taineers; among whom they had, at starting, proposed to propagate the new faith. But knowing nothing of their language (the Gaelic of China) they wandered helplessly among the hills for four days till they fell in with a Chinese named Keang settled there as a teacher of his own language. He entertained them hospitably and professed belief in their doctrines. Finding it impossible to act directly on the mountaineers, Hung sew tseuen and Fung yun san left a few tracts with Keang for distribution to such as had learned the Chinese language and then set out in search of Wang, a relative of the former, whose house they reached about the month of June, at "Valley Home" in the Kwei district, in the south of the Kwang se province. They remained here for five months, during which they made upwards of a hundred converts. Fearing to become burthensome on Hung sew tseuen's relative, Fung yun san left with the intention of returning home; but meeting, before he had proceeded two or three days on his journey, with some workmen he knew, his desire to propagate his new faith induced him to accompany them to "Thistle mount" in the Kwei ping district (department of Tsin chow) where he assisted them in their occupation of carrying earth. Ten of them soon became his converts; and having introduced him to the notice of their employer, the latter engaged him as a teacher, and was shortly after himself baptized. Fung yun san was thus enabled to remain several years in the neighbourhood, preaching with great zeal and such success that whole families of various surnames and clans were baptized, formed congregations among themselves and became extensively known. under the name of the "Society of God-worshippers." It was this society which subsequently formed the strength of the religious political rebellion that now shakes the Imperial Throne; though in its founder, the earth carrier, Fung yun san, I believe we have at once the most zealous and most disinterested preacher of the new faith in its soberest form.

A month after the departure of Fung yun san, Hung sew tseuen also left for his native district in Kwang tung, on reaching which he was surprised to find the former had not returned. Mr. Hamberg's book says that Hung sew tseuen was called to account by the mother and wife of the friend he had taken "on so perilous a journey," they being "highly displeased at his return without him and without any knowledge of his present circumstances." This is one of the many incidental proofs of the truthfulness of Mr. Hamberg's informant. The distance from the home of Fung yun san, in the Hwa district, to the scene of his labours, in the Kwei ping district, is but 200 miles in a straight line, and probably not over 300 by road. But to a poor traveller the distance in time is fully 20 days; while the remoteness, as to means of communication by writing, is something of which the English reader can form to himself no conception, even by going back to the days of our first horse posts. In China the government posts carry official despatches only. Private posts (resembling our country parcel carriers) do exist, but only along great highways or between very large cities. As for letters from one out of the way village in an out of the way district, to a similar locality 300 miles off, they can only be sent when some inhabitant of the one place happens to go to the other. Accordingly we find that Fung yun san's family do not appear to have heard of him again till he himself returned in 1848, after some four and a half years' absence.

In the mean time Hung sew tseuen remained in Kwang tung, preaching and writing essays, discourses and odes on religious subjects. During 1845 and 1846 his native district was the scene of his labours. About the end of 1846 he learned from a person connected with the establishment of Mr. Roberts, an American missionary at Canton, that the latter was preaching there. That foreign missionaries were preaching in Canton must however have been known to him before.

It is a fact of considerable significance, that he had

not previously, nor did still now, attempt to put himself into communication with them. In April 1847, however, an

event took place that drew the attention of the whole department and even the whole province on foreigners. The British Plenipotentiary Sir John Davis, suddenly left Hong Kong with a small naval and military force, entered the river, took all the forts which guard it, and, after spiking 827 pieces of artillery, established himself in military occupation of the foreign settlement at the provincial capital. One of his objects was to insist on the immediate possession of land as a site for warehouses to which we were entitled by treaty, but which we had never received. An erroneous notion of the nature of this demand getting abroad, the rural population not only in the immediate neighbourhood of Canton, but up to the borders of Hung sew tseuen's district, formed themselves into bands of volunteers to resist what they held to be a step in the prosecution of a design to seize their country. This drew general attention as well to the plans of foreigners, as to the apparent inability of the Manchoo Government to resist people entertaining such plans. Within a month or six weeks afterwards we find Hung sew tseuen studying the foreign Scriptures at Mr. Roberts's establishment; and it would appear that from this period the idea occasionally crossed his mind in a vague way that the patriotic day dreams of his youth might possibly have a chance of realization. But he must have been silly to a degree altogether disproved by his subsequent proceedings and career, had he then allowed himself to indulge in a distinct intention of trying to overturn the existing government. So far from this being the case, we find that he, after a two months' study with Mr. Roberts, appears to have inclined to the belief that it was as a preacher under the direction of foreigners that he was to prosecute his "mission" of religious reformer. He applied for baptism, and prompted by the insidious advice of a countryman on the establishment who feared him as a rival, also for a monthly support. The latter request naturally drew a

