temples and dagobas; but within the sacred enclosure of this temple no symbol of heathenism appears.  Of the August Imperial service Dr. Martin thus eloquently speaks:[146] “Within the gates of the southern division of the capital, and surrounded by a sacred grove so extensive that the silence of its deep shades is never broken by the noise of the busy world around it, stands the Temple of Heaven.  It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent azure is intended to represent the form and color of the aerial vault.  It contains no image; but on a marble altar a bullock is offered once a year as a burnt sacrifice, while the monarch of the empire prostrates himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Universe.  This is the high place of Chinese devotion, and the thoughtful visitor feels that he ought to tread its courts with unsandalled feet, for no vulgar idolatry has entered here.  This mountain-top still stands above the waves of corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests a faint ray of its primeval faith.  The tablet which represents the invisible deity is inscribed with the name Shangte, the Supreme Ruler, and as we contemplate the Majesty of the Empire before it, while the smoke ascends from his burning sacrifice, our thoughts are irresistably carried back to the time when the King of Salem officiated as priest of the Most High God.  There is,” he adds, “no need of extended argument to establish the fact that the early Chinese were by no means destitute of the knowledge of the true God.”  Dr. Legge, the learned translator of the Chinese classics, shares so fully the views here expressed, that he actually put his shoes from off his feet before ascending the great altar, feeling that amidst all the mists and darkness of the national superstition, a trace of the glory of the Infinite Jehovah still lingered there.  And in many a discussion since he has firmly maintained that that is in a dim way an altar of the true and living God.

Laotze, like Confucius, was agnostic; yet he could not wholly rid himself of the influence of the ancient faith.  His conception of Taou, or Reason, was rationalistic, certainly, yet he invested it with all the attributes of personality, as the word “Wisdom” is sometimes used in the Old Testament.  He spoke of it as “The Infinite Supreme,” “The First Beginning,” and “The Great Original.”  Dr. Medhurst has translated from the “Taou Teh King” this striking Taouist prayer:  “O thou perfectly honored One of heaven and earth, the rock, the origin of myriad energies, the great manager of boundless kalpas, do Thou enlighten my spiritual conceptions.  Within and without the three worlds, the Logos, or divine Taou, is alone honorable, embodying in himself a golden light.  May he overspread and illumine my person.  He whom we cannot see with the eye, or hear with the ear, who embraces and includes heaven and earth, may he nourish and support the multitudes of living beings.”