1850.
Defense of an Essay, &c.
603
really mean god in any case, then it always means god." But words are not sʊ bound down to a single meaning as Dr. L.. would here have us to suppose; and in this particular case, the absurdity of supposing that different Chinese writers, or even the same Chinese writer, may have used the same word for both god and spirit, is not manifest to my mind. I know that Drs. Morrison, Milne, Medhurst, Gutzlaff, and a number of other very intelligent Christian men have used shin in the sense of God, a god, gods, and of spirit also; and if such men as these have fallen into the error of using the same word for God and spirit, it is surely too much to suppose it an absurdity to fancy that Chinese writers may have used the word shin in the sense of a god, gods, and in that of spirit also. I readily admit that to render shin god, in the cases adduced by Dr. L‚—“ I felt my heart and god (shin) blown about;" and, "As I write, my god (shin) gallops away to you &c. ;"—would be very absurd; for there can be no doubt that by sin shin in the first sentence, and shinin the last, the writer means his own mind.
ŭ
But on the contrary, I contend that the absurdity is equally great to suppose the writers quoted above use the word Shin in this sense, when they call the Being who gave the Law on Mount Sinai a Shin; when they call Jesus the only Shin worshiped by Christians; or Bud- ha, the Shin Fuh; or say trees, birds, and beasts were worshiped as shin. When both classes of facts are considered, the conclusion to my mind is inevitable, that the Chinese use this word shin where we would use god and also spirit. I contend, however, that when used in the place of the latter word, they do not attach the same meaning to the word shin that we do to the word spirit. With us, the word spirit means a created, incorporeal, intelligent being: the human spirit we regard as such a being. The Chinese, I fancy, do not call the human spirit shin from conceiving of it in this way; but on the contrary, from regarding it as a part of the eternally existing Shin that belonged to the primordial substance of which heaven, earth, man, and all things were made. The human skin, therefore, is only a portion of the universally diffused divinity. But I shall endeavor to set forth the Chinese views of this matter more fully after I have noticed Dr. Med- hurst's answer to the conclusion drawn from the premises stated in my Essay, viz., "That the class of beings called shin, being the highest class worshiped by the Chinese, must be regarded as the gods of China, and shin as the generic name for god in the Chinese language." "In reply to this," Dr. M. says (See Vol XVII, page 552), We may observe that we have abundantly proved shin to be the general
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