nant) Prince of Darkness acted with extreme malice; this is the serpent devil. However, the Almighty God, who is infinite in skill and power, taught his Son [the rebel chieftain] how to put down that fiend, and in the contest with him, to show him no mercy. Upon this that red-eyed demon's courage cooled. [The rebel chief] God's Son then fought and conquered him; and, after this, returned to heaven, where the Mighty Supreme conferred vast powers on him. But the Mighty God, who still pitied the world as before, gave orders to his own Son [the rebel chief] to descend to the lower world, and in conducting him down said to him, "Fear no evil, for I am with thee "to manage all things." And when he [the rebel chief] was in deep trouble in the year 1848, the Supreme God again appeared, bringing Jesus along with him into the world. On this occasion he gave his Son [the rebel chief] instructions how he should bear his heavy duties. God appointed him to continue for ever and ever, and (gave him authority) to defeat all evil machinations, to display his majesty and might, to judge mankind, to separate the wicked and the righteous, to allot to the one class the miseries of hell, and to assign to the other the joys of heaven. As heaven is superintending all matters, and as heaven is lending its support and aid, Oh, all ye people under heaven, together come and pay homage to this monarch!'

It is impossible to read these assumptions of superhuman power and of divine authority, without feeling that Hungsiutsiuen deserves to be classed among the grossest fanatics or impostors who have appeared in the world, and that all attempts to palliate his frauds are futile and mistaken. Is his assumption of being in a peculiar sense the second Son of God,'-of having many visions and divine revelations, or of holding repeated intercourse with the Divine Being, in colloquies and special interviews, but a venial offence? Is his claim to universal homage, on the plea that he has been anointed to his sacred kingship by the hands of God, and has received direct orders to that effect from the lips of the Eternal, to be regarded merely as one of his tolerabiles ineptiæ'? Can the good though imperfect passages in his writings be brought forward as outshining those that are thick with darkness and full of blustering blasphemy? It is true, he has the reputation of being a fierce iconoclast, he publishes some Christian truths, and is said to distribute portions of our Scriptures: but his imperfect acquaintance with the religion of Jesus, is not sufficient to counterbalance the frightful pretensions which are unblushingly made throughout his own books and proclamations.

The only consistent and straightforward explanation of the case is to put the chief of this movement down as in every respect a Pretender. It has been very positively affirmed by

some writers and speakers, that, as far as Hungsiutsiuen and his ⚫ followers are concerned, the insurrection originated in religious persecution.' Strange enough, however, there is not a word in their writings, which we have examined, to suggest the idea or encourage the statement, that intolerance on the part of the government, against a people zealous for the Christian faith, was the moving cause of the rebellion.

There is little doubt but the movement was from the first, in its chief aim and objects, political, or, more properly, a grasping at power and property. A form of religion was invented as a mere accessory, and this profession of something less than a semi-christianity has been assumed to facilitate their ambitious projects. Of the various insurrections (some very limited) that have disturbed the interior of China under the present dynasty, most of them have had some religious novelty, or superstitious element introduced as an aid to invest them with interest and importance. The insurgents of Kwangsee have, strangely enough, gone to foreign sources for a religious name to their rebellious designs. But these leaders could not be ignorant of the remarkable doings and influence of the western nations, during the last fifteen years, especially in warfare; they must be aware that the superior tactics and power of foreigners in commerce and in arms are accounted for by their countrymen on the ground that foreigners belong to (the Yesoo Kiau), the religion of Jesus;' and it is more than probable that the grand chieftain of this expedition has hoped that, by the infusion of this religious system, with its novel tenets, practices, and writings, into his administration, he might achieve similarly wide and wonderful successes, as those by which western people have recently excited the attention, dread, and respect of the native Chinese. In Mr. Hamberg's notices of the early history of the insurrectionary leader, derived from the relatives of the chief, we find that when the Christian tracts fell into his hands, which contained many portions of the Holy Scriptures,

'He often applied the pronoun "you" or "he" to himself when the meaning suited his views, as he considered the whole of these tracts specially written for him and given him from heaven. Often when he observed the word Tsuen* (whole, all, complete) he thought his own name was referred to He liked exceedingly the 19th and 33rd Psalms, which he used to recite in a loud voice. The third verse he would understand, "Their voice is gone out to the whole "world (the country of Tsiuen;") the ninth and tenth verses he would

* Tsiuen is one part of his name, Hungsiutsiuen.

read, instead of "altogether righteous," "Tsiuen is righteous, more "to be desired than gold." The twelfth verse again he would read, "Who can understand, so as Tsiuen, his errors," and so on.'

