of feeding, paying, and yet cheating spiritual beings; and ask, with surprise, is this the mode of worship adopted by a great, civilized, and learned people like the Chinese? After all the teaching of their boasted sages, their pratings about eternal reason, and the incarnations of the divine Buddha, is it come to this, that the wise Celestials display a silliness and absurdity in their religious practices, which children would scarcely practise? It is true, we do not find in their ceremonious observances, any of that impurity or cruelty, which disgraces the religion of India; but we do find a childishness, which we should hardly have expected from a people, in many other respects so shrewd and intelligent. So true is it, that the world by wisdom knew not God; and so necessary do we find divine revelation, in order to guide man in the way to heaven. It is comparatively easy for deists in Europe, who derive, though they will not acknowledge it, much assistance from the sacred scriptures, to draw up a system of natural theology, which shall look well, and sound pleasingly; but let them go to China, where little or no assistance has been derived from supernatural discoveries, and they will then see, how the wisest drivel in divine and eternal things, and how far they fall short of even children in Christianity.
One of the most favourite doctrines of Buddha is, that all things originated in nothing, and will revert to nothing again. Hence, annihilation is the summit of bliss; and nirupan, nirvana, or nonentity, the grand and ultimate anticipation of all. Contemplation and abstractedness of mind, with a gradual obliteration of all sense and feeling, are considered the nearest approaches to bliss, attainable on earth; and the devotees of this
