HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

PIONEER AND BUILDER
n9
the sending forth of the call for one hundred new workers
during the following year, 1887. Those eight days of
prayer, with alternate days of fasting, were what
Hudson Taylor called "beginning right with God". And
so sure was he of God's guiding hand, that he could add:
"We had a thanksgiving, for the men and the money that
were coming, in November 1886, and they were all received
and sent forth before the end of December 1887."
But we must now take up the story of the closing
years of this strenuous career. In the 'nineties, after
more than thirty years of leadership of a rapidly growing
and expanding work, it began to be evident that his
powers of mind and body were unequal to the heavy and
constant strain of such responsibilities. The signs of an
apostle had been wrought in his life. He had been in
labours abundant, in fastings, and in watchings. He had
once confessed that "the sun had never risen upon
China without finding me at prayer". In his serving the
Lord he had been both fervent in spirit and diligent in
business. Half-hearted he could not be. The spirit in
which he laboured is revealed in the following words
of his:
"Self-denial surely means something far greater than
some slight and insignificant lessening of our self-indulgences!"
What self-denial meant to him in just one department
of his life, i.e. separation from wife and children, is
brought home by the following statement, made at the
New York conference, on the marriage of missionaries:
"I do not know any more difficult question in the whole
missionary problem. I have had the pl~asure of living as a
married missionary for forty years, and I know all the advantages,
and the comfort, and the blessings to the work of