Religious Rites in China
There are three great religions in China—Buddhism, Taoism, and the worship of Nature. The worship of Nature, in which is embodied their highest idea of an Invisible Deity, is the purest form of religion in China. Its Temples are situated in a magnificent Park in the Chinese City of Peking. The Temple of Heaven, the most imposing of the group, spherical and triple-domed, rears its proud height here and is visible from afar. Its triple dome tiled, without, in the sacred green of Nature and vaulted within in Heaven’s own blue, is surrounded by groves of century-old arborvitae. In other parts of the great Park are the scarcely less splendid Temples to the Earth, to the Sun and Moon and to Agriculture, and grandest, most unique of these Temples, is that to the Invisible Deity. Its foundations are the Earth, its walls are limitless Ether, its dome Heaven’s own vault! On its great open altar this Nature worship has its culmination and reaches its highest fulfilment. This altar is the Holy of Holies, the tabernacle of the group of Temples consecrated to the worship of Nature.
It is built in the center of a great marble-paved space with the secular arborvitae radiating therefrom in long concentric avenues. It is of pure white marble, round as is the Earth. The Trinity in Nature and its Infinity are symbolized in its three superposed circles. Each of the circular platforms is surrounded by an exquisitely carved balustrade and approached by flights of nine steps each, to the north, south, east, and west. The central point of the great upper circle thus represents the center of the Universe, accessible from every point of the compass.
Here in this symbolic center of the world, in this great Temple, whose walls are Space, whose towers are Infinity, on this great triple altar,