Martin, D.D., LL.D., of the Tung Wen College, Peking, "from some of the best principles of human nature.

The first conception of a life beyond the grave was, it is thought, suggested by a desire to commune with deceased parents." ("The Worship of Ancestors--a plea for toleration.") But Dr.Hudson Taylor condemned bitterly this plea for toleration.

"Ancestral worship," he said (it was at the Shanghai Missionary Conference of May, 1890), "Ancestral worship is idolatry from beginning to end, the whole of it, and everything connected with it." China's religion is idolatry, the Chinese are universally idolatrous, and the fate that befalls idolaters is carefully pointed out by Dr.
Taylor:--"Their part is in the lake of fire." "These millions of China," I quote again from Dr.Taylor, "These millions of China" (who have never heard the Gospel), "are unsaved.

Oh! my dear friends, may I say one word about that condition?
The Bible says of the heathen, that they are without hope; will you say there is good hope for them of whom the Word of God says, 'they are without hope, without God in the world' ?" (Missionary Conference of 1888, _Records_, i., 176.) "There are those who know more about the state of the heathen than did the Apostle Paul, who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, 'They that sin without law, perish without law,' nay, there are those who are not afraid to contradict the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him to shew unto His servants, in which He solemnly affirms that 'idolators and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.' Such being the state of the unsaved of China, do not their urgent needs claim from us that with _agonising eagerness_ we should hasten to proclaim everywhere the message through which alone deliverance can be found ?" (_Ut supra_, ii., 31.) Look then at the enormous difficulty which the six hundred and eleven missionaries, of the China Inland Mission, raise up against themselves, the majority of whom are presumably in agreement with the teaching of their director, Dr.Hudson Taylor.

They tell the Chinese inquirer that his unconverted father, who never heard the Gospel, has, like Confucius, perished eternally.