Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 660

618

Defense of an Essay, &c.

Nov.

The transfer of a word having been suggested both in London and New York, the unanimity with which all the missionaries in China, the six abovementioned excepted, have joined in protesting against this course, will no doubt excite much surprise in Europe and Ameri- ca. The missionaries who propose this transfer are clever men; they have made abundant trial, as I said before, of Shángti, Tien-ti and ti; why then do all the missionaries refuse to follow them? These mis- sionaries are practical men, who are guided by sound common sense in conducting their work, and these six signers, disgusted with “the Chinese superstition" mixed up with the native terms they had been using, forgot to take counsel of a friend so plain and unpretending, when they sat down to write their Letter.

The case seems to be a plain one to those who are familiar with the facts as we see them here in China, and who are willing to be guided by common sense. Demetrius complained of St. Paul, "That not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, he had persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no ☺ɛo, which are made with hands," &c. Can we suppose that such an effect would have followed from the Apostle's preaching, if St. Paul had contented himself with telling the Ephesians that the Alohos made with hands were false Alohos?

If in preaching against the false gods worshiped by the Ephesians, St. Paul had used the word Aluho instead of GE01, and Demetrius and his friends had seen the people standing aloof from their @so on this account, they would, as a matter of course, have denied that the Geor they made were Alohos, or that the Apostle was preaching against them; if St. Paul in answer to this denial asserted that they were Alo- hos, then it would have been surely pertinent to ask, Why in speaking to Greeks, he did not call them by their Greek name (so?

Now here in China it is notorious that there are a multitude of be- ings who are worshiped by the whole nation from the Emperor down to the meanest peasant. To these beings they have built thousands of temples, and like the Greeks have made images of them that are met with at every corner of their streets. No one will deny that in the Chinese language there is a name common to all these objects. We ask then, Why, in the name of common sense, should the Chris- tian teacher, when preaching in Chinese against these objects, lay aside their common Chinese name, and call them Alohos? Will this word effect more in his mouth in China, than Aloho would have done from the lips of St. Paul at Ephesus?

(To be concluded in next number.)

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