HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

XII
GOD, THE ONE GREAT CIRCUMSTANCE
FOR nearly four years Hudson Taylor had been in China,
and had suffered the lot of the pilgrim and the stranger.
Like the Apostle Paul he had known what it was to be
"buffeted" -not in body only-and to have "no certain
dwelling-place". Now he was to enjoy that "most sweet
and dear custom of living together" with the woman he
loved. But that only made him feel the more that God
must be his Eternal Home.
Those were days of constant peril and rude alarm.
The mutiny in India had been a terrible demonstration
of the dangers of life in the Far East. The Taiping Rebellion
was a never-failing menace. Great Britain was
still at war with China, and deeds of vengeance were ever
possible. In Hongkong the chief baker had attempted
to poison the foreign community. In Ningpo, where
Hudson Taylor was, fifty or sixty Portuguese had been
massacred in broad daylight, and had not the officialwhile
the missionaries were actually at prayer-withdrawn
his permission, a plot to murder all Europeans
would probably have been successful. Such facts as
these made "the secret place of the Most High" a great
necessity and a glad reality. Hudson Taylor was learning
to think of God as the One Great Circumstance in
Whom he lived, and moved, and had his being. ·
For the first month or two of their married life, after
a brief sojourn in the quiet of a Chinese monastery, they
go