God's Chinese Son

by Jonathan Spence

  The passage is hard for Hong to understand, and nowhere in the tracts does Liang say exactly what was done with water, or when, or how, while Jesus lived. But in the sixth tract, talking of his own life with Milne, Liang reports the definition that Milne gave to him: "In the ritual of purification by water, one takes some clear water, and sprinkles it on the person's head, or on his body. The inner meaning of this is to wash away the filth of the person's sins, and allow the Holy Spirit to transform his heart. After one has received this ritual of purification by water, one comes to love goodness and hate evil, and sloughing off the old nature one becomes a new being."51 On the next holy day, when Liang expressed his deep repen­tance and love of Jesus, Milne scattered clear water on his head, and he was purified. Sometime thereafter, Liang purified his wife with water by himself, and got Morrison to purify his son.52

  The moral of this whole tragic yet joyful story rests on two different levels, Liang suggests. Long ago, God chose one country to be his own, the land that he named Israel. There he gave his prohibitions, and there he sent his son to save all human souls from sin. But just as in the time of Moses the prohibitions and God's words were ignored, so was Jesus killed upon the cross and all his followers scattered. And God's vengeance was terrible, for the evildoers in that land not only met their individual fates, but the whole country of Israel was itself subjugated, and "up to the pres­ent time this country is no more, and its people scattered among all the other nations."53

  Such a fate is also the final, absolute, and universal one for all unbeliev­ers, Liang concludes, as the ninth tract ends. All the world must expect a Last Judgment, which will sweep upon all people as surely as the pains of a woman in labor, yet as furtively and unseen as a thief in the night. God's retainers will unroll the scrolls on which all our sins are listed; all people of all nations shall be judged, as surely as the shepherd separates out his sheep from the mountain goats. To those who believed in Jesus, and shel­tered the believers in his name, will come the blessings of almighty God. But for the others, there will be only eternal torment in the eternal fire, with the demons as their guardians.54

  The throne of the Saviour, at that final hour, will be like blazing wheels of fire, and the Savior will order his millions of attendants to burn all creatures to ashes in the flame of his father's anger. As the Judgment ends, the Saviour will descend in a cloud amidst the shouts of angels, blowing the trumpets of God his father, and all who believed early on in Jesus' name and died for him shall be resurrected, followed by those who were slower to see the light, but did so before it was too late. And all those saved shall be raised in the cloud, and welcomed by the Saviour in the heavens, and their bodies will be restrengthened and purified, and no one will be bride or groom, but all shall live like angels of the lord in Heaven.55

  The collection of tracts is long, full of strange terms and stranger names, and there are many things that Liang does not explain. But Hong feels the key has opened up his head and heart. The man with the golden beard of whom he dreamed, and for whom he fought the demons, is God the Father, the Lord Ye-huo-hua, who created Heaven and earth. The elder brother who shone the golden seal upon the demons, fought at Hong's side, yet scolded him severely is Jesus the Saviour, son of God, killed on the cross and returned again to Heaven. The retainers who welcomed Hong and helped him in his heavenly battles are the angels who live with God. The texts unrolled before his eyes or explained to him point by point are the words of Liang's, or the words of other sacred texts that Liang tran­scribed or summarized. The evil one, Yan Luo, is the demon devil serpent who ruined the happy life of man and woman in their first idyllic garden. The sword with which Hong fought the demons is like the sword that guarded the eastern gate of Paradise. God does speak directly to mankind, as he did to Moses on Mount Sinai, and as he has to Hong. Jesus too has lived and toiled upon the earth. The raging flood that almost swept away all living things is a sign of Hong's own destiny. His name Huo, or fire, was tabooed because it was the middle name of God the Father. His new name Quan—"complete" or "whole"—begins, closes, and reverberates throughout the sacred texts. The Confucian examinations are worthless vanities, spreading false hopes, engendering false procedures. The foreign­ers, despite the opium and the wrath of some of their number, have good intentions, and perhaps will save the land from death. Idols are evil, and the festival days that mark the working Chinese year do not reflect the rhythms of worship due the highest God. Sin ravages the world, encour­aged by false priests, the lustful, the pornographers. The cleansing rituals that Hong went through in Heaven were foretellers of his baptism. There are legions of demons still to slay on earth, for evil has infiltrated all the human race. And since Jesus is the son of God, and also Hong's elder brother, then Hong is literally God's Chinese son.

  6 WANDERING

  One is what one believes. Hong starts to preach. The man he reaches first is Li Jingfang, with whom he read the text. Piecing the baptismal ritual together from the scattered bits of information left by Liang—who in his tracts chose not to present any of the four Gospels' accounts of Jesus' baptism by John, or Jesus' baptism of others—Hong and Li baptize each other, in a private ritual, as Liang had baptized his wife. Liang has written

  that only those who believe in Jesus and receive baptism shall receive everlasting life, while those rejecting Jesus will receive everlasting pain. So as the two men sprinkle water on each other's heads they pray to their new True God, promise to follow His commandments, and to keep away from idols, evil, and the evil spirits. Together they chant their own new invocation: "Puri­fication from all former sins, putting off the old, rebirth." His heart filled with happiness, Hong writes his first poem using his new Saviour’s name:

  Sure is it that our sins surge up to heaven;

  How good to know that Jesus bears them all on our behalf.

