[Home]

Chapter 8

A Missionary: Hudson Taylor[1]

(1832-1905)

      The late professor J.B. Mosley, in his Lectures on the Old Testament, wrote, “A great act gathers up and brings to a focus the whole habit and general character of the man.  …Single acts are treasures.  They are like new ideas in the people’s minds.  There is something in them which molds, which lifts up to another level, and gives an impulse to human nature.”

      Beyond question, the acts of Hudson Taylor have helped mold the minds of many people.  The great idea which dominated his life from beginning to end was his unfailing belief in the utter faithfulness of God.

      James Hudson Taylor was born at Barnsley, England May 21, 1832, the first of five children—three boys and two girls.  Hudson’s two brothers died when quite young.  Young Hudson had strong influences from both parents.  His father, a chemist (druggist) had a deep personal faith in God, and imbued his children with his convictions.  His mother was cast in a gentler mold.  It was said that if his father supplied the driving force of his life, his mother poured in the oil.  Hudson was enriched by the joint contribution of both parents. 

      Because of chronic health problems young Hudson was able to attend school for only two years.  Although this was an overall disadvantage, he profited from the stimulating energies of his father and the gentle teaching of his mother, who directed most of his studies.  When Hudson was four years old he had learned the Hebrew alphabet at his father’s knee.  The two of them had long conversations, and it was from his father that Hudson, at the age of four or five, became deeply impressed with the need of the heathen world.  He was often heard to say, in this youthful period, “When I am a man, I will be a missionary and go to China.”

      When Hudson was about seven years old, he and his sister Amelia became deeply interested in a book known as Peter Parley’s China.  They read the book again and again until Amelia resolved to accompany her brother to that strange and distant country.

      At the age of 13, Hudson began assisting his father in the drug store.  A year later he worked for a bank, but eventually had to give it up because of serious eye troubles.  While working at the bank, a new friend influenced him to set his sights on worldly pleasures, and he became skeptical of his religious beliefs.  Long after this, he was to say that he was thankful for this period of skepticism.

      Although he had felt the strivings of the Holy Spirit from earliest childhood, Hudson was about 17 when he became a convinced Christian.  It happened when he was reading a Gospel tract which mentioned “the finished work of Christ.”  From this phrase he concluded there was nothing more to do but to “fall down on one’s knees…and accept the Savior and His salvation.”  Later he found that his mother had been praying fervently for his conversion at that very time.  He also was to learn that his sister had made a note in her diary that she would “give herself to prayer” until God should answer in the conversion of her brother.  In exactly one month, her prayer was answered.

      Shortly after his conversion, Hudson became convinced through prayer that God was calling him to China.  He immediately began to prepare himself for this endeavor.  A Mr. Whitworth, the local treasurer of the British Foreign Bible Society, loaned him some books on China.  When he told Mr. Whitworth about his call to missionary service, Whitworth asked him, “And how do you propose to go there?”  Hudson told him he didn’t know—that maybe he should do as the Twelve and Seventy had done in Judea, go without purse or script “relying on Him who had sent me, to supply all my need.”  Hudson said, “Mr. Whitworth kindly put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Ah, my boy, as you grow older you will become wiser than that.  Such an idea would do very well in the days when Christ Himself was on the earth, but not now.’ ” Many years later when commenting on this conversation, Taylor added, “I have grown older since then, but not wiser.  I am more and more convinced that if we were to take the directions of our Master, and the assurance He gave to the first disciples more fully as our guide, we should find them just as suited to our times as to those in which they were originally given.”

      Taylor’s conviction that God would provide for his dream of becoming a missionary precipitated numerous crises in which his faith was severely tested.  But each time, his unwavering faith prevailed, sometimes at the 11^th hour.  His preparation included a period of medical studies in a London hospital where he functioned as a surgeon’s assistant.

      Finally on September 19, 1853 at the age of 21, Taylor set sail on a small sailing ship for China.  He was the only passenger aboard.  For almost six months, his ship, Dumfries, was his home.  During this time the ship never touched land; it was cut off from the outside world.  As recorded in Taylor’s writings, the ship encountered a terrific storm in which it seemed that a watery grave was inevitable.  Later, with winds at dead calm, the swift currents running toward sunken reefs were an even greater peril.  When the ship finally dropped anchor March 1, 1854 near Shanghai, no one was there to meet him, and he had to face some sobering facts.  England was on the brink of the Crimean War and Shanghai was in the hands of rebels.  Food was at famine prices.  The cost of the dollar had risen from four to seven shillings and was soaring even higher.  Taylor had letters of introduction to three men, but one had died, another had gone to America, and the third had left for the security of the British consulate.  Fortunately, there were some missionaries still there and Taylor was allowed to stay at their compound as a paying guest.

