Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 478

440

Defense of an Essay, &r.

AUG.

in this way there would be two divinities, IIeaven and Shángtí, we reply in the words of the Chinese writer, that Shángti and Heaven are the same." See Reply, Vol. XVII. p. 547.

The views of another class he gives us at p. 551 :-" Dr. Boone then (p. 49) alludes to the prayers used in the national worship, according to the Ritual of Chau, and affirms that those prayers were ad- dressed to the Shin, Kwei, and K, adding that they were presented at a time when the people sacrificed to heaven, earth, and ancestors. From this we perceive that the objects sacrificed to were the great powers of nature, with deceased progenitors; and that Shin, Kwei, and Ki, were the spirits of those objects, sometimes used elliptically for the objects themselves. The anuual prayer for grain was said to be offer- ed to Shangtí, from which we are left to infer that Shangtí is includ- ed among the spiritual beings to whom prayers were offered; to all which we have no objection to offer. But from neither statement are we entitled to infer that the spirits of the object sacrificed to were the gods of those objects, or that all spiritual beings are gods, because Shángtí is reckoned among them. It appears from the whole that the Chinese prayed to heaven, earth, and deceased inen, for certain bless- ings:* showing that they considered these capable of conferring the

Deum namque ire per omnes,

Terrasque, tractusque maris, cœlumque profundum :

Ipse in æthere sit Jupiter, ipse in aëre Juno, ipse in mari Neptunus .....in terra Pluto, in terra inferiore Proserpina, in focis domesticis Vesta, in fabroruin fornace Vulcanus, in sideribus sol et lana, et stellæ, in divinantibus Apollo, etc. ......hi omnes dii deæque sit unus Jupiter."

The reader will observe that it is Shangtí and Jupiter, the chief god of each system, who is thus made the universal, impersonal power, recognized under different names, according to the different offices or works performed by this power. The sentence which Dr. Medhurst here explains was translated in iny Essay on the supposition that shin was here used as a concrete noun; I am now satisfied that Dr. M. took the more correct view in regarding it as abstract. As the management of the heavenly bodies, &c., however, is rather a divine than a spiritual function, I should prefer to render

and not "spiritual energies" as Dr. M. has done.

“divine energies,"

If Dr. Medhurst's view is correct, that the Chinese worshiped, in the times of the Chau dynasty, B.C. 14001, heaven, earth, and deceased men, and con- ceived of the heaven and earth so worshiped as material beings possessed of spirits or souls; it is a great confirmation of the opinions of Dr. Hales and Mr. Faber mentioned above. I may mention that, by demonolatry, both those writ- ers mean the worship, not of devils, but dead men. Dr. Medhurst's theory ex- pressed above, that the Chinese addressed their prayers to, and honored by their worship, the material and not the spiritual part of the object worshiped, seems very strange: take the case of the earth, for instance; that they prayed to the mud, and not to the spirit animating this compound being. May we not better suppose that the class of writers, whose views Dr. M. is here stating, conceive of heaven and earth, the sun, moon, stars, &c., in a manner answer. ing to Cudworth's animalıslı gods, in which case they would regard the whole compound being as their god—the object prayed to and worshiped.