Page:Who is God in China.djvu/22

 rolls his wave across the plains of the Middle-kingdom, and there is one man left who speaks only the peculiar idiom of that land.

Our task, then, is to render faithfully into good Chinese the true meaning of the original Hebrew and Greek texts of Holy Scripture. And that requires, on our part,—

) A knowledge of the sense of the original text.

) A knowledge of the language into which the original text is to be translated. Now—

) The sense of Holy Scripture may be twofold:—


 * a) Literal, and—


 * b) Allegorical.

The allegorical sense, however, is so uncertain, and depends so much on the turn of a man's mind, or on his fancy, that it should be carefully avoided in a printed translation of the Word of God, which ought to speak for itself, and be independent of either note or comment. The allegorical sense is fit for oral instruction alone; and that again, to older converts only.

In our translation of the original text, then, our bounden duty is, to adhere strictly and devoutly—for we have to deal with inspired writings—to its

a) Literal sense, which consists in the meaning attached to it by the author.

In order to get at that meaning, we must become acquainted with—