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the College are also cheered by the fact of a dozen of the leading students having come forward for prayers, professed faith in Christ, and given in their names to be probationers in the Church. The Church Missionary Society has been reinforced by the return of Rev. J. R. Wolfe and wife, and the addition of Rev. J. Martin and Miss E. A. Goldie.

dist Episcopal Mission have occupied the handsome buildings erected in that city some few years ago by the Inland Mission; and Dr. E. P. MacFarlane, formerly of the Church of Scotland Mission, Ichang, has commenced medical work in connection with the above Mission.

located at Shanghai, and J. Stubbert, M.D., to be located at Nanking. The reports from the several stations showed slow but marked progress. All are suffering from the want of adequate foreign help, Ningpo and Hang how being left with only one foreign missionary at each place, and Soochow with none at all. The Report of the Press shewed 14,929,000 pages as printed for the British and Foreign Bible Society, 7,234,550 for the American YANGCHOW.-The American MethoBible Society, and 2,573,000 pages of tracts, &c., printed by the Press from its own funds. After adjournment, but before the final separation, came a letter from the Secretary in N. Y., informing the Mission that the Board hoped to reinforce them during the coming year to the extent of three or four men. Not the least enjoyable of the proceedings was the musical entertainment at the house of Mr. Fitch, and the monthly missionary conference at the house of Mr. Farnham. The former was by and for the members of the mission only, the latter, being more general, called forth larger numbers and was a very enjoyable and profitable occasion. With 751 Church members under its care, 125 boarding 449 day scholars the mission enters upon the coming year with renewed zeal and confidence.

KIUKIANG.-Mr. W. J. Hunnex, late of the Inland Mission, has entered the service of the American Methodist Episcopal Mission,and is stationed at Kiukiang.

WUCHANG:-Mr. H. Sowerby, late of the Inland Mission, entered the service of the American Episcopal Mission in February and is to be stationed at Wuchang.

TIENTSIN.-The first meeting of the Tientsin Missionary Association was held at the residence of the Rev. W. FOOCHOW.-The Home Church of F. Walker, on the 23rd January last, the American Methodist Mission has when a constitution was adopted and taken favorable action on the re- an Executive Committee appointed, commendations sent them concern--Rev. L. W. Pilcher secretary. ing the Foochow Anglo-Chinese After these necessary preliminaries College. It has been decided to were completed Mr. Pilcher read a send out two more men, and $7,000 paper on "Christianity and ChineseTM have been voted for the Theological Architecture." In the discussion School. Those in connection with which followed the majority of the

speakers took the opposite view to of the Canadian Presbyterian Mis

that expressed in the paper.

FORMOSA. On the 19th December, Rev. Dr. Mackay, wife and child,

sion, returned to Tai-wan fu, after an absence of two years. Rev. D.

Smith, left in January for a visit home.

Notices of Recent Publications.

American Oriental Society. Proceedings at New Haven, Conn., October 26th, 1881.

THIS Society is composed of distinguished scholars and others who are interested in Eastern countries. It holds semi-annual meetings at which papers are read on subjects pertaining to these lands. It will interest many of the readers of the Recorder to know that at the meeting in October, 1881, Prof. S. W. Williams, LL.D., was inducted into office of President of the Society to which he had been previously elected. The papers which were read at the last meeting of the Society were as follows:-1. Notice of F. Delitzsch's views as to the alleged site of Eden, by Prof. C. H. Toy, of Cambridge. 2. On non-dipthongal e and o in Sanskrit, by Prof. Maurice Bloomfield, of Baltimore, M.A. 3. On the Aboriginal Miao-tsz' Tribes of South-western China, with Remarks on the Nestorian Tablet of Singan fu, by Prof. S. Wells Williams, of New Haven. 4. On the so-called

Henotheism of the Veda, by Prof. W. D. Whitney, of New Haven.

The third and fourth papers are on subjects that interest readers in China. Prof. Williams exhibited forty water-colour paintings of figures of as many tribes of Miao-tsz' by a Chinese artist. They were

obtained by him in Peking. To each picture is added a short description of tribe. The translations of several of these descriptions were read.

