Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/108

bers? Confucianism, in its original purity, cannot be called the creed of the whole Chinese nation: the illiterate masses are subjected to other influences. But it is the creed of the literati, one and all. Not only do they study it with the same reverence that the most devout Christian brings to the reading of his Bible, but also they know that the closer their acquaintance with its canons and with all the literature on which the Sage set the seal of his approval, the better their chance of public distinction and official success. Never has the term "State religion" been more unequivocally applicable to any form of faith than to Confucianism. If the Christian Bible were the chief text-book at all the schools, colleges, and universities of the United States, and if knowledge of its doctrines were regarded as the highest literary attainment, then would every European inquirer into American character search the Old Testament and the New. The Analects and its associated classics are such text-books and such tests of erudition in China, and they have been so since the fifth century before the Christian era. It is in their pages that the portrait of the educated Chinaman may be seen. Should one find it surprising that the original of that portrait does not immediately recognise the superiority of a creed which bids him believe in miracles, which punishes temporal sins with an eternity of torture, and which requires that the crucifixion of the innocent shall expiate the crimes of the guilty?