HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

64 THE MAN WHO BELIEVED GOD
In all this work the British and Foreign Bible Societysupplied
him with Scriptures, and met in part his
travelling expenses, which, as he was apparently forgotten
by his own Society, came as a very welcome
assistance.
Such journeys in those days were full of hazard. As
foreigners had enlisted themselves on both sides in the
rebellion, he was liable at any time to be seized and
roughly handled, if not even killed, by an infuriated
and suspicious people. "But", he wrote, "the Word of
God must go, and we must not be hindered by slight
obstacles in the way of its dissemination." What these
"slight obstacles" were may, in part, be gathered by the
following paragraphs. On one of his journeys he was
arrested, when on an eminence, by the smoke of a vast
conflagration. This was nothing less than Shanghai in
flames, and whether the foreign settlement was involved
with the Chinese city, he did not know. It was a terrible
journey home. Poor defenceless men were constantly
appealing to him for protection, and thes.e he frequently
saw beheaded before his eyes. But happily the Shanghai
foreign settlements had been spared, for the Imperialists
had been too busy in slaughtering their own countrymen.
"Shanghai", he wrote, referring to the Chinese city, "is
now in peace, but it is like the peace of death. Two thousand
people at the very least have perished, and the tortures
some of the victims have undergone cannot have been exceeded
by the worst barbarities of the Inquisition. The city
is little more than a mass of ruins."
On another occasion, in the spring of 1855, he and
Mr. Burdon set out to visit a group of islands situated
in the great mouth of the Yangtse River, of which
Tsungming and Haimen were the largest and most im-