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I felt that if I wanted to go to China, I had to train myself to trust in a faithful God. In March 1852, at the age of nineteen, Hudson Taylor, an impatient man full of ideals, wrote to his sister: “I think I am about to leave this country, and I do not know what God’s next direction is, but I feel that change is coming and that there are signs that I am ready to go on my way.” Pray for me that my faith will not be lost.” For Hudson Taylor, joining the mission in the foreseeable future would be difficult because all missions require mission staff to be ordained and have superior training.

So he planned to earn enough money to travel and set out for China, where he would look to God for provision. But the thought of having to work to save money made him impatient and unacceptable, so he continued to share another thought with his sister in the letter: “If I stay here for two more years and save fifty to sixty pounds before going to China, it will make no difference between finding the money while I go.” Within two years, at least 2.4 million people had died in the land…… In six to eight months, I should be able to speak a little Chinese.

If I could preach the truth of the gospel to a perishing sinner – then I would have to endure a four- to six-month journey. Hudson wanted to get a job as a doctor’s assistant on a ship, and if not that was possible, a sailor. Although he was willing to endure the hardships and sufferings that came with doing so, the prayers and counsel of his family, friends, and friends made him consider absorbing more knowledge before setting sail to the other side of the earth. Dr. Hedy was willing to take Hudson Dudson as an apprentice, but he wanted him to study for the next three years.

Hudson Taylor wanted to be a doctor, but he felt that he had to leave as soon as the opportunity came, so he had to decline the doctor’s good intentions. Soon, a few months after Hudson Taylor’s twentieth birthday, he decided to go to London to continue his medical studies. He was sure that he would not need to wait there long before he could make the trip. Hudson Taylor was determined to practice and strengthen his faith in ministry, so it was no longer important to raise more money for travel, to receive more knowledge, and even to train for a more mature life.

“I think that if you want to go to China, you have to train yourself to trust in a faithful God, and there is a golden opportunity ahead. “My dear father has offered to bear all my expenses in London, but his business has recently been losing money, and it will take great sacrifices to help me get there. I have recently begun to get acquainted with the members of the China Missionary Society, who have no idea of my father’s intentions and who are willing to take care of all my expenses in London. Overwhelmed when I received these two suggestions, I wrote to my father and the secretary of the committee, telling them that I needed a few days to pray and consider, and to share their suggestions with both parties.

Finally, after prayer, and under the guidance of the Lord, it became clear to me that I should not accept either kindness. The mission secretary did not know that I had decided to rely entirely on God’s provision, and my father would have thought that I had accepted help. I wrote to dismiss the kindness of both. I know that no one will worry about my needs anymore, that I am alone in God’s hands, and He knows my heart. If God were to encourage me to go to China, He would have given me the ability to rely fully on Him in England first.

Hudson received support from the Mission Society for his tuition at a London hospital, and he lived with his uncle in SoHo until he found a permanent home. In addition to these two aspects, this young man from a small town will have to pay for all the expenses of living in bustling London. Before leaving Hor, he wrote to his mother: “I can testify that the following golden verse is true: ‘You will keep him very safe with his steadfast heart because he trusts in him.'”

My mind was as calm as a thousand pounds in my pocket. May God keep me steadfast in my hope in His provision in all things temporal and spiritual. He wrote to his sister Ho Mei to inform her that he needed a job that would help him pay for his living expenses and give him time to study. “There wasn’t a good job in London, but I wasn’t in a hurry because he was ‘God yesterday, today, and ever.’ His mercy will not be broken, his words will never change, his power will remain, and everyone who trusts in him will be ‘very peaceful’: I realized that he strengthened my faith by love. May he be glorious, and I will be satisfied. Hudson Taylor felt that if his confidence did regress one day, he would rather be in England than in China.

So he continued to exercise his faith. He lived a simple life and relied solely on God’s provision. He once mentioned in a letter: “In order to save money, my cousin and I shared a room. We live about four miles from the hospital, and we are responsible for our own meals. After much research, I found that the most economical way to live is to satisfy my hunger with coarse wheat bread and water. In this way, I can use God’s provision for me as long as I can. Some expenses are unavoidable, but the cost of meals is completely in my control.

