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deep in mud or covered with dust. The houses are chiefly of brick, one story high, and often embellished with grotesque carving, as shown in our engraving, and with much brilliant painting and gilding.

The street scenes are generally of peculiar animation, from the number of stalls and street buyers and sellers. All manner of trades and industries are conducted al fresco, and the picturesque garb of the natives, which is fast becoming familiar in our Canadian cities, gives colour and variety to the scene.

The Great Wall was built upon the northern boundaries of the empire two hundred years before our Saviour came to earth. It was designed as a defence against the warlike Tartars, but is now quite useless. It runs from the sea along the northern border of the empire for over 1,300 miles, passing through the valleys and over lofty mountain ranges. The wall varies from fifteen to thirty feet in height, and is about as thick as it is high, while at intervals there are large square towers, some of them being fifty feet high. It is said that six horsemen could ride abreast on the top of the wall. What energy and patience the Chinese must have had to build this enormous structure, which has lasted now for over two thousand years!

There are said to be three national religions in China. One originated with Confucius, a sage who lived about six hundred years before Christ. All the Chinese reverence him, and yet a large portion of them follow another religion than the one he taught. Some are Taoists, and some are Buddhists. But while these three forms of religion are professed, the people care little about any one of them. Once or twice a year each Chinaman bows and worships heaven and earth, but every day of the year and in every house in the land, worship is offered to departed ancestors. The universal religion of China is the worship of ancestors. Each family keeps what are called ancestral tablets. These are boards, usually about twelve inches long by three wide, on which are written the name, rank, titles, birth and death days of each deceased member of the household. Every day, morning and evening, incense is burned and worship offered before these tablets.

One of the saddest things about the religions of China is that none of them seem to have it for their object to make men better. A priest once said to a missionary: "Your religion does not give what the people want. When they worship they wish to know whether they can grow rich and recover from disease. In the case of believing in Jesus, there are no benefits of this kind." The people have no idea of a religion whose aim is to free from sin and to make men pure.

Though the Chinese are good scholars and have many books, they are as superstitious as the lowest savages. They believe in ghosts and evil spirits, and one of their singular notions is that these evil spirits go in straight lines, and hence they make their streets crooked, so as to confuse and keep off the bad spirits. They also believe in an oracle by which they can foretell their fate. While incense is burning and crackers are fired off, to keep the god awake and attentive, the inquirer shakes a cup in which

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are placed strips of wood with some written words upon them, and from the strips that fall upon the ground he learns his fate. Another singular notion of the Chinese is that they can convey to any spirit, whether human or divine, whatever they may please, by simply burning the article, or an image of it, in the flames. Hence, as they think that a friend, after his spirit leaves the body, will need just what he needed here, they burn paper images of these objects, and fancy that they reach the departed soul. A missionary describes a paper house which he once saw built for

a person who had died. "It was about ten feet high and twelve deep. It contained a sleeping-room, library, reception-room, hall, and treasury. It was furnished with paper chairs and tables. Boxes of paper money were carried in. There was a sedan-chair, with bearers, and also a boat and boatman, for the use of the deceased in the unseen world. A table spread with food was placed in front of the house." This whole paper establishment was suddenly set fire to, and in the midst of a fusilade of crackers it quickly vanished in the flames. What a pitiable notion this is as to what human souls will need in the future!

This idea that whatever is burned in the sacred flame is thus conveyed to unseen spirits, is applied to prayers. The Chinaman always writes his prayers and then burns them. So he fancies they go up to the god or spirit he would address. The priests fill up blank prayers, according to the wishes of their customers who come with their various wants. People come to buy prayers for themselves and for others, and having had them filled out, they go away to burn them.

Among other singular customs of the Chinese are those connected with the death and burial of people. When any man is supposed to be dying, he is taken into the hall of his house and washed and dressed in his best clothes. Of course such treatment often hastens death. When he is fairly dead a priest is called, who exhorts the spirit to leave the body. Coins of gold or silver are put in the dead man's mouth. With these, it is supposed, he can pay his way in the other world. The coffin is usually all ready, since most Chinamen make this provision for themselves long before they die. It is said that children often present their fathers and mothers with a coffin as a suitable birth-day gift when they have completed their sixty-first year. After the body has been closely sealed in the coffin, it is kept in the house for fifty days of mourning. During each of these days the family go into the street, and kneeling in front of the house they wail bitterly. All the relatives send offerings of food and money to be placed before the coffin for the use of the spirit which remains in the body. They imagine that each person has three souls, and on the twenty-first day of mourning they raise huge paper birds on long poles, and these birds are supposed to carry away one of the souls to heaven.

The Chinese are like some foolish people elsewhere, in imagining that good or bad luck is connected with certain days and places. But the Chinese carry it so far that they seek a lucky spot for a grave, and a lucky day and hour for the funeral. This often takes a long while, and a burial has been known to be

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delayed many months till a lucky time could be pitched upon. When the day comes the people gather at the beating of gongs, and the priest calls upon the remaining spirit to accompany the coffin to the tomb. The

procession is then formed, as shown in our illustration on this page. The ceremonies are almost endless, quite too many to describe here. Usually a band of musicians, or gongbeaters, goes first, then men with banners on which are inscribed the

names and titles of the deceased and his ancestors. In the sedan-chair which follows is placed the man's portrait. Then follows more gong-beaters, and near them a person who scatters on the ground paper money, representing gold and silver coins. This mock money is supposed to be for the hungry ghosts who are wandering through the air, and will annoy the departed soul unless they receive toll. Then comes the, coffin, and after that the relatives all clad in white, the mourning colour in China.

On the arrival of the procession at the burial-place, a person who is supposed to be able to drive away evil spirits strikes each corner of the grave with a spear, and the priest calls upon the soul of the dead man to remain with his body in the tomb.

Is not all this a sad story of superstition? And the Chinese in some directions are as cruel as they are superstitious. If they are kind to their parents, they are inhuman to their children. The girls suffer most. Their feet are tightly bound to keep them small, in a way to give them constant pain. The wail of the poor feet-bound girls is heard far and wide in China. And in some provinces parents kill their daughters and nothing is thought of it. It is said that in the great city of Foochow, more than half of the families have destroyed one or more of their daughters.

What can save such a people but the gospel of Jesus? It is pleasant to close this sad story of wickedness and superstition by telling how the light is beginning to shine in the midst of the darkness. A little over forty years ago no Protestant missionary was permitted to live within the bounds of China. Now thirty missionary societies are maintaining labourers, and 439 churches have been organized, with 40,350 members. Many thousands more have left their idol worship, and are hearing the gospel of Jesus.

A recent English tourist thus describes his visit to Shanghai: "What a magnificent town, the Venice of the East it seemed to me, with its long procession of stately buildings in the Venetian Palace style on its Bund, recalling the Grand Canal and its procession of palaces, now unhappily recalling Browning's death. A little before midnight of the 17th of November, 1891, we anchored in the river of China, the fourth river of the world, the Yangt-si-kiang, in one of the southernmost mouths of its seventymile delta, and at daylight steamed up to Woo Sung, whence, at about nine a.m., the agent's launch carried us up the Wang Po, a two hours' trip to Shanghai. The first English words which saluted us were Empire Brewery.' I was much interested in a Chinese tea-house, and Chinese buildings, with clusters of queer little turn-up-toed roofs. But we were all alike soon lost in con

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