      It bothered Taylor that because of the fighting, he could not speak to the people who were suffering so much.  Guns could be heard all night, and he could see the fighting from his window.  The cost of coal had become prohibitive, the weather was bitterly cold, and he had little money.  Certainly the situation looked bleak, and no one could say when it would improve. He spent nearly all his time studying the language and praying.

      For the first six months, Taylor had to remain as a paying guest of his fellow missionaries.  His income was much too small to rent a place.  With the war going on in Shanghai, it was perilous for foreigners to move outside of the compound.  However, he wanted to learn the language, and so he mingled freely with the people.  Whenever possible, he and others in the missionary community went outside the city limits of Shanghai, even though it presented many dangers.  Between December 1854 and the fall of 1855, Taylor made eight missionary journeys into the interior of China—one of which was a 200-mile trip up the Yangtse River.  In those days, such journeys were full of hazards, the main one being the hostile people they encountered.  Yet Taylor wrote during this time, “Never was I so happy as when speaking of the love of God and the atonement of Jesus Christ.”

      The neglect of the Missionary Society to send adequate supplies caused Taylor to set his eyes toward beginning a new work in the interior.  For almost two years, he was alone in this work.  He had landed in China to find himself closed in by the Civil War and dependent on the hospitality of others.  There were no kindred spirits to sympathize with him.  Then, on a visit to the island of Tsungming (40 miles from Shanghai—the nearest port), he unexpectedly had the opportunity to rent a house.  He moved in and began doing medical work.  The island gave him a potential parish of a million souls.  But his success at relieving pain and curing the sick caused the local doctors to look upon him as a serious rival.  One day he received a summons to appear before the British Consul to answer for “residing away from a treaty port.”  He courteously pointed out that the French Catholics were doing the same thing, but that didn’t change the minds of the authorities.  His only recourse was to appeal to the British minister, Sir John Bowring.  In the end, he was forced to give up all claims to Consular protection, even though it subjected him to the authority of Chinese law, which could be meted out in a cruel fashion.

      Shortly after the above incident, a fellow missionary was stricken with smallpox.  Taylor had barely recovered from another sickness himself but gladly volunteered to nurse the sick man.  The disease proved fatal to the man and Taylor contracted smallpox, but had a mild attack since he had been vaccinated.  He was forced, however, to destroy his clothes, and because he had used his funds to help another missionary, he had no money to buy more.  It was at this juncture that a long-lost box of clothes, left behind 15 months earlier, arrived unexpectedly, bringing him just what he needed.  He made this note in his journal in November 1857: “I would not, if I could, be otherwise than as I am—entirely dependent upon the Lord, and used as a channel to help others.”

      In January, 1858, Hudson Taylor married Maria Dyer, who was the daughter of a missionary, and had been orphaned at an early age.  She attended the first girls’ school opened by missionaries in China.  Fluent in the Chinese language from birth, she was the first woman to go to China as a missionary.  When the new couple began their missionary work together in Ningpo, they had no Chinese helpers.  By day and night, these two ministered to the sick, preached to all who would listen, and taught all who were interested.  There was no master/servant attitude—customary for wealthy foreigners in China—only a willingness to live their lives for others.

      Because of the events going on around them, the lives of the Taylors were often in jeopardy.  A fellow missionary wrote:

We are living from night to day to night.  The people are thirsting for revenge.  They mix up together the missionaries, traders, and the government, the war and the coolie traffic.  …They have placarded the street, calling for our blood.  …We are now in the midst of this, our wives and our little ones in the same danger.  But we are resting on Him who restrains our enemies with “thus far, but no further.”

      Amid such conditions in July 1859 with the thermometer at 104° Fahrenheit in the shade, their first-born child—a girl who was named Grace—was welcomed into that stormy world.

      Eventually the constant physical and mental strain began to imperil Taylor’s health.  He knew he had to rest, and yet his work seemed to demand his presence.  Finally, when tubercular trouble was threatening, he knew that the more moderate climate of England was his only hope of life, and so with sad hearts, the hospital was closed, and passages were booked for England.  In July 1860 the “Jubilee” weighed anchor, bound for London—seven years after Hudson Taylor had sailed from Liverpool.

