A Honolulu Chinese Joss House
The Friend (YMCA Supplement). Honolulu: April, 1880.
As we see hundreds old Chinese thronging our thoroughfares day in and day out, a strange people of whose thoughts and hearts we can judge only by outward actions, having no general medium of speech, we have perhaps accustomed ourselves to think of them only as animated money making machines, forgetting that, belonging to the same great brotherhood of mankind, they necessarily have hearts to love and hate, sorrows, joys, and apprehensions of deity and the hereafter somewhat as we have.
The reality of this however is brought home to us as we fall in with one of their Joss houses here in Honolulu and find their offering of food on the altar, incense burners and the attendant paraphernalia of such a worship together with an image in the rear frowning over all. There, reaching after the Unknown, they pray for good luck and protection from the ills of flesh and mind. On the opening day of the year, they consult the oracle, who foretells the good or ill that is to befall them in the unfolding year, etc., etc.
The Chinese Christian Colporteur in addressing these his countrymen can in truth say, Behold, "I shew unto you a more excellent way."
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