November 30, 1907.]
military works established by the Han monarchs seem to have been kept in good order, but under the later monarchs of the dynasty, who had lost the energy of their predecessors these works were gradually suffered to fall into decay, and the sandy desert made rapid advances, so that with the rise of Mohammedanim and the decay of the Buddhist monasteries that had flourished under the rule of the earlier Wei sovereigns, the whole of these countries became a bowling desert.
Here history repeats itself. In our own times the savage Teo Tsungtang was sent under the present regency to put down the Mohammedan rising which had taken place as a sequence to the rule of the Amir Yakub in Kashgar. Tao's sole idea of repression was extermination, and the entire country was devastated, and the inhabitants, men, women, and children, ruthlessly massacred. T80 was indeed temporarily successful: he made a howling wilderness of the oases that had up to his day survived, and the land deprived of its inhabitants, and with its irrigation works destroyed, has in the latter period of the nineteenth century become an irreclaimable desert, never more to be re- stored to cultivation. Such is the story of Eastern Turkestan, which we are now, after the explorations of Dr. STEIN, beginning to comprehend. A much wiser course in the interests of humanity at large would have been to have listened to the prayers of of YAKUB BEG, and assisted him in the founding of his kingdom; but through a mistaken policy of supporting China on every occasion, whether right or wrong, we have aided in the final ruin of Central Asis, and weakened our own rule in India.
GHOSTS.
is
CHINÁ OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
with a mild request that the promoters | Theologist," Mr. CAMPBELL of the City would ascertain the truth before pro. Temple, who spends his time explaining ceeding. We all want to ascertain the that the Bible doesn't really mean what it truth, as far AS possible, and it says, but what he says, will appreciate it. to be hoped that more care will be For ourselves, we give the quotation for its exercised in the use of such phrases as possible effect on those who may expect "entirely trustworthy," " unimpeachable spirits to tell them where the silver teapot authority," and the like. In people who lies buried, and on those who have lately teach faith-defined by an iuspired school-been wondering what is the boy as
message belief in what you know aint so Hongkong of the " gift of tongues " just imported from America. We do hope the public asylums of the Empire are not short of funds.
f.
1 t
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25
"An astound-
any amount of dogmatism is excusable, so long as they stick to their role and don't pretend to logical argument. A worse example from the Home papers is fittingly prefaced with the following formula, which we italicise to emphasise the way in which an air of vouching for accuracy is generally given to the careless reader. ing story of spiritualism is published here Rome] to-day, for the accuracy of which, it is stated, many highly-placed persons are prepared to vouch." Even supposing they were numerous, and very highly-placed- supposing they had vouched, instead of being said to be ready to vouch, nothing would make the astounding story believable to a sane mind. It tells how the " 'spirit of a woman deceased besieged various mediums until at last one consented to communicate with her husband, who came and obtained information about a sum of money she had buried in the garden. He found the money, of course. Not long ago We noticed the case of an American "scientist who had discovered the weight of a human soul. Here, now, is another sul fussing over material money. In this connection, as there are apparently people who will swallow anything from talkers who happen to be "highly-placed," we may quote Sir OLIVER LODGE's latest. He is a scientist with a mental twist to which we do not care to put a name, and the author of an egregious pseudo-scientific catechism which promises to add another terror to childhood. Lecturing to an audience, mostly fools, on "The immortality of the soul," he delivere himself of the following:
MANIFESTATIONS.
to
(Daily Pres November 28th). It never raios but it pours. return to a subject merely glanced at We have to
yesterday, after studying the Rev. Lord WILLIAM GASCOYNE-CECIL's article on the situation in Korea. In doing so, we hope all readers will remember that there is a sincerity of the intellect as well as of the heart. Though many morally honest people seem content to live in a mental muddle, the day is long past when newspapers were expected to sanction all that sort of thing. No honest endeavour to render a clear situation should be feared; and nowadays, men of the Rev. Lord GASCOYNE-CECIL'S class and position realize that it does not pay to burke open discussion. The help and sympathy of newspapers being freely drawn upon by them, they are prepared for criticism also. In the article reproduced on pageя 3 and 5, Lord GASCOYNE-CECIL deprecates generalization, and then genera- lizes freely in his comparison of Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. Apropos the Japanese lack of self-consciousness, which (though are far from the purity of Adam's Paradise) is really an Edenic innocence, e inentions that the Koreans are essentially a decent people, and then his subsequent comments make a complete admission that their alleged decency is really a prurient prudery. The incident cited is merely a Korean instance of the old maid's telescope. They have, he slyly SLYS, an almost Western prejudice against acknowledging the fact that women have legs." We can, however, afford to pass Any notion that these same atoms will at over his Lordship's reference to the “inde. some future date be re-collected and united with cency" of the "heathen soldiery" of Japan. the dissociated and immaterial portion, so as to It is his claim that the Koreans are accept- constitute once more the complete man as being Christianity enthusiastically and earnest- appeared here on earth, and who is thereafter to last for ever, is a pagan superstition, though most unfortunately believed-or at least taught -by one great branch of the Christin Church. I want to make the distinct assertion that no really existing thing perishes, but only changes its form.
