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tai-ping-wang’s religion. 
notice vsoon reaches the rebels, and results in similar 
scenes at their hands. It is hard to say which is the 
worst, the mandarin or rebel party.” 
^luch sympathy was excited in Europe and America 
some three years since (in 1853, I think) in favour of 
these rebels of whom I have been writing. It was as- 
serted that Tai-ping-wang, their leader, was a Christian, 
a convert of the missionaries, and that his followers were 
all conv^erted Chinamen, and that their object was to 
spread the light of the gospel over that heathen laud, 
Xow see the true state of the case. 
Tai-ping-wang, when a boy, attended the schools of the 
mission at Shanghae, learned to speak, read, and write 
English tolerably well, and got a very fair idea of the life 
and religion of our Saviour. As is often the case, this 
knowledge did him more harm than good : he cursed and 
swore, felt himself above other Chijiamcn of his class, 
and finally left the school-room for a life of starvation, 
work, or rascality. The first of these not agreeing with 
him, he was forced to the second. He engaged as a 
horse-boy in the employ of some European at Shanghae, 
but, finding work too troublesome, set his brains to work 
in the line of rascality. The next thing that we hear of 
him he is the commander-in-chief of the rebels, calling 
himself the elder brotlier of our Saviour, and, as such, 
claiming the respect and veneration due to a God. He 
says that Christ and Mahomet were both divine spirits, 
and that their religions did well enough until he came : 
now, however, he is commissioned to modify their teach- 
ings, and none but his is the true doctrine. What his 
modifications consist of I do not know; I only know the 
