Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 636

594

Defence of an Essay, &c.

Nov.

to the rank of spirits, or carry up the spirits so spoken of, to the rank of Jehovah, and if He be God, make them Gods too?

Again, let us suppose that we learned from the Sacred Scriptures, that Jehovah had been worshiped under the name of, and as a spirit ; that throughout the whole ritual directing the worship conducted on Mount Zion, He was regarded as a spirit; that we should observe, that, according to this ritual, "the principal object of the ceremonies (there used) was to serve the spirits," and that among all the cere- monies employed, "those that were used in the service of the spirits were considered most important; that the officers appointed were to sacrifice to, and offer up prayers to the spirits," and that there was not any passage in the whole ritual which spoke of any priest appoint- ed to sacrifice to or worship Him under the name of, or as, God; should we not think that the words God and Spirit had changed places?

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Now this is the case in China. Shin is the highest absolute oppel- lative noun in the language; there is no class of beings higher than this class; Shangtí, the Supreme Ruler, the highest being spoken of in the Classics, is merely the chief one of this class. No officers were ever appointed to worship any class of beings called tí, rulers. Shangtí, the Supreme Ruler, was worshiped, but, as we have seen, as a shin, the Ruler of the other shin, and not as a being of a distinct class, or species from the shin over whom he ruled, as he must have been, if the Chinese regarded him as a god, and the other shin as mere spirits, beings belonging to a different species. More than this, we are expressly told, that “if Shángtí were not a shin (observe he might still be a tí, a ruler; or a Shángti, a Supreme Ruler), it would be of no use to pray to him; but if he be a shin, he can not be deceived.' Here Shangtí's being a proper object of worship is ascribed to the fact of his being a shin, (not to his being tí, or Shángtí), and it is in con- sequence of his being a shin, that he knows the thoughts and

purposes of the human heart, so that he can not be deceived by an insincere worshiper. If shin means nothing more than spirit, and Shángtí is the highest being known to the Chinese, deriving as he does his right to worship and his heart-discerning intelligence from his being a shin (the word which denotes his nature, and not from his being Shángtí, the Supreme Ruler over the other shin,-his official title), then it seems clear that the Chinese can not know of any higher being, or class of beings, than spirits, and it is of no use to seek for any word in their language meaning a god, gods, not to mention for an instant, a word answering to our word God.