God's Chinese Son (45 page)

Issachar Roberts finally reaches Nanjing on October 13, 1860, while Hong Xiuquan dreams of vanquishing the demon dogs and tigers. With Roberts' arrival, many hopes and thoughts converge. It is now thirteen years since Hong Rengan and Hong Xiuquan together visited Roberts' chapel in Canton.
¹
It is over eleven years since Hong Xiuquan, as if puzzled by Roberts' refusal to give him the rites of baptism, asked Jesus through the mouth of Xiao Chaogui, whether "the foreigner Roberts has a truly sincere heart or not" and received the answer from Jesus that "his heart is indeed sincere, you are connected together."
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It is over seven years since Hong Xiuquan, on first entering into his Heavenly Capital, sent a trusted emissary to Canton in person, to invite Roberts to visit Nanjing and preach there to the Taiping faithful.
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It is close to two years since Hong Xiuquan, seeking to woo Lord Elgin to his cause, asked if Roberts was with Elgin on the mission, and met with no reply.
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And it is a little over a year since Hong Rengan, in his elaborate memorandum, mentioned to his Heavenly King that just as newly developed weapons of war can be purchased to strengthen the Heavenly Kingdom, so is it in the best interests of the Taiping to let certain foreigners into their domains. Instructors from countries that are "advanced in technical skills" and have "elaborate insti­tutions" should be encouraged to enter Taiping areas, along with foreign missionaries, as long as they offer their advice to the kingdom as a whole and do not "slander" the Taiping ways.
⁵

Roberts' arrival in Nanjing, in turn, is made possible only by a concate­nation of events. One is the result of Lord Elgin's violence in Peking, which has forced the emperor to yield new treaty rights that will let for­eigners travel freely in the interior of China, whether to trade or to preach the gospel. Another is the eastern campaign, which, even if failing to seize Shanghai, by making the city of Suzhou a Taiping bastion has made travel from Shanghai comparatively easy.
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And Roberts himself, though not exactly for the happiest of reasons, is for a time free of the family and financial problems that have dogged his life for years: his wife, weakened by illness and alienated from Roberts, has insisted on living in the United States with their two children; his first Chinese assistant has died and the second, after grave mistreatment, has abandoned him; and years of tena­cious legal wrangling have finally led exhausted Qing officials to grant the perennially bankrupt Roberts $5,200 in restitution for his Canton home and chapel, which have twice been looted by Chinese mobs.
⁷

Hong Xiuquan initially receives Roberts almost as rapturously as he received Hong Rengan eighteen months before. Shortly after his arrival, Hong grandly promises freedom of worship to all Christians in his domain. He endorses Roberts' appeals for more Protestant missionaries to come to Nanjing, so that there can be eighteen new chapels in the city, and as many as two to three thousand more outside the walls. Seeing himself as "
the
pioneer" in this venture, Roberts writes to his friends of the great opportunity now offered to the Baptists to reach out to the thirty million souls who live in the six provinces more or less controlled by the Taiping forces. Success in this "will doubtless prove the surprise and admiration of Christendom."
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Hong announces that Roberts will be his minister of foreign policy and of justice in all cases involving foreigners. He gives him free lodgings— two rooms, upstairs, not far from his own palace—and food and a stipend. He offers Roberts three new wives—Roberts declines the offer—but when Hong offers him Taiping clothes, Roberts accepts. A missionary who sees him in Nanjing writes that Roberts looks resplendent, "robed in Taiping costume, a blue satin fur gown, and yellow embroidered jacket over it, with red hood, and satin boots."
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Yet the only personal meeting Roberts has with his former baptismal candidate is disconcerting: the pomp of the moment in Hong's palace is undeniable; the honor to a foreign visitor, unique in Taiping history, is patent; and Hong seems imposing to Roberts—"a much finer-looking man than I thought he was. Large, well-made, well-featured, with fine black moustaches which set off considerably, and a fine voice."
¹⁰
But the retinue makes it clear to Roberts that he should kneel in Hong's presence, and when he refuses he is tricked into doing so by the sudden shouted command that all present should now kneel in the honor of the Lord— which Roberts follows automatically, till he realizes it is Hong who is being knelt to. Their hour-long conversation is interrupted several times by the assembled Taiping leaders' further kneeling and chanting in Hong's honor. Roberts now stands throughout these genuflections— indeed he is never invited to be seated, the only one besides the Heavenly King so honored being his son Tiangui. And when Hong invites Roberts to dine, he means with the other kings but not with him."

Hong Xiuquan makes it clear that the Christianity he expects Roberts to preach is Taiping Christianity, with its own special revelations; to Rob­erts, who has come to Nanjing in hopes of purifying Hong's religion of its misconceptions, this is a bitter blow. Roberts' secret hope has been to replace the Gutzlaff version of the King James Bible, used by the Taiping, with the American Baptist Bible of Goddard, which a group of Baptist co-workers have already translated into Chinese. Roberts himself has pre­pared an annotated version of Luke's Gospel for Hong, while two of his Baptist colleagues have annotated Acts and Romans.
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Less serious, but also dispiriting, is the curious but intrusive rule that Roberts may have no visiting foreigners to stay with him in his small Nanjing residence. And yet just as Roberts begins to grow most guarded, convinced that Nanjing is run by martial law, with only a glimmering of truth in its so-called Christian teachings, and no clear sense of its future fate, he is struck favor­ably and afresh by the Taiping's stated need for a church, their desire for true preachers, their determination on the battlefield, their openness, and Hong's willingness to debate his stands.
¹³

