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form a reliable conclusion; but that the struggle, end as it may, will certainly be hard; and that I do not believe that either of the contending parties themselves even can feel assured of ultimate success, whatever their language and their hopes may be.'

But if the Tae-pings should succeed, what then? In the map of China prefixed to Mr. Meadow's volume, a large tract of country is covered with a yellow cloud of an oblong form, its northern extremity hovering over Nanking, and its southern skirts overlapping Nan Chang to the east and Chang Sha to the west. That cloud, representing as it does the district in which the insurrection is quartered, may be fraught with innumerable blessings for China, for should it spread itself over the empire, it may water the parched and ungracious soil, hitherto as impenetrable as flint, and prepare it for the reception of true Christianity. Upon its gradual extension or diminution during the next few years, says Mr. Meadows, 'it depends whether or not, in a population of 360 millions of heathens, all the males 'who have the means, and are not too old to learn-all the males from boyhood to twenty-five or thirty years, who can devote their time to study-will be assiduously engaged in getting the Bible off by heart, from beginning to end. Should the thing take place, it will form a revolution as unparalleled in the world for rapidity, completeness, and extent, as is the Chinese people itself for its antiquity, unity, and numbers.' Reckoning the numbers already in the enjoyment of Christianity in various parts of the world, Mr. Meadows calculates that if the Tae-pings should triumph in their crusade, not less than 480 millions of human beings will accept the Bible as the standard of their 'faith, and in this mass of believers will be found the most ' cultivated and intelligent races of which the earth can boast.'

If, however, the Christianity of the insurgents should be of a dim and distorted character, this is what we must naturally expect. How could it be otherwise with a system which sprung up so silently and so extemporaneously, and with a founder who never served any regular apprenticeship to the true faith? The wonder is not that the little twinkling light which Hung-sewtseuen acquired at Canton should have been carried away to Kwang-se in a clumsy lanthorn of his own making, but that, spite of the horny medium through which it shone, it should have lit up whole provinces with its dusky and discoloured beams. Obscured as his doctrine may be by a number of absurdities, when we consider that it started into life in the heart of a country like China, and under the auspices of an humble individual who seemed as little competent to shake the ancient

Hung-sew-tseuen's Excursion to Heaven.

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orthodoxy of the empire as any British shoemaker would be to revolutionize the Protestantism of these realms, we can only express our surprise that so much truth and vitality should exist in a religion thus marvellously improvised.

The Bible and Testament of the Western foreigners constitute the basis of the Tae-ping Christianity. Their Heavenly Rules,' the pillars forming the portico of the fabric, are substantially the same as our Ten Commandments. The Eastern Prince has announced in writing that under the Tae-ping dispensation the sacred works of Confucianism shall be discarded from the public service examinations, and the Bible employed as the text-book in their stead. In China, where generation after generation has been engaged in committing the writings of the great philosopher to memory, and where all learning has been supposed to reside in these productions, just as Europe once thought that all secular knowledge was to be found in the pages of Aristotle, such a declaration duly enforced would be equivalent to a whole reformation. Unfortunately, as Hung-sew-tseuen studied the Scriptures in a fragmentary form, and by means of imperfect translations, many errors have crept into his creed. Nor should it be forgotten that the Tae-ping lawgiver had been deeply drilled in Chinese philosophy before he succumbed to the Western faith. Until thirty years of age he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews-a Confucian of the Confucians, and therefore like a learned pagan, when transferring his allegiance from Jupiter to Jehovah, he carried with him as much of his favourite lore as he could plausibly retain. His, therefore, was inevitably an amalgamated creed. And Hung-sew-tseuen was also a man who had dreamt strange dreams, and had seen strange visions. During an illness produced by excessive mental exertion at one of those rigorous examinations which regularly kill a certain per centage of the candidates, he was taken up into heaven, or to speak medically, he fell into a state of delirium. He was conveyed to the skies, not on a celestial steed like Al Borak, whom Mahomet bestrode in his famous excursion, but in a beautiful sedan, as if the selection of such a truly Chinese vehicle were intended to show how thoroughly human was the whole trance, and how difficult it is for men to cast off their earthly ideas when attempting to soar into the regions of the supernatural. On his arrival he underwent a severe washing, then his old heart was taken out of his body and its place supplied by one perfectly new, and finally he was admitted into the presence of a Venerable Being with a golden beard, who sat in a hall of matchless beauty. From him the visitor received a commission to extirpate demons and reclaim apostate spirits. On returning to earth the brain-stricken man

slowly recovered his health. When, therefore, after his restoration, he happened to examine the Scriptures, and found so much that tallied with his own experience in the visions and revelations of the Bible, is it any wonder that he was impressed with the apparent resemblance, or that he subsequently inserted his ravings into the faith he established, and made his wildest fancies part and parcel of his Christianity?

Nor has this trance-state of the Tae-ping prince been the only febrile element in the Tae-ping religion:

From their publications we learn that Yang-sew-tsing, the Eastern Prince, falls at times into a state of unconsciousness resembling sleep, but in which he utters commands and exhortations; summons other leaders to his presence; orders men whom he declares to be traitors to be brought before him; convicts them out of their own testimony, elicited by cross-examination, and condemns them to immediate decapitation. In all this he speaks as the Heavenly Father; and it is these his fits, or trances, which constitute what are called the descents or the coming down of God into the world. When the trances, which appear to be really accompanied by an excitement, followed by considerable exhaustion, are over, the Eastern Prince alleges complete unconsciousness of what has passed; and only learns the words which his own mouth has uttered from the notes taken of them by those who surrounded him; his soul is, in short, nullified for the time, and it is the Heavenly Father who possesses his body, and makes use of it to communicate His will. In this way the Heavenly Father gives orders, at times, that certain information or commands shall be communicated to the Eastern Prince; and when the trance is past-which is called the return of the Father into Heaven-communications are

made to him accordingly. These he then receives with surprise, delight, indignation with exposed offenders, &c., as their nature may severally require; they being all the while communications from himself to himself. In the same way Seaou-chaou-hwuy, the Western Prince, utters commands and exhortations as the words of the Heavenly Elder Brother. But the Tae-ping books only record three of such communications. Their subordinate authority, as compared with those of the Heavenly Father, may account for their cessation or their rarer occurrence.'

