Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 387

1850.

Defense of an Essay &c.

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another, we should first ascertain, from lexicographers and standard writers, the meaning of the word which is to be translated; and then, by means of the same process, the meaning of the word or words proposed as the representative of the idea, in the language into which we are translating." He afterwards appears to feel conscious that many ideas must concur to make up our conception of what is includ- ed in the word God; the next stage is therefore to content himself with the leading idea, and this leading or principal idea he decides is power or authority.

Dr. Bowring writes (see Chinese Repository, Vol. XVIII, page 600): "How indeed should they (i. e. the parties who have written on both sides of this controversy) have succeeded? They have been struggling through incompetent means for an unattainable end; they have been seeking in the Chinese mind, and in the Chinese language for what was never there. In order that an idea should exhibit itself by some external symbol, some expression, some formula-the idea itself must have a previous existence," &c. He then proposes to treat God as he would an unknown quantity in algebra, i. e. represent the unknown quantity by a symbol, viz: ℗. When I read this, the thought occurred to me, Could Dr. Bowring kneel down and seriously pray to ✪, “O, ! have mercy upon me!" I surely could not.

Sir George Staunton writes, "In the Chinese language there neither is, nor could there be expected to be, any word which fully and cor- rectly conveys the idea, which we Christians attach to the word God. Words are but the symbols of ideas, and we have not yet implanted the idea itself in the Chinese mind." How much clearer to say,- "We cannot expect to find any name in Chinese for the Being whom we Christians call God, as we have not yet taught the Chinese to know this Being, GOD."

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To show how fatally this regarding the word God as the symbol of an idea, will mislead us, we quote from Sir George's "Inquiry his method of meeting this difficulty. Having stated that the Chinese have no word answering to our word God, he proceeds to say, "I think I have shown that the term Shángti has from time immemo- orial been employed in Chinese in a sense more nearly approaching to that which we attach to the word God than any other which at present exists in the language of the country." What is this but saying that, the Being whom the Chinese call Shángti comes nearer to the Being whom we Christians call God, than any other Being the Chinese know. But this is a case surely in which the rule nullum simile est idem applies. To come short of the Infinite Being whom