Hudson Taylor: The Man Who Would Not Be a Stranger

Hudson Taylor was a young man from England who longed to tell the people of China about Jesus. In his day, China was the largest country in the world, and most of it had never heard the good news even once.

When Hudson arrived, he noticed something that troubled him. The missionaries there dressed in English clothes, lived in English houses, and ate English food. To the people of China they looked like foreign strangers, and it was hard for a stranger to be trusted or believed.

So Hudson did something that shocked the other missionaries. He put away his English suit. He dressed in the clothes the Chinese people wore. He grew his hair long at the back in a braid, the way Chinese men did then. Some of his own friends laughed at him and said he had gone too far. But now, when Hudson walked through a town, the people did not see a foreigner. They saw a man who had come close, who had made himself one of them so that they might listen.

Hudson wanted to reach not just the coast of China but the vast inland, where no missionary had ever gone. To do it he would need many workers and a great deal of money — and he had almost none. So Hudson made a quiet, daring decision. He would never ask any person for money. He would ask only God, in prayer, and trust God to send what was needed.

It was a frightening way to live. There were times when there was little in the cupboard and nothing in his pocket. But again and again the money came — sometimes in the very hour it was needed, from people who had no idea how great the need was.

Hudson Taylor started a mission that sent hundreds of workers deep into China, to places that had waited hundreds of years to hear the name of Jesus. He spent more than fifty years at it, and never grew tired of the country or its people.

Hudson had learned a lesson he never forgot: to reach people, you must first come near to them. He would not stand far off and shout. He would come close, and become a friend, and would not be a stranger.