HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

A VISION SEEN THROUGH TEARS
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Word, made him recognize the world's deepest need met
by the fulness of God.
"I have often seen since," he wrote later, "that without
those months of feeding and feasting on the Word of God, I
should have been quite unprepared to form, on its present
basis, a mission like the China Inland Mission.
"In the study of that Divine Word I learned that to
obtain successful labourers, not elaborate appeals for help,
but, first, earnest prayer to God to thrust forth labourers,
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 in His
sure word who had said, 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added
unto you'."
God's visions do not come to the idle dreamer, but to
the man of toil, to Moses caring for the sheep, to Gideon
and Oman threshing out the wheat, and to Matthew at
the receipt of Custom. And so it was with Hudson
Taylor. In the task of translation, with other duties,
came that closer vision of God and the clearer sight of
China's need.
What that vision of China was we know from China's
Spiritual Need and Claims, a book published in the late
autumn of 1865, but commenced long before, at the
suggestion of the Rev. W. G. Lewis, Editor of the Baptist
Magazine. It is a book which reminds us of Carey's
Enquiry, save that Carey surveyed the world, while
Hudson Taylor centres all his thought on China. If any
refutation were ever needed that missionary enthusiasm
sprang from an excess of emotion, such publications
alone would provide a conclusive ans'Y'er. In both cases
history and facts are soberly marshalled to form an
irresistible argument. Carey's keynote is "obligation".