which, for them, attach to the teaching of Confucius. To revert to our illustration, the growths of religious faith and practice are intermingled root and branch, but Confucianism is everywhere readily traceable by reason of its dominant vitality and vigour.
By the "law of survivals," working through all movements and changes of the new time, it is seen to be of Chinese religions the fittest. Its advocates in the native Press set forth the advantages that would accrue to the new empire from a Confucian worship-day, analogous to the Christian Sunday and occurring at the same intervals. On the Confucian rest and worship-day, assemblies convened for the purpose in temples and in public halls should, it is urged, join in hymn and prayer not less than in attending to precept and injunction; the multitudes throughout China following a form and mode of worship akin to that observed throughout Christendom, Confucius being put in the place of Christ. It is further pleaded that the new learning, having few points of contact with morality and religion, schools and colleges in all the provinces should keep a Confucian Sunday, when the regular teaching may give place to the new ritual to worship and to exhortation that centre in the person and the doctrine of the sage. These are suggestive facts that must needs count for much in any fitting record of twentieth century impressions of Chinese religion.
What manner of man was Confucius? What charm of life and doctrine gave to him the place he holds among the teachers of the race? What potent forces have wrought for the diffusion of his influence and for its conserving as a prime factor of reconstruction in the sphere of Chinese religion to-day?
Reply to such an inquiry, since it can only be of the briefest, should take us at once into the heart of things. Our means of knowing Confucius, if not ample, are at least adequate. In the "Analects, or Conversations, of Confucius with his Disciples," the whole of one book, the tenth, is devoted to a delineation of the habits and deportment of the master as he was known to his immediate followers in private and in public life. With the loving hand and the earnest purpose of Boswell portraying Johnson, the disciples of Confucius have sought to picture their master. Particular details are too minute, they take from the symmetry and finish of the completed portrait. It has, however, to be borne in mind that national habits and characteristics as we see them in the Chinese to-day — their race features — are what his followers saw in the sage of China 2,500 years ago. The times are evil, there has been a falling away from pure and lofty ideals, there are none that have attained, but the seekers after truth strive to be as the perfect sage. Ceremonial observances on which Confucius set the seal of his approval, constant virtues as seen in him, their highest exponent — these are the goal and aim of the Confucian. He is concerned always with the duties arising from the great human relations. When these are fulfilled all is well with the individual, the family, and the State.
Over the Western mind the " Analects " may cast no spell ; the non-Chinese reader of the Confucian canonical books, who has no working acquaintance with the Chinese people, is not likely to discover the secret of the magician's power.
To such we say, " Live among the Chinese, be in daily touch with their modes of thought and their outlook on life, and the wonder ceases." Adaptation to the genius of the race has been carried to the farthest point, and Confucianism has held its place as a world religion, because on its own finite lines and within a limited sphere, its appeals to humanity are direct, forceful, irresistible.
The founder, Confucius, was born in what is now the Yen-chau department of the Shantung Province, a territory comprised in the ancient state of Lú. The date of his birth is placed by some writers in 552, and by others in 550 B.C. Apart from the portents that were said to herald his birth, there was, in the circumstances of his parentage, no augury of a destiny distinguished among the millions of the race. The sage could, however, trace his descent back to the imperial house of Yin, and his forefathers for more than five hundred years had been men of probity and talent. His father figures in the history of the times as a soldier of daring prowess, and from his mother's kindred came Yen-Hui, his own favourite disciple.
The budding genius of Confucius was abundantly marked by the " capacity for taking pains." His acquirements in the literature of the period seemed to his contemporaries all-comprehensive, and he eagerly drank of the spirit of the most ancient sage monarchs, whose exploits shine resplendent in the first dawning light of Chinese history. This, more than anything else, determined the trend of his character and teaching. For him the past held whatever was of greatest worth. To turn the minds of men in his own degenerate times backward to the golden age, was for Confucius the heaven-appointed means of regenerating society.
As a servant of the State from the twentieth to the fifty-seventh year of his age, when Confucius finally retired from office, he embodied those public virtues which he honoured in his chosen exemplars. As Minister of Works and, subsequently, as Minister of
