1850.
Defense of an Essay &t.
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word Gop, when it is used propriè. The first point, however, is to decide, Is the being the same? it will be time enough, after this point is settled, to inquire for the name. If the being be not the same, no matter what the principal idea suggested to us by his name may be, this name will be but the name of a false god, and nothing more.
The principal idea suggested by the word God, (if what this idea is, could ever be decided) takes in only a very small part of the ideas, which go to make up our conception of the Being we call God; and a being, the meaning of whose name conveyed this principal idea, might want those physical attributes, e. g. self-existence, omniscience, &c.; or might fail to sustain those relations of Creator, Upholder, Sustainer of the universe, &c., or want those moral attributes, with- out which a being can not be truly and properly God.
If I am correct in what I have said above, then the first question for us to consider is, do the Chinese know any being, whom we can re- gard as the same with "the Being" we call God? That they know no such being was taken for granted, and not discussed in my Essay, because, as I there said, I understood this was admitted by all the Protestant missionaries in China. The discussion of this point has become necessary from the fact of its having been distinctly affirmed by Dr. Legge, and from the indefinite manner in which other parties have expressed their opinions about it.
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To the position taken by me, that, "under these circumstances," i. e. the Chinese not knowing the true God, we can only choose between the name of the chief god, and the name by which the whole class of gods in their language is known," I understand Dr. Legge to reply in substance as follows. "There may be no middle course be- tween the alternatives, allowing the case to be as you state it; but I deny the correctness of the statement: the Chinese do know the true God. I rejoice to acknowledge in the Shángti of the Chinese Classics, and the Shángti of the Chinese people, Him who is God over all, bless- ed for ever p. 32. But even should we admit that the Chinese do not know the true God, 'there is a real tertium quid,' a course altogether different. God is not a generic, but a relative term; and relative terms are defined to be “words which imply a relation, or a thing considered as compared to another. They include a kind of opposition between them; yet so, as that the ONE cannot be without the OTHER.
Such are father and son, husband and wife, king and subjects, &c. To these instances I have no hesitation in adding that of God and creatures,” p. 5. "God does not indicate the essence, or express anything about the being of Jehovah," p. 24. "Should the Chinese therefore have no word
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