Hudson Taylor Missionary Quotes

When I cannot read, when I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust.

God isn’t looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him.

God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him.

Depend on it. God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply. He is too wise a God to frustrate His purposes for lack of funds, and He can just as easily supply them ahead of time as afterwards, and He much prefers doing so.

HUDSON TAYLOR – THE PROGRESSION OF A MISSIONARY CALL: As child, at age 5: When I am a man, I mean to be a missionary and go to China. As a young man:I feel I cannot go on living unless I do something for China. Late in life, as a veteran missionary: If I had 1,000 lives, I’d give them all for China.

O Lord, how happy should we be If we would cast our care on Thee, If we from self would rest; And feel at heart that One above, In perfect wisdom, perfect love, Is working for the best!

I am more than ever convinced that if we were to take the directions of our Master and the assurances He gave to His first disciples more fully as our guide, we should find them to be just as suited to our times as to those in which they were originally given.

my experience was that the less I spent on myself and the more I gave away, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become. Unspeakable joy all the day long, and every day, was my happy experience.

God, even my God, was a living, bright Reality; and all I had to do was joyful service.

I thought to myself, "When I get out to China, I shall have no claim on any one for anything; my only claim will be on God.

It was to me a very grave matter, however, to contemplate going out to China, far away from all human aid, there to depend upon the living God alone for protection, supplies, and help of every kind.

Mr. J. Hudson Taylor well reminds us that while in nature the normal order of growth is from childhood to manhood and so to maturity, in grace the true development is perpetually backward toward the cradle: we must become and continue as little children, not losing, but rather gaining, childlikeness of spirit. The disciple's maturest manhood is only the perfection of his childhood. George Müller was never so really, truly, fully a little child in all his relations to his Father, as when in the ninety-third year of his age.

I found myself possessed of only a single coin—one half-crown piece. Still I had hitherto had no lack, and I continued in prayer.

I have but one candle of life to burn and would rather burn it out where people are dying in darkness than in a land that is flooded with light. I look upon foreign missionaries as the scaffolding around a rising building. The sooner it can be dispensed with, the better; or rather, the sooner it can be transferred to other places, to serve the same temporary use, the better.

I believe we are all in danger of accumulating—it may be from thoughtlessness, or from pressure of occupation—things which would be useful to others, while not needed by ourselves, and the retention of which entails loss of blessing.

Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission (now called the Overseas Missionary Fellowship) believed that if money could motivate the merchants of England to cross life-threatening oceans and enter the interior of China at great personal risk of loss of life, could not the love of Christ motivate missionaries to do the same for the sake of the gospel?

There was no doubt that if faith did not fail, God would not fail; but, then, what if one's faith should prove insufficient? I had not at that time learned that even "if we believe not, He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself"; and it was consequently a very serious question to my mind, not whether He was faithful, but whether I had strong enough faith to warrant my embarking in the enterprise set before me.

D. A. Carson makes this observation about this section of 1 Corinthians: When in the last century Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission (now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship), started to wear his hair long and braided like Chinese men of the time and to put on their clothes and to eat their food, many of his fellow missionaries derided him. But Hudson Taylor had thought through what was essential to the gospel (and was therefore nonnegotiable) and what was a cultural form that was neither here nor there, and might in fact be an unnecessary barrier to the effective proclamation of the gospel… This is not to say that all cultural elements are morally neutral. Far from it. Every culture has good and bad elements in it… Yet in every culture it is important for the evangelist, church planter, and witnessing Christian to flex as far as possible, so that the gospel will not be made to appear unnecessarily alien at the merely cultural level.3

Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; So shall the King desire thy beauty: For He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him.

may it please our Lord to kindle a new light of the world which may guide unbelievers to conversion, that with us they may meet Christ, to whom be honor and praise world without end.

we should never lose sight of the higher aspect of our work—that of obedience to God, of bringing glory to His Name, of gladdening the heart of our God and Father by living and serving as His beloved children.

I have grown older since then, but not wiser. I am more than ever convinced that if we were to take the directions of our Master and the assurances He gave to His first disciples more fully as our guide, we should find them to be just as suited to our times as to those in which they were originally given.

If the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid, what is there left for me to do?

Ill that God blesses is our good, And unblest good is ill; And all is right that seems most wrong, If it be His sweet will.

Furthermore, in our privileged position of fellow-workers with Him, while fully recognising all the benefits and blessings to be bestowed on a sin-stricken world through the proclamation of the Gospel and spread of the Truth, we should never lose sight of the higher aspect of our work—that of obedience to God, of bringing glory to His Name, of gladdening the heart of our God and Father by living and serving as His beloved children.

And I will go! I may no longer doubt to give up friends, and idol hopes, And every tie that binds my heart. . . . Henceforth, then, it matters not, if storm or sunshine be my earthly lot, bitter or sweet my cup; I only pray, God, make me holy, And my spirit nerve for the stern hour of strife.

J. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, preached these words in 1865 to a large audience in Perth, Scotland, pleading for missionaries to be sent to China. Do you believe that each unit of these millions has an immortal soul, and that there is “none other name under heaven given among men” save the precious name of Jesus “whereby we must be saved”? Do you believe that He and He alone is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that “no man commeth unto the Father” but by Him? If so, think of the condition of these unsaved souls, and examine yourself in the sight of God to see whether you are doing your utmost to make Him known to them or not. It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home. If you cannot in the sight of God say you are sure that you have a special call to stay at home, why are you disobeying the Saviour’s plain command to go? Why are you refusing to come to the help of the Lord against the mighty? . . . Before the next Perth conference twelve millions more, in China, will have passed for ever beyond our reach. What are we doing to bring them the tidings of Redeeming Love? (from Taylor and Taylor 1965, 167)