The R eligious Attitude 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHINESE MIND. 
 
 I.Y 
 
 REV. WILLIAM A. P. MARTIN, D.D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE IMPERIAL TEN OWEN COLLEGE, 
 PEKING, CHINA. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION 
 
 AT THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, 
 FEBRUARY (5th, 1891. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE CHINESE MINI). 
 
 BY BEV. W. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., PRESIDENT OF THE IMPERIAL TTTNGWEN 
 COLLEGE, PEKING, CHINA. 
 
 Religion consists of two elements, thought and feeling. Its thought 
 is directed toward the mysterious problems of existence. In this as- 
 pect every religion that emanates from human thought is, to a certain 
 extent, to be regarded as a philosophy, hence worthy of careful study, 
 not as throwing light, which to us would be valuable, on the question 
 of human destiny, but as throwing light on human character, on na- 
 tional character, and the relations of nations to each other. The reli- 
 gious experience of the Chinese people, the elements forming their 
 religious beliefs, constitute the subject which I have to discuss. No 
 field could, perhaps, be of greater interest, partly on account of the 
 multitude of people who are affected by these views, partly on account 
 of the vast antiquity presenting records reaching back, without a break 
 in the chain, for many thousands of years, and also because that great 
 people have been segregated by mountain chains and ocean breadths, 
 from intercourse with the rest of mankind, to a very large extent for 
 the greater part of their national existence. In order that our lessons 
 may be of value, it will be important that we should take them out of 
 the stream, we may say, at a point prior to the influx of the living 
 waters of Christianity ; for Christianity has to some extent affected 
 the modes of thought of that people beyond the pale of Christian com- 
 munities which, for the last three hundred years, have been growing 
 up in that land. But the systems of which I have to speak date back 
 far beyond that time. The missionary, thoughtful, and accustomed to 
 study the field upon which he is entering, is somewhat like a scien- 
 tific farmer who studies and analyzes the soil into which he intends to 
 cast the precious seed. He may find that that soil was produced by 
 the disintegration of many kinds of rocks, some deposited from water, 
 others thrown up by the action of internal fires, others yet affected by 
 atmospheric influences. We find, in a similar manner, the mental soil 
 of China composed of three leading elements which have been com- 
 mingled and brought into interaction in such a way as to present to 
 the superficial observer a homogeneous aspect. These are known as 
 the three religions — Confucian, Tauist and Buddhist. 
 
 Before attempting to point out their interaction, which, after all, is 
 the objective point, allow me briefly to sketch the leading characteris 
 tics of each, as they rise successively before our eyes. I shall not be 
 able to go into detail in our allotted time, nor would it be desirable, im 
 
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 THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE CHINESE MIND. 
 
 asmuch as I have in mind the distinct object of pointing out only a few 
 salient features by which these religions have acted upon each other. 
 
 The Confucian system did not originate with Confucius. He said : 
 “ I am an editor, not an author ” He took the records of remote an- 
 tiquity and sifted them, in such wise, however, as to exert in a most 
 effective manner the influence of an editor, giving to the readers of all 
 succeeding ages only that which he wished to have produce its effect 
 on the national mind. We consequently date Confucianism from the 
 beginning of his records, from the time of Yao and Shun, his favorite 
 models of virtue, twenty-two centuries before the Christian era. Viewed 
 as a religion, it presents two leading features : The first is the worship 
 of Shang-ti ; the second is the worship of the spirits of men under the title 
 of ancestors. Shang-ti signifies the Supreme Ruler. Coming before 
 us in some of the most ancient books extant in any language, that au- 
 gust being suggests at once the Jehovah of the Christian Scriptures — 
 the Lord, the Most High, who was worshipped not only by those who 
 are recognized in the canon of Scripture as possessing the guidance 
 of inspiration, but by such men as Melchizedek, the King of Salem, 
 who was both king and priest. We find the earliest sovereigns of 
 China combining this double function of king and priest, signalizing 
 their accession, especially in the case of founders of dynasties, by going 
 to mountain tops, the highest points approaching to heaven, and there 
 offering up burnt sacrifices to the king of heaven, by whom kings 
 reign and princes decree justice. If there were any doubt as to the 
 lofty spiritual conception connected with this grand object of worship 
 of the one alone to whom all kings and princes were recognized as ac- 
 countable, we may find it in a single passage among many scores that 
 I might cite to you if I only had time. The founder of the dynasty of 
 Chow, eleven hundred years before the Christian era, is leading a 
 small army to attack the powerful host which upheld the throne of a 
 tyrant. On the battle-field, before the critical engagement, he ad- 
 dresses an eloquent harangue to his soldiers, and the most eloquent 
 passage is that in which he points upward and says : “ The Most 
 
