God's Chinese Son

by Jonathan Spence

  Stanzas 46, 107, 153, 281.

  Stanzas 284, 393, 286, 410-11, 9, 282.

  Stanza 412.

  Stanzas 217, 247, 414, 415, 422, 423, 426.

  TR, 1531, Young Monarch's confession.

  Stanzas 265, 427.

  Stanzas 275, 30.

  Stanzas 392, 364, 390, 375.

  Tianfu shi, in Yinshu, 28, stanza 313. A different rendering is in TR, 636.

  Stanzas 55, 312. The same message seems implicit in stanzas 187 and 354.

  Stanzas 378, 389.

  Stanzas 164, 264.

  Stanzas 264, 328.

  Mistakes, stanza 327; good cheer, 212, 343, 362; beating, 17, 18, 111, 189; death, 340; women bathed, 429, 432.

  Stanza 21.

  The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections, Blackfriars Road, Lon­don, contains two versions of the early Taiping Bible: the slightly modified Gutzlaff ver­sion, Jiuyizhao shengshu (comprising Genesis 1-28, call number 15116.b.9), and the only known surviving copy of Qinding Jiuyizhao shengshu (Genesis through Joshua) containing Hong's full range of revisions (call number 15117.e.20) For brevity, these will be cited here as Bibles A and B. A virtually complete listing of all variants is given by Wu Liangzuo and Luo Wenqi in their invaluable essay "Taiping Tianguo yinshu jiaokan ji," 267-73.

  Tianfu shi, stanza 448; TR, 657.

  Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 267.

  Ibid., 268; a similar insertion is made in Genesis 18:16 and 22, and 48:16.

  As Hong does in Genesis 38:12 and 43:29.

  Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 274.

  See Bibles A and B, 1:11b; Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 267.

  Genesis, 20:2-13, Yinshu, 24b-25; Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 268-69. The parallel story of Abimelech seeing Isaac "sporting" with Rebekah, in Genesis 26:7-9, uses almost identi­cal words to clear Isaac of deceit; Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 269.

  Divide is "fen." Genesis 25:31-34, Bibles A and B, 1:34b; Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 269.

  Bibles A and B, 1:36—37b; Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 270-71. Hong purges other refer­ences to wine as an offering—for instance, from Leviticus 23:13 and Numbers 6:20 and 18:27.

  Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 281.

  For all these corrections see Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 272-73.

  Ibid., 275. To make space for his own rewriting, Hong cuts Exodus 22:18 altogether.

  Chapter 18: The Wrong Man

  1. Arrival, in BPP/Elgin, 19; armaments, Walrond, Elgin, 190, 192, 195, 198, and BPP/ Elgin, 35, 40.

  2. Earl of Clarendon to Elgin, April 20, 1857, BPP / Elgin, 2-3, 5. For an analysis of the "Arrow War" that sparked his mission see Fairbank, Trade, and Wong, Arrow War.

  3. For the Elgins, father and son, see DNB, 104-6, 130-31.

  4. Oliphant, Narrative, 1:292-350; Walrond, Elgin, 210-57.

  5. Tianxiong shengzhi, 1:3, dated Daoguang, 28/10/24.

  6. Ibid., 1:12b, dated Daoguang, 29/1/16.

  7. BPP/Elgin, 444; Walrond, Elgin, 285.

  8. BPP/Elgin, 444.

  9. Walrond, Elgin, 285.

  10. Oliphant, Narrative, 2:311.

  11. Quotations from ibid., 313-14; see also Walrond, Elgin, 285; BPP / Elgin, 455.

  12. BPP /Elgin, 454; TR, 713.

  13. BPP /Elgin, 471-72, Wade's translation with romanization modified; TR, 717.

  14. TR, 718-19; BPP / Elgin, 472-73; Chin, Shiliao, 95-97.

  15. Chinese text in Chin, Shiliao, 97-98; partly following translations by Thomas Wade in BPP /Elgin, 473, and TR, 720.

  16. Oliphant, Narrative, 2:461.

  17. Ibid., 454.

  18. Chin Shiliao, 138-39; BPP / Elgin, 470; TR, 721-22.

  19. Walrond, Elgin, 301-2; on the trip, see BPP/ Elgin, 470; Oliphant, Narrative, 2:447-

  48.

