institutions of which governments are naturally jealous; the
monasteries were destroyed or rebuilt, sacerdotal orders and celibacy
suppressed or encouraged by imperial decrees, according to the views
and prepossessions of successive dynasties or emperors. Nevertheless
the general policy of Chinese rulers and ministers seems not to have
varied essentially. Their administrative principle was that religion
must be prevented from interfering with affairs of State, that abuses
and superstitious extravagances are not so much offences against
orthodoxy as matters for the police, and as such must be put down by
the secular arm.

Upon this policy successive dynasties appear to have acted
continuously up to the present day in China, where the relations of
the State to religions are, I think, without parallel elsewhere in the
modern world. One may find some resemblance to the attitude of the
Roman emperors towards rites and worships among the population, in the
Chinese emperor's reverent observance and regulation of the rites and
ceremonies performed by him as the religious chief and representative
before Heaven of the great national interests. The deification of
deceased emperors is a solemn rite ordained by proclamation. As the
_Ius sacrum_, the body of rights and duties in the matter of religion,
was regarded in Rome as a department of the _Ius publicum_, belonging
to the fundamental constitution of the State, so in China the ritual
code was incorporated into the statute books, and promulgated with
imperial sanction. Now we know that in Rome the established ritual was
legally prescribed, though otherwise strange deities and their
worships were admitted indiscriminately. But the Chinese Government
goes much further. It appears to regard all novel superstitions, and
especially foreign worships, as the hotbed of sedition and disloyalty.
Unlicensed deities and sects are put down by the police; magicians and
sorcerers are arrested; and the peculiar Chinese practice of
canonising deceased officials and paying sacrificial honours to local
celebrities after death is strictly reserved by the Board of
Ceremonies for imperial consideration and approval. The Censor, to
whom any proposal of this kind must be entrusted, is admonished that
he must satisfy himself by inquiry of its validity. An official who
performs sacred rites in honour of a spirit or holy personage not
recognised by the Ritual Code, was liable, under laws that may be
sti