The Rising Tide (1880-1885)
Back in the terrible days of the Taiping Rebellion, Captain Yu of the Imperial army was stationed for a short time in Ningpo. While there, he fell in with preachers of ‘the Jesus Doctrine,’ and learned something of the teachings of Christianity. Naturally a thoughtful, religious man, he could not but be impressed, but the little he had heard left him with no clear knowledge of the way of salvation. Fifteen long years went by without bringing him further light; but he was seeking, groping after the truth, and doing all in his power to win and help others to win ‘the favour of Heaven’.
Among a sect of reformed Buddhists strongly opposed to idolatry he had found kindred spirits, and was giving all his time to going from place to place as their accredited agent, though without remuneration. His preaching was necessarily rather negative than positive—denouncing the folly and sin of idol-worship, and proclaiming the existence of one true, supreme Ruler of the universe, the only God who should be worshipped, but of whom he could tell his hearers practically nothing.
He was growing an old man before, in an inland city (Kin-hwa-fu), he meta foreign missionary. Dr. Douthwaite had come over from his station on the Tsientang River, and with Pastor Wang Lae-djtin was preaching daily in a newly opened Gospel hall. Here the devout Buddhist heard in all its fullness the glad tidings of salvation—heard, believed, and found himself a new creature in Christ Jesus. After his baptism a year later (1876) he went down to Chu-chow-fu to be under Dr. Douthwaite’s care, for medical treatment, and the latter was rejoiced to see how much progress he had made in knowledge of the Word of God.
‘I well remember how, after we had been reading the Scriptures and praying together,’ he wrote, “Yi earnestly entreated me to let him go out as a preacher of the Gospel.
““T have led hundreds on the wrong road,” he said, “and now I want to turn them to the Way of Truth. Let me go. I ask no wages; I do not want your money. I only want to serve the Lord Jesus.”
Three weeks later this ardent missionary, sent out with the prayers of the little church at Chu-chow-fu, returned with his first convert. He had crossed the watershed between Chekiang and the adjacent province of Kiangsi, and in the beautiful district of Yiishan had visited some of his former disciples. One of these it was who accompanied him now—a cheery farmer, also named Yi, who was himself to become an earnest soul-winner. Dr. Douthwaite recalled of this farmer,
He seemed to be just boiling over with joy.
‘For forty years I have been seeking the Truth,’ he said, ‘and now I have found it!’
Then he earnestly requested to be at once baptised.
‘Oh,’ I replied, ‘we cannot go so fast!’, “No,” he urged, ‘let me be baptised now. I am an old man and have come three days’ journey. I may’never be able to travel so far again. I believe everything you have told me about the Lord Jesus. There is no reason why I should not be baptised today.’
On further enquiry, I myself could see none; so I baptised him and he went away rejoicing.
But he did come back, bringing with him six or seven neighbours (Feb. 1877). They, too, definitely expressed their faith in Christ, saying that from what they had heard they were convinced that idolatry was false and sinful, and were prepared to give it up. After a few months’ testing, I had the joy of receiving them, too, into the church.
The ex-Captain meanwhile, continuing his labours, had been led to another man from the same district whose heart the Lord opened. Travelling to Yiishan one day, carrying his few belongings, he had joined company with a stranger who soon became interested in his conversation. Perceiving the old ‘Teacher’ to be a good man, Farmer Tung insisted on relieving him of his bundle of bedding, etc., as they tramped along together mile after mile. So fully did the story of the life, death and resurrection of Christ meet the young man’s need, that from that day he too was not only a believer in Jesus but a preacher of the Gospel. On visiting his village (Tayang) some months later, Dr. Douthwaite was surprised to find the courtyard of the house filled with an orderly assembly of people waiting as if for a meeting. Stools, chairs, baskets, inverted buckets, whatever could be' used as a seat had been requisitioned, and the company consisted of women as well as men—all eagerly expectant. They were waiting, he found, for him to address them; and on asking how such an audience had been gathered at short notice, he was still more interested to learn that had he not been coming the meeting would have been held just the same. It was their custom to come together every evening in Farmer Tung’s house or courtyard, to sing hymns and pray and read from the Word of God; and in villages far and near, for miles around, the Good News had been made known.
