Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/168

 These passages are the more remarkable, because Confucius was not in the ordinary sense a believer in God. That is, he never, throughout his instructions, says a single word implying acknowledgment of a personal Deity; a Creator of the world; a Being whom we are bound to worship as the author of our lives and the ruler of our destinies. He has even been suspected of omitting from his edition of the Shoo-king and the She-king everything that could support the comparatively theistic doctrine of his contemporary, Lao-tsè (By V. von Strauss, T. T. K., p. xxxviii). That his high respect for antiquity would have permitted such a proceedure is, to say the least, very improbable; and Dr. Legge is no doubt right in acquitting him of any willful suppression of, or addition to, the ancient articles of Chinese faith (C. C., vol. i. Prolegomena, p. 99). For our present purpose it is enough to note that he avoided all discussion on the higher problems of religion; and contented himself with speaking, and that but rarely, of a vague, and hardly personal Being which he called heaven. Thus, in a book attributed (perhaps erroneously) to his grandson, he is reported as saying, "Sincerity is the very way of Heaven" (Chung Yung, xx. 18). Of king Woo and the duke of Chow, two ancient worthies, he says: "By the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth they served God" (where he seems to distinguish between Heaven and God, whom I believe he never mentions but here); "and by the ceremonies of the ancestral temple they sacrificed to their ancestors. He who understands the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and the meaning of the several sacrifices to ancestors, would find the government of a kingdom as easy as to look into his palm" (Ibid., xix. 6). Elsewhere, he remarks that "he who is greatly virtuous will be sure to receive the appointment of heaven" (Ibid., xvii. 5). Again: "Heaven, in the production of things, is surely bountiful to them, according to their qualities" (Ibid., xvii. 3). Nothing very definite can be gathered from these passages, as to his opinions concerning the nature of the power of which he spoke thus obscurely. Yet it would be rash to find fault with him on that account. His language may have been, and in all probability was, the correct expression of his feelings. His mind was not of the dogmatic type; and if he does not teach his disci