Hudson Taylor: Go for Me to China

[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Dan Jones and This Is History A Dynasty To Die For is back for a brand new season. This time we meet Edward II, a larger than life character who starts out as the party

[00:00:12] boy prince and ends up… well I don't want to give too much away. He's got one thing on his mind, not war, not ambition, but love. And it's a love that will get him in burning hot trouble with his barons, his family and his queen.

[00:00:29] The king's affection for his favorite knight kicks off a wild rollercoaster reign full of love and hate, war and grief, famine and just about all the horsemen of the apocalypse. Along the way we'll meet tiger mums, Scottish legends, murderous cousins, a herd of camels

[00:00:46] and one extremely hot iron poker. Listen to and follow This Is History A Dynasty To Die For, available wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want someone who understands you like no one else?

[00:01:05] Someone who can make your wishes come true and wants to experience the most beautiful adventure of your life with you? The Shopify commerce platform revolutionizes millions of companies worldwide. With Shopify you can create your own online shop in no time, without programming or design knowledge.

[00:01:23] Thanks to the efficient setup and intuitive social media and online marketplace integration, you can advertise and sell via Instagram, eBay and Co. Reaching new target groups has never been so easy. Shopify offers all the tools to build your online business on a single, secure platform.

[00:01:42] Test for free and present your business to the world. Visit shopify.de//try. Simply enter shopify.de//try and get started. Made for Germany. Powered by Shopify. Martyrs & Missionaries is a production of Revive Studios. You're listening to Martyrs & Missionaries.

[00:02:05] I'm Elise and on every episode I'll bring you a new martyr and or missionary, the called and the brave. In this episode we're covering the incredible life of Hudson Taylor, the father of China Inland Mission. I'm really excited to be back after a two month break.

[00:02:43] We were back in the States visiting family and friends and speaking at different churches and had a really incredible time. We were able to visit my husband's grandmother for the first time in Texas. We visited our home church in Kansas City.

[00:02:55] We spent lots of time in Tennessee and in the Northeast for the first time and were able to speak at a church there. It was incredibly nice and we feel very refreshed coming back to Indonesia, diving right back into the school year and other things.

[00:03:10] And over the summer we also added several new Patreons. I'd like to thank Deb and Delana and Catherine and Eden and AB and Tavis and Kittrick for joining us on Patreon and supporting us.

[00:03:22] And we are very grateful for you and for all of our Patreon supporters who enable us to do episodes like Hudson Taylor. This will be part one of at least three parts and I want to give you a brief overview of

[00:03:34] the idea that I have for this episode series. This may change a little bit so don't hold me to it if it's not exactly the way that I said it was going to be because I haven't yet worked out anything other than part one.

[00:03:47] So I do know that part one is going to cover from his early life up until the point that he leaves China for the first time after six years of ministry. Part two will cover the creation of the China Inland Mission and into those early days

[00:04:02] and then part three will cover his later life. And that is what I'm working with so far. So it gives you a bit of a heads up as to the flow of what we're going to be trying to do.

[00:04:14] And the books that I have read for these episodes are A Retrospect which is Hudson Taylor's personal autobiography kind of of the founding of the China Inland Mission. And then I also read Hudson Taylor Gospel Pioneer into China by Vance Christie.

[00:04:30] There's a few other things that I supplemented there but these are the two main things that I read and I think they're both fantastic. So when I quote from things those are the two things that I will be quoting from for the most part in this episode.

[00:04:45] And in previous episodes about China I have covered the different challenges of missions to China some of the history that was going on in China with the opium wars and the Taiping Rebellion and things like that. And so I'm not going to get into a super long overview.

[00:05:00] We'll cover a little bit more of the Taiping Rebellion because I feel like that is a huge part of Chinese history and it was also a gigantic hurdle to Hudson and other missionaries there on the ground in those early days.

[00:05:12] And I don't think I've covered that one in as much depth. Prior to the first opium war missionary movements in China had been severely hampered by the lack of access to the mainland. There were several Protestant missionaries who were able to start different ministries

[00:05:25] among Chinese populations particularly in Dutch held Indonesia and modern day Malaysia and then they were hoping and praying for the mainland to be opened. And then finally after the Treaty of Nanking which ended the first opium war in 1842 Hong

[00:05:40] Kong was ceded to the British and five port cities were open on the mainland for trade and residency of British citizens. Ten years before this James Hudson Taylor was born May 21st 1832 in Barnsley in Yorkshire England and his parents were deeply burdened for missions work in China.

[00:05:58] And I want to talk a little bit about Hudson's grandfather because I think that he seems to come from a pretty cool group of people. His grandfather was a street preacher and a ministry was like a Methodist lay pastor

[00:06:11] in Barnsley and back in his grandfather's day it was a complete disaster of a town like it was just not known for anything good. And even when he was trying to evangelize to people there was this group that like rubbed

[00:06:24] dirt and glass in his eye and like partially blinded him for like a month or something before he was able to get back to it. But all of his challenges eventually led to success to the point that when John Wesley

[00:06:35] visited in 1782 he was like where is this place that I'm at this is nothing like what I remember it being. It's incredible. And Hudson's parents had this same fervor for missions particularly to China because

[00:06:48] it was the kind of the talk of the day among Christians who were interested in missions work that was the place to go but it wasn't open and so there was all these people that

[00:07:00] were kind of waiting on the outskirts for it to open and it just nobody was sure when that was going to happen. But Hudson's parents before his birth prayed that if he were a boy that he might be called

[00:07:12] and privileged to labor in the vast and needy empire which was then apparently so sealed against the truth. And I'm sure that this is a common factoid but it needs to be mentioned nonetheless that

[00:07:23] Hudson didn't have any idea about this until he returned from China after his first six years of service there. Growing up in a family that was so dedicated to missions work Hudson was interested in

[00:07:36] Christianity from a young age and he was very passionate when he was younger and then as he got older and he took a job working as a bank teller among kind of a worldlier crowd

[00:07:46] that was not as accepting of the things that Hudson would talk about like prayer and Bible study and that kind of thing that was really important to his family and he suddenly began to feel a little bit awkward and shamed about it.

[00:08:01] It kind of dampened his fervor but then at the same time he was trying to work his way to heaven kind of like if he couldn't make himself a Christian through his good works and his diligence that he just wouldn't try.

[00:08:15] And his parents and his sister noticed this change in him and his mother was away I think visiting family about 70 or 80 miles away and she was so burdened with the state of her son that she decided she was going to dedicate herself to prayer.

[00:08:31] And I want to read this section from his book A Retrospect that tells this story. He says, let me tell you how God answered the prayers of my dear mother and of my beloved sister Amelia for my conversion.

[00:08:43] On a day which I shall never forget when I was about 15 years of age, my dear mother being absent from home, I had a holiday and in the afternoon looked through my father's library to find some book with which to while away the unoccupied hours.

[00:08:57] Nothing attracting me I turned over a little basket of pamphlets and selected from amongst them a gospel tract which looked interesting saying to myself there will be a story at the commencement and a sermon a moral at the close.

[00:09:08] I will take the former and leave the latter for those who like it. I sat down to read the little book in an utterly unconcerned state of mind believing indeed at the time that if there were any salvation it was not for me and with a distinct

[00:09:20] intention to put the tract away as soon as it seemed too prosy. Little did I know at that time what was going on in the heart of my dear mother 70 or 80 miles away. She rose from the dinner table that afternoon with an intense yearning for the conversion

[00:09:33] of her boy and feeling that absent from home and having more leisure than she could otherwise secure. A special opportunity was afforded her pleading with God on my behalf. She went to her room and turned the key in the door resolved not to leave that spot until

[00:09:45] her prayers were answered. Hour after hour did that dear mother plead for me until at length she could pray no longer but was constrained to praise God for that which his spirit taught her had already been accomplished the conversion of her only son.

[00:09:59] I in the meantime had been led in the way I have mentioned to take up this little tract and while I was reading it struck with the sentence the finished work of Christ. The thought passed through my mind why does the author use this expression?

[00:10:12] Why not say the atoning work of Christ? Immediately the words it is finished suggested themselves to my mind. What is finished? And I at once replied a full and perfect atonement and satisfaction for sin.

[00:10:23] The debt was paid by the substitute Christ died for our sins and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. Then came the thought if the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid what is there left for me to do?