Hudson Taylor himself, in 1877, had met some of these converts, and now, in the summer of 1880, during a visit to the Mission centres in Chekiang, he decided to cross into the neighbouring province of Kiangsi, and return to the Yangtze by way of the Kwangsin River.
Upon his visits to Farmer Tung and the newly opened out-station at Ytishan we must not dwell; but in the light of those lives touched with the love of Christ, the darkness of all that lay around them and beyond was felt the more. Did the vision come to him then, as he passed the cities day after day that were to witness a chain of Mission centres unique in China, staffed entirely by women; the vision of girls then’ free and happy in far-off Christian homes, quietly laying down their lives in loving, self-sacrificing service for the up-building of the kingdom of God in human hearts? Whether he saw it or not, there was One who knew why Hudson Taylor had been brought to the Kwangsin River; One who knew where to find the treasures of love ready to be outpoured in His service from many a woman’s heart.
And all the while in distant provinces, hundreds of miles farther north and west, a beginning was being made. Strange and new as was the presence of foreign women in the great inland cities they now called home, it was no more so than the experiences that were coming to them.
‘For nearly two months past,’ Mrs. Nicoll wrote from Chungking in Szechwan, ‘I have daily seen some hundreds of women. Our house has been like a fair. Often while getting one crowd out at the front door another has found its way in at the back.’
How much she needed help may be imagined; for, without a Christian woman anywhere within reach, the only person she could fall back upon was a member of their household who, being an old man, was tolerated among the guests in the inner courtyard. As the summer wore on she had to get up at three o’clock in the morning to obtain quiet for Bible study or letters. The busy day that followed rarely brought opportunity for rest; and more than once she fainted from weariness in the midst of her visitors, returning to consciousness to find the women fanning her, full of affection and concern.
Among many well-to-do women who were her friends was one elderly lady who cared for her like a mother. From time to time, knowing how weary she must be, this lady - would send round her sedan chair with an urgent request for Mrs. Nicoll to return in it immediately. If she succeeded thus in getting her away from the Mission house, she would put her on the most comfortable bed in her own apartment, send out all the younger women, and sit down herself to fan her until the tired missionary was fast asleep. Then she would prepare an inviting meal and on no account let her go home until she had had a good dinner.
That was the surprise, the unexpected encouragement that everywhere awaited these first women who went—the people were glad to see them, were eager, often, to hear their message, and showed not only natural curiosity and interest, but real heart sympathy. Even crossing the desperately anti-foreign province of Hunan, for example, Miss Kidd could write of friendly women wanting to detain them.
‘Why do you go to Kweichow?’ they said in several places: ‘we too want happiness and peace. Stay here and be our teachers.’
Their experiences on reaching Kweiyang were no less encouraging.
“We find the people most friendly,’ Mrs. McCarthy wrote during the following summer, ‘and we go in and out without the least inconvenience. As we walk about, we get many invitations to sit down and drink tea.’
With Miss Wilson and Miss Fausset it was just the same in their distant northern province. Arrived in Hangchungfu they found George King and his wife in the midst of an absorbing work. God had a people in that place, and it was all the missionaries could do to keep up with developments that before long gave them an unusually bright little: church of over thirty baptised believers. One of these, an elderly woman who seemed all on fire with love to Christ, never wearied of accompanying Miss Wilson to the surrounding villages.
About six months later Mr. and Mrs. Parker came up, on their way to a still more distant sphere. They were bound for Kansu, the farthest north-west of all the provinces, where, with its Muhammadan* and Chinese population of ten millions, G. F. Easton was the one solitary witness for Christ. Five months only after their arrival Mr. Parker wrote (June 2nd, 1881):
‘I doubt whether there is a lane or courtyard in the city where a visit from my wife or Miss Wilson would not be welcomed. Three candidates are waiting to be baptised.’
Thus at point after point in the far interior, prayer was being answered and the seemingly impossible brought to pass. ‘Do love the Chinese women,’ Hudson Taylor had said to Miss Wilson when she first went out. ‘Whatever is your best time in the day, give that to communion with God; and do love the Chinese women.’ This was the power that was telling now on hearts that were ‘learning through human love, unknown before, the wonder of the Love that ‘passeth knowledge’.
