The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-04 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDIESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 4, 1854.

THE CHINESE REBELLION.

(FROM THE BISHOP OF VICTORIA'S CHARGE,'AT SHANGHAE,
. OCT. 20, 1853.)
We have arrived at an important era of Protestant
missions in China. Unwilling to count our converts by
the doubtful measure of promiscuous baptisms, we have
in past times chosen rather to await the descent of God
the Holy Spirit upon our work than to build a spiritual
fabric on the rotten foundation of a barren formalism.
We were often asked—" Where are the proofs of suc-
cess or the signs of progress in Protestant missions ?
Rome with her fourteen bishops, her eighty-four Euro-
pean missionaries, her 135 native priests, her fourteen
colleges and seminaries, her 326 churches and chapels,
and her estimate of 315,000 baptised converts, counts
her children in every province. Where are those who
form the beginnings of the Protestant Christian Church
in China ?" We had a reply which, while it satisfied the
student of missionary records of the past, awakened no
sympathy in unfriendly minds. It has been a distin-
guishing principle of Protestant missions in China to
give a pre-eminent honour to the inspired word of God.
The translation and circulation of the Holy Scriptures
have from the commencement of the present century oc-
cupied a prominent place in the attention and labour of
Protestant missionary societies. Unable to point to
numerous instances of positive submission to the holy
restraints of the Gospel, we nevertheless trusted in the
Divine promise, and patiently abided God's time. We
looked forward in faith to the results of a wide-spread
moral impression, assured that the seeds of scriptural
truth, sown widely and sinking deeply into the minds of
the people, would hereafter, under the vivviug power of
God's Holy Spirit, become pregnant with life, produce a
harvest of joy, and bring forth the fruits of a spiritual
influence in the hearts and lives of the people.
And now at length a sudden gleam of hope streaks the
horizon, and the dawn of a brighter day succeeds to our
dark and dreary night of depression. The Holy Scrip-
tures and the Christian books distributed in past years
along the coast—and especially in the province of Can-
ton—have at length, as messengers of mercy, winged
their flight into the far interior, and given an impulse to
a movement which appears likely to issue in the most
remarkable revolution of modern times.
Numerous, doubtless, have been the unknown channels
through which a wide-extended moral impression has
been communicated to the distant localities of the inte-
rior. But at the present time, and in the absence of
more intimate access to the insurgent army, the only
known facts refer to the circumstances under which the
insurgent chief arrived at his knowledge of Christian
truth. Twenty years ago a native preacher who now
survives, Leang Afa, distributed several thousand copies
of a Christian book composed by himself, and containing
lengthened extracts from the Bible in the form of Scrip-
ture lessons, interspersed with his own summary of Chris-
tian doctrine. In the journals of the late Dr. Morrison;
the first Protestant missionary to China, there occur no-
tices of this Christian native having disposed of large
numbers of this and other books among the crowds at-
tracted to the city of Canton on the occasion of the pro-
vincial examination for literary degrees. According to
information recently supplied by a relative of the insur-
gent chief who visited Hong Kong, it appears that in the
year 1834 one scholar, destined in all probability to fulfil
a conspicuous part in the history of the empire, received
from an aged man, whose evident description points to
no other than Leang Afa, a copy of the above-men-
tioned work, entitled "Keuen She Leung Yen"—Good
Words for Exhorting the Age. lie took with him to
his distant home these first elements of Christian truth,
and pondered over the important doctrines which they
contained. Seven years ago the same native returned
to Canton, and, as an inquirer after Christianity, became
for two months an inmate in the house of an American
missionary. Partially enlightened as to the Christian re-
ligion, and before he was admitted to Christian baptism,
he retired to his native district in the interior. The dreams
of his excited brain during a period of sickness under
which he laboured after his first acquaintance with Chris-
tianity, appear to have been mistaken for a personal re-
velation from God. He communicates Christian doc-
trines to others ; and the number of Christian professors
multiplies. In the strength of awakening earnestness,
they decry and denounce the idolatry of their neighbours.
The sect attracts the notice of the magistrates. Perse-
cution essays its power ; resistance follows ; and at length
a collision ensues. What, at first, was a mere local
rising, in many of its adherents engendered perhaps
more by civil discontent than by religious fervour, grows
at length to a formidable rebellion. The infusion of a
religious element imparts an energy and vigour to the
moeement for which the usual impossibility of the native
mind rendered us unprepared. The corruption and
weakness of the native Government and the popular
hatred of the dominant Manchow Tartars strengthen the
insurrection and lend wings to its progress. The pro-
ject is conceived of expelling and exterminating their
Manchow oppressors, and of building up on the ruins of
the Tartar dynasty the Church of Christ and the king-
dom of God.
The political considerations arising from these events
I shall speedily leave. Whether Louis Napoleon at
the bidding of the French priesthood may interpose
