James Hud­son Tay­lor (1832−1905), was a British Protes­tant Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary to Chi­na, and founder of the Chi­na Inland Mis­sion. The soci­ety that he began was respon­si­ble for bring­ing over 800 mis­sion­ar­ies to the coun­try who began 125 schools and direct­ly result­ed in 18,000 Chris­t­ian con­ver­sions, as well as the estab­lish­ment of more than 300 sta­tions of work with more than 500 local helpers in all eigh­teen provinces. He wrote a book called Chi­na’s Spir­i­tu­al Need and Claims in 1865 which was instru­men­tal in gen­er­at­ing sym­pa­thy for Chi­na and vol­un­teers for the mis­sion field, who began to go out in 1862. Tay­lor was known for his sen­si­tiv­i­ty to Chi­nese cul­ture and zeal for evan­ge­lism. He adopt­ed wear­ing native Chi­nese cloth­ing even though this was rare among mis­sion­ar­ies of that time. Under his lead­er­ship, the CIM was sin­gu­lar­ly non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al in prac­tice and accept­ed mem­bers from all Protes­tant groups, includ­ing indi­vid­u­als from the work­ing class and sin­gle women as well as multi­na­tion­al recruits. Pri­mar­i­ly because of the CIM’s cam­paign against the Opi­um trade, Tay­lor has been referred to as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant Euro­peans to vis­it Chi­na in the 19^th Cen­tu­ry. In this book, Tay­lor tells his own sto­ry – from his call to the mis­sion field through his ear­ly mis­sion expe­ri­ences – ​“In Retrospect.”

2010