Sec. 6.  Religious Character of the “Kings.”

We have seen that, in the philosophy of the Confucians, the ultimate principle is not necessarily identical with a living, intelligent, and personal God.  Nor did Confucius, when he speaks of Teen, or Heaven, express any faith in such a being.  He neither asserted nor denied a Supreme God.  His worship and prayer did not necessarily imply such a faith.  It was the prayer of reverence addressed to some sacred, mysterious, unknown power, above and behind all visible things.  What that power was, he, with his supreme candor, did not venture to intimate.  But in the She-King a personal God is addressed.  The oldest books recognize a Divine person.  They teach that there is one Supreme Being, who is omnipresent, who sees all things, and has an intelligence which nothing can escape,—­that he wishes men to live together in peace and brotherhood.  He commands not only right actions, but pure desires and thoughts, that we should watch all our behavior, and maintain a grave and majestic demeanor, “which is like a palace in which virtue resides”; but especially that we should guard the tongue.  “For a blemish may be taken out of a diamond by carefully polishing it; but, if your words have the least blemish, there is no way to efface that.”  “Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.”  “To acknowledge one’s incapacity is the way to be soon prepared to teach others; for from the moment that a man is no longer full of himself, nor puffed up with empty pride, whatever good he learns in the morning he practices before night.”  “Heaven penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, like light into a dark chamber.  We must conform ourselves to it, till we are like two instruments of music tamed to the same pitch.  We must join ourselves with it, like two tablets which appear but one.  We must receive its gifts the very moment its hand is open to bestow.  Our irregular passions shut up the door of our souls against God.”

Such are the teachings of these Kings, which are unquestionably among the oldest existing productions of the human mind.  In the days of Confucius they seem to have been nearly forgotten, and their precepts wholly neglected.  Confucius revised them, added his own explanations and comments, and, as one of the last acts of his life, called his disciples around him and made a solemn dedication of these books to Heaven.  He erected an altar on which he placed them, adored God, and returned thanks upon his knees in a humble manner for having had life and health granted him to finish this undertaking.

Sec. 7.  Confucius and Christianity.  Character of the Chinese.