Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
Eventually the worship of some one ancestral spirit, or group of spirits, overshadows that of all the rest; and a supreme deity, or group of supreme deities, becomes evolved. But the differentiations of the ancestor-cult must be understood to proceed in a great variety of directions.
Coercion, exercised by their lords upon a docile people trained to implicit obedience, would explain something of the initial success of the missions; but it would leave many other matters unexplained: the later success of the secret propaganda, the fervour and courage of the converts under persecution, the long-continued indifference of the chiefs of the ancestor-cult to the progress of the hostile faith.... When Christianity first began to spread through the Roman empire, the ancestral religion had fallen into decay, the structure of society had lost its original form, and there was no religious conservatism really capable of successful resistance.
Eventually it over-shadowed the national life, and coloured all the national thought. Yet the extraordinary conservatism of the ancient ancestor-cult its inherent power of resisting fusion was exemplified by the readiness with which the two religions fell apart on the disestablishment of Buddhism in 1871.
This law, of course, was made in support of the ancestor-cult, the continuance of which it was deemed the paramount duty of each man to provide for; but the government regulations concerning adoption enabled everybody to fulfil the legal requirement, without difficulty.
To-day it is probably impossible to undo what the sterile labour of intolerance has already done. The hatred of Western religion in China and adjacent countries is undoubtedly due to the needless and implacable attacks which have been made upon the ancestor-cult.
Once that the domestic ancestor-cult had become universally established, the question of marriage, as a duty of filial pity, could not be judiciously left to the will of the young people themselves. It was a matter to be decided by the family, not by the children; for mutual inclination could not be suffered to interfere with the requirements of the household religion.
The sociological reason is plain. We have seen, then, that up to the year 1645 the ancestor-cult had been tolerated by the Jesuits in China, with promising results; and it is probable that an identical policy of tolerance was maintained in Japan during the second half of the sixteenth century.
In certain provinces they were not made; and almost everywhere a considerable part of the population preferred to follow the Shinto form of the ancestor-cult.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking