Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 505

1850

Defense of an Essay, &c.

167

nese people, is “God over all, blessed for ever," Dr. L. maintains they should still stand to Shingti as the rendering of Elohim and 205. His words are

"Let me observe that however others may differ from the opinion which I have just unhesitatingly expressed that Shẳngti is not the chief god merely of the Chinese, but the true God also, such dif ference of opinion will not justify them in rejecting the term as not being the proper rendering of Elohim and 80s. It is a relative term which implies dominio that inheres in a spiritual being. It ought therefore to belong to Jehovah; and granted that to every being to whom the Chinese have given it, it has been given wrongly, it is for us now to take and rescue it from such perversion, and give it to Him whose right it is.' Jehovah Shingti will just express in Chinese what Jehovah Elohim does in Hebrew, and Jehovah God in English.” If I understand Dr. L., he here contends that the title, "the Supreme Ruler," should be used to render Elohim and dsos, even if it should appear that the Chinese have never used this title to designate God proprié, but have used it only as the distinctive appellation of one or more of their false gods, because these words are titles which have the same meaning as the Chinese phrase Shángti. If we determine that the word god is an absolute term, this point of Dr. L.'s argument is wholly set aside by such determination; but even if any one should be induced to regard the words Eloḥim and deos as relative terms, he would be very unwary, I think, to follow Dr. Legge in his conclusion that these words must be rendered by the phrase Shángtí. And this because Shángtí, by both classical and popular usage, when standing alone or absolutely, does not designate indifferently any one of the in- dividuals who may be so called, but is the distinctive title of a definite individual being, and this individual being is a false god.*

That Shingti is, according to common usage a singular, not a com- mon term;—that it is a relative, and not an absolute term;-and that

*To this objection it may be answered, that Elohim, when standing alone, designates an individual being as definitely as Shangti does. True, but this in- dividual so definitely designated is the true God, the proper object of worship. If it can be proved that the Tien of the classics is the true God, the more definitely Shangt, when standing absolutely, designates this being, the better; but if the individual definitely designated be a false god, the objection seems to me un- answerable and fatal. It was no doubt a feeling of the truth of this, that made Dr. Medhurst, when he maintained that the individual being designated was the true God, testify so strongly (as we shall presently see he does) that Shángtí in the classics always and invariably means the same individual being and “him only." After, however, he had adinitted that the Chinese do not know the true God, as he did in his Reply to Dr. Boone, and letter of 13th Jan. 1849, given above, it was as manifestly for the interests of Shangtí to deny that it definitely designates a single individual; accordingly Dr. M. in his "Reply to the Few Plain Questions of a Brother Missionary,” makes it “a generic term