eyes on the gilded spears, and standards and battle-axes standing in the corners of the Temple, and as you look up you almost covet the great Chinese lanterns suspended from the ceiling.  Your eyes are finally directed to the altar, near which, and on it, are flowers artificial and natural.  At the rear in a kind of a niche in the Joss or god.  The figure of this deity was like a noble Chinaman, well-dressed, with a moustache, and having in his eyes a far-away expression.  He wore a tufted crown, which made him look somewhat war-like.  It is but natural that this Joss should be a blind man.  The Greek gods and goddesses have Greek countenances.  The idolatrous nations fashion their deities after their own likeness.  And what are these but deified human beings?  It is so in Greek and Roman mythology.  The Egyptian Osiris is an Egyptian.  It is true that some of the ancients outside of Hebrew Revelation had a better conception of God than others.  Even in Egypt where birds and beasts and creeping things received divine honors there were scholars and poets who had an exalted idea of the Deity, as witness the Poems of Pentaur.  This is true also of some of the Greek Poets who had a deep insight into divine things.  It is not a little interesting to note also that artists of different nations paint the Madonna after the style of their own women.  Very few of the pictures in the great art galleries are after the style of face which you see in the Orient.  Hence there are Dutch Madonnas, and Italian and French and English types.  There were no worshippers in the Joss-House at the hour when I visited it.  Worship is not a prominent feature of Chinese religious life.  The good Chinaman comes once a year at least, perhaps oftener, and burns a bit of perforated paper before his Joss, in order to show that he is not forgetful of his deity.  This bit of paper is about six inches long and two inches wide.  He also puts printed or written papers in a machine which is run like a clock.  Well, this is an easy way to say prayers.  And are there not many prayers offered, not merely by Chinamen, that are machine prayers, soulless, heartless, meaningless, and faithless, and which bring no answer?  But how simple, how beautiful, how sublime, the golden Prayer which the Divine Master taught His disciples!  Lord, teach us how to pray.  If the noble Liturgy of the Church is properly rendered,—­for it is the expansion of the Lord’s Prayer,—­there will be no machine-praying, and the answer to prayer will be rich and abundant.  The contrast between the worship of the Joss and the worship of the true God in a Christian Church is striking and affords reflection.  The former is of the earth earthy, the latter transports the devout worshipper to the throne of the Most High.  There is no fear that the religion of the Joss-House will ever usurp the religion of the Christian altar.  Men have expressed the fear that if the Chinese came in overwhelming numbers to America they would endanger the Christian