This work is constituted of fifty-eight books. It throws much light on the history of the Chinese Empire, and bears evidence of having been written in a very remote age, but was compiled about 500 B.C. It argues that people are not bad by nature, and that it is the duty of governments to bless the good and punish the wicked. Otherwise they need not expect the blessing of heaven, or the favor of the people. It relates the case of an emperor who was reformed by reading the Holy Book. V. THE SHE KING; OR, BOOK OF POETRY. This book is about as devoid of moral instruction as the Books of Ruth and Esther in the Christian Bible. It is principally a display of human emotions and social feelings. Yet almost every Chinese has committed portions of it to memory. Being gotten up in the style of a poem, it is well calculated to enlist the feelings of the devout disciple. VI. THE CHUN TSEN; OR, SPRING AND SUMMER. This is principally a historical record, and is interpreted as representing spring and summer. It is held in high estimation as being the production of the "Great Divine Man," Confucius; and it is wonderful with what ingenuity its commentators and teachers have succeeded in extracting from its dry details about wars, marriages, deaths, travels, eclipses, battles, &c., the most profound lessons in morals. Like the admirers and expounders of other Holy Books in all ages and countries, they bestow the most recondite spiritual meanings on texts containing nothing but nonsense, senseless verbiage, or immoral teachings. VII. THE TAO-TE KING; OR, DOCTRINE OF REASON. "Tao" means _absolute_, and "Te" means _virtue_; which indicates that it teaches _absolute virtue_. Of all sacred books this is the most philosophical. It seems to constitute both a revelation and system of philosophy. It displays considerable wisdom and beauty, but is not free from those gross and repulsive elements which characterize the Christian and some other Bibles. It declares that God created, cherishes, and loves all the world. It has no angry God, but one enjoining love and benevolence, and the return of good for evil, upon all the human race. It declares God made all beings: his essence formed them, his might preserves them, his providence protects them, and his power perfects them. It condemns war and weapons of death: it says that Tao does not employ them, and all good men abhor them. It also condemns the possession of worldly wealth as being in opposition to a spiritual life, and as denoting the absence of good from the soul. Modesty, mercy, benevolence, and contentment are recommended as the highest of human virtues. An extensive commentary, written by a Chinese saint about 160 B.C., goes with this book to explain it, as all "divine revelations" have to be revealed over again by the priests, who seem to assume that Infinite Wisdom is too ignorant of human language to dictate a book that can be understood. Must it not be mortifying to him to have his blunders thus exposed?