 High God, the Supreme Ruler, is looking down upon you. Let not 
 your hearts waver.” The worship of Shang-ti, the Most High (for that 
 is almost a literal translation of the name) continues to the present 
 day, the sovereign now on the throne acting, as did his predecessors 
 of four thousand years ago, as high priest for the empire. On an altar 
 within the walls of Peking he offers up burnt sacrifices to the Supreme 
 Being. In the earliest days, however, this worship was impure. We 
 find no point in Chinese history where it was not mingled with the 
 worship of subordinate deities, nature-gods— gods of the hills and 
 rivers— and that intermixture not only continues to the present day, 
 but it has been largely increased, as I shall have occasion to show, by 
 the influence of other religions, more or less corrupting even the 
 comparative purity of the primitive ideas. 
 
 Confucius was himself strongly inclined to agnosticism. In his in- 
 timate conversations with his disciples he refuses to give them any 
 positive statement in regard to the things beyond the reach of human 
 sight. He said : “ We know not life. How can we know death, or 
 what lies beyond the grave ? We are unable properly to render ser- 
 vice to our living parents ; how should we know how to render fitting 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE CHINESE MIND. 
 
 3 
 
 service to those who have passed into the other world ?” Yet he 
 enjoined service to those who have passed into the other world as 
 the cardinal duty in his religious system, and it is that, more than 
 anything else, which makes it a religion potent and living to this 
 day. The worship of Shang-ti, the Supreme Ruler, grand as it is, is 
 nevertheless, like a ray of the sun falling upon an iceberg, so far as 
 its influence on the public mind is concerned. It is limited to the 
 emperor and to a few remarkable and august manifestations of pub- 
 lic ritual, but you do not find it in the household. You do not find 
 it on the lips of the people. You do not find that God in that form 
 has taken up his abode with men. He is still far remote, on the sum- 
 mit of an icy Olympus, as it were, although to a certain extent dimly 
 perceived by the mind of the Chinese nation. 
 
 Tauism rose next. The founder of Tauism preceded Confucius, 
 but by a kind of paradox his religion is of later date. The founder of 
 Tauism goes by the name of Lautse, which signifies the “old philos- 
 opher,” probably because he was old when Confucius was young. 
 They were contemporaries. The Tauist system is not found clearly 
 developed in the only book which has been transmitted to us from 
 the hand of Lautse, and the authenticity of which has been to a large 
 extent questioned. His followers, however, deduced from the ob- 
 scure hints contained in that book two ideas, or rather, one idea, 
 which afterward subdivided itself into two. The one idea was that 
 by persistent effort we may acquire a mastery over matter in such a 
 way as to command all its potencies, and employ them in accomplish- 
 ing objects which would seem far beyond the reach of human power, 
 unless it were elevated by this process of discipline. The matter 
 thus spoken of is subjectively that of our own bodies, the discipline 
 of which would result in a possible immortality, and objectively the 
 material objects surrounding us, but chiefly the elemental forms, the 
 careful study of which would enable man finally to transmute the 
 baser metals info gold, and to accomplish many things which have 
 the air of miracle. You perceive at once how naturally from this 
 root conception springs the two fundaiuental ideas of alchemy — the 
 transmutation of metals into gold and the attainment of immortality. 
 These came forward under the influence of perhaps the two leading 
 desires which characterize human existence — the first to be rich, the 
 second to live long, or to live forever, in order to enjoy wealth. This 
 system has, however, a close relation to what preceded it as a cause 
 and explanation of the power with which it took hold of the human 
 mind. I have just said that Confucius was something of an agnostic. 
 He dealt largely in negations — refused to give any light beyond the 
 grave, or to hold out any hope of immortality, although that is to 
 some extent implied iu the formal worship of ancestors. The long- 
 ing of the human mind for a future life sought satisfaction in the 
 Tauist conception of a possible immortality which was to be con- 
 quered by a long and laborious discipline, and which could not be 
 the heritage of the many, but which might become the possession of 
 a very few. 
 
 This system, at the same time, imparted a kind of life to all na- 
 ture ; every form of matter is instinct with an inextinguishable, 
 divine essence, which is capable of assuming personality. In this 
 
4 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE CHINESE MIND. 
 
 way it peopled the whole world with a new Pantheon of gods, fairies, 
 and genii. The term genii we usually employ as a translation for 
 shensien or sienjin, both forms being used, which is the word the Tau- 
 ists apply to their adepts, those who obtain the precious gift, the 
 elixir of immortality. This view may be illustrated by the following 
 lines from a Chinese poem : 
 
 “A prince the draught immortal went to seek. 
 
 And finding it he soared above the spheres ; 
 
 In mountain caverns he had dwelt a week — 
 
 Of human time it was a thousand years.” 
 
