In the year 1837, a man twenty-three years of age, whose family resided near Canton, went up for his literary examination—a competitive examination for office under his Government. He was plucked—it was not the first time. Perfectly satisfied with his own merits, he had assumed the title Siu-tsuen, or “Elegantly perfect,” in addition to the family name of Hung. As Siu-tsuen we shall speak of him. Between 1837 and 1843, Siu-tsuen was again repeatedly unsuccessful at the examinations; disappointment brought on brain fever, and for some years he was a dangerous lunatic. Recovering from this attack, he accidentally obtained possession of a number of tracts on Christianity by a native convert called Leang-Afah. They were in style and translation enough to puzzle a stronger brain than Siu-tsuen’s. Naturally excitable, he was now seized with a religious mania, and fancied he had personal interviews with the Trinity. He had witnessed the proceedings of Western nations against the Government of his country; and our combination of civilisation, religion, and war no doubt struck him as the right means for gratifying his spleen and his ambition. From a crack-brained enthusiast, Siu-tsuen sobered down into a conspirator against his sovereign and the order of the State. From 1843 to 1846, he was, we are told, busy inoculating a small circle of his immediate friends with his views. His disciples believed that he was in direct communication with the Deity, and he appears at first to have merely contented himself with the character of a second Moses. He formed a society which he called the “Congregation of the Worshippers of God” (or “Shangti”). Hung-jin, or Kan-wang, and another relative of Siu-tsuen’s, named Fung, likewise joined it. As the society increased, Siu-tsuen bound the members by oaths “to live or die with him, and to exert all their efforts to assist him;” and in return he promised to ascertain from heaven for the members “wherein lay their respective interests and profits,”[2] an essentially Chinese way of looking at Christianity. They soon worshipped Siu-tsuen as an incarnation of Shangti, or God. Both he and his relative Fung had ecstatic fits. The latter performed miracles; and like other arch-impostors, they passed unconsciously from deluding others into deceiving themselves. The disordered condition of Southern China favoured the propagation of any doctrines, however wild and bizarre; and the mountains and secluded valleys of Kwang-si afforded the necessary hiding-places for a sect whose first article of faith was disobedience to the Emperor. In either 1846 or 1847 Mr Roberts, residing in Canton, was so interested in the doings of Siu-tsuen that he invited him to stay at his house, and promised a kind welcome on the part of his brethren. Siu-tsuen, accompanied by his relative Hung-jin, accordingly went to Mr Roberts, and stayed two entire months studying Protestantism. Their conduct was exemplary, but Mr Roberts did not feel justified in