Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/110



Perhaps the most amazing feature of the rebellion was the apparent aim of the leader, Hung Siu-ch'üan, to set up a Christian kingdom in China. To read Hamberg's volume regarding his visions, written from material furnished by Hung Jin (Hung Jen-kan), later the Kanwang, we are led to think that the whole effort was purely religious and Christian, turned by nothing but imperial persecutions into an anti-dynastic rebellion. Towards the end of the rebellion "Lin Li," an Englishman, A. F. Lindley, who served under the Chungwang, accuses the nations of the West of the blackest treason to their faith in finally taking sides with the government against these Christians. He does not deny imperfections in their religious beliefs and practices, but attributes these practices, not to the fault but to the ignorance of the leaders. The same point of view meets us in Chinese books hostile to the movement. They see nothing in the rebellion but a religious crusade against the Manchu government based on a superstition created from foreign and Christian materials.