(I hope you’ll forgive me for talking mostly about books the last two weeks. 🙂 I happened to finish several recently and I’m trying to finish off my spring reading plans.)

I’ve mentioned before the importance of reading missionary biographies, for our own growth and inspiration and to keep before us those names in church history that need to be remembered just like Washington, Lincoln, and others need to be remembered in our secular history.

Hudson Taylor is one of those names for several reasons. He was a pioneer missionary to China in the 1800s during a time when China was especially hostile and suspicious of foreigners. He wanted to convert people to Christ in their own culture rather than converting them to Western culture. He dressed as a Chinaman, much to the dismay and criticism of the overseas European community and even other missionaries, simply because he found that the most effective way to work with the Chinese. A missionary coming into a town dressed as a European was likely to be attacked and cause a riot. He suffered much hardship uncomplainingly and purposefully lived as simple a life as possible. He did not set out to start a mission agency, but the agency which sent him out failed miserably: they failed to advise or prepare him, failed to forward funds and communicate with him when he was on the field, causing other mission agencies to step in and help him and others, and then they had the gall to criticize other mission agencies in the periodicals of the day. The necessity of a mission agency attuned to the needs in China and resp0nsible in its habits led to Hudson beginning the China Inland Mission. There were a few missionaries in the bigger cities, but China wanted to go inland where the gospel had not been preached. Probably the most notable aspects of Hudson, however, were his simple childlike (but not childish) faith and his unswerving obedience to what he perceived God wanted him to do.

For these reasons I was very glad to see It Is Not Death to Die: A New Biography of Hudson Taylor by Jim Cromarty. There are two older well-known biographies of Hudson Taylor. One is a two-volume set, Hudson Taylor in Early Years: The Growth of a Soul and Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God by his daughter and son-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, first published in 1911. But the first volume is over 500 pages and the second well over 600, which can be quite daunting and they can sometimes be hard to find (Amazon only had used copies but I found them on sale just now here.) These are excellent and easily readable though they were written over a hundred years ago. The other well-known biography of Taylor is Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, also written by his daughter and son-in-law, but much more compact at 272 pages and still printed regularly today.

I had high hopes that this new biography by Cromarty would bridge the gap between these two and bring Hudson’s life before a modern audience that might not seek out the older books. And while it is a faithful representation with much research evidently behind it and I can recommend it, I wish it were more dynamically written. It’s a good reference book for people who want to know more about Taylor, but I don’t know if it would draw in those who are unfamiliar with him or those who do not like to read biographies.

Biographers do have it a little rough: they can write in a story form, which is more interesting but tends to be less accurate as the biographer has to invent conversations and situations to bring out the points he needs to; or they can right a factual version which can tend to be more encyclopedic and accurate, but which doesn’t appeal to the average modern reader. This one is in the style of the latter. I think it could have been much more condensed: there are many descriptions of various CIM missionaries’ travels which could have been left out or at least summarized. The book is 481 pages, not including indexes and end notes, and I have to admit I got bogged down in places.

But I do recommend the book. If you persevere, you will find great nuggets about Taylor’s character. He was not unflawed: he was very human and he would never have wanted people to think he was some super-Christian. But he loved and followed the Lord in an exemplary and humble way.

I marked way too many places to share, especially in a review that is long already:

But here are a few places that stood out to me:

His health, as he described it, could “not be called robust” (p. 49), but I hadn’t realized he struggled so much with his health through the years, including regular bouts of dysentery.

Before he went to China, the girl he had planned to marry refused his proposal because she did not want to go to China. He wrote to his mother, “Trusting God does not deprive one of feelings or deaden our natural sensibilities, but it enables us to compare our trials with our mercies and to say, ‘Yet notwithstanding, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation'” (p. 55).

