Page:Oriental Religions - China.djvu/930

900 or Dante 1 with the every-day concerns of life. Everlasting penalties await infanticide, and "deceiving of the people by lies;" others, such as those that punish -cruel officials, are measured by Buddhist kalpas. As* in Manu, the wicked inflict sufferings on themselves similar to those they have wrought in others, or suffer death from diseases of the organs they have abused. The " unpardonable sin " is not in speaking against the Holy Ghost, but in maltreatment of parents. Resurrections are a commonplace, and enter regularly into the retributory system as executed by the decisions of the spiritual court. This system has also the control of cosmical phenomena, directing them on the cc P erson f the sinner, who is struck by lightning,

with cosmical phenomena

smitten with disease, or swept away by strong winds,. -j^e epochs of wind and rain are deranged by crimes of rulers and people." Boys who burn sacred books are carried off by pestilence. The Tao-sse Ananias is an official who beats an angel disguised as a mendicant; an unkind son is crushed by a stone falling out of the sky; violent men die violent deaths; the blasphemer of spirits is torn by a dog; the licentious person sees his children given over to vices like his own, for which no miracle would seem necessary; a moral intuition is hinted in the aphorism that " Providence has no special affection, yet always helps the virtuous." These mathematics, that determine

Their democratic spirit.

destiny as a quotient of balanced accounts in good and evil conduct, override all earthly distinctions; and, in the judgment, both Chinese and Buddhist wisdom see the slave equal with his master, and the beggar under one responsibility with his prince.

The main motive to which Tao-sse preaching appeals is official the love of official position, which is promised to all aTelbka* 8 gd people with an assurance as astonishing as reward. the legend-manufacture by which it is enforced

Kan-ing-pien, pp. 136, 94, 453.