Another analogy may be noticed. The religion of Confucius enjoins absolute obedience to national rulers. This, too, is a prominent tenet of the Christian religion. As the result of this, Confucianism became and has remained the state religion of China, while Christianity became and has remained the state religion of Europe.
Laou-tsze.
Laou-tsze, the other great religious founder of China, was born 604 B. C. His entry into the world and his exit from it were attended by miracles. Like Christ he was miraculously conceived; like Christ he ascended bodily into heaven. He was believed to be an incarnation of an astral god.
His gospel, the “Tao Teh King,” was written by him. “Tao” means “the way.” Christ was called “the Way.” Man, according to this gospel, is both a material and a spiritual being. By the renunciation of riches and worldly enjoyments the soul attains to immortality. The most divine of mortals are, like Enoch and Elijah, translated to heaven without suffering death. Laou-tsze taught that men to be righteous must become “as little children.” Christ said: “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” ([Matt. xviii, 3]).
The more ignorant followers of Laou-tsze, like the more ignorant followers of Christ, believe that many diseases are caused by evil spirits, and their priests, like Christ, practice exorcism to expel them. Like the Catholics, they have monasteries and convents.
Of Laou-tsze’s writings Prof. Montuci, the Italian philologist, says: “Many things about a triune God are so clearly expressed that no one who has read this book can doubt that the mystery of the Holy Trinity was revealed to the Chinese five centuries before the coming of Christ.”
There is one element in Christianity which was not borrowed from Paganism—religious intolerance. Referring to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taouism, a writer on China says: “Between the followers of the three national religions there is not only a total absence of persecution and bitter feeling, but a very great indifference as to which of them a man may belong.... Among the politer classes, when strangers meet, the question is asked: ‘To what sublime religion do you belong?’ and each one pronounces a eulogium, not on his own religion, but on that professed by the others, and concludes with the oft-repeated formula: ‘Religions are many; reason is one; we are all brothers.’”