IX
HIDDEN YEARS

Oh, to save these! to perish for their saving;
Die for their life; be offered for them all.
SELECTED.
BUT it told, this busy, happy work, upon those who were engaged in it.
Within nine months, sixteen patients from the hospital had been baptized,
while more than thirty others were candidates for admission to one or
other of the Ningpo churches. But six years in China, six such years, had
left their mark, and Hudson Taylor’s strength was failing rapidly.
People are perishing, and God is so blessing the work (he wrote to his
father). But we are wearing down and must have help....
Do you know of any earnest, devoted young men desirous of serving God
in China, who, not wishing for more than their actual support, would be
willing to come out and labor here? Oh, for four or five such helpers! They
would probably begin to preach in Chinese in six months time, and in
answer to prayer the means for their support would be found.
“People are perishing and God is so blessing the work” — it was the
urgency of these facts that carried Hudson Taylor through serious illness
and the painful parting, when he was invalid home in 1860. It was the
urgency of these facts that sustained him through the years that followed,
when it seemed as though the doctors were right in thinking that he would
never be strong enough to return to China. The great need, as he had seen
it, and a deep sense of responsibility burned as a steady fire in his soul,
and neither poor health, lack of encouragement nor any other difficulty
could lessen his sense of call to bring Christ to those perishing millions.
Settling in the east end of London, to be near his old hospital, Mr. Taylor
was able as health improved to resume his medical studies. He also
undertook the task of revising the romanized Ningpo Testament, the Bible
Society having agreed to publish a new edition. And for a time there was a
good deal of correspondence with young men who were considering China
as a field for life service, which resulted in the going out of one, one only,
to join Mr. and Mrs. Jones in Ningpo.8 But gradually outside interest
seemed to lessen, and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor found themselves, with few
friends, shut up to prayer and patience. At twenty-nine and twenty-four
years of age it was not easy to be set aside, cut off from the work they
loved and left in the backwater of that dreary street in a poor part of
London. Yet, without those hidden years with all their growth and testing,
how could the vision and enthusiasm of youth have been matured for the
leadership that was to be?
Five long, hidden years — and we should have known little of their
experiences but for the discovery in an old, dusty packing-case, of a
number of notebooks, small and thin, filled with Mr. Taylor’s
handwriting. One after another we came upon them among much useless
rubbish, until the complete series lay before us — twelve in number, not
one missing. And what a tale was unfolded as, often blinded with tears,
one traced the faded record!
For these unstudied pages reveal a growing intimacy with God and
dependence upon Him. Faith is here, and faithfulness down to the smallest
detail. Devotion is here and self-sacrifice, leading to unremitting labor.
Prayer is here, patient persevering prayer, wonderfully answered. But
there is something more: there is the deep, prolonged exercise of a soul that
is following hard after God. There is the gradual strengthening here, of a
man called to walk by faith not by sight; the unutterable confidence of a
heart cleaving to God and God Alone, which pleases Him as nothing else
can.
“Without faith it is impossible to please (or satisfy) him: for he that
cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek him.”
Outwardly the days were filled with quiet, ordinary duties, enriched with
trials and joys of many kinds. The little daughter who had brought such
happiness in Ningpo had now three younger brothers. Home and children
had to be cared for with very limited means, and faith was often tested as
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor went on in the pathway of direct dependence upon
God. The work in Ningpo had also to be provided for and directed, which
involved a good deal of correspondence. The New Testament revision was
a task that seemed to grow rather than diminish, as it had come to include
the preparation of marginal references. These proved of great value to the
Ningpo Christians, and the labor of preparing them, while it was
considerable, brought no little blessing to the young missionary who was
spending hours every day over the Word of God.
The amount of work he was enabled to get through is amazing, and could
hardly be credited but for this record. Every day Mr. Taylor noted the
time given to his main task, and one frequently comes upon entries such as
the following:
April 27, Revision seven hours (evening at Exeter Hall).
“28,” nine and a half hours.
“29,” eleven hours.
“30,” five and a half hours (Baptist Missionary
Society meetings).
May 1, Revision eight and a half hours (visitors till 10 P. M.).
“2,” thirteen hours.
