The Altar of Heaven
ERHAPS One of the most unique features of the Temple of Heaven is its walls. Yung Le, its imperial master-builder, not only believed in walls but was passionately fond of them. The outer courts of the Temple of Heaven were inclosed by walls more than three miles in length, while the inner walls alone are over twelve thousand feet in circumference. “There are square walls around the altar, circular S w alls around the temple of the sacred tablets, walls around the store rooms, walls around the slaughter-house," walls around the Hall of Abstinence. Yes, "Yung la believed in walls, but he also believed in wide and generous gateways." The outer wall has two gates-both on the western front; while the inner wall has four gate ways. On the east, the Gate of Universal Creation; on the south, the Gate of Luminous Penetration; on the west, the Gate of Far-Reaching Generosity; and on the north, the Gate of Complete Steadfastness. These gates are sturdy, fortlike structures raised on foundations of solid marble, their huge, red doors studded with nine rows of enormous brass nails, and roofed with glistening tile. Yung lê was "lavish with tiles." The enlire length of these myriad walls is "crowned with tiles, and the huge roofs on all the buildings are one sparkling mass of glaze." "But one place, the one for the sake of which all these tiles and stones and bricks have been gathered together, the great 'Circular Mound' where the Sovereign Lord of Heaven was worshiped, has no tiles, no roof, no doors, no windows-only stairs leading from the lowest and widest to the middle and to the upper platforms." This marble altar, “radiant in its isolation," standing "open to the sky in a square of dull Pompeian red walls pierced with marblo gateways," and surrounded by sacred groves of ancient cypresses and pine, has been for centuries the "high place of Chinese devotion." "Gathered in the whiteness of its marbles, in the greenness of its trees, sheltered behind a double line of walls," this sanctuary "is closed against all the dust and dirt of the world, but wide open to the stirring of the least soft breath from heaven, the light of the farthest, faintest star," The Chinese people looked upon their emperor not only as their father and the sole fountain of power and honor, but as their consecrated sin-bearer. He, the supreme pontiff. must bear the nation's sins upon his shoulders. It was the emperor Tang (1766 B.C.) who said: "When quilt is found anywhere in you [the people) occupying the myriad regions, let it rest on me, the One Man." Again, when a human sacrifice was suggested as a means of propitiating Heaven in time of famine, he declared: "If a man must be the victim, 1 will be he." (See pages 60, 72, 88, 110, 126, and 248.)
