God's Chinese Son (36 page)
Since the days of T'ang, Yu, and the Three Dynasties, the sages of all ages have been sustaining the traditional culture and emphasizing the order of human relationships. Hence, ruler and officials, father and children, high and low, honored and humble, were as orderly in their respective positions as hat and shoes which can never be placed upside down. Now, the Yueh [Taiping] bandits steal some dregs of foreign barbarians and adhere to the religion of God; from their fake king and fake ministers down to the soldiers and menial servants, they address one another as brothers, alleging that only Heaven can be called father. Aside from this, all the fathers of the people are brothers and all the mothers are sisters. The farmers cannot cultivate their own fields to pay taxes, because it is said that all the land belongs to the Heavenly King. The merchants cannot do their own business to make profits, because it is said that all the commodities belong to the Heavenly King. The scholars cannot read the classics of Confucius, but they have others called the doctrines of Jesus and the book of the New Testament.
In short, the moral system, ethical relationships, cultural inheritance, and social institutions and statutes of the past several thousand years in China are at once all swept away. This is not only a calamity in our great Qing Dynasty but is, in fact, the most extraordinary calamity since the creation of the universe, and that is what Confucius and Mencius are crying bitterly
about in the nether world. How can all those who study books and know the characters sit comfortably with hands in sleeves without thinking of doing something about it?
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Yang's reassertion of certain traditional Chinese values overlaps with the Taiping discovery of a plot to open the gates of Nanjing secretly to the Qing forces encamped outside. The leader of this conspiracy, Zhang Bingyuan, is a holder of the licentiate's degree that Hong had failed to pass, an alert and inventive man, who by the time his plot is discovered in March 1854, has recruited in person and through intermediaries, an estimated six thousand disaffected soldiers and Nanjing residents. His plan secretly to open one of the eastern city gates at dawn so the Qing troops can storm inside is foiled only by the dilatoriness and suspicions of ambush by the Qing commander. There is also a disastrous muddle in which one party plans its armed link according to the Taiping calendar while the other calculates according to the traditional Qing calendar; since the two calendars use the same terms for dates that are in fact six days apart, the mistake is discovered only when it is too late.
Yang's subsequent uses of the power he has wrung from Hong Xiuquan in December 1853—to be the ultimate arbiter of death sentences in legal cases—is given ironic substance by Zhang Bingyuan's fatal subtlety. For when Zhang is first arrested, and charged with attempted treason by a Taiping informer, he convincingly insists the informer is an opium addict, who acted as he did because he was afraid that Zhang would turn him over to the authorities. For this crime the informer is executed on Yang's orders before all his charges against Zhang have been substantiated. When the main plot is unraveled and Zhang is interrogated by Yang's agents, he blithely lies again, naming thirty-four of the most talented Taiping military officers as his co-conspirators. Only when all thirty-four have been summarily executed do the Taiping leaders find they have been duped into doing themselves much of what Zhang himself had hoped to achieve. The final execution of Zhang can not atone for all these Taiping dead.
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The contradictions in Taiping text and policy are now so pronounced that they can hardly be concealed. But it is not only on Confucian ground that the battle is being joined. In the biblical world as well tensions and ambiguities are pressing to the fore. Hong Xiuquan, as God's second son and Jesus' closest younger brother, obviously has a kind of primacy over Yang as "fourth brother." Yet with Xiao Chaogui now long dead and the voice of Jesus stilled, Yang's double claims as voice of God and "Comforter and Wind of the Holy Spirit" give him two places in the structure of the Christian Trinity, while Hong has consistently and consciously denied the nearness of any force to God Himself. Just as Jesus himself is lesser than his father, so is the Comforter and Wind of the Holy Spirit only an emanation rather than an equal force. Moreover, though other Taiping leaders have traveled up to Heaven, and met at intervals with the Father, Son, and others in the holy families, it is Hong Xiuquan's revelation of 1837 that is the decisive one, with his vision of the golden bearded God in black dragon robe, and his special nearness to Jesus' wife and children, his elder sister-in-law, and his son Tiangui's first cousins. But how can such claims be balanced or evaluated in all their complexity, since no one in the Taiping leadership has training in theology, and Issachar Roberts has been banned from visiting the Heavenly Capital by the American commissioner, punctilious about the neutrality of the United States in the current war?
Providence, which works in many ways, gives Yang an opportunity to test the waters. It is the British who occasion the opportunity. Frustrated by their experiences with the
Hermes
in 1853, they have sent no more formal diplomatic visits. But in late June 1854 they can no longer contain their curiosity. Claiming the need for the British in Shanghai "to ascertain whether a supply of coals can be provided for the public service" from the Taiping, since coal is rumored to be stored in Wuhu, which has been intermittently under Taiping control, the British minister sends a small mission under Captain Mellersh of the
Rattler
to investigate the options. The two junior British diplomats assigned to the mission are further instructed to find out everything they can about the current state of Taiping life and belief—"their political views, their forms of government, their religious books, creeds and observances, their domestic and social habits, and all facts respecting them which seem entitled to notice."
