Deaths In The Mission Field

Triumphs come at a cost. Such is the story of the cross. There are no victories where none dares to count the cost. All die, not all die for something of eternal worth. Even our view of death is marred by sin as unfortunate. But for a child of God it is merely the end of sorrows and the beginning of endless joy.

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By Christmas 1869, Hudson and Maria had made the most difficult decision of their married lives. Their four oldest children, Herbert, Howard, Samuel, and Maria were to be sent back to England to stay with their grandparents. It would be safer for them there, and they could go to a regular school. At that time it was quite normal for children to be sent home like this, but it still upset Hudson and Maria to think they wouldn’t be seeing their children for a long time. They decided to keep one-year-old Charles with them because he was too young to be separated from his parents. Also, Maria was pregnant again and due to give birth in the middle of the year, so Charles would have a playmate. Emily Blatchley would take the children back on the ship with her. She had contracted tuberculosis and needed treatment in England. 

The family had much to do to prepare for the trip to Shanghai, where the children’s ship would depart for England. As they prepared, Samuel was not well, but no one knew how sick he was until February, when they began the journey to Shanghai. As they traveled by boat down the Yangtze River, Samuel slipped into a coma and died. In the middle of a rain storm, Maria and Hudson buried their six-year-old son next to Grace in a small cemetery beside the river in the town of Chin-kiang.

On July 7, 1870, baby Noel was born. He was a solid little child, and he got bigger and stronger each day. But Maria did not. Hudson began to worry about her. She just lay in bed with Noel tucked in beside her. She smiled but looked ashen and frail. After a week, Hudson knew her condition was serious. She was bleeding somewhere inside her body, and he had no way of knowing exactly where so he could stop it. 

Meanwhile, baby Noel was no longer well either. He now had diarrhea, which is not such a big problem for an adult, but for a little baby like Noel, it was serious. Hudson now had a very sick wife and a very sick baby. He spent his time praying and helping to keep them cool and comfortable. But thirteen days after his birth, Noel’s body gave up, and he died quietly, tucked in bed beside his sick mother. 

Maria, who was too ill to attend the funeral, kissed her baby goodbye and chose the hymns for his funeral. Hudson left the cemetery after burying Noel beside his sister Grace and brother Samuel. But one week later he was back again. This time to bury his wife beside the children.

Stories about missionaries from the China Inland Mission spread around the world. Many of the missionaries were daring and adventurous, just like their founder. Both men and women crisscrossed China, making maps of the ahead they went through. Hudson's second wife Jennie, and two other China Inland Mission women were the first Western women to go deep into inland China. They were on a mission to set up orphanages for children whose parents had died as the result of a massive famine that spread across China. 

Missionaries from the China Inland Mission now no longer just came from the British Isles. There were missionaries from Sweden, the United States, and Australia. The mission quickly spread across China until there was a China Inland Mission work in every province.

By the late 1890s, though, there were many small, secret societies trying to change things inside China. One of these groups was called the Boxers. They hated foreigners and were getting stronger as more people joined their cause. As the Boxers grew in strength, Hudson grew concerned for the safety of the missionaries, especially the single women. 

At the end of 1898, the China Inland Mission had experienced what Hudson knew was a possibility ever since the day he prayed on Brighton Beach: the murder of one of its missionaries. 

Bill Fleming, a lively Australian, had been on an evangelistic mission among the Black Miao tribe in the distant southwestern province of Kwei-chow. His friend and helper, P’an Shoushan, was himself a member of the Black Miao tribe. When other members of the tribe heard that P’an had left their religion to follow Christianity, they were angry. As Bill Fleming spoke to the crowd, they became even more angry, until they rushed forward to attack P’an. Fleming stepped in front of the mob, using his own body to shield his friend, and he was killed. 

Hudson’s heart sank as he heard the news of Bill Fleming’s death. He wrote: “How sad the tidings! Blessed for the martyrs, but sad for us, for China, for their friends. And not only sad, but ominous! It seems to show that God is about to test us with a new kind of trial.” His words proved very true. Things were changing quickly in China, and changing for the worse.

Hudson continued to tell men and women everywhere about the needs of China. He traveled to Australia and New Zealand and on to the United States. Huge crowds gathered to hear him. At Carnegie Hall in New York, thirty-five hundred came to hear him speak, including the President of the United States and the Governor of New York. 

From New York he traveled on to Boston for another series of meetings. As he spoke in one of the meetings there, he seemed to forget where he was. Over and over he said the same sentence: “You may trust the Lord too little, but you can never trust Him too much.”

Hudson was now sixty-eight years old and badly in need of rest. Jennie made arrangements to take him to Switzerland, where the fresh air and walks in the mountains helped him to get better. However, it was not long before telegrams began to arrive from the China Inland Mission headquarters in London. Each one seemed to bring worse news than the one before. In China, the empress dowager had declared war on foreigners, and many Chinese people had been happy to help her out. Churches were burned to the ground, and missionaries’ homes looted. A missionary family were killed in their beds; others were fleeing for their lives. Hudson was shocked. They were his beloved people, and he was too far away to help. As the telegrams piled up on the table, he told Jennie, “I cannot read, I cannot think, I cannot even pray; but I can trust.” 

Thousands of Chinese Christians, called “secondary devils,” were also being killed because they were seen as traitors to China. In Peking alone, fifteen to twenty thousand Chinese Catholics were killed. Those were black days for China. 

By the time the Boxer Uprising had been defeated, one hundred thirty Protestant missionaries and over fifty of their children had been killed. The China Inland Mission alone lost fifty-eight missionaries and twenty-one children. Hudson wept for every one of them. Hudson could only think back to the first days when he had fought so hard not to start a missionary organization, and how he had finally come to understand that each person who was called was in God’s care. He could do no more than to pray for each of the dead missionaries’ families.

Benge, Janet; Benge, Geoff. Hudson Taylor: Deep in the Heart of China (Christian Heroes: Then & Now)