Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 685

1850.

Defense of an Essay, &c.

643

Take another instance: Suppose a lady called her husband, or her son, "my Charles;" and that upon reading a memoir of her, we should find that the phrase, "my Charles," occurred 1476 times, whereas the word Charles stood absolutely only 722 times: what would be thought of the inference that this word "Charles" was a mere relative term, which signified husband or son, the reader being left in doubt which was the definite relation indicated, as Dr. L. is with respect to the relation designated by the word God. Those who consider the word God as an absolute appellative noun, find no difficulty at all in accounting for the use of the word God in these 1476 cases, where Dr. L. says it "is used with relative force apparent;" for the Being whose absolute name it is, stands in many relationships to us, several of which rela- tionships (it is worthy of remark) and not one only, this word is used to designate.

In a preceding part of this paper, I endeavored to show from this fact that the word God can not be a mere relative term:-eg. we can say "God is the Creator; God is the Supreme Ruler; God is our Preserver; &c., predi- cating every relationship which the Supreme Being sustains to us, of the word God, without any sense of tautology or impropriety. Could we do this if the word (od were not the absolute name of the Being designated, but a mere title expressing any one of these relationships. If this was the character of the word, should we not have tautology when we predicated that relation- ship of the word: e. g. of the relationship designated by that of Creator to creatures, as Dr. L. says it is on p. 5 of his Argument, to say that God is our Creator is equivalent to saying “the Creator is our Creator:" the same if the relationship designated is that of "Supreme Ruler," or any other whatsoever, there would be a tautology if we predicated this relationship of the word God Now as we have no such difficulty in predicating each and every of the rela- tionships, in which we stand to the Supreme Being, of the word God, this word can not be a mere relative term-the mere exponent of any given one of these relationships.

But that which Dr. L. fancies will reduce the advocates of the absolute character of the word God to a complete dilemma, is the 245 instances in which the word "is applied away from him," e. i. Jehovah. He says, if "so; and Elohim express anything of the Divine nature, how is it that they are applied, away from Jehovah, to angels, judges, and to Moses? When Jehovah says to Moses, 'I will make thee a God to Pharaoh,' he promised what he actually did. But did he make Moses from being a man to become actually of the nature of God? Did he convert the unity of his human existence into a trinity of Divine existences? I dare not pursue the subject farther to its impious consequences."

It is to be hoped that Dr. L. succeeded in filling his own mind with due horror at the impious consequences that must follow from regarding the word God as an absolute term, but I very much doubt if a single reader has shared these feelings with him. If, when Dr. L. declares, that," when Jehovah says to Moses, 'I will make thee a God to Pharaoh,' he promised what he did,” he means to assert that the word God is used propriè, and not metaphorically,