1905
Death of missionary Hudson Taylor
China in the mid-nineteenth century was in a dreadful state. The decadent Qing (or Manchu) dynasty was unable to deal with challenges posed by natural disasters and the intrusion of the outside world after years of relative isolation. The British East India Company had encouraged a massive drug problem in order to alleviate its balance of payment problems and the Chinese governments’ attempts to counter this were met by the Opium Wars. China was forced to open its doors at the point of a gun and in poured foreign merchants, ideas and missionaries. One of those missionaries gave a pamphlet entitled “Good Words to Admonish the Age” to a young Chinese man named Hong Xiuquan, a failed candidate for the civil service exams. After reading Christian tracts and undergoing visions, Hong proclaimed himself the younger brother of Jesus and began a rebellion that would lead to the death of 20,000,000 of his fellow countrymen. Into this chaos stepped Hudson Taylor (1832-1905).
Taylor was the son of an English Methodist lay preacher who desired that his son become a missionary to Asia. To prepare himself for this task Taylor studied medicine and Mandarin. In 1853 he set sail for Shanghai under the auspices of the China Evangelization Society but he soon abandoned that unreliable organization and conducted himself according to his own principles. Unlike other western missionaries Taylor dressed in the Chinese style, shaved his forehead and wore his hair in a pig tail. He shunned the company of Europeans and headed inland distributing tracts and Bibles. He was often robbed and caught up in riots; mission stations were overrun by combatants; his supplies were destroyed in a fire; and he encountered the vicissitudes of a land undergoing civil war. His wife and 4 young children died in China. During the Boxer Rebellion many of his colleagues and their families were murdered in the anti-foreigner uprising. Despite these challenges Taylor continued his work and built the China Inland Mission into the country’s biggest evangelistic endeavour. He died in 1905 and was buried in China. Today there are tens of millions of Chinese Christians and Taylor’s work continues to be carried on by the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (International).