      Although he could not have imagined it at the time he arrived, Taylor was detained in England for 5½ years.  For the greater part of that time, he was daily engaged in the revision of the Ningpo version of the New Testament.  He frequently worked 8 to 12 hours a day and sometimes longer on this project.  What motivated Hudson during those 5½ years was the thought of countless millions without the Gospel.  Prayer was the only relief for his burdened heart, along with his daily study of God’s Word.  Taylor was prepared to step out and venture everything based on the truth of God’s Word.  God was his Father; prayer was to him “a word to the Big Heart from the little one.”  One of his many proverbial utterances was, “Before I was a father, I thought God would never forget me; but since I have become a father, I know God never can forget me.”  One verse which he frequently inscribed in people’s birthday books or autograph albums was:

The Lord thy God is in the midst of thee, a Mighty One who will save; He will rejoice over thee with joy, He will rest in His love, he will joy over thee with singing.”

Clearly, the joy of the Lord was his strength.

      While Taylor was writing China’s Spiritual Need and Claims, The Baptist magazine requested a series of articles covering the whole of Inland China.  While doing this, he faced a decisive moment.  As he worked on the manuscript, he felt “God’s sigh in the heart of the world.”  The sense of China’s need overwhelmed him, and at the same time, a consciousness of God’s willingness to do greater things possessed his soul.  He had come home from China prepared to ask for five devoted workers, and God was giving these.  But the inadequacy of so small a number became more evident to him considering the urgent need.

      For two or three months, Taylor felt a crushing burden for getting the Gospel to the millions of Chinese who had never heard it.  While in this state of mind, he received a letter from a friend, who being concerned for his health, invited him to his place at Brighton on the coast of England.  This is Taylor’s description of how the conflict in his mind was resolved:

On Sunday, June 25, 1865, unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more people rejoicing in their own security while millions were perishing for lack of knowledge, I wandered out on the sands alone, in great spiritual agony, and there the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself for this service.  I told Him that all the responsibility as to issues and consequences must rest with Him, that as His servant, it was mine to obey and follow Him—His, to direct, to care for, and guide me and those who might labor with me.

From this point on, Taylor had an absolute and unreserved obedience to the all-conquering Lord.

      Taylor’s experience at Brighton was sealed two days later when he opened a bank account in the name of the China Inland Mission; the first deposit was ten pounds “and all the promises of God,” as he said on a later occasion.  It was faith’s mustard seed.  Eventually four million pounds sterling would be channeled through that bank for the same mission.  The years of obscure labor were past, and there was now to be recognition and leadership.  Taylor had labored for 12 years in silence and patience in a narrow and humble sphere.  He had proved himself faithful “over a few things” and was now to be set “over many things.”

      For the eleven months between the Brighton experience and his return to China, Taylor completed his book China’s Spiritual Need and Claims.  The influence of the book was both immediate and lasting.  Over the next 20 years, further editions and reprints followed.  Its burning message, born in his heart, spoke to the heart.  Loyal friends began to multiply.  Candidates for the missionary field were attracted by his zeal, and answered the call to the mission field in China.

      On May 26, 1866, Taylor, at the age of 34, sailed for China with a party of 22 on the three-masted Lammermuir.  Only Taylor and his wife were familiar with their destination; the others were going to an unknown country with no one to guarantee them support, and no one in China to welcome them.  It was a daring adventure.  To many the audacity was unwise; to others it was reckless folly.  But Hudson Taylor had a passionate belief that his God was strong, and did exploits—miracles of action—in history.

      The party of men and women came from all classes, and were endowed with divergent natures.  Taylor was able, from the first, to overcome friction when it arose, and to create a family feeling among this diverse group.

      After surviving two terrible typhoons, the battered vessel reached Shanghai the last day of September 1866 (four months after sailing).  Shanghai was a welcome refuge from the storms at sea, but was an unfriendly haven for the unconventional missionary party.  The internal problems, however, were the most difficult to handle.

      One of Taylor’s prominent characteristics was his largeness of heart.  He knew China and knew how to appeal for its evangelization.  His convictions were contagious, but much of his appeal was in his impressive personality.  He had a way of baring his heart which caused people to be drawn to him.  His strength as a leader came by his example, even more than by his words.  No trail was shirked; no sacrifice was considered too great.  Although he knew there were those who criticized his work, he did not criticize others.  He was secure in his belief that God was directing him every step of the way.  He was a pioneer, but he was more than that; he was a builder.  In a letter to his mother, Taylor wrote of rising before daylight for a quiet “waiting upon God” for every member of the mission.  This was his constant practice.  He once acknowledged to a friend that the sun had never risen upon China without finding him either praying for, or having prayed for, those laboring with him in the mission field.

