The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations. Kersey Graves

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СКАЧАТЬ to Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews. They are believed to be divinely inspired; and all are regarded as authority in matters of faith, doctrine, and practice. All of them inculcate virtue, and condemn vice and immorality. I will present merely a brief exposition of a few of the leading books.

I. TA-HEO; OR, GREAT LEARNING.

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      This book forms the basis of the religious sect known as the Tao-ists. It treats principally of doctrines, but enjoins many important duties,—such as family government, the cultivation of the natural faculties, the acquisition of knowledge, the duty of being honest and sincere and rectifying the heart, and the moral obligation of having good rulers and a righteous government as means of making all peaceful and happy.

II. THE CHUNG YUNG; OR, THE DOCTRINE OF THE MEAN.

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      This book contains the Golden Rule: "What you do not like others to do to you, do not so to them." It recommends a state of harmony in the mental faculties as the path of duty and the road to happiness and to heaven. It teaches that people should follow the dictates of their own consciences, and cultivate and fully develop their natures. On the whole, it admonishes a system of moral perfection. It declares that spiritual beings are constantly around us, and we do nothing without them, though we do not see nor hear them. Pretty good spiritualism!

III. THE BOOK OF MANG, OF MENCIUS.

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      Mang, or Mencius, the philosopher, lived about two hundred years after Confucius. This Holy Book of his was not admitted into the Chinese canon till several centuries after it was written. Up to that date it was regarded as apocryphal, but is now held in high veneration as an inspired book. It affirms the essential goodness of human nature, instead of the Christian doctrine of "total depravity." It teaches that all men are possessed of more or less goodness by nature, but are often corrupted by bad example and bad governments. It argues the moral right of the people to choose their own rulers.

IV. SHOO KING; OR, BOOK OF HISTORY.

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      This work is constituted of fifty-eight books. It throws much light on the history of the Chinese Empire, and bears evidence of having been written in a very remote age, but was compiled about 500 B.C. It argues that people are not bad by nature, and that it is the duty of governments to bless the good and punish the wicked. Otherwise they need not expect the blessing of heaven, or the favor of the people. It relates the case of an emperor who was reformed by reading the Holy Book.

V. THE SHE KING; OR, BOOK OF POETRY.

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      This book is about as devoid of moral instruction as the Books of Ruth and Esther in the Christian Bible. It is principally a display of human emotions and social feelings. Yet almost every Chinese has committed portions of it to memory. Being gotten up in the style of a poem, it is well calculated to enlist the feelings of the devout disciple.

VI. THE CHUN TSEN; OR, SPRING AND SUMMER.

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      This is principally a historical record, and is interpreted as representing spring and summer. It is held in high estimation as being the production of the "Great Divine Man," Confucius; and it is wonderful with what ingenuity its commentators and teachers have succeeded in extracting from its dry details about wars, marriages, deaths, travels, eclipses, battles, &c., the most profound lessons in morals. Like the admirers and expounders of other Holy Books in all ages and countries, they bestow the most recondite spiritual meanings on texts containing nothing but nonsense, senseless verbiage, or immoral teachings.

VII. THE TAO-TE KING; OR, DOCTRINE OF REASON.

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      "Tao" means absolute, and "Te" means virtue; which indicates that it teaches absolute virtue. Of all sacred books this is the most philosophical. It seems to constitute both a revelation and system of philosophy. It displays considerable wisdom and beauty, but is not free from those gross and repulsive elements which characterize the Christian and some other Bibles. It declares that God created, cherishes, and loves all the world. It has no angry God, but one enjoining love and benevolence, and the return of good for evil, upon all the human race. It declares God made all beings: his essence formed them, his might preserves them, his providence protects them, and his power perfects them. It condemns war and weapons of death: it says that Tao does not employ them, and all good men abhor them. It also condemns the possession of worldly wealth as being in opposition to a spiritual life, and as denoting the absence of good from the soul. Modesty, mercy, benevolence, and contentment are recommended as the highest of human virtues. An extensive commentary, written by a Chinese saint about 160 B.C., goes with this book to explain it, as all "divine revelations" have to be revealed over again by the priests, who seem to assume that Infinite Wisdom is too ignorant of human language to dictate a book that can be understood. Must it not be mortifying to him to have his blunders thus exposed?

ANALOGY OF THE CHINESE AND JEWISH RELIGIONS.

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      The Christian historian, Mr. Milne, expressed a fear that he might be condemned for furnishing proof, that, before Jesus was born, a morality as pure was inculcated in the celestial empire (China). As in the Hindoo, Egyptian, and Persian religions, we find the Jewish and Christian religions here amalgamated together. The Chinese had a cosmogony, or story of creation similar in some respects to those already noticed. These sacred books speak of a primitive paradise, in which was a tree of knowledge and a tree of life; also of a deluge and an ark. Baptism, the cross, and the miter are emblematical rites of their religion. They also taught the doctrine of the eucharist and the trinity, and practiced circumcision.

      The Chinese have a story or tradition of an incarnate God, Natigai, who, like Christ, was both creator and mediator. His system of religious faith taught the doctrine of special providences, future rewards and punishments, a general judgment-day, the duty of humility or self-abasement, and the moral and religious obligation to observe strict temperate habits, and to devote our whole lives to God, &c.

      The Chinese religion inculcates many beautiful and sublime moral precepts, which we have not space to notice here.

      The historical books of China, comprising a hundred and fifty volumes, and called "The Great Annals," and recently translated by a scientific Frenchman, have a regular chronology, beginning nearly two thousand six hundred years before the period assigned for the creation of Adam. And they have calculations in astronomy at that remote СКАЧАТЬ