ther Shang Ti
nor T'ien mean the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost of the New Testament. Did they mean this, the
efforts of the Christian missionaries to convert the Chinese would be
largely superfluous. The Christian religion, even the Holy Trinity,
is a monotheism. That the Chinese religion (even though a summary
of extracts from the majority of foreign books on China might point
to its being so) is not a monotheism, but a polytheism or even a
pantheism (as long as that term is taken in the sense of universal
deification and not in that of one spiritual being immanent in all
things), the rest of this chapter will abundantly prove.

There have been three periods in which gods have been created in
unusually large numbers: that of the mythical emperor Hsien Yuean
(2698-2598 B.C.), that of Chiang Tzu-ya (in the twelfth century B.C.),
and that of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (in the fourteenth
century A.D.).

The Otherworld Similar to this World

The similarity of the Otherworld to this world above alluded to is
well shown by Du Bose in his _Dragon, Image, and, Demon_, from which
I quote the following passages:

"The world of spirits is an exact counterpart of the Chinese Empire,
or, as has been remarked, it is 'China ploughed under'; this is the
world of light; put out the lights and you have Tartarus. China has
eighteen [now twenty-two] provinces, so has Hades; each province has
eight or nine prefects, or departments; so each province in Hades
has eight or nine departments; every prefect or department averages
ten counties, so every department in Hades has ten counties. In
Soochow the Governor, the provincial Treasurer, the Criminal Judge,
the Intendant of Circuit, the Prefect or Departmental Governor, and
the three District Magistrates or County Governors each have temples
with their apotheoses in the other world. Not only these, but every
_yamen_ secretary, runner, executioner, policeman, and constable
has his counterpart in the land of darkness. The market-towns have
also mandarins of lesser rank in charge, besides a host of revenue
collectors, the bureau of government works and other departments,
with several hundred thousand officials, who all rank as gods beyond
the grave. These deities are civilians; the military having a similar
gradation for the armies of Hades, whose captains are gods, and whose
battalions are devils.

"The framers of this wonderful scheme fo