The popular notion that the religious instinct is universal is perhaps natural enough, but it is not borne out by these significant facts and conclusions. Indeed, it would be far more correct to say that an instinct, the very antithesis of what the Church would mean by the religious instinct, was at one time, and even now is, well-nigh universal.
RELIGION IN MODERN CHINA.
So far we have seen that the opponents of the “Universal” theory presume in their argument that devil-worship has no relation to true god-worship, and we may note that it never even entered the heads of such men as Darwin and Lubbock that it would ever be held that these are essentially identical. Nor is this peculiar opinion held by clerics who have studied devil-worship on the spot. Thus the Rev. Arthur H. Smith, D.D., twenty-two years a missionary in China, describes[56] the fear of goblins and devils which figures so largely in Taoism; but, far from suggesting the presence of the religious instinct, he laments its total absence. Among his many pertinent observations I commend the following to the serious consideration of those who believe in a universal religious instinct and in a progressive revelation: “If the Chinese ever did recognise the true God, that knowledge has certainly been most effectually lost, like an inscription on an ancient coin now covered with the accumulated rust of millenniums.[57]... Sir Thomas Wade, whose long familiarity with China and the Chinese might be supposed to entitle him to speak with authority on so plain a question as whether the Chinese have or have not a religion, has recently published his opinion as follows: ‘If religion is held to mean more than mere ethics, I deny that the Chinese have a religion.’”[58]
Speaking of Chinese nature-worship, Dr. Smith says: “No prayer is uttered.... What is it that at such times the people worship? Sometimes they affirm that the object of worship is heaven and earth. Sometimes they say that it is heaven, and again they call it ‘the old man of the sky.’ The latter term often leads to an impression that the Chinese do have a real perception of a personal Deity. But when it is ascertained that this supposed person is frequently matched by another called ‘grandmother earth,’ the value of the inference is open to serious question.”[59]
As to there being no such thing as an atheistic people, are we to take no account of the cultured classes? Mark the following: “The polytheism and pantheism of the lower classes of Chinese are matched in the upper classes by what appears to be pure atheism.... There never was on this earth a body of educated and cultured men so thoroughly agnostic and atheistic as the mass of Confucian scholars.[60]... Its absolute indifference to the profoundest spiritual truths in the nature of man is the most melancholy characteristic of the Chinese mind—its ready acceptance of a body without a soul, of a soul without a spirit, of a spirit without life, of a cosmos without a cause, a universe without a God.”[61]
Alluding to the mixture of Confucianism with Taoism and Buddhism, he remarks: “Any kind of a divinity which seems adapted to exert a favourable influence in any given direction will be patronised, just as a man who happens to need a new umbrella goes to some shop where they keep such goods for sale. To inquire into the antecedents of the divinity who is thus worshipped no more occurs to a Chinese than it would occur to an Englishman who wanted the umbrella to satisfy himself as to the origin of umbrellas, and when they first came into general use.... The Chinaman has carried ‘intellectual hospitality’ to the point of logical suicide, but he does not know it, and cannot be made to understand it when he is told.”[62]
Three questions suggest themselves. If the pious lady who contributes towards mission work in China only knew of this, would she be pleased?[63] Are there not many English people strangely like the Chinese in an umbrella-patronage of Christianity? Finally, does not the modern apologist (with his theory of Progressive Revelation and his idea that Christianity has yet much to learn from, and will be improved by contact with, the faiths of the East) carry “intellectual hospitality” to the point of logical suicide?
The advice of Confucius was to reverence the gods as if they existed,[64] but in any case to keep them at a distance, and have as little to do with them as possible; and his advice has been followed. Dr. Smith tells us that the popular instinct has taken at its true value the uncertainty conveyed in the words “as if,” and has embodied them in current sayings which accurately express the state of mind of the mass of the people. Thus:—
Call on the gods as if they came;
But, if you don’t, it’s all the same.