[00:10:36] And with this dawned the joyful conviction as light was flashed into my soul by the Holy Spirit that there was nothing in the world to be done but to fall down on one's knees accepting the Savior and his salvation to praise him forevermore.

[00:10:48] Thus while my dear mother was praising God on her knees in her chamber I was praising him in the old warehouse to which I had gone alone to read at my leisure this little book.

[00:10:58] Hudson then told his sister Amelia but then swore to secrecy not to tell their mother until she returned so that he could tell her himself. But when she came home she already knew and so he thought oh did Amelia tell you I told her not to?

[00:11:11] And she said no the Lord told me and I knew which was even further confirmation of the realness of God to Hudson because how else could she have known? And then a while later he had picked up his sister's diary on accident thinking that

[00:11:23] it was one of his books and was flipping through it and then saw that she had been writing down that she was going to pray for him every day until his conversion and she had begun praying that for him exactly one month before his conversion.

[00:11:37] This whole story is just showcases the providence of God and I'm sure for someone like Hudson who needed that reassurance that was just especially amazing. I mentioned that Hudson's parents were really into missions work and evangelism and they

[00:11:52] were very serious and they had this subscription to a magazine and one of the subjects on this magazine one month was holiness and that was a really impactful article for Hudson to read and it kind of changed his trajectory in life.

[00:12:05] He wanted to live his life wholly surrendered to God living a life of holiness but he didn't know what it was that God wanted him to do so he decided that until the Lord told him

[00:12:15] what to do he was just going to continue to pray regularly and seriously about his future and it was during one of these regular prayer sessions where he was laying prostrated on the floor that he says he felt as though the Lord was telling him just impressing upon

[00:12:30] his soul and he said go from me to China. And it was like a light flashed on for Hudson that he finally had that place and he felt such a calm reassurance even though it was a hard mission calling.

[00:12:44] Even though he didn't fully understand how it would be difficult he knew that it would be it wasn't a safe place to go he knew that it might cost him his life and he had no idea

[00:12:54] how to prepare because there were no resources like today if you want to go into mission work there are generally tons of resources about that country. There's language training there are all sorts of things that can prepare you as much as

[00:13:05] possible before you go over to your country but in Hudson's day and especially for China there were none of those resources. But there did happen to be one book written on missions in China by Walter Medhurst who

[00:13:20] was the second Protestant missionary to visit China and he happened to know that this particular church had this book in their library so he goes and visits this pastor. And I want to read this little snippet from Vance Christie's book and you'll see why

[00:13:34] I share this in just a moment. The minister told him that he could borrow the book but he wanted to know why he wanted to read it and Hudson said I believe that God has called me to spend my life in missionary service in China.

[00:13:48] And how do you propose to go there the pastor asked further. I don't know it all Hudson responded truthfully but it seems probable to me that I shall need to do as the 12 and the 70 did in Judea go without purse or script relying on him who

[00:14:01] has called me to supply all my need. The old minister kindly placed his hand on Hudson's shoulder and stated my boy as you grow older you will get wiser than that such an idea would do very well in the days when

[00:14:13] Christ himself was on earth but not now. Imagine being known as the guy who told Hudson Taylor not to go to China and I'm not sure that this pastor ever knew if Hudson became anything because it would be probably at least

[00:14:28] a decade before his name was known more widely in England. And I get the idea this guy was older but I can't tell if it's better that he doesn't know or it's better that he knows but all the same I hope this was kind of a funny story.

[00:14:43] In Walter Medhurst's book he mentions that there is a great need for medical missionaries to go to China and that was all it took for Hudson to decide that he was going to be a doctor so that gives him an inroads into China.

[00:14:56] And from there he was given the Gospel of Luke in Mandarin so that he could study it and learn and from it he learned 600 Chinese characters by comparing brief verses to their equivalent in the English Bible and that to me is really incredible because I think it

[00:15:13] was just the Chinese characters because pinyin hadn't been invented yet and maybe there was some other, I looked this up a little bit and I couldn't figure it out so if you

[00:15:20] happen to know this what they were using at that point if it was characters or if it was some like pre-pinyin writing you can let me know because I'm really curious about that. As a side character here we have Mary Ann Vaughn.

[00:15:35] She's his sister's friend and his first love and he was really head over heels for her but she didn't really care about China. She placated him but she wasn't really all that interested but she did like him but I

[00:15:47] don't think she was as into him as he was into her and this creates some conflict in his calling to China. But all the same in the spring of 1851 when he's 19 years old he becomes a physician's

[00:15:58] assistant to a doctor Hardy who was one of the best doctors in the region and also a relative by marriage and he's able to attend lectures and help with medical operations and then dispensing medications.

[00:16:10] He's also able to live with his mother's sister, his aunt Hannah and she's very conveniently located she's right across the street from the hospital so that makes the room and board a little bit more expensive and while he's staying there he becomes convicted of his

[00:16:25] need to tithe and if he tithes he won't be able to afford living there anymore but he's feeling the conviction and so he moves to this place called Drainside which is not appealing

[00:16:38] sounding and it's not it's very run down but on the other hand it provides him with more ministry opportunities and he's able to live more frugally. He says, my experience was that the less I spent on myself and the more I gave to others

[00:16:52] the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become. Unspeakable joy all the day long and every day was my happy experience. God, even my God was a living bright reality and all I had to do was joyful service.

[00:17:06] And around this time he's already given up his comfortable bed, he's living on gruel like he has really trimmed himself down preparing for the hardships of China and it's around this time that he takes it a step further.

[00:17:19] He decides that he wants to rely on no one but God alone to provide for him and this creates some hardships for him. One of those hardships is his salary. Dr. Hardy is a really busy man and he would ask Hudson to remind him when his quarter

[00:17:34] salary was due because he was so busy that he often forgot but Hudson decided that he wasn't going to remind him anymore and so he would ask the Lord to bring it to Dr. Hardy's mind.

[00:17:45] So not long after he decides this, he is down to his last coin and he's got a half a crown. I have no idea what that is worth. I looked it up and I couldn't figure it out. It's not very much.

[00:17:56] And one night he gets a knock on his door and he opens it and it's this very haggard looking Irishman who is begging him to come and pray over his wife who has just had a baby and she's dying.

[00:18:08] And he asks the Irishman because he's Catholic, he says, well why didn't you just call the priest? And he says, well the priest won't come because I can't pay him. So Hudson goes down and he's in a really, really rough part of town and they open the

[00:18:20] door and there's these kids that are just starving to death. These young children in this little apartment and there's a child that has been born within the last few days and it's just moaning quietly in the corner, not even crying.

[00:18:37] And the wife is off to a room by herself and she is slowly dying. And Hudson is feeling very convicted and in his conviction he gets kind of upset because he realizes these people have absolutely nothing.

[00:18:50] And he feels the Lord telling him to give his money to them and he's praying for them and saying, the Lord will provide, the Lord will take care of all your needs. And he's just saying this just feels so wrong.

[00:19:06] Why am I praying for these people when I have money that could help them? And the man after he finishes praying says, if you have anything that could help, please help us. And he gets even more defensive in his head.

[00:19:18] All I have is this little bit of money and if I give this away, I won't have anything. But then he does give the money to the man and immediately as soon as he gives it, he

[00:19:28] feels like there's the block over his soul is gone and he's able to actually genuinely rejoice and actually pray for these people in a way that's meaningful, which reminds me of that.

[00:19:38] I think it's in James where it says, don't just say to somebody, you know, oh, go and be fed, go and be well, like actually do something. And he's able to leave knowing that he did what God had asked him to do.

[00:19:51] And the next morning he receives this anonymous gift that actually ends up tripling what he had given to this family. And then two weeks later, it's gone and he needs to pay rent on Saturday. And his landlady really, really needs this money. Her husband works on a ship.

[00:20:07] And so she relied on this income to make ends meet while he was away. And so Thursday and Friday, he is just praying that the Lord will bring this to Dr. Hardy's mind that he needs this money.

[00:20:21] And on Saturday, he's talking to Dr. Hardy after hours and they're sitting by the fire together and Hudson is really, really anxious, but he's not going to say anything. And Dr. Hardy says, is your, are your wages due? Is that time yet?

[00:20:40] And Hudson says, well, actually, you know, they were due some time ago. And he said, oh man, I really wish that you had told me because I had just sent all the money that I have to the bank and I had nothing to pay you with.

