Besides these three sects, there are some Roman Catholics, some Mohammedans, and a few Jews, scattered in different parts of China.
Since I have now commenced, I wish to write you several short letters; and this I will try to do, if God our heavenly Father gives me time and strength. Earnestly desiring that he will give you all good things, I remain,
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS,‑‑In the first letter, I told you something about the situation and the vast population of China, and the three religious sects into which the people are divided. In this letter I propose to give you a short account of their temples, priests, priestesses, and idols.
_Idol temples_ are very different from meeting‑houses. I have visited a good many of these temples, in and about Canton and Macao. There is very little, if any, difference between the temples of the Buddha and the Taon sects. Those which I have seen are brick, and usually firm and well built. A common village temple occupies about half an acre of ground, enclosed by a wall twelve or fifteen feet high, and consists of several houses for the priests, a number of small rooms and niches for the idols, and an open court and alleys. Some of the temples are large, including within their outer wall three or four acres, having beautiful trees and gardens, and sometimes a furnace, in which the dead bodies of priests are burnt, and also a kind of tomb, filled with urns, in which their ashes are afterwards deposited. These are more than thirteen hundred idol temples in the province of Canton; and, at the same rate of reckoning, there will be, in the eighteen provinces into which China is divided, more than _twenty‑three thousand idol temples_.
I have never visited any of the temples dedicated to Confucius. They are, it is said, distinguished from those of Buddha and Taon, by their dignified simplicity, the exclusion of images from all the principal halls, and by substituting, in their stead, commemorative tablets, bearing the names of Confucius and his most distinguished disciples.
_Priests_ are numerous. One temple in Peking has, it is said, eight hundred priests. One which I have visited, _near_ Canton, has more than one hundred and fifty. Those of Buddha shave their heads perfectly bald. They usually appear dressed in a large grey gown, with sleeves often a full yard wide. They live principally on vegetables; they eat no meat, are not allowed to marry, are idle, and, except by persons of their own sect, utterly disrespected. The priests of the Taon sect shave their heads, except a spot about the size of a man's hand, of which the crown of the head is the centre. This, indeed, every Chinese does. Every man and every boy must have his head shaved, as a mark of submission to the Emperor. This has been the custom for almost two hundred years. But, while the common people braid their hair into a "long tail," which hangs down to their heels, the priests of Taon fold theirs up in a knot on the top of the head. When they appear in public, they usually wear a yellow robe. They eat flesh, and are permitted to marry. No priest of either sect ever teaches in public and but seldom in private. They spend much of their time in devotions, which are nothing but "vain repetitions," saying over and over again the same words, as fast as they can, hundreds and thousands of times. They are sometimes called to pray for the dead, and sometimes to go in funeral processions.