Once during a storm on the way to China in a ship, he took off a life jacket because he felt he was trusting in it rather than the Lord. Later he realized that was wrong thinking and wrote, “The use of means ought not to lessen our faith in God; and our faith in God ought not to hinder whatever means He has given us for the accomplishment of His own purposes…When in medical or surgical charge of any case, I have never thought of neglecting to ask God’s guidance and blessing in the use of appropriate means…to me it would appear presumptuous  and wrong to neglect the use of those measures which He Himself has put within our reach, as to neglect to take daily food, and suppose that life and health might be maintained by prayer alone” (p. 99). He was later said to be “a man of prayer, but it was prayer associated with action…’He prayed about things as if everything depended upon the praying…but he worked also, as if everything depended upon the working'” (p. 329).

To live in inland China at that time meant giving up what would be considered as Western luxuries, and Hudson tried hard to give a real picture of the mission field before new missionaries came over. “The only persons wanted here are those who will rejoice to work — really to labour — not to dream their lives away; to deny themselves; to suffer in order to save.” (p. 294). He wrote to applicants, “If you want hard work, and little appreciation of it; value God’s approbation more than you fear man’s disapprobation; are prepared, if need be, to seal your testimony with your blood and perhaps oftentimes to take joyfully the spoiling of your goods…you may count on a harvest of souls here, and a crown of glory that does not fade away, and the Master’s ‘Well done’…it is no question of ‘making the best of both worlds’ — the men who will be happy with us are those who have this world under their feet” (p. 303).

At one time he said. “My soul yearns, oh how intently for the evangelization of these 180 millions of the nine unoccupied provinces. Oh that I had a hundred lives to give or spend for their good…Better to have pecuniary and other outward trials and perplexities, and blessing in the work itself, souls being saved, and the name of the Lord Jesus being magnified, than any measure of external prosperity without it” (p. 297).

He was known to be a humble and unassuming man. Many meeting him for the first time were surprised that he didn’t “stand out,” but looked at first like a regular Chinaman. Spurgeon wrote of him, “Mr. Taylor…is not in outward appearance an individual who would be selected among others as the leader of a gigantic enterprise; in fact, he is lame in gait, and little in stature; but…his spirit is quiet and meek, yet strong and intense; there is not an atom of self-assertion about him, but a firm confidence in God” (p. 329). Many times he quietly and unassumingly helped and ministered to others, especially new arrivals. Once when a group he was with had to spend a night on a boat with a leper, and someone complained about the stench of his bedding, Hudson spent the night in his cabin uncomplainingly and bought him new bedding the next day. Another time when an exhausted group of travelers fell into bed without eating, Hudson prepared omelets for them all. Once when he knew of a paper that was critical of him, almost derogatory, he said, “That is a very just criticism, for it is all true. I have often thought that God made me little in order that He might show what a great God He is” (p. 400).

In one meeting, Hudson said, “What we give up for Christ we gain, and what we keep back is our real loss…Let us make earth a little less homelike, and souls more precious. Jesus is coming again, and so soon! Will He really find us obeying His last command?” (p. 383).

I had thought that the title of this book came from the hymn, “It is Not Death to Die,” originally written in 1832 and recently updated. But in writing of Hudson’s death, Cromarty cites the Banner of Truth 1977 publication of Pilgrim’s Progress, at the section where Mr. Valiant-For-Truth dies, and the line “It Is Not Death to Die” is in the passage he quotes but I have not found it in the online versions of Pilgrim’s Progress. Nevertheless, the sentiment is true. Dying to self and living for Christ, which Hudson Taylor exemplified, is true life, just as dying to this body makes way for heaven for those who have trusted Christ as Savior.

(For a more positive review that brings out some different things about Cromarty’s book and Taylor’s life, see my friend Debbie’s review here.)

I first heard of Isobel Kuhn either in college or in the church where we were members when we first married, where there was an emphasis on reading missionary biographies. I’ve read her books By Searching: My Journey Through Doubt Into Faith and In the Arena (as well as her others) several times and know some parts of her story as well as my own. But I always enjoy reading them again, going over what’s familiar and being reminded of what I’d forgotten. Her name is well-known in some areas but not as well known, perhaps, as some of the house-hold names of classic missionary biographies, so I want to keep her story before people. She herself would probably be loathe to read that sentence, as she wouldn’t want her name to be promoted, but rather the God who worked in and through her. I feel the same, but by presenting her story I’m ultimately promoting His grace and work.

