years ago. The autographs of distinguished men are highly prized.

The females of China, from the empress to the wife of the meanest peasant, practiced the spinning and weaving of silk; which material, from the earliest times known, was used for clothing by the poor as well as by the rich, for the same reason that wool was used by the ancient English-because it was the material of which they had the greatest abundance. "When the king of France," says Barrow, "introduced the luxury of silk stockings, the peasantry of the middle provinces of China were clothed in silks from head to foot; and when the nobility of England were sleeping on straw, a peasant of China had his mat and his pillow, and the man in office enjoyed his silken mattress."

The empresses of those days were as zealous in promoting the branches of industry adapted for females by their own example as were the emperors in encouraging agriculture by similar means. A plantation of mulberry trees was formed within the gardens of the palace, and a house built purposely for rearing the worms, which were tended by the ladies of the court and often fed by the fair hands of royalty. Every autumn a festival was held to commemorate the invention of silk-weaving, when the empress, attended by the princesses and ladies of her train, made sacrifices in the temple of the Earth, and then proceeded to her mulberry grove, where she gathered leaves and wound the cocoons of silk, which were afterward spun and woven by her own hands into small webs. These were carefully preserved for the grand spring festival, when they were burned in sacrifice.

Great attention was bestowed on the management of silkworms throughout the whole of the empire; and as it had been discovered that those which were fed on mulberry leaves produced a finer kind of silk than the common worms of the forest, a law was made by one of the early emperors that every man possessing an estate of not less than five acres should plant the boundary with mulberry trees.

The difference between the garments of the higher and lower orders consisted in the quality and colors of the silks of which they were composed and the fashion in which they were made. The robes of the grandees were often richly embroidered with gold and silver, and ornamented with various devices, according to their rank and occupation. The dress of a literary man was ornamented with a bird worked on a square of black silk on the breast, or with the figure of a tiger or some other animal or design; and these are among the innumerable customs which have been continued from that time to the present.

The wars among the princes, and the efforts of some of them to render themselves independent of the emperor, led to a vast deal of disorderly conduct in the several states, each petty sovereign being more intent upon his own aggrandizement than on keeping good order among his people; who, finding that the affairs of government were neglected and the laws seldom enforced, paid very little attention to them. Such was the state of the Chinese empire when the celebrated philosopher Confucius was born in the kingdom of Lu, one of the small sovereignties in the north of China. This event occurred when the ancient Greek republics

were in all their glory and Rome was just beginning to rise into power and greatness. The Greeks and Romans, however, knew little or nothing of China at that time, nor did the Chinese imagine there was any truly great empire in the world besides their own; an opinion they have maintained even until our own days.

But on the other hand it is manifest from the remains of great, populous and magnificently-built cities which stretch in a chain from the Mediterranean sea to the countries now embraced in the Chinese empire, from the historic legends and philology of the nations existing there, and from hints in the inspired history which the holy men of Palestine have given us, that there was kept up an intercourse by caravans1 across the continent, and also by sea between the western and eastern sides of the continent. The silk, the cassia, the camphor, the broiddered work, the ivory, the porcelain of China, were known through the ages of the old Jewish dispensation to the people of India, Central Asia and Phoenicia and her neighbors. The vessels of Solomon and Hiram, king of Tyre, sailed two monsoons eastward and two monsoons back-a period of three years-which connected them at the Indian archipelago with the commerce which in like manner from the beginning of history has vibrated with the semi-annual monsoon up and down the China sea. The prophet Isaiah (as has been shown in a previous chapter) looked with glowing hope to the time when China, multitudinous and vast, and potential in Asia, should "come" to the feet of Immanuel as her Prince and Saviour.

1 The most common route is traced by A. H. HEEREN; Historical Researches, vol. i.; Babylonians, chap. ii., vol. ii.; Appendix xiii., etc.

We observe, with strengthened confidence in the government of the Great King over all, the historical fact that the philosopher whose life marks the greatest moral era of the Chinese people was raised up just at the period when the Jewish nation was sent into captivity to Babylon, and when thus from that metropolis of Asiatic commerce, science and religious ideas there began to stream forth to the most distant confines of the continent the light of the clearer revelation of God and of the promise of a coming Saviour.

The influence of the dispersion of the Jews upon the literature and religious systems of the remoter East has long been a subject of the deepest interest. We observe the most distinct marks of it in the fragments of the religion of Zoroaster, the great philosopher of Persia; in the traditions of Bokhara, Affghanistan and Northern India; in the apparent hint by Confucius of "a holy One in the West;" in the continual pilgrimages of the Chinese in that direction to inquire for One that was to come; but still more plainly in the discovery in modern times of a colony of Jews upon the Yellow river, in the most populous part of China, whose accounts of themselves prove that they have been there since long before Christ. They were first brought to light by Semedo and Martini, Jesuit priests, in the year 1625. Within the past twenty years they have been visited several times by Protestant missionaries or Chinese members of Protestant churches; and some of them in turn have visited our stations on the coast. Some of their children have been sent to our schools to learn of Him of whom Moses and the prophets bore witness. Of late years they have become very poor, ceased some of

their ancient observances, and seem prepared for a change.

It is calculated to fill the soul of the thoughtful student of God's ways among the nations of the earth with awe and reverence to mark, inscribed upon the walls and tablets amidst the ancient temples upon the great river of the north, the grand and solemn declaration : "HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE

LORD.

"BLESSED BE THE NAME OF HIS GLORIOUS KINGDOM FOR EVER AND EVER."

Or elsewhere these words:

"UNSEARCHABLE IS HIS NAME; FOR JEHOVAH IS THE · GOD OF GODS."

What a verse is the following in the Chinese, to meet the eyes of the worshipers of idols!

"Raise thine eyes to Heaven, the source of creation;

Canst thou refuse to render solemn praise?

Or, bowing before the Lord of eternal life,

Should'st thou not come with clean body and a pure heart?"

At what time this Jewish colony reached the city of Kai-fung, where now they reside, their traditions do not mention. No doubt they were one of many that were either pushed forth by the oppressions of the Persians or attracted by the fame of the wealth and grandeur of China, and were distributed at various times into different portions of what are now the territories or provinces of the Chinese empire. This colony seems to have known nothing of the fact of the advent and atonement of Christ or of the destruction of Jerusalem. They "ate not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day; because God touched