The paper by Prof. Whitney discusses a point connected with all systems of idolatry. The worship of an idol implies that it is regarded by the worshiper as omniscient, omnipresent or as possesing the attributes of a god. It is one of the absurdities of idolatry that there can be a plurality of such beings. We copy "in extensio" the summary of this paper :

We have long been accustomed to class

religions as monotheistic and polytheistic, according as they recognize the existence of one personal God or of a plurality of such, and to call pantheistic a faith which, rejecting the personality of a Creator, accepts the creation itself as divine, or holds everything to be God. The last of these is the one least definite in characters, and confessedly latest in the order of development; nor has it any popular or ethuic value; it is essentially a philosophie creed, and limited to the class of philoso phers. The other two, monotheism and

polytheism, divide between them the whole

great mass of the world's religions. As to which of the two is the earlier, and foundation of the other, opinions are, and will doubtless long or always remain, divided, in accordance with the views taken respecting the origin and first history of the human race. But it does not appear doubtful that they will settle down into two forms: either man and his first conditions of life are a miraculous creation, and monotheism a miraculous com

munication to him, a revelation; or, if he is a product of secondary causes, of develop. ment, and had to acquire his knowledge of the divine and his relations to it in the same way with the rest of his knowledge, namely by observation and reflection, then polytheism is necessarily antecedent to menotheism; it is simply inconceivable that the case should be otherwise-nor can we avoid allowing everywhere a yet earlier stage which does not even deserve the name of religion, which is only super.

stition.

Nearly all the religions of men are polytheistic; monotheisms are the rare exception: namely-1. The Hebrew monotheism, with its continuators, a. Chris tianity, and b. Mohammedanism; and 2. the Persian monotheism, or Zoroastrianism (so far as this does not deserve rather to be called a dualism): the former apparently has behind it a general Semitic polythe sm; the latter certainly grows out of the Aryan or Indo-Iranian belief in many gods. That they should be isolated products of the natural development of human insight is entirely in harmony with other parts of human history: thus, for example, all races have devised in struments, but few have reduced the metals to service, and the subjugation of steam is unique; all races have acquired language, but few have invented writing: indeed, all the highest elements of civilization arise at single points, and are passed from one community to another.

A single author, of much influencenamely, M. Müller-has recently endeavored to introduce a new member, with a name, into this classification: he calls it henotheism (or kathenotheism), 'the worship of one god at a time,' as we may render it. The germ of his doctrine is to be found in his History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature; where, after speaking of the various gods of the Veda, he says (p. 532, 1st ed., 1859): “When these individual gods are invoked, they are not conceived as limited by the power of others, as superior or inferior in rank. Each god is to the mind of the supplicant as good as all [i. e. as any of ?] the gods. He is felt at the time as a real divinity-as supreme and absolute, in spite of the necessary limitations which, to our mind, a plurality of gods must entail on every single god. All the rest disappear for a moment from the vision of the poet, and he only who is to fulfil their desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers." And later (p. 526), after quotation of specimens: "When Agni, the lord of fire, is addressed by the poet, he is spoken of as the first god, not inferior even to Indra. While Agni is invoked, Indra is forgotten; there is no competi.

tion between the two, nor any rivalry between them or other gods. This is a most important feature in the religion of the Veda, and has never been taken into consideration by those who have written on the history of ancient polytheism." In his later works, where he first introduces and reiterates and urges the special name henotheism, Müller's doctrine assumes this form: (Lect. on Sc. of Rel., p. 141) that a henotheistic religion "represents each deity as independent of all the rest, as the only deity present in the mind of the worshipper at the time of his worship and prayer," this character being very prominent in the religion of the Vedic poet;" and finally (Or. and Growth of Rel., lect. vi.), that henotheism is "a worship of single gods," and that polytheism is "a worship of many deities which together form one divine polity, under the control of one supreme god."

