HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

THE ETERNAL SPRINGS OF GOD 161
salvation. His letters which remain bear extraordinary
witness to the sustaining and satisfying power of God's
grace.
"A few months ago", he wrote to Mr. Berger, "my
home was full, now so silent and lonely-Samuel, Noel, my
precious wife, with Jesus; the elder children far, far away,
and even little T'ien-pao 1 in Yangchow. Often, of late years,
has duty called me from my loved ones, but I have returned,
and so warm has been the welcome. Now I am alone. Can it
be that there is no return from this journey, no home-gathering
to look forward to! Is it real, and not a sorrowful dream,
that those dearest to me lie beneath the cold sod? Ah, it is
indeed true. But not more so than that there is a homecoming
awaiting me which no parting shall break into ....
Love gave the blow that for a little while makes the desert
more dreary, but heaven more home-like."
Or again; in another letter dated three months later:
"He knows what her absence is to me. Twelve years and
a half of such unbroken spiritual fellowship, united labour,
mutual satisfaction and love, fall to the lot of very few ....
But were the blank less, I should know less of His power and
sustaining love."
And in another letter, penned on the same day, he
wrote:
"No language can express what He has been and is to me.
Never does He leave me; constantly does He cheer me with
His love. He who once wept at the grave of Lazarus often
now weeps in and with me .... His own rest, His own peace,
His own joy, He gives me. He kisses me with the kisses of
His love, which are better than wine. Often I find myself
wondering whether it is possible for her, who is taken, to
have more joy in His presence than He ~~· given me."
That he recognized that such experiences were supernatural
is made abundantly clear by a few words in a
1 Charles Hudson Taylor.
M