HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

IT IS THE LORD
I5I
spiritual blessing which came to Hudson Taylor. The
Lord whom he sought suddenly came to His temple,
even the Messenger of the Covenant whom he delighted
in. But that experience demands a chapter to itself. We
must here pass on, with uncovered heads, into the
valley of the shadow of death whither Hudson Taylor's
steps were bound. The point to note is, that whatever
came, his heart still said: "It is the Lord, let Him do ,
what seemeth to Him good." He sometimes expressed ·
his convictions in these words:
"With peaceful mind thy path of duty run:
God nothing does, nor suffers to be done,
But what thou wouldst thyself, could thou but see
The end of all events as well as He."
Such words can easily be quoted when life's path is
smooth, but it is another matter when hard beset by
trial and temptation. How the iron had entered his soul
the following passage, in which he opens his heart to his
mother at this time, will help to show:
"Envied of some, despised by many, hated perhaps by
others; often blamed for things I never heard of, or had
nothing to do with; an innovator on what have become
established rules of missionary practice; an opponent of
mighty systems of heathen error and superstitions; working
without precedent in many respects, and with few experienced
helpers; often sick in body, as well as perplexed in
mind and embarrassed by circumstances; had not the Lord
been specially gracious to me, had not my mind been sustained
by the conviction that the work is His, and that He
is with me in what it is no empty figure to call 'the thick of
the conflict', I must have fainted and broken down. But the
battle is the Lord's: and He will conquei:.. :We may fail, do
fail continually; but He never fails."
It was well that he had been spiritually refreshed
during 1869, for 1870 was a year filled with, humanly