In fact, it seems that the Eastern Prince does not scruple to announce himself as the veritable Paraclete! He it is whose advent was intimated by our Saviour, and whose teachings are to guide us into all truth. At any rate, he has adopted the designation of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter,' and now numbers it amongst his titles as coolly as that of Commander-in-chief! To us this must necessarily appear to be intolerable blasphemy. * See British Quarterly, No. xliii., on the 'Insurgent Power in China,' for further information on this subject.

The Eastern Prince.

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There can be little doubt that Yang-sew-tsing is the great fanatic of the insurrection. Hung-sew-tseuen, as we have seen, once ascended to heaven, and afterwards declared himself to be the second son of the Heavenly Father, Jesus being his Elder Brother. But as the Tae-pings do not believe that the Redeemer is coequal with the Almighty, and as Hung-sew-tseuen expressly disclaimed the title of Supreme, and required the troops to style him Choo, or Lord, only, it is possible that these assumptions may be far less offensive in their real signification than the terms in which they are couched would seem to imply. When Sir Henry Pottinger wrote to the authorities respecting the murder of the crews of the Nerbudda and Anne, and took occasion to state that the Queen of England 'owned no superior but God,' the interpreters declared that they had no word by which to render the Divine name exclusively, and would have translated it in such a way that it would have applied to the Emperor as well as to the Almighty! Thus, by a curious and mischievous mistake, they would have totally reversed the meaning of the declaration.

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We fear, however, there is too much reason to look upon the Eastern Prince in the light of a designing impostor rather than in that of a self-deluded enthusiast; but when men rush into a new religion without any adequate guidance, and, still worse, without any means of correcting the ignorant zeal they are apt to display, the result must necessarily be a grotesque and distempered faith which knowledge and experience alone can rectify. Most truly does Mr. Meadows observe that for every new convert the 'words of the Bible have a freshness-a living reality-of which 'great numbers of routine readers and church-goers have never ' had an idea,—which they cannot even conceive to themselves.' Think what an effect that book would have upon the mind of Hung-sew-tseuen, and how his imagination would burst into a blaze when he found that his own past visions were like reflections of many an awful scene which had occurred in the history of prophets and saints! Was it improbable that he should believe himself to have been rapt and inspired as they were? If Abraham or Moses conversed with God as a man with his fellow, why not Hung-sew-tseuen? If the Apostle Paul was caught up into the third Heaven, why should not the Apostle of China? If Saint John the Divine was permitted to behold the Ancient of Days, with hair like snow, seated on his great white throne, why should not the destined prince of the Tae-pings enter within the veil of mystery and gaze upon the Venerable Being with the golden beard who dwelt in the hall of matchless beauty?

Suppose, however, that this same Hung-sew-tseuen, instead of acquiring a smattering of the true religion, had been brought

under proper missionary schooling, what would have been the In lieu of originating a crazy kind of Christianity he might have instituted a community of real God-worshippers ;' and if patriotism had led the fraternity to revolt against the Manchoo dynasty, the insurrection would doubtless have been conducted on milder principles and with an incalculably smaller outlay of blood. The country might have been delivered from Tartar thrall by a noble army of reformers instead of being ravaged by a host of wild fanatics. It is true that if the insurgent chief had come under adequate spiritual training at the outset, there might perhaps have been no rebellion at all. Let the matter be put in either light. The teachings of a single Protestant missionary in the case of Hung-sew-tseuen would probably have altered the fate of tens of thousands of the people: those teachings might have substituted a noiseless moral revolution for a sanguinary rebellion, and thus have told upon the fortunes of China to an extent which no human arithmetic can estimate or express. Turn the stream at its source, and it may flow down to the sea a noble and navigable river, whilst, if it should happen to take another direction, it may spread out into an idle expanse, or drown the most fertile valleys in its path.

Since, therefore, China at the present moment affords such a singular illustration of the importance of missionary instruction, we cannot but lament that a contemporary review, entitled by its long standing and eminent ability to our highest respect, should condemn all attempts on the part of England and America to treat with the authorities for permission to drive the gospel-plough on Chinese ground. Our object must be the extension of commerce, and this is assumed to be incompatible with efforts for the extension of Christianity. Relinquish which you will, but ne courez pas deux lièvres à la fois; or if you must follow both, at any rate let one pursuit be kept perfectly subordinate to the other.

Now, admitting, as our valued contemporary does, that the 'barbarians' may lawfully require the Chinese to submit to certain regulations for the benefit of commerce, we do not exactly see why the same principle may not be applied to Christianity. That the blessings of religion are infinitely superior to the blessings of a good trade we presume no one will dispute. England has asked the Chinese for their tea, and taken infinite pains to procure it. She has offered them her Indian opium and spilled the blood of thousands to induce the mandarins to admit it for the use of the people. Ought we then to be so fearful of offending, that we cannot request them to listen to the Gospel, or to sanction the presence of its proclaimers? If it were really necessary to 'relinquish' one of the two objects proposed, would it not be more

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