Few readers, I believe, would have been much startled by this passage, or would have seen in it what Father Amyot saw. But more startling revelations were in store. The most celebrated Chinese scholar of his time, Abel Rémusat, took up the subject; and after showing that the first of the three names had to be pronounced, not Khi, but I, he maintained that the three syllables I Hi Wei, were meant for _Je-ho-vah_. According to him, the three characters employed in this name have no meaning in Chinese; they are only signs of sounds foreign to the Chinese language; and they were intended to render the Greek Ἰαῶ, the name which, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Jews gave to their God. Rémusat goes on to remark that Lao-tse had really rendered this Hebrew name more accurately than the Greeks, because he had preserved the aspiration of the second syllable, which was lost in Greek. In fact, he entertained no doubt that this word, occurring in the work of Lao-tse, proves an intellectual communication between the West and China, in the sixth century B. C. Fortunately, the panic created by this discovery did not last long. M. Stanislas Julien published in 1842 a complete translation of this difficult book; and here all traces of the name of Jehovah have disappeared. “The three syllables, he writes, “which Abel Rémusat considered as purely phonetic and foreign to the Chinese language, have a very clear and intelligible meaning, and have been fully explained by Chinese commentators. The first syllable, I, means without color; the second, Hi, without sound or voice; the third, Wei, without body. The proper translation therefore is:—” “You look (for the Tao, the law) and you see it not: it is colorless. “You listen and you hear it not: it is voiceless. “You wish to touch it and you reach it not: it is without body.” Until, therefore, some other traces can be discovered in Chinese literature proving an intercourse between China and Judæa in the sixth century B. C., we can hardly be called upon to believe that the Jews should have communicated this one name, which they hardly trusted themselves to pronounce at home, to a Chinese philosopher; and we must treat the apparent similarity between I-Hi-Wei and Jehovah as an accident, which ought to serve as a useful warning, though it need in no way discourage a careful and honest study of Comparative Theology. IV. ON SPELLING.