[Illustration: THE PRIESTS OF LA-ON-TZEE.]

What an awful liar this man must have been! Yet many people believed in
him, and still believe in him. There are now priests of La-on-tzee, and
once a year they rush through hot cinders and pretend they are not hurt.
You will wonder their tricks are not found out, seeing they cannot give
any one the drink to keep them from dying. It is indeed wonderful that
any one can believe these deceitful priests.

Their religion is called the "_Taou_" sect. Taou means reason. The name
of folly would be a better title for such a religion.

There is a _third_ religion in China. It is the sect of Buddha.[7] This
Buddha was a man who once pretended to be turned into a god called Fo.
You see he was even worse than La-on-tzee.

Buddha pretended that he could make people happy; and his way of doing so
was very strange. He told them to think of nothing, and then they would
be happy. It is said that one man fixed his eyes for nine years upon a
wall without looking off, hoping to grow happy at last. You can guess
whether he did. There are many priests of Buddha, always busy in telling
lies to the people. They recommend them to repeat the name of Buddha
thousands and thousands of times, and some people are so foolish as to do
this; but no one ever found any comfort from this plan.

The priests of Buddha say that their souls, when they leave their bodies,
go into other bodies. This idea is enough to make a dying person very
miserable. One poor man, when he was dying, was in terror because he had
been told his soul would go into one of the emperor's horses. Whenever
he was dropping off to sleep, he started up in a fright, fancying that he