ix hundred and forty acres of valuable city property being
set aside for the grounds of a single temple, as compared with the way
our own great churches are crowded into small city lots of scarcely as
many square feet, and over-shadowed by great business blocks costing a
hundred times as much, and we can get some conception of the
magnificence of the scale on which this temple is laid out. A large
part of the grounds is covered with cedars, many of which are not less
than five hundred years old, while other parts are used to pasture a
flock of black cattle from which they select the sacrifice for a burnt
offering. The grounds are not well kept like those of our own parks and
churches, but the original conception of a temple on such a large scale
is worthy of a great people.

The worship at this temple is the most important of all the religious
observances of the empire, and constitutes a most interesting remnant
of the ancient monotheistic cultus which prevailed in China before the
rationalism of Confucius and the polytheistic superstition of Buddhism
predominated among the people. While the ceremonies of the sacrifices
are very complicated, they are kept with the strictest severity. The
chief of these is at the winter solstice. On December 21st the Emperor
goes in a sedan chair, covered with yellow silk, and carried by
thirty-two men, preceded by a band of musicians, and followed by an
immense retinue of princes and officials on horseback. He first goes to
the tablet-chapel, where he offers incense to Shang Ti, the God above,
and to his ancestors, with three kneelings and nine prostrations. Then
going to the great altar he inspects the offerings, after which he
repairs to the Palace of Abstinence, where he spends the night in
fasting and prayer. The next morning at 5:45 A. M. he dons his
sacrificial robes, proceeds to the open altar, where he kneels and
burns incense, offers a prayer to Shang Ti, and incense to his
ancestors whose shrines and tablets are arranged on the northeast and
northwest portions of the altar.

There are two altars in the temple, a quarter of a mile apart, the
covered and the open altar, and this latter is one of the grandest
religious conceptions of the human mind. It is a triple circular marble
terrace, 210 feet wide at the base, 150 feet in the middle, and ninety
feet at the top, ascended at the points of the compass by three flights
of nine steps each. A circular stone is in the centre of th