Rights in God's Church
Appendix 3. (688).
Socrates constantly pleads for light and consolation from some heavenly being. The need for a messenger from heaven to teach mankind is not, however, confined to Greek philosophers. The East testified to this need before the Greeks and longed for such a messenger. Christ is rightly called by the prophets the `expectation of the nations'. I offer one quotation in confirmation of this. It is taken from Chung Yung, the second of the four sacred, classical books of China containing the teachings of Confucius. Chapter 31 speaks of the perfectly holy man, and describes him as `one whose capacities are so extensive that he resembles an immense spring, bringing forth in due time all that is needed', and adds: `His capacities are as vast as the heavens; the hidden spring from which they come is as deep as the abyss.' It continues:
| Let this perfectly holy man appear in all his virtue and powerful capacities, and the peoples of the world will pay him their homage; let him speak, and the peoples will believe his word; let him act, and the peoples will exult with joy... The fame of his virtue is like an ocean flooding the empire on all sides, and spreading north and south to barbarian lands. Travellers, merchants and artisans proclaim his fame to the ends of the earth; every living, breathing human being is ready to love and revere him. How true it is that his capacities and virtue are as high as heaven itself! |
This ancient Chinese writer had already acknowledged that the longed-for person is the only true king. From the beginning of the chapter, he had written of the personage who formed the object of his desire:
| In the whole universe, only the perfectly holy man, with his capacity for complete knowledge and comprehension of the essential laws of living beings, is worthy of sovereign authority and power over human beings. His heart, generous, affable and kind, enables him to benefit others abundantly; noble, firm, tranquil and constant, it enables him to provide for the reign of justice and right. His capacity for decency, simplicity, seriousness, right and justice attracts respect and veneration; his capacity for procuring everything attainable by unremitting study, and for enlightening the world by thorough investigation of deep things and the most subtle principles, enables him unfailingly to discern truth from falsehood, and good from evil. |