Strive to complete the task thou hast commenced;
Wearied, renew thy efforts once again;
Again fatigued, once more the work begin;
So shalt thou earn success and fortune win.
This Law-giver’s moral teaching extended all over the Eastern world, including Corea and Japan, and thence to the western shores of the American continent; so that when his earthly course was finished, the dwellers in all these countries founded religions based on his precepts, making his memory the object of their worship.
The Mexicans and Peruvians held him and his followers in such reverence, and were so confident that some day he would revisit them, that, when the Spaniards appeared among them, they mistook them for the expected visitors, and were ready to worship them.
It is related that “Viracocho, the eighth Inca, beheld in a vision a man of majestic form, with a long beard, and garments reaching to the ground, who declared that he was a child of the sun. That monarch built a temple in honour of this person, and erected an image of him, resembling as nearly as possible the singular form in which he had appeared to him. In this temple divine honours were paid to him under the name of Viracocho.”
“When the Spaniards first appeared in Peru, the length of their beards, and the dress they wore, struck everybody as so like to the image of Viracocho, that they supposed them to be children of the sun, who had descended from heaven to earth. All concluded that the last days of the Peruvian Empire were at hand, and that the throne would be occupied by new rulers. Atahualpa himself, considering the Spaniards as messengers from heaven, was so far from entertaining any thoughts of resisting them, that he determined to yield implicit obedience to their commands. From these sentiments flowed his professions of love and respect; to these were owing the cordial reception of Soto and Ferdinand Pizarro in his camp, and the submissive reverence with which he himself advanced to visit the Spanish general in his quarters.”[[88]]
The same idolatrous worship is paid in Japan and China to the memory of the Law-giver Moses, who was the founder and sovereign of these Empires. In Japan this mode of worship is called Shintoism, and in China Confucianism. The institutor of the latter was Confucius. After him came his disciple Laou-tsze, who wrote a book containing five thousand characters; on this he constructed the modern Chinese religion. The book is called Taou-tih-King; the religion, Taouism.
“The first chapter of the Taou-tih-King tells us that, ‘that which is nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth,’ and elsewhere we are let into the secret of the processes which led up to this creation. Taou produced one, the first great cause; one produced two, the male and female principles of nature; two produced three; and three produced all things, beginning with heaven and earth.