“What is this strange, warm feeling we have when we come here to you?’ said a group of visitors to one of the first women missionaries in Honan. ‘We never feel it anywhere else. In our own mothers’ homes we do not feel it. Here our hearts are k’uan-ch’ao—broad and peaceful. What is it warms them so? We have never felt it before.’
But such service was not without its cost. While there was much to encourage—for by the end of 1880 the pioneers were rejoicing in sixty or seventy converts gathered into little churches in the far inland provinces—there was much also to call for faith and patience and the spirit of those who overcame ‘by the blood of the Lamb’ and ‘loved not their lives unto the death.’ First to go to the women of western China, Emily King was the first also to be called to higher service. But before her brief - course ended—the one precious opportunity in which she had given her all—she had the joy of seeing no fewer than eighteen women baptised on confession of their faith in Jesus. Dying of typhus fever in her far-off home (May 1881), this it was that raised her above the sorrow of leaving her husband desolate, and their little one but five weeks old without a mother. The Man of Sorrows was seeing of ‘the travail of his soul’ among those for whom He had waited so long! And she was satisfied.
This it was that strengthened the mother’s heart by a little lonely grave, when in that same month of May Mrs. George Clarke went on from Kweichow, in which she had been the only woman missionary, to the still more distant and difficult province of Yiinnan. The sisters who had come to her help were able by that time to carry on the work; and the precious child who had filled her hands as well as her heart had been taken to a safer, better Land.
‘The Lord has been leading us by a painful path,’ the father wrote. ‘Doubtless He saw best to take our dear boy to Himself, to send us to Yunnan; for if he had been spared we should not have thought of leaving Kweichow. Now, where is the married couple who can go as well as we?’
Forty days’ journey westward lay the city in which a house was waiting; and Yiinnan with its twelve millions was without a resident missionary, or anyone at all to bring to its women and children the glad tidings of a Saviour’s love. Kneeling beside that little grave, the mother consecrated herself afresh to God for this work, and went on to the loneliness and privations she knew so well, to do in a second great province of western China what she had already been doing in Kweichow. And though only two and a half years later she too was called to her reward, the fruit of that life, the answer to her many prayers, lived on.
From the snow-capped mountains that reminded her of her own Switzerland, on which she loved to watch the sunset glow, in later years hundreds upon hundreds of the neglected tribes-people came to the Saviour she so truly loved and served. And in the two provinces where she pioneered the way as the first woman missionary, a church numbering more than 8,000 spread across to the Burma border forty years after her death, and went on increasing.
Shortly before Mrs. Hudson Taylor had left home (May 1878) to lead in this pioneer movement, a special Prayer Union had been formed in England ‘to seek blessing upon the 125 millions of heathen women in China.’ The circular setting forth the objects of the Union was headed with the promise: ‘If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven’ (Matt. 18. 19). Daily prayer for those labouring among them was the condition of membership; and who shall say how much the safety, happiness and success of the first women workers to go to the far inland provinces was due to the united, definite prayer focused thus upon their labours?
The work of the C.I.M. pioneers was extensive and thorough-going. “Other missionaries are doing a good work, but they are not doing this work,’ wrote Alex. Wylie of the London Missionary Society early in the 1880s. ‘They are opening up the country, and this is what we want.’ And one of Her Majesty’s Consuls included, in the same year, the following statement in his official report from Hankow:
Always on the move, the missionaries of this society have travelled throughout the country, taking hardship and privation as the natural incidents of their profession and, never attempting to force themselves anywhere, they have made friends everywhere; and while labouring in their special field as ministers of the Gospel, have accustomed the Chinese to the presence of foreigners among them. Not only do the bachelor members of the Mission visit places supposed to be inaccessible to foreigners, but those who are married take their wives with them and settle down with the good will of the people in districts far removed from official influence, and get on as comfortably and securely as their brethren of the older Missions under the shadow of the Consular flag. This Mission has, at the same time, shown the true way of spreading Christianity in China.
