Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 470

432

Defense of an Essay, &c.

AUG.

Dr. L. has so fully persuaded himself of the truth of this proposition, and of the fact that he has demonstrated its truth, that he risks, and acknowledges that he risks, his whole cause for Shangtí upon his cor- rectness in maintaining it and another proposition, viz., that the word god is mis-used, if applied to any other being than the Supreme Being. He speaks out here in the same decided manner which we have admir- ed before:-"I may be permitted to intreat my readers to consider well the fundamental positions on which I have constructed the argu- ment. If these be sound, solid rock-the presumption is that the building reared on them must stand. For myself, I can say, that if the two propositions (those just mentioned) in which I have summed up the preliminary discussion, can be unsettled, I shall feel at once that I must gird up my loins afresh, and commence anew my inquiries for a term in the Chinese language to correspond to the term God.” p. 41.

41. And in a previous part of the "Argument," after telling us in a passage already quoted, that, "as surely as corn that grows from the bosom of the earth is from God, so also is language that grows up out of the mind of man," he thus warmly expresses his sense of the great impropriety of using a generic term to render a relative: " Change that mind, and you will change the nature of language. Depose the old laws that since the creation have governed the association of ideas, and introduce new ones in their room, and we may use terms of classes" (generic absolute-appellative) “for relative terms. In a word let us make the Chinese, and also ourselves, from being men into beings of a new class-then, and not till then, can we employ the character Shin" (because generic) “to render Elohim or God." Dr. Legge thus declares an interminable, internecine war between absolute and relative terms. If the general verdict shall be that God is an

Test.) wherever Tí occurs, it is not used in the sense of human rulers, but in the sense of celestial rulers, and spiritual beings generally worshiped by men. There is however but one Ti, the maker of heaven and earth, most honorable and without compare, besides whom no other ought to be worshiped; we there fore call him T{.'

In the preamble that precedes this definition, Dr. Medhurst stated, as he and his friends maintain in their letter of the 30th January, that "Messrs. Med- hurst, Stronach and Milne contend, as they have always done, that Ti is em ployed in the Chinese classics and other writers, to denote God by way of eminence while it is used also with reference to other beings worshiped by the Chinese." From this definition, we learn the sense in which they under- stand the word to be employed, when it denotes "God by way of eminence,' viz., the Ruler by way of eminence," "the celestial Ruler." They say, "Wherever Tí occurs in the New Test., they use it in the sense of “celes- tial rulers,” not “human rulers;" it is plain therefore that they consider the

of the word to be “ruler ” not god, and that celestial ruler meamug taken as a general equivalent to the words God, god, gods