Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 469

1850.

Defense of an Essay, &c.

431

There is one thing to be admired in Dr. Legge's "Argument he lays aside so entirely the indefinite style, in which the "advocates of ti and its cognates" have conducted their part of the controversy, and speaks his mind out fearlessly and fully. Dr. Medhurst, as we have seen, contented himself with saying that "the Supreme in their estimation is variously designated Tien, Ti, or Shángtí;" and " by Ti the Chinese mean the Supreme God so far as they are acquainted with him." Supreme god here may mean, either the chief god of a polytheistic system, or the God over all, the true God: most readers would perhaps understand it in the last sense. Dr. M. however, in his Reply to Dr. Boone's Essay, says that the Chinese know as little of the true God as the Greeks did, and that they have never conceived of a self-existent, almighty Being who made heaven and earth; and in his Letter of the 13th January, 1850, "that when he employs the Chinese phrase Shángti as the name of God, in preaching, he does not use it as even alluding to any being with whom the Chinese are acquainted. Dr. Legge speaks out fully and at once on this subject: he rejoices "to acknowledge in the Shúngti of the Chinese classics, and the Shángti of the Chinese people, Him who is God over all, blessed for ever."

What Dr. Medhurst's opinion of the meaning of the phrases Shang- ti and Ti is, I have found it difficult to decide from reading his In- quiry, his Reply, or the Letter of January 30th. Dr. Legge speaks his opinion out fully: "Ti means Ruler; it may be the Supreme Ruler, or it may be any other." p. 28. Of the phrase Shangti, he says, “Sepa- rate its constituent characters, and we shall translate them 'Supreme Ruler.' "Ticnti "he says, "simply denotes, in itself, the Heavenly ruler, or Heaven's ruler.”

Dr. L. on p. 22, defining appellative or general names, says, "If the idea be of a dignity or office common to many individuals, it is a relative term." The class denominated by the Chinese word ti, he here designates by the word ruler; they are therefore classed to- gether because of a "common office or diguity;" thus he sustains the view of this word taken in my Essay, pp. 79, 80, 83, in opposition to that of Dr. Medhurst, as expressed in his Inquiry, p. 110, "The in- ference therefore is that ti is descriptive of a class of beings begin- ning with the highest and passing down to inferior divinities, and is therefore generic for god in Chinese."*

* In a paper drawn up by Dr. Medhurst when he was proposing to use f with a definition, as mentioned by him on page 6 of the letter of January 30th, 1850, the definition he proposed to use is as follows" In this book (the New