One afternoon, the cook, who was a new convert, came to tell Hudson he had just opened their last bag of rice. At the same moment, the mail arrived. In it was a letter from a Mr. Berger in England and a check for fifty pounds. If Hudson needed more money, Mr. Berger instructed in his letter, he just needed to write and say how much more, and the amount would be sent to him. Hudson read the letter to the cook, who ran yelling down the hallway of the hospital, “God answers prayer, God answers prayer.”
In the following months, there were many other wonderful answers to prayer that allowed the hospital to keep on ministering to people’s needs. The Bridge Street church also grew to twenty-one active members, and there were lots of other people who were interested in knowing more about the Gospel. Every afternoon, Hudson taught new converts how to read the Bible and follow its teaching. But every afternoon, he found it a little more difficult to concentrate. He did not like to admit it to himself, but he was becoming a very sick man.
Chapter 12
In the Light of Eternity
Hudson, Maria cuddling Grace in her arms, and Wang Lae-djun, a Chinese Christian from the Bridge Street church, stood together on the deck of the Jubilee, a speedy new clipper ship. The water slowly turned from yellow to blue as the ship cleared the Yangtze Delta and headed for the open waters of the China Sea. Hudson strained for his last look at China. His heart was so heavy he could not speak. There was still so much to do for God in China, but he could not stay; his body had betrayed him. After six years in China, at age twenty-eight, he had contracted tuberculosis. After putting off consulting the doctor for several months, Hudson had finally sought him out, even though he knew what the doctor would tell him. He should return home to England immediately, where good food, the best doctors, and a cooler climate would help him overcome the disease. And if he didn’t return home, most likely he would die in a matter of months.
The Jubilee made the trip back to England in only four months, which was a good thing, because one-year-old Grace screamed with teething most of the trip, and Maria got gastroenteritis, while Hudson had dysentery on top of his other health problems. Wang Lae-djun also became terribly seasick. They were all very glad when the coastline of England came into view.
The Jubilee docked in Gravesend in late November 1860, and they caught a train to London. In London they made their way to Bayswater and the home of Amelia and her new husband Benjamin Broomhall. Louisa, his youngest sister, now twenty years old, was also waiting for him there. They had a joyful, long-anticipated reunion, and after several days with Amelia and Benjamin, they took the train to Barnsley and a warm reunion with his parents. Before he left London, though, Amelia managed to persuade Hudson to cut off his queue and begin wearing English clothes again.
Two weeks later, Amelia and Benjamin, as well as Aunt Hannah and Uncle Richard from Hull, arrived in Barnsley for Christmas. Maria felt welcomed into Hudson’s family, and just seeing everybody again made Hudson feel better.
After Christmas they returned to London and rented a house close to London Hospital. Wang Lae-djun moved in with them.
Hudson went to the hospital, where his former instructor told him that his liver, digestive system, and nervous system had all been badly damaged by his illness. Recuperation would be a long process, and it would be many years before his health was strong enough for him to travel overseas again. Despite the bad news, Hudson did not get depressed; there was too much to do.
Although he may have left China, China had not left him. The country was continually on his mind. He bought a huge map of China and pinned it to the wall opposite the desk in his study. It was the first thing he saw when he began work in the morning and the last thing he prayed for at night. Slowly, as he regained his strength, he began to plan for his eventual return to China, even though he had no idea when that would be.
Hudson’s experiences with the hospital in Ning-po had shown him the need to complete his medical training. That was why he had rented a house close to London Hospital’s new medical college building. Even though he started out as an outpatient at the hospital, as soon as he was strong enough, he resumed his medical studies there.
While he studied at the hospital, he started on another project. This project was the reason Wang Lae-djun had accompanied them back to England. With his help, and that of Frederick Gough, another missionary to China, they began the task of translating the New Testament in the Ning-po dialect from pictographs to romanized words. (This meant that instead of using pictures to represent Chinese words in the traditional way, the sounds of the words themselves were written out phonetically using letters of the alphabet.) Translating the New Testament this way would make it much easier for Chinese people and missionaries alike to learn how to read Chinese.
Hudson also began recruiting workers to go to Ning-po and help John Jones run the Bridge Street Chapel, as the church there was now called.
All of this kept Hudson very busy. In fact, it took four years to complete it all. By 1865, the New Testament had been translated and Wang Lae-djun had returned to his family in Ning-po with the completed text. Six new workers had also been sent to Ning-po. Dr. Parker himself, having remarried, returned to restart the hospital. And Hudson had his medical degree. He was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and had the title “Doctor” in front of his name.
During this time, Hudson received no wages for his efforts, so he and Maria relied on God to meet their needs. Sometimes God’s provision arrived at the last moment, but always, even when their three new sons, Herbert, then Howard, and finally little Samuel, were born, there was enough money for the rent and food.
