James Hudson Taylor was an extraordinary man. He courageously followed God’s call into the interior of China being the first white man to carry the Gospel into the heart of China. The respect I have for Mr. Taylor cannot be expressed in a 1,000 word article. I have so much respect for this Godly man that I have a large painting of him in my church office beside my library.
When I was about 11, I read a children’s biography of this mighty man of God. I read how Hudson was in bed one night and while in prayer, he gave himself to the Lord. He spread himself out on the bed and said, “If you send me to China, I will go!” As an 11 year old boy, I prayed that same prayer. I said, “If you will send me into missions, I will go!” Well, that next summer, I had the unique opportunity to spend 3 weeks traveling through Germany, Hungary, Romania and the Ukraine with a missionary friend of my church and family. Since then, Hudson Taylor has impacted my walk with Christ in enormous ways.
He was born May 21, 1832 in Yorkshire, England. His parents were Godly, and they prayed, “Lord, if you give us a son, we pray you use him in China.” Hudson was a good student through school and decided to study both medicine and theology. His parent’s prayer came true September 19, 1853 as he set sail to become a medical missionary to China.
Once Hudson arrived in Ningpo, China he noticed immediately that mission work there wasn’t what he thought it would be. One fault of some missionaries in those days was the mentality that Christians were to “Westernize” the culture. So, they built enormous homes along the coast and “hired” the Chinese as servants in order to influence them with their culture. Many missionaries went to China to change their dress, customs and even language to English.
Hudson didn’t see mission work that way. He wasn’t interested in converting the Chinese to his culture, he desired to convert them to Christ! He couldn’t understand why the missionaries were not penetrating the interior of China with the Gospel. He respected the customs of the Chinese and was eager to adopt them as long as it didn’t violate his Biblical standards. One area he adopted was to wear local clothing men wore and he even grew his hair into a long “pigtail” because this was the culture of the local men. Most missionaries criticized him for these decisions, except one missionary…Maria Dyer!
She respected Hudson for loving the Chinese and desiring to bring the Gospel to their culture. They were happily married January 20, 1858!
Hudson and his bride continued their labor for several more years before returning home to England for a furlough. Their lives would soon change as Hudson knelt upon the beach at Brighton, England and “prayed for twenty-four willing, skillful laborers” to reach the interior of China. This was on June 25, 1865, the night China Inland Missions (CIM) was born! The next morning, he opened a bank account with 50 pounds ($10 USD) in the name of China Inland Missions. One year later, 24 people sailed to China with the Taylor’s to bring the light of the glorious gospel to this dark land!
Throughout the year, the new mission would continue to grow, but because of the Boxer Rebellion the Taylor’s lost 58 missionaries and 21 children, but God continued to send missionaries to them. By the time of his death, CMI had 205 missionary stations throughout China with 849 missionaries serving and 125,000 Chinese converted to Christ!
Hudson Taylor died in Changsha, China on June 3, 1905, but the story does not end here! His work continued on. The ministry God led him to build was so strong that it is still going even to this day! China Inland Mission is now called Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) and you can visit their website at www.omf.org.
Currently, OMF is praying for 900 new workers to join them in the mission field by 2011. They have 1,300 missionaries serving now! On March 20, 2009, Hudson’s great-grandson, James Hudson Taylor III went to be with the Lord at age 79. He himself was a powerful missionary to East Asia. He died in Hong Kong. Hudson did what few are able to do. He left a legacy, not just of ministry, but for his family to follow in his footsteps to magnify Christ and to seek the salvation of souls! A mighty man of God indeed! I will leave you now with a couple of popular quotes from James Hudson Taylor, missionary to China.
“It is always helpful to us to fix out attention on the God-ward aspect of Christian work; to realize that the work of God does not mean so much man’s work for God, as God’s own work through man.”
“We have no responsibilities save to follow as we are led, and we serve One who is able both to design and to executed, and whose work never fails.”
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