HUDSON TAYLOR AND THE LIFE OF FAITH (1)

Few people have grappled more earnestly with what it means to “live by faith” in the Lord Jesus than the nineteenth century missionary to China, Hudson Taylor (1832-1905). Fewer still have written so explicitly on the experience of doing so than he did in a letter to his sister Mrs. Amelia Broomhall in 1869. His account of the discovery of the “exchanged life” is still referred to as a guide for those seeking a deeper experience of life in Christ today. Yet at the same time it is regarded by many as a faulty “two-stage” approach to the Christian life. Because it relates so closely to our present theme (experiencing union with Christ) it warrants careful study.

Hudson Taylor’s biographers record that his first fifteen years in China, while incredibly fruitful, were nevertheless years of frequent spiritual anguish. Taylor believed that for all the spiritual reality he enjoyed, something was missing. He longed for a greater measure of holiness and power, both for himself and for the members of the mission he had founded (The China Inland Mission). For years he strove for this, intensifying his efforts to use means of grace, exercise faith, and discipline his body. Yet the more he tried, the more despairing he became.

He wrote of these struggles to his sister Amelia as follows:

My mind has been greatly exercised for six or eight months past, feeling the need personally, and for our mission, of more holiness, life, power in our souls. But personal need was the first and stood greatest. I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living nearer to God. I prayed, agonized, fasted, strove, made resolutions, read the Word more diligently, sought more time for retirement and meditation – but all was without effect. Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me... Instead of getting stronger, I seemed to be getting weaker and to have less power against sin; and no wonder, for faith and even hope were getting very low. I hated myself; I hated my sin; and yet I gained no strength against it.

All of this changed in September 1869 after receiving a letter a team member, a Mr John McCarthy. Like others in the mission, McCarthy shared his leader’s longing for holiness, and also experienced the same deep frustration from what he viewed as fruitless effort. At the height of his distress he found relief through a book Hudson Taylor had left for him to read – a book called Christ is All. In this he read and was helped by the words, “The Lord Jesus received is holiness begun; the Lord Jesus cherished is holiness advancing; the Lord Jesus as counted upon as never absent would be holiness complete.”

It was the idea of the constant presence of Jesus as the antidote to sin that gripped McCarthy. If only the Lord Jesus might be constantly “counted on as never absent” there would be a way past the crippling defeat of sin. In sharing his discovery with Hudson Taylor he wrote,

To let my loving Saviour work in me his will, my sanctification is what I would live for by his grace. Abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off unto him; trusting him for present power; trusting him to subdue all inward corruption; resting in the love of an almighty Saviour, in the joy of a complete salvation, of a salvation ‘from all sin’ (this is His Word); willing that his will should be truly supreme – this is not new, yet ‘tis new to me.

But how was the Lord Jesus to be “counted on” and consequently rested in as the ever present Saviour? Faith was the key. Referring again to the book Christ is All, McCarthy read faith described as “the chain which binds the soul to Christ, and makes the Saviour and the sinner one.”

A channel is now formed by which Christ’s fullness plenteously flows down. The barren branch becomes a portion of the fruitful stem... One life reigns throughout the whole.

Here, then, was his answer. The secret to overcoming sin (and to receiving power for ministry), was to have the life of Christ flowing into and reigning over him through faith. Faith enables us to embrace him as always present and makes it possible for us to look beyond ourselves to him for strength.

One question remained for John McCarthy: How was it possible to get such faith? Was it a matter of striving harder, of using the means of grace more earnestly? That’s what he and others in the mission (including Hudson Taylor) had done for many years. Now, however, as he felt the “first dawning of a glorious day” rising upon him, he came to see his mistake. He wrote to Hudson Taylor,

How then to have our faith increased? Only by thinking of all that Jesus is, and all He is for us: His life, His death, His work, He Himself revealed to us in the Word, to be the subject of our constant thoughts. Not a striving to have faith or to increase our faith, but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need; resting in the Loved One entirely for time and eternity. It does not appear to me as anything new, only formerly misapprehended.

It was to be this insight – the thought of faith as looking to Jesus and all that he is – that was to prove to be so helpful to Hudson Taylor. We shall see how it affected him in our next Insight.