In the course of six years of almost uninterrupted travelling James Cameron traversed every province in China except Hunan, even reaching Mongolia and Tibet. John McCarthy had gone on foot through the three southwestern provinces, preaching everywhere as he went, while George Clarke and Edward Fishe were evangelising in Kwangsi, still farther south and until then wholly unreached. Broumton, once Kweiyang was occupied, was set free to travel again, and visited with others nearly every city in eastern Ytinnan. On the west J. W. Stevenson and Henry Soltau, who had been in Burma, crossed the hills to unite the advance guards of the Mission coming from east and west, and then proceeded to the coast, the first Europeans to travel from the Burmese frontier right through to Shanghai. Taylor was at Wuchang when they reached the Yangtze, whence he had seen off another large party, including women, bound for western China.
Hardly had they started before Adam Dorward appeared, fresh from five and a half months of pioneering. Hunan was graven on his heart, and he had just commenced the self-sacrificing labours that for eight years he continued almost without intermission, giving his life at last in hope of the blessed results seen later. Little wonder that a crying need began to be felt, rising out of these developments—the need for reinforcements to follow up such labours and enter many a widely opened door!
This then was the state of things when Jennie Taylor was obliged to return to England, after more than three years’ absence (October 1881), and Taylor set out from Chefoo, now his headquarters, for a conference with several of the pioneers at Wuchang. Dorward was there from Hunan, Parrott and Pigott from the north, Trench and Miss Kidd from the far south-west and other workers from central China. Just a family party they seemed, overjoyed to have Taylor with them, quite unconscious of what was to be the outcome. There had been little or no pre-arrangement about these meetings. As Taylor came up-river, he brought with him one and another who seemed to need refreshment, and Coulthard’s bachelor house-keeping was taxed to the utmost. But a spirit of prayer prevailed. And shortly after the conference had begun, Hudson Taylor wrote:
God is giving us a happy time of fellowship together, and is confirming us in the principles on which we are acting.
That one little sentence, taken in connection with the crisis to which they had come, lets in a flood of light on the important sequel to those days of fellowship at Wuchang. For, unconsciously, perhaps, to the younger members of the Mission, it was a crisis, and more was hanging in the balance than Taylor himself could realise. After years of prayer and patient, persevering efforts, a position of unparalleled opportunity had been reached. Inland China lay open before them. At all the settled stations in the far north, south, and west, reinforcements were needed, whole provinces as large as kingdoms in Europe being at last accessible to resident as well as itinerant missionary work. Not to advance would be to retreat from the position of faith taken up at the beginning. It would be to look at difficulties rather than at the living God. True, funds were low—had been for years, and the workers coming out from home were few, while several retirements had taken place in China. Difficulties were formidable; and it was easy to say, ‘All these things are indications that for the present no further extension is possible.’ But not to go forward would be to throw away opportunities God had given, and to close, before long, stations that had been opened at great cost. This, surely, could not be His way for the evangelisation of inland China.
What then was to be done? What answer must be given to the pioneers who were writing and eagerly looking for help? There are several different ways of working for God, as Taylor reminded the little company.
One is to make the best plans we can, and carry them out to the best of our ability. This may be better than working without plan, but it is by no means the best way of serving our Master. Or, having carefully laid our plans and determined to carry them through, we may ask God to help us, and to prosper us in connection with them. Yet another way of working is to begin with God; to ask His plans, and to offer ourselves to Him to carry out His purposes.
This then was the attitude taken up. Day by day the needs of the whole work were laid before the Lord, guidance being sought as to His will in connection with them.
Going about it in this way, we leave the responsibility with the Great Designer, and find His service one of sweet restfulness. We have no responsibility save to follow as we are led; and we serve One who is able both to design and to execute, and whose work never fails.
