Hudson Taylor Quotes & Sayings

The less I spent on myself and the more I gave to others, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become. — Hudson Taylor

Let but faithful labourers be found, who will prove faithful to God, and there is no reason to fear that God will not prove faithful to them. — Hudson Taylor

It is always helpful to us to fix our attention on the God-ward aspect of Christian work; to realise that the work of God does not mean so much man's work for God, as God's own work through man. — Hudson Taylor

If the Lord is coming soon, is this not a very practical motive for greater missionary effort? I know of no other motive that has been so stimulating to myself. — Hudson Taylor

God is not looking for men of great faith, He is looking for common men to trust His great faithfulness. — Hudson Taylor

When the heart submits, then Jesus reigns. When Jesus reigns, there is rest. — Hudson Taylor

Oh, for eloquence to plead the cause of China, for a pencil dipped in fire to paint the condition of this people. — Hudson Taylor

When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone. — Hudson Taylor

I am so weak that I can hardly write, I cannot read my Bible, I cannot even pray, I can only lie still in God's arms like a little child, and trust. — Hudson Taylor

I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him to do His work through me. — Hudson Taylor

There has never been a successful social movement for any minority without the support of the majority. — Hudson Taylor

I myself, for instance, am not especially gifted, and am shy by nature, but my gracious and merciful God and Father inclined Himself to me, and when I was weak in faith He strengthened me while I was still young. He taught me in my helplessness to rest on Him, and to pray even about little things in which another might have felt able to help himself. — Hudson Taylor

If this is a real work for God it is a real conflict with Satan. — Hudson Taylor

So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with His own, and He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you — Hudson Taylor

Devotion to God is still a voluntary thing; hence the differences of attainment among Christians. — Hudson Taylor

We have heard of many people who trusted God too little, but have you ever heard of anyone who trusted Him too much? — Hudson Taylor

All our difficulties are only platforms for the manifestations of His grace, power and love. — Hudson Taylor

Truly there is a Living God, and He is the hearer and answerer of prayer. — Hudson Taylor

Perhaps if there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently see the results we desire. Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of eternal things may be the true cause of our want of success. — Hudson Taylor

While unbelief sees the difficulties, faith sees God between itself and them. — Hudson Taylor

A few nights after his conversion he asked how long this Gospel had been known in England. He was told that we had known it for some hundreds of years.
"What!" said he, amazed; "is it possible that for hundreds of years you have had the knowledge of those glad tidings in your possession, and yet have only now come to preach it to us? My father sought after the Truth for more than twenty years, and died without finding it. Oh, why did you not come sooner? — Hudson Taylor

If we wait till we run no risk, the gospel will never be introduced into the interior, — Hudson Taylor

God means just what He says and He will do all that He has promised. — Hudson Taylor

I often think that God must have been looking for someone small enough and weak enough for Him to use, and that He found me. — Hudson Taylor

Would that God would make hell so real to us that we cannot rest; Heaven so real that we must have men there. — Hudson Taylor

We are not only to renounce evil, but to manifest the truth. We tell people the world is vain; let our lives manifest that it is so. We tell them that our home is above and that all these things are transitory. Does our dwelling look like it? O to live consistent lives! — Hudson Taylor

Many Christians estimate difficulties in the light of their own resources, and thus attempt little and often fail in the little they attempt. All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and presence with them. — Hudson Taylor

Power with God will be the gauge of real power with men. — Hudson Taylor

As a rule, prayer is answered and funds come in, but if we are kept waiting, the spiritual blessing that is the outcome is far mar precious than exemption from the trial. — Hudson Taylor