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The shaping of modern China (2 vols)

Hudson Taylor's life and legacy

THE SHAPING OF MODERN CHINA (2 volumes)
Hudson Taylor’s life and legacy
By A.J. Broomhall
Piquant, with William Carey Library, Pasadena, & OMF International
880 pages each. £23.99 (from http://www.piquanteditions.com)
ISBN 1 90368 916 3

These two massive volumes are beautifully produced and reprint the whole of Broomhall’s labour of love, which was originally published in seven separate volumes in the 1980s. The new edition is far superior, on better paper, with clear print and well illustrated with photos and maps.

These books are not for the faint-hearted. Each volume has 860 pages (!) Also, the price at £29.99 may be off-putting — although it has to be said there are many academic Christian paperbacks on the market with a tenth of the material and of far less spiritual worth, which sell for an even greater price.

Jim Broomhall was himself a China Inland Mission missionary who did sterling work among the Nosu people in SW China which is still warmly remembered today. He has gleaned a vast amount of information from many sources about the early history of the CIM, centred on the founder, Hudson Taylor himself. The bulk of the work covers Hudson Taylor’s life and work in China until his death in 1905, but the material is so extensive it is really a spiritual history of evangelical mission in China, centring on the CIM.

For the increasing number of British Christians with a burden to serve God in China today this is an invaluable work to inspire, humble and give vision. Hudson Taylor and his intrepid band of pioneers triumphed in the face of almost impossible odds — disease, civil war, bandits, famine, hostile officials and sometimes, even some fellow Christians who misunderstood their revolutionary determination to live like the Chinese as closely as possible in humble imitation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These are definitely not volumes to read through in a few sittings, but to be dipped into over many years for both stirring stories and spiritual insights. After Taylor’s death in 1905, a fellow missionary stated: ‘Faith and prayer gave Hudson Taylor power with God.’ It was surely Jim Broomhall’s desire that his magnum opus would inspire a whole new generation of Christian workers for China with like faith.

Tony Lambert