s had shown his students the beauties of honouring their Father
and their Mother. They soon began to be more interested in the memory of
their departed parents than in the happiness of their children and their
grandchildren. Deliberately they turned their backs upon the future and
tried to peer into the vast darkness of the past. The worship of the
ancestors became a positive religious system. Rather than disturb a
cemetery situated upon the sunny and fertile side of a mountain, they
would plant their rice and wheat upon the barren rocks of the other
slope where nothing could possibly grow. And they preferred hunger and
famine to the desecration of the ancestral grave.

At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite lost their hold
upon the increasing millions of eastern Asia. Confucianism, with its
profound sayings and shrewd observations, added a touch of common-sense
philosophy to the soul of every Chinaman and influenced his entire life,
whether he was a simple laundry man in a steaming basement or the ruler
of vast provinces who dwelt behind the high walls of a secluded palace.

In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivilised
Christians of the western world came face to face with the older creeds
of the East. The early Spaniards and Portuguese looked upon the peaceful
statues of Buddha and contemplated the venerable pictures of Confucius
and did not in the least know what to make of those worthy prophets
with their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that these
strange divinities were just plain devils who represented something
idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the respect of the true
sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit of Buddha or Confucius seemed to
interfere with the trade in spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the
"evil influence" with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain
very definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage of
ill-will which promises little good for the immediate future.

THE REFORMATION

THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE IS BEST COMPARED TO A GIGANTIC PENDULUM
WHICH FOREVER SWINGS FORWARD AND BACKWARD. THE RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENCE
AND THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY ENTHUSIASM OF THE RENAISSANCE WERE
FOLLOWED BY THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY INDIFFERENCE AND THE RELIGIOUS
ENTHUSIASM OF THE REFORMATION

OF course you have heard of the Reformation. You think of a small but
courageous group of pilgrims who crossed