ut think, what a burden it becomes to the poor man who tries
conscientiously to do his duty to the departed!

Now this ancestral worship leads to the deduction that it is an
unfilial thing not to marry and beget sons by whom the line of
descendants may be continued. Otherwise the line would cease, and the
spirits would have none to care for them or worship them.

The Chinese view of rulers or Kings is also striking. According to the
belief prevalent regarding government, Heaven and Earth were without
speech. These created man who should represent them. This man is none
other than the Emperor their vicegerent. He is constituted ruler over
all people. This accounts for three things; first, the superiority
which the Chinese emperors assume over the kings and rulers of other
countries; secondly, for the long-lived empire of China, it being
rebellion against Heaven to lift up one's self against the Emperor;
and in the third place it explains to us why divine honours are paid
to him. He is a sacred person. He is in a certain sense a god. The
view is similar to that entertained by the Roman Emperors, who, in
inscriptions and on coins employed the term Deus, and at times exacted
divine honours. As we turn from the Joss-House and walk away from this
bit of heathendom in the heart of an active, stirring, prosperous,
great American city with its Christian civilisation and its Christian
Churches and its Christian homes, we cannot but ask ourselves what
would have been the history of the Pacific States, of California with
its nearly eight hundred miles of coast, if the Chinese had settled
here centuries ago? If they had been navigators and colonizers like
the Phoenicians of old, like the Greeks and Romans, if they had had
a Columbus, a Balboa, a Cabrillo, a Drake, the whole history of the
country west of the Rocky Mountains might have been totally different.
Millions of Chinamen instead of thousands might now be in possession
of that great region of our land, and great cities like Canton and
Fuchau, Pekin and Tientsin, might rise up on the view instead of
San Diego and Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco, with their
idolatry and peculiar life and customs. Another question may be asked
here by way of speculation. What would have been the effect of Chinese
occupation of the Pacific coast on the Indians of all the region
west of the Rocky Mountains? Would the followers of Confucius have
incorporated them into their nationality,