Hudson Taylor

God at all times and by all people makes roads where none are found and bridges over insurmountable obstacles so that His word may be spread. Hudson Taylor's life exemplified this truth. Hudson a man "With only trade school medicine, without any university experience much less missiolgical training, and a checkered past in regard to his own individualistic behavior while he was on the field, he was merely one more of the weak things that God uses to confound the wise. Even his early anti-church-planting missionary strategy was breathtakingly erroneous by today's church-planting standards. Yet God strangely honored him because his gaze was fixed upon the world's least reached peoples. Hudson Taylor had a divine wind behind him. The Holy Spirit spared him from many pitfalls, and it was his organization, the China Inland Mission - the most cooperative servant organization yet to appear - that eventually served in one way or another over 6,000 missionaries, predominantly in the interior of China."
Hudson was born the year of 1832 in Yorkshire, England. From the beginning he was raised with God, stating his desire to be a missionary to his parent's friends before he was five years old. He was not saved until the age of seventeen when he experienced a "joyful convictionÔøΩlight was flashed into my soul by the Holy SpiritÔøΩ There was nothing in the world to be done but to fall down on one's knees and, accepting this Savior and His Salvation, to praise Him forevermore." When Hudson told his mother the news he was surprised instead of her, for God had given her the urge to pray for his salvation two weeks earlier and she did so until she was sure of God's answer.

In 1854 Mr. Taylor began his missionary career in China. It started with a group called the Chinese Evangelization Society, CES. The match was not made in heaven and he was soon an outcast within the society. Part of the problem lied in the fact that Taylor cared not for the comforts of this world, but rather he wished to depend solely on God. Before leaving England he once said "ÔøΩwhen I get out to China I shall have no claim on anyone for anything; my only claim will be on God. How important, therefore, to learn before leaving England to move man, through God, by prayer alone." Living what he preached he actually cut and dyed his hair as well as adopting Chinese attire to more effectively preach the gospel. His well-intentioned missionary brethren chided him for not keeping with western culture. Hudson left CES in 1857 and from that point on was on his own.

Hudson lingered in China until 1860. During that time he found his first wife Maria Dyer. The return to England brought a much-needed furlough and the birth of the China Inland Mission, CIM. God's passion, through Hudson, rang in the hearts of those around him as he cried out "A million a month dying without God." Thus inspired a group including: Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, their four children and fifteen male and female recruits set sail for China in 1865. It was the largest missionary party of the time.

The CIM functioned as Hudson had in his first trip to China. They all dressed and wore their hair as the Chinese and they worked in the interior of China. The CIM missionaries were people whose hearts were close to God, not people of high education. Though the CIM was ridiculed the society did more work in China than any other group. The CIM reached its peak in 1934 with 1,368 missionaries, by this time Hudson Taylor was with the Lord. He died peacefully in China in the place God had put him.