B.C. It is found in the great Temple of Heaven at
Peking. Dr. Martin and Professors Legge and Douglas all insist that the
sacrifices there celebrated are relics of the ancient worship of a
supreme God. China is full of the traces of polytheism; the land swarms
with Taouist deities of all names and functions, with Confucian and
ancestral tablets, and with Buddhist temples and dagobas; but within the
sacred enclosure of this temple no symbol of heathenism appears. Of the
August Imperial service Dr. Martin thus eloquently speaks:[146] "Within
the gates of the southern division of the capital, and surrounded by a
sacred grove so extensive that the silence of its deep shades is never
broken by the noise of the busy world around it, stands the Temple of
Heaven. It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent azure
is intended to represent the form and color of the aerial vault. It
contains no image; but on a marble altar a bullock is offered once a
year as a burnt sacrifice, while the monarch of the empire prostrates
himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Universe. This is the high
place of Chinese devotion, and the thoughtful visitor feels that he
ought to tread its courts with unsandalled feet, for no vulgar idolatry
has entered here. This mountain-top still stands above the waves of
corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests a faint ray of
its primeval faith. The tablet which represents the invisible deity is
inscribed with the name Shangte, the Supreme Ruler, and as we
contemplate the Majesty of the Empire before it, while the smoke ascends
from his burning sacrifice, our thoughts are irresistably carried back
to the time when the King of Salem officiated as priest of the Most High
God. There is," he adds, "no need of extended argument to establish the
fact that the early Chinese were by no means destitute of the knowledge
of the true God." Dr. Legge, the learned translator of the Chinese
classics, shares so fully the views here expressed, that he actually put
his shoes from off his feet before ascending the great altar, feeling
that amidst all the mists and darkness of the national superstition, a
trace of the glory of the Infinite Jehovah still lingered there. And in
many a discussion since he has firmly maintained that that is in a dim
way an altar of the true and living God.

Laotze, like Confucius, was agnostic; yet he could not wholly rid
himself of the influence of the ancient faith. His