A struggle of jarring impulses; a mysterious division between the injunctions of the mind and the elections of the will; and the utter incommensurateness and the unsatisfying qualities of the things around us, that yet are the only objects which our senses discover or our appetites require us to pursue; these facts suggest that the riddle of fortune and circumstance is but a form of the riddle of man, and that the solution of both problems lies in the acknowledgement that the soul of man, as the subject of mind and will, possesses a principle of permanence and is destined to endure.

Evidences of Christianity!  I am weary of the word.  Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust it to its own evidence—­remembering only the express declaration of Christ himself, “No man cometh to Me, unless the Father leadeth him.”

Christ’s awful recalling of the drowsed soul from the dreams and phantom world of sensuality to actual reality—­how has it been evaded!  His word, that was spirit!  His mysteries, which even the apostles must wait for the parable in order to comprehend!  These spiritual things, which can only be spiritually discerned, were—­say some—­mere metaphors!  Figures of speech!  Oriental hyperboles!  “All this means only morality!” Ah! how far nearer the truth to say that morality means all this!

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CONFUCIANISM

THE LUN YU, OR SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS

The so-called “Four Books” of Chinese literature are held in less esteem than the “Five Kings,” or “Primary Classics,” but they are still studied first by every Chinaman as a preparation for what is regarded as the higher and more important literature.  It should be borne in mind that the four “Shus,” as these books are called, tell us much more about the actual teaching and history of Confucius.  The four books are:  (i) The “Lun Yu,” or the “Analects of Confucius,” which contain chiefly the sayings and conversations of Confucius, and give, ostensibly in his own words, his teaching, and, in a subordinate degree, that of his principal disciples; (2) the “Ta-Hsio,” or “Teaching for Adults,” rendered also the “Great Learning,” a treatise dealing with ethical and especially with political matters, forming Book 39 of the “Li-Ki,” or “Book of Rites,” the “Fourth Classic,” (3) the “Chung Yung,” or “Doctrine of the Mean,” more correctly the State of Equilibrium or harmony, forming Book 28 of the “Li-Ki”; and (4) “Meng-tse,” Latinised “Mencius,” that is, the conversations and opinions of Mencius.  The first, the “Lun Yu,” or “Analects,” is the most important of these, the next in importance being the teaching of Mencius.  The book to which we are most indebted in the preparation of the following epitomes is “The Chinese Classics,” edited by Dr. J. Legge.  Other books are “The Sayings of Confucius,” translated by S.A.  Lyall; “Chinese Literature,” by H.A.  Giles; and “The Wisdom of Confucius,” by G. Dimsdale Stacker.

INTRODUCTORY