 The Tauist system, deifying, as it were, matter, being essentially ma- 
 terialistic. laid hold upon that august and sublime conception of the 
 ruler of the universe, and incorporated it into the material world. 
 Not only so, having arrived at the idea of the five elements, it subdi- 
 vided the idea of the supreme ruler, and made five gods, each a god 
 of a special element. Thus it corrupted the idea of God, and it has 
 been one of the most fruitful sources of corruption in the history of 
 rhe Chinese mind, introducing a multitude of favorite idols, nature- 
 gods of material origin, which continue to be worshipped to the 
 present day. 
 
 The Buddhist system came in, as you are aware, early in the 
 Christian era, the Emperor Ming Ti having sent a mission to India 
 to bring Buddhist priests and books from that country in the year 66 
 of the Christian era. The occasion for the introduction of Buddhism 
 was, on the one hand, the eclipse of Confucianism, and. on the other, 
 the religious thought, or phases of thought, stimulated and intro 
 duced by Tauism. The defects of both were supposed to be supplied 
 by the stronger, more intellectual, and more spiritual creed of India. 
 The eclipse of Confucianism was not caused by the ascendancy of a 
 rival creed. It was caused by a political revolution. The builder of 
 the great wall rose up in his might and conquered the rival kings, 
 and resolved that he would extirpate the feudal system. He was 
 made to beli-ve that without extirpating the books of Confucius he 
 never could eradicate that system, and that though he might over 
 throw one king after another, yet after he should pass away the sys- 
 tem would again spring from the pages of the Confucian books. 
 He resolved to burn the books, and then, lest these books should be 
 reproduced from the memory of ab'e scholars, he put them to death, 
 and thus flattered himself that he had swept away Confucianism 
 from the face of the earth, and with it the whole of the feudal sys- 
 tem. It was during this eclipse of Confucianism, which lasted for 
 about two centuries, that the Emperor Ming Ti sent his embassy to 
 India. 
 
 The Chinese people, having got the idea of immortality from 
 Tauism, were at first fired with it, but disappointed that through 
 that system there was no hope for any but a very few ; they were 
 fascinated with a report they had heard of a blessed religion in India, 
 which offered salvation to all. Hence the Emperor sent his embassy 
 to India and introduced this new religion, which had, perhaps, to 
 some extent, already found its way into China, and begun to exert 
 some influence, but which from that day became a potent factor in 
 the development of the Chinese mind, and continues to the present 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE CHINESE MIND. 
 
 5 
 
 day to be the leading religious influence in that country. I may say, 
 as an illustration of the position which Buddhism acquired and holds 
 in China, that 1 hold in my hand a document never given to the 
 world in the English language, nor, perhaps, so far as I know, in any 
 other Western language, showing that if in the year 66 an emperor 
 was so impressed with Buddhism as to send an embassy to the West 
 to introduce it into China, fourteen centuries later another emperor 
 was so much influenced by it as to send an embassy to introduce the 
 Buddhist classics from Thibet. (The paper, which was an edict of 
 the Emperor Yungloh, 1413, was here read.) Various doctrines are 
 alluded to in that paper, only one or two of which I will touch upon. 
 I have already referred to the full and bounteous offer of salvation 
 and immortality made by Buddhism as furnishing a very powerful 
 attraction in contrast to the meagre promises of Tauism and the cold 
 negations of Confucianism, which preceded. This was connected 
 with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which was common 
 to almost all Indian creeds. The Iudiau philosophy on that subject 
 regarded transmigration as something amounting to a physical ne- 
 cessity, that it is absolutely impossible for a man to extinguish his 
 being— that he has, as it has been expressed, come into this world 
 without his own choice and will go into the next without his own 
 choice, and thence go on in a succession of changes forever. This 
 succession of changes is described under the figure of a wheel, the 
 turn of destiny, or wheel of fate, which is represented as revolving 
 rapidly and dropping out human souls to be born again in the form 
 of man or of some higher or lower being, there being six categories in 
 all, according to the Buddhist division The religious view of the 
 founder of the faith w.ts pessimistic. To escape from this series of 
 changes constitutes happiness, and he devised a method for that pur- 
 pose. In the Northern School of Buddhism, especially in its popular 
 phase, we seldom meet with this idea. We meet, more frequently 
 with the idea that to rise in the scale of being is happiness. Sak- 
 yamuni had in his system no heaven. The Northern Buddhism, 
 which has prevailed in China, has a heaven, borrowed, it may be, 
 from the Christian’s Paradise. It has, presiding over that heaven, a 
 goddess of mercy, borrowed, perhaps, from the Catholic conception 
 of the mother of Jesus Christ. Many other ideas present a transfor- 
 mation — I will not say a travesty — of Christianity. 
 
