We then changed the conversation to the question of "whether Confucius believed in God or not?" I had been instructed in this controversy by one of the most learned missionaries in China, Dr. Ross of Mukden. They maintained, as he told me they would maintain, that the Heaven of Confucius meant Reason. {179} But Reason cannot possibly punish the guilty, though the guilty might be punished by their want of Reason. And as Confucius refers in several places to Heaven as a power that punishes, the definition is obviously incorrect. It dates from a philosopher called Chu. Again the learned men were absorbed in controversy, every one enjoying such a discussion. The greatest number still held to the doctrine that Heaven meant Reason, but a certain number held that it meant a personal God. It ended in the controversy becoming quite heated, and in a copy of Dr. Legge's translation of the Chinese classics being fetched, so that I might fully understand their different points of view. In the end we agreed that there was a considerable force in the argument that Confucius believed in a personal God. When I further asked how Reason could possibly punish a bad man when he was dead, and how it was that many a bad man, as we all know, died in wealth and prosperity, they answered that after death his memory was punished by his bad deeds coming to light. I suggested that if a man was dead this did not matter to him, and that Confucius' assertion that punishment followed sin implied a future life. When they were further asked whether Confucius taught that all secret sin should one day be made public, there was an eloquent silence, and we dropped the subject.