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ON THE CHINESE NAME FOR GOD.
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Some of these names may seem to us very objectionable, but not all ; and I confess I could never help admiring the bold language of an ancient Sanskrit poet who introduces Bhagavat, his own supreme God, saying, “Even those who worship idols, worship me.'
If we are so hard on the Chinese, and tell them that their word Shang-ti cannot be used as the name of the true God, because it is used synonymously with tien, which means the sky, what shall we say when they point to such verses in the New Testament as Luke xv, 21, 'I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son'? And if we are offended by every anthropomorphic expression in the sacred writings of non-Christian races, how is it that we can bear so well with the language of the Old Testament, in reading of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day'? Do the words of Dante
Per questo la Scrittura condescende A vostra facultate, e piedi e mano
Attribuisce a Dio, et altro intende,' apply to our Scriptures only? Should we not apply them even in a far more generous spirit to the scriptures of the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Mohammedans ? It was, I need hardly tell you, one of the chief objects for which I undertook the publication of The Sacred Books of the East,' to show, as St. Augustino said, that there is no religion without some truth in it, and particularly to make missionaries see that, hidden beneath a fearful amount of rubbish, and worse thair rubbish, there are grains of gold to be found in every book that has once been called sacred by human lips. Nothing, I confess, las rejoiced me so much as when I heard the other day an excellent missionary tell me, You have shown us that the heathen religions are not the work of the devil; and you have taught us to look first of all for what the heathen religions share with us in common, and to make that the foundation of our labour. Surely the