the power of a foreign fleet and to seek to crush a rising
power, which in the first burst of iconoclastic zeal has
demolished alike Romish images and Buddhist idols ;
or whether the Russian Czar may pour down from Sibe-
rian Tartary his hordes of fierce invaders to arrest the
chariot-wheels of revolution and prop up the cause of
Chinese despotism ; or whether the downfall of the
Manchow Tartars may be arrested or delayed by intes-
tine divisions in the insurgent force, are contingencies of
the future, big with weighty results to the world, and
calculated to affect the whole history of missions in the
East. Anxious reflections are also sometimes awakened
in reference to the great commercial Powers of the West.
If Britain, inconvenienced by the diminution of the large
duties upon the import of tea, or alarmed at the more
permailent injury to her Indian revenue through the ex-
clusion of opium by the rival dynasty, should hereafter
he tempted to interpose her powerful arm, or if,. bribed
by promises of extended privileges which the passing
away of their hour of danger would lead the faithless
Manchows, as heretofore, to evade and elude, she should
hereafter employ the resources of a joint foreign inter-
vention to restore the sinking fortunes of the Imperial-
ists—then it may confidently be predicted that the civili-
sation of this vast empire will be hopelessly postponed,
and the conversion of this people to Christianity will (to
all human view) be indefinitely delayed. In such a de-
plorable event, this remarkable race—possessing within
their territory all the resources needful for great strides
in material civilisation, and exhibiting in their national
character moral and intellectual traits capable of giving
them a leading place among Asiatic empires--will be
trampled hopelessly :n the dust, and the pmans of Man-
chow triumph will be the melancholy dirge of a vast
nation having her liberties entombed amongst the dead,
and sinking into the lowest depths of political annihilation.
All present hope of China's elevation in the scale of
nations, morally, politically, and socially, appears to
centre around that little army of imperfectly-enlightened
religious warriors who now hold the ancient capital of
the empire, and before whose irresistible prowess the
forces of the former conquerors of China have been un-
able to stand in a single conflict of arms.
With the religious aspect of this native movement we
are more intimately concerned. And here it is needful
to exercise a prudential caution, neither expecting too
much of matured Christianity on the one hand, nor
identifying Protestant missions with it too indiscrimi-
natingly on the other. Tic rebel leaders are evidently
men in earnest. Their unsparing destruction of idols—
shocking the minds of the common people generally,
and, of the female population universally—would be ina- '
politic in men with less lofty aims than those of a re-
formation of the national religion, and strikingly exhibits ,
their own belief in their Divine mission to extirpate j
image-worship and to propagate the knowledge of the
one true God. Their compulsory prohibition of opium
smoking and their threatened exclusion of this contra-
band article from the country, preclude the supposition
of their being actuated by a selfish and calculating policy,
bringing them into danger of eventual collision with
foreigners, as well as pledging them to an onslaught on
the most cherished sensual habits of their countrymen.
They appear to be animated with all the religious fer-
vour which inspired Mahoinet in his course of victory,
and to be tinctured with the austere morality which
soured and incensed the Puritans against their dissolute
adversaries. To expect from men of whom we have as
yet no certain knowledge that any of them have been
baptized —. who have no spiritual teachers whose
knowledge of Christianity is derived more from the
Old Testament than the New—whose views of reli-
gious zeal and political propagandism appear to be
drawn rather from the warlike- example of Joshua
at the head of the armies of Israel than from the writings
and sufferings of Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ—to
expect from such a body of men a perfect exhibition of
the gentle, forgiving spirit of the Gospel, and a full
harvest of the fruits of the spirit of holiness, is to mea-
sure them prematurely-by the standard of well-instructed
Christians, and to apply to them the rule of long-estab-
lished Christian communities.
Amid all the error, the enthusiasm, the fanaticism,
and the intolerance which are perceptible among them,
they have given forth, in their public manifestoes to the
reading population of China, sentiments and views of
moral and religious truth such as have never before
sounded in the ears of this people.
It is a mark of no inconsiderable progress in this
people to find the former half of the book of Genesis, as
translated by the late Dr. Gutzlaff, republished in the
insurgent host and bearing the imprimatur of T'hae-
ping-wang as emperor : the words " Volume the First"
leading to the supposition that other portions of the
sacred record have been published or are in the course
of publication. it is no slight event in the history of
the world to find a Chinese claimant of imperial dignity
taking up the work of the British and Foreign Bible
Society and publishing the Holy Scriptures for his
followers.
The "New Calendar of the T'hae-ping dynasty" pro-
claims to tho people of China—hitherto the dupes of
necromancers or the slaves of good and evil omens,
and of lucky and unlucky days—that prayer for .he
Divine blessing sanctifies every day as alike for-
tunate :
"Whoever truly venerates our heavenly Father, the
supreme Lord and great God, is under the protection of
Heaven and can engage in• his duties whensover he