"The fist simple trath that must be insisted on, he said, "is the commonplace, but often ignored and even denied, fact that there is nothing immortal or persistent about the body except the material atoms of which it is
composed.
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<<
(Daily Press, November 27th.) The presence in Hongkong of a spiritual charlatan who is doing miracles for the edification of the Chinese demands local attention to the character of the average professor of the supernatural. It would appear that human credulity has no limits. What the Chinese think of the " gift of tongues," an American miracle now inani- festing in Hongkong, it is impossible to say. It is not only they, however, who fall a ready prey to the Higher Foolishness. In various papers from Home we have been noticing lately instances of what is either incredible credulity or deliberate depravity of deceit. Serious students of psychic phenomena " are invited by one hitherto respectable journal to consider the case of an Italian gentleman in South Kensingtou, to whom a noise in the chimney ultimately prov to be the voice of a far away niece, Physical science teaches us this clearly who had been murdered at the same instant. enough concerning malter aud We read that “there is no doubt as to the the two great entities with which it has to do. energy, accuracy of the details." In these days the Can life be a uonentity that has buil up public ought to know better than to swal-particles of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen
into the form of an oak or an eagle or a man? unimpeachable authorities" "Not so; nor is it 83 with mind and con so glibly trotted out by careless journalists.sciousness and will, nor with memory and love Only lately, in connection with the proposed Chinese fête at Hongkong, we were asked to accept, "from quarters known to be entirely trustworthy," the statement that the price of necessities had already risen in consequence of the announcement of next month's festival. That would doubtless be sufficient for some people, who would not even read to the end of the article, which, before it closed, completely contradicted its own opening announcement by honestly admitting that it was declared by others that there had been no appreciable rise in prices. The very article that began by citing an "entirely trustworthy testi- mony concluded with an acknowledgment that the evidence was conflicting, and
low all the
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and adoration, nor all the manifold activities which at present strangely interact with matter and appeal to our bodily senses and terrestrial knowledge.
vanish into nothingness or cease to be. They did not arise with us; they never did spring into being. They are as eternal as the God- head itself, and in the eternal Being they shall sodure for ever."
"They are not 'nothing'; nor shall they ever
In trying the circus trick of riding two horses at once, trying with indifferent success to "keep in "with the Bishops and yet to tell the truth as his intellect sees it, Sir OLIVER LODGE has said many extra- ordinary things; but this time he must certainly have stung at once the Bishops and the lay noodles. Perhaps the "New
$4
ly, and particularly his illustrations of their enthusiasm, that most require analytic Koreans are embracing Christianity because consideration. We are told that the
in their present national circumstances (not so very different, be it noted, to those they have all along been experiencing, so far as
salve the wound of humbled pride, and tenda independence is concerned) it promises to
Naturally, not with "the feeble weapons of to a recovery of their ancient diguity. How?
Rev.
KE came to
this world." It must be because it teaches them to love their enemies, to pray for them that despitefully do use them. Any one who knows the Korean people will be surprised to be told that they
it. One Korean, whose wife had suffered yearn in that fashion, but the Lord GASCOYNE-CECIL believes it and says severely from Japanese brutality, the mission room"-not, like the usual rice-Christian, to demand intervention-bat, according to his Lordship, asking the prayers of others to enable him to perform the very difficult Christian duty of forgive- ness.' That is positively miraculous. The Japanese soldier had broken the Korean's wife's earthen cooking dish, and when she demanded compensation, he had." struck her with his weapon and wounded her so
"
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