His teaching, which is so often quoted by
Japanese gentlemen, was, "Honor the Gods and keep them far from you."
His image stands in thousands of temples and in every school, in China,
but he is only revered and never deified.
China has for ages suffered from agnosticism; for no normal Confucianist
can love God, though he may learn to reverence him. The Emperor
periodically worships for his people, at the great marble altar to
Heaven in Peking, with vast holocausts, and the prayers which are
offered may possibly amount to this: "Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name." But there, as it seems to a Christian, Chinese
imperial worship stops. The people at large, cut off by this restricted
worship from direct access to God, have wandered away into every sort of
polytheism and idolatry, while the religion of the educated Chinese is a
mediaeval philosophy based upon Confucianism, of which we shall speak
hereafter.
The Confucian system as a religion, like a giant with a child's head, is
exaggerated on its moral and ceremonial side as compared with its
spiritual development. Some deny that it is a religion at all, and call
it only a code. However, let us examine the Confucian ethics which
formed the basis and norm of all government in the family and nation,
and are summed up in the doctrine of the "Five Relations.
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