A Million a Month

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. MATTHEW 9:36

In the middle of a quiet meditation on the Levites who carried the tabernacle, Hudson Taylor breaks off in Separation and Service with a sentence that sounds like a cry: “A million a month in China are dying without God.” The figure was his own estimate, and it need not be exact to do its work. Behind every plan, every prayer for workers and every mile he travelled lay the thought of a multitude passing into eternity without having heard the name of Christ.

It is not convenient

The most vivid expression of that burden in A Retrospect is a story from 1856. Taylor was travelling by boat to Ningbo, and among his fellow passengers was a Chinese man who had been to England and was called Peter there. They had talked earnestly about his soul the night before, and he had been moved to tears. The next day Taylor heard a splash. Peter had fallen overboard. Taylor leapt into the water, could not find him, and saw a fishing-boat nearby with a drag-net that would surely bring him up. He begged the fishermen to come. Their answer was, “It is not convenient.” They were busy fishing. They haggled over the price. By the time they dragged the spot, Peter was dead.

Taylor told the story not to condemn the fishermen but to search himself and his readers. Were they not guilty of the man’s death, having the means to save him and refusing to use it? Assuredly. But what then of Christians who leave souls to perish, and say, like Cain, Am I my brother’s keeper? The Lord Jesus commands us to go. Shall we tell Him that it is not convenient, that we are busy fishing?

If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? PROVERBS 24:11–12

Too late for his father

Another story pierces more deeply still. One of the first converts in Ningbo was a middle-aged man who had sought the truth all his life. A few nights after he believed, he asked Taylor how long the gospel had been known in England. Some hundreds of years, he was told. He was amazed. His own father had sought the truth for more than twenty years and died without finding it. “Oh, why did you not come sooner?”

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? ROMANS 10:14

Taylor adds that a whole generation had passed since then, and that in the meantime more than two hundred million had died in China without an offer of salvation. How long, he asks, shall this continue, and the Master’s words, To every creature, remain unheeded?

On the sands at Brighton

This burden drove Taylor to the crisis of 1865. Back in England, with a map of China on his study wall, he had come to believe that a special agency was needed for the unreached inland provinces, and that God would have him ask for workers and go with them. But he would not ask. He was afraid. He had not yet learned, he says, to trust God for keeping power and grace for himself, and so he could not trust Him to keep others; he feared that young workers might break down in the dangers of the interior and reproach him bitterly for leading them there.

Meanwhile, he writes, “the feeling of blood-guiltiness became more and more intense.” Because he refused to ask, the labourers did not go, and every day tens of thousands were passing into Christless graves. He could not rest by day or sleep by night, and his health broke down.

Then said I, Here am I; send me. ISAIAH 6:8

On Sunday the twenty-fifth of June, 1865, at Brighton, unable to bear the sight of a thousand Christians rejoicing in their own security while millions perished, he walked out on the sands alone. “There,” he says, “the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service.” He told God that all the responsibility for issues and consequences must rest with Him; that it was Taylor’s part to obey and follow, and His to direct, care for and guide. Peace flowed in at once. He asked for twenty-four workers and wrote the request in the margin of his Bible.

The heart of that surrender was not a new burden but the laying down of one. Taylor did not become less concerned for China. He became unwilling to carry what only God could carry. Years later, in Union and Communion, he wrote that if we let Christ be our instructor in service and leave the responsibility with Him, our strength will not be exhausted with worry and anxiety.

Go, or help others to go

Taylor never thought every Christian should go to China, but he thought every Christian should ask the question honestly. In his address A Full Reward, on the story of Ruth, he urges his hearers at least to become strangers and pilgrims at home, to toil somewhere in the harvest, and, if they may lawfully do so, not to be slow to obey the command to go. When He says Go, he asks, shall we reply No?

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. MATTHEW 28:19

He had a particular word for parents. In Coming to the King he asks how many parents who refuse to let a son or daughter go to the mission field would refuse the Queen of England if she offered their child an honourable post abroad. And in the introduction to A Retrospect he reminds his readers how much missions owe to people who never see the field, whose love, sympathy and prayers will surprise them on the great day.

A word of care

Taylor’s language of blood-guiltiness should be handled carefully. It expressed a real and biblical sense of responsibility (Ezekiel 33:6). But in some consciences it can breed a crushing, unending guilt that drives people into service out of fear rather than love, and burns them out. Taylor’s own relief at Brighton points to the cure: the burden is real, but it belongs to God, and our part is obedience, not omnipotence. We are not the saviours of the world. We are sent by the One who is.

All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. MATTHEW 28:18

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Find out which peoples in the world today have least access to the gospel, and begin to pray for one of them by name.

2. Ask yourself honestly whether you have ever told the Lord, in effect, that it is not convenient.

3. If God is laying a burden on you, ask whether you are carrying the responsibility that belongs to Him. Hand it back.

4. If you are a parent, pray about whether you would gladly give your children to God’s service anywhere.

5. Whether or not you go, decide on one concrete way to help others go: by prayer, giving, encouragement or hospitality.

A PRAYER

Lord of the harvest, You were moved with compassion for the multitudes, and they are still without a shepherd.

Forgive me for the times I have told You it was not convenient, and for my comfort while others perish without hearing Your name.

Lay on me as much of Your burden as You mean me to carry, and take from me the part that is Yours alone.

Here am I. Send me, or send others through me, and let none of us be too busy fishing to obey. Amen.