It was only gradually it came to them—for it seemed too big a thing for faith to grasp. Walking over the Serpent Hill in the midst of Wuchang, Taylor was counting up with one of his fellow-workers how many men and women it would really take to meet the most pressing claims. Station after station was considered, their thoughts quickened meanwhile by the scene outspread before them—the homes of no fewer than two million people being gathered at that confluence of the mighty Yangtze with the Han. Thus it was the thought dawned, overwhelming almost in its greatness. Fifty to sixty new workers? Why, the entire membership of the Mission was barely 100! But fifty or sixty, at the lowest computation, would be all too few. ‘Other seventy also,’ came to Taylor’s mind: ‘the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them...’
They did not run away with the new idea all at once. Several prayer meetings and quiet consultations were held before they came to feel liberty and confidence in asking the Lord for seventy new fellow-workers. Three years was agreed upon as the period in which the answer should be looked for, as it would hardly be possible to receive and arrange for so many new workers in a shorter time.
‘If only we could meet again and have a united praise meeting when the last of the Seventy has reached China!’ said one.
‘We shall be widely scattered then,’ said another with a practical turn of mind. ‘But why not have the praise meeting now? Why not give thanks for the Seventy before we separate?’
So the meeting was held, and those who had joined in the prayer joined in the thanksgiving also, with which the answer was received—in faith.
From that time on the prayer for reinforcements was taken up throughout the Mission. In the scene of his early labours at Ningpo, Hudson Taylor drafted an appeal to the home churches which in due course was signed by seventy-seven members of the Mission in China. The sense of responsibility that lay behind it, as well as its quiet confidence in God, may be judged from the following extracts:
Souls on every hand are perishing for lack of knowledge; more than 1,000 every hour are passing away into death and darkness. Provinces in China compare in area with kingdoms in Europe, and average between ten and twenty millions in population. One province has no missionary; in each of two other provinces there is only one missionary and his wife resident; and none are sufficiently supplied with labourers. Can we leave matters thus without incurring the sin of blood-guiltiness?
After requesting prayer for more workers ‘in connection with every Protestant missionary society on both sides of the Atlantic,’ the needs of the C.I-M. were specially referred to.
A careful survey of the spiritual work to which we ourselves are called has led us to feel the importance of immediate and large reinforcements, and many of us are daily pleading with God in agreed prayer for forty-two additional men and twenty-eight additional women. We ask our brothers and sisters in Christ at home to join us in praying the Lord of the Harvest to thrust out this ‘other seventy also’. We are not anxious as to the means for sending them forth or sustaining them. He has told us to look to the birds and flowers, and to take no thought for these things, but to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and that all these things shall be added unto us. But we are concerned that only men and women called of God, fully consecrated to Him, and counting everything precious as dross and dung ‘for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,’ should come out to join us; and we would add to this appeal a word of caution and encouragement, to any who may feel drawn to offer themselves for this blessed work. Of caution, urging such to count the cost; to wait prayerfully on God; to ask themselves whether they will] really trust Him for everything, wherever He may call them to go. Mere romantic feeling will soon die out amid the toilsome labour and constant discomforts and trials of inland work, and will not be worth much when severe illness arises and perhaps all the money is gone. Faith in the living God alone gives joy and rest in such circumstances. But a word also of encouragement, for we ourselves have proved God’s faithfulness and the blessedness of dependence on Him. He is supplying and ever has supplied all our need. And if not seldom we have fellowship in poverty with Him who for our sakes became poor, shall we not rejoice if the Day prove that we have been, like the great missionary Apostle, ‘poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things’? He makes us very happy in His setvice, and those of us who have children desire nothing better for them, should the Lord tarry, than that they may be called to similar work and similar joys.
(Shortly before this was written, Hudson Taylor had welcomed his eldest son to China.)
What should we not expect from 1882 after this beginning, with the prayer for the Seventy being taken up in such a spirit throughout the Mission? Should we not confidently look for a rising tide of spiritual blessing both at home and in China, and that Taylor especially, as representing the movement, should be led on from strength to strength? Perhaps a deeper knowledge not only of the ‘acts’ but of the ‘ways’ of God would modify such expectations, and lessen the surprise with which one finds the reality to have been very different. In England as in China, difficulties did not lessen. Working to the limit of his powers, Benjamin Broomhall was not able to report any decided increase either of funds or of service. Eleven new workers were sent out, but three only of the number were men, when five times as many had been hoped for. So great was the trial as to shortness of supplies that Taylor could scarcely wonder at the retirement of one and another from the Mission whom he knew to be loosely attached to its principles. Government posts were to be had at a salary of £50 a month, in which it was easy to think that exceptional opportunities for usefulness would be found. Most disturbing of all, the work in some important stations seemed to be going back rather than forward.