[00:20:54] And Hudson is very distraught. So he actually leaves the room so that Dr. Hardy can't see how distraught that he is. And he's able to compose himself and he comes back into the room and Dr. Hardy has already left.

[00:21:07] And Hudson's tidying up and getting ready to go when Dr. Hardy comes back in and he says, ah, you'll never guess one of my wealthiest clients decided that he wanted to pay his bill all up front. It's a bunch of money. I have your quarterly wages.

[00:21:21] You're all set and ready to go. And that's just how unusual, right? Isn't that crazy? And so that was the way the Lord chose to meet his needs, getting right down to the wire.

[00:21:33] After a while, Hudson decided that he had gone about as far as he could go with Dr. Hardy and that he wanted to move to London to further his medical training. And at the same time, the China Evangelization Society, who produced a magazine that his

[00:21:46] parents subscribed to and which Hudson loved to read, was deciding to send out foreign missionaries of their own. And Hudson reached out to them and told them of his desire to go to China and to join them.

[00:21:58] And they were overjoyed and they and his father offered to pay for his room and board. And Hudson was debating whether or not he should take this offer. And after praying, he decided to turn down both offers and he knew that neither side

[00:22:11] would be offended because they would just assume that, oh, the other person had covered those costs. But instead of having his room board cared for, he was sharing a room with his cousin and he starts training at the London Hospital in Whitechapel.

[00:22:25] And before he leaves, his old landlady, whose husband was working on a ship, she asked him if he would help her to get her husband's salary sent for cheaper because when she had it mailed to her, they took quite a hefty chunk out of it.

[00:22:38] And so he agrees to do that. And he's been in London for a while and she asks him to send it. But it's kind of an inconvenient time. There's a lot of testing coming up.

[00:22:48] And he says, well, I can just pay it out of my own pocket and then I'll go reimburse myself from the office when I get a chance. So a few days later, he goes down to the office and he's told they can't fulfill the

[00:23:00] salary because her husband had jumped ship and had joined the gold diggings. This is a huge blow to Hudson because now he has absolutely nothing. So as he's heading back home from this, he's depressed and he's down and he's sewing up

[00:23:14] a bunch of pages for a new notebook and he ends up pricking his finger on this needle and he doesn't think anything about it. It's normally not a huge deal. So he goes to the hospital to do a dissection on a patient who had died of fever.

[00:23:31] At this point, he's completely forgotten that he pricked his finger and he's dissecting this guy. And a few hours in, he's just not feeling all that well. And he starts to feel worse and worse and worse. And the doctor notices he's not feeling very well.

[00:23:46] And he says, is there any chance that you had any kind of open wound on your fingers? And he says, no, I don't think I do. But then he remembered that he had been pricked on the finger. He said, do you think that's possible?

[00:23:58] Just one tiny little prick. And he said, well, yeah, I think that's very possible. And you probably want to go home and get your affairs in order because that was an incredibly deadly disease and you're probably not going to make it.

[00:24:10] He is gutted, but he thinks, well, the Lord wants me to go to China. So either I'm going to die or I'm going to go to China. I feel like the Lord has called me to China so I can't die.

[00:24:21] But he goes home and the doctor visits him and he says, well, you know, if you were living a good life, a life that is not indulgent with heavy meats and wines and stuff like that, then you might be OK.

[00:24:35] But if you've been living that kind of lifestyle, you're probably not going to be OK. And I don't know the reasoning behind that. Hudson was fine because he'd been living on gruel and brown bread. And the doctor was like, thank goodness.

[00:24:49] So now you need to start eating all these rich meats and this this port wine and get your strength up. And he has no money for any of that. But his uncle does. And he says, well, I'll take this and I will do this for you.

[00:24:59] So he's eating well and he's but he's out of sorts for like weeks, probably about three weeks before he's even able to get out of his bed and go downstairs. And that has completely winded him. And he is but he's past the point where he is good.

[00:25:14] He feels like he's going to die on the mend. And his parents were told nothing about this because he he told his uncle, don't tell them I want them to. I want to recover.

[00:25:23] And then when I've recovered enough, then I'll tell them after he's recovered, he needs to go to the shipping office to see if that salary is there. There's some mistake, but he can't hardly move. And he says, Lord, give me the strength.

[00:25:39] I need to go down there and see because I want to be able to pay for the medicines I use. I don't want to be a burden to my uncle. And he starts walking. It's about three miles, which is totally a breeze any other time.

[00:25:53] But he's taking breaks at every single window pane. And he's like, I don't know if I'm going to make this. It takes him a very long time to get there. And he finally shows up at the bottom of the stairs, the shipping office, and people are

[00:26:08] passing him by and he's looking just ghostly pale. And they keep stepping around him. And he makes his way up to the stairs to the second floor with the shipping office was. And the clerk is there and he says, oh, my goodness, I'm so glad you returned because

[00:26:23] actually that was a mistake. The guy that jumped ship happened to have the same name as as your fellow. So I can give you the salary. And Hudson is overjoyed. And the clerk says, you know, you don't you don't look very good.

[00:26:38] And Hudson tells him what had happened. And he he's like, well, don't you just stay here and get a sandwich with me? You can split my lunch. And I was like, oh, no, no, no. And this ship's clerk is like, no, I insist.

[00:26:49] Like you really need to eat a sandwich. So Hudson eats the sandwich and he's feeling so good that he decides to splurge a little bit and get a trolley or a horse and buggy or something. I'll know you back home. So he's not walking all that way.

[00:27:02] And after he returns home, he's talking with the doctor who cared for him. And the doctor says there's no way that you walked three miles. That's that's incredible. Not in your condition. You were just like out and and horrible looking.

[00:27:15] And Hudson is telling him about the call on his life to China and the hope he has in Christ. And this guy that he's talking to, this doctor, is a skeptic. But he's but he's kind of open to listening to Hudson talk.

[00:27:28] And he actually begins to cry and he says, you know, I wish that I had a faith like yours. And Hudson's like, well, you can have a faith like mine. But Hudson leaves to go back to Barnsley and visit his family.

[00:27:40] And then while he's away, the doctor has a stroke and he never recovers and he passes away. And Hudson never knew if if he became a believer towards the end of his life or or what.

[00:27:50] But he he felt comforted in the fact that he was able to share the gospel with him before he passed away. And after he's recovered, things end with Mary Ann Vaughn, who was his first love. And they've kind of had this thing on and off.

[00:28:04] But she's not into China. And her dad is really not into Hudson and says, no, you're not marrying my daughter, just a carter off to China and she'll probably die and you'll die too. And you'll be poor in the process.

[00:28:18] And so Marianne says, yeah, I'm really sorry, but this is not going to work out. And Hudson's pretty devastated. But then it seems like he also gets another there's another lady he's interested in named Elizabeth Scissor, I believe. So there's there's this going on in the background.

[00:28:36] This becomes important a little bit later. But after some more medical training in London, he becomes a surgeon's assistant to Dr. Brown and his room and board is provided by the doctor's family as part of that arrangement.

[00:28:48] And part of his job is to make the rounds in this hospital. And one of the patients is dying of gangrene. And he's an atheist and he's a hateful old man. And he even spits in a vicar's face. And then he ran a pastor out of the room.

[00:29:02] And Hudson's really burdened for this guy. But he doesn't know if he's even going to listen because of how he treated these other people. But I'll read here. It says, finally, one day, Hudson could contain himself no longer as he prepared to leave the patient's room.

[00:29:15] He paused at the doorway and then suddenly burst into tears. Crossing the dying man's bedside, he exclaimed, my friend, whether you will hear me or not, I must deliver my soul. How I wish you would allow me to pray with you.

[00:29:28] And the man was completely taken aback and stammered. Well, well, I guess if it'll be a relief to you, then go ahead. And so immediately Hudson fell to his knees and poured out his soul to God on behalf of the ailing man.

[00:29:39] Then in there, I believe Hudson recorded the Lord wrought a change in his soul. He was never afterwards unwilling to be spoken to or prayed with. And within a few days, he definitely accepted Christ as his savior.

[00:29:52] And oh, the joy it was to me to see that dear man rejoicing in the hope and the glory of God. He reflected further on the incident. I have often thought since that in connection with this case and the work of God generally

[00:30:04] of the words that he goeth forth weeping, bearing a precious seed shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Perhaps that there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears. We should more frequently see the results we desire.

[00:30:20] Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our own feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of eternal things may be the true cause of our want of success.

