The Reverend James Hudson Taylor | |
|---|---|
 Taylor in 1893 with a handwritten note and signature | |
| Personal life | |
| Born | (1832-05-21)21 May 1832 Barnsley, Yorkshire, United Kingdom |
| Died | 3 June 1905(1905-06-03) (aged 73) Changsha, Hunan, China |
| Spouse | Maria Jane Taylor (née Dyer); Jennie Taylor (née Faulding) |
| Parent(s) | James Taylor Amelia Hudson |
| Alma mater | London Hospital Medical College |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Christianity |
| Church | Protestant |
James Hudson Taylor (Chinese:戴德生;pinyin:dài dé shēng; 21 May 1832 – 3 June 1905) is regarded as one of the most "important and influential missionaries of all time."[1] He was a BritishProtestantChristianmissionary to China and founder of theChina Inland Mission (CIM, nowOMF International). Taylor visited or lived in China over a period of 51 years. The CIM that he founded in 1865 became the largest of many missionary organizations in China. By 1910, it had more than 800 missionaries to the country, created 125 schools,[2] and converted more than 20,000 Chinese toChristianity, as well as establishing more than 300 stations of work with more than 499 local helpers based in all 18 provinces.[3]
Taylor was known for respectingChinese culture and zeal forevangelism. He adopted wearing native Chinese clothing even though this was very rare among missionaries of that time. Under his leadership, the CIM was singularly non-denominational in practice and accepted members from all Protestant groups, including individuals from the working class, and single women as well as multinational recruits. HistorianRuth Tucker summarizes the theme of his life: "No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since theApostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor."[4]
Taylor was able to preach in severalvarieties of Chinese, includingMandarin,Chaozhou, and theWu dialects ofShanghai andNingbo. The last of these he knew well enough to help prepare a colloquial edition of the New Testament written in it.[1]
Taylor was born on 21 May 1832 inBarnsley,Yorkshire, the first child of a chemist (pharmacist) andMethodist lay preacher James Taylor and his wife, Amelia Hudson. Hudson Taylor was a small, sickly child. According to legend, James Taylor instilled in his son a desire toevangelize China. As a young man he doubted the Christian beliefs of his parents, but at age 17, he experienced a religious conversion and a year later felt a call from God to become aChristian missionary in China.[5][6]
In Spring 1851, he began working with a medical doctor inHull. He studiedChinese,Latin,Hebrew, andGreek. In November 1851, he moved into modest dwellings and began denying himself luxuries. He spent his spare time as a medical missionary working with people in the slums. He gave away much of his money to the poor. He fell in love with a Miss Vaughan, a music teacher, but his lifestyle was too austere for her and she denied his affections. He wrote to theLondon Missionary Society offering his services, but received no reply.[7]
In fall 1852 Taylor began studying medicine at theLondon Hospital Medical College inWhitechapel, London, as preparation for working in China. The interest awakened in England about China because of theTaiping Rebellion which was then erroneously supposed to be a mass movement toward Christianity, together with the glowing but exaggerated reports made by German missionaryKarl Gützlaff concerning China's accessibility, led to the founding of theChinese Evangelisation Society (CES). Hudson Taylor offered himself as its first missionary. The Society paid for his medical training. He attempted to rekindle his romance with Miss Vaughan, but her family objected to his plans to go to China and the couple mutually broke off the engagement.[8][9]
Taylor left England on 19 September 1853 as an agent of the Chinese Evangelisation Society without completing his medical studies, and arrived inShanghai on 1 March 1854. In China, he was immediately faced with the civil war raging in the vicinity.[9][10]W.A.P Martin, a veteran missionary, characterized Taylor as "an odd sparrow." He was often destitute as the funds promised him by the CES didn't arrive. He dressed as a Chinese, shaved his head, and grew a pigtail, scandalizing the foreign community in Shanghai. Another veteran missionary,Joseph Edkins, took Taylor under his wing and schooled him in Chinese customs. Another missionary,William Chalmers Burns, accompanied him on tours to the countryside. Among his experiences he was robbed twice, losing his medical equipment and personal items. In 1857, he resigned, along with medical doctor William Parker, from the CES and moved toNingbo as an independent missionary. There, he made his first convert to Christianity.[9][11]
