CHINA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 211, 8 November 1854, Page 7

CHINA.

The Insurgent body at Nanking are not now to be viewed as the same body of men as those who, a few months ago, were regarded with hopefulness by foreign Christians. We that the most sanguine statements and views respecting them were fully justified and supported by the facts that had come to our knowledge at that time. We are, however, disappointed and shocked at their recent proceedings. We cannot at once abandon all hope of some amendment in their religious system, in the event of missionaries being shortly able to visit and instruct them. This desirable result which would have been comparatively easy

a'year ago, may be rendered very difficult now,

They are, however, publishing the Books of the Old and New Testament; and we have sufficient confidence in the moral effects of a perusal of the inspired volume, to have faith still in the movement being finally overruled for good, and proving ultimately conducive in some mysterious arrangements of a controlling Providence, to the furtherance of Christianity in an empire previously closed to the entrance of the Gospel.

The various members of the Missionary and clerical body in China may have formed too sanguine a view of the character and objects of Tae-ping-wang. But let any impartial reader say whether anything could have been possibly more improbable, and contrary to all reasonable expectation, than the recently reported assumption of the titles of the "Holy Ghost" and " Jesus" by the Eastern and Western Kings respectively.— Friend of China.

Persia