Faith was thus thrown into the crucible in many ways. Weaknesses were brought out with startling clearness—need of spiritual power, or organisation, of leaders of more calibre. With answered prayer on the one hand as to the opening up of inland China, and a growing faith for large reinforcements on the other, they were forced to a realisation of the utter inadequacy of existing arrangements to carry on the work even as it was. In and through it all, Taylor himself was assailed by depression, loneliness and forebodings.;
Yet there were gleams of brightness, all the more welcome for the shadows, and some outstanding experiences that told of a deepening work of God. Memorable among these was the Conference lasting for several days at Anking in June. Seven months had now elapsed since in a similar gathering the decision had been reached to ask in faith for seventy new fellow-workers, and to this little company on their knees at Anking came a wonderful confirmation of their convictions as to that purpose.
“We have had a day of united fasting and prayer today,’ Taylor wrote on June 30th, ‘and a wonderful time of blessing it has been. The Holy Spirit seemed so to fill us this morning that several of us felt as if we could not bear any more.’
One cannot but trace the rising tide of spiritual blessing that began to make itself felt, to the waiting upon God of this and of other special meetings towards the close of the year. Taylor paid another visit to the district in which a few months previously he had found so much to discourage. Then he had written of his efforts being all or ‘nearly all in vain, so far as this part of the work is concerned.’ Now, - baptised afresh with a spirit of love, he found his way to hearts that had seemed closed against him, and a work of grace was the result, that was not only to save valuable workers from being lost to the Mission, but was to set them in its front rank as soul-winners.
It was at Chefoo that the later months of the year were spent and some of its most important work accomplished and Taylor began to see his way at length to returning to England. Faith was encouraged by definite answers to prayer in the matter of funds. Early in October, for example, they were looking with special expectancy for the home remittance.
We were at table, when we received our letters (the home mail); and when on opening one of them I found, instead of seven or eight hundred pounds for the month’s supplies, only £96 9s. 5d, my feelings I shall not soon forget!
I closed the envelope again and, seeking my room, knelt down and spread the letter before the Lord, asking Him what was to be done with less than £97—a sum it was impossible to distribute over seventy stations in which were eighty or ninety missionaries, including their wives, not to speak of about 100 Chinese helpers, and children to be fed and clothed in our schools. Having first rolled the burden on the Lord, I then mentioned the matter to others of our own Mission in Chefoo, and we unitedly looked to Him to come to our aid; but no hint as to our circumstances was allowed to reach anyone outside.
Soon the answers began to come—kind gifts from local friends who little knew the peculiar value of their donations, and help in other ways, until the needs of the month were all met without our having been burdened with anxious thought even for an hour. We had similar experiences in November and again in December; and on each occasion, after spreading the letter before the Lord and leaving the burden with Him, we were ‘helped.’ Thus the Lord made our hearts sing for joy, and provided through local contributions in China for the needs of the work as never before or since.
Encouraged in this way, the little circle at Chefoo were the more prepared for Taylor’s suggestion that they should unite in asking some definite ‘token for good’ of the same sort to strengthen faith at home. Letters received had shown how really concerned were some of the workers and friends of the Mission as to the appeal for the Seventy. It had been kept in the background as much as possible, just because it seemed too great an advance to contemplate at such a time; and Taylor, who by no means ignored the difficulty, felt it laid on his heart to ask the Lord to put His seal upon the matter in a way that could not be mistaken. It was at one of the daily prayer meetings at Chefoo, on or about February Ist, 1883, and the few who were present were conscious of much liberty in laying their request before God. Recalling the occasion Taylor wrote,
We knew that our Father loves to please His children. What father does not? And we asked Him lovingly to please us, as well as to encourage timid ones at home, by leading some one of His wealthy stewards to make room for a large blessing for himself and his family by giving liberally to this special object.
