Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 edition. Excerpt: ...religion had been invented by the devil, for the express purpose of bringing a reproach upon the Romish Church. We would infer from the resemblance in the forms of worship of the two sects that the places of worship must also be much alike; and so in fact they are. The shrine and the altar, with the same gaudy tinsel and the same burning candles, and the idols but slightly different, give the Buddhist temple and Romish chapel a very similar aspect. It is said that when the Insurgents took Nanking, and went about destroying the idol temples, they demolished the Romish churches and their idols along with the rest, all unconscious of any difference between them. It was certainly a very natural, and a very pardonable mistake. CHAPTER XVI. BLENDING OF THE SECTS SOME NEGATIVE FEATURES COMMON TO ALL. No picture of the religious notions of the Chinese would be complete which did not give a separate view of the three sects which have been noticed in the preceding pages. It must not be supposed, however, that the people are divided, by distinct and tangible lines, among these sects. There is nothing in China corresponding to the different religious denominations into which Christian nations are divided. The Chinese readily embrace some of the tenets, and observe some of the rites, of all these sects, making no account of the glaring inconsistencies and contradictions in which this involves them. It is to a certain extent true that all are Confucianists--all Tauists--all Buddhists. The same persons may be seen, now in a Buddhist temple--now in a Tauist. A family mourning for a deceased member may call in the Buddhist priests to-day to pray for the soul of the deceased, and to-morrow the Tauist; or both may be called at the same time to perform the...