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As regards the fundamental facts of Vedic worship, Müller's statements so exaggerate their peculiarity as to convey, it is believed, a wholly wrong impression. It is very far from being true in any general way that the worship of one Vedic god excludes the rest from the worshipper's sight; on the contrary, no religion brings its gods into more frequent and varied juxtaposition aud combination. The different offices and spheres of each are in constant contemplation. They are addressed in pairs: Indra-Agni, Indra-Varuna, MitraVaruna, Heaven and Earth, Dawn and Night, and a great many more. They are grouped in sets: the Adityas, the Maruts, and so on. They are divided into gods of the heaven, of the atmosphere, of the earth. And they are summed up as "all the gods" (viçve devās), and worshipped as a body. Only, in the case of one or two gods often, and of a few others occasionally (and of many others not at all), the worshipper ascribes to the object of his worship attributes which might seem belong to a sole god: never, indeed, calling him sole god, but extolling him as chief and mightiest of the gods, maker of heaven and earth, father of gods and men, and so on. This fact had been often enough noticed before Müller, but no one had had any difficulty in explaining it as a natural exaggeration, committed in the fervor of devotion. And it is in fact nothing else. This is evidenced by its purely occasional or even sporadic character, and by its distribution to its various objects. The office of Agni, as the fire, the god on earth, mediator and bearer of the sacrifice to the other gods, is as distinct as anything in Vedic religion, and the mass of his inuumerable hymns are full of it; but he, in a few rare cases, is exalted by the ascription of more general and unlimited

to

attributes. The exaggerations of the worship of Soma are unsurpassed, and a whole Book (the ninth) of the Rig Veda is permeated with them: yet it is never forgot. ten that, after all, soma is only a drink, being purified for Indra and Indra's worshippers. The same exaltation forms a larger element in the worship of Indra, as, in fact, Indra comes nearest to the character of chief god, and in the later development of the religion actually attains in a certain subordinate way that character: but still, only as primus inter pares. These are typical cases. There is never a denial, never even an ignoring, of other and many other gods, but only a lifting up of the one actually in hand. And a plenty of evidence beside to the same effect is to be found. Such spurning of all limits in exalting the subject of glorification, such neglect of proportion and consistency, is throughout characteristic of the Hiudu mind. The AtharvaVeda praises (xi. 6) even the uchista, 'the remnant of the offering,' in a manner to make it almost supreme divinity: all sacrifices are in and through it, all gods and demigods are born of it, and so on; and its extollation of kāla, 'time' (xix. 53, 54), is hardly inferior. And later, in epic story, every hero is smothered in laudatory epithets and ascriptions of attributes, till all individuality is lost; every king is master of the earth; every sage does penance by thousands of years, acquires unlimited power, makes the gods tremble, and threatens the equilibrium of the universe. But this is exceptional only in its degree. No polytheist anywhere ever made an exact distribution of his worship to all the divinities acknowledged by him. Circumstances of every kind give his devotion special direction: as locality, occupation, family tradition, chance preference. Conspicuous among "benotheists" is that assembly which "with one voice about the space of two hours cried out Great is Diana of the Ephesians!"-all other gods "disappeared for a moment from its vision." The devout Catholic, even, to no small extent, has his patron saint, his image or apparition of the Virgin, as recipient of his principal homage. If thus neither monotheism nor a monocratically ordered polytheism can repress this tendency, what exaggeration of it are we not justified in expecting where such restraints are wanting? And most of all, among a people so little submissive to checks upon a soaring imagination as the Indians ?

The exaggeration of the Vedic poets never tends to the denial of multiple divinity, to the distinct enthronement of one god above the rest, or to a division of the people into Indra-worshippers and

Agni-worshippers and Varuna-worship pers and so on. The Vedic cultus includes and acknowledges all the gods together. Its spirit is absolutely that of the verse, curiously quoted by Müller among his proof-texts of henotheism: "Among you, O gods, there is none that is small, none that is young; you all are great indeed." That is to say, there are an indefinite number of individual (Müller prefers to call them "single") gods, independent, equal in godhood; and hence, each in turn capable of being exalted without stint. No one of them even arrives at supremacy in the later development of Indian religion; for that the name Vishnu is Vedic appears to be a circumstance of no moment. But, also according to the general tendencies of developing polytheism, there come to be supreme gods in the more modern period: Vishnu, to a part of the nation; Civa, to another part; Brahman,

to the eclectics and harmonizers. The

whole people is divided into sects, each setting at the head of the universe and specially worshipping one of these, or even one of their minor forms, as Krishna, Jagannatha, Durgā, Rama.