No account of that special prayer meeting had been written home, nor could a letter of that date have reached London until the end of March. But at Pyrland Road on February 2nd a sum of £3,000 was received for work in China.
Meanwhile Taylor was on his way back to England and, on landing at Marseilles, took the opportunity of visiting the Bergers at Cannes.
The April China’ Millions there came to hand, and I found in the list of donations this £3,000, acknowledged under the date of February 2nd, with the text, ‘Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession,’ as follows:
Father = £1000
Mother ‘, 1,000
Mary 200
Rosie 200
Bertie 200
Amy 200
Henry 200
£3,000
It was most striking to see how literally God had fulfilled our prayer, and led His faithful steward to make room for a large blessing for himself and his family. Never before was a donation sent to us in such a way, and never since, save on one occasion, a year and five months later, when a donation for the same fund is entered thus in China’s Millions:
Father £200
Mother 200
Mary . 100
Rosie 100 .
Bertie 100
Amy 100
Henry 100
Baby 100
£1,000
A beautiful instance, this, of a father who seeks that each member of his family should have “treasure in heaven’.
Reaching home at the end of March, Taylor soon noticed the new position accorded to the Mission in the esteem of the Christian public. The eight years of Benjamin Broomhall’s unwearied labours had told especially in the direction
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which was his forte—that of inspiring confidence and making friends. In many parts of the country people were wanting to hear of the achievements of the pioneers, and how they had effected a settled residence inland. Meetings, therefore, soon claimed the leader of the Mission.
“When he was speaking,’ one recalled, “you could be quite sure that, whatever else he might say, he would make no plea for funds. His great desire was that no funds should be diverted from other societies to the China Inland Mission. Nothing gave him more genuine pleasure than to speak well of other Missions.
“Oh, the dignified way in which his life of faith was lived out, the reality of it all! Instead of wanting to get anything out of you, he was always ready to give to you.’
At a conference in Salisbury no reference was made to the China Inland Mission. It was for China that lives were consecrated and money flowed in. In spite of there being no collection, people emptied their purses, stripped themselves of their jewels, handed over watches, chains, rings and the like, and gave their lives to God for His service.
Fifteen or sixteen offers for the mission field were the result, and a whole jewelry case was sent in next day. People had received so much that they felt they could give anything.
Fully as were Taylor’s time and strength occupied in these ways, he was quietly seeking light upon how to prepare for the larger growth that was coming in the Mission. In August he sent out a carefully considered letter to all the members, stating what was proposed and asking their judgment.
Our home arrangement of assisting the Director by a Council may be introduced in China; the members of that Council may themselves be Superintendents of districts, in which capacity they may in their turn be assisted by district Councils of our missionaries. In all this no new principle will be introduced, yet our work will be rendered capable of indefinite expansion while maintaining its original character. Many local matters can thus be locally considered and attended to without delay, and local as well as general developments will be facilitated. I have hitherto had the opportunity of conferring only with those of our number who might be within reach, and that at irregular intervals. The plan I now propose will, through the district Superintendents, bring me into conference with all our missionaries of experience, and will secure an increasingly effective supervision of the whole work. |
Meanwhile, away in China, Dr. Harold Schofield, stricken with a malignant fever, had laid down his life after only three years on the mission field. On the face of it there seems little connection between that fact and the special developments of 1883 and 1884. Why recall Harold Schofield’s short-lived service, brilliant and selfsacrificing though it undoubtedly was? Only this—that Schofield died praying.
During all the later months of his life his chief preoccupation had been prayer. For this he would leave wife and children, denying himself rest and recreation, and making time at any cost for waiting upon God. And the petition he urged with special fervency was that God would touch the young life of our universities, and raise up men of gifts and education for His work among the heathen. There was no Student Christian Federation in those days, no Volunteer Movement in any of the colleges. Himself a distinguished prizeman, who had taken more than £1,400 in scholarships, he knew well the value of thorough mental training; and remembering all that had been said in his own case about ‘sacrifice of brilliant prospects,’ he prayed for a new spirit to come over Christian thinking, more in harmony with Him who ‘made himself of no reputation’ that dying souls might live.
