J. Hudson Taylor — Founder of the China Inland Mission

James Hudson Taylor, who would later found the China Inland Mission, was converted to Christ when he was only seventeen years old.

He had been brought up in a Christian home. His parents prayed for him and had sought to teach him the Scriptures, but Hudson himself was not yet converted. He had frequently been troubled about his soul and had again and again “tried” to become a Christian. He failed so often that eventually he concluded there was little use in continuing to try.

Then, in 1850, something happened that would change not only his own life but, through him, the lives of multitudes in China.

One afternoon, while looking through some books and Gospel tracts in his father’s library, Hudson came across a little tract that appeared more interesting than the others. He picked it up, intending to read the story but to skip the religious application at the end. As he later testified, he was in an utterly unconcerned state and had made up his mind to lay the tract aside as soon as it became “prosy.”

But God had other plans.

At that very time, his mother was about seventy miles away, visiting friends. A tremendous burden came upon her concerning the spiritual condition of her only son. She withdrew to her room, turned the key in the door, and determined to remain there in prayer until she believed God had answered her.

Hour after hour, she pleaded with God for Hudson’s conversion.

Then something remarkable happened.

After praying for a long time, she found that she could no longer pray for his conversion. Instead, she became convinced that God had answered her prayer. Her pleading turned into thanksgiving, and she began praising God for the salvation of her son—even though, as far as she knew, nothing had yet happened.

Meanwhile, miles away, Hudson was still reading the little Gospel tract.

Then his attention was arrested by one expression:

“The finished work of Christ.”

The words stopped him.

Why, he wondered, did the writer speak of the finished work of Christ? Why not simply call it Christ’s atoning or propitiatory work?

Then the words of the Lord Jesus upon the cross came into his mind:

“It is finished.”

What was finished?

Hudson began to reason it through. A full and perfect atonement for sin had been made. The debt had been paid. Christ had died for sinners.

Then came the question that pierced through all his previous efforts to make himself acceptable to God:

If the work is finished and the debt has been paid, what is left for me to do?

Suddenly he understood.

Salvation was not something he had to accomplish by trying harder. Christ had accomplished the work. His part was to receive the Saviour and rest by faith in what Christ had already done.

Taylor later described the realization that came over him: there was nothing left for him to do but accept the Saviour and His salvation and praise Him forever.

There, alone with that little tract, seventeen-year-old Hudson Taylor trusted Christ.

And while Hudson was thanking God for salvation, his mother, seventy miles away, was already thanking God because she believed her prayer for his conversion had been answered. Taylor himself later connected the two events and never forgot the lesson he learned concerning believing prayer.

When his mother eventually returned home, Hudson could hardly wait to tell her what had happened.

But she was not surprised in the way he expected.

She already believed God had answered her prayer.

The young man who had discovered the meaning of “the finished work of Christ” would eventually give his life to carrying that message deep into China.

Taylor first sailed for China in 1853 under the Chinese Evangelisation Society. He learned the Chinese language and did something that was still controversial among many Western missionaries: he adopted Chinese dress and sought to identify more closely with the people he was trying to reach.

Years later, the spiritual needs of China’s vast inland provinces became an overwhelming burden upon him.

On June 25, 1865, while walking alone on Brighton Beach in England, Taylor finally surrendered himself to the enormous task before him. He prayed for twenty-four willing and skilful workers—two for each of eleven inland Chinese provinces then without Protestant missionaries, and two for Mongolia.

That day marked the beginning of the China Inland Mission.

The following year, Hudson Taylor, his wife Maria, their children, and sixteen missionaries sailed for China aboard the Lammermuir. The mission deliberately sought to penetrate inland areas rather than concentrate only upon China’s coastal cities. Its missionaries learned Chinese, adopted Chinese clothing in many cases, preached the Gospel, established churches, and eventually became involved in medical and educational work.

Taylor’s reliance upon prayer became one of the distinguishing features of the mission. When the China Inland Mission had fewer than one hundred missionaries, Taylor called Christians to pray for seventy more workers. Seventy-three eventually came. In 1886, another appeal was made for one hundred new missionaries, and 102 sailed for China within the following year.

The work was not without terrible suffering.

During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the China Inland Mission lost 58 missionaries and 21 children. Yet the mission continued. Around that period it had grown to more than 900 workers.

Hudson Taylor died in China on June 3, 1905, after approximately fifty years of active involvement in the evangelization of China. He was buried at Zhenjiang beside his first wife, Maria. Ten years after his death, the China Inland Mission had grown to 1,063 workers serving at 227 stations throughout China.

The organization Taylor founded continued long after his death and eventually became known as OMF International. By 1939, more than 200,000 Chinese and minority people had been baptized through the work associated with the China Inland Mission.

Yet behind that extraordinary missionary history stood a seventeen-year-old boy alone with a Gospel tract.

He had spent his time trying to become a Christian.

Then he encountered four words that changed his understanding:

“The finished work of Christ.”

The young man who discovered that Christ’s work for his salvation was already finished would spend the rest of his life telling others about the Saviour who had finished it.