respect for parents and rulers, and by so honouring the
mother that woman has a higher position in China than in most
other non-Christian lands.

And yet Confucianism has been and is the most formidable
obstacle to the regeneration of China. While it teaches some
great truths, it ignores others that are vital. It has lifted the
Chinese above the level of barbarism only to fix them almost
immovably upon a plane considerably lower than Christianity.
It has developed such a smug satisfaction with existing conditions
that millions are well-nigh impervious to the influences
of the modern world. It has debased respect for parents into
a blind worship of ancestors so that a dead father, who may
have been an ignorant and vicious man, takes the place of the
living and righteous God. It has fostered not only premature
marriages but concubinage in the anxiety to have sons who
will care for parents in age and minister to them after death.
It makes the child virtually a slave to the caprice or passion of
the parent. It leads to a reverence for the past that makes
change a disrespect to the dead, so that all progress is made
exceedingly difficult and society becomes fossilized. ``Whatever
is is right'' and ``custom'' is sacred. Man is led so to
centralize his thought on his own family that he becomes selfish
and provincial in spirit and conduct, with no outlook beyond
his own narrow sphere. Expenditures which the poor can ill-
afford are remorselessly exacted for the maintenance of ancestral
worship so that the living are often impoverished for the sake
of the dead. $151,752,000 annually, ancestral worship is said
to cost--a heavy drain upon a people the majority of whom
spend their lives in the most abject poverty, while the development