Walking home from the hospital every day, buying a twopence barley bread on the way would satisfy my two meals in the morning and evening, and two or three apples at noon, which was enough to provide me with the strength to walk eight or nine miles a day and frequent exchanges during my internship at the hospital. In the months that followed, Hudson Taylor’s endurance was put to the test. Although he was studying, he prayed constantly for God to open the door to China.

During this time, he contracted a malignant fever from the autopsy of a corpse and almost died. But what happened on the other side of the world not only wanted to rewrite Chinese history, but also made Hudson Taylor’s long-held dream a reality. In China, the Taiping revolt seemed to be in doubt, with their capital at Nanjing, while the Christian army occupied most of the provinces in the Central Plains and the north, and Beijing seemed to be about to fall into the hands of the rebels.

Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was so envious of the Christian faith that he wrote to an American missionary to the effect that “Send teachers, and let many teachers spread the truth.” When my career is successfully completed, I will spread the doctrine of God throughout the country so that all people can come unto the Lord and worship the one true God. This is what my heart desires. At this time, China, which has always been closed to self-control, seems to be about to open its doors to the messenger of Christ.

Churches across Europe and North America were thrilled with the opportunity, believing that this opportunity was too precious to be missed. To this end, a steady stream of donations rolled into the warehouses of various mission agencies to support various projects related to China. For example, the British Bible Society has an unprecedented intention of printing a million copies of the Chinese New Testament.

The missionary society, which had paid for Hudson Taylor’s tuition, decided to send two missionaries to Shanghai in the shortest possible time, one of whom was a surgeon of Scottish descent because he could not leave immediately, and the missionary thought that Hudson Taylor was a bachelor at the age of twenty-one, and that it would most likely be that he would be able to go immediately, even if it meant sacrificing the course of medicine and surgery he was studying. Hudson Taylor, though impatient and anxious to get on the road, was an easy decision to accept a missionary assignment.

He had worked with the China Missionary Society in the past, and he knew that as a missionary of the Society, he had to report to the mission and ask for instructions. Their intention was to send him to Shanghai, and what if God opened the way for him to go deep into Chinese mainland? He began to feel that God was calling him to go to Chinese mainland, places where Western missionaries had never set foot.

Now that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom seems to be gaining power, a great opportunity may be at this time. He began to look back on his original plan to go to China on his own, which was perhaps the most important one, and he had no other reliance but God. He consulted his family and friends on the matter and asked them to intercede for him. But after meeting one of the missionary secretaries, he wrote to his mother: “Mr. Bi solved most of my problems, and I decided to follow his advice and immediately recommend myself to the committee. I am still expecting you to pray for me and wait for your answer. If I accept the assignment and set out on my journey, do you suggest that I go home first? I look forward to seeing you again, and I am sure you will feel the same way. But it’s good that we don’t see each other because it’s the saddest thing to see each other and then be separated forever.

Oh, it won’t be forever!” “I can’t write anymore, I hope you will hear back to me soon.” Please pray for me more. It is easy to leave everything to the Lord, but when the test comes, we will be able to survive only when we are ‘perfected and perfected in Him.’ May God bless you and be with you, my dear Mother, and may God let you appreciate the preciousness of the Lord Jesus so that you may have nothing to ask for but to ‘know Him.'” His letter to his sister reads: “Pray for me, dear Homei, that God who has promised to give us all that we need may be with me in this long waiting day on the edge of pain.” Hudson Taylor finally decided: that he was leaving for China. He bought the ticket for the fastest departure.

At the Ocean Ship Dock in Liverpool, the brig “Dun Fatu” is moored for China. The small 470-ton boat had a passenger, so there was no crowd on the pier. Mr. Pearse, the representative of the mission, and Hudson Taylor’s father came to Liverpool to see him off, but the ship was delayed due to repairs, so they left without a long stay, leaving Hudson Taylor’s mother alone to watch him depart. Hudson Taylor later made the following notes about that exciting and sad experience: “On September 19, 1853, in the aft cabin of the ‘Dunfei VII,’ the members of the China Missionary Society held a simple mission meeting, especially for me.

“My beloved mother (now home) came to Liverpool to say goodbye to me. I will never forget that day, or how she followed me into the little cabin that would be my home for the next six months. My mother made my bed with her loving hand, then sat beside me and sang the last hymn before we parted. When we knelt down, my mother began to pray, and that was the last time I heard her prayer for her child before I left for China. Then the notice came down, the ship was about to set sail, and we broke up. We don’t dare to hope to see each other again in the world. To make me feel better, she tried to suppress her emotions as much as possible.

