e and those of his attendant deities watched our slumbers. But
we did not sleep till we had seen the moon rise, a great orange disc,
straight from the plain, and swiftly mount till she made the river, five
thousand feet below, a silver streak in the dim grey levels.

Next morning, at sunrise, we saw that, north and east, range after range
of lower hills stretched to the horizon, while south lay the plain, with
half a hundred streams gleaming down to the river from the valleys. Full
in view was the hill where, more than a thousand years ago, the great
Tang poet Li-tai-po retired with five companions to drink and make
verses. They are still known to tradition as the "six idlers of the
bamboo grove"; and the morning sun, I half thought, still shines upon
their symposium. We spent the day on the mountain; and as the hours
passed by, more and more it showed itself to be a sacred place. Sacred
to what god? No question is harder to answer of any sacred place, for
there are as many ideas of the god as there are worshippers. There are
temples here to various gods: to the mountain himself; to the Lady of
the mountain, Pi-hsia-yueen, who is at once the Venus of
Lucretius--"goddess of procreation, gold as the clouds, blue as the
sky," one inscription calls her--and the kindly mother who gives
children to women and heals the little ones of their ailments; to the
Great Bear; to the Green Emperor, who clothes the trees with leaves; to
the Cloud-compeller; to many others. And in all this, is there no room
for God? It is a poor imagination that would think so. When men worship
the mountain, do they worship a rock, or the spirit of the place, or the
spirit that has no place? It is the latter, we may be sure, that some
men adored, standing at sunrise on this spot. And the Jade Emperor--is
he a mere idol? In the temple where we slept were three inscriptions set
up by the Emperor Chien Lung. They run as follows:--

"Without labour, oh Lord, Thou bringest forth the greatest things."

"Thou leadest Thy company of spirits to guard the whole world."

"In the company of Thy spirits Thou art wise as a mighty Lord to
achieve great works."

These might be sentences from the Psalms; they are as religious as
anything Hebraic. And if it be retorted that the mass of the
worshippers on Tai Shan are superstitious, so are, and always have been,
the mass of worshippers anywhere. Those who rise to religion in any
country are few. I