A Spiritual Secret

A Spiritual Secret

He discovered what he was looking for.

THE MOST widely circulated book about Hudson Taylor, pioneer missionary to inland China, is Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret.

Hudson Taylor was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1832, the son of a pharmacist and lay Methodist preacher. Experiencing a dramatic conversion to Jesus Christ at the age of seventeen, Hudson soon became interested in becoming a missionary to the then almost closed country of China. He first went to China in 1854 with the China Evangelization Society, a short-lived mission group. While there he married another missionary, Maria Dyer, although many fellow missionaries discouraged her from marrying him.

Forced to return to England because of his health, he could find no mission society to back him when China was opened to Westerners. As a result, in 1865 he founded the interdenominational China Inland Mission, now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. The following year he sailed for China with his first brigade of missionaries.

Supervising multiple mission stations throughout the expanse of China became a daunting and often frustrating task. In 1869 Taylor sank into deep depression, even contemplating suicide. His inner conflict increased as the summer months passed. He prayed, made resolutions, fasted, read his Bible—to no apparent avail. He prayed for faith, for holiness, for peace, but only felt more conflicted.

In August Hudson Taylor visited the mission station in Hangchow, where a volatile Irishman, John McCarthy, was in charge. Taylor shared his personal spiritual frustrations, and McCarthy told of his own continual feelings of failure and unrest. He, too, desperately desired the satisfaction of an ongoing fellowship with God.

Taylor left Hangchow and visited other mission stations on his way back to his own mission compound, all the while wrestling with his own spiritual despair. He arrived home in Chinkiang on September 4, 1869. After being greeted by his wife and children, he immediately hurried to his room to get caught up with his correspondence.

One of the letters he opened and read was from John McCarthy and had been written a day or two after Taylor’s visit. McCarthy wrote, “I seem as if the first glimmers of the dawn of a glorious day has risen upon me. . . . I seem to have supped only that which can fully satisfy.”

As he read on, Hudson Taylor became convinced that McCarthy had discovered the secret for which they had been searching. “To let my loving Saviour work in me His will . . . abiding, not striving or struggling; looking off unto Him; trusting Him for present power . . . resting in the love of an almighty Saviour in the joy of a complete salvation.” Taylor read the final paragraph: “Not striving to have faith, or to increase my faith but a looking at the faithful one seems all we need. A resting in the Loved One entirely, for time, for eternity. It does not appear to me as anything new, only formerly misunderstood.”

Hudson Taylor’s long spiritual struggle was resolved in an instant! He later wrote, “As I read, I saw it all. I looked to Jesus, and when I saw—oh how joy flowed.”

A colleague reported:

He was a joyous man now, a bright, happy Christian. He had been a toiling, burdened one before, with latterly not much rest of soul. It was resting in Jesus now, and letting him do the work—which makes all the difference. Whenever he spoke at meetings after that, a new power seemed to flow from him, and in the practiced things of life, a new peace possessed him. Troubles did not worry him as before. He cast everything on God in a new way and gave more time to prayer.

Hudson Taylor had found his spiritual secret. It was the exchanged life—no longer I but Christ living in me.

Reflection

All of us can identify with Hudson Taylor’s frustration at trying to live the Christian life by our own efforts. What is most helpful to you in the “secret” that Taylor discovered? What can you do to apply this truth to your life?

I have been crucified with Christ. I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:19-20