HUDSON TAYLOR’S SPIRITUAL SECRET

Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor 

Authors of Hudson Taylor, in two vols.: The Growth of a Soul; The Growth of the Work of God

To our father’s dear and honored friend: DR. HENRY W. FROST for forty-two years Director in North America of the China Inland Mission: with the love of two generations

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FOREWORD

This record has been prepared especially for readers unfamiliar with the details of Mr. Hudson Taylor’s life. Those who have read the larger biography by the present writers, or Mr. Marshall Broomhall’s more recent presentation, will find little that is new in these pages. But there are many, in the western world especially, who have hardly heard of Hudson Taylor, who have little time for reading and might turn away from a book in two volumes, yet who need and long for just the inward joy and power that Hudson Taylor found.

The desire of the writers is to make available to busy people the experiences of their beloved father — thankful for the blessing brought to their own lives by what he was, and what he found in God, no less than by his fruitful labors.—Howard and Geraldine Taylor Philadelphia, May 21, 1932

Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. … What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer. …

The training of the Twelve was the great, difficult and enduring work of Christ. … It is not great talents or great learning or great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God — men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mold a generation for God. —E. M. Bounds

The founder of the China Inland Mission was a physician, J. Hudson Taylor, a man full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, of entire surrender to God and His call, of great self-denial, heartfelt compassion, rare power in prayer, marvelous organizing faculty, energetic initiative, indefatigable perseverance, and of astonishing influence with men, and withal of childlike humility.—Professor Warneck

Surely never was man better fitted for his work than he for the difficult undertaking of founding and conducting a great interdenominational and international mission in million-peopled China. The China Inland Mission was conceived in his soul, and every stage of its advance sprang from his personal exertions. In the quiet of his heart, in deep unutterable communings with God, the Mission had its origin, and it remains his memorial. —H. Grattan Guinness, D.D.

 

CONTENTS 

01 An Open Secret

 

02 Soul-Growth in Early Years

 

03 First Steps of Faith 

 

04 Further Steps of Faith 

 

05 Faith Tried and Strengthened 

 

06 Friendship and Something More 

 

07 God’s Way — “Perfect” 

 

08 Joy of Harvest 

 

09 Hidden Years 

 

10 A Man Shut Up to God 

 

11 A Man Sent from God 

 

12 Spiritual Urgency 

 

13 Days of Darkness 

 

14 The Exchanged Life 

 

15 No More Thirst 

 

16 Overflow 

 

17 Wider Overflow 

 

18 Streams Flowing Still 

 

Appendix and Appeal for Prayer 

 

Chronological Outline