      In another letter to his mother (when he was 37 years old and had been in the mission field for 15 years), Taylor expressed his innermost hunger and thirst:

My own position becomes continually more and more responsible, and my need greater of special grace to fill it; but I have continually to mourn that I follow at such a distance and learn so slowly to imitate my precious Master.  I cannot tell you how I am buffeted sometimes by temptation.  I never knew how bad a heart I had.  Yet I do know that I love God and love his work, and desire to serve Him only in all things.  And I value above all things that precious Savior in Whom alone I can be accepted. Often I am tempted to think that one so full of sin cannot be a child of God at all; but I try to throw it back, and rejoice all the more in the preciousness of Jesus, and in the riches of that grace that has made us “accepted in the Beloved.”  Beloved He is of God; beloved He ought to be of us.  But oh, how short I fall here again!  May God help me to love Him more and serve Him better.  Do pray for me.  Pray that the Lord will keep me from sin, will sanctify me wholly, will use me more largely in His service.

      It has been said that the human heart has no desires that God cannot satisfy.  In this instance, the way to a satisfied heart and “rest of spirit” for Hudson Taylor was learned from a fellow missionary, John McCarthy.  In a letter to Taylor, he wrote:

To let my loving Savior work in me His will, my sanctification is what I would live for by His grace. Abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off unto Him; trusting Him for present power; trusting Him to subdue all inward corruption; resting in the love of an almighty Savior, in the conscious joy of a complete salvation, a salvation “from all sin” (this is His Word); willing that His will should truly be supreme—this is not new, and yet ‘tis new to me. I feel as though the first dawning of a glorious day had risen upon me.  I hail it with trembling, yet with trust.  I seem to have got to the edge only, but of a sea which is boundless; to have sipped only, but of that which fully satisfies. Christ literally all seems to me now the power, the only power for service; the only ground for unchanging joy.  May He lead us into the realization of His unfathomable fullness.

      This letter had a profound influence on Taylor.  It led him into the realization of God’s unfathomable fullness.  He read it at the mission station of Chin-Kiang on September 4, 1869.  Taylor was always reticent about telling details of his transforming experience.  He did say, however, “As I read, I saw it all.  I looked to Jesus, and when I saw, oh how the joy flowed!”

      His fellow missionaries said of him, “Mr. Taylor went out a new man in a new world, to tell what the Lord had done for his soul.”  Here is what Taylor himself said about the “life that is Christ” in a letter to his sister in England:

As to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone.  The last month or more has been perhaps, the happiest of my life; and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul.  I do not know how far I may be able to make myself intelligible about it, for there is nothing new or strange or wonderful—and yet, all is new!  In a word, “Whereas once I was blind, now I see…”

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.  McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, wrote (I quote from memory): “But how to get faith strengthened?  Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.”

As I read I saw it all!  “If we believe not, He abideth faithfully.”  I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, “I will never leave you.”  Ah, there is rest!  I thought.  “I have striven in vain to rest in Him.  I’ll strive no more.  For has He not promised to abide with me—never to leave me, never to fail me?”  And, dearie, He never will!

But this was not all He showed me, nor one half.  As I thought of the vine and branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured into my soul!  How great seemed my mistake in having wished to get the sap, the fullness out of Him.  I saw not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that I was a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine now I see, is not the root merely, but all—root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed.  Oh, the joy of seeing this truth!  I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ…

The sweetest part, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is the rest which full identification with Christ brings.  I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine.  It makes no matter where He places me, or how.  That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest positions He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient.

      Many years after Hudson Taylor’s meeting in the house in Chin-Kiang, an Anglican clergyman, the Reverend H.B. Macartney of Melbourne, Australia, added his testimony to that of many others regarding Taylor’s possession of the “life that is Christ:”

He was an object lesson in quietness. He drew from the Bank of Heaven every farthing of his daily income—“My peace I give unto you.” Whatever did not agitate the Savior, or ruffle His spirit was not to agitate him. The serenity of the Lord Jesus concerning any matter and at its most critical moment, this was his ideal and practical possession. He knew nothing of rush or hurry, of quivering nerves or vexation of spirit.  He knew there was a peace passing all understanding, and that he could not do without it.