  No longer trusting in the demon devils we obey the holy word

  Worshipping the One True Lord to cultivate our hearts.1

  The two men discuss Hong's dream, and feel that some of it, at least, can be understood literally. So together they order a local craftsman to forge two double-edged swords—each sword nine pounds in weight, and three feet in length—with three characters carved upon each blade, "Sword for exterminating demons." They celebrate the moment in a poem:

  Grasping our three-foot swords we bring order to the mountains and valleys,

  All within the four seas will be one family, living in kindly union....

  Tigers roar and dragons call. Light fills the earth;

  Great will be our joy as the Great Peace reigns.2

  The words seem now to pour out of Hong, and spread beyond his village. As at the time of his dream, some think him mad; but when anxious friends post a man to watch him, Hong converts the watcher to the logic of his views. Hong talks often, too, with two of his relatives, who listen with particular attention to his words. One, Hong Rengan, lives in Guanlubu, and is a cousin on his father's side; the other, Feng Yunshan, is related to Hong's stepmother (Hong's father's second wife), and lives in a village less than a mile away. Like Hong, they have education but have not succeeded in their examinations, and serve as village teachers. In the summer of 1843 Hong converts them both. The three men celebrate with a double ceremony—first Hong administers the baptism privately, in the school where the elder cousin works; but then, spurning privacy, they go to a stream that runs nearby and immerse themselves completely. From this time onward, it is Feng and Hong Rengan who share Hong Xiuquan's innermost councils—and despite his sword Li Jingfang drifts out of the inner circle of believers.3

  Rereading Liang's text with his two new converts, Hong Xiuquan comes to a realization he has not had before. As Hong Rengan later remembers it, Hong phrased it thus: "If I had received the books without having gone through the sickness, I should not have dared to believe in them, and on my own account to oppose the customs of the whole world; if I had merely been sick but not also received the books, I should have had no f
urther evidence as to the truth of my visions. ... I have received the immediate command from God in his presence; the will of Heaven rests with me."4 The words cannot be changed, says Hong, and God's commands cannot be disobeyed, for "the word of the Lord Jehovah is right." The proof lies in Psalms 19 and 33, each of which is translated in Liang's tract. The psalms—Liang translates no others, so Hong cannot know the rest—are full of Hong's own name, they reverberate with "Quan," and Hong chants the words aloud: "There is no speech or lan­guage, where their voice is not heard. Their sound is gone out to the whole earth—to the earth that is Quan's—and their words to the ends of the world."5 "The Judgements of the Lord Jehovah are true, and righteous altogether—Quan is righteous—more to be desired than gold, yea than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb."6 "Who can fully understand—understand like Quan—his errors? Cleanse thou me from my secret faults."7

  For the next few months, they pore over Liang's text, exploring, preach­ing, trying to see which pronouns fit with which being, earthly or divine. Slowly the three men convert members of their own and each other's families. And two distant cousins of Hong Xiuquan from the western province of Guangxi, who come to Guanlubu on family business (or other business of which we have no record), are moved by his words, baptized by him, and later take the message home with them.8

  To strike at the idols, as God has ordered them, the three move first against the ones they know best and face the most often, the tablets to Confucius that stand in the place of honor in each of the schools where they teach. One by one they remove the tablets, purging their schoolrooms of the heathen icons. This is not a simple task, for there are many varieties of tablets, in many styles and sizes. In Hua county, as elsewhere in China, the centerpiece of homage to Confucius is, by law, a replica of the four characters of calligraphy written in 1686 by Emperor Kangxi to honor the Sage: "Model Teacher of a Myriad Generations." Each wooden board on which these characters are written, specifies the government's decree, is to be 2.37 feet in height, four inches wide, and seven-tenths of an inch in thickness; while the base on which it rests must be four inches high, seven inches broad, and three inches thick. The background must be in bright vermilion, the lettering in gold.9 Then, depending on the grandeur of the shrine or center of display, tablets of sizes graded somewhat smaller are arranged symetrically around the main Confucian tablet. These are all in black lettering on backgrounds of less fiery red, and list one by one the names of Confucius' four favorite and most talented disciples, his other early followers, and all those across the next two thousand years whom various emperors have acknowledged as worthy to be added to the list of great Confucian activists or thinkers. By the time of Hong Xiuquan this list had swelled to over one hundred names, all of whom he could be expected to recognize, and many of whose texts or commentaries he read intensively in school while preparing for the state examinations.10

  Slowly, as the parents of their pupils hear that the Confucian tablets are coming down, the pupils are withdrawn. The incomes of the schools decrease. Some men near Guanlubu who have attained the licentiate's degree that Hong has sought so long chide him for his conduct, and for spreading his new beliefs. One, recognizing Hong as a serious scholar, with a lively mind, even offers to read all Liang's texts, and refute the errors in them one by one. Affronted, Hong breaks off their relationship.11 In the first month of 1844, the local village worthies still reach out to Hong, for they respect his education and his versifying skills. When he refuses their request that he write an ode in honor of that year's lantern festival—for he sees, now that his eyes are opened, that such a poem would be "to praise the merits of the idols"—they chide him with a verse:

  We unskillful old folk hoped for help from the young,

  Little imagining you would have nothing to do with us.