We broke up and she walked ashore and turned back to give me her blessing. I stood alone on the deck while she followed the ship forward in the direction of the locks. The ship passed through the locks, and at this moment we were separating. My mother’s heartfelt cry pierced me like a knife, and I will never forget it. It was then that I realized what it means to say that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And I believe that my beloved mother will know more about God’s love now than she has ever comprehended!

“Parting is undoubtedly sad and painful, but the hardships of Hudson Taylor’s journey around the earth have only now begun. Before the ship reached the high seas, its voyage was in danger of being interrupted. For twelve days and nights, the Darmsfors was struck by storms in St. George’s Strait, sometimes toward Ireland and sometimes toward the treacherous shores of Wales. Hudson Taylor wrote of his journey: “All day on Saturday (September 24), the barometer was constantly falling. As night fell, the wind picked up again. On Sunday morning, the captain did not summon the sailors to listen to him read the prayer at the stern of the ship, as he had done all night.

In the afternoon, the wind blew harder, and all sails were taken in except for a few sails left for balancing. I handed out the leaflets to the crew and then went back to the cabin, and the boat was so jolting that I was dizzy.” The barometer is still falling, and the strong winds are intensifying and gradually turning into hurricanes. Both the captain and the first mate said they had never seen such a monstrous wave. At about two or three o’clock in the afternoon, I barely made it up to the deck. We saw the waves churning, the sea foaming at the foam, a large ship clinging to our stern, and another brig on our windy side. The big ship caught up, but drifted farther away from us. The waves crashed against the hull of the ship, threatening to swallow us at any moment, and the boat stubbornly withstood the wind and waves. Because the wind was strong and fierce, our ship did not move forward but followed the wind blowing from the west toward the shore. “‘Unless God helps us,’ said the captain, ‘we have no hope.'” I asked him how far it was from the coast of Wales. “‘About fifteen or sixteen miles,’ he replied. We have nothing else to do but hoist all the sails.

The more sails open, the less fast we drifted. This is a matter of life and death, pray that God will hold those masts. He spread two sails on each mast. “It was a horrible time. The wind was blowing so hard that our ship was pushed to and fro by the waves, and one moment it rose into the air, and the next it looked like an abyss into the sea. The windward side of the ship is raised high, while the downwind side is tilted very low, and in fact, the sea water is constantly pouring into the cabin from the downwind side. I stared at the sunset and thought, ‘Tomorrow you will rise the same, and as for us, unless God does great things for us, we and this ship may be nothing but splinters’ The night was very cold, the wind was bitter, and we kept going, and the rolling waves beat us through.

I walked back to the cabin, and after reading a hymn or two, a few psalms, and John 13-151, I felt so much better, and fell asleep. After sleeping for an hour, I got up and looked at the barometer and saw that it was rising. We passed by the lighthouse of Baitu Island, which is in the sea between Gardigan and Canawin Bay. I asked the captain if we would touch the reef at Cape Saint-Tatou. He replied, ‘It’s fine if our ship doesn’t change course, but if it drifts again, we’ll have to trust in God’s protection.’ ‘Our boat drifted with the waves—first the lighthouse of Cape Saint Tatu appeared on our bow, then on the side of the ship. Our fate seems to have been decided. I asked the captain if we had only two hours left, and the captain was noncommittal. The barometer is still rising, but it’s so slow that we can’t hope. I think of my beloved parents, my sister and my friends…… Tears began to roll down…… The captain was brave and calm, and he believed that his soul was in the hands of the Lord.

The cooks also say that they are insignificant and that the Lord alone is in charge of all things. I thank God for their faith, and at the same time I plead with God to deliver us because of the sailors who have not yet known Him, and He will do so for Her glory because He is a God who hears prayers. I remembered the words of the Bible: ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you.'” And thou shalt glorify me. ‘I plead with God to fulfill His promise.”” Our situation is truly precarious. That night the moon was shining, the night sky was clear, and the coast was visible. I walked back into the cabin. The barometer continued to rise, but the wind did not abate. I took out my notebook, wrote down my name and address, and thought to myself that if my body was washed up on land, someone would know who I was. I put a few things in a basket that might help me or someone else get in if it floated as I thought. Finally, I put my soul in God’s hands and asked God to remember all my relatives and friends who had visited me.

