any one desiring to
live a holy life to become a priest. _It abolished sacrifices_; made
it the _duty of all men to honor their parents and care for their
children_, to be kind to the sick and poor and sorrowing, and to forgive
their enemies and return good for evil; it spread a spirit of charity
abroad which encompassed the lowest life as well as the highest." **

* Clodd.

** Ibid.

With these before him will a Christian suppose that morals are dependent
upon our Bible?

Of Confucianism, believed by millions to be essential to their
salvation, and one of the three state religions of China, Clodd says:
"On the soil of this great country there is crowded nearly half the human
race, the most orderly people on the globe. This man (Confucius), who
was reviled in life, but whose influence sways the hundreds of
millions of China, was born 551 years before Christ. His nature was so
beautifully simple and sincere that _he would not pretend to knowledge
of that which he felt was beyond human reach and thought_."

What an earthquake there would be if our clergymen where only to become
inoculated with that sort of simple sincerity I His disciples and
followers did that for him as has been done in most other cases.

"The sacred books of China are called the _Kings_, and are five in
number, containing _treatises on morals_, books of rites, poems, and
history. They are of great age, perhaps as old as the earliest hymns of
the Rig-Veda, _and are free from any impure thoughts_. [Which is much
more than can be said of our own sacred books, which are not so old.] In
the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but the design of them all
may be embraced in that one sentence, '_Have no depraved thoughts._'

"At the time when Confucius lived, China was divided into a number
of petty kingdoms whose rulers were ever quarrelling, and although he
became engaged in various public situations of trust, the disorder of
the State at last caused him to resign them, and he retired to another
part of the country. He then continued the life of a public teacher,
instructing men in the simple moral truths by which he sought to govern
his own life. The purity of that life, and the example of veneration for
the old laws which he set, gathered round him many grave and thoughtful
men, who worked with him for the common good."

Confucius said among other wise and moral things: "Coarse rice for food,
water to drink, the bended arm for a pil