CHINESE ECLECTICISM.
[To TEE EDITOR OF THE " EIFEcTATOR."] SIR,—Neither the author of "Chinese Characteristics (reviewed in the Spectator of March 12th), nor your reviewer can comprehend how a Chinaman can adopt at once several forms of belief. But this indifference as to forms of belief, or methods of expressing a sense of the great principle of religion, runs through many parts of Asia, and accounts for- an amount of religious tolerance, or rather, tolerance of forms
and tenets of religion, which is to us very incomprehensible.. ManyOrientals who think of these subjects consider religion as a grand central principle, and that the various forms of it which are adopted are simply manifestations of the principle, and they see no reason why they should confine themselves to. one manifestation, even though there may be a good many inconsistencies between one form of religion and tenet, and another. They are no doubt influenced, too, by the con- sideration that at the Last Day they will be questioned, not so. much as to what they have believed, but as to what they have. done.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[Last Day ? Mr. Elliot is an authority; but will he name to us the Asiatic creed, Mahommedanism possibly excepted,. which has a notion of a Last Day P—ED. Spectator.]
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