James Hudson Taylor
English missionary who first went to China in 1853 and in 1865 founded the China Inland Mission, which sent workers to the inland provinces without restriction as to denomination, without a guaranteed income and without personal appeals for money.
The history of his mission gives his birth as 21 May 1832, the son of James Taylor of Barnsley in Yorkshire (Guinness, Story of the China Inland Mission vol. 1, p. 49). He dates his conversion to an afternoon when he was about fifteen and picked up a gospel tract in his father’s library (Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 1). He sailed from Liverpool on 19 September 1853 under the Chinese Evangelisation Society and landed at Shanghai on 1 March 1854 (Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 8–9). He later resigned from that society because it was often in debt, which he held to be against Scripture, and went on working at Ningpo without a salary (Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 15).
Illness sent him back to England, where he worked on a revision of the New Testament in the Ningpo dialect and came to think that a new agency was needed for inland China (Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 18). In 1865 he organised the China Inland Mission, and on 26 May 1866 he sailed with its first party in the Lammermuir (Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 19–20). See Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission.
In the timeline
- 25 June 1865, firm dateHudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission
Hudson Taylor, a missionary invalided home from China, resolves on Brighton beach to lead a new mission to the inland provinces. The China Inland Mission accepts workers without restriction as to denomination, guarantees no income and makes no personal appeals for money.
Primary sources
A Retrospect
- Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 1gutenberg.org
- Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 8–9gutenberg.org
- Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 15gutenberg.org
- Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 18gutenberg.org
- Taylor, A Retrospect ch. 19–20gutenberg.org