  20. BPP /Elgin, 451, Wade's account.

  Chapter 19: New Worlds

  1. Jen, Revolutionary Movement, 356-57; Guo Tingyi, Shishi, appendix, 23.

  2. Jen, Revolutionary Movement, 351-56.

  3. Xiang, Ziliao, 2:846, modifying TR, 1511.

  4. TR, 759 n. 7, 760-61 nn. 8-10; see also Wylie, Memorials, 159-60, for Hamberg; 175- 76 for Burns; 117-22 for Legge; 125-28 for Hobson; Yung, My Life, 108. Yung had been in the Yale College class of 1854.

  5. Pfister, "Legge," pt. 2, p. 34.

  6. Legge, "Colony," 169.

  7. Pfister, "Legge," pt. 1, p. 44; Legge, "Colony," 172.

  8. Legge, "Colony," 171-72.

  9. Wylie, Memorials, 118; Pfister, "Legge," pt. 1, p. 45. Other missionaries had also cham­pioned the use of Shangdi, though it remained a controversial choice to many. A full summary of the various arguments is given in Medhurst, Dissertation.

  10. Legge's view as summarized by Pfister, in "Legge," pt. 1, pp. 48—49.

  11. Ibid, pt. 2, pp. 35-36.

  12. Welsh, Hong Kong, 169; Legge, "Colony," 165-66, 171.

  13. Legge, "Colony," 167-68; Welsh, Hong Kong, 164-66, 218.

  14. Legge, "Colony," 165; Welsh, Hong Kong, 212, on Caldwell, and 152, on entrepre­neurs.

  15. Legge, "Colony," 171.

  16. Pfister, "Legge," pt. 1, p. 44; Jen, Revolutionary Movement, 356.

  17. TR, 1512; Jen, Revolutionary Movement, 357, citing Lin-le, Ti-ping, 1:226; Wylie, Memorials, 217-18, on Chalmers, who received the letter, Legge being away at the time.

  18. TR, 765, 767; Hong Rengan, Zizheng xinbian, in Yinshu, 14, 16.

  19. On insurance, TR, 769; houses, 771; banks, 765-66; roads, 764, 765; patents, 766.

  20. TR, 768-69.

  21. TR, 767; a rather similar comment of Hong's is on p. 764.

  22. TR, 111, slight changes from Zizheng xinbian, in Yinshu, 21.

  23. Yung, My Life, 110.

  24. J. S. Burdon, in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 240; Forrest, "Taipings at Home," NCH, Oct. 19, 1861, also cited ibid, 360.

  25. "Questions Recently Addressed to the Kan Wang," NCH, Aug. 11, 1860, also cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 241.

  26. NCH, Aug. 11, 1860.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Forrest, "Taipings at Home," translating "Kan Wang" and "T'ien Wang." This passage is also printed in Blakiston, Five Months, 51.

  29. TR, 758, some changes following Zizheng xinbian, in Yinshu, 8b.

  30. TR, 758.

  31. TR, 759; Zizheng xinbian, in Yinshu, 9.

  32. For Japan, TR, 763; for Germans, 760; Scandinavians and France, 761; Russia, 762.

  33. TR, 773, modified following Zizheng xinbian, in Yinshu, 22.

  34. Curwen, Deposition, 234 n. 77; TR, 1525.

  35. Curwen, Deposition, passim; Guo Tingyi, Shishi, appendix, 21.

  36. Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 233, on Li's "small keen features" and glasses.

  37. Curwen, Deposition, 109-15, 230-33; TR, 1524-25.

  38. Curwen, Deposition, 117—19.

  39. Brine, Taeping, 253-54; TR, 923-24, on the Catholics, and 1119-20.

  40. As cited in Lin-le, Ti-ping, 1:298; this "scenario" is discussed in Wagner, Heavenly Vision, 113.

  41. Brine, Taeping, 258-59, changing Shanghae to Shanghai and "imps" to "demons"; TR, 1124.

  42. Jen, Revolutionary Movement, 403-28, has a brilliant analysis of the Anqing (Anking) campaign; Li Xiucheng is rather casual about the loss—Curwen, Deposition, 130, and 260— 64, citing piercing testimony from Zhao Liewen's diary; Hong Rengan blames Li for the loss, TR, 1513, 1525-26.

  43. Curwen, Deposition, 121, 244 n. 42.

  44. NCH, Aug. 11, 1860, also cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 243, echoed by Griffith John as quoted in Lin-le, Ti-ping, 1:294; Wagner, Heavenly Vision, 59-60.

  45. The 1853 illustrated Amoy edition, Tianlu licheng, is in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and an 1855 illustrated Hong Kong edition is in the British Library, Oriental Collection. A summary in thirteen leaves was published by Muirhead in 1851, according to Wylie, Memorials, 168. On other editions, see ibid., 175-76, and ibid., 282, for Burns' translation of Bunyan's follow-up volume on the journey of Christian's wife, Christ
iana, published in Peking in 1866.

