Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 223

1850.

Term for Flohim and Theos.

197

mon name embracing them all. But while daives is thus a term used to embrace all the θεοι, θεοι is never used to include the δαίμονες.

Is not the Chinese use of tí and shin the precise counterpart of these two words? Shin is used to include the ti, but tí is never used so as to embrace the shin. Hence, I ask, if the writers of the New Testa- ment sanctioned the use of Asos for the true God, because it was the appellative of all objects of worship, did they not mistake the proper term. Why did they not employ Sawv? The simple and common sense reason doubtless is, that δαίμων did not mean God και' εξοχήν, but only spiritual intelligences, high or low, who were objects of wor- ship; while they employed dɛos, because it was so used, to distinguish those beings who were esteemed to be divine. It was used by way of eminence for Deity. But where do we find such resemblance be- tween shin and Osos, that the one should become the synonym of the other? Shin does not mean God xa? sğıxıv, nor has it ever been so employed by natives. The objects of Chinese worship are called shin, just as myriads of other objects are called shin, because they are supposed to be spiritual or inscrutable by nature or operation.

But may it not be, that the Chinese do really regard their various objects of worship to be divine beings, and so have nevertheless used shin very much in the sense of 860g? This is an important point, and should have been clearly established by most positive evidence, as the first link in an argument in favor of shin as the term needed. If the objects worshiped by a people are not believed by that people to be Gods, then the term expressive of the class of such objects of worship, can not be a term corresponding to sog, and a suitable one through which to reveal Deity. Do the Chinese therefore worship any one shin or any class of shin, because by themselves believed to be divine? That people quite as enlightened as the Chinese may and do offer wor- ship, which we believe should be offered only to the Deity, to beings which the worshipers themselves do not believe to be divine, the practice of the whole Papal and Greek churches proves. Such is the worship of saints and angels. It has previously been observed, that a case is perfectly supposable, that a people may be gross idolaters, and yet have no being in their estimation divine among all their objects of worship. This too, not because their theology recognizes no such being, but because in their ignorance of the real character of the Deity, they have placed such a being at an immeasurable distance beyond the

* Consult also, Kitto's Encyclopedia of Biblical Literature, under Demon; also under God, for the proper idea of 3. See also Roman Antiquities

pinbæ. under Genii; Arts, Sciences and Antiquities of Greece and Rome under Demon.