[00:30:36] Meanwhile, December 1850, the Taiping Rebellion in China is in full swing. The head of this rebellion is Hong Xiquan. He converted to Christianity under the influence of missionaries, but then he failed his entrance exams to inter-civil service and he's driven absolutely mad.

[00:30:56] He has a dream about how to exorcise demons. Through this dream, somehow he concluded that he was the brother of Jesus. Because Christianity was very new to China and not understood by the vast populace, it was really easy for a cult to form.

[00:31:12] Now, Christians back home didn't understand this and they hoped that it was a revival in China that would lead to the huge opening in missions work. And so all of these missionaries were getting, including Hudson, were kind of like, okay, this is the time to go.

[00:31:27] We need to do this thing. This is awesome. The Lord is opening these doors. And then later it would be known that the Taiping Rebellion is one of the bloodiest conflicts in world history. I think it's only second to World War II, I think.

[00:31:43] And part of the reason the Taiping Rebellion happened and the reason it was so successful and spread so rapidly, I think this also helps us to understand how communism happened in China a few years later, not too much longer after that, I guess, a hundred years, but

[00:31:57] in China that's nothing. But poverty in China is an epidemic. Most of the population is in poverty and this movement has a populist message. And it's very much proto-communist where we'll share everything and the government will be run by the people. And it's very, you know, collectivist.

[00:32:19] And the movement also claimed to be divinely inspired. And it just spread like wildfire, kind of hinging on these two things, these religious radicals plus this message of hope for people that had been trodden down by their own government, by foreign governments.

[00:32:36] And it was incredibly hard to squelch. And because it was so hard to squelch, the casualties were just astronomical in some cases and in many cases, the entire cities were just wiped out. So this is the movement that originally Christians were praising and seemed like a good thing,

[00:32:56] but in fact, it would later go on to lay the groundwork for Mao Zedong and the communist revolution a hundred years later. And so it's into this that Hudson will plunge headlong into. But back in England, none of this has become evident yet.

[00:33:11] And the China Evangelization Society is very eager to send missionaries over and they want to pay for the rest of Hudson's schooling to become a full medical doctor and also a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.

[00:33:24] But Hudson declines because he doesn't want to be beholden to a humanitarian institution. He wants to be free to preach the gospel in the interior because even though these port cities are open, his heart is for the interior of China and the CES loves his spirit.

[00:33:40] And three weeks later, he is approved to go to China as soon as he can prepare for the trip. So on September 19th, 1853, he finds himself on a ship saying goodbye to his mother. Now mother and son sat beside each other sharing their final moments together.

[00:33:57] Both realized that it would likely be a very long time until they would see each other again and that perhaps the reunion would be in heaven rather than on earth. They sang a hymn together and then prayed. Hudson's tone of voice was composed and joyous until he prayed,

[00:34:11] And now God, I commend to your care the objects of my love, father and mother, my sister Amelia. His voice faltered and he paused to regain his composure then continued concluding confidently, Heavenly father, I realize that I am entering upon a course of trial, difficulty and danger.

[00:34:27] Neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy in the ministry with which I have received of the Lord Jesus so to testify the gospel of the grace of God. After Hudson read a psalm, they went on the deck.

[00:34:40] The ship had already been loosed from its mooring so Mrs. Taylor was helped ashore. She sat down on a beam of timber on the dock's edge and feeling suddenly chilled, began to tremble all over. Hudson quickly stepped onto the dock and sat down beside her.

[00:34:53] He lovingly drew her close to him and sought to comfort her. Dear mother, do not weep. It is but for a little while and we shall meet again. Think of the glorious object I have in leaving you.

[00:35:02] It is not for wealth or fame but to try to bring the poor Chinese to the knowledge of Jesus. Hudson was obliged to return to the ship and once again he grasped his mother's hand, this time over the ship's edge. Farewell mother, he said earnestly. God bless you.

[00:35:17] And God bless you my son, she responded. And she walked along beside the ship until it passed the gate at the end of the dock and suddenly a piercing cry of anguish escaped her aching heart. Said Hudson later of that cry, it went through me like a knife.

[00:35:31] I never knew so fully until then what God so loved the world meant and I am quite sure my precious mother learned more the love of God for the perishing in that one hour than in all her life before.

[00:35:44] These pioneer missionaries had it difficult in a way that is almost impossible to understand for us today. And I think we can kind of understand it, the idea of not seeing somebody for a very

[00:35:54] long time but it was such a reality to them because now we have so many different ways of communicating which are a blessing. But they didn't have any of these things today so as much as God asks us to give up

[00:36:08] today I think that there was a lot more to give up for these people who just left and then never saw their family again. I think it's incredibly humbling to think about the number of parents who prayed for

[00:36:22] their children to be sent into missions knowing full well that they would probably never see them again. Once upon a time in medieval England there was a young king who would do just about anything for his favorite knight. They were inseparable.

[00:36:50] With love at the front of a king's mind, instead of war or ambition you'd think the kingdom would be in for a golden era of peace. But England is headed for the most catastrophic collapse seen for hundreds of years. The saga continues.

[00:37:03] Join me, Dan Jones, on This Is History – A Dynasty to Die For. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:38:00] While Hudson is headed to China the route is just ridiculously rough. They have problems at just about every turn from really rough seas that almost take them out to just nothing happening in the Pacific to almost getting shipwrecked on the reefs

[00:38:34] in Papua New Guinea where there are literally cannibals that are lighting fires waiting for them to wreck. I read that and thought that image alone is terrifying and he hardly mentions it. That to me would be way more than a quip in my story.

[00:38:55] That would be the highlight of something I share with people for the next 20 years. But not for Hudson. He arrives in China in February of 1854 after more than 5 months at sea and the Taiping Rebellion is devastating city after city marching towards Beijing in an effort to overthrow

[00:39:15] the Qing dynasty. And a rebel group called the Red Turbans has taken over Shanghai, which is where he lands. And so he's told to expect everything in the city to be set for famine prices. Which was very disheartening to hear because he's very poor.

[00:39:29] He doesn't have a lot of money as it is. He was sent to Shanghai with 3 letters of introduction. 2 of his letters of introduction don't go anywhere. One guy's died, one guy's left. His last one, which was the most tenuous of those, is the one that works.

[00:39:44] And he ends up lodging with missionaries from the London Missionary Society in their compound. And he feels really out of place for several reasons. One of which being that his salary was woefully inadequate. The CES sent him with almost nothing.

[00:40:00] He is by far the poorest missionary and he's trying to buy everything on famine prices. And he gets looked down on quite a bit. Vance Christie says this, He was neither university trained nor connected with a prominent denomination as were his LMS acquaintances.

[00:40:16] His position as a missionary was unusual and open to criticism. He planned to do medical work but he wasn't a doctor. He was accustomed to preaching and providing pastoral care yet he was not ordained. And he steadfastly refused the title reverend that others were inclined to give him.

[00:40:30] And then he also learned that the objectives and missions of his supporting society were viewed as unrealistic or even absurd by experienced practical missionaries on the field. In fact, the CES and its monthly publication, The Gleaner, were considerably ridiculed in Shanghai.

[00:40:46] It was extremely painful to Hudson to hear his fellow missionaries tearing apart the ideals and perspectives set forth on each new issue of The Gleaner. He was also surprised and troubled by what he perceived to be worldly tendencies on the part of many in Shanghai's missionary communities.

[00:41:03] Missionaries had extensive interactions with government officials and military officials stationed in Shanghai, being very useful to them as interpreters. This intercourse prompted considerable secular socializing and undue interest in status and fashion that struck Hudson as being inappropriate for Christian missionaries.

[00:41:22] I can't even imagine what it would feel like to be working so hard to get to China, to be so proud that you finally made it. You get into the company of other missionaries and they laugh at your missionary organization

[00:41:33] and you're the only one there so there's nobody else that can commiserate with you. Everyone else is just like, oh, isn't this crazy? What a joke. And they have no, if they said it to your face, how much worse are they saying it behind your back?

[00:41:46] So I think that would be just a rough, a rough go. But all the same, Hudson gets a language teacher and begins studying the Chinese language five hours a day. But the tensions in the city of Shanghai continue to increase.

[00:42:00] You have the imperial forces, the British, and the Red Turbans. And these imperial forces are being angsty with the foreigners. And so the British consul says, hey, you need to knock it off. And they don't.

