and he has ordered his life to suit that estimate. He has started from the principle of the survival of the strongest, and he has selected for his empire the qualities which he believes to be the strongest, but he has made a mistake in his selection. He has preferred the virtues of active enterprise to the virtues of passive endurance, and therefore he has driven out the feminine to make room for the masculine type. But in so doing he has rejected the most abiding of all forces, the most indomitable of all influences. He has left it to be taken up by a religion which, through its exercise, has become supreme, and which is raising through its power that heavenly kingdom which China failed to build: the rejected stone of China has become in Christianity the head of the corner. If China is ever to retrieve herself, it must be by going back to incorporate this neglected element. If she is ever to realize any part of her ancient dream, it must be in union with that sacrificial principle which Christianity has made her own; for any spiritual empire other foundation can no man lay. It is in this direction alone that China can be radically influenced by the culture of the West. No mere transplant ing of institutions, no simple adoption of European customs, no bare transition from an old to a modern regime of education, can permanently effect the cure. It is a spirit that China wants, an enthusiasm of humanity which is born of the love of man. In Christianity alone has that spirit been realised, and in contact with Christianity alone can China hope to find it. If a kingdom should await her in the future, if her vision of a crown should be fulfilled, it must be a kingdom which has been built on the service of humanity, and a crown which has been conquered through the power of sacrifice.

Here, however, we are warned by our limits that we must bring this subject to a close. In deference to these

limits we have studied throughout to void all minutiæ. We have passed by everything of the nature of detail. Our main endeavour has been to grasp and to exhibit the essence of the religion of Confucius. We have sought to put our hand upon those distinctive features which have constituted this religion a separate faith, and have left untouched those extraneous elements which it holds in common with other faiths. Perhaps at the close of this study the thought most powerfully borne in upon our minds will be an impression of the modern in the ancient. Perhaps nowhere has the Asiatic intellect presented so many points of contact to the European mind as in this most exclusive, most conservative, most prosaic of Eastern religions. Nowhere has the East caught so much of the spirit of Western sanguineness. Nowhere has Eastern religion come so near to the European standpoint of bringing secular institutions into harmony with religious convictions. Nowhere has the oriental spirit made an effort so thoroughly modern to embody the worship of the heart in the acts and duties of the common day. In a world which habitually and systematically divorced the human from the divine, in an age which regarded with despair all manifestations of the seen and temporal, in a community which looked upon man's chief end as a life of asceticism and contemplation, the religion of the Chinese empire struck out a path of novelty which modern life has made a path of permanence. It pointed to the fact that there is a divine order in mean things, in little things, in prosaic things; that the drudgery of daily toil has something to do with the interests of universal government, and that in union with these interests the daily toil may hope for its reward. It has bequeathed to Europe the inheritance of a thought which alone would make Europe its perpetual debtor-the belief that religion

has a share in the establishment of human civilisation, and that the goal of a perfect civilisation is the foundation of a kingdom of God. China, the most seemingly irreverent of all nations, has here joined hands with Judea, that nation which of all others has been most impressed with the personality of God. Approaching the subject. from different angles, and looking at the problem with a contrary bias, they have arrived in one respect at the same goal. They have reached that thought to which the continent of Asia has been otherwise a stranger, that there is a sacred element underlying all secular phenomena, that the sphere of religion embraces the things which are present as well as the things which are to come, and that the recognised thrones and dominions of this world are as much the agencies of God as the unknown principalities and powers of the heavenly places. They have transmitted that thought to Christian Europe, and Christian Europe has intensified it by its Christianity. It has not nullified the labours of the Chinaman and of the Jew,-it has prosecuted these labours by a shorter and an easier method; and if ever that time should come when it shall impart its new strength to their ancient fabric, it shall only put into their hands the talisman by which their national mission shall be crowned and perfected.

RELIGION OF PERSIA:

ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA.

HE ancient Persian religion, which I am to describe, is a natural growth from the primitive religion of our Aryan fathers, who dwelt in Iran, the region rudely bounded on the south by the Persian Gulf, on the west by the Tigris, on the east by the Indus, and which extended northwards as far as the Scythians allowed. They adored one supreme god; him they saw visibly revealed in the sky, which, as the grandest known existence, they endowed with the highest known qualities-life and personality; and to him they gave such names as Varana, Ouranos, the enclosing one; or Dyaus, Deus, Zeus, the shining one. From Iran westwards streamed those peoples, which as Celts, Romans, Greeks, Teutons, Slavs, overspread Europe, carrying with them the primitive faith. Lastly, eastwards into India flowed the Hindus, who, in the Rig-Veda, have given us the correctest picture of that faith. The supreme was not the only god; closely allied to Varana, the Sky, was he whom the Hindus in India and the Persians remaining in Persia, or

rather, let us call them by the wider and more correct name, the Iranians remaining in Iran, called Mithra, the Friend, the kindly light of Heaven. Six others stood around the supreme, and under them all the powers of nature,―gods without number. But a settled society under centralised government could not leave the gods in nomadic disorder and independence. Among the Iranians the idea of heaven developed into monarchy: Varana became sole god with the name Ahura, Lord; the other gods lost independence, became the works of Ahura's hands and his instruments in producing his other works, being named Amesha-Spentas, Bountiful Immortals.

But while gods became mere dependent arch-angels and angels, demons refused to own the lordship of Ahura; therefore we call the Persian religion Dualism. This view of the universe, as divided into two opposing camps, is inherited from the old Aryan mother religion, in which we find it as a crude, unclaimed, almost unconscious possession. Its origin is easily accounted for. Everywhere we see that action and reaction, doing and undoing, balance or oppose each other. Heaven is alternately in the power of day and night, of clouds and sunshine. On earth activities are found equally opposed; one plant is for food, another is for poison; one beast is a possession, another is a natural enemy. Growth, life, and welfare are produced or prevented by the state of the sky, its light or darkness, its drought or moisture, its heat or cold. Day is for labour; night protects the thief, she quells us with sleep, and invites all ravenous beasts to creep forth; day returns and hunts them back to their dens. Nowhere do the variance and opposition which are everywhere visible show themselves more vividly than in the storm. The storm not only struck the Aryan's imagination by its