 In By Searching she shares how she came to know the Lord. She had been raised in a Christian home in Toronto, Canada, and when she went off to a secular college, her parents took care to drill her in arguments against modernism and other affronts to truth that she would encounter there. In one of her first classes, her professor asked if anyone believed in heaven and hell, in Genesis, etc. Only Isobel and one other student raised their hands. The professor didn’t present arguments against the Bible: he only said, “Oh, you just believe that because your papa and mama told you so.” On the way home from class, Isobel examined why she believed what she believed in light of what she was learning in her classes and concluded the professor was right: she only believed because of what her parents said. She determined to “accept no theories of life which [she] had not proved personally” (p. 7). She wouldn’t say there was no God, but rather that she didn’t know whether there was or not, and instead of seeking out the answer to such an important question, she determined that, since one can’t know, then it really didn’t matter what one did. So she gave up going to church so she could sleep in on Sunday to rest up after parties and dances through the week, she set aside Bible reading, and she gave herself to the activities she had always been taught were “worldly.”

At first everything was pleasant and fun, but she discovered before long that nothing satisfied. One night she was so low that she even contemplated taking her own life, but a groan from her father in his sleep in another room reminded her of the devastating effect that would have on her family. She prayed, “God, if there be a God, If You will prove to me that You are, and if You will give me peace, I will give you my whole life.”

The rest of the book tells how He answered that prayer. “To find that He is, this is the mere starting-point of our search. We are lured on to explore what He is, and that search is never finished, for it grows more thrilling the further one proceeds” (p. 94).

The title for In the Arena comes from the thought that God brings His children to various platforms, or arenas, to show Himself not only to them but to anyone observing. The book overlaps a bit at the beginning with parts of By Searching, but it’s done for the purpose of showing God in various arena experiences. One of the earliest was the staunch opposition of her mother to her going to the mission field, even though her mother was an earnest Christian and even a president of the Women’s Missionary Society. Her mother wanted her to marry well and move in “good society,” and the thought of her daughter depending on the charity of others was more than she could bear. I’ve always thought Isobel’s response to this was ideal, praying and seeking wise counsel rather than adamantly opposing her mother (though there might be times when a person has to obey God in opposition to a parent’s wishes, but when possible it should be handled gracefully.) God did turn her mother’s heart, and continued to manifest Himself to Isobel through Bible college, leading her to her husband, calling them to China, various problems, frustrations, losses, needs, rewarding work, up through facing cancer at the end of the book.

There is so much I’d love to share with you that the Lord spoke to me about in these books…but I’d end up copying most of them here if I shared everything. But here are a few of the most memorable.

On the ship on the way to China, a veteran missionary was meeting with the new girls going over, and one day she said, “Girls, when you get to China, all the scum of your nature will rise to the top.” Isobel “was shocked. Scum? Was that not a strong word? All of us were nice girls, were we not? Scum? A bit extravagant surely. And so I was totally unprepared for the revolt of the flesh which was waiting for me on China’s shores. The day was to come when on my knees in the Lord’s presence I had to say: ‘Lord, scum is the only word to describe me.'” (In the Arena, p. 37.) She then went on to explain some of those “revolts of the flesh” included, in going to a poor area, the realization that it costs to be clean, being unprepared for true poverty even though she had tried to prepare herself, fleas, lice, bedbugs and such, food that she couldn’t take at first, the tribespeople’s lack of understanding the “odd” desire for a bit of privacy sometimes, etc.

In By Searching, she tells how one by one God led her to give up various “worldly” practices, and I feel I should say here that a modern reader might disagree with whether some of them were worldly. But suffice it to say she felt led to lay them aside (“All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.’ I Corinthians 6:12; 10:23), and she didn’t miss any of them. The thing that most stood out to me was her calling them “extinguished tapers” in comparison to the “Rising Sun.” I’ve often thought the emphasis in combatting worldliness shouldn’t be so much in opposing some practices that people can argue over, but in emphasizing love for Him, for in that love lesser things will fall away in themselves.