  46. See Bunyan text, Tianlu licheng, and illustrations 1, 3, and 8, and the interpretation in Rudolf Wagner, Heavenly Vision, 59. Wagner suggests early influence through Milne's summary of 1816; but Hong Rengan to Edkins, NCH, Aug. 11, 1860, also cited in Clarke and Gregory Reports, 243, specifies it was Burns' translation, which first appeared in 1853, that Hong liked to read.

  47. Bunyan, Tianlu licheng, 9, and 21; see comment by Wagner, Heavenly Vision, 59; Xia, Zongjiao, 151-52, also discusses this "narrow gate," zhaimen, and its relationship to Pil­grim's Progress.

  48. TR, 939.

  49. Joseph Edkins, "Narrative," 279.

  50. Much of the rest of this edict, as translated by the missionary J. L. Holmes, is too garbled to make sense. It is reproduced in TR, 1126-27, from Brine, Taeping, 266-67. I substitute Young Monarch for Junior Lord.

  51. TR, 939, 941,943, 945.

  52. TR, 944, 945.

  53. TR, 945, 946.

  54. NCH, March 2, 1861, as observed and reported by a "Native Christian" and trans­lated by the Reverend William G. E. Cunnyngham on a Nanjing visit.

  55. TR, 936.

  56. TR, 940, proclamation of April 4, 1861.

  57. TR, 945-46.

  58. TR, 931.

  59. TR, 931.

  60. TR, 933, modified following Chin, Shiliao, 106.

  61. Chin, Shiliao, 107; TR, 934.

  Chapter 20: Priest-King

  1. Hamberg, Visions, 31-32.

  2. Tianxiong shengzhi, 1:14, dated Daoguang 29/1/21. I translate qianlian as "connected together." See also Joseph Edkins' remark, in "Narrative," 265, that Hong Xiuquan had been "divinely informed, so he believed," of Roberts' goodness.

  3. TR, 573-75, for testimony of the courier Yeh. A. Happer's record of the courier's visit is given in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 75-80. One letter, claimed for a time to be Hong's actual invitation, is now regarded as probably a later fabrication. See TR, 509-10.

  4. BPP/Elgin, 473.

  5. TR, 758.

  6. See Roberts' letter of Sept. 29, 1860, in NCH, Oct. 27, 1860, and his letter to the Overland China Mail cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 253.

  7. Pruden, "Roberts," 215, 284, and Y. C. Teng, "Roberts," 61, on the illness of his wife; Pruden, "Roberts," 164, on the case of the second assistant A-Chun, and 108-18 and 284 on the legal battles. The death of Chun, his first helper, in 1845 is movingly described by Roberts in a letter of April 6, 1845, Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, Richmond, Va., Roberts files, "Chun's Doings in Canton," Fiche 15, plate 1760, no. 49. For Virginia Young Roberts' disgust with her husband, see her letter of Oct. 6, 1867, ibid., correspon­dence, Fiche 1. My thanks to Laura McDaniel for this and other references to this collec­tion and that of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

  8. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, Archives, Valley Forge, Pa., Issachar Rob­erts, Folder 75-5, dated Nanking, Nov. 8, 1860, and Dec. 1, 1860, enclosures to Bro[ther] Lord; Pruden, "Roberts," 289-90.

  9. Coughlin, "Strangers," 274; Pruden, "Roberts," 290-91; Edkins, "Narrative," 265, 267; NCH, Sept. 7, 1861. Roberts' former colleague T. P. Crawford, however, visited Nanjing in spring 1861 and wrote to a friend of seeing Roberts "in the old cast-off robes of the chiefs," "the dirtiest, greasiest white man 1 ever saw," cited in Coughlin, "Strangers," 276; for the Reverend Hobson it was "a dirty yellow Chinese robe—a miserable spectacle of dirt and slovenliness"—cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 298. Yung Wing, who had met Roberts long before in Mrs. Gutzlaff s Macao school, found him looking old, though moving "leisurely in his clumsy Chinese shoes" (My Life, 107).

  10. Roberts letter, cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 254.

  11. Ibid., 255.

  2.NCH, Sept. 7, 1861; Wylie, Memorials, 97, item 5. For Roberts' collaborators Charles Washington Gaillard and Rosewell Hobart Graves, see Wylie, Memorials, 230, 240-41, and Pruden, "Roberts," 205, 285. Roberts' own inscribed copy of the Goddard Bible is pre­served in the library of Brown University, Providence, R.I.

