HUDSON TAYLOR

His China Inland Mission

Hudson Taylor

• Was born on May 21, 1832 Barnsley, England,

18 miles south of Leeds.
• Died on June 3, 1905 Changsha, Hunan, China
(340 miles north of Canton)
• Hudson Taylor was the most widely used
missionary in China's history.
Hudson Taylor

Taylor was born to James and Amelia Taylor, a

Methodist couple fascinated with the Far East
who had prayed for their newborn, "Grant that
he may work for you in China."
His travel to China

In September 1853, 21-year-old Hudson Taylor

boarded a little three-masted clipper that slipped
quietly out of Liverpool harbor. He was headed
for a country that was just coming into the
Christian West's consciousness and only a few
dozen missionaries were stationed there which is
China.
Taylor wanted the Christian faith taken to the
interior of China, so he and along with Joseph
Edkins, set off for the interior, setting sail down
the Huangpu River distributing Chinese Bibles
and tracts.
Hudson and Edkins were often not warmly
welcomed by remote villages because of their
foreign appearance. For this reason, and out of
respect for their culture, Hudson adopted a
Chinese wardrobe.
He decided to dress in Chinese clothes and grow
a pigtail (as Chinese men did).
He popularized the commonplace idea that
missionaries should live and dress like the
people they seek to evangelize.
Taylor became an independent missionary when
the Chinese Evangelization Society, which had
sponsored Taylor, proved incapable of paying its
missionaries in 1857, so he resigned. That same
year, he married Maria Dyer, daughter of
missionaries stationed in China.
He continued to pour himself into his work, and
his small church in Ningpo grew to 21 members.
But by 1861, he became seriously ill and was
forced to return to England to recover.
He continued translating the Bible into Chinese,
studied to become a midwife and recruited more
missionaries in England and wrote a book titled
China: : Its Spiritual Need and Claims.
Taylor became convinced that a special
organization was needed to evangelize the
interior of China. He made plans to recruit 24
missionaries: two for each of the 11 unreached
inland provinces and two for Mongolia. It was a
visionary plan that would increase the number
of China missionaries by 25 percent
"There the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I
surrendered myself to God for this service. I told
him that all responsibility as to the issues and
consequences must rest with him; that as his
servant it was mine to obey and to follow him."
China Inland Mission or Overseas Missionary
Fellowship (International).

Taylor’s new mission which its missionaries

would have no guaranteed salaries nor could
they appeal for funds, they would simply trust
God to supply their needs, furthermore, its
missionaries would adopt Chinese dress and
then press the gospel into the China interior.
Some CIM missionaries, in the wake of this and
other controversies, left to join other missions,
one of them was Lewis Nicol, who accused
Taylor of tyranny, had to be dismissed. But in
1876, with 52 missionaries, CIM constituted
one-fifth of the missionary force in China.
"China is not to be won for Christ by quiet,
ease-loving men and women," he wrote. "The
stamp of men and women we need is such as
will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and
foremost in everything and at every time - even
life itself must be secondary."
Taylor battled severe depression all his life, both
from the way he drove himself and because of the
immensity of the task. Even after thousands of
conversions, there were still some 400 million
Chinese to reach. At one point late in life, he sank
towards black despair, and “the awful temptation,”
as an unpublished note in the Taylor papers runs,
“even to end his own life.”
The personal cost of Taylor's vision was high on
his family as well, his wife Maria died at age 33,
and four of eight of their children died before
they reached the age of 10. Taylor eventually
married Jennie Faulding, a CIM missionary.
His works

During his 51 years of service there, his China Inland Mission

• established 20 mission stations
• brought 849 missionaries to the field (968 by 1911)
• trained some 700 Chinese workers
• raised four million dollars by faith (following Mueller's
example),
• developed a witnessing Chinese church of 125,000.
It has been said at least 35,000 were his own converts and that
he baptized some 50,000. His gift for inspiring people to give
themselves and their possessions to Christ was amazing.
End of Report