The prayers of those last months had not been in vain. News of his death, though cabled to England, did not reach Taylor immediately, but that very day a letter came to him in the north of England that one cannot but connect with Dr. Schofield’s prayers. It was from a young officer in the Royal Artillery asking for an interview, signing the name that, little as either of them could suppose it, was in due course to replace Hudson Taylor’s own. D. E. Hoste writing from Sandown Fort in July, Stanley P. Smith coming up from Trinity College and his exploits on the river, these and the others who joined them making the well-known ‘Cambridge Seven,” whose going out awakened a new spirit indeed throughout the universities of the United Kingdom and America, and through them of the world—what were they but the answers to those sacred pleadings in which a believing heart had entered into fellowship with God?
It came about very naturally. In his History of the Church Missionary Society, Dr. Eugene Stock speaks of _ “the extraordinary interest aroused in the autumn of 1884 by the announcement that the captain of the Cambridge Eleven and the stroke oar of the Cambridge boat were going out as missionaries’. When the news reached Edinburgh it deeply stirred a group of medical students who for some months had been burdened about the indifference to spiritual things in the university, especially among their fellow medicals. A series of remarkable meetings had just 446 BIQGRAPHY OF JAMES HUDSON TAYLOR
been held at Oxford and Cambridge in which Hudson Taylor and several of the outgoing party had won the sympathies of the undergraduates for foreign missions as never before. Could they not come to Edinburgh also?
‘Many had heard of Stanley Smith,’ wrote Professor Charteris, ‘and to everyone who knew anything of cricket the name of Studd was familiar. And so the word went round our classrooms, “Let us go and give the athlete missionaries a welcome!”
‘The men gathered—about 1,000. Smith would have made his mark as an orator anywhere. Studd has not, the gifts of an orator, but he never went more straight at the mark in the cricket field than he did in his narrative of the way God had led him for years, from stage to stage of the Christian life, until he was ready to forsake father and mother, home and friends, because of his love for his Redeemer.
‘The students were spellbound. Those two speakers were so manly—types indeed of handsome, healthy manhood—were so happy, spoke in such unconventional style, that when they had done, hundreds of students crowded round them to grasp their hand, followed them to the train by which they were going right off to London, and were on the platform saying “God speed you”, when the train steamed away.’
As further meetings were planned, it was becoming clear to Taylor that the hand of God was in the movement. He had seen the influence of the Seven not over students only, but over leaders of Christian life and thought.
‘The gift from God of such a band to the China Inland Mission,’ wrote the Editorial Secretary of the C.M.S., ‘was a just reward to Mr. Hudson Taylor and his colleagues for the genuine unselfishness with which they had always pleaded the cause of China and the world, and not of their own particular organisation, and for the deep spirituality which had always marked their meetings. And that spirituality marked most emphatically the densely crowded meetings in. different places at which the seven men said farewell. They told, modestly and yet fearlessly, of the Lord’s goodness to them, and of the joy of serving Him; and they appealed to young men, not for their Mission, but for their Divine Master. No such missionary meeting had ever been known as the final gathering at Exeter Hall on February 4th, 1885. We have become familiar since then with meetings more or less of the same type, but it was a new thing then.’
It was not in public gatherings, however, that these men were knit to their leader and the Mission with which they had cast in their lot. It was behind the scenes in quiet hours the work was done, and chiefly in times of prayer at Pyrland Road, as on the last day of 1884. There was no disguising on-these occasions the poverty, as far as material resources were concerned, of the Mission that had closed its latest balance sheet with only £10 in hand—‘£10 and all the promises of God.’ But how small a matter this seemed with the presence of the Lord Himself so consciously felt!
When Taylor left London three weeks later to go ahead to Shanghai, some of the party were again in Scotland, rejoicing to tell of all the wealth they were finding in deeper fellowship with Christ, which so far outweighed anything of worldly advantage they were laying down. And in a blinding snow-storm, as he crossed France alone, the traveller’s heart was full of praise for news received only that morning from the northern capital: ‘2,000 students last night—wonderful times! It is the Lord.’