Hudson Taylor is a name familiar to many
wrestling fans. As his Wikipedia entry
notes, he holds several Hall of Fame records
and “is ranked among the top five pinners in
NCAA wrestling.” Surprisingly, he is a
descendent of another Hudson Taylor who was
also a wrestler of sorts, though not in a
ring surrounded by ropes. James Hudson
Taylor’s opponents were not flesh and blood,
but the enemy acknowledged in Ephesians
6:12: “We wrestle not against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness
of this world, against spiritual wickedness
in high places.”
Taylor devoted 51 of his 73 years to taking
the Word of God to China, a mission that
continues to inspire evangelical Christians
to this day. Historian Kenneth Scott
Latourette called him “one of the four or
five most influential foreigners who came to
China in the nineteenth century for any
purpose.” C. H. Spurgeon observed of Taylor
that “there is not an atom of self-assertion
about him, but a firm confidence in God and
in the call which he has himself received to
carry the gospel to China.”
To Taylor, it was important “to realize that
the work of God does not mean so much man’s
work for God, as God’s own work through
man.”
James Hudson Taylor was born May 21, 1832 in
Barnsley, England to James and Amelia
Taylor, both devout Christians who raised
their son in the Christian faith. In his
memoir, In Retrospect, Taylor
recalled his parents’ efforts and his
resistance to the message.
“I had many opportunities in early years of
learning the value of prayer and of the Word
of God; for it was the delight of my dear
parents to point out that if there were any
such Being as God, to trust Him, to obey
Him, and to be fully given up to His
service, must of necessity be the best and
wisest course both for myself and others.
But in spite of these helpful examples and
precepts my heart was unchanged. Often I had
tried to make myself a Christian; and
failing of course in such efforts, I began
at last to think that for some reason or
other I could not be saved, and that the
best I could do was to take my fill of this
world, as there was no hope for me beyond
the grave.”
A sickly child, he was educated at home. At
15, he struck out on his own and worked as a
junior clerk in a bank where he met people
he described as “holding skeptical and
infidel views” who encouraged his own
doubts. Taylor was thankful to make their
acquaintance since they offered “some hope
of escape from the doom which, if my parents
were right and the Bible true, awaited the
impenitent.”
His mother and sister were so concerned for
his soul that they prayed constantly on his
behalf. Their prayers were answered when he
was 15. One day, while his mother was away,
he wandered into his father’s library in
search of a book to read. Finding no title
that interested him, he picked up a gospel
tract from a basket, and began reading it
with nothing in mind but entertainment.
“There will be a story at the commencement,”
he thought to himself, “and a sermon or
moral at the close. I will take the former
and leave the latter for those who like it.”
Only later did he learn that at the same
time he was reading the tract, his mother
“rose from the dinner table that afternoon
with an intense yearning for the conversion
of her boy. . .went to her room and turned
the key in the door, resolved not to leave
that spot until her prayers were answered.”
It was the tract’s reference to “The
finished work of Christ” that stirred his
curiosity. “Why does the author use this
expression?” he wondered. “What was
finished?” The answer came to him
immediately: “A full and perfect atonement
and satisfaction for sin: Christ died for
our sins, and not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world.” With that
realization, Taylor concluded that the only
course of action was to “fall down on one’s
knees, and accepting this Savior and His
salvation, to praise Him for evermore. Thus
while my dear mother was praising God on her
knees in her chamber, I was praising Him in
the old warehouse to which I had gone alone
to read at my leisure this little book.”
Still, it took a while for Taylor to fully
commit his life to God. “The first joys of
conversion passed away after a time, and
were succeeded by a period of painful
deadness of soul, with much conflict.” But
this period of backsliding only deepened his
dependence on the Lord, and he turned to
prayer again, this time asking God to give
him some work to do, “something with which
He would be pleased, and that I might do for
Him who had done so much for me.”
In answering the prayer, God was also
answering a prayer made years earlier by his
father. Taylor relates that his father had
become concerned with the spiritual state of
China through reading several books about
the subject. His own circumstances prevented
him from traveling to the Far East, “but he
was led to pray that if God should give him
a son, he might be called and privileged to
labour in the vast needy empire which was
then so apparently sealed against the
truth.” Several months later, “the
impression was wrought into my soul that it
was in China that the Lord wanted me.”
To prepare himself for his calling, Taylor
read Walter Henry Medhurst’s China: Its
State and Prospects. He also began
studying Mandarin, in addition to Greek,
Hebrew, and Latin. “I felt that one’s
spiritual muscles required strengthening for
such an undertaking,” he wrote, so he set
about economizing. “Butter, milk, and other
luxuries, I soon ceased to use; and I found
that by living mainly on oatmeal and rice,
with occasional variations, a very small sum
was sufficient for my needs. In this way I
had more than two-thirds of my income
available for other purposes, and my
experience was that the less I spent on
myself and the more I gave away, the fuller
of happiness and blessing did my soul
become.”
For a time, he volunteered as a medical
assistant with Dr. Robert Hardy in a poor
neighborhood of Kingston where he also
preached the Gospel and passed out tracts. A
year later, he began studying medicine at
the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel.
On September 19, 1853, at age 21, Taylor and
crew set sail for China on a three-masted
clipper ship called the Dumfries. His
mission was to “evangelize all China, to
preach Christ to all its peoples by any and
all means that come to hand.”
Taylor’s mother had asked him to wear a
swimming-belt, but he refused, convinced
that to do so would demonstrate a lack of
faith in God. Later, he realized his error.
“The use of means ought not to lessen our
faith in God, and our faith in God ought not
to hinder our using whatever means He has
given us for the accomplishment of His
purposes.”
