He lived some three hundred years after the Advent of
Christ; and owing to his disobedience to his parents, for which he was
punished in his conscience, and otherwise, he grieved himself to death
and wept tears of blood. His image, I was told, is placed in all
Temples as a warning to children. It is a forceful lesson, and it is a
timely warning. The one thing that is characteristic of a Chinaman is
his filial piety. This filial piety was admired in all ages. It
was inculcated in the old Hebrew Law and enforced with weighty
considerations. It was a virtue among the Greeks as well as other
peoples of the Gentile world; and I wonder not that when the heroes
who captured Troy saw Aeneas carrying his aged father Anchises on his
shoulders and leading his son, the puer Ascanius, by the hand, out of
the burning city, they cheered him and allowed him to escape with
his precious burden. A Chinaman is taught by precept and example to
venerate his parents and to give them divine honors after death.
Should a Chinese child be disobedient he would be punished severely
by the bamboo or other instrument, and he would bring on himself the
wrath of all his family.
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