Endorsing the Right Leader – Part 15: Readings – 5
From that moment life was unified in one great purpose and prayer. For Hudson Taylor was “not disobedient to the heavenly vision,” and to him obedience to the will of God was a very practical matter. At once he began to prepare, as well as he could, for a life that would call for physical endurance. He took more exercise in the open air, exchanged his feather bed for a hard mattress and was watchful not to be self-indulgent at table. Instead of going to church twice on Sunday, he gave up the evening to visiting in the poorest parts of the town, distributing tracts and holding cottage-meetings. In crowded lodging-house kitchens he became a welcome figure, and even on the race course his bright face and kindly words opened the way for many a straight message. All this led to more Bible study and prayer, for he soon found that there is One and One alone who can make us “fishers of men.”
The study of Chinese, also, was entered upon with ardour. A grammar of that formidable language would have cost more than twenty dollars and a dictionary at least seventy-five. He could afford neither. But with a copy of the Gospel of Luke in Chinese, by patiently comparing brief verses with their equivalent in English, he found out the meaning of more than six hundred characters. These he learned and made into a dictionary of his own, carrying on at the same time other lines of study.
“I have begun to get up at five in the morning [he wrote to his sister at school] and find it necessary to go to bed early. I must study if I mean to go to China. I am fully decided to go, and am making every preparation I can. I intend to rub up my Latin, to learn Greek and the rudiments of Hebrew, and get as much general information as possible. I need your prayers.”
Several years with his father as a dispensing chemist had increased his desire to study medicine, and when an opportunity occurred of becoming assistant to a leading physician in Hull he was not slow to avail himself of it. This meant leaving the home circle, but first in the doctor’s residence and later in the home of an aunt, his mother’s sister, the young assistant was still surrounded with refinement and comfort.
This proved, indeed, one of the elements in the new life which led him to serious thinking. Dr. Hardey paid a salary sufficient to cover personal expenses, but Hudson Taylor was giving, as a matter of duty and privilege, a tenth of all that came to him to the work of God. He was devoting time on Sunday to evangelism in a part of the town where there was urgent need for temporal as well as spiritual help. And this raised the question, why should he not spend less for himself and have the ioy of giving more to others?
On the outskirts of the town, beyond some vacant lots, a double row of cottages bordered a narrow canal which gave the name of “Drainside” to the none-too-attractive neighborhood. The canal was just a deep ditch into which Drainside people were in the habit of throwing rubbish to be carried away, in part, whenever the tide rose high enough—for Hull is a seaport town. The cottages, like peas in a pod, followed the windings of the Drain for half a mile or so, each having one door and two windows. It was for a rented room in one of these little places that Hudson Taylor left his aunt’s pleasant home on Charlotte Street. Mrs. Finch, his landlady, was a true Christian and delighted to have “the young doctor” under her roof. She did her best, no doubt, to make the chamber clean and comfortable, polishing the fireplace opposite the window and making up the bed in the corner farthest from the. door. A plain deal table and a chair or two completed the appointments. The room was only twelve feet square and did not need much furniture. It was on a level with the ground and opened familiarly out of the kitchen. From the window one looked across to “The Founder’s Arms,” a countrified public-house whose lights were useful on dark nights shining across the mud and water of the Drain.
Whatever it may have been in summer, toward the close of November when Hudson Taylor made it his home Drainside must have seemed dreary enough. To add to the changed conditions he was boarding himself, which meant that he bought his meager supplies as he returned from the surgery and rarely sat down to a proper meal. His walks were solitary, his evenings spent alone, and Sundays brought long hours of work in his district or among the crowds who frequented the Humber Dock.
“Having now the twofold object in view [he recalled] of accustoming myself to endure hardness, and of economizing in order to help those among whom I was labouring in the Gospel, I soon found that I could live upon very much less than I had previously thought possible. Butter, milk, and other luxuries I ceased to use, and found that by living mainly on oatmeal and rice, with occasional variations, a very small sum was sufficient for my needs. In this way I had more than two-thirds of my income available for other purposes, and my experience was that the less I spent on myself and the more I gave to others, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become.”
For God is no man’s debtor, and here in his solitude Hudson Taylor was learning something of what He can be to the one who follows hard after Him.
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Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, China Inland Mission, pages 17-19.
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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?
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