Zell's Encyclopedia gives the following items as true to-day: "Their husbandry is, to a great extent, nullified by the rude and ill-adapted implements employed therefor, and also by the smallness of the farms. Hence, agriculture, as scientifically considered, is but little advanced." The form of government is strictly patriarchial. The emperor, who bears the various euphuistic titles of the "Brother of the Sun and Moon." _Teen-tsye_, or the "Sun of Heaven;" _Ta-hwang-li_, or the "Great Emperor;" and _Wansuy-yay_, or the "Lord of a Myriad Years," is regarded as the father of his people, and has unlimited power over all his subjects. The emperor is spiritual as well as temporal sovereign, and as high priest of the empire, can alone, with his immediate representatives and ministers, perform the great religious ceremonies. The bamboo, as the chief instrument of government, is applied without distinction, to the highest and lowest Chinese.
The imperial palaces are of great extent, consisting of a series of courts, with galleries and halls of audience beautifully painted. The temples differ greatly in form and size. The ordinary temples or _joss-houses_, consist each of one chamber _containing an idol_. This, gentle reader, is the store-house of pagan idolatry to which some unbelievers in Indiana and elsewhere resort for names or titles by which to designate the houses of Christian worship in our own country. How would those men like to emigrate to China, where they could have a language that suits their taste, and a literature and religion about which they have boasted so much? If Chinese government, religion, and literature and science be so old as is claimed by Chinamen, and by infidels in our country, and its age be the cause of its great superiority in religion and science, may we not thank the Lord that we are young?
The Mosaic method found in the first chapter of the book of Genesis is not the method of physical science; this seeks, by induction, after laws, principles and causes, stepping backwards step by step, seeking, by the light of physical science, the character of that unit which lies at the base of the whole series of all created things. "The world by wisdom knew not God." The truth of this statement is monumented by the literature of the unbelievers of the nineteenth century. To-day, men who refuse Bible instruction talk of the unknown and the unknowable, thus conceding that their efforts as naturalists, or "natural men," are not sufficient in their results to disclose the character of the great first cause. The same great failure has been, and ever will be, made by all mere naturalists. In view of this fact it is well that Moses gives us at once the great first cause in the phrase, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There is in this sentence no limitation of time, so there is room here for astronomical ages, cycle upon cycle. There was time enough in that beginning for the present system of planets to be arranged from a single nebulous mass. In it we have a picture of matter in a crude condition, without fixedness of form, surrounded with darkness. Then comes the commencement of the great work of preparing our planet for the home of man, by the spirit of God moving over the chaos. There is nothing in this statement that should perplex any man, unless he is that fool who "says in his heart there is no God." If the chaos here described was matter in a rare, gaseous condition, floating in space, molecular motion produced by the spirit of God brooding over it, and a chemical change producing electricity may have given the light called the first day.