God sends Famine.--The _Ode_ from which the following extract is taken
carries us back to the ninth century B.C., at the time of a prolonged
and disastrous drought:--

Glorious was the Milky Way,
Revolving brightly in the sky,
When the king said, Alas!
What crime have my people committed now,
That God sends down death and disorder,
And famine comes upon us again?
There is no spirit to whom I have not sacrificed;
There is no victim that I have grudged;
Our sacrificial symbols are all used up;--
How is it that I am not heard?

The Confucian Criterion.--The keystone of the Confucian philosophy, that
man is born good, will be found in the following lines:--

How mighty is God!
How clothed in majesty is God,
And how unsearchable are His judgments!
God gives birth to the people,
But their natures are not constant;
All have the same beginning,
But few have the same end.

God, however, is not held responsible for the sufferings of mankind.
King Wen, in an address to the last tyrant of the House of Shang, says
plainly,