By Mary Vee
Year: November, 1865
Hudson Taylor: age 33
From J. Hudson Taylor's Notes
The time had come to put a push on the formation of the China Inland Mission.
We had opened an account at the bank. A great start.
As the days quickly passed, I found myself invited to the wealthy homes of England. It had become a fad among the rich men and women of our nation to support missionary endeavors to China. Truly God had allowed such timing. I never asked for support, still the wealthy gave freely.
I had been given many opportunities to speak to groups interested in our new mission, making aware to those in the audience the tremendous need for missionary workers in China.
"Do you realize," I said, "how immense the number 250 million is? What mind can grasp it?
"If a railway train could go twelve hours without stopping to relieve the driver or to take in water, and were to travel twelve hours at the steady speed of thirty miles an hour, it would go three hundred sixty miles a day. Seven and a half years of such travel, without a single day's intermission would not complete one million miles. Had a train started the journey at this rate on the first day of the Christian era and continued every day since . . . it would not yet have gone 250 million miles. If all the people living in Peking were marshaled into the court in a single file, allowing one yard between each man, they would encircle the globe more than seven times at its equator. Were they to march past the spectator at the rate of thirty miles a day, they would move on and on, day after day, week after week, month after month. And over seventeen and a quarter years would pass before the last individual passed by. Just Peking residents alone!
"This number includes all the people. But if those who confessed their faith in Christ were to line up, they would pass by in less than one day.
"Such is the tremendous need for missionaries to go to China and tell the millions about God's love for them."
The audience, I believed, finally understood the urgency to send missionaries to China.
I also included this information in a book I wrote, had it published, and ready for distribution at a convention.
The time had come. The support in the bank ready to send. I had finished my duty and now could return to China as one of the sent missionaries of the new China Inland Mission. The London office would be handled by my friends Mr. and Mrs. Berger.
We had opened an account at the bank. A great start.
As the days quickly passed, I found myself invited to the wealthy homes of England. It had become a fad among the rich men and women of our nation to support missionary endeavors to China. Truly God had allowed such timing. I never asked for support, still the wealthy gave freely.
I had been given many opportunities to speak to groups interested in our new mission, making aware to those in the audience the tremendous need for missionary workers in China.
"Do you realize," I said, "how immense the number 250 million is? What mind can grasp it?
"If a railway train could go twelve hours without stopping to relieve the driver or to take in water, and were to travel twelve hours at the steady speed of thirty miles an hour, it would go three hundred sixty miles a day. Seven and a half years of such travel, without a single day's intermission would not complete one million miles. Had a train started the journey at this rate on the first day of the Christian era and continued every day since . . . it would not yet have gone 250 million miles. If all the people living in Peking were marshaled into the court in a single file, allowing one yard between each man, they would encircle the globe more than seven times at its equator. Were they to march past the spectator at the rate of thirty miles a day, they would move on and on, day after day, week after week, month after month. And over seventeen and a quarter years would pass before the last individual passed by. Just Peking residents alone!
"This number includes all the people. But if those who confessed their faith in Christ were to line up, they would pass by in less than one day.
"Such is the tremendous need for missionaries to go to China and tell the millions about God's love for them."
The audience, I believed, finally understood the urgency to send missionaries to China.
I also included this information in a book I wrote, had it published, and ready for distribution at a convention.
The time had come. The support in the bank ready to send. I had finished my duty and now could return to China as one of the sent missionaries of the new China Inland Mission. The London office would be handled by my friends Mr. and Mrs. Berger.
Please pray for all missionaries and for those who don't know they will be missionaries in the future that God will bless, strengthen to carry out the work God has called them to do.
J. Hudson Taylor
Missionary to China--preparing to leave for my beloved China
Blessed by God
Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
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. &and Mrs. Howard Taylor.
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