HUDSON TAYLOR The man who believed God by Marshall Broomhall

80 THE MAN WHO BELIEVED GOD
"He spoke as if Jesus Christ was at his elbow!" And he
believed He was.
Improbable as it appeared in a land where one man's
misfortune is considered another man's opportunity, he
was enabled, though without money, to secure a passage
to Shanghai, a friendly Chinese standing security should
he fail to recoup the boatman at his destination. He
trusted and proved God in this time of dire need, and
the first mail to reach him in Shanghai after his return
brought him a gift of £40 from Mr. and Mrs. Berger, as
a token of their love! Posted in England long before the
robbery, in fact, before he had left Swatow, it came as
a heart-moving reminder that God had foreseen and had
provided.
And, though he did not learn the fact till long afterward,
his letters home, telling his people that he did not
purpose prosecuting his servant, but rather to seek to
overcome his evil by good, fell into the hands of George
Muller, and secured him as a lifelong friend of the
Mission that was yet to be.
But the keenest and most searching discipline of all
was still before him, and was connected with his affection
for the woman of his choice. In Ningpo, where, after a
brief period in Shanghai, he had found his sphere of
labour, lived Maria Dyer, who awakened in his heart all
that love of which his ardent nature was capable. In
every way she answered to his ideal of a chosen helpmeet,
and yet, when he revealed his hopes, he received
a cold and blank refusal.
His fervent love, together with a deep conviction that
God was in it, still urged him to hope on. He did not
know, and could not know, that her negative had been
dictated by another to whom, for the time being, she
was subject.