refusal of the former from Mr. Roberts; who had observed nothing in the applicant to distinguish him from other men of the class. Hung sew tseuen then left for Kwang se, and it is worthy of note, as exemplifying the manner in which circumstances affecting individuals may influence religious institutions, that in the religious publications of the rebels obtained from them at Nanking six years after this, new converts are taught how to baptize themselves.*

On reaching the house of his relative Wang, in the Kwei district, Hung sew tseuen learned of the society of Godworshippers established in the Kwei ping district by Fung yun san, whom he immediately joined at that place. The congregation soon amounted to upwards of two thousand in the Kwei ping district; from whence the new faith rapidly spread in the neighbouring districts of Ping nan, Woo seuen, Seang, Kwei, Poh pih, &c., and in the adjoining department of Woo chow. Graduates of the first and second degree (bachelors and licentiates) as well as men of influence, either from their wealth, or their position as acknowledged heads of families, were among the number of converts.† Though Fung yun san was the founder of the society of Godworshippers, Hung sew tseuen's superiority was acknowledged by all. The belief in his divine mission, now confirmed to himself by prospects of success, naturally caused him to assume a tone of authority which was supported by his greater knowledge of the Scriptures, acquired at Canton;

It is at the same time a proof of the superiority of Hung sew tseuen's nature, that he seems to have fully recognised the reasonableness, on Mr. Roberts' part, of the really unfounded suspicions with which his pecuniary demand had been regarded; and retained in his mind only a grateful sense of the treatment and instruction received. For at Nanking the most active of the more military leaders, the northern Prince, who had never seen any foreigner till I found him there, spoke to me about Mr. Roberts with much interest and respect merely in consequence of the account which had been given of him by the then "Heavenly Prince," Hung sew tseuen.

At this period we find already the names of Yang sew tsing, Seaou chaou hwuy, Wei ching, and Shih ta kae the men who are now with Hung sew tseuen and Fung yun san the leaders of the insurgents under the title of "Princes."

and by the fact that he was the original converter of Fung yun san himself. Hence he was better able to introduce a rigid discipline among the variety of people who joined the congregations. Let us now endeavour to arrive at some idea of the causes which led to the rapid rise and increase of these. That religious movements are indebted for their ultimate success mainly to the mental perception and appreciation, on the part of conformers, of better beliefs and stricter practice, need not be insisted on. This is the case whether we speak of the acceptance of new doctrines-of conversion properor of the substitution of a living, spiritual acceptance and practice, for a merely intellectual submission or formal observance; which is called "a revival" when we speak of communities, and "getting religious" when an individual is the subject alluded to. But I think it not uninstructive to bear in mind here that the origination, if not ultimate triumph of religious movements, whether conversions or revivals, rests largely on the merely sympathetic affections. A cheerfully disposed man steps suddenly into the company of people all for the moment either sad or grave. They say not a word to him of the cause; they do not even tell him that they are sad or grave, and the only indication he has of their mental state is the very imperfect one afforded by the expression of their faces and their attitudes, by the purely physical positions of their features and limbs. Nevertheless the spirit of sadness or of gravity communicates itself to him, and he too becomes sad or grave. So also when the indication of the mental state of others, is conveyed by the ear alone; as when a person hears one or two others in an adjoining room laugh heartily. He immediately joins without having the least notion of the original cause of the laughter. Nay more, the sympathetic faculty is brought into operation without any objective reality as a cause. Let the reader imagine himself in the position just described, and he will be seized with the spirit of merriment. Human beings are, in short, prone to be affected by any emotion which they think they perceive in