THE DRAGON, IMAGE, AND DEMON OR THE THREE RELIGIONS OF CHINA CONFUCIANISM, BUDDHISM, AND TAOISM GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THE MYTHOLOGY, IDOLATRY, AND DEMONOLATRY TO THE REV. J. LEIGHTON WILSON, D.D., EIGHTEEN YEARS A MISSIONARY IN AFRICA, AND FOR THIRTY-THREE YEARS SECRETARY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS; WISE IN COUNSEL, GENTLE IN ADMINISTRATION, A CHEERY CORRESPONDENT TO THOSE IN LANDS OF NIGHT, AND HAPPY TO RECEIVE A JOVIAL LETTER FROM ACROSS THE SEA, PREFACE. D URING a visit to the United States in 1882, a lecture on the "Three Religions" was delivered in about 150 churches, and there were many requests for its publication. With further study the lecture has grown to its present size. Many of the best thoughts in this volume are obtained from the writings of Edkins, Eitel, Legge, and Beal; also from general works on China, missionary journals, and other sources. In every known case quotation marks are used, but the "quotation marks" do not always indicate that the passage is taken from an English work, for they are also used for translations. The writer has drawn his water from native wells, the facts being mostly gathered from Chinese sources. The pen is not held by one seated in a professor's study, but by a plain man, who daily walks to and fro among idolaters, and testifies of what he has seen and heard. Some may discover errors in the work, and doubtless they will, for it is a book of errors, and where truth has no touch-stone how can error be detected? The name chosen is the most exact representation that |