In another vein, when I first started reading missionary biographies, I felt they were such godly Christians that I should do everything they did. You run into trouble after a while, though, as some of them might do different things! She mentions one of those extinguished tapers was voracious reading of romance novels, “not the modern sexy novels, but clean, exciting love stories” (By Searching, p. 47.) She had trouble putting them down and felt the untrue-to-life plots would make her discontent with everyday routine. One night after staying up until 1 a.m. reading an exciting novel, she then tried to read her Bible, and it seemed flat to her and the Lord seemed far away. She felt it was like filling up with candy and ice cream and spoiling her appetite for good nutrition. So for about fifteen years she gave up all fiction, but she came back to the classics when she had to spend a lot of time alone in China while her husband traveled, because they were wholesome and, since she had read them before, they didn’t have the grip on her that some other books might. I would say that it is right and noble to give up anything that you feel might hinder or hamper your love for the Lord, especially in light of the verses in Corinthians mentioned in the previous paragraph, and some people may feel led to give up some things that aren’t necessarily wrong in themselves but they feel the Lord would have them put aside for various reasons. But I obviously don’t feel the same way about fiction as she did, though I know some who do. I don’t think there was anything in the way of Christian fiction then (this would have been in the 1920s or 30s), and even ice cream and candy aren’t inherently sinful but rather need to be kept in moderation. There is some fiction, even Christian fiction, that I would avoid, and if I felt even the good kind was a hindrance in any way, I’d have to reexamine it, but I don’t feel led to toss it out as a genre.

Something that stood out to me in this reading that I hadn’t remembered from before was that for a time she suffered from stage fright in leading meetings with a group of working girls while waiting to go to China. She had had to give a speech at her college graduation and her mind went blank during it, and that seemed to set off a fear of being in front of people. At times while girls were setting up  for the meeting, she had to go to the bathroom for privacy and cry to the Lord for the nerve to do what she had to do. That touched me because I have done the same thing in bathrooms before meetings!

Another quote that stands out to me was in the context of seeking God’s guidance in whether to try to leave China when the Communists were taking over the area. A Bible verse on a calendar seemed to give direction one way, yet she knew not to take a verse at random out of context. She remarks “You only learn to discern His voice by experience. If you want to be able to hear it in the crises of life, you must first seek it in the common places of life” (In the Arena, p. 190).

I could go on, but suffice it to say that Isobel Kuhn’s life is an inspiration to me. She readily admits her flaws, but she steadfastly followed her Savior, and He worked mightily in and through her.

I have read all of her books, some of which tell more of the work in China. One, Green Leaf in Drought (linked to my review) tells of the last China Inland Missionaries to be released from China after the Communists took over. Another, Whom God Has Joined (also linked to my review), was originally titled One Vision Only and focuses on her marriage. It’s both poignant and humorous. One of my favorites is Second Mile People where she tells of some of the main people who influenced her life: I mentioned one in a previous post, A sense of Him. I want to read that one again soon. Also due to her writings I read two biographies of the man who influenced her for China, gave wise counsel in regard to her mother, and was her missions director in China, J. O. Fraser, in Mountain Rain by Eileen Crossman and Behind the Ranges by Geraldine Taylor. I’d love to read those again some time, too.

I hope you’ll explore some of her life and writings and will be as blessed by them as I have.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

In the preface to 50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning From Spiritual Giants of the Faith, author Warren Wiersbe states that he has been greatly helped by reading biographies. “The past is not an anchor to drag us back but a rudder to help guide us into the future.” I love to read biographies as well, and this book included some that were new to me.

I didn’t realize until I received the book that it was compiled from two former books by Wiersbe, Living With the Giants and Victorious Christians You Should Know, which in turn were originally columns in the magazines Moody Monthly and The Good News Broadcaster, which are no longer being published. I am glad these testimonies have been preserved in this book.