  13. Josiah Cox, cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 313, on the restriction. Roberts letter to NCH, March 30, 1861, also cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 262-64.

  14. Edkins, "Narrative," 276-77.

  15. As translated by Edkins in "Narrative," 274, and translating Kan-wang as Shield King. The idea that "the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:2) had been read by Hong first in Liang Afa's version; see Quanshi, 469-71. Hong also used the passage to refer to himself in his commentary on Revelation 22:17-20; see TR, 237.

  16. Wylie, Memorials, 187-91; Milton and science, ibid., 189.

  17. Edkins, "Narrative," 294-96, includes two of Hong's own comments on his eye troubles. The eye problem is corroborated by Griffith John, letter to his brother, in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 297. See also Wagner, Heavenly Vision, 99.

  18. Edkins, "Narrative," 295; Forrest, "Nanking," also notes Hong's knowledge of Atha- nasius and other church fathers.

  19. Edkins, "Narrative," 295; Xiao, Zhaoyu, item 2 (plate 6), includes a photograph of Edkins' Chinese text with Hong's comments and marks of emphasis. The original is in the British Library as Or. 8143 bound into the volume 5896(J). It is written very clearly in black ink on pale blue pages.

  20. Edkins, "Narrative," 272 n, mentions that Hong saw Edkins' writing of 1857 on this topic in a "Chinese monthly magazine." This is presumably Edkins' essay "On the Oneness of Jesus with God," mentioned by Wylie, Memorials, 189, no. 8, as appearing in the Hua- yang hehe tongshu (Chinese and foreign concord almanac) for that year.

  21. This original poem in Hong's calligraphy is written in red ink on the last sheet of Edkins' essay (see n. 19 above). It can be authenticated by the massive square Taiping seal on the back of the document, of which about half is legible. Jen Yu-wen has reconstructed most of the characters in his Collection, p. 33, photographs of seals. The poem is photo­graphically reproduced in Xiao, Zhaoyu, item 2, second page, plate 7, and a transcript is printed in Xiang, Ziliao, 2:672. A rendering rather different from mine is given in TR, 1205.

  22. TR, 939.

  23. TR, 938.

  24. J. L. Holmes, in NCH, Sept. 1, 1860, cited in Clarke and Gregory, Reports, 250.

  25. Parkes 1861, April 2, BPP / IUP, 122, Inclosure 2 in no. 5, Admiralty to Hammond of June 15, 1861.

  26. Forrest, "Nanking."

  27. Ibid., and BPP /IUP, 100.

  28. The commentaries are preserved in the British Library edition of the revised Taiping Bible, Qinding Jiuyizhao shengshu and Qinding Qianyizhao shengshu. Though it is not possi­ble to date Hong's commentaries precisely, the evidence of R. J. Forrest in his "Christianity of Hung Tsiu Tsuen," 190, 200, shows that those we have now cannot be later than Oct. 1861, when Forrest obtained his copy of this Bible. Xia, Zongjiao, 142, argues for 1860.

  29. Chin, Shiliao, 85, somewhat modifying TR, 234.

  30. Chin, Shiliao, 80, TR, 230.

  31. Acts 7:56; Chin, Shiliao, 81; TR, 231; Bohr, "Eschatology," 362 n.

  32. Chin, Shiliao, 85; TR, 235.

  33. Matthew 8:15; Chin, Shiliao, 77; TR, 227.

  34. Matthew 9:29; Chin, Shiliao, 77; TR, 228.

  35. Mark 2:3-5; Chin, Shiliao, 79; TR, 229; and Matthew 8:3; Chin, Shiliao, 77, "upon the head" being toushang; TR, 221.

  36. Luke 7:14-15; Chin, Shiliao, 80; TR, 230.

  37. 1 Corinthians 15:49-53; TR, 232; Chin, Shiliao, 83.

  38. Acts 15:14-16; TR, 231; Chin, Shiliao, 81.

  39. Chin, Shiliao, 75, partly following TR, 225; Wu and Luo, "Yinshu," 283, point out the misprint in the original printing of wang (king) for ju (lord), and note that Chin Yii- fu mistakenly puts this passage under chap. 15 of Genesis.

  40. Chin, Shiliao, 75-76, partly following TR, 225.

  41. Hebrews 6:19-20. There is also a reference in Psalms 110:4, but Psalms was not printed in the Taiping Old Testament, which ended with Joshua.

  42. TR, 233, modified follo
wing Chin, Shiliao, 84, and rendering "Hewang" as "Hong."