Whether the Imperial Government succeeds in crushing this rebellion, or whether the final success of the Taiping government is the result, it is impossible not to foresee serious and novel difficulties before the missionary in the propagation of Christianity in China, altogether unexpected by those whose favourable conclusions from this insurrection have been over sanguine and hasty. The movement has identified itself from the outset with a new religion, tainted with egregious errors in doctrine and practice, which are not set up as in opposition to truth, but mixed up with facts and tenets of indisputable verity and importance. To aggravate the evil, this extraordinary jumble of truth and error is adopted in the creed and ritual of a new religion, to be founded and established by law as national. What reception then will such a people give to the pure gospel, or the messengers that carry it to them? Is it to be expected that the professors of these strange and mixed dogmas, when elated with success, and confident of heavenly honours, as the reward of their valour in battle with the Mantchoo soldiery, will listen with patience to statements by the minister of Christ regarding heaven and the way to heaven, opposed to the fanatical and sanguinary opinions of the creed, in these words of their leader's manifesto,

High Heaven has commissioned you to kill the impish fiends,

Our heavenly Father and celestial elder Brother have their eyes upon

Let the male and female officers all grasp the sword, and look to ot/t heaven,

Where there are golden tiles and golden houses, all glorious to

In heaven above you may enjoy happiness and dignity in the ex

The very meanest and smallest will be clothed in silks and satins ; The males will be adorned with dragon-embroidered robes, and the females with flowers.'

At first sight this religious system appeared to be tinged with the traditions, if not with the principles, of our own faith; but on more accurate investigation this gross and blasphemous imposture proves to be only another instance of those delusions which have so often been made the disguise and the instrument of ambition and intolerance. Yet if, as is probable, the cause of the Pretender fails, and his followers are dispersed, it

may be feared that the real teachers and disciples of Christianity will suffer from the persecution which will follow the defeat of so formidable a sedition and so daring a heresy.

The history of modern Europe is not altogether devoid of examples of similar outbreaks of religious and social fanaticism. The mystical sects which swept over the Continent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries left no vestiges of their tenets, and the sanguinary traces of their excesses have long since disappeared: but they were, unquestionably, eruptions of human resentment against the stern institutions of the feudal system, the intolerable condition of society, and the exactions of a rapacious and superstitious clergy. The great outbreak of the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century was a still more conspicuous example of the same tendency; and the attributes with which the fanatics of Munster invested their prophet remind us in many particulars of the inordinate and blasphemous pretensions of Tai-ping. There is the same confusion of Christian traditions with human extravagance-the same incentives to the passions, the same menace against the rights of property, and the sanctity of marriage- the same claim to direct inspiration from the Deity. Under different climates, amidst different races, and in different ages, the course of fanaticism is marked by the same phenomena, for it acts upon the universal credulity and the sufferings of mankind: but the reign of these evils is transient; and we entertain a hope that they prepare the way for more permanent improvements in the state of society, and for purer views of religious truth.

But this extraordinary revolution has not yet been consummated, nor is there much prospect, according to the information we at present possess, of the Kwangsee rebels winning the prize. Vincit qui patitur. For a revolution to be effective in China, effective in reforming every branch of the government and in improving all classes of the people we believe it will have to call in the aid and the influence of the foreigner, The limited freedom, which has been secured to foreign visitors on the soil of China during the past twelve years, is itself a change which, as we have already shown, has probably had no small influence on the country, and there is reason to hope that its results are not unwelcome to the people. We have before us the correspondence of an honoured and laborious missionary in China, from which it appears that since the outbreaking of these troubles, the mandarin authorities themselves have a growing disposition to assist our countrymen in their excursions inland. It is stated that the members of our mission have lately taken to itinerating into the country,

'sometimes to the distance of one or two hundred miles. In ⚫ all these excursions we have gone in the foreign dress, sporting the English flag and preaching openly wherever we went. In almost all our journies, we have fallen in with mandarins 'who have shown no obstacles in our way, and in some instances they have hospitably entertained us, and helped us on our journey with coolies and sedans, both to and from the places of our destination. They seem to have come to the conclusion that "the foreigners do no harm, that it is no use to prevent them 'getting into the country, and that the best plan is to take 'them by the hand and give them guides and guards. Be the ' reason what it may, fear or love, we are helped on our way, ' and by this means the country is getting opened more effec'tually than could be done by plenipos or generals.' If China be thrown open to foreign intercourse, whether by Imperialists

Insurgents, Lazarists or Baptist missionaries, it will be a long stride towards self-dependence and general advancement.

ART. III. Census of Great Britain, 1851.

Education.

England and Wales. Report and Tables. London: 1854. FOR the purposes of the Census, England and Wales were

divided into 30,610 separate plots or districts, each of which was the sphere of an Enumerator, who in his turn was under the direction of a Registrar of Births and Deaths, of whom there are 2190 in England and Wales. The Census was made under the authority of an Act of Parliament. The information which it supplies as to the statistics of religious worship and of education was not, however, collected under the authority of that Act, in the same sense in which the population returns were. The penal sections of the Act were found to be inapplicable to it; and it is to be received as the result of inquiries instituted by the Registrar-General through the medium of the Enumerators of the Census, but answered voluntarily by the parties to whom these inquiries were addressed. The Enumerators were directed to prepare, in the week preceding the 30th of March, 1851, lists of all public and private schools; specifying the schoolmasters, or other official persons competent to give information in respect to them; and they were to deliver to such persons in the course of that week, schedules of inquiries provided for that purpose; collecting such schedules in the course of their rounds on the Census-day, Monday, the 31st of March, 1851. When the schedules so returned had been