Hudson Taylor-The Power of a Tiny Cut

By Mary Vee

J. Hudson Taylor's Thoughts

I went home after hearing the ship worker had run away and not honored his promise to send money for his wife. I loaned her the money and now would not be repaid.


My stomach grumbled. Since there wasn't a single coin in my pocket, I chose to ignore it and worked to prepare for my classes the next day. Every few evenings I sewed sheets of paper together to take notes on for class lectures. While I sewed I prayed. Talking to God kept my mind off of food. In truth, I was very hungry.


As the needle pushed in and through the sheets, I imagined life as a missionary in China, what the country looked like, what I would say to the people. I pushed and pulled the needle through thick pages practicing Scripture verses.


At one point the needle refused to push through the sheets. I set my first finger on the top sheet and pressed through from the bottom page with my thumb. After a hearty shove the needed popped through and pricked my finger. I hardly thought about the matter and kept working.


The next morning I took my newly sewn notebook and a half loaf of bread to the hospital.


One of my classes schedule for that day was dissection. The other students and I examined the insides of bodies to learn where, what, and why God put things there. The body given to us that day had experienced a deadly fever. So deadly, the professor said the powerful germ could still attack any of us through a simple cut in our skin.


The instructor refused to allow any student in the dissection room who had a cut. He asked us several times. "Do you have a cut. If, so, stay out of that room." We checked each other to insure no one entering the room had a cut.


I knew I didn't have a cut, and no one found any on my skin. I entered the dissection room with a few other students and participated in the dissection. We saw how the fever attacked the body. A terrible disease, indeed.


After class we visited the wards to check on patients. At lunch time I suddenly became sick. Quite sick. Since I rarely became ill, I hardly knew what to do. I sat in a room by myself and drank a class of cool water. After a short time I felt better and rejoined the students. But during the afternoon lectures, my energy left. I couldn't hold my pencil, or focus on the instructor's words.


A searing pain ran through my arm and down my right side. I left the lecture and went to the dissection room to pack my tools to go home. The demonstrator turned to me. "Why are you here, now?"


I rubbed sweat from my forehead. "I don't know what's happening to me. I can't focus, I have no energy, I feel awful."


He became quite angry. "The answer is clear. While dissection you became careless and cut yourself, and you knew this body had a malignant fever."


"No, please. I took great care to not cut myself. I know I didn't."


The surgeon shook his head. "You must have a cut!" He grabbed my hands and searched every inch but didn't find one.


Then I remembered the needle poke from the night before. "Excuse me, Sir, could a needle prick from last night still be unclosed this morning?"


He lowered his head. "Most likely. I recommend you get a taxi and go home as fast as you can. Take care of any will or other papers you have, because you will be a dead man very soon."


The only thought in my mind was: how could I be a missionary in China if I died right then? None of this new disease made sense to me.


Come back next week to read what happened.


J. Hudson Taylor


Do you have any questions?



Photo courtesy of visualbiblealive.com


Research resources: J. Hudson Taylor, An Autobiography by J. Hudson Taylor; It is Not Death to Die, a new biography of Hudson Taylor by Jim Cromarty; Hudson Taylor Founder, China Inland Mission by Vance Christie; J. Hudson Taylor, A Man in Christ, by Roger Steer, and Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret by dr. & Mrs. Howard Taylor.