Of the 50 (51, actually: one chapter combines two men), I had previously read biographies of six; I knew something about or had read books by about fifteen others, and the rest were new to me except for just a few whose names I had heard. There are four women, a few missionaries, but most are preachers.

Wiersbe gives a brief history of each person as well as suggestions for books by that person or other biographies of them for further reading. Some of the chapters were a little drier to me than others, but often that occurred when I was trying to read too many of them at one time. The stories I already knew were a good refresher, and some of the others were a good springboard toward finding new biographies to read. Though most of the time Wiersbe tried to convey what the person was like rather than just what they did, there were a couple of chapters where I didn’t get that sense of personality. I did appreciate that the individuals were listed in chronological order, so that we could see the effect of the issues of the day or other people on each person.

A couple of the inclusions confused me, though, as Wiersbe said they “did not preach the atonement”: one, in fact, went from a grace-based faith to a works-based religion. I don’t see how such persons could be considered “giants of the faith,” though Wiersbe did say there were things he learned from them.

One of the overall lessons this books left with me was that God can use anybody. These 51 agreed on most core, fundamental doctrines yet were from various denominations, from opposite sides of the Calvinist/Arminian and other controversies, from differing viewpoints on end times and how ministry should be conducted, from widely different personalities and academic tendencies. and yet God used each one. Does that mean none of those issues matters? No, each individual is responsible to  study the issue, the Bible, and in their own conscience before God determine what they believe and how to live it out. But seeing how God used varieties of people helps me to be a little less critical, though I trust no less analytical. We can even learn from the fact that some were gifted in one area but had faults in others, as we are all in the same state.

I marked more passages and quotes than I can possibly share in one post…

But here are a few that stood out to me:

Often, after hearing his father preach, Matthew [Henry] would hurry to his room and pray that God would seal the Word and the spiritual impressions made to his heart so that he might not lose them (p. 25).

An excellent exercise. Perhaps that’s part of what made him the commentator he was.

No place is like my study. No company like good books, especially the book of God. ~ Matthew Henry (p. 27).

My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there and not to trust in what I think might be there ~ Charles Simeon (p. 49.)

Amen. Would that all preachers would so do.

“Tried this morning specially to pray against idols in the shape of my books and studies. These encroach upon my direct communion with God, and need to be watched” ~ Andrew Bonar (p. 77).

Books and studies are helpful but even they can take the wrong place in our hearts and minds.

“I can see a man cannot be a faithful minister, until he preaches Christ for Christ’s sake, until he gives up striving to attract people to himself, and seeks only to attract them to Christ” ~ Robert Murray McCheyne (p. 82).

“To efface one’s self is one of a preacher’s first duties. The herald should be lost in the message” ~Alexander Maclaren (p. 109)

Surprisingly, Maclaren was haunted all his life by a sense of failure. Often he suffered ‘stage fright’ before a service, but in the pulpit he was perfectly controlled. He sometimes spoke of each Sunday’s demands as ‘a woe,’ and he was certain that his sermon was not good enough and that the meeting would be a failure” (p. 109).

Though I am not a preacher, I can identify with those feelings. In fact, I have felt that maybe they were an indication I should not be in the ministries I was in, but I guess that’s not always the case. Similarly, John Henry Jowett wrote of his Yale lectures, which I have heard reference to as a great help by more than one preacher:

The lectures are a nightmare to me, and I am glad of getting rid of them this week! (p. 284).

And later,

Preaching that costs nothing accomplishes nothing (p. 284).

We could say that is true of much service, not just preaching. What the Lord uses in our lives may not always be the incidents where we “feel” spiritual or feel like we’re accomplishing something for Him. This next quote is a help:

“All God’s giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them” ~ J. Hudson Taylor (p. 133).

“Don’t go about the world with your fist doubled up, carrying a theological revolver in the leg of your trousers.” ~ Charles Spurgeon (p. 143).