[00:42:12] So the British then bomb the imperialist camps and the Red Turbans come through and loot everything. And so these damaged relationships within the city were intensified because then the soldiers were taking out their frustrations on Chinese citizens, which makes it almost impossible to do missions work.

[00:42:30] And a trip that Hudson was planning to take to one of these outlying villages to preach had to be postponed. So he's still spending five hours a day on language and medicine and chemistry and Greek and Latin. And he is getting hardly any sleep. And he's incredibly lonely.

[00:42:48] He has one friend whose name is John Burden, who's a really nice guy. But it kind of intensified the loneliness because John Burden is a newlywed and he's really in love with his wife. And so he would hang out with them.

[00:43:00] But it just increased the heat and didn't have anybody to spend time with. And so it just was really hard for him. In the midst of all this, his org is sending a new missionary family. The missionary's name is William Parker. He's a Scottish physician.

[00:43:15] He has a wife and three kids. But CES sends no letter letting him know that they're coming and they send no money to provide for furnishings. And so Hudson on his very meager salary has to figure out where to put them because there's

[00:43:29] no room in the LMS compound. They're not LMS missionaries. And he discovers a house just outside of the north gate of the city. It's not particularly safe, but it is spacious and it is cheap. And it's between the Chinese and European settlements.

[00:43:44] But his Mandarin teacher won't go there because it's too unsafe. So he has to find a new teacher. And so he finds Mr. Su, who is a Chinese Christian who became a good friend and a ministry partner. So in a way, it was a blessing.

[00:43:57] And then people heard that Hudson was a doctor. And then soon he was seeing several patients a day in this new neighborhood. And they started a day school that was run by Mr. Su. And he traveled with him to the city to give out New Testaments and literature.

[00:44:11] But they're still in the middle of a war zone. And a cannonball one day crashes through their house and landed at the feet of Mr. Su's daughter. And it got so bad that Hudson knew he couldn't bring the Parkers to the house.

[00:44:23] And a little while earlier, John Burden, he had lost his wife to cholera. And he couldn't stand to be in his house anymore on the LMS compound. And so he offered to rent it out to Hudson, who then jumped at the chance.

[00:44:35] And then he sublet part of it to an American family who had just arrived to help pay for the rent. And two days after he secures this house, the Parkers arrived to the compound. And he is embarrassed at how spartan their dwellings are.

[00:44:47] He only has a couple of tables, a few chairs, and one Chinese-style bed, which I can tell you is very hard. They're not known for softness or comfort. And so when other missionaries came to visit the Parkers, they openly critiqued Hudson's apparent lack of care.

[00:45:02] And Hudson didn't want to besmirch his own org, so he didn't tell the other missionaries what was really going on. And in addition to not telling Hudson that the Parkers were coming, his organization

[00:45:13] also failed to send the line of credit that the Parkers needed in order to settle into Shanghai. So when Parker writes to the CES on behalf of Hudson, to their credit, they significantly increased his salary, even though it was still lacking.

[00:45:27] It was still better than what he had before. In December of 1854, he and another missionary, Joseph Edgins, who would later visit with high-ranking officials of the Taiping Rebellion in order to better understand their beliefs,

[00:45:40] which is how we got an idea that they were pretty crazy, they decided to take a trip 100 miles inland. And one Sunday morning, they arrived at a Buddhist temple, and they began sharing there. Actually many of the monks listened attentively, and after they finished sharing, the monks

[00:45:57] invited them to visit a holy man who lived there. This holy man had bricked himself off from the world, and his only opening was a small slot through which to pass food and water.

[00:46:07] And they shared the gospel with him, this poor sad man just sitting there in a dank, dark, I don't even know, like just on a practical level, what you do with, like for example, your waist. I imagine that was just a really, really miserable place to be.

[00:46:24] They shared the gospel with him, but he didn't talk to them, he didn't interact in any way, so they had no idea of knowing if anything they said had made any sense or penetrated in any which way to him.

[00:46:36] And they continued traveling around, and people were really curious about them because they had heard tales of the so-called white devils but had never seen one, and so this was a really good opportunity for them.

[00:46:46] And one day they climbed a high hill to sing in an abandoned pagoda, and they looked down and they could see that Shanghai was burning. So they hurried back, fearing the worst, and the imperial troops had taken back the city,

[00:46:58] and the rebels, the red turbans, as they were fleeing had set fire to it. And as they passed, these captured rebels begged them for their help, and they were powerless to stop them, and as they're passing through, these men were decapitated right in front of them.

[00:47:13] And as they walked further into the city, the south gate was blown up, and the headless bodies of men, women, and children, indiscriminate of age, were scattered everywhere amongst the smoking ruins. And the European settlements had been spared, and thankfully all of the missionaries were safe.

[00:47:29] And Hudson writes a letter, he says that Shanghai is now at peace, but it is like the peace of death. Two thousand people, at the very least, have perished, and the tortures some of the victims have undergone cannot be exceeded by the worst barbarities of the Inquisition.

[00:47:43] The city is little more than a mass of ruins, and many of the wretched objects who have survived are piteous to behold. The missionaries did everything they could to help, providing humanitarian aid to these people.

[00:47:56] And in the spring of 1855, Hudson, William Parker, and John Burden head for Ningbo, which is south of Shanghai and separated by the Hangzhou Bay, so it's really not that far at all. And when they arrive, they see that the missionary work there is thriving, the English and American

[00:48:10] societies are working harmoniously together, and they invite Dr. Parker to become their community surgeon. So he accepts and then makes preparations to move. And Hudson received notice at the same time that he would need to leave the house he was

[00:48:22] renting in the London Missionary Society compound because they had a new family coming. And he had been invited to join Parker at Ningbo but felt that God was leading him elsewhere. And through a contact, he was able to rent a brand new house in a Chinese neighborhood

[00:48:36] for dirt cheap because the owner had run out of money and he couldn't finish it. And he decided that he was going to accompany the Parkers part of the way to Ningbo, and he wanted to experiment with wearing native Chinese garb.

[00:48:49] And there's a few different reasons for this, and one of the things that you hear is that Hudson Taylor was the first missionary to do this, and he was one of the first missionaries, but he wasn't the first.

[00:48:58] The first missionary was Carls Gutsloff, who was a German missionary to China, who was actually the founder of the organization, this China Evangelization Society that Hudson was a part of. And so he was kind of the inspiration for that, but there weren't, at the time, there

[00:49:18] really was nobody else doing it. But he said he wanted to break down these cultural barriers and he didn't want to stand out any more than he had to because as you're going into these villages, you're the only

[00:49:29] white person and the only Westerner they've ever seen in many of these places. And so it was becoming a distraction more than it was helpful. But there's a lot of changes that have to happen in order for him to make this switch.

[00:49:45] Number one is the Chinese Q. This was a hairstyle that was mandated by the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty has been ruling since the 1600s, but they overthrew the Ming Dynasty, which is seen as like the golden era of China.

[00:49:58] And they forced everybody to wear their style of haircut, which is this where they shave the front forehead and the men at least shaved the forehead and they leave this like awkward circle in the back and they had this long ponytail that grows out of it.

[00:50:12] And it was seen as a symbol of Qing oppression by most people. And so after the Qing Dynasty falls in 1911 and it became illegal then to wear the Q, there were literally celebrations where people were cutting off this ponytail and there were just piles of ponytails everywhere.

[00:50:30] But that hasn't happened yet. So he decides to cut his hair into this Q, he dyes his hair black and then has to get like an extension to make it long enough.

[00:50:40] And then he has to decide on what kind of native garb he's going to wear because what you wear in Chinese society at this time did kind of denoted who you were. So he was trying to figure out, do I wear a religious garb?

[00:50:55] But like, no, that's more Buddhist. What do I wear? And he decides on that of a teacher. So he puts all this together and he shows up and it doesn't seem like he's really told anybody that this is his plan.

[00:51:07] And so when Parker sees him, he thinks it's humorous, but he respected the attempt. And at first he wasn't treated as respectfully as he would have been if he was dressed as a foreigner, but he was a doctor. So that helped a lot.

[00:51:19] So then women and children were a lot more willing to come and see him. And he was also able to get through a crowd a lot easier and attracted much less attention. And so he decided that it was worth it to help his evangelistic efforts into the interior,

[00:51:32] which was going to be even more unfamiliar with any kind of foreign influence. When he arrived back in Shanghai, the other missionaries treated him with open contempt and so did the merchants and government officials. So that was difficult for him to bear.

