Women's Missions in China, Part 1

The following story is taken from Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. At this point in the book many men serving in the China Inland Mission were entering into engagement and marriage. Hudson Taylor was very cautious in his consent to this because he knew from experience what these young couples would have to face. Mr. Taylor's first wife Maria spent very little time traveling with him. The majority of her time was spent at the mission headquarters caring for their family, before she lost her life to illness. Mr. Taylor's second wife Jane, the focus of this account, would later become a pioneer for women's missions in China.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Six millions of people in North China were facing starvation, in a province in which there were no missionaries save a few Inland Mission pioneers. Children were dying in thousands and young girls being sold into slavery and carried away in troops to cities farther south. Mr. Taylor had come home [to England] burdened with the awful condition and was doing all in his power to forward relief work. Funds were available for the rescue of children, but where was the woman who could go to that stricken province to undertake the work? No white woman had ever been beyond the mountains that separated Shansi from the coast, and to get there meant a two weeks' journey by mule-litter, over dangerous roads, with miserable inns at night.

Yet is was for this undertaking that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor separated when he had been home only a few months. A little worn notebook recalls the experiences through which her faith was strengthened as she waited upon God to know whether or not the call was really from Him. But once she did know, not even the sacrifice involved for Mr. Taylor, whose suggestion it had been, held her back. Two little ones of her own, four older children and an adopted daughter made a young family of seven to leave behind. How were they to be cared for? All her hard questions she brought to God, and He not only answered them, meeting every need as it arose, but gave grace for the parting and all the difficult, dangerous work in China.

After that, it was easier for Mr. Taylor to let other women join the front ranks, when his own wife had led the way. And part of his reward when they were reunited, a year later was to have her with him in China as, in province after province of the interior, women's work quietly opened up."

*Chapter 17, Wider Overflow, pages 214-215