It were easy to find defects in the doctrine of Confucius.  It has little to teach of God or immortality.  But if the law of Moses, which taught nothing of a future life, was a preparation for Christianity; if, as the early Christian Fathers asserted, Greek philosophy was also schoolmaster to bring men to Christ; who can doubt that the truth and purity in the teachings of Confucius were providentially intended to lead this great nation in the right direction?  Confucius is a Star in the East, to lead his people to Christ.  One of the most authentic of his sayings is this, that “in the West the true Saint must be looked for and found.”  He has a perception, such as truly great men have often had, of some one higher than himself, who was to come after him.  We cannot doubt, therefore, that God, who forgets none of his children, has given this teacher to the swarming millions of China to lead them on till they are ready for a higher light.  And certainly the temporal prosperity and external virtues of this nation, and their long-continued stability amid the universal changes of the world, are owing in no small decree to the lessons of reverence for the past, of respect for knowledge, of peace and order, and especially of filial piety, which he inculcated.  In their case, if in no other, has been fulfilled the promise of the divine commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

In comparing the system of Confucius with Christianity, it appears at once that Christianity differs from this system, as from most others, in its greater completeness.  Jesus says to the Chinese philosopher, as he said to the Jewish law, “I have not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”  He fulfils the Confucian reverence for the past by adding hope for the future; he fulfils its stability by progress, its faith in man with faith in God, its interest in this world with the expectation of another, its sense of time with that of eternity.  Confucius aims at peace, order, outward prosperity, virtue, and good morals.  All this belongs also to Christianity, but Christianity adds a moral enthusiasm, a faith in the spiritual world, a hope of immortal life, a sense of the Fatherly presence of God.  So that here, as before, we find that Christianity does not exclude other religions, but includes them, and is distinguished by being deeper, higher, broader, and more far-reaching than they.

A people with such institutions and such a social life as we have described cannot be despised, and to call them uncivilized is as absurd in us as it is in them to call Europeans barbarians.  They are a good, intelligent, and happy people.  Lieutenant Forbes, who spent five years in China,—­from 1842 to 1847,—­says:  “I found myself in the midst of as amiable, kind, and hospitable a population as any on the face of the earth, as far ahead of us in some things as behind us in others.”  As to the charge of dishonesty brought against them by those who judge the whole nation by the degraded population of the suburbs of Canton, Forbes says, “My own property suffered more in landing in England and passing the British frontier than in my whole sojourn in China.”