洗心向善 Washed Hearts Turned to Goodness
逐句解 Line by line
All together they showed themselves in the blue heavens, each ranged in order in his holy bearing.
挨排 is to line up in sequence, one pressed close after another — and the first character is a rare one that this chapter uses exactly once. Even revealed in glory, the gods arrange themselves by rank.
Only then did the people within the bounds of Fengxian believe; they bowed to the ground, took up incense, and their bad natures turned.
頂禮 is the full prostration, forehead to the floor. 才信, only then believed, is the verse conceding Pilgrim's point from a few passages back: the people needed to see.
Today they look up and pay court to the generals of Heaven, washing their hearts, turning to goodness, taking refuge to a soul.
洗心, washing the heart, is an old phrase for a thorough moral change. 盡 is jìn, exhaustively — every last one of them, which is the same completeness the local gods testified to in heaven.
The verse admits something the prose was too polite to say: only then did the people believe.
Everything up to now has been taken on trust. A monkey said he would bring rain, a prefect ordered prayers, and a whole prefecture chanted for a man they were told had offended heaven. The rain came. But it is the sight of four gods hanging in the blue with their proper faces on that turns the thing from obedience into belief.
Pilgrim arranged it deliberately, for exactly that reason, and the verse confirms he was right.