It is hard for Nanjing visitors not to be moved by the outdoor services on one of the open plots of land in the center of Nanjing, when a great crowd assembles on the Sabbath day, while "a sea of flags and streamers, red, yellow, white and green, floated in the wind over them," to listen to the two Taiping preachers appointed for that day. The Taiping preachers, standing in their glittering yellow coronets on a rostrum that itself is raised upon a great square platform, address the throng in turn, one on the topic of a soldier's duties, love of family and attention to prayer, one on the reason for excluding traders from the city and on the need for charity toward the elderly and destitute. Then, as each preacher himself kneels on the rostrum, the congregation also kneels, and prays together as a group, in perfect silence. Once the Taiping service is over, Roberts is free to preach his own sermons, on what he considers "the central truths of Christianity," either in the Cantonese dialect that he already knows or in the Nanjing dialect he is studying daily to acquire. Clearly much work still lies ahead, for when a soldier, chosen at random, is asked, "Who is the Holy Spirit?" he replies, "The Eastern King."
¹⁴

Roberts begins to doubt that he can convert Hong to the truest mean­ings of his faith, but Hong never despairs of converting Roberts, writing in a letter to the American Baptist:

Add to your faith. Do not suppose that I am deceived. I am the one saviour of the chosen people. Why do you feel uncertain of the fact of divine com­munications to me? When Joshua formerly destroyed the enemies of God, the sun and moon stood still. When Abraham sat under the oak, three men stood by him. Carefully think of all this. Do you become conscious of it? Do you believe? I am grieved at heart, having written very many edicts on these matters, and all men being with me as one family. When the Shield King came to the capital, he also had a revelation. To recognise these divine com­munications is better than being baptized ten thousand times. Blessed are they that watch. Your Father, your Lord, comes to you as a thief, and at a time when you know not. He that believeth shall be saved. You will see greater things than these. Respect this.
¹⁵

The British missionary Joseph Edkins, a scholar of fluid dynamics and Milton's
Paradise Lost
as well as of biblical theology, and friend to the Shield King ever since they met in Shanghai in 1854, also visits the Heav­enly Capital, in the spring of 1861.
¹⁶
While there he presents to Hong Xiuquan a copy of an essay he has published in Chinese, "That God Is without a Body Is True," and several other shorter theological pieces.

Having learned from friends that Hong Xiuquan is having great trou­ble with his eyesight, and refuses to read materials that are written out in too-small characters—unlike Loyal King Li Xiucheng, Hong has not adjusted to wearing spectacles—Edkins sends essays that have been printed in big clear characters and writes out his own remarks "in a large hand."
¹⁷
The arguments advanced by Edkins speak to the immateriality of God's nature, leaning heavily on chapter 1, verse 18, of John's Gospel: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Edkins also argues strongly for the divinity of Jesus Christ, and sends Hong translations of both the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds, to warn him that he must not fall into the heresy of Arius, who was condemned for denying the divinity of Jesus.
¹⁸

Edkins' strategy of writing in large characters is successful. Hong responds with a stream of his own commentary, so that Edkins, even if not convinced, is still gratified to find his own letter "covered with vermilion corrections and notes," all of which have clearly been "dashed off roughly" with a "very thick-pointed" writing brush. In the passage from John 1:18, Hong has erased the word "only" from the phrase "only begotten Son," so that his own Sonship is not denied: "Christ is in God's form," Hong adds, since "the Son is as the Father." In his letter to Hong, Edkins has also quoted a passage from the "Revelation of John the Divine," explaining to Hong Xiuquan that the description of God contained within it must be read as strictly "figurative."

After this I looked and, behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the first voice which I heard was, as it were, of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the Spirit; and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone; and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. (Revelation 4:1-3)

In his reply, Hong erases the word "figurative" with his blunt-nosed brush, and writes in the word "real."
¹⁹

Showing himself to be fully aware of the purport of Edkins' remarks on Arius, and of how the views of Arius had been fully revoked by Atha- nasius and a council of the church, Hong comments briefly that in that case the council was wrong, Arius right.
²⁰
Hong not only deigns to read all of Edkins' arguments; he sends his own handwritten poem in rebuttal:

God is vexed most by idols and images,

So human beings are not allowed to see the Father's likeness.

But Christ and myself were begotten by the Father,

And because we were in the Father's bosom, therefore we saw God.

The Father created Adam and Pangu in his own image—

If you acknowledge the truth of this, you can still be pardoned.

The Elder Brother and I have personally seen the Father's heavenly face;

Father and Sons, Elder and Younger Brother, nothing is indistinct.

The Father and the Elder Brother have brought me to sit in the Heavenly Court;

Those who believe this truth will enjoy eternal bliss.
²¹

Branching out from this private correspondence with the Western mis­sionary to his own followers at large, Hong explains in a proclamation of May 1861 that the problem is partly one of numbers of participants as well as of belief, of history as well as present reality. If over twenty people suddenly said God was their Father, the world would justly doubt the claim, and believe it violated human relationships. If two hundred all claimed kin with the Elder Brother, one would justly believe God was being slighted. Because "since ancient times, no man has seen God," there has been a justifiable fear—too often realized—that men in their igno­rance would "make false images and consequently go to hell." But such strictures do not apply to Hong himself,
cannot
apply: "Only the divine Son can recognize the divine Father. It is well known that the Elder Brother and I know the Father." Thus it is that in high Heaven the Father, the Elder Brother, and Hong the "Shining Sun" pour their light "brightly upon the earthly world. The Father, the Elder Brother in Heaven, and I, the true Sun, together shall establish peace for myriads of years. This day is the heavenly day of great peace, prophesied long ago in the Gospel, and now proven."
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