ka, and to have concluded that the foreign "Heaven" religion rested
on the same basis as theirs.

Referring the reader to Wylie's valuable researches and Edkins' Religion
in China for information concerning the establishment of colonies of
Manicheans, Mohammedans and of successive Christian missions, etc., in
China, I shall but quote the following passage from Marco Polo's travels
(pp. 167 and 168) because it shows how the doctrine of the quadruplicate
division of all things, celestial and terrestrial, led to a broad
tolerance of opinion in the famous Tartar prince, Kubla Khan, who, in
1260, at Kanbalu=Peking, honored the Christian festivals. "And he observed
the same at the festivals of the Saracens, Jews and idolaters. Upon being
asked his motive for this conduct, he said: 'There are four great Prophets
who are reverenced and worshipped by the different classes of mankind. The
Christians regard Jesus Christ as their divinity; the Saracens, Mahomet;
the Jews, Moses; and the idolaters Sagomombarkan (Buddha) the most eminent
amongst their idols. I do honor and show respect to all of the four, and
invoke to my aid whichever of them is in truth supreme in heaven.' " This
attitude of mind and that of the Chinese towards the Christian Cross can
only be fully understood and appreciated when it is realized that their
"imperial ruler of Heaven" was the pole-star and that the Ursa Major
described each year the sign of a cross in the heaven which ever impressed
upon them quadruplicate division and differentiation and the union of four
in one. It is doubtlessly owing to the same reason that the Chinaman of
today finds it possible to believe in, at once, the three great national
religions which exist in China. Edkins has explained that, whereas
"Confucianism speaks to the moral nature, Taouism is materialistic and
Buddhism is metaphysical; thus, they are supplemental to each other and
are able to co-exist without being mutually destructive" (_op. cit._ p.
60). Somewhat apart from these three state religions and embodying the
most ancient ideas and traditions of the race, exists the elaborate and
solemn "Imperial worship," the study of which Edkins designates as
"specially interesting because it takes us back to the early history of
the Chinese people and introduces us to many striking points of comparison
with the patriarchal religion of the Old Testament and with the worship of
the kings of Nineveh, Babylon and Egypt." The same auth