The Coming Day Volume 3-4 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 Excerpt: ... our party was too frightened to look at these idols. She kept saying--"Oh, mamma, it is so ugly Take it away " The heathen priest was a very clever man. I found afterward that he had been a great reader. In this joss-house he stood in front of the gods with his people, and they all worshiped and prayed together. They were thoroughly in earnest, and I believe every Chinaman believed his eternal salvation depended on his worship. I found the priest to be a man of great learning. After the service I went in behind the gods with a young interpreter--a young Chinese graduate from Yale, and had a long talk with him. "I see you have many gods?" I commenced. "No," he replied, through the interpreter, "we only worship one God," "Then these are idols," I remarked. "No; the Chinese do not worship idols. These are images to represent God--one God We have many images, so that all the people can see at once, but each image represents ihe same God." "Then you do not worship the images." "Oh, no. They are only to remind us of God. You Christians pray before the crucifix, and the Catholics even have an image of Christ and the Virgin Mary, just as we have these images. We do not worship the images." "Why da you have such ugly, deformed images?" 1 asked. "Why do they have double heads, many ears, and many eyes?" "Well, God, you know, is omniscient, potential, and omnipresent. We represent these attributes by the images. The many hands denote that God is omnipresent The many eyes denote that He is omniscient--that he sees everything." "But why do you make such ugly-looking images?" I asked. "Oh that is the Chinese antique They are not ugly to us. They...