Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 118

1830.

Remurks on the Words Shin and Ti.

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[Nole. The remarks of our Correspondent commend themselves to the candid inquirer into the merits of the terins proposed in former articles in this work. We beg his permission to append a few general remarks to his letter, in reference to the whole subject, and for the purpose of record- ing the various steps of the discussion. We refer here to a letter just issued by missionaries of the London Missionary Society, addressed "To the Protestant Missionaries laboring at Hongkong, and the Five Ports in China." It is dated Shanghải, Jan. 30th, 1850, and is signed by Messrs. Medburst, Btronach, Milne, Lockhart, Muirhead, and Edkins.

Without remarking upon the circumstances under which this document is issued, or the position its writers assume, and their "determination not to adopt a version of the Scriptures in which the term (skin) is so employed," we here quote the eight objections they bring forward to the use of shin :

"1. Skin never has been employed by any Chinese writer to designate God by way of eminence, and would, if so used, in the version of the Scriptures, involve an absurdity in the estimation of every well-educated Chinese.

“2. The real meaning of shin is invisible being or essence, and as such is used and understood by the Chinese in the sense of spirit. It is applicable as well to the spirit of inan, and the living principle in irrational animals and plants, as it is to the highest being of whom the Chinese have any conception.” A term, therefore, which is common to all these, can not convey any idea of Dirine nature. "3. Although some of the spirits, who are called shin by the Chinese, are worshiped, shin does not necessarily mean a worshiped being, neither does the use of it convey in itself the notion of divine worship, nor imply that beings so designated ought to be worshiped. Worship with regard to the shin is an accident, not an essential element.

"4. The term shin being applied to the spirits of heaven, earth, and man, to invisible beings both good and bad, high and low, honored or derided, is, in its general acceptation, equivalent to the word spirit in western languages. To say, therefore, that there is but one shin, and no other, that Jehovah knows of no other, and that the devils believe this, is to utter what, according to the mean- ing of the term, as used and understood by the Chinese, amounts to a falsity.

5. The word shin, when used in the possessive, as belonging to a person, must, according to the usus loquendi of the Chinese, be understood of the spirit possessed by that person, and not the god worshiped by him. Hence the phirase my God," or the "God of Abraham," could not, if shin were employed, be in- telligibly expressed in Chinese, without a circumlocution.

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"6. The word shin, when used in connection with sacrificing to the god of a progenitor, must be understood as conveying the idea of sacrificing to the manes of ancestors.

“7. The word shin being the most expressive term in the Chinese language for spirit, whether concrete or abstract, we should, were it used for God by our- selves, or by others whom we might be unwilling to offend, be deprived of a most useful term in its proper and legitimate acceptation, compared with which no other term in the language is so definite.

"8. The word shin having been rendered spirit by the best European Sinolo- gues, and used in the sense of spirit by the Roman Catholic writers in China, whose influence throughout the country is more extended than that of Protes- tants, there is little chance of the latter being able to establish a usus loquendi in favor of their own mode of employing the word, particularly when that mode is denounced by the Chinese themselves as wrong."

We have not time now to remark upon the character of these objections, and there is little in them which has not already been brought forward; but we are not willing that gentlemen standing in the position that Messrs. Medhurst, Stronach and Milne do as the delegates of their fellow-mission-