In 1858, Taylor fell in love withMaria Dyer, the orphaned daughter of the ReverendSamuel Dyer of theLondon Missionary Society. Maria was working in Ningbo at a girls' school run byMary Ann Aldersey. Aldersey regarded Taylor as a "poor unconnected Nobody!...without education and without position." Nevertheless, the couple were married on 20 January 1858. Taylor adored Maria who was "almost constantly pregnant." The couple had nine children in the 12 years of their marriage of whom four survived to adulthood.[12][13]
Both Taylors were in poor health and they returned to England in 1860 along with their daughter, Grace, and a young man, Wang Laijun, who would help with the Bible translation work that would continue in England.[12][14][15]
The Taylors remained in England almost six years. Taylor completed his medical training, was ordained as a minister, and translated theNew Testament into theNingbo dialect of Chinese. He wrote a book titled 'China's Spiritual Need and Claims'. Most of all, he traveled around Britain speaking at churches and generating support for missionary work in China.[16]
On 25 June 1865 onBrighton beach, Taylor had a "heavenly vision." He dedicated himself to the founding of a new missionary society to undertake the evangelization of the "unreached" inland provinces of China. He founded the China Inland Mission (CIM) together withWilliam Thomas Berger shortly thereafter. He opened a bank account for the China Inland Mission with 10pounds of his own money.[17][18]
Taylor established the core values of the CIM, quite different from those of the dozen or more missionary organizations then operating in China. The organization would not appeal for funds, but "rely on God alone" for sustenance. The focus would be on the inland provinces of China, unreached at that time by Protestant missionaries. CIM missionaries would dress, eat, and live as Chinese to better fulfill their mission. The missionaries would be non-denominational, selected for their beliefs and dedication, not their affiliations and credentials. People of all social classes and level of education plus single women would be selected as missionaries. Finally, the CIM would be governed from China and headed by a General Director (Taylor), not a board or committee in its homeland, unlike other missionary organizations.[1]
In late 1865, Taylor sent out the first two missionaries of the CIM. On 26 May 1866, he boarded ship at the head of the "Lammermuir Party." Aboard were Hudson and Maria Taylor, their four children, and 16 missionaries, including nine single women. After a four month voyage (and twotyphoons) they arrived in Shanghai on 30 September 1866. They were the largest group of missionaries that had ever arrived in China.[19]
Dissension among the missionaries began while on board the ship -- and continued in China. Taylor stipulated that all the missionaries wear Chinese dress, which included the men shaving their foreheads and wearing a pigtail. The group was called the "Pigtail Tribe" by European residents of Shanghai who found their adoption of Chinese clothing to be ridiculous. Moreover, rumors began to circulate that it was inappropriate for "young unmarried females" to share a home with Taylor. Respected missionaryGeorge Moule advised Taylor to "put a speedy end" to the CIM.[20][21]
Moreover, in 1868 Taylor and his CIM associates were accused of causing a riot in the city ofYangzhou. The Taylors had taken a party of missionaries to Yangzhou but their mission premises were attacked, looted, and burned during theYangzhou riot. The international outrage at the Chinese for the attack on British citizens (and the subsequent arrival of theRoyal Navy) caused the China Inland Mission and Taylor to be criticized for almost starting a war. Taylor never requested military intervention, but British officials asked "what right have we to send missionaries to the interior of China?"[22][23]
Personal problems also dogged Taylor. Two of his children died and he sent one of his missionaries,Emily Blatchley, back to England with his surviving three children. On 23 July 1870, his wife, Maria, died.[24]
Two developments in the late 1860s facilitated the missionary enterprise in China. The opening of theSuez Canal in 1869 and the use of thesteamship rather than sailing ships reduced travel time from England to China from four months or more to less than two months.[25]
