Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/120

100 from Disease. This attempt on the part of Yang to identify himself with the Holy Ghost encroached on the place Hung held by reason of his earlier visions and was accompanied by treasonable political actions. But it helps us to understand Hung's position, which was that God as Father, and Jesus as elder brother, had prerogatives on which a younger brother must not encroach, but that he was nevertheless more than mortal man. This identification of himself with the heavenly family did not raise troublesome questions of speculative theology; there is no argument about the possibility of holding such a relationship: he holds it as a matter of faith and conviction.

Here we see the fruit of an unguided Confucian mind working on materials recorded in the Bible, which Hung accepted literally and turned to his own purposes. As he progresses in his thought he finds himself farther and farther away from the teachings of the Protestant Christianity with which he had first come into contact at Canton. He is a prophet and son of God in his own right; he is willing to accept little or no guidance from the teachers of the foreign faith, though he must recognize that they represent the worship of the same God. It is for them to come to him for enlightenment, for he has come direct