Isaac, and Jacob, or the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of the New Testament.  Did they mean this, the efforts of the Christian missionaries to convert the Chinese would be largely superfluous.  The Christian religion, even the Holy Trinity, is a monotheism.  That the Chinese religion (even though a summary of extracts from the majority of foreign books on China might point to its being so) is not a monotheism, but a polytheism or even a pantheism (as long as that term is taken in the sense of universal deification and not in that of one spiritual being immanent in all things), the rest of this chapter will abundantly prove.

There have been three periods in which gods have been created in unusually large numbers:  that of the mythical emperor Hsien Yuean (2698-2598 B.C.), that of Chiang Tzu-ya (in the twelfth century B.C.), and that of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (in the fourteenth century A.D.).

The Otherworld Similar to this World

The similarity of the Otherworld to this world above alluded to is well shown by Du Bose in his Dragon, Image, and, Demon, from which I quote the following passages: 

“The world of spirits is an exact counterpart of the Chinese Empire, or, as has been remarked, it is ‘China ploughed under’; this is the world of light; put out the lights and you have Tartarus.  China has eighteen [now twenty-two] provinces, so has Hades; each province has eight or nine prefects, or departments; so each province in Hades has eight or nine departments; every prefect or department averages ten counties, so every department in Hades has ten counties.  In Soochow the Governor, the provincial Treasurer, the Criminal Judge, the Intendant of Circuit, the Prefect or Departmental Governor, and the three District Magistrates or County Governors each have temples with their apotheoses in the other world.  Not only these, but every yamen secretary, runner, executioner, policeman, and constable has his counterpart in the land of darkness.  The market-towns have also mandarins of lesser rank in charge, besides a host of revenue collectors, the bureau of government works and other departments, with several hundred thousand officials, who all rank as gods beyond the grave.  These deities are civilians; the military having a similar gradation for the armies of Hades, whose captains are gods, and whose battalions are devils.

“The framers of this wonderful scheme for the spirits of the dead, having no higher standard, transferred to the authorities of that world the etiquette, tastes, and venality of their correlate officials in the Chinese Government, thus making it necessary to use similar means to appease the one which are found necessary to move the other.  All the State gods have their assistants, attendants, door-keepers, runners, horses, horsemen, detectives, and executioners, corresponding in every particular to those of Chinese officials of the same rank.” (Pp. 358-359.)