Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 509

1~10.

Defense of an Essay, &c.

471

this being is not the true God, we shall be just as responsible for exhort- ing men to worship him, calling him by his distinctive title Shángti, as we would be if we called him by his absolute name Tien. I have never contended that Shangti was a proper name, but always, on the contrary, that it was a mere title: but a title, which, by Chinese usage, designates so definitely an individual being, that it is in effect, and as far as concerns the particular point we are now discussing, to all intents and purposes a proper name. A being may be as definitely designated by a title of office or dignity-by a relative term-as by an absolute proper name. We have a remarkable instance of this in the fact that Jehovah, the absolute, proper name of the revealed God, is rendered in the English Bible by the phrase "the LORD." Common instances occur in such phrases as the following, "the Queen," "the Iron Duke," "the Founder of Rome," &c. In England, these phrases would designate the individuals referred to quite as definitely as the words Jehovah, Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington, Romulus, &c. And so too, in Chinese, the phrase Shángti, in the classics, designates the chief god quite as definitely as the absolute name Tien docs. The question here turns not upon the character of the phrase, but of the being who is designated by it: if he be the true God, it is lawful for us, yea, our duty, to worship him, and to teach others to do so; if he be a false god, and any one, upon our exhorting him to worship Shángtí, should commit an act of idolatry by worshiping this false god, of what avail would it be to say that we only designated him by his ti- tle, and not by his proper name? If an Englishman, talking to other Englishmen, in England, should tell a number of stories of "the Queen," which though true of the Queen of Spain, were wholly false if referred to her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, should we not hold him responsible for any misunderstandings and scandals his stories might give rise to the phrase " the Queen" being by commou usage, at the present time, in England, so distinctive a designation of Victoria? In like manner, we contend that when speaking to Con- fucianists, the phrase Shángti is quite as distinctive a designation of the chief god Tien, as "the Queen" is at present of Victoria in England; and that therefore if Tien, the being whom the literati style Shangti, the Supreme Ruler, be not the true God, we shall be respon- sible for their worship of a false god, if we teach them to worship Shangti, without taking pains to warn them against the false god wor- shiped under this title, at the winter solstice by Yau and Shun, and the successive emperors of China to the present time.

But though it be granted that in the classics the phrase Shingti