The voyage was rough, with twelve days of
fierce winds that left the ship “beating
backwards and forwards in the Irish Channel,
unable to get out to sea.” As the ship
drifted perilously close to some rocks, the
captain came to Taylor to say, “We cannot
live half an hour now.” Waiting on the
island of New Guinea were cannibals who were
already lighting fires with which to cook
the dinner that the ship seemed about to
deliver. “We have done everything that can
be done,” the captain said, but Taylor
corrected him. They could still pray and
“ask the Lord to give us a breeze
immediately.” Only minutes later, a wind
materialized. “The wind has freed two
points,” the captain observed. “We shall be
able to beat out of the bay.”
The ship landed in Shanghai on March 1,
1854.
China was in the midst of a civil war. “A
band of rebels, known as the ‘Red Turbans,’
had taken possession of the native city,” he
wrote in A Retrospect. “Those were
indeed troublous times, and times of
danger.” One day shortly after his arrival,
while walking with Alexander Wylie, a fellow
missionary, he was very nearly killed by a
cannonball. “Another day my friend Mr. Wylie
left a book on the table after luncheon, and
returning for it about five minutes later,
found the arm of the chair on which he had
been sitting shot clean away. But in the
midst of these and many other dangers God
protected us.”
After renting a house, he took to sleeping
during the day so he would remain alert at
night when the fighting was more intense.
Eventually, he realized he would have to
return to the Foreign Settlement, and not a
minute too soon. Before all of his
belongings had been removed, the house was
burned to the ground. In was in this climate
of terror that Taylor began to evangelize.
In 1855, his mission took him to T’ung-chau,
a visit that he recorded in his journal. “We
felt persuaded that Satan would not allow us
to assail his kingdom, as we were attempting
to do, without raising serious opposition,
but we were also fully assured that it was
the will of God that we should preach Christ
in this city, and distribute the Word of
Truth among its people.”
Taylor and his companion ignored repeated
warnings about the dangers of attempting to
bring God’s Word to the people of the city,
and after preaching the Gospel in Mandarin
in a tiny village outside of T’ung-chau,
they were captured by the militia. “Once or
twice a quarrel arose as to how we should be
dealt with; the more mild of our conductors
saying that we ought to be taken to the
magistrate’s office, but others wishing to
kill us at once without appeal to any
authority. Our minds were kept in perfect
peace, and when thrown together on one of
these occasions, we reminded each other that
the Apostles rejoiced that they were counted
worthy to suffer in the cause of Christ.”
The two missionaries were dragged through
the “long weary streets. . . I thought they
would never end, and seldom have I felt more
thankful than when we stopped at a place
where we were told a mandarin resided.” They
eventually found themselves in the presence
of a mandarin “who seemed to be the highest
authority of T’ung-chau” who listened
respectfully as they explained the purpose
of their mission, then let them distribute
Gospel tracts in the city.
There were other challenges. The Chinese
Evangelization Society, which had sponsored
Taylor’s voyage, rarely came through with
its promise of cash to finance his mission,
but Taylor, who later resigned from the
organization to become an independent
missionary, was unconcerned. “Depend upon
it,” he said. “God’s work, done in God’s
way, will never lack for supplies.”
Taylor was critical of the other
missionaries, believing they spent too much
time courting businessmen and diplomats for
whom they worked as translators, and they
were critical of him for his decision to
adopt the ways of the Chinese by growing a
queue (pigtail) and shaving his head as
Chinese men of the time did. He also adopted
their style of dress which meant giving up
the dark overcoat that made some of the
natives refer to him as a “black devil.”
Taylor made 18 preaching tours of China and,
in 1865, founded the Chinese Inland Mission
which survives today as Overseas Missionary
Fellowship. It proved an innovative ministry
with missionaries drawn from various
Christian denominations overseen, not by
committees in the home country, but by
leaders who were serving alongside them in
the field. The missionaries would also adopt
the dress of the Chinese to increase their
identification with the people they served.
The CIM “made steady progress, the
development of the work in China being
accompanied by corresponding developments in
the home departments of the Mission in
England, America, and Australia.”
In 1858, Taylor married Maria Jane Dyer, who
worked at a school run by a Chinese
missionary. “Never, perhaps, was there a
union that more fully realized the blessed
truth, ‘Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good
thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord,’”
he wrote in A Retrospect. “My dear
wife was not only a precious gift to me, God
blessed her to many others during the twelve
eventful years through which she was spared
to those that loved her and to China.”
In 1900 came the Boxer Rebellion, the
violent uprising instigated by a secret
society that opposed “foreign spheres of
influence” in the country, including those
seeking to bring God’s word to the people.
Hundreds of missionaries and their children
were cruelly murdered along with thousands
of Chinese Christians. “The China Inland
Mission lost 53 missionaries and 21
children,” Taylor wrote, and though he was
distressed by these events, he noted that in
its aftermath, “throughout China generally
there has been a spirit of awakening and a
time of enlarged opportunity, which is a
large call for more men and women to
volunteer to step into the gaps and fill the
places of those who have fallen.”
For much of his life, Taylor struggled with
ill health, and he was frequently visited by
tragedy. In July 1870, he would lose a son
only weeks after birth, then lose Maria
three days later. A daughter died of water
on the brain, and his second wife, Jane,
whom he married in 1871, would succumb to
cancer. In bringing the Gospel to China, his
life was often on the line, but he never
wavered in his faith or his belief that it
was God who provided the muscle with which
men wrestled against those unseen powers of
darkness.
“I have found that there are three stages in
every great work of God: first, it is
impossible, then it is difficult, then it is
done.”
Amen.