  You are crammed with learning, and could have used it—

  But convinced by slanderous words, you cling just to them.12

  Hong Xiuquan responds in verse, matching the local scholars' rhyme scheme and reversing the argument of their final line in his opening one:

  Not because we were convinced by slanderous words did we turn down your request,

  But because we only follow the True God's commandments.

  Sharp must be the line between the roads to Heaven and hell—

  How can we with muddled-heads traverse this earthly life?13

  The clash seems elegant, for these are cultured men, even if living in the villages rather than the more sophisticated county town. But anger is there not far below the surface. Before the spring is over, Hong and his cousins lose their jobs.14

  What should they do? Hong and his friends decide, as they phrase it, "to travel throughout the world, and teach to all the people the doctrine of repentance."15 They have little money, and Hong Xiuquan's wife, Lai, has just borne her second child, another girl. Their hope is that they can sell ink and writing brushes as they go, to pay their way. Five of them plan to go together, but before they leave, Hong Rengan is forced to aban­don the group. His parents and elder brother forbid him absolutely to make the journey. Although his age is already over twenty, they have not hesitated to beat him severely and tear his clothes to punish him for defac­ing Confucian tablets, and he knows their words have to be taken seri­ously. So it is Hong Xiuquan, Feng Yunshan, and two of Feng's relatives who take their leave of Guanlubu in early April 1844."'

  Hong's First Journey, 1844

  Is their plan somehow to emulate the restless traveling of Jesus, or the far-flung journeying of his Apostles? Or is it mere survival? They do not say, but their initial route betrays their indecision, as if they want to travel far and yet not get too far away from home. First they go to Canton city, re-traveling, for Hong, the route of four examination trips; the open fighting there is over, the cannon stilled, but still the city seethes with bitterness, of Chinese against the Manchus, and of the populace against the British, whom they will not allow to enter within their walls, despite the specific treaty provisions. Unwilling to provoke another war, the Brit­ish continue to negotiate, and build their Hong Kong base. From Canton the four men travel down into the delta region, then curve northwest, re-entering the city via the western gate, exiting through the eastern gate, marching and preaching in a semicircle through the eastern hills until they rest for a while in Qingyuan county, some forty miles north of Guanlubu. Here they are welcomed by the locals, and baptize many in the clan of the Li—relatives perhaps of Hong's first convert—who remain thereafter steadfast in the faith. Heading farther north, then west again, they pause at White Tiger village in early May. They have tramped around their province for thirty-four days, and have ended up a little over a hundred miles from where they started.1'

  Here, at Hong Xiuquan's own urgings, the little group breaks up. According to Hong's later recollections, he wished to travel on alone, but Feng Yunshan insisted on accompanying him, while Feng's two relations chose to return to their homes and families.18 The plan that Hong Xiuquan and Feng devise is bold and potentially dangerous. They will walk all the way to Guangxi province in the west, to the village of Sigu in Guiping county. They choose this destination because it is the home, among others, of that same Hakka family named Huang, distant relatives of Hong Xiu­quan's, two of whose members had visited him the previous year, and been converted and baptized by him before returning home. Hong and Feng know little of the geography of the region, nor even the best route to follow for this journey of 250 miles or more across rather than along the major river routes, and through mountainous regions, many sparsely settled, or inhabited mainly by native Miao or Yao tribesmen with little knowledge of or interest in Chinese government and culture.1''

  But as it happens, the journey is peaceful. People along the way reach out to help them, especially a Chinese teacher who has made his home among the hills, and runs a school there for the children of the Miao. He entertains them, and believes their message, and they entrust him with spreading their message among
the Miao, for neither Hong nor Feng can understand a word of the Miao people's dialect. As they leave, they write out their doctrine for the teacher, and he in turn gives them a little travel­ing money. Often they walk all day with only occasional cups of tea and snacks they buy at roadside village stalls. Despite these hazards, and their shortage of funds, they know that they "travel under the One True God's protection," and reach the Guangxi town of Mengyu on May 21, 1844, after seventeen days of travel, averaging over fourteen miles a day. From there they travel another fifteen miles farther west, till they reach the Huang family home in Sigu village, where they are welcomed by their host, the two men previously baptized in Guanlubu, and five other branches of the Huang and Hong clans, with whom they are able to stay in turns.20

  To reach out effectively to potential converts, and speed the holy work, Hong knows—it is Liang Afa who taught him—that one needs tracts describing the One True God's religion. So while staying either in or near Sigu village, Hong starts to write his own "Exhortations to Worship the One True God," echoing the title of Liang Afa's tracts. These "Exhorta­tions" are Hong Xiuquan's first substantial pieces of writing, except for short poems and examination essays. As the months glide by he continues to write, in paired verse couplets of seven characters each, which will make the message easier to remember for those who cannot read.21