As the days went by and Hudson studied the large map on his wall, an idea began to grow in his mind. China had eleven provinces and one territory, Mongolia. Hudson prayed for them every day. How hard would it be to recruit two missionaries to go into each of those areas? By year’s end, every province in China could have its own missionaries sharing the Gospel with the people there. The idea excited him. It would take only twenty-four missionaries to do it. It could easily be done if the mission societies with missionaries already in China agreed to take part in the plan. So Hudson began visiting the local representatives of these societies to get them to help.
The representatives he visited were polite but firm. They all gave the same answer. They didn’t have enough money or the right personnel to send missionaries into the interior. It was hard enough to support the missionaries already in China. In fact, the year before there had been a total of one hundred fifteen Protestant missionaries in China. This year the number was down to ninety-one. Hudson, they pointed out, needed to accept the reality that China was no longer a fashionable place to send missionaries; it was dangerous and very foreign.
Hudson could hardly believe what he was hearing. With that kind of attitude, there would be no missionaries left in China in a few years, and just at the time when the country was really beginning to open up. They had to keep sending missionaries! Every month more than a million Chinese people died without ever hearing about Jesus Christ.
Over and over Hudson asked himself the question, Why wasn’t someone doing something? As he thought about it, the question slowly and quietly turned itself around in his mind: Why aren’t I doing something?
Deep in his heart he struggled with the answer. He knew there was no one in England better suited to recruit a group of missionaries to move into the heart of China than he and Maria, but he did not want the responsibility for other people’s lives. It was too great a load to bear, having others rely on him for their safety and guidance. On his return to China, Dr. Parker had fallen off a horse into an icy river and drowned. One of the six missionaries Hudson had recruited and sent to Ning-po had contracted cholera and died. Even his good friend, John Jones, had become so sick that he had to return to England. On the voyage home he’d died, and now lay buried on some faraway, forgotten island. Such sad news made Hudson long to be in China to help and encourage those left working there, but how could he accept the responsibility for the lives of others who might go?
He felt caught in the middle. Part of him wanted to organize an all-out missionary assault on China, but another part of him was too scared to ask people to go, knowing he would be responsible for them.
Hudson became very stressed over the whole matter. He couldn’t seem to sleep or eat, and his health was starting to deteriorate again.
Maria could see the strain in her husband, and she was pleased when he announced he was going to Brighton for a few days’ rest. He would stay with Mr. Berger, the man who had begun supporting the hospital work in Ning-po right at the time they ran out of money. Maria hoped the sea air and the Christian fellowship would help clear Hudson’s mind.
Unfortunately, the large church filled with happy, healthy, rich Christians had the opposite effect on Hudson. He found it hard to sit and listen to people singing about God and their salvation while not seeming to care whether others went to their eternal death without ever hearing the Gospel.
Hudson could no longer stand to be in the service. He slipped out a side door and, as the organ music faded behind him, walked down to Brighton Beach. He took off his shoes and socks and waded in the water. His heart was as tossed and turned as the seaweed floating in the surf. He had to resolve the struggle he felt inside. As the waves lapped around his feet, a thought suddenly occurred to him. What was the worst thing that could happen to a missionary in his care? What if he took a group of missionaries back to China and they all died? How bad would that be in the light of eternity? They would all go straight to heaven. And if, as a result of their work and sacrifice, one Chinese person turned to Christ, wouldn’t that make it worthwhile?
Strangely, this backward way of looking at things comforted Hudson. In the light of eternity, there was no fate worse than for Chinese people never to hear the Gospel.
As he thought about all this, his mind began to clear. If each missionary was obeying God in going to China, the responsibility for what happened to them rested with God, and not with Hudson Taylor. Tears of joy slid down his cheeks. The answer to his struggle was so simple. He was going to do what he felt God was calling him to do, and he would trust that others exercised the same obedience. Standing in ankle-deep water on Brighton Beach, Hudson prayed and asked God to raise up twenty-four workers for China. Then he pulled a pencil from his pocket and wrote in the back of his Bible, “Prayed for twenty-four willing, skillful laborers at Brighton, June 25, 1865.”
The next day, he returned to London a new man. The inner conflict was settled; it was time to move forward. Now he had to prepare for what God wanted him to do.
He went to the London and County Bank and, with ten pounds, opened a bank account in the name of the China Inland Mission.
Next, Hudson took all the information he’d gathered together to try to convince existing missionary societies to join his plan, and he put it into a booklet. He called the booklet China’s Spiritual Need and Claims.
The booklet set out plainly how four hundred million Chinese people had never heard the Gospel. Yet they had a right to hear it, and Christians in other lands around the world had a duty to follow Jesus’ command to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.
The booklet made many Christians feel uncomfortable. Was it possible that they were partly responsible for the million people in China who died each month without knowing of Jesus Christ?
