Hong Xiuquan (1814-1864), who thought he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, became exposed to Protestant hymns while in Canton in 1847 seeking instruction in the Bible from I. J. Roberts (1802-1871), a Baptist minister born in Sumner County, Tennessee. Roberts began his work in China in early 1837 as a missionary under the aegis of the Roberts Fund Society.
Much of Hong’s encounters with Christian tracts came through translations of Robert Morrison. In 1866 Augutus F. Lindley wrote that after Hong and his cousin Li Jingfang familiarised themselves with translations of chapters of the Bible by Morrison, they 'administered baptism to each other' and then Hong Xiuquan composed the following ode upon repentance:
When our transgressions high as heaven rise,
How well to trust Jesus’ full atonement;
We follow not the demons, we obey
The holy precepts, worshipping alone
One God, and thus we cultivate our hearts.
The heavenly glories open to our view,
And every being ought to seek thereafter.
I much deplore the miseries of hell.
O turn ye to the fruits of true repentance!
Let not our hearts be led by worldly customs (Lindley, 1866:41)
Hong later adopted the Protestant hymn ‘Old Hundredth’ as his own apocalyptic vision of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. A new text was written for the hymn and renamed ‘Ode Praising the Heavenly Kingdom’ (Tianchao zanmeige):
Praise the Lord
Praise Jesus, the Savior of the World
Praise the Holy Spirit
Praise the Holy Trinity.
While 'Ode to the Heavenly Kingdom was sung at all Taiping rituals and rallies, we know very little about the organisation and structure of their religious observances. In his book The Visions of Hung-siu-tshuen, and Origin of the Kwang-si Insurrection published in Hong Kong in 1854, and republished the following year in London in a slim volume titled The Chinese Rebel Chief, Hung-siu-Tsuen and the Origin of the Insurrection in China, Theodore Hamberg writes:
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