“3, Sunday at Bayswater: In the morning heard Mr. Lewis, from John
3:33; took the Communion there in the afternoon.9 Evening, stayed at
home and engaged in prayer about our Chinese work.
May 4, Revision four hours (correspondence and visitors).
“5,” eleven and a half hours.
“6,” seven hours (important interviews).
“7,” nine and a half hours.
“8,” ten and a half hours.
“9,” thirteen hours.
May 10, Sunday: Morning, with Lae-djun on Hebrew 11, first part, a
happy season.10 Wrote to James Meadows. Afternoon, prayer with
Maria about leaving this house, about Meadows, Truelove, revision, etc.
Wrote to Mr. Lord.11 Evening, heard Mr. Kennedy on Matthew 27:42 —
“He saved others, himself he cannot save.” Oh, to be more like the meek,
forbearing, loving Jesus! Lord, make me more like Thee.
The meetings referred to were a large part of Mr. Taylor’s work at this
time, for he was doing his utmost to induce the denominational boards to
take up the Evangelization of inland China. Alone or with his colleague in
the revision, the Rev. F. F. Gough of the C.M.S., he visited the secretaries
of various societies, putting before them the need of that long-neglected
field, made accessible by the granting of passports for travel and even
residence in the interior. But, while everywhere meeting with a
sympathetic hearing, it became evident that none of the boards was
prepared to assume responsibility for so great an undertaking.
All this, naturally, reacted in one way on Hudson Taylor, and when to his
personal knowledge of certain parts of China was added a careful study of
the whole field, the result was overwhelming. For he had been requested
by his friend and pastor, Mr. Lewis, editor of the Baptist Magazine, to
write a series of articles to awaken interest in the Ningpo Mission. These
he had begun to prepare and one had already been published when Mr.
Lewis returned the manuscript of the second. The articles were too
important and weighty, he felt, to be restricted to a denominational paper
“Add to them,” he urged, “let them cover the whole field and be published
as an appeal for inland China.”
This led to detailed study of the spiritual needs of every part of China,
and of its outlying dependencies. While in Ningpo, the pressure of claims
immediately around him had been so great that Mr. Taylor had been
unable to give much thought to the still greater needs further afield. But
now — daily facing the map on the wall of his study and the open Bible
whose promises were gripping his soul — he was as near the vast
provinces of inland China as the places in which he had labored near the
coast. Little wonder that “prayer was the only way by which the
burdened heart could obtain any relief”!
But the real crisis came when prayer no longer brought relief, but seemed
to commit him more and more to the undertaking from which he shrank.
For he began to see in the light of that open Book that God could use him,
even him, to answer his own prayers.
I had a growing conviction (he wrote) that God would have me seek from
Him the needed workers and go forth with them. But for a long time
unbelief hindered my taking the first step....
In the study of that divine Word, I learned that to obtain successful
workers, not elaborate appeals for help, but first earnest prayer to God to
thrust forth laborers, and second the deepening of the spiritual life of the
Church, so that men should be unable to stay at home, were what was
needed. I saw that the apostolic plan was not to raise ways and means, but
to go and do the work, trusting His sure promise who has said, “Seek ye
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall
be added unto you.”...
But how inconsistent unbelief always is! I had no doubt but that if I
prayed for fellow-workers, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, they
would be given. I had no doubt but that, in answer to such prayer, the
means for our going forth would be provided, and that doors would be
opened before us in unreached parts of the Empire. But I had not then
learned to trust God for keeping power and grace for myself, so no wonder
I could not trust Him to keep others who might be prepared to go with
me. I feared that amid the dangers, difficulties and trials necessarily
connected with such work, some comparatively inexperienced Christians
might break down, and bitterly reproach me for encouraging them to
undertake an enterprise for which they were unequal.
Yet what was I to do? The sense of blood guiltiness became more and
more intense. Simply because I refused to ask for them, the laborers did
not come forward, did not go out to China: and every day tens of
thousands in that land were passing into Christless graves! Perishing China
so filled my heart and mind that there was no rest by day and little sleep
by night, till health gave way.
For the hidden years had done their work. An instrument was ready that
God could use, and the prevailing prayers going up from that little home in
East London were to receive a speedy though unexpected answer.