 We are asked particularly the relation and the interaction of these 
 three systems which we have thus briefly sketched. You have noted 
 that they rose one after the other, each of them introduced by a felt 
 want, and that each was preceded by a yearning of the human soul 
 for something better; consequently, in a religious point of view, each 
 one may be considered as an advance upon that by which it was pre- 
 ceded. They were a long time antagonistic, sometimes even inciting 
 bloody persecutions, but in this day they have become comparatively 
 quiescent, like active chemicals, which, being brought into juxtaposi- 
 tion, exert for a time their various qualities, but which soon become 
 quiescent and inert, until they are brought into contact with some 
 more energetic agent. We shall find that in Christianity. A remark- 
 able illustration of the quiescence of these long active and conflict- 
 ing systems is found in the fact that there are in some parts of China 
 
6 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE OP THE CHINESE MIND. 
 
 little shrines or temples where the three religions are seen represented 
 by their founders— Confucius, Buddha, and Lautse — all sitting side 
 by side and receiving at one and the same time the homage of 
 worshippers who acknowledge all three. You might object that it 
 would be a strange mind that would acknowledge and swallow all 
 these creeds, yet there are many who assert that the three creeds are 
 identical, if you could only get down to the bottom. In fact, nothing 
 is more contradictory. The Confucian system is essentially ethical ; 
 the Buddhist system is pure idealism, as pure as that of Berkeley or 
 Hegel ; the Tauist system is materialistic, beginning with gross mate- 
 rialism. How is it possible that three systems so utterly divergent 
 should ever be reconciled ? The fact is, they are irreconcilable. 
 Each one presents some one thing which meets a human want, but 
 reconciliation there is none ; peace, union, harmony, there cannot be, 
 though a truce, a permanent truce, seems at present to exist between 
 them. They are no longer belligerent. The question may be raised : 
 What benefit has each one of these conferred upon the Chinese peo- 
 ple ? Each one has enlarged and widened the speculative thought 
 and religious conceptions of the people. Confucianism gave them, 
 or, at least, preserved for them, and preserves to the present day, the 
 grand idea of the Supreme Ruler, and it bears witness, too, to the 
 doctrine of immortality, in the duty of worshipping depart- d spirits. 
 But this is faint, very faint, in comparison with the religious teach- 
 ing of the other two sects. Buddhism has been especially potent in 
 instilling ideas which are so nearly akin to those propagated by 
 Christianity as again to prepare the way for the introduction of an- 
 other system. Buddhism, no doubt, vastly enlarged the erea of 
 Chine-e conceptions. To borrow a mathematical illustration, the 
 religious ideas of the Chinese were limited, before the introduction of 
 Buddhism, to two dimensions, something that may be described as a 
 “flat-land,” with length and breadth, but no height. Buddhism 
 gives it height, soaring up to the heavens and developing the concep- 
 tion of the universe, the grandeur of which, perhaps, nothing can 
 exceed. Is it possible that after this universe of three dimensions we 
 shall have one of four dimensions ? Mathematicians tell us that with 
 space of four dimensions it is possible to do many things which cannot 
 be done without it. There is, in my view, room for the fourth dimen- 
 sion, or, to dr ip the figure, there is room (or a fourth stage in the pro- 
 gression, one which China is waiting for— that is, the introduction of 
 Christianity. Each of the previous religions was ushered in by a felt 
 want. Christianity alone can supply the defects of all the systems 
 and present one harmonious unity. If I were to express in one word 
 what Christianity is to confer upon China, it would be this : Not a 
 God seated far away, upon some remote Olympus, as in the Confucian 
 system ; not a God inherent in matter, as in the Tauist system ; not a 
 God, as in the Buddhist system, who has risen from the ranks of the 
 disciples of virtue, a mere deified man, but God, the Spirit of the 
 universe, in Christ Jesus, coming into the human soul, taking up his 
 abode there and working by his Holy Spirit a regenerating influence 
 such as none of these creeds has ever possessed, and of which they 
 have presented only a faint and dim prophecy. This I believe to be 
 the mission" of Christianity, and I believe the Chinese, though it may 
 be unconsciously, are waiting for it and reaching out after it. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE OF THE CHINESE MIND 
 
 7 
 
 la reply to a question as to what religion preceded Confucianism, 
 Dr. Martin said : 
 
 “Confucius edited the canonical books of China, the earliest of 
 which, or rather the records contained in it, go back twenty-two 
 hundred years before Christ. These two religious elements of the 
 Confucian system, worship of Shang-ti (conjoined with that of the 
 hills and rivers) and that of the deceased ancestors, were in full flower 
 at that time. These must have taken some time to attain the form in 
 which they appeared. As to the idea of the Supreme Ruler, which so 
 far as it goes, is very analogous to the Christian’s idea of God, 
 whether that is from a patriarchal tradition, as I am inclined to 
 think, I will not affirm.” 
 
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