I’m smiling because this reminds me of my friend from yesterday’s post. On the other hand,

[Alexander] Whyte was so much of an encourager that he forgot that Christians cannot accept every doctrine men preach, though the men may be fine people (p. 169).

“Fathers and brethren,” Whyte cried, “the world of mind does not stand still! And the theological mind will stand still at its peril.” True. but the theological mind must still depend on the inspired Word of God for truth and direction. Once we lose that anchor, we drift (p. 169).

Religious sentiment, if it is worth anything, must be preceded by religious perception. ~ George Matheson on devotional writing (p. 200).

It is urgently needful that the Christian people of our charge should come to understand that they are not a company of invalids, to be wheeled about, or fed by hand, cosseted, nursed, and comforted, the minister being head physician and nurse — but a garrison in an enemy’s country, every soul of which should have some post of duty, at which he should be prepared to make any sacrifice rather than quit it. ~ F. B. Meyer (p. 216).

“Passion does not compensate for ignorance. ” ~ Samuel Chadwick (p. 249).

“We cannot make up for failure in our devotional life by redoubling energy in service.” ~ W. H. Griffith Thomas (p. 264).

“The Bible never yield itself to indolence.” G. Campbell Morgan (p. 278).

“The ‘soul-saving passion’ as an aim must cease and merge into the passion for Christ, revealing itself in holiness in all human relationships” [Oswald Chambers]. In other words, soul winning is not something we do, it is something we are…and we live for souls because we love Christ (pp. 324-325).

The applause of the crowd is not always the approval of the Lord (p. 370).

Christian leaders must realize that if they suffer from shallowness, the malady will spread throughout their entire organization (p. 370).

When a friend told William Whiting Borden that he was “throwing his life away as a missionary,” William calmly replied, “You have never seen heathenism” (p. 342).

Of Borden, who died at the age of 26 after just starting on the mission field:

Why should such a gifted life be cut short?…”A life abandoned to Christ cannot be cut short” ~ Sherwood Day (p. 345).

I think what he means is that that was what God appointed for him — that amount of time, that mission — and he fulfilled it well and God used him — and still does.

There is a very sweet poem written by Francis Ridley Havergal to Fanny Crosby — I don’t think I had realized they were contemporaries:

Dear blind sister over the sea
An English heart goes forth to thee.
We are linked by a cable of faith and song,
Flashing bright sympathy swift along;
One in the East and one in the West,
Singing for Him whom our souls love best,
“Singing for Jesus,” telling His love,
All the way to our home above.
Where the severing sea, with its restless tide,
Never shall hinder, and never divide.
Sister! what will our meeting be,
When our hearts shall sing and our eyes shall see!

The whole poem/hymn is here.

There were some amusing things in the “My how times have changed” department: D. L. Moody “felt that the bicycle, because of its popularity, was the greatest enemy of the Sabbath” (p. 291). I wonder, 100 years from now, what things people will shake their heads at in wonder that we thought “worldly.”

I imagine some of you who read here regularly will be glad to see this one done — it’s been appearing on my Nightstand posts for months. 🙂 It was neither hard nor tedious to read: it’s just best read a bit at a time rather than plowing straight through. With 50 chapters you could easily take one a week and finish it in a year — or one a day and finish it in a couple of months. Either of those or something between would give you a rich variety of people to learn from.

Though there were some names missing I would have liked to have seen here — Jim Elliot, Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth, J. O. Fraser, Henry Ward Beecher, Martyn-Lloyd Jones (he is referred to a few times), J. Oswald Sanders, Isobel Kuhn — I do understand that every author and book has its limits. 🙂 Overall I enjoyed the book very much.

I’ll close with something William Borden wrote in his notebook in college, something that many of these would echo:

“Lord Jesus, I take hands off, as far as my life is concerned. I put Thee on the throne in my heart. Change, cleanse, use me as Thou shalt choose. I take the full power of Thy Holy Spirit. I thank Thee.” Then he added this revealing sentence: “May never know a tithe of the result until Morning” (p. 345).

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday review of books.)