It is not God who has caused this evil time,
But it is you who have strayed from the old paths.

The Associate of God.--Worshipped on certain occasions as the Associate
of God, and often summoned to aid in hours of distress or danger, was a
personage known as Hou Chi, said to have been the original ancestor
of the House of Chou. His story, sufficiently told in the _Odes_, is
curious for several reasons, and especially for an instance in Chinese
literature, which, in the absence of any known husband, comes near
suggesting the much-vexed question of parthenogenesis:--

She who first gave birth to our people
Was the lady Chiang Yuan.
How did she give birth to them?
She offered up a sacrifice
That she might not be childless;
Then she trod in a footprint of God's, and conceived,
The great and blessed one,
Pregnant with a new birth to be,
And brought forth and nourished
Him who was Hou Chi.

When she had fulfilled her months,
Her firstborn came forth like a lamb.
There was no bursting, no rending,
No injury, no hurt,
In order to emphasise his divinity.
Did not God give her comfort?
Had He not accepted her sacrifice,
So that thus easily she brought forth her son?