Grief from Maria's death, health problems, and the need to reorganize the home office of CIM caused Taylor to leave China in August 1871 to return to England. Accompanying him on the voyage was CIM missionaryJennie Faulding. The two fell in love and were married on 28 November 1871 in London. In late 1872, the couple returned to China. They had four children, two of whom grew to be adults.[26][27]
In June 1874, Taylor injured his spine and was paralyzed for six months. Jennie and he returned to England. From his bed, he conducted CIM business, wrote articles for CIM publications, and recruited new missionaries.[1] In author Austin's view, this was the nadir of the fortunes of the China Inland Mission. Fifty-three missionaries had been sent to China, but only 22 remained. The others had died or resigned. Of the 22, "only four or five men and three or four women were much good."[28]
In his state of crippling physical hindrance, Taylor confidently published an appeal for 18 new workers to join the work. When he did recover his strength, Jennie remained in England with the children and in 1876 Taylor returned to China, followed by 18 additional missionaries. Meanwhile, in England, the task of General Secretary of the China Inland Mission in England was undertaken byBenjamin Broomhall, who had married Hudson's sister, Amelia.[29]
Taylor's initial plan was to open up a mission station in an inland city remote from the temptations and foreign influence in Shanghai and Ningbo. He would then use that mission as a base to send workers on foot in the surrounding area to evangelize, distribute religious tracts, and seek converts and native leaders. His first effort to carry out that plan failed in Hangzhou. Instead, he began sending out missionaries to itinerate in villages and towns untouched by other missionary societies and foreign influence. The theory was that when the locals became accustomed to CIM missionaries, opportunities to convert people to Christianity would open up; Chinese converts would carry the message to new areas; and permanent missions could be established. All this was to be done in secrecy without informing British diplomats and officials in port cities and risking interference, as had happened in Hangzhou.[30]
The response CIM missionaries got in their itinerations was "coldness, indifference, carelessness" The Chinese people were "proud, crude, callous, and annoying to the last degree...The Christian message fell on stony ground."[31]
TheChefoo Convention forced on China by Britain in 1876 made it legal for missionaries and other foreigners to travel to inland China. The CIM was quick to take advantage of the convention. The travels ofJames Cameron illustrate the itinerations undertaken by CIM missionaries, Between 1876 and 1882, Cameron traveled thousands of miles to nearly every province of China. Usually accompanied by Chinese Christians and sometimes other missionaries, he preached in villages and towns and sold bibles and tracts. On one eight-month journey he sold 20,000 bibles and preached to tens of thousands of people. He traveled with a mule, a bedroll, and a "minimum of necessities."[32]
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Hudson's evangelical work in England profoundly affected various members of the famouscricketingStudd family, resulting in three of the brothers converting and becoming deeply religious;Charles Studd became a missionary to China along with fellowCambridge University converts, known as theCambridge Seven.
From 1876 to 1878 Taylor travelled throughout inland China, opening missions stations. In 1878, Jennie returned to China and began working to promote female missionary service there. Their son Ernest Hamilton Taylor, who had been educated atMonkton Combe School and the Glasgow Institute of Accountants, joined them at the China Inland Mission in 1898 where he remained as a missionary for much of his working life. By 1881 there were 100 missionaries in the CIM.
Taylor returned to England in 1883 to recruit more missionaries, and he returned to China with a total of 225 missionaries and 59 churches. In 1887 their numbers increased by another 102 withThe Hundred missionaries, and in 1888 Taylor brought 14 missionaries from the United States. In the U.S. he traveled and spoke at many places, including theNiagara Bible Conference where he befriendedCyrus Scofield, and Taylor filled the pulpit ofDwight L. Moody as a guest in Chicago. Moody and Scofield thereafter actively supported the work of the China Inland Mission of North America.
In 1897 Hudson's and Maria's only surviving daughter, Maria, died inWenzhou, leaving four little children and her missionary husband,John Joseph Coulthard. She had been instrumental in leading many Chinese women to Christianity during her short life.
