that
there is the lounging place of the establishment. You see men on
couches perfectly at ease and undisturbed by your presence, smoking
cigarettes or opium, the Chinaman's delight. If you desire to
penetrate further into the building you will come to the kitchen where
the dainty dishes of the Chinese are cooked; but you retreat and
ascend a staircase in the southeast corner of the first room, and
soon you are in the Joss-House proper. This second story is devoted
exclusively to religious purposes. The room to which you are now
introduced is about thirty feet square, and as you look around you
perceive the hangings on the walls and the rich decorations of the
ceiling. Here are placards on the walls, which, your guide will tell
you, if you are not conversant with the Chinese tongue, bear on them
sentences from the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and others, with
exhortations to do nothing against integrity or virtue, to venerate
ancestors and to be careful not to injure one's reputation in the eyes
of Americans;--all of which is most excellent advice, and worthy of
the attention of men everywhere. You then cast your eyes on the gilded
spears, and standards and battle-axes standing in the corners of the
Temple, and as you look up you almost covet the great Chinese lanterns
suspended from the ceiling. Your eyes are finally directed to the
altar, near which, and on it, are flowers artificial and natural. At
the rear in a kind of a niche in the Joss or god. The figure of this
deity was like a noble Chinaman, well-dressed, with a moustache, and
having in his eyes a far-away expression. He wore a tufted crown,
which made him look somewhat war-like. It is but natural that this
Joss should be a blind man. The Greek gods and goddesses have Greek
countenances. The idolatrous nations fashion their deities after their
own likeness. And what are these but deified human beings? It is so in
Greek and Roman mythology. The Egyptian Osiris is an Egyptian. It is
true that some of the ancients outside of Hebrew Revelation had a
better conception of God than others. Even in Egypt where birds and
beasts and creeping things received divine honors there were scholars
and poets who had an exalted idea of the Deity, as witness the Poems
of Pentaur. This is true also of some of the Greek Poets who had a
deep insight into divine things. It is not a little interesting to
note also that artists of different nations paint the Madonna after
the style