Hudson Taylor, a British Protestant Christian missionary,…
September 1853 CE
Taylor was born on May 21, 1832, to a chemist (pharmacist) and Methodist lay preacher James Taylor and his wife, Amelia (Hudson), but as a young man he ran away from the Christian beliefs of his parents.
At seventeen, after reading an evangelistic tract pamphlet entitled "Poor Richard", he professed faith in Christ, and in December 1849, he committed himself to going to China as a missionary.
Taylor was able to borrow a copy of China: Its State and Prospects by Walter Henry Medhurst, which he quickly read.
About this time, he began studying the languages of Mandarin, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.
In 1851, he moved to a poor neighborhood in Kingston upon Hull to be a medical assistant with Robert Hardey, and began preparing himself for a life of faith and service, devoting himself to the poor and exercising faith that God would provide for his needs.
He was baptized by Andrew John Jukes of the Plymouth Brethren in the Hull Brethren Assembly in 1852, and persuaded his sister Amelia to also take adult baptism.
In 1852 he began studying medicine at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London, as preparation for working in China.
The great interest awakened in England about China through the civil war, which is erroneously supposed to be a mass movement toward Christianity, together with the glowing but exaggerated reports made by Karl Gützlaff concerning China's accessibility, led to the founding of the Chinese Evangelisation Society, to the service of which Hudson Taylor has offered himself as their first missionary.
Locations
People
Groups
Regions
North Europe
View →Subregions
