inner transformation of their movement into a great cause which resulted in bringing Hung forward as leader. It also brought about the supposed intervention of God the Father, who inspired Yang (later King of the East), and Jesus the Saviour who spoke through Hsiao (King of the West). Two or three of these accounts may throw some light on the crystallisation of the Taiping movement.
… in the Mow-shin year [a.d. 1848] the great God compassionated the calamities of the people, who had been entangled in the meshes of the devil's net; on the third month of that year [April], the great God and supreme Lord came down into the world; and in the ninth month [October] Jesus, the Saviour of the world, came down, manifesting to the world innumerable acts of power, and slaughtering a great number of impish fiends in several pitched battles: for how can impish fiends expect to resist the majesty of Heaven?[1]
The nature of these manifestations of divine power is more clearly indicated, perhaps, in the following extract from the proclamation sent to the British in 1858:
- In the third moon of the year, "Mo-shin" [1848], Shangti descended,
- And commissioned the King of the East to become a mortal.
- In the 9th moon of the same year the Redeemer descended,
- And commissioned the King of the West to manifest divine powers,
- The Father and Elder Brother led us to sit on [the throne of] the heavenly kingdom;
- With great display of authority and might to sit in the hall of heaven;[2]
