On this day in 1854, the famed evangelist James Hudson Taylor entered China as a missionary. Taylor was only 22, but here he began a work that in the following decades would transform the church in China.
Born in Barnsley, Yorkshire in 1832, Taylor knew from shortly after his teenage Christian conversion that he was called to go to China. He was a talented linguist who studied Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Mandarin. Before leaving England he trained as a medical doctor: his skills in medicine, language and a passion for preaching would all serve his missionary work.
Radically for the time, he accommodated to the culture he was evangelising, relinquishing European garb and wearing the local Chinese dress and hairstyle as he travelled, preaching and dispersing gospel tracts, around the vicinity of Shanghai. He later translated Scripture into local dialects, established schools and clinics, and served the poor.
He had first worked with the China Evangelisation Society, but later started his own group, the China Inland Mission: an interdenominational mission that relied on faith for the provision of financial support. This initiative, now known as OMF International, went on to become one of the world's largest missionary organisations.
Through his life and missionary legacy, Taylor's memory is still cherished by many today. Here are nine quotes that capture some of his pioneering pastoral heart.
1. When I cannot read, when I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust.
2. God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply.
3. Let us give up our work, our thoughts, our plans, ourselves, our lives, our loved ones, our influence, our all, right into his hand, and then, when we have given all over to him, there will be nothing left for us to be troubled about, or to make trouble about.
4. There are three stages to every great work of God; first it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.
5. It is not so much the greatness of our troubles, as the littleness of our spirit, which makes us complain.
6. If I had a thousand pounds China should have it – if I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour?
7. To me it seemed that the teaching of God's Word was unmistakably clear: 'Owe no man anything.' To borrow money implied to my mind a contradiction of Scripture – a confession that God had withheld some good thing, and determination to get for ourselves what he had not given.
8. God isn't looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow him.
9. The real secret of an unsatisfied life lies too often in an unsurrendered will.
