had raised in his own. The terms bhúmi and diva, not being "technically appropriated, would be free from the objection." When I was in England recently, a Baptist clergyman, formerly a resident in Benares, wrote to seek an oral discussion with me of this question. The proposed discussion happened to be incompatible with my other arrangements; but even had it not been so, it would have served no purpose. I should have found my old acquaintance, so long as he could fight even a losing battle-just as little willing to give up one jot or tittle of the Sanskrit version, (on the having produced which, as it now stands, his sect not unjustifiably prides itself,) as one finds the sentimentally headstrong, votary of King James's version willing to allow the rectification of a misplaced comma in the Authorized English. He would have argued the point (and I appeal to him to say whether I am not reading his very heart-) first on the general question, and secondly on the particular one. With respect to the general question he would have argued that I had no business to asperse the Baptist version in its first verse, if I was not prepared at once-slap bangto table, at the very least, fifty other instances of alleged mistranslation, the slightest hitch in my establishing of any single one of which alleged mistranslations must make my whole censure collapse like a punctured bladder. Then, supposing the fifty instances to have been produced, and to have passed muster, (—which I should have been very sorry for,-) he would next have argued, on the particular question, thus :-" Why not be content, as regards the "first verse of Genesis, with the present Sanskrit rendering in the Baptist version, seeing that, in the original Hebrew, (-to quote "from Carpenter's Examination of Scripture Difficulties, my copy of "which, by the bye, I sold to you several years ago at Benares,-) Moses first uses a word in a general, and then in a particular or restricted sense? Thus, in the first verse, the term áretz, earth, is "used to denote the entire substance, which afterwards was separ'ated into waters, and dry land (ver. 9, 10); and then, in the tenth verse, the word is restrictively applied to one part of this sub 66 VII stance, namely, the dry land, of which it becomes the proper appellation?" Now, what would have been the use of my reply ing, as I must have replied, that the quite unnecessary selection of the technical words which, in the current habitual thought and language of educated Brahmas, are appropriated, "past redemption," to two out of five supposed Elements, has misled (as I have shown) and may be hereafter purposely and effectively employed to mislead? What would have been the use of my urging this orally, when I had already recorded all this "as clear as noonday" in plain printed type,-in which nevertheless it had failed to make itself discerned? Each man, any man, during his terrestrial pilgrimage, can get through but a limited amount of work, and there is certainly the slenderest possible claim of obligation on any one of us to attempt achieving what he knows he would fail in if he attempted it. I intended to go through many questions of difference of rendering, but time at present fails me; and, moreover, I have to assure those who value themselves jealously on the Baptist Sanskrit version, that I am the last man to seek to displace it. I think it better that there should be a variety of versions, if it were only to prevent or baffle the superstitious impression (peculiarly Scotch) that there is more in the accustomed phrase than there really is.' The paraphrastic style of the Baptist version is excellent. It is (so far as it goes--) text and commentary in one. In my own version, attended by a commentary of merciless length, I could afford to be harshly literal in my textual translation; and, with no disrespect whatever to my Baptist friend, I have chosen to be so. APPENDIX C. (p. 93). OUR COLLEGIATE STUDIES. My clerical friend was surprised to find from my letter (see p. XCIII) that our collegiate course was so much more of a 'praedaratio evangelica' than he had imagined. The text-books had indeed all along stood upon the bookshelves of the Mission library, but "Can any good thing come out of Gallilee?" was a sufficient reason for leaving them undisturbed there. In a mood of pleasurable surprise, at the passage in my letter, my excellent friend wrote to beg that I would furnish him with fuller accounts of these unsuspected well-doings-meritorious albeit Gallilean. I promised (or resolved) to devote an Appendix to a statement of these, (—for the benefit of those who, in printer's phrase, must have things "read short" to them if they are to attend at all—); but I see that I have quoted, in pp. V-XI of the Introduction to this brochure, so much regarding our collegiate course as supersedes the necessity for the intended Note. I will only add here, therefore, an extract from a work lent to me by my friend, which expresses, much more perfectly than I could have expressed it myself, the precise view of the relation of the sciences to theology on which I have all along acted and do act. The words are those of the Rev. Dr. Ralph Wardlaw. 66 Speaking of Theology, Dr. Ralph Wardlaw, in his Systematic Theology," p. 1,, says,—“In one view it might legitimately enough "be regarded as embracing in its ample range all the other sciences. “As all nature, in all its departments, is only the varied manifesta"tion of God; every science that investigates nature, and evolves "its principles and laws, might be considered and treated as a "branch of Theology. And it would be well, if by all who study and expound them, the various sciences were viewed more than they too often are in this light; if the researches into them were prosecuted, and the lessons taught by them elucidated, on this principle. Then would natural philosophy, including astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, and all the rest, together with metaphysics or "the science of mind, be rendered subservient, in addition to the "intrinsic interest they respectively possess, to something still su"perior to themselves. From their relation to Theology, they ought to derive, and, anywhere else than in a fallen world, infallibly would [as they do in the Benares College-] derive, a large 66 66 66 IX "amount of interest of another and higher kind, as well as of real "and substantial utility; being made tributary to ends of a loftier "character than the mere augmentation of the accommodations and "comforts of the present life, or even the gratification and expan"sion of the powers of intellect, namely, the sublime purpose of religion and moral improvement.” |