[00:51:48] But around this time comes a man named William Burns, who had been in China since 1847, but it only recently arrived in Shanghai. And he is 17 years older than Hudson. He had led a revival in Scotland 20 years before, and they were kindred spirits. Hudson no longer felt so alone.

[00:52:08] And they decided they both have the same kind of mindset to travel more into the interior. And the interior wasn't open, so they went as close to the interior as they possibly could. And they left to travel to this region that was about 200 miles or 330 kilometers southwest

[00:52:22] of Shanghai. And they traveled in separate boats so that they could carry even more literature. And they arrived in a town called Wuchan or Black Town, which is an outlaw town known specifically for salt smuggling. And it was going well the first few days.

[00:52:36] But Hudson was having lunch in his boat and he hears people throwing these huge chunks of something onto his roof. And so he comes outside and he realizes they're throwing frozen dirt onto his boat roof and it caves in and he's asking them to stop and they won't.

[00:52:52] And then one of his Chinese helpers was able to go ashore and distract them away from the boat. And the backstory to this was that the salt smugglers were mad that the missionaries wouldn't just give them tons of free literature.

[00:53:03] They were hoping that if they gave them free literature, they could sell it and then buy opium. And just a couple evenings later, they were at this tea shop looking to meet with people who would be interested in talking about the gospel. And they didn't get anybody.

[00:53:17] Nobody was interested. So they headed back to their boats earlier than usual. And they ran into one of their boatmen who blew out their lanterns and the men were confused. They said, what do you do that for?

[00:53:27] And then they lit it up again and then he blew it out again. And they're like, hey, what are you doing? And he's like, shh. And he tells them the salt smugglers were demanding a bunch of money and opium. And they had neither one of those things.

[00:53:38] And 50 men were lying in wait, waiting for their response. And if they didn't give them what they wanted, they would destroy the boats. And so they hid on their boats and were praying all night long that they would be able to escape.

[00:53:50] And the next day was this torrential rainfall. And so they couldn't leave, but neither could their pursuers find them. And so the next day after the rain, they were able to travel back safe to Shanghai.

[00:54:02] They intended to get back to Shanghai and then stock up on literature and then go right back out. But there was a British captain named Captain Bowers who was a Christian who had told him

[00:54:12] and Burns about how burdened he was for people living on Double Island near Shantou, which is about 600 miles south of Shanghai. And British merchants there were selling opium and engaging prolifically in the coolie trade. And the coolie trade is essentially what replaced the slave trade in Africa.

[00:54:30] And they considered it not to be a slave trade because technically they were indentured servants but it really was just slavery. And there was not a single missionary there. And the captain said, well if they can be there, then why not missionaries?

[00:54:46] And Hudson felt God calling him to go there, but he was upset because he and Burns had become such good friends in ministry that he couldn't bear the thought of being apart. And for days, he refused to listen to what God was telling him to do.

[00:54:58] And a few evenings later, he and Burns had gone over to the home of an American missionary couple. And after dinner, the wife had sang and played this song called The Missionary Call. And although Hudson had never heard this song before, it greatly affected him.

[00:55:14] And this particular verse struck him. It says, and I will go, I may no longer doubt to give up friends and idle hopes and even every tie that binds my heart. Henceforth then it matters not if storm or sunshine be my earthly lot, bitter or sweet

[00:55:28] be my cup. I only pray God make me holy and my spirit nourish for the stern hour of strife. And he felt as if his heart was going to break and he knew that this was the way the Lord was telling him that he had to go.

[00:55:43] And then when they had left, Hudson asked Burns to come to a little house near the South Gate that still served as his headquarters. There he could contain himself no longer and broke down in tears.

[00:55:51] Oh my cherished brother, he explained when he was again able to speak, God has been leading me to go minister in Shonto, but I am afraid that I have been very rebellious in resisting his call.

[00:56:01] That is because I was unwilling to leave you my dear friend in order to go to that new sphere of labor. But tonight I have surrendered my lot to the Lord and said I will go.

[00:56:10] And as Burns listened, a look of surprise and pleasure rather than pain crept across his face. Hudson, he revealed, I determined this very night that I would tell you that I had heard the Lord's call as well.

[00:56:20] My one regret has been the prospect of severing the happy holy fellowship with which we have enjoyed together. And so the next day they were able to go to Captain Bowers and say, hey, we're ready. Send us both. We're both going to go over to Shonto.

[00:56:33] And when they get there, Hudson realizes there is such a deep need for a hospital and everyone's begging him to start one. And he leaves to go back to Shanghai to get his medical supplies and then come back.

[00:56:44] And when he arrives in Shanghai, he realizes the place that he was leaving his medical equipment and most of his medicines was burned down. And so he realizes he has to go to William Parker in Ningbo to go get more supplies,

[00:56:56] which isn't really that big of a deal. Like it's an inconvenience, but it's not that big of a deal. But this little trip that he's planned, which would be no big deal, turns into an absolute nightmare.

[00:57:05] He sends his things along with two men and his assistant, and the assistant decides to rob him of his things and leaves him high and dry. And he almost gets robbed of what little bit he has remaining by two beggars at night.

[00:57:20] And he gets back miraculously unharmed and he's even reimbursed the things that he's lost because before he left for Ningbo, there was a letter on its way to him with an amount that was exactly what he needed to recover the cost of his bed and some different supplies

[00:57:35] that he was bringing with him to Ningbo. And then later on, he goes to Ningbo without incident, gets the supplies, and he plans to rejoin Burns. But he gets this letter that says they've been arrested and told not to come back. And he has to change his plans.

[00:57:50] So instead, he goes to Ningbo to help Parker with the hospital. And he's accompanied by Peter, who is a very well-traveled young Chinese man who has been offered a position at Parker's hospital as well.

[00:58:01] And he's not a believer, so Hudson shares the gospel with him and he's interested. He's moved to tears, but he makes no profession of faith. Hudson's inside the boat as they're traveling to Ningbo and he hears this loud splash.

[00:58:14] And he comes out and he realizes that Peter has fallen overboard. And he sees these fishermen and they have these nets with which they can drag the river and find him. And he calls out to them and says, help me. Like I need your help.

[00:58:26] And they said, it's not worth it. We're fishing. And he says, well, what do you mean? It's not worth it to you. There's a man's life. And they say, yes, it's not worth it. We're fishing. And he says, well, I'll give you money.

[00:58:38] And he says, well, how much money do you have? And he's like, I have $17. And they're like, well, it's not really what we're looking for. And he says, that's all I have. And so they come over and this is taking quite a while.

[00:58:50] And they come over, they drag the river and they find his body and he's already dead. And Hudson writes this letter reflecting on this moment. He says, to myself, this incident was profoundly sad and full of significance, suggesting a far more mournful reality.

[00:59:05] Were not those fishermen actually guilty of this poor man's death? And if they had the means of saving him at hand, if they would but have used them, assuredly they were guilty. And yet, let us pause ere we pronounce judgment against them.

[00:59:17] Lest a greater than Nathan answer, thou art the man. Is it so hard-hearted, so wicked a thing to neglect to save the body? Of how much sore punishment then is he worthy who leaves the soul to perish? And Cain like says, am I my brother's keeper?

[00:59:33] The Lord Jesus commands me and commands you into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And we say to him, no, it is not convenient. By October of 1856, Hudson had moved to Ningbo.

[00:59:48] He's only 24 years old, which is crazy to think about after all the things that he's been through. And he's only been in China for about two and a half years. The city of Ningbo contained about 400,000 people and was completely surrounded by five miles of walls.

[01:00:03] And he was living in the attic of the building that Dr. Parker had rented out as a daytime dispensary and a school for boys and also a gospel meeting center in the evenings. In the city of Ningbo lived a woman called Mary Ann Alderzeem.

[01:00:18] And she is a pretty interesting woman. And I want to give her the benefit of the doubt somewhat because her story in Hudson's story is actually pretty terrible. But she is a really interesting woman. She is the first missionary woman to China.

[01:00:38] She was trained in Chinese by Robert Morrison, who was one of the first Protestant missionaries to China. He did a Chinese translation of the Bible and a dictionary for Westerners. And he trained Mary Ann and others in Chinese while on furlough in England.