floated upon theirbosom the scattered and drifted wreck of
thousands of broken idols. The temples have been demo-
lished, the einblems of superstition have been expelled, an d
in cases of resistance the priests have been put to the sword.
The first principles of civil and religious freedom and of
constitutional government have yet to be imbibed from
the same fountain source whence they gained their
knowledge of the more prominent truths of the Bible.
The national polygamy of China seems as yet to have
received no check; and like the Israelitish monarchs of
old, the insurgent chiefs appear to have a plurality of
wives. They make an 'external submission to Christi-
anity a condition of adherence to their cause ; and all
the evil consequences of such a compulsory profession
may bo expected to prevail, in the hypocrisy or fanati-
cism of many among their multitude. The various styles
of writing observable in their books, and the extravagant
pretensions proclaimed in some of their edicts, lead to
the conclusion that probably two classes of Christian
professors are to be found in the movement—sincere en-
thusiasts, on the one hand, impelled by a conviction of
their divine mission to extirpate false religion from the
empire, and political adventurers, on the other hand,
less palpably under the influence of religious motives,
and willing to employ the arts of kingcraft or the pious
frauds of a middle-age Christianity for overawing the
multitude and banishing treachery from the host. Many
facts, however,4 which have been ascertained respecting
them, exclude the supposition that such adherents as the
latter- class form a general specimen of the religious
character of the insurgents. The lawless rabble of mem-
bers of the Triad Society—who have recently risen
against the local authorities and captured the cities of
Shanghae and Amoy, and whom we have seen to be
addicted to the practice of idol worship and opium
smoking—are in no way to be confounded or identified
with the character and cause of Thae-ping-wang. They
have endeavoured to conciliate foreigners in this city by
hoisting the flag of T'hae-ping-wang, and by issuing a
copy of one of his religious proclamations. But it is a
mere device intended to excite foreign sympathy.
A recent visitor, an Atneri can med ical missionary, relates
of the insurgent forces within the city ofChin-keang, that
among them the Sabbath was kept holy (although by an
astronomical error in their calendar, they kept as such
the seventh instead of the first day of the week)—public
religious services were regularly held—appointed offi-
cers, like Cromwell's generals of old, preached to the
troops—and the general signs of order, morality, and
decorum prevailed. At each dawn of day, the rebel
garrison assembled for prayer in the various military
guard-houses—and there, to the sound of native music,
they sang hymns, chants, and doxologies to the Trinity,
all kneeling devoutly in prayer to the Almighty. Could
we hope that even a small proportion of this vast mul-
titude operates as a leaven of religious sincerity, to give
a Christian character to the general mass, it would be a
spectacle partaking of the sublime, to witness tens of
thousands of native patriots banded together for a great
political and religious end ; and, where a little while ago
idolatry reigned uncontrolled, to hear doxologies of
praise and hymns of prayer ascending to the one true
God through the one Saviour of mankind.
Ere long the true character of this movement will be
open to a closer view. In the meantime we judge only
from published documents and authenticated facts ; and
such a mingled aspect leaves opposite impressions on
the mind—mucit that is hopeful combined with not a
little that is dubious and unsound. While there is much
that should render us indisposed to raise unduly the
hopes of the Christian Church at home—to sound the
notes, of premature triumph—or to identify the continued
stability, of Protestant missions with the fortunes of the
T'hae•ping dynasty, we may leave both sides of the
picture—its lights and shadows—its bright colours and
its sombre hues—its hopeful features and its dangercus
aspects, to the careful, observing mind ; premising only
that it requires a more than human foresight —it be-
longs only to the secret counsels of Him whose over-
ruling providence 'will assuredly direct the result--to
know and to predict in which direction the religious
bearings of this question may terminate. The mere
political problem seems likely soon to be solved; and
the dynasty of the Manchow Tartars is apparently fall-
ing or fallen to rise no more.-2'he Record.

NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

REAR-ADMIRAL CORRY'S SQUADRON.

A letter from Lisbon, dated the 28th December, says :
—"There has been an unfortunate affair here, of which I
will endeavour to give the leading particulars. On
Saturday (24th) the fleet, consisting of the Prince Re-
gent (flag), Duke of Wellington, St. Jean d'Acre, Im-
perieuse, Arrogant, Tribune, Desperate, Aniphion,
Valorous, and Cruiser, started under sail alone for a
cruise, intending to go as far as Vigo. The wind was foul
and unsteady, and the tide ebbing. The St. Jean d'Acre
was outside, but, not being ready, was not to start at
the moment. Thinking herself in the way, she was
moving towards the south shore to leave room for the
others. At this moment, with the tide and current
running like a mill-race (from the late heavy rains), the
wind failed; the Cruiser missed her stays, and was only
saved by an anchor when within a hand's breadth of the
shore. The Desperate also missed stays, and was swept
down upon the St. Jean d'Acre in a moment, and im-
paled upon her bowsprit. I thought she would have
been turned over by the force of the tide under the St.
Jean d'Acre's stern. By great good fortune their
anchors held when they were close to the shore ;
these two and the Valorous got steam up, and,
with the Cruiser, at last extricated the un-
happy Desperate, with the loss of mainmast, and
all the superincumbent rigging, mizentopmast, great in-
jury to topsides, upper deck beams, and various other
damages, but no harm done to the engine. While this
was going on the flag-ship nearly got on board one of the
frigates, lost an anchor (for which boats have been creep-
ing ever since), and got round only when her keel
touched (or did not, for it is a vigorously disputed point)
the ground. By this time the Duke of Wellington,
which works like a Cowes yacht, was well out, but the
Admiral made the recall and signalled to anchor, and the
cruise is deferred sine die. The Portuguese, as usual,
were most attentive in sending assistance and offering
the resources of their dockyards, but I doubt their find-
ing a spar, or the resources of ie fleet being able to do
more than put the Desperate in a temporary state of
efficiency. A court of inquiry was held on board the
Duke of Wellington by the Commodore, Captains Wat-
son and Yelverton, and no blame was attached to any
one. Miraculously and mercifully, no one was killed.
A man fell from the mainyard of the Valorous, struck
the side, and fell overboard--killed ; he was buried on
shore. Next day (Christmas-day) a man fell down the
flag-ship's hatchway and was killed ; he was also buried
on shore. The Valorous and Desperate, being the last
manned, are the martest ; the Duke of Wellington and,
Imperieuse give promise of being in very good order.
The flag-ship has rather fallen off since she changed
her commander. The St. Jean d'Acre lost her jibboom
with other trifling damages, and has gone to-day on a
month's cruise by herself, at the end of which she will
call at Gibraltar for provisions and return here."

PORTSMOUTH, JAN. 3.

The Dauntless, 33, screw, Captain A. P. Ryder.—This
powerful screw frigate, " true to her name," went out of
harbour at 11 a.m., in the face of a gale of wind from
E.S.E., to prove her powers at the measured mile, hav-
ing Capt. the Hon. F. T. Pelham on board. It was
feared at first that, owing to the driving snow-storm it
would be utterly impossible to sight the marks at Stoke's
Bay. Keen eyes overcame this apparent difficulty, and
her runs were as follow :

With and against the Tide.
With ... 10.034 1.643
Against ... 5.202 '
With•and against the Tide.
With 11.255 7 907
Against ... ... 4.220
Thus showing that even with her old boilers, in the face
of a gale of wind, she is equal to nearly eight knots an
hour. We cou:d have wished to have seen carried out
what we submitted many months since, that this power-
ful frigate should have new boilers to do her justice,
when we feel satisfied she would have accomplished 11.
However, patching up is the order of the day. The Daunt
less's draft forward is 15 feet 10 inches, and aft, 17 fee
4 inches. Her steam would not enable her to go fu
power.

First Step of Expansion.
Revolutions ...
Barometer ...

29
27
8 lb.

Steam ...