Now it is to these later forms of Hindu

religion, and to their correspondents elsewhere, that Müller would fain restrict the name of polytheism, To believe in many gods and in no one as of essentially su perior rank to the rest is, according to him, to be a henotheist; to believe in one supreme god, with many others that are more or less clearly his underlings and ministers, is to be a polytheist! It seems sufficiently evident that, if the division and nomenclature were to be retained at all, the name would have to be exchanged. A pure and normal polytheism is that which is presented to us in the Veda; it is the primitive condition of polytheism, as yet comparatively undisturbed by theosophic reflection; when the necessity of order and gradation and a central govern. ing authority makes itself felt, there has been taken a step in the direction of monotheism: a step that must be taken before monotheism is possible, although it may, and generally does, fail to lead to such a result.

It may be claimed, then, that henotheism, as defined and named by its inven. tor, is a blunder, being founded on an erroneous apprehension of facts, and really implying the reverse of what it is used to designate. To say of the Vedic religion that it is not polytheistic but henotheistic, is to mislead the unlearned public with a juggle of words. The name and the idea cannot be too rigorously excluded from all discussions of the history of religionsIt is believed that they are in fact ignored by the best authorities.

Report of the Second Annual Convention of the American Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance. Held in Allegheny City, Pa., U.S.A., October 27-30, 1881. Pittsburgh, Pa., Nevin Brothers, 1881.

They carried much

THE first convention of this Alliance | owing to the influence of the diswas held October, 1880. The Al- cussions at the first and second liance is composed of the students conventions. There were some two in the various theological seminaries in the U.S.A. The students of forty six seminaries connected with fifteen denominations are connected with it. In these seminaries there are over fifteen hundred students; of this number some four hundred will finish their studies and go forth as Ministers of the Gospel next May. This shows how very intimately this alliance is connected with the foreign missionary work. It presents the reasons why the Alliance should have a prominent place in the sympathies and prayers of missionaries and all the friends of missions. It is from the young men connected with this Alliance that we must look for missionaries to comes from the United States. Of those who left these seminaries last year, fifteen out of every hundred went as foreign mis sionaries. It is expected that a larger proportion of those who complete their studies in April, 1882, will go abroad. This result is largely

hundred and fifty students present
at the last meeting. They were all
greatly interested and benefited by
the discussion.
of the interest of meeting to their
respective seminaries. This Report,
which gives in full the papers which
were read and the addresses which
were made and which has been
widely distributed is well calculat-
ed to deepen the impression and
extend the influence of this last
session of the Alliance. We wish
the Report a wide circulation and
for the Alliance ever increasing in-
fluence. The harvest is every where
waiting the coming of the laborers.
God is saying to his Church by his
Providence in preparing the way,
as well as in the last Command to
his disciples; "Go ye into all the
world and preach the Gospel to
every creature." And we welcome
every plan which is adapted to enlist
the sympathies and energies of the
Church and her Ministry in this
great work of the Church.

The China Review: for November-December, 1881.
THIS number hardly sustains the
well-established reputation of this
journal. The first article is by Mr.
H. A. Giles, on the New Testament
in Chinese. The writer notices the
version by the late distinguished
Chinese scholar the Rey. W. H.
Medhurst, D.D., and others; and
the one by the Rev. J. Goddard,

of Ningpo. The remarks of Mr. Giles will not carry much weight with those who are acquainted with the character and attainments of those who were engaged in the preparation of these versions. Those however, who are interested in the revision of the Sacred Scriptures will carefully consider each passage

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