[01:00:51] And here's where it gets really interesting because one of these people that she meets at Morrison's language school is Samuel Dyer, who becomes the father-in-law to Hudson Taylor. He was a missionary to Chinese-speaking Malaysia. He invented movable type for Chinese script to mass-produce literature.

[01:01:07] And he was a friend of Peter Parker and he actually died in the care of Parker in Canton, which is Guangzhou. And I did an episode on Peter Parker so if you want to check that out, I recommend it. I will link it.

[01:01:19] Mary Ann was also a lifelong supporter of the London Missionary Society. Even though I don't believe she actually was associated with the London Missionary Society, she just liked them and was adjacently connected to them.

[01:01:31] The money she gave enabled Mary Ann Newell to move to Malacca and marry Karls Gutsloff. And Karls Gutsloff was also the missionary who inspired both David Livingston and surprisingly, Karl Marx. Livingston in a positive way, Karl Marx in a negative way.

[01:01:48] But I happened to be looking up Mary Ann because I thought there's got to be more to her story here. Like who made her who she was? And I stumbled across all these other connections that I had to share with you.

[01:01:58] And I mention this about Mary Ann because she needs this. You're going to not like her. And understandable. She was known as the Witch of Ningbo and she faced a lot of opposition. Mary Ann operated a Protestant girls school, which is the first of its kind in China.

[01:02:15] And she was one of the first missionaries to arrive in Ningbo. And she started her ministry about less than 10 years before. But she was so influential that some local natives believe that just as England was ruled

[01:02:26] by Queen Victoria, so Mary Ann was delegated to be the head of the British community in Ningbo. And some even suggested that the British consul took orders from her. And when an earthquake happened that alarmed the citizens, they credited it to her magical

[01:02:40] powers because she had been seen mounting the city wall early that morning, opening a bottle of strong spirits and proceeded to shake the pillars of the earth. When what actually happened is she took a walk at 5am along the wall every day, no matter what the weather was.

[01:02:56] And she carried around this bottle of smelling salts that she used to relieve headaches. And she faced a bunch of opposition in her time. You would have men who would harass her as she left the compound, people saying that

[01:03:09] she was eating children and all sorts of awful things. And in her charge were these two young ladies named Barella and Maria Dyer, the children of Samuel Dyer, whom she had met at Robert Morrison's school learning Chinese language.

[01:03:27] And so after these girls' parents had died, they went into the care of their uncle. And because of their connections to Mary Ann, ended up coming back to help her in China, which is where they had kind of grown up, not in China proper, but in Chinese speaking

[01:03:43] communities. So they already spoke Chinese really well and were a valuable asset to Mary Ann's work. Mary Ann would regularly invite the Parkers and the Joneses, who were another couple and good friends of Hudson.

[01:03:56] And she would also invite Hudson over for dinner, but more like a courtesy, not because she actually liked him, because she didn't like him at all, because he was a nonconformist in her mind. Which is kind of funny because her own parents were nonconformists during the nonconformist

[01:04:11] movement in England years before. She hated that he wore Chinese clothing and in her mind didn't associate with any denomination, even though he was a Baptist and heavily associated with the Plymouth Brethren. And later with the Keswick movement, which influenced Amy Carmichael, George Mueller,

[01:04:27] and lots of other people. The real problem seemed to be that she didn't approve of his associations because she was a known disliker of the Plymouth Brethren and of Baptists in general and was just kind of cranky. Now Maria noticed Hudson almost right away.

[01:04:44] She thought he was very handsome. But Hudson was too hung up on this woman back home that I mentioned earlier, Elizabeth. She happened to be a ward of his parents and before he left for China, he got to know her

[01:04:56] and after his rejection by Mary Ann Vaughn, he started to write letters to her and wanted to get engaged. But once again, her father didn't like him and didn't want him to get married.

[01:05:09] But he said, well if you come back to England then maybe I'll let you marry her. And he even considered for a moment leaving China to come back to London under the pretense of becoming a full medical doctor and to marry Elizabeth.

[01:05:22] But it seems like even though her father was okay with it if he came back, she really wasn't. And so she turned him down three different times. And after the third time she turned him down, he suddenly noticed Maria. And the two became quite smitten with each other.

[01:05:39] And they didn't tell anybody of their interest, not even each other. They decided to pray about it and leave it up to the Lord for a while. In late 1856, Britain continued to push for the legality of the opium trade.

[01:05:54] And China, being very opposed to the opium trade, arrested some opium smugglers and the British got really mad about that so they bombarded Canson, which is Guangzhou, and even temporarily arrested their city official.

[01:06:06] And after they withdrew, the Canton Viceroy vowed revenge and put a price on every foreigner's head. So word of this spread among the Cantonese and in all other parts of China and life got incredibly iffy for the foreigners. And Ningbo had a huge Cantonese population.

[01:06:24] And even though Hudson and other missionaries spoke out against the actions of the British, it didn't matter. The Cantonese devised a plot to kill all the foreigners in Ningbo. And they knew that they met at a house on Sunday evening and so they decided that they

[01:06:37] would attack and kill those inside and then any stragglers later on. The chief magistrate of Ningbo, who was not Cantonese, was only too pappy to approve because he didn't like foreigners.

[01:06:49] And so a guy who was aware of this plot warned his friend, and this friend happened to be in the employee of a missionary, so his friend warned the missionary. And so all the missionaries gathered together to pray.

[01:07:01] And while they were praying, the superintendent of the customs goes to the magistrate and says you need to call this off. This is a terrible idea. So the magistrate says no, because the foreigners will be killed. The British would hear of it and then kill all the Cantonese.

[01:07:15] So two birds, one stone. And basically the superintendent was like, this is not how this works. Have you been around? And the magistrate calls it off, realizing that this is a really dumb idea. And the missionaries hear about it weeks later, that as they were praying, then this

[01:07:32] whole meeting is going down. But even though this has been called off, Ningbo is still really volatile. So the missionaries send their wives and children away to Shanghai, but Marianne chooses to keep her school open, so Maria and Barella are still there.

[01:07:48] And Hudson reluctantly leaves to escort the crew back to Shanghai. And while he's in Shanghai, this winter famine hits and it brings thousands of people to Shanghai. Many of them die in the streets. And Hudson is helping to distribute food and clothing and administer to them.

[01:08:06] And while he's there, his feelings for Maria continue to persist, and he actually lets it slip to his good friends, the Joneses, about how he feels. And they encourage him to tell her how he feels.

[01:08:17] So he writes this letter telling her of his affections and that he desires to get to know her better with the intention to marry her. So Maria receives this letter, is really excited about it, and then feels that she needs to tell her benefactor, Marianne.

[01:08:32] And Marianne is livid to think that he would even dare to ask her. He's a poor, unconnected nobody. And she tells Maria to respond and basically shut him down. And she was going to read the letter before it was sent to make sure the matter was closed.

[01:08:50] And Maria was a little bit sneaky, very smart at how she does this. So she writes this letter, but she leaves it ambiguous enough to hint to Hudson about her true feelings. And Hudson must have known that Marianne really did not like him because he reads this letter

[01:09:07] and immediately knows that she had a hand in this. And both of them decide to give the whole thing to God, that if he wants them to marry, not even Marianne will be able to stand in the way.

[01:09:20] Now meanwhile, he's 25 years old and he's had over three years in China. And the China Evangelization Society is deeply in debt. They were borrowing thousands of pounds to pay their missionaries and they had no desire

[01:09:33] to change how they operated, even though several letters have been written to them to say, hey, this is not a good idea, we need to fix this. And Hudson became more and more convinced that missionaries should not be indebted.

[01:09:46] He later writes a letter that explains his personal convictions. He said, to me it seemed clear that the teaching of God's word was unmistakably clear. Oh no man anything. To borrow money implied to my mind a contradiction of scripture, a confession that God had withheld

[01:10:00] some good thing, a determination to get for ourselves what he had not given. Could that which was wrong for one Christian to do be right for an association of Christians? Or could any amounts of precedence make a wrong course justifiable?

[01:10:14] If the word taught me anything, it taught me that I have no connection with debt. I could not think that God was poor, that he was just short of resources or unwilling to supply any once of whatever work was really his.

[01:10:26] It seemed to me that if there were lack of funds to carry on the work, then to that degree in that special development or at that time, it could not be the work of God.

