AN IMPERIAL CONFUCIAN TEMPLE.
CHAPTER IV
RELIGIOUS FORCES IN CHINA
Chinese efforts to propitiate their gods—Figures of men on roofs of houses—Stone tiger—Fung-Shuy—The “Mountain City”—The county of “Peaceful Streams”—Density of population—The “dead hand”—Ancestral worship—Idolatry—Koan-Yin—Heaven—Description of a scene in a popular temple.
The Chinese are an exceedingly superstitious people, but they are capable of being intelligently religious when they become acquainted with the truths of the Gospel. Until then all their offerings and ceremonies and ritual are performed, either to avert the sorrows that the supernatural beings might bring upon them, or for the purpose of putting the minds of their gods into such a pleasing state of satisfaction that they will be ready to send sons into the family and prosperity into the business, and riches and honour and a continued stream of blessings upon the home. The spirits and the gods of all denominations are credited with having unlimited wealth at their command, which they can dispose of to any one who has gained their favour, without in the least degree impoverishing themselves. They are also believed to be high-spirited, easily offended and vindictive, and careless as to the moral qualities of those who worship them. The great thing is to keep these capricious beings in a good humour by making them constant offerings, which though comparatively valueless in themselves, by some sort of a hocus-pocus during the process of reaching the idols, become worth large sums of money to them.
Evidences of superstition abound in almost any direction in which one may turn. Looking at the roofs of the houses, one is struck with the large numbers of miniature figures of men, in all kinds of fantastic shapes and attitudes, armed with bows with which they seem to be shooting at the sky. These are supposed to be fighting with the invisible forces that are flying through the air, seeking for opportunities to descend into the houses and to bring plague or pestilence upon the people residing within them. Were it not for these little warriors it is believed that human life could not exist, and the homes that are now happy and prosperous would be filled with mourning and lamentation.
Walking along a straight street that terminates in another that is at right angles to it, one is surprised at seeing in the wall of the house at the extreme end of this road a rough slab of stone about three feet high and one in breadth, with the three words cut into it, “I dare defy.” Where the road is winding, or deviates from the straight, no such stone is ever found.