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with other friends of China, to accept the challenge at page 9, sec. 10, and "see that the truth of God is maintained, and his great and glorious name honoured, and not dishonoured in China."
"Arma parate, animis et spe præsumite bellum!"
We will, therefore, crave the patient hearing of our readers, while we touch on the "extrema rerum" of the case, and lay before them the reasons which have led us, living away from the din of battle of "Shin," to hear of it without alarm, and to judge of the fight for ourselves. However poor the fare, they will have, at all events, something more than a somewhat partial view of "Shin v. Shang-Te" to go upon. Unless, indeed, some of them have already made up their mind, like that bencher in Erin, who, would not hear the other side of the question, as it "puzzled him so!"
Meanwhile, we would venture to submit to the Committee of the Bible Society, that they need not take alarm. Neither should they be moved to recall, in haste, their former verdict; and thus hasten their final decision, by the dread of either "giving the Chinese a stone instead of bread," or of incurring a fearful responsibility to God, and the millions of Chinese, who are waiting for "the bread of life" (page 15). The case, we may assure them, is not so desperate. The bread is not "poisonous"; and all the harm "Shang-Te" can do to his own people, is not to be compared with the injury done them by, first, sane-