[01:10:36] So he writes the China Evangelization Society along with the Joneses and says that he doesn't feel this is right and thankfully there were no hard feelings on either side. And the society would later disband in 1865, which interestingly is the same year that Hudson

[01:10:53] would start the China Inland Mission, but that is for part two. So now Hudson and the Joneses are independent missionaries that are completely reliant on God and those who know about their new situation. Hudson was looking into every means available to support himself and was looking into supporting

[01:11:10] himself via tent making. About six months after they had to leave Ningbo, they were able to go back. He and the Joneses moved back together and he lived with them for several months in the same house that he used to rent from Dr. Parker.

[01:11:23] Mrs. Jones was playing matchmaker. She invited Maria to join in her ministry evangelizing Chinese women and also often invited her over to visit. And Marianne was very unamused to the point that she confronts Mrs. Jones at a ladies prayer meeting. And she says this,

[01:11:41] I feel I have good reason to be indignant. Miss Dyer belongs to a different social circle from that of Mr. Taylor. She has a small but reliable income of her own, unlike Mr. Taylor, who is so far as I

[01:11:51] can see has no regular source of income with which to propose supporting a wife. Maria is educated, gifted, attractive and has no lack of suitors who are far more eligible in my eyes. I think it unpardonable that this person has presumed upon her youth and inexperience. She was 19.

[01:12:07] It's still more so that he has returned to Ningbo after it has been made plain that he is not wanted here. Now you must promise me that you will do nothing more to forward Mr. Taylor's suit and that

[01:12:16] hereafter he will never be allowed to see or speak to Miss Dyer in your house. Now for her part, Miss Jones said that she was completely confident that Mr. Taylor would not seek to take advantage of Miss Dyer's visits by attempting to see her alone.

[01:12:29] But at the same time, she felt compelled to say that it is a very serious matter for Marianne to tamper with the affections of two young people. Not too much longer after that, after a ladies prayer meeting, a torrential downpour left

[01:12:42] Maria and a friend waiting to be picked up from the Joneses' house, and Hudson and Mr. Jones had just arrived home and Hudson thought, is this the time? Is this the moment?

[01:12:53] And he asked to have a meeting with Maria, who agreed as long as her friend was present. And he asked her for permission to court her and told her of his feelings for her and she

[01:13:03] said that she would write to her uncle at once and ask him for permission to court Hudson. And they decided that until they heard back from her uncle, they would not see each other, they would not talk together. And Maria decides that she has to tell Marianne.

[01:13:17] And Marianne is enraged and she writes her own letter in which she says he is called by no one, connected with no one, recognized by no one as a minister of the gospel. She even said that he was fanatical, undependable, and diseased in body and mind and totally

[01:13:32] worthless. For his part, Hudson, who I don't think had any idea about this, was continuing to lead meetings from the home that he and the Joneses shared. And one evening a cotton merchant and devout Buddhist named Yang Fa was walking down the

[01:13:47] street when he heard the bells going off. And he learned that this was the announcement from the so-called Jesus Hall that a meeting was about to begin to discuss religious matters. Now he was a Buddhist and he was conflicted about attending, but he'd been wrestling

[01:14:00] with his shortcomings and questioning the nature of life after death. And Hudson was sharing from John 3, 14 through 16, and Yang Fa felt that every question he'd been wrestling with was answered in one evening and he became a Christian.

[01:14:15] And after Hudson had finished speaking, Yang Fa stood up and told the audience that every question that he'd ever had had been answered and that he was a believer. And Yang Fa invited Hudson to this Buddhist society that he was actually a member of,

[01:14:29] I think a high-ranking member of, that he had recently resigned from. And Hudson spoke with them. And after he finished speaking, Yang Fa asked him, well, how long have you had the gospel in England? And Hudson said, well, we've had it for several hundred years.

[01:14:46] And Yang Fa said, what do you mean for several hundred years? How have you known about Jesus for so long and only now come to tell us? And he said that his father had sought the truth for more than 20 years and had died without finding it.

[01:14:59] And he said, why didn't you come sooner? Which they couldn't come for understandable reasons, but this was one of the many interactions that Hudson had that fueled his deep need and desire to bring the gospel to every person in China.

[01:15:16] In England, Maria's uncle had received a letter asking for permission to marry Hudson. And at the same time, he had received Mary Ann's letter and he was concerned and conflicted because it was such a horrible letter.

[01:15:30] And so he inquired of everybody who knew Hudson in London as to what kind of man that he was. And everyone he asked, including Hudson's former missionary organization, had nothing but the highest praise for Hudson.

[01:15:42] And in fact, he arrived at the exact opposite opinion of Mary Ann and decided that Hudson must be a missionary of unusual promise. And so he gives them permission to marry as long as they wait until Maria had turned 21 in just a couple of months.

[01:15:56] And so they were married January 20th, 1858, four days after Maria's 21st birthday. And so they entered into married life living in the same house that Hudson was living in, but they moved into the attic that he had recently remodeled.

[01:16:13] And Hudson continued to preach and teach and practice medicine during the day while Maria continued to run a school from their building. And in June of 1858, a new treaty was signed which ended the second opium war and opened

[01:16:27] up 10 additional port cities in the entire Yonkta River region, which stretched hundreds of miles inland. And so now foreigners could travel freely with their passports and Christians were free to practice their religion without interference. A few months later, Hudson wrote home,

[01:16:57] In contrast to this good news, 1858 was a really hard year for this little crew of missionaries because Maria's sister Barella had died of cholera and she had been married to John Burden a few months ago.

[01:17:15] And John Burden now had lost two wives and a child since coming to China. And in the following month, Maria gave birth at seven months to a baby who did not survive. And on top of this, the following year brought more anti-foreign sentiment.

[01:17:29] So many foreigners left Ningbo, but the Taylors felt they could not abandon their new Chinese converts. And Maria was pregnant again and close to delivery when a mob surrounded their home shouting beat the foreigners, kill the foreign devils.

[01:17:42] And a few days later, Maria gave birth to a little girl they named Grace Dyer Taylor. And Dr. Parker convinced Maria to bring herself and the newborn to a safer part of the city.

[01:17:52] And while Maria was there, Mrs. Parker came down with cholera and died within a matter of hours. And Dr. Parker was so stricken with grief that he decided to take his children back to Scotland to have time to grieve.

[01:18:04] And he asked Hudson to take over his dispensary while he was away. But Hudson felt the Lord was asking him to run not just the dispensary, but all of it. And that is a huge responsibility because the hospital had 50 daily inpatients, half

[01:18:17] of whom were recovering opiate addicts, hundreds of outpatients. The operating budget was huge. And with Parker going back to Scotland, the regular donations had dried up. But Hudson knew that if the Lord was directing him to operate this hospital, that he would also provide the means.

[01:18:34] And so one morning after he'd been overseeing the medical work for a few weeks, the hospital's cook anxiously informed him that the last bag of rice has been open and is disappearing rapidly. So Hudson said, then the Lord's time for helping us must be close at hand.

[01:18:50] Before that bag of rice was consumed, Hudson received a letter from William Berger containing a check for 50 pounds. Berger wrote, a heavy burden has come upon me, the burden of wealth to use for God. My father recently passed away, leaving me a considerable increase of fortune.

[01:19:04] I do not wish to raise my standard of living as I have enough before. This enclosed check is for any immediate needs which you might have. Would you be so kind as to write fully after praying over the matter if there are any ways

[01:19:16] in which you can profitably use more? This was a huge sign of encouragement to both the missionaries and to the hospital patients. Now in 1860, after six years of being in China and enough money to run the hospital, but

[01:19:30] not enough people to run it, and the stress of his other ministry efforts, Hudson's health was rapidly declining and he was in serious need to go back to England and recover. And he shares this in a retrospect. It was hard to face this possibility.

[01:19:45] The growing church and work seemed to need our presence, and it was no small trial to part from those whom we had learned so much to truly love in the Lord. Thirty or forty native Christians had been gathered into the recently organized church,

[01:19:57] and the well-filled meetings and the warmhearted earnestness of the converts all bespoke a future of much promise. At last, however, completely prostrated by repeated attacks of illness, the only hope of restoration seemed to lie in a voyage to England and a brief stay in its more bracing climate.

[01:20:13] And this necessity, painful though it seemed at the time, proved to be only another opportunity for the manifestation of the faithfulness and loving care of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.

[01:20:26] This is where we will end part one, and so we'll pick up in part two with the way the Lord provides for the tailors while they are in England. As always, thank you for listening to Morrow's Missionaries. I'm Elise.