Two extraordinary events have occurred in our day in China, the results of which may be of the utmost importance to the nation and to mankind. The one is the Tae-ping insurrection, the other the diplomatic mission of Mr. Burlingame to the Western world. Whatever may be the immediate issue of the great insurrection of our day against the Tartar dynasty, it will remain a phenomenon of the utmost significance. There is no doubt, notwithstanding the general opinion to the contrary, that it has been a religious movement, proceeding from a single mind deeply moved by the reading of the Bible. The hostility of the Chinese to the present Mantchoo Tartar monarchs no doubt aided it; but there has been in it an element of power from the beginning, derived, like that of the Puritans, from its religious enthusiasm. Its leader, the Heavenly Prince, Hung-sew-tseuen, son of a poor peasant living thirty miles northeast of Canton, received a tract, containing extracts from the Chinese Bible of Dr. Morison, from a Chinese tract distributor in the streets of Canton. This was in 1833, when he was about twenty years of age. He took the book home, looked over it carelessly, and threw it aside. Disappointed of his degree at two competitive examinations, he fell sick, and saw a vision of an old man, saying: "I am the Creator of all things. Go and do my work." After this vision six years passed by, when the English war broke out, and the English fleet took the Chinese forts in the river of Canton. Such a great national calamity indicated, according to Chinese ideas, something rotten in the government; and such success on the part of the English showed that, in some way, they were fulfilling the will of Heaven. This led Hung-sew-tseuen to peruse again his Christian books; and alone, with no guide, he became a sincere believer in Christ, after a fashion of his own. God was the Creator of all things, and the Supreme Father. Jesus was the Elder Brother and heavenly Teacher of mankind. Idolatry was to be overthrown, virtue to be practised. Hung-sew-tseuen believed that the Bible confirmed his former visions. He accepted his mission and began to make converts All his converts renounced idolatry, and gave up the worship of Confucius. They travelled to and fro teaching, and formed a society of "God-worshippers." The first convert, Fung-yun-san, became its most ardent missionary and its disinterested preacher. Hung-sew-tseuen returned home, went to Canton, and there met Mr. Roberts, an American missionary, who was induced by false charges to refuse him Christian baptism. But he, without being offended with Mr. Roberts, went home and taught his converts how to baptize themselves. The society of "God-worshippers" increased in number. Some of them were arrested for destroying idols, and among them Fung-yun-san, who, however, on his way to prison, converted the policemen by his side. These new converts set him at liberty and went away with him as his disciples.