News of theBoxer Rebellion and the resulting disruption of missionary work in 1900 distressed Taylor, even though it led to further interest in missions in the area and additional growth of his China Inland Mission. Though the CIM suffered more than any other mission in China (58 missionaries and 21 children were killed), Taylor refused to accept payment for loss of property or life, to show the 'meekness and gentleness of Christ'. He was criticized by some but was commended by theBritish Foreign Office, whose minister in Beijing donated £200 to the CIM, expressing his 'admiration' and sympathy. The Chinese were also touched by Taylor's attitude.[33]
Because of health issues, Taylor remained in Switzerland and semi-retired with his wife. In 1900Dixon Edward Hoste was appointed the Acting General Director of the CIM, and in 1902 Taylor formally resigned. Jennie died of cancer in 1904 inLes Chevalleyres, Switzerland, and in 1905 Taylor returned to China for the eleventh and final time. There he visited Yangzhou andZhenjiang and other cities before he died in 1905 while reading at home inChangsha. He was buried next to his first wife, Maria, in Zhenjiang, in the small English Cemetery near theYangtze River.
The small cemetery was built over with industrial buildings in the 1960s, and the grave markers were destroyed. However, the marker for Hudson Taylor was stored away in a local museum for years. His great-grandson,James Hudson Taylor III, found the marker and was able to help a local Chinese church erect it within their building in 1999.[34]
His tombstone reads:
Sacred to the memory of the Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, the revered founder of the China Inland Mission. Born 21 May 1832, Died 3 June 1905 "A MAN IN CHRIST" 2 Cor. XII:2 This monument is erected by the missionaries of the China Inland Mission, as a mark of their heartfelt esteem and love.
In 2013 the land for the cemetery was redeveloped, and the demolition of the old industrial buildings revealed that the Taylors' tombs were still intact. On 28 August the graves were excavated with the surrounding soil and moved to a local church where they were to be reinterred in a memorial garden.
The beginning of "faith missions" (the sending of missionaries with no promises of temporal support, but instead a reliance "through prayer to move men by God") has had a wide impact amongevangelical churches to this day. After his death, China Inland Mission gained the notable distinction of being the largest Protestant mission agency in the world. The biographies of Hudson Taylor inspired generations of Christians to follow his example of service and sacrifice. Notable examples are: missionary to IndiaAmy Carmichael, Olympic Gold MedalistEric Liddell, twentieth-century missionary and martyrJim Elliot, founder ofBible Study Fellowship Audrey Wetherell Johnson,[35] as well as international evangelistsBilly Graham andLuis Palau.
Descendants of James Hudson Taylor continued his full-time ministry into the 21st century in Chinese communities in East Asia.James Hudson Taylor III (1929–2009)[36] in Hong Kong, and his son,James Hudson Taylor IV 戴繼宗, who married Yeh Min Ke (the first Taiwanese member of the Taylor family), who is involved in full-time ministries in Taiwan. James H. Taylor V continued the family legacy by singing with a middle school choir.[37]
Hudson Taylor was, ...one of the greatest missionaries of all time, and... one of the four or five most influential foreigners who came to China in the nineteenth century for any purpose... —Kenneth Scott Latourette
More than any other human being, James Hudson Taylor, …made the greatest contribution to the cause of world mission in the 19th century. —Ralph D. Winter
He was ambitious without being proud... He was biblical without being bigoted... He was a follower of Jesus, without being superficial... He was charismatic without being selfish." —Arthur F. Glasser
Chinese tourists have started visiting his hometown ofBarnsley to see where their hero grew up, and the town developed a trail to guide visitors to landmarks around the town.[38]
Taylor was raised in theMethodist tradition. In the course of his life he became close to the "Open Brethren" such asGeorge Müller, and was a member of the Westbourne Grove Church pastored byWilliam Garrett Lewis.[39]
Born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, on 21 May 1832, into a pious Methodist home, the religious fervour of his parents and their prayerful interest in China implanted in their first born the seed of foreign missions. Feeble health in childhood instilled in Taylor a sense that his life was not his own; and thus, from an early age, he professed ‘a genuine desire for holiness’.[40]
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Ernest (died 1948) and Amy (died 1953) are buried in the same grave plot at the Kent & Sussex Cemetery,Royal Tunbridge Wells
Manuscripts and letters relating to James Hudson Taylor are held as part of the China Inland Mission collection by the Archives of theSchool of Oriental and African Studies in London.[45]
Taylor House inYMCA of Hong Kong Christian College, which was founded byYMCA of Hong Kong, was named in commemoration of Taylor.[46]
broomhall martyred.page needed
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| Religious titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| New title | Director of theChina Inland Mission 1865–1900 | Succeeded by |
