ALONE AMONGTHOUSANDS---J. HUDSON TAYLOR

J.Hudson Taylor was a missionary. He was the first major missionary to go to China. His story is amazing, because the odds were against him, but he never gave up. I read the remarkable book Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. It tell his story in a very readable format.I highly recommend that you read it. It will likely bless you. There were no Christians in China when he arrived in that country on March 1, 1854. Over time, he learned many things about the Chinese people. Historian Ruth Tucker summarizes the theme of his life:
 "No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul, has had a wider vision, and has carried out a more systematized plan of  evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor." ---Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1963

I'd like to tell you much more about this great servant of God, but suffice it for this article to say that while he was in China the first time he wrote to his sister Amelia  "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?"   

On his first furlough home to England, he was given opportunity to speak at Metropolitan Tabernacle. He became good friends with the pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Spurgeon became a life-long supporter of China Inland Missions, which was the mission founded by Taylor.

I can only encourage you to read one of his biographies. I suggest the book I mentioned about his spiritual secret. This will help you in your Christian life. In these dark times we need to be fed by reading the remarkable story of one whom God blessed each step of the way. Here  are some of his own brief words which if you hear them will bless you as few will. It is short. Please take time to read it!

 "At home you can never know what it is to be alone – absolutely alone, amidst thousands, as you can in a Chinese city, without one friend, one companion, everyone looking on you with curiosity, with contempt, with suspicion or with dislike. Thus to learn what it is to be despised and rejected of men – of those you wish to benefit, your motives not understood . . . and then to have the love of Jesus applied to your heart by the Holy Spirit . . . this is worth coming for."