God's Chinese Son (16 page)

Each of the more than fifty tracts that Gutzlaff or his Chinese Union members write or circulate in the 1840s has a simple theme. Some cite passages from the New Testament and elaborate briefly on them: "Blessed are the Poor in Spirit," "Blessed are those who suffer for Righteousness' sake," "They that are in the flesh cannot please God," "Love Thy Neigh­bor as Thyself." Some are on specific elements within the Christian faith: on repentance, prayer, Jesus' love, the resurrection, everlasting life, God's forgiveness of our sins. Some deal with specific verses or chapters from the Bible, such as Genesis, chapter 3, on the fall and expulsion of Adam

and Eve, or the First Epistle of John, chapter 1, on the light and joy brought by Jesus to our lives:

That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:3-5)

Other passages are chosen by Gutzlaff with special artfulness and perti­nence, such as the opening of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, with its mes­sage of travel and expansion of the faith: "I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are in Rome also."
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While Feng Yunshan moves slowly deeper into the mountains of Guangxi, Hong resumes his life at Guanlubu. Tired of wandering, Hong earns his keep by teaching once again, and continues to work on his own tracts, two of which he finishes in 1845 or 1846. In the first, Hong draws on Chinese classical writings such as the
Book of Rituals
and the
Book of Changes
to explore how China once shared a vision with the rest of the world that was both compassionate and without local hostilities and divi­sions. In the time of China's early sage rulers, "those who had and those who had not were mutually compassionate." No one needed to bar their doors, and the world maintained a natural virtue as "men and women walked on different paths." Human love for others extended far beyond the confines of the family: all the young were given the resources they needed to grow, all able-bodied adults received employment, all those disabled by disease were nourished, all the aged were cared for until their deaths.
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One of the human tragedies that broke this harmony was the spread of localism and special interests. Hong Xiuquan uses two lines from the thirteenth hexagram of the
Book of Changes,
"Human Fellowship," to illustrate this point concisely: "Fellowship with people in the open, success. Fellowship with people in the clan, humiliation."
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' The language in which Hong expands on this idea seems full of his experiences both with his own family and community in Guanlubu and with the problems of the Huangs and Zhangs in Sigu village and Guiping on his Guangxi visit. Our lives and ways have become "intolerant and shallow," writes Hong, and we have come to be ruled by selfishness:

Hence, there are cases where this country resents that country, and that country resents this country. Worse than that, there are cases within one country when this province, this prefecture, or this district resents that prov­ince, that prefecture, or that district; and that province, that prefecture, or that district resents this province, this prefecture, or this district. And beyond that again, there are even cases within one province, prefecture, or district where this village, this hamlet, or this clan resents that village, that hamlet, or that clan; and that village, that hamlet, or that clan resents this village, this hamlet, or this clan. The ways of the world and the minds of men having come to this, how can they do otherwise than to insult each other, to wrest things from each other, to battle with each other, and to kill one another, and thus perish altogether?
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Since all of us, in all countries and all clans, share the same Great God and Universal Father, why do we keep on with these absurd distinctions and conflicts?

How can it be that this perverse and unfeeling world cannot in a day be transformed into an honest and upright world? How can it be that this age so full of insults and violations, fighting and killing, cannot in a day be changed into a world where the strong no more oppress the weak, the many overwhelm the few, the wise delude the simple, or the bold annoy the fearful?
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In the second, and much longer, tract Hong pursues the same ideas of fractured harmony, but now he concentrates his energies on exploring the reasons that can be gleaned from China's own history for the falling from a grace that all had once shared. Hong's quest is for a continuity between past and present, for all interpretations that deny such continuity must, in their essence, be false. If we are told that something "is applicable to mod­ern times and not applicable to antiquity," then we can be sure that it represents "the false way, the evil way, and the small way."
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The powers of the demon devil king Yan Luo are a case in point. People ascribe the power over life and death to this spirit, but he is only the same old "serpent devil" who deceived Adam and Eve, as he deceives us now by his endless transformations, but his power has never been anything compared to that of God.