Now I was altogether different.  Mine is a peculiarly nervous disposition, and with a busy life I found myself in a tremor all day long.  I did not enjoy the Lord as I knew I ought. Nervous agitation possessed me as long as there was anything to be done.  The greatest loss of my life was the loss of the light of the Lord’s presence and fellowship during writing hours. The daily mail robbed me of His delightful society.

“I am in the study, you are in the big spare room,” I said to Mr. Taylor at length.  “You are occupied with millions, I with tens.  Your letters are pressingly important, mine of comparatively little moment. Yet I am worried and distressed, while you are always calm.  Do tell me what makes the difference.”

“My dear Macartney,” he replied, “the peace you speak of is in my case more than a delightful privilege, it is a necessity.”

He said most emphatically, “I could not possibly get through the work I have to do without the peace of God ‘which passeth all understanding’ keeping my heart and mind.”

“Keswick teaching” as it is called was not new to me at that time. I had received those glorious truths and was preaching them to others. But here was the real thing—an embodiment of “Keswick teaching” such as I had never hoped to see.  This impressed me profoundly—here is a man almost sixty years of age, bearing tremendous burdens, yet absolutely calm and unruffled.  Oh, the pile of letters! any one of which might contain news of death, or shortness of funds, or riots or serious trouble. Yet all were opened, read and answered with the same tranquility—Christ his reason for peace, his power for calm. Dwelling in Christ he partook of His very being and resources, in the midst of and concerning the very matters in question.  And he did this by an act of faith as simple as it was continuous.

Yet he was delightfully free and natural. I can find no words to describe it save the Scriptural expression “in God.” He was “in God” all the time, and God in him. It was that true “abiding” of John 15.

      For expressing the truth of the Scriptures he had proven by experience, Hudson Taylor found that the words in the little booklet How to Live on Christ by Harriet Beecher Stowe were ideally suited.  He sent a copy to every member of the mission. In part, Mrs. Stowe stated:

How does the branch bear fruit?  Not by incessant effort for sunshine and air; not by vain struggles for those vivifying influences which give beauty to the blossom, and verdure to the leaf: it simply abides in the vine, in silent and undisturbed union, and blossoms and fruit appear as of spontaneous growth.

How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit?  By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers?  No: there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to Him; a constant looking to Him for grace. Christians in whom these dispositions are once firmly fixed go on calmly as the infant borne in the arms of its mother. Christ reminds them of every duty in its time and pace, reproves them of every error, counsels them in every difficulty, excites them to every needful activity. In spiritual as in temporal matters they take no thought for the morrow; for they know that Christ will be as accessible tomorrow as today, and that time imposes no barrier on His love.  Their hope and trust rest solely on what He is willing and able to do for them; on nothing that they suppose themselves able and willing to do for Him.  Their talisman for every temptation and sorrow is their oft-repeated child-like surrender of their whole being to Him.

      On June 18, 1900, the Taylors returned to England. Hudson’s physical condition was so serious that he was taken to Switzerland for rest and recuperation. But it was not to be. Both were passing into “life’s eventide.”  Mrs. Taylor was to be spared four years, and Hudson Taylor for five years.

      On July 30, 1904, Mrs. Taylor died of cancer. She died without a long and painful period of suffering, and was laid to rest on the hills above the Lake of Geneva. A few months later, Hudson Taylor had a longing to see once more his adopted land. In the company of his son and daughter-in-law, he set sail on Feb. 15, 1905 for what would be his eleventh and last journey to China.

      The party reached Shanghai April 17, 1905, and received a tremendous welcome—so different from his first arrival there 51 years before. Now he was an honored veteran whose faith in God and wisdom in administration commanded men’s esteem. The weeks that followed were little short of a triumphal procession; Taylor was honored by foreigners and Chinese alike. On Sunday, May 21, he celebrated his 73^rd birthday. On the third of June he spoke to the Christians in the chapel at Changsha, and that evening the weary, worn-out warrior found rest. It hardly seemed like death; God took him. He was buried a few days later in the English cemetery at Chinkiang.

      To Taylor there was “no dream that must not be dared”; no risk that must not be taken, if it came in line of duty; no obstacle that could not be surmounted, if the call of God demanded.  “Faith,” he asserted, “laughs at impossibilities, and obedience raises no questions.”

      Hudson Taylor proved that Paul’s words of Galatians 2:20 can be a glorious reality:

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

[Home]