196
and teachings of an extraordinary man. Accounts of the origins, development and principal characteristics of the Three Religions are superfluous here, as they can be found in both current and older standard works on the subject.
In regard to any comparisons with religion as understood in the West, the celebrated American missionary scholar Dr. Arthur Smith had this to say of Chinese religion:
"There is no word in Chinese embodying this concept, its place having been taken by a character denoting Instruction, which embodies quite a different idea; or by the phrase bai shen, signifying "to worship" (or to pay one's respects to) gods and spirits."
"Bai," he added, "can also denote 'to pay one's respects to' in ordinary human intercourse." "These terms show what is the substitute in the Chinese mind for that which we mean by religion."
Dr. Smith's dictum was endorsed by one of the best-known Chinese scholars of the Republican era, Dr. Hu Shih, writing a generation later on "Religion in Chinese Life" in his book The Chinese Renaissance (1934):
"The Chinese word for 'religion' is chiao which means teaching or a system of teaching. To teach people to believe in a particular deity is a chiao; but to teach them how to behave toward other men is also a chiao. The term chiao is applied to Buddhism, Taoism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, as well as Confucianism."
Teaching, as "Instruction," was common to all of China's Three Religions, and as Dr. Hu went on to explain, the intention was to inculcate moral virtue:
"Teaching a moral life is the essential thing: and 'the ways of the gods' are merely one of the possible means of sanctioning that teaching. That is in substance the Chinese conception of religion."
With these few words, the two scholars have brought out the two