HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

I62
THE MAN WHO BELIEVED GOD
letter to Mr. George Mtiller of Bristol, who also had lost
his wife. The letter is dated March, I87I.
"You do know, beloved brother, what the cup is that I
am daily called to drink-yes, many times a day .... The
flesh is weak; and your sympathy and prayers I do prize and
thank you for. They tell me of Him who, when the poor and
needy seek water, and there is none--no, not one drop-opens
rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the
valleys."
Yes, when there was no water, not one drop, God did
open His Eternal Springs in the deep and dark valley.
There was no passage of Scripture more inseparably
connected with this experience in Hudson Taylor's mind
than the Fourth Chapter of St. John's Gospel, where the
story of the Samaritan woman and Christ's offer of
living water is told. In a little booklet entitled Unfailing
Springs, published by him many years later, after expounding
the passage he added some words of personal
testimony.
"One afternoon," he wrote, "in the course of my usual
reading, I came to John iv. It had always been ancient
history to me, arid as such loved and appreciated, but that
afternoon, for the first time, it became a present message to
my soul. No one could have been more thirsty, and I there
and then accepted the gracious invitation, and asked and
received the Living Water, believing from His own Word
that my thirsty days were all past, not for any present
feeling, but because of His promise."
He then related the trials and the sorrows which had
come upon him, as we have just seen. He then continues:
"Then I understood why the Lord had made this passage
so real to me. An illness of some weeks followed, and oh! how
lonesome at times were the weary hours when confined to