I pray that if God could, he would keep this bitter cup away from us. After praying, I returned to the deck. Satan attacked me, and I was terrified. But once again, the Lord quieted my heart. From that moment on, I firmly trusted in the Lord, and the Lord gave me peace and stability. I asked the captain if the lifeboat was useful in the midst of the storm? As for making rafts out of timber such as masts, it is too late. The sea is white, and the shore is ahead.’ We must change the direction of the ship,’ said the captain, ‘or it will be all over.’ When the ship turns, the sea water can wash everything on the deck into the sea…… But we still have to try…… ‘This moment will tremble even the most resolute and unyielding heart.’ As soon as the captain gave the order, we turned the ship out, but in vain. Doing so should add distance to our shores.

The captain gave another order to turn the ship in the other direction, and by God’s blessing we succeeded this time, and we were on the reef near the shore, about two hulls away. Just as we were getting out of danger, the wind turned slightly two degrees and we were finally able to successfully sail out of Canawin Bay. If the Lord does not help us in this way, all our efforts will be in vain. His mercy knows no bounds. “Hudson Taylor’s notebook is full of interesting experiences from his journey. His voyage was for the most part, except for occasional moments of excitement, for they had not set foot on land for twenty-three weeks. Hudson Taylor spent most of his time in the cabin reading and equipping himself. He also held sixty religious meetings for sailors, some of whom were very interested in what he had to say, and talked and prayed to him privately. To his disappointment, however, the sailors did not change their lives much, and none of them were willing to fully dedicate themselves to the Lord. The most inspiring and most powerful test of the voyage was the windless days in the South Pacific.

From morning to night, the ship remained still, and from dusk to sunrise, there was a slight evening breeze to help the voyage. Hudson Taylor wrote of those days: “On this sailing ship, there is no wind in the face of the four fields, and the boat drifts with the rapids towards the treacherous shore, how helpless it feels. Amid a storm, the ship can be more or less controlled, but in the absence of wind, people are only empty and anxious. The Lord must exercise great power. When we sailed about north of New Guinea, we experienced a crisis.

That Saturday night we were about thirty miles from land, and on Sunday morning at the deck worship, I noticed the captain looking over the ship from time to time with a worried face. After the worship, I learned from him the reason: the boat was being carried towards a reef by a current that was traveling at four knots. We’re so close that we’re probably going to hit the rocks before dusk. After lunch, the sampan was laid down, and all the men on board tried together to turn the bow of the ship and sail to the shore, but in vain. After standing quietly on the deck for a while, the captain said to me, ‘We have done all we can do, and now we are left to fate,’ and a thought suddenly crossed my mind, and I replied, ‘There is one thing we have not yet done.’ ”What is it?” he asked. Four of us are Christians. Let each of us return to our cabins and pray with one mind that the Lord will give us a fresh breeze at once. It was as easy for him to supply the wind now as it was at dusk. The captain agreed, and I went to the other two. After we prayed together, the four of us went back to the cabin to wait for God.

After a short but deep prayer, I felt that God had answered our prayers, and I knew I couldn’t ask any more, so I quickly returned to the deck. At this time, the commander was the first mate of the ship, who was a non-believer. I went over and asked him to lower the lower corner of the sail, or the corner of the mainsail, which had been opened, so that the sail and the rope would not flapping against each other. ‘What’s the benefit of that?’ he asked me rudely. I told him that we had asked God for the wind, and that the wind was coming soon, and that we were so close to the reef that we could not delay any longer. With a look of contempt, he cursed, saying that he would see the wind and not hear it. As he spoke, I followed his gaze and looked up at the tallest sail on the mast, and it was certain that the sail had begun to flutter in the breeze. ‘Isn’t the wind coming, look at the little sail!’ I shouted. No, it’s just an anchor claw (a fleeting breeze).

He insisted. ‘Anchor claw or not,’ I cried out, ‘I beg you to lower the mainsail quickly, so that we may take advantage of the wind!’ and he did it without delay. After a while, the captain heard the voices of people on the deck and stepped out of the cabin to see what was going on. Within a few minutes, we were breaking the waves at a speed of six or seven knots per hour, and although the wind was rising and stopping, there was still wind on and off before passing the island of Biru. Before I arrived in China, God encouraged me to bring all my needs to Him, trusting Him to be my immediate help in the name of Jesus. He will soon be put to a similar test again.