But one aim

100 years ago this month, the great missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, went to be with the Lord . . .

On June 3 1905, 30 guests from six missionary societies attended a reception at the mission house of the China Inland Mission in Changsha.

73-year-old Hudson Taylor was looking tired and drawn, and after the guests had departed he went upstairs to rest.

A.J. Broomhall, in his seven-volume official biography of the great missionary, shows how important the day had been for him. ‘For Hudson Taylor to stand on Hunan soil and set foot on CIM premises in the last but one citadel of China to yield to the Gospel marked in a sense the crowning moment of his life.’

While Geraldine Taylor, his daughter-in-law, was tending to his needs Hudson Taylor slipped away. The Daily Light for June 3 said: ‘And Enoch walked with God and God took him’ (Genesis 5.24). The Hunan Christians insisted on purchasing for their beloved leader the best casket which could be purchased in Changsha. This they later carried to a ship moored at the Xiang river.

James Hudson Taylor was born at Barnsley, Yorkshire, in 1832. Before his birth his godly parents had prayed for a son who might become a missionary to China — this at a time when missions to that land were virtually non-existent.

Converted at 17 through reading a religious tract, Hudson Taylor early had a spiritual urge to go to China as a missionary. At the age of 20 he wrote to his mother: ‘I feel as if I could not live if something is not done for China’. In 1853, after some basic preparation, he went to that land under the Chinese Evangelisation Society (CES). This small organisation proved to be inept both as regards financial support and day-to-day decisions, and Taylor re-signed from it, while continuing to do his missionary work.

Making a mission

In 1860 he returned to England, and spent his time working on a revision of the New Testament in the Ningpo dialect and completing his medical studies. He spent much time in prayer and meditation on what God wanted him to do next in China. He later wrote in his Retrospect: ‘Months of earnest prayer resulted in a deep conviction that a special agency was essential for the evangelisation of inland China’. Thus in 1865 the China Inland Mission (CIM) was formed, and a year later he sailed for China on the Lammermuir with his wife and children, and a party of 16 new young missionaries.

The society he formed was unique in many ways for that time. It was interdenominational, its workers would have no guaranteed salary, it would accept female workers and lay persons with no special educational qualifications. After his experience under the remote control of the CES, its headquarters was to be in China; and its primary aim would be to evangelise the inland provinces.

Influence of CIM

Daniel Bacon has shown that the CIM as a ‘faith mission’ was the forerunner of seven similar missions which later worked in other mission fields, as well as having six associate missions based in Scandinavia and Europe which worked within its programme. Slowly but surely the work spread to the inland provinces.

But the mission was not without its problems. Some of the early pioneers walked across the breadth of China to break new ground. Thus some in Britain used the mission’s initials teasingly as ‘constantly in mission’. Some critics nicknamed the CIM as the ‘pigtail mission’ because its founder insisted that every male missionary had to wear Chinese dress and have pigtails. One speaker in the House of Lords referred to Hudson Taylor as an ‘incurable idiot’ and his workers as a ‘troop of novices’.

But the CIM was suddenly lifted to a blaze of public admiration in 1885 when seven young graduates, to be known as the Cambridge Seven, joined the mission, having been converted through the ministry of American evangelist, D.L. Moody. Wherever they went, large crowds attended their meetings.

Hudson Taylor’s life was characterised by travel in harsh conditions, visiting his workers in distant inland stations with health and personal problems, travelling by ship to Britain and North America to speak at conferences and meet mission leaders. A.J. Broomhall has shown that the audiences expected from such a leader academic or philosophical addresses, but they heard clear and captivating talks on living in close communion with God and on being obedient to his voice.

The Boxer Rising

When the Boxer Rising occurred in 1900 in north China, Taylor was convalescing in Davos, Switzerland. A succession of telegrams from China brought news of the killings of the mission’s workers. His wife, Jennie, tried to stagger the bad news to protect her husband, already suffering from mental and physical exhaustion. Bowled over by these tragedies, the mission leader could only say: ‘I cannot read, I cannot think, I cannot even pray, but I can trust.’

Shortly before his death, Hudson Taylor spoke to a group of young missionaries in Zhenjiang. They had recently been designated to their new stations. He said to them: ‘The Lord Jesus will never leave nor forsake us. Count on him, enjoy him, abide in him. Be true to him and his Word. He will never disappoint you.’

Lasting legacy

Many instances are given of the spiritual impact which Hudson Taylor made on people who met him. Roger Steer records the testimony which Robert Wilder, pioneer of the Student Volunteer Movement, gave after staying with him for six months in Switzerland. He told Howard and Geraldine Taylor: ‘It was not so much what your father said but what he was that proved a blessing to me. He bore about with him the fragrance of Jesus Christ. His strong faith, quietness and constant industry, even in his weakness, touched me deeply.’

At the time of his death a column in The Guardian newspaper said of him: ‘He had but one aim — to preach Christ to China by any means that came to hand. There was nothing so real to him as the individual soul, and God in Christ for its salvation.’ Griffith John of the London Missionary Society said of his friend Hudson Taylor: ‘He loved the Chinese with a Christ-like love. He lived for China and he died for China’.

Remembering Hudson Taylor, 1832-1905

Making a mission

Influence of CIM

The Boxer Rising

Lasting legacy

Norman Cliff

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