Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 386

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Defense of an Essay &c.

JULY.

and properly God, nor any generic name of their gods, and the words Elohim and Theos must be rendered by a generic term, we have no resource but that of transferring the original word.

All the objections that have been urged against the use of Shin, will come naturally under one or other of these heads; and it will pro- mote, we think, a clear understanding of the questions that have been raised, and of all points at issue, to discuss them in this order.

Previous however to the discussion of these heads, I will recur to a point, on which much stress was laid at the commencement of my Essay. I refer to the importance of determining, definitely, at the very outset, "what we should seek for, before our minds become engaged in the examination of the multifarious evidence that may be submitted." The settlement of this point, as a preliminary, is the more important from the fact that all parties admit that there is no word in the Chinese language that answers to the Hebrew Eloah, Flohim, the Greek Theos, Theoi, and the English God, god, gods.

On this subject Dr. Medhurst thus expresses his opinion on p. 4. of his "Inquiry:" "Having discussed the meanings of Elohim, and Theos, as these words were understood by both Hebrew and Greek writers, to indicate the Supreme, as well as inferior deities, we now come to consider what term in Chinese is most nearly equivalent to them. And here it may be premised, that, after most studious research, we have not been able to find any one term that fully answers to the words as employed in the Old and New Testaments." Dr. Legge, after quoting this, adds his own opinion in the following words: “The conclusion to which my researches, equally studious probably, though not so extensive, have brought me, is substantially the same." We shall see presently that Sir George Staunton, Dr. Bowring, and the "American Missionary," all concur in this opinion.

Of the word God, the several parties writing on this question,

take widely different views in many respects; but it seems to me there is one error which has chiefly misled Dr. Medhurst, Sir George Staunton, Dr. Bowring and Dr. Legge, and which we must be careful not to fall into, if we would keep the real point of search clearly before us. The error, to which I allude, is that of regarding the word God as the 'symbol of an idea," to use Sir George Staunton's expression, instead of regarding it, as it really is, as the name of a bond fide Being, of whom, after we have exhausted all the ideas of which we are capable, we can form but very inadequate conceptions.

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Dr. Medhurst commences his Inquiry with these words: "In dis- cussing the proper mode of rendering a word out of one language into