Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/73

Heaven and Earth are those by which we serve Shang-ti." In brief, heaven was and is worshipped as representative of the divine majesty and authority, earth as representative of the divine care and love—the former paternal, the latter maternal. The prayers offered to Shang-ti by the sovereigns of the Ming dynasty bear further testimony to the fact that the original monotheism of the Chinese was then the State creed, just as it is to-day, and that if a number of spirits, celestial and terrestrial, were worshipped, they did not receive homage as gods but only as ministers of the one supreme divinity.

Sacrifices had no propitiatory or expiatory purpose: they were merely tokens of dutiful gratitude, expressing a sense "not of guilt but of dependence." The term "sacrifice" is in truth a misnomer as applied to the Chinese rites. What worshippers laid before the altar should be called an oblation, "an offering whereby communication and communion with spiritual beings was effected"—offerings of food, of drink, of incense, of precious stones, and of silks, and a whole burnt offering at the great solstitial service. It must be noted, too, that the Emperor did not act as the high priest of the nation. There is no such thing as a priesthood in the original religion of China. His majesty was not the "Son of Heaven" in a literal sense. He was the living representative of the family called by divine decree to rule the Empire, in the place of the