o developed systems is entirely wanting; there is no idol, no
priestly class, no Bible, no theology; the most important doctrines
are left so vague and undetermined that scholars interpret them in
opposite ways. It is a religion in which, just as in the primitive
stage, outward acts are everything, the doctrine nothing, and which
is not regulated by an organised code but by custom and precedent.
All these marks point to a formation in very early times, and to a
very early arrest of growth, before the ordinary developments of
mythology and doctrine, priesthood, ritual, and sacred literature had
time to take place. They also point to the operation of some powerful
cause, which, when the religion had developed its main features, was
able to suppress older beliefs and practices, and lead the nation to
devote itself altogether to the newer faith. How this took place we
can only conjecture, but certainly it could never have been done
unless the new faith and the national character had fitted each other
perfectly. The classical religion may, as Prof. de Groot says, have
come into existence along with the classical constitution set up by
the Han dynasty 2000 years ago. But it must have been ready to enter
into this position.

The objects of worship in the Chinese religion arrange themselves in
three classes. The Chinaman of old worshipped and his descendant of
to-day worships still--

1. Heaven.
2. Spirits of various kinds, other than human.
3. The spirits of dead ancestors.

1. Heaven (Thian) is the principal Chinese deity; in strictness we
must say the sole deity, for there is no family of upper gods; heaven
receives all the worship that is directed aloft. It is the clear
vault, the friendly ever-present and all-seeing blue that is meant,
not the windy nor the rainy sky, but that which is above all
agitations, and which all beings of the air or of the earth look up
to and serve. It is conceived as living. It is not a separable
spirit, not a power behind, that is worshipped, but heaven
itself,--the living heaven of that early thought, which has not yet
come to distinguish between matter and spirit,--the living heaven
which is over all, knows all, orders and governs all.

To this heaven other names are given, even in the oldest
writings--Ti, Ruler; or Shang-ti, Supreme Ruler. Did the Chinese
conceive this ruler as identical with heaven, or as a personality
dwelling in it or above it? It has been held that the two be