Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 115

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Remarks on the Words Shin and Ti.

FER.

that which is peculiar to the God of the Bible. The words D Osos, God, are alike applicable to Jehovah, and to all the vile aud senseless things worshiped by the heathen. There is but one cha- racteristic common to all the beings designated by these words, and that is, that they are objects of religious worship. The name by which the Chinese designate this class is the term by which the words D'x, eros, God, must be translated into the Chinese language. They can not be properly represented by any other term. Any terin which excludes a portion of the class, is not the name of the class ; that is, it is not the generic name of god. A word must be found which shall be applicable to this whole class, and if no such term exist in the language, one must be introduced. Without such a word, the claim of Jehovah to be the only living and true God, the only proper object of religious worship, can never be clearly set forth. If there were no such word, the very necessities of thought, as the knowledge of Christianity advances, would soon force some word into such a use.

Here, however, we are happily relieved from all difficulty. No one denies that the Chinese have a term which they use to designate the class of beings whom they worship, and it has been abundantly proved that that term is shin

It has been clearly shown that this word is the designation of a class which includes all the objects wor- shiped by the Chinese. It may be considered, therefore, as a settled question that the class of beings designated in Scripture by the words D' and esos, the Chinese designate by the word Shin. This then is the generic term for God in the Chinese language. But it is admitted that Elohim and Osos, even when used for the true God, should be rendered by the generic term for god. They should there- fore be rendered by a shin.

It has been argued that is the generic name of god. The only way in which an argument can be constructed in favor of this proposition, is to assume that "the generic name of God" means “the name of the being to whom the Chinese ascribe the highest attributes," or of "the class of beings to whom they ascribe the highest attributes." This again is based on the assumption that the word god in this phrase means the "being, or class of beings" to whom are ascribed the highest attributes; or in other words that it means the true God. We have already shown that this sense is un- tenable. But if the phrase means "the name of the class of beings designated by the word God," tí is not the generic name of God,