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. He
first goes to the tablet-chapel, where he offers incense to
Shang Ti, the God above, and to his ancestors, with three
kneelings and nine prostrations. Then going to the great altar he
inspects the offerings, after which he repairs to the Palace of
Abstinence, where he spends the night in fasting and prayer. The
next morning at 5:45 A. M. he dons his sacrificial robes,
proceeds to the open altar, where he kneels and burns incense,
offers a prayer to Shang Ti, and incense to his ancestors whose
shrines and tablets are arranged on the northeast and northwest
portions of the altar.
There are two altars in the temple, a quarter of a mile apart,
the covered and the open altar, and this latter is one of the
grandest religious conceptions of the human mind. It is a triple
circular marble terrace, 210 feet wide at the base, 150 feet in
the middle, and ninety feet at the top, ascended at the points of
the compass by three flights of nine steps each. A circular stone
is in the centre of the top, around which are nine stones in the
first circle, eighteen in the second, twenty-seven in the third,
etc., and eighty-one in the ninth, or last circle. The Emperor
kneels on the circular stone, surrounded by the circles of
stones, then by the circles of the terraces, and finally by the
horizon, and thus seems to himself and his retinue to be in the
centre of the universe, his only walls being the skies, and his
only covering, the shining dome
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