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Reaching Nanjing on June 20, 1854, the British are denied permission to enter the city or its suburbs, and no Taiping come to their ship. Frustrated, they submit to Yang, the East King, thirty questions on a wide variety of topics—trade prospects, troop numbers, laws, tariffs, initiation rites, examinations, the common treasury, separation of males from females, opium prohibitions, ranks of nobility—and two intrusive ones on a matter of different import: what does it mean when Hong Xiuquan says he is Jesus' younger brother; and why, among his many titles, does the East King include those of "Comforter" and "Holy Ghost"? Yang's answer comes promptly, in a large yellow envelope, one foot wide and eighteen inches long. Though often evasive or elliptical, on the questions relating to Hong's identity and his own titles he is more direct, and the British interpreter at once translates Yang's answers:
To your enquiry (as to whether and why I received the appellation of "the Comforter," "the Holy Ghost" and as to the meaning of the titles "Honae Teacher" and "Redeemer from Disease") I reply, that the Heavenly Father appeared upon earth and declared it as his sacred will that the Eastern Prince should redeem the people of all nations upon earth from their diseases, and that the Holy Ghost should enlighten all their blindness. The Heavenly Father has now pointed out the Eastern Prince as the Holy Ghost, and therefore given him the title of "Comforter, Holy Ghost, Honae Teacher and the Lord who redeems from disease," so that all the nations of the earth may know the confidence placed in me by the Heavenly Father in his mercy....
To your enquiry (whether you are to infer by the designation given to Jesus of Celestial Elder Brother and that given to the Celestial King of Second Elder Brother, that the latter is actually the child of God, or that he is so only by allegory) I reply, that the Celestial King is the second son of God, truly declared to be by the Divine Will of God. The Celestial King likewise ascended up to Heaven in his own person and there again and again received the distinct commands of God to the effect that he was the Heavenly Father's second son and the true sovereign of the myriad nations of the globe. Of this we possess indubitable proof.
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In return, Yang poses fifty questions of his own to Captain Mellersh; in their range and nature, the first thirty of them show with great clarity the questions that are troubling the Taiping Celestial Court about their heavenly claims. The East King writes:
The questions I have to ask are these—
You nations having worshipped God for so long a time, does any one
among you know,
1.
How tall God is, or how broad?
2.
What his appearance or colour is?
3.
How large his abdomen is?
4.
What kind of beard he grows?
5.
What colour his beard is?
6.
How long his beard is?
7.
What cap he wears?
8.
What kind of clothes he wears?
9.
Whether his first wife was the Celestial Mother, the same that brought forth the Celestial Elder Brother Jesus?
10.
Whether he has had any other son born to him since the birth of Jesus his first born?
11.
Whether he has had but one son, or whether, like us mortals, a great many sons?
12.
Whether he is able to compose verse?
13.
How rapidly can he compose verse?
14.
How fierce his disposition is?
15.
How great his liberality is?
You nations having worshipped God and Jesus for so long a time, does any one among you know,
16.
How tall Jesus is, or how broad?
17.
What his appearance or colour is?
18.
What kind of beard he grows?
19.
Of what colour his beard is?
20.
What kind of cap and clothes he wears?
21.
Whether his first wife was our elder sister?
22.
How many children he has had?
23.
Of what age is his eldest son?
24.
How many daughters has he had?
25.
Of what age is his eldest daughter?
26.
How many grandsons has God at this moment?
27.
How many granddaughters has God at this moment?
28.
How many heavens are there?
29.
Whether all the Heavens are of equal height?
30.
What the highest Heaven is like?
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The remaining twenty of Yang's questions refer to specific problems of interpretation of New Testament passages, to the role of the "Comforter," to the nature of the Taiping mandate from God to destroy the Manchus, and the significance of Britain's alleged stance of neutrality. With a sharper touch, in the fiftieth question Yang notes, "You have the audacity to presume to impose upon us in spite of ourselves, and without any sense of propriety to represent that your object in coming to the Celestial Kingdom is the desire to get coals.'"
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The small group of foreigners on the
Rattler
—none of whom has theological training either—form what they sardonically call "a synod" with Captain Mellersh for the purpose of answering Yang as well as they can, locating apposite passages to answer specific points, and moving thoroughly through all fifty of his questions. For questions one to eight, the answer is that God has neither height nor breadth. On nine to eleven, God as spirit does not "marry," and has no son but Jesus. For twelve to fifteen, God is always merciful, and nothing to Him is impossible. On sixteen to twenty, the New Testament gives no information. On twenty- one to twenty-seven, references to the "marriage of the Lamb" as found in Revelation can only be understood figuratively, as the "union of believers with Christ." Twenty-eight to thirty are unknowable.
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But though these answers to the specific questions are courteous and thorough, the British "synod" 's summary of their conclusions and reflections reads harshly indeed to Yang:
In reference to your closing declarations, such as that God has specially commissioned you and your people to exterminate the imps—that your sovereign is God's own son, and the uterine brother of the Celestial Elder Brother—that he is the true sovereign of all nations—that you, the Eastern King, are appointed by God to the office of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter—I think it right to state to you distinctly that we place no faith in any one of your dogmas to this effect, and can subscribe to none of them. We believe only what is revealed to us in the Old and New Testaments, namely, that God the Father is the creator and Lord of all things—that Jesus is his only begotten son—that he came down into the world and became flesh— that he died on the cross to redeem us from our sins—that after three days he rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where he is ever one with God—-that he will appear once again hereafter to judge the world— that those who believe in him will be saved—and that those who do not believe in him will be lost—that the Holy Ghost is also one with God—that he has already been manifested among men, namely, shortly after the ascension of our Lord—that now those who pray for his influence will receive him in their hearts and be renewed thereby—and that these three, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, are the one and true God.
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