The growth of superstitious beliefs of this kind can be traced epoch by epoch, ruler by ruler, says Hong, and he proceeds to draw on his earlier historical studies to do just that. First to slide away from worshiping the One True God were tribes on the periphery of China proper, like the Li and Miao, who began to venerate the demons. Then came early rulers of the founding Qin dynasty, who searched for secrets of immortality among the islands of the Eastern Sea. After them, the rulers of the early Han dynasty sought by sacrificing to the Kitchen God to transmute cinnabar to gold and managed to draw a throng of charlatans to their court; their successors of the later Han, and rulers of the Liang and Tang, sent their magic specialists to India in search of the Buddha and his bones. Most damaging was the ruler of the Song, who changed the name of the True God of All to the "Great Jade Emperor," this being to Hong "the worst kind of blasphemy" of them all. Such absurdities have since been spread and elaborated through such books as the
Jade Record.
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In contrast, writes Hong, the books brought by the foreigners to China show clearly enough how God's plan really was conceived, and how erro­neous these Chinese aberrations must be seen to be. The vast waters of Noah's flood, proof of God's wrath and spreading over the world for forty days and nights, show clearly enough that it cannot be the dragon devil of the Eastern Sea who brings rain to China, despite the sacrifices so many people make to him. When God called Moses to Mount Sinai, He warned him clearly not to let the people of the world set up any kinds of images, or worship them. The "real nature" of the demon devil evaporates on close inspection, in just the same way as bean curd turns out to be full of water. How ever could such a demon devil as Yan Luo be called divine? Even Jesus himself, our Savior and the Son of God, may be called our Lord
(zhu)
but not our God
(di),
even though except for Jesus' Father none are as great as he is. How could one, knowing this, rebel against God's commands and "join with the evil demons in rebelling against Heaven"? Nothing could be more pitiable, more sad, than that!
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While Hong Xiuquan writes and teaches, others are talking about him. It is known to some in Canton city that he has read and believed the tracts of Liang Afa, that he preaches, that he has friends who do the same. These men in turn tell members of the Chinese Union, who work with Issachar Roberts. Roberts came to China from Tennessee at the invitation and under the inspiration of Karl Gutzlaff, and was the first to return to Canton from Hong Kong after the Opium War of 1839-42: living in the suburbs of the city, dressing in Chinese clothes, erecting a small chapel with a bell tower, learning Hakka dialect, and gathering a small group of Chinese converts around him.
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A maverick whose affiliations with mis­sion groups in the United States are often temporary and stormy, Roberts joins up with Gutzlaff s Chinese Union in the mid-1840s, and gratefully accepts the small payments that Gutzlaff makes to him. For Roberts, the heart of Christian conversion and devotion lies in the act of baptism, and his own most lyrical writings describe the joys of thus greeting new Chris­tians in the rolling surf off the shores of Hong Kong or in the flowing rivers of China. For choice, in the hot seasons of the south, Roberts takes the baptismal candidates out into the water at night-time, when the moon is full and bright, immersing each one completely "in the spacious deep in imitation of the death and burial of his Lord," before raising them once again "in imitation of the resurrection of Jesus.'°
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A Christian convert from Canton visits Hua county in 1846, and urges both Hong and his cousin Hong Rengan to visit Roberts at his chapel and hear his preaching. Both Hongs are too busy with their own teaching to accept. But early in 1847 Roberts' senior assistant, a convert and member of the Chinese Union, writes formally to Hong Xiuquan and urges him to visit. This time Hong accepts, and persuades Hong Rengan to accom­pany him. Roberts receives them cordially, and under his general supervi­sion the two cousins read the Bible, in Gutzlaff s translation, both the Old Testament and the New. Though Hong Rengan does not stay long, Hong Xiuquan perseveres, and asks Roberts (as Liang Afa some thirty years before asked Milne) to prepare him formally for the rites of baptism. Rob­erts agrees to take him in his care, and sends two of his Chinese converts to Guanlubu, to see what sort of reputation Hong Xiuquan has at home.
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As has happened before in Hong's life, suddenly and without clear explanation something goes wrong. Just a few days before, baptism seemed assured. Hong had written out his statement of faith and purpose for Roberts, as baptists must, to prove the sincerity of their religious call, and Roberts found it satisfactory. Nothing untoward was said about him to the investigators in Guanlubu. Some contemporaries say that Hong falls into a trap, a trap laid by other jealous Chinese converts who work for Roberts. Knowing that Roberts hates those who claim they seek baptism only in order to gain employment or a stipend from the Christian mission­aries, and fearing that Hong might be hired by Roberts and thus cost one of them his job, they tell Hong to ask Roberts for financial reassurance about the future. Guilelessly, Hong does just that, forfeiting Roberts' trust and support. It sounds far-fetched, but times are hard for those with or without education living around Canton, and Roberts is famous for his sudden tantrums and zealous adherence—when it suits him—to the arti­cles of his baptist faith. Roberts' only comment on the matter is that Hong chose to leave before Roberts was "fully satisfied of his fitness."
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Whatever did happen between Hong and Roberts, on July 12, 1847, Hong goes on the road again, without receiving the promised baptism.

But he does not turn north for home and family in Guanlubu, as one would expect. Instead, almost penniless except for some borrowed copper cash, with his few possessions on his back, and his cherished demon-kill­ing sword in a scabbard he has had specially made, marked with the single character of his dream-state name of Quan, he turns his steps once more toward the west, in search of Feng Yunshan, asking his newfound Chinese Union friends to tell his family where he has gone.
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Hong walks westward along the river, too poor to pay the boat fare, feeding as best he may. He has got as far as the river town of Meizixun, more than halfway to the Guangxi border, when ten or so men, dressed as an anti-smuggling patrol, block his way. When Hong has relaxed his guard, they draw out guns and knives, demand his money and his bundle of possessions. Such acts of impersonating government personnel have been growing in numbers, though certainly they are not new. When Hong was first an examination candidate, a gang killed a magistrate and his staff and then took over their office and their duties along with their insignia, and ran the county for several months before anyone arrested them. On other occasions, gang members rode in official sedan chairs and claimed to be functionaries, ending by ransacking people's homes and assaulting their women?
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While Hong was living in Guanlubu, a hundred or more bandits just north of Canton city set up road and river barriers, apparently immune to government reprisal, demanding money from all travelers, and causing such disruptions to trade that honest merchants and opium smugglers alike have to reroute their goods due west.
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Qing government embassies to Annam can get to that neighboring kingdom only by paying "protection" to the local river bandits; and students from West Guangdong, however well prepared, cannot even get to Canton city to take the examinations.
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Perhaps if Hong had raised his thumb to represent the Heavens, worn the second button of his summer robe undone, stretched out three fingers together in a greeting, said truthfully that he was traveling from the east towards the west, or even murmured a coded version of his own name, then they would have let him be. But he has not been made privy to these mysteries, and the ten men rob him of his borrowed money, his sword and scabbard, and everything else he carries, leaving him only a single change of clothes.
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