A Reader’s Guide to Hudson Taylor

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 TIMOTHY 2:15

Taylor is easy to read and easy to finish. He wrote little, and nearly all of it is short: a memoir, two small books of Bible meditations, and a number of addresses first printed in the mission’s magazine, China’s Millions. His style is plain and warm, and many pages end in a question to the reader. The difficulty with Taylor is not quantity or obscurity. It is that his books are so readable they can be admired in an evening and forgotten by the next.

Begin here

A Retrospect. Taylor’s own account of his conversion, his training in Hull and London, his early years in China and the founding of the China Inland Mission, first gathered as a book in 1894. It is the best single entry point. In the Ochorus library, where it is also retold for teens and for children.

Union and Communion. His meditations on the Song of Solomon, the fruit of the inner life he found after 1869. Short, tender and searching; the basis of chapters nine to eleven of this volume. Read it slowly. In the Ochorus library.

On consecration and service

Separation and Service. Meditations on Numbers 6 and 7: the Nazarite, the priestly blessing and the princes’ offerings. Less known than it deserves, and full of homely illustrations. The basis of chapters thirteen and fourteen. In the Ochorus library.

China’s Spiritual Need and Claims. The little book he wrote with Maria’s help in 1865 to lay the needs of inland China before British Christians. It is a window into the burden behind the mission. Not yet in the Ochorus library.

Addresses

Nine of Taylor’s shorter addresses are in the Ochorus library. Begin with Unfailing Springs, which contains his own testimony to the crisis of 1869 and the grief of 1870, and A Ribband of Blue, on holiness in small things. Blessed Prosperity and Blessed Adversity belong together, on the first psalm and on Job. Self-Denial versus Self-Assertion is only a few pages long and one of the most searching things he wrote. All Sufficiency, Under the Shepherd’s Care, Coming to the King and A Full Reward complete the set.

Approach with care

The appendix to Union and Communion and the closing pages of the second part of Separation and Service set out Taylor’s view that not all Christians will share in the first resurrection or be caught up before the great tribulation, but only those whose lives show them ready. It is not the heart of his teaching and can be set aside.

In Blessed Prosperity he treats the promise that whatsoever the righteous man doeth shall prosper as absolute, while adding that its prosperity may be visible only to faith. Read it together with Blessed Adversity, which corrects any impression that faithfulness guarantees outward success.

About Taylor

Dr and Mrs Howard Taylor, his son and daughter-in-law, wrote the standard two-volume life: Hudson Taylor in Early Years: The Growth of a Soul (1911) and Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God (1918). Rich in letters and warmly devotional, they are the source of most later accounts. Their shorter Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret (1932) concentrates on the exchanged life and has been read by millions. A. J. Broomhall’s Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, in seven volumes (1981–1989), is the most detailed history, fuller on the mission’s setting and its controversies. Roger Steer’s J. Hudson Taylor: A Man in Christ (1990) is a good single-volume life. Alvyn Austin’s China’s Millions (2007) is a scholarly history of the mission and more critical than the family biographies. The older lives were written by people who loved him, and it shows in what they leave out; read more than one. The Ochorus author page carries a shorter biography.

Three counsels for reading him

Read him with the Bible open. Taylor claimed no authority of his own and built everything on texts. Check them, and notice when his allegories go beyond them.

Read him for the God he trusted, not for the man. His stories are memorable, and the temptation is to be impressed. He told them so that his readers would trust God in their own circumstances. Ask, after each one, what it tells you about God.

And read him with something to obey. Taylor tested the Bible by living it. A chapter of his acted on, in money, in prayer or in service, will do more than all his books admired.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21