Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 494

456

Tract upon Nourishing the Spirit.

AUG.

pages with the latter, besides some thirty or forty pages more of a general na- ture, not exactly on either side. Dr. Medhurst has printed nothing on the op- posite side of the question to that which he takes, while his own writings on this subject not inserted in the Repository, and those of Dr. Legge on the same side, exceed 550 octavo pages. It is not for want of industry, therefore, on the part of these brethren that we have not been convinced that Shangti is the word by which to render Theos; but we are quite willing to leave the charge of editorial unfairness to the decision of our readers.

If, however, we are so summarily accused, convicted, and condemned by the worthy Doctor for saying nothing, we hardly know what he would have done to ns, if we had expressed our honest convictions upon Dr. Boone's Few Plain Questions. We have now no doubt that, for years we were unwittingly up- holding idolatry in the minds of such Chinese as heard our explanations of the New Testament by using the title Shangtí for God proprié, and that they confounded the God over all, blessed for ever, whom we referred to, with their idols of that naine. And even Chinese well instructed in truth make the same confusion. In a small volume of hymns, printed at Malacca and also at Hong- kong, at the L. M. Society's press, entitled Yang-sin-shin Shí

詩

ni

(which we shall be accused of unfairness and ignorance, if we do not now translate Hymns for Fostering the Spirit of the Mind, as it bears the same title an the preceding tract, though we suppose the author meant Divine Hymns for Nourishing the Heart), are many terms for the Almighty. In the first line it is said, “ Shin is an almighty, eternal, living ling ;” then in another place, "Shin- tien is three persons and one body;" then, "Shangtí is omniscient;" and in a fourth verse,

“How did they know that Yuh-ti from his seat in heaven,

Would laugh at their foolish plans and schemes ? "

No one can doubt that by Yuhi-tí, or Gemined Emperor, every Chinese refers to the idol called Yuh hwang Shangtí, and the author of these hymnns must be supposed to have known the same, and also that no one was likely to mistake Shin in the first line for spirit. Really, we should like to know what form of phraseology, a Chinese should adopt to express his idea that shin meant God or god, supposing Dr. Medhurst was willing to allow that any individual Chinese really believed such a meaning to attach to it, as we suppose the writer of this hymn book did. The confusion is almost inevitable in the mind of a Chinese. Does not every native who passes by Union Chapel in Hongkong, for instance, get a more correct idea, vague though it may be, of the Divinity worshiped there by seeing the words Chin Shin táng Ž

真神堂 over the door, than if the chapel should be called Shangtí táng? Would Dr. Medhurst venture to

pat up the sign 上帝廟 over a Christian temple?

In entering a protest against Messrs Medhurst, Stronach and Milne, publicly stiginatizing a version with shin in it used for thcos, as unclassical and contemp- tible, we wished in the first place to put in a caveat against the use of hard words. On page 460 of Vol. XVII, Dr. Medhurst properly says, "they do not serve the interests of truth, and are not likely to carry conviction with them.” We doubt if he could fine a harsher word than contemptible with which to blackball a ver- sion he disapproved of. In whose eyes would it be contemptible? If in the eyes of himself and his coadjutors, then they have been for the last ten or fifteen years circulating a contemptible version, for the present one, chiefly revised by Dr. Medhurst himself, contains the term Shin used in hundreds of cases for God by way of eminence. Dr. Morrison also issued a contemptible version, and both of them we hope have been blessed to the conversion of souls ; thousands of con- temptible tracts have moreover been circulated, productive it is to be hoped of no small amount of good. In the second place, we think that these brethren lower themselves by applying such epithets to any version of the Word of God; and though they may not thank us for being more careful of their own reputa. tion that they are themselves; yet we can but animadvert on the use of such epithets