In China, two hundred and seventy years ago, originated a sect whose adherents, scattered through the villages of the Eastern Provinces, and belonging principally to the lower classes of society, may be called Protestant or Reformed Buddhists. They are described by Dr. Edkins[398] as opposed to idolatry in all its forms, as having no temple, but only plain meeting-houses, signalised with only the common tablet to heaven, earth, king, parents, and teachers, as their symbol of reverence. Their worship consists not in ceremonies, but in quiet meditation, and inner adoration of the all-pervading Buddha. They are called the “Do-Nothing Sect,” not because they are idle, like the ignorant inmates of the monasteries—for they are really industrious and virtuous,—but because they hold that the highest virtue is never intentional, but wholly unconscious of self. Like M. Aurelius,[399] they consider that to ask to be “paid for virtue is as if the eye demanded a recompence for seeing.” In thinking of them, the words of the Lord Jesus recur to us: “Do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again.” George Fox, and the quiet and charitable Society which he founded, and which still continues in formal garb his protest against all formalism in worshipping God, not by clamouring to Him, but in silently waiting till He speaks, seems to be the realisation of what these good Wu-wei-Kiau aspire to in their religion. They have not been able to free themselves from Buddhism or Taoism. Buddha, though not worshipped, is believed in by them, and they have found an object of adoration in Kîn-mu, the Golden Mother of the soul, who can protect and deliver from calamity, and even save those that have died from misery. They have four principal festivals, two of which celebrate the birth and death of Lo-tsu, their founder. On these occasions three small cups of tea and nine tiny loaves of bread are placed on the tables, according to the appointment of Lo-tsu himself. On this account they are nicknamed “the Tea and Bread Sect.” They are strict vegetarians, but in no other sense ascetics, honouring marriage and family life, and having no monastic institute among them. They aver that one of their leaders during a persecution was crucified, and their great hope is that the world will soon come to an end, and that the Golden Mother will appear, to take all her children—all who believe in her as they do—home to her beautiful heaven.