Against all this mass of the evil world the Chinaman has but one defence: his father and his ancestor belong to that world and they will defend him; and so the ancestor cult is intimately connected with this {159} belief in evil spirits. If the father does not bestir himself the son may come to harm--in fact, the main part of a Chinaman's religious idea centres round ancestor worship; and there is no such awful moment in a Christian convert's life as when he is required to destroy the tablet of his ancestors. A Confucianist cannot understand the missionary position; to his mind contempt for the ancestor only means a deep and spiritual scepticism, an absence of all faith in the supernatural, a negation of all sense of duty. A missionary recounted a story illustrative of this difficulty. He was travelling up-country in China, and his road lay along the same way down which a well-to-do merchant was travelling, and as they journeyed on side by side and met every night at the inns at which they put up, he noticed that the Chinaman eyed him askance; but as the missionary spoke Chinese well, and as travellers have many little wants which another traveller can supply, it was not unnatural that in spite of the mistrust manifested by the Chinaman they should fall gradually into more intimate converse. One night as they were sitting at an inn the Chinaman said to the missionary, "Do you know I thought you were a Christian, but I see you are a good fellow." The missionary assured him that he was a Christian, and did not deny that he was a good fellow. He felt, however, that there was some obstacle in the Chinaman's mind that kept them still apart, and as they journeyed on from day to day and had grown more intimate, the Chinaman said, "You know {160} people do tell such lies that one cannot believe a word they say." The missionary assented to this general proposition as true of all the world, but asked for a more immediate application. The Chinaman continued: "Well, I hope you will not be offended if I tell you the lies they tell about you--lies that I am afraid I believed till I met you and could see what a good fellow you are. They say--" but he broke off. "Pardon me, it is such a horrible accusation that I do not like to repeat it, even though I know that it is untrue." The missionary pressed him to tell what this accusation was, and the Chinaman continued apologetically, "I know that it is such a lie that I am ashamed that my people should tell such lies, but they do say that you Christians actually teach men to break up the tablet on which their father's name is written;" and the missionary realised all at once the depth of the conviction of the Chinaman and the wide gulf that separated him from Christianity. And so many and many a person who knows China best confidently asserts that Christianity will never become the religion of China till it permits and recognises this ancestral worship.