616
Defense of an Essay, &c.
Nov.
our word spirit, have grown up out of this pantheism of the yin and yáng; and I can not think, when all the circuinstances of the case are considered, that the use of shin by these writers as the name of the universal informing spirit or divinity wherever found-in heaven, earth, man, birds or beasts,-is a good argument against the use of this word to render Elohim and sog. It is a circumstance which' rather serves to show that shin is the name of the subject on which we wish to set the Chinese right; for all these uses of the word that have grown out of pantheism, are, to iny mind, only so many evidences of the groping of the human mind in China after the truth on the great subject of Divinity. The polytheistic uses of the word afford eviden. ces of the same thing; and the fact that both pantheists and polythe- ists have called the name of their highest agent or agents shin, is, I contend, the highest kind of evidence that shin is, in the Chinese lan- guage, the general name of the subject on which we want to enlighten the Chinese, and is therefore the very word we are in quest of.
Having now considered the principal arguments which have been adduced by the several parties who have discussed this question, still though very inadequately, at a length, which I fear has been tedious to the Reader, I shall conclude by testing the fitness of each of the three terms that have been proposed, to effect the great object we have in view, which is to remove from the minds of the Chinese all the errors and superstitions on the subject of Deity into which they have fallen, and to build them up in the knowledge and love of the true God. It is very important for us to remember that the subject is not a new one to the Chinese, it has been before their minds and oc- cupied their thoughts for generations; the thousands of temples that have been erected to their objects of worship are monuments of the errors into which they have fallen, and it is upon the ruins of these that the temple of Christian truth must be built.
The first proposition we shall bring to this test is that of rendering the word eos, by the Hebrew word Eluah, transferred by the three Chinese characters 4-lo-ho u.
This proposition first claims our attention, as embodying the deli- berate conclusion to which three of the Committee of Delegates have been led after a three years' careful examination of this controverted subject. It challenges our attention, too, from the circumstances un- der which they adopted this foreign term. According to their pub- lished letter it was after full consultation with "the most intelligent Chinese to whom they had access" that this step was taken. The parties had had a long experience of Shangtí, that of many, many