Hudson Taylor Founds China Inland Mission

The wind off the Channel carried a sharp edge that morning even though the sun had already burned the mist away. I had come down from London on the early train with no clear purpose beyond the need to breathe salt air and escape the close rooms where letters about China piled higher each week. The promenade at Brighton was nearly empty. A few carriages rattled past but most people kept to the shops or the hotels.

Hudson Taylor walked alone ahead of me along the wet sand. His coat hung loose at the shoulders and his step was uneven from the old illness that had driven him home. He carried no papers that I could see yet his right hand kept opening and closing as though it held something invisible and heavy.

I slowed my pace without meaning to. Twice he stopped and stared at the water. The third time he dropped to one knee without warning. The movement was so sudden that a gull lifted from the shingle nearby. I stood twenty yards off and watched the line of his back against the gray-green waves. He remained there long enough for the tide to reach the edge of his boot.

When he rose he did not brush the sand from his knee. He turned toward the higher beach where the pebbles gave way to grass and walked straight to a wooden bench half hidden by a low wall. From his pocket he drew a small notebook and a pencil. The pencil moved in short hard strokes. I could not see the page but I saw the number he wrote large enough to fill the margin. Seventy. He stared at it for a moment then closed the book and pressed it against his chest as though the figure might escape.

That same afternoon he called together the handful of men and women who had already offered themselves for the inland provinces. They met in a plain sitting room above a chemist’s shop on the western side of town. No platform had been arranged. Taylor stood with his back to the window so the light fell across the faces of the others. He spoke of the eleven provinces still without a single witness and of the two workers needed for each. The arithmetic was plain. Twenty-four would only begin the work. The full need stood at seventy.

A woman near the door asked how the passage money and the yearly support would be found. Taylor answered that no appeal would be printed and no collection taken. The answer seemed to satisfy no one and yet no one left the room. One man wrote his name on a sheet of paper that passed from hand to hand. Others followed. The list remained short but it was begun.

In the weeks that followed the same notebook appeared at every meeting. Taylor would open it to the page with the penciled seventy and set it on the table without comment. Letters arrived from strangers who had read his account of China’s need. Some enclosed bank drafts. Others simply promised to pray. The sums were never large and never announced in advance.

By the time the first party booked passage the number had not reached twenty. Taylor refused to delay. He said the remainder would be supplied once the workers were on the field. The ship chosen was the Lammermuir, an old tea clipper refitted for passengers. Her decks were crowded with crates of medicines, boxes of Chinese Bibles, and the household goods of families who had sold nearly everything they owned.

I stood on the quay at Gravesend on the morning she cast off. Taylor’s wife held their youngest child at the rail. The older children waved with both hands. The wind caught the canvas almost at once and the ship heeled slightly as she gathered way. No band played. The only sound was the slap of water against the hull and the shouted orders of the crew.