a man be wicked, if
he duly prepares himself by fasting and abstinence and purification by
water, he may sacrifice to God."

Ch'u Yuan.--The statesman-poet Ch'u Yuan, B.C. 332-295, who drowned
himself in despair at his country's outlook, and whose body is still
searched for annually at the Dragon-Boat festival, frequently alludes to
a Supreme Being:--

Almighty God, Thou who art impartial,
And dost appoint the virtuous among men as Thy Assistants.

One of his poems is entitled "God Questions," and consists of a number
of questions on various mysteries in the universe. The meaning of the
title would be better expressed by "Questions put to God," but we are
told that such a phrase was impossible on account of the holiness of
God and the irreverence of questioning Him. One question was, "Who has
handed down to us an account of the beginning of all things, and how
do we know anything about the time when heaven and earth were without
form?" Another question was, "As Nu-ch'i had no husband, how could she
bear nine sons?" The _Commentary_ tells us that Nu-ch'i was a "divine
maiden," but nothing more seems to be known about her.

The following prose passage is taken from Ch'u Yuan's biography:--

"Man came originally from God, just as the individual comes from his
parents. When his span is at an end, he goes back to that from which
he sprang. Thus it is that in the hour of bitter trial and exhaustion,
there is no man but calls to God, just as in his hours of sickness and
sorrow every one of us will turn to his parents."

The great sacrifices to God and to Earth, as performed by the early
rulers of China, had been traditionally associated with Mount T'ai, in
the modern province of Shantung, one of China's five sacred mountains.
Accordingly, in B.C. 219, the self-styled "First Emperor," desirous
of restoring the old custom, which had already fallen into desuetude,
proceeded to the summit of Mount T'ai, where he is said to have carried
out his purpose, though what actually took place was always kept a
profound secret. The literati, however, whom the First Emperor had
persecuted by forbidding any further study of the Confucian Canon, and
burning all the copies he could lay hands on, gave out that he had been
prevented from performing the sacrifices by a violent storm of rain,
alleging as a reason that he was altogether deficient in the virtue
required for such a ceremony.

It may be added that in B.C. 110 the then