Wei Yuan, a major figure among scholars advocating Confucian Statesmanship in Jiaqing and Daoguang period, is also an influential yet controversial Confucian scholar in modern China. Based on interpretations of the classical text, historical and philosophical works in the Complete Works of Wei Yuan, this paper takes a historical investigation of Wei's idea of "teaching and transforming people" (jiaohua), which has long been neglected in the previous research. In the introduction, it is argued that this idea and related critical discrimination of different doctrines could provide us new perspectives of observing Wei's thought. Through close examinations, the first part revealed how Song-Ming Neo-Confucian legacies shaped Wei's philosophical understandings of relations between mind and actions, heaven and human. In addition, it is also elaborated that Wei's unrestrained investigations in Confucian classics helped him ease the tension between "teaching and transforming" ideals and political realities, and he also put emphasis on the practicality of the applicable logic within his idea. The second part made a comparative study of Xu Jishe, Yao Ying, and Wei's remarks on different religious doctrines, reconstructing a humanistic understanding of heaven-human relationship shared by these Confucians. In the following section, this paper investigates similar difficulties in practicing the political ideals shared by Wei and his friend Gong Zizhen. In the last part, it is further discussed that how such difficulties and rising destabilization in real life have contribute to Wei's choice of converting himself into a Buddhistic soteriology, supported by the analysis of its structure and correlations with Wei's former ideas. This article attempts to provide a more thorough recognition of Wei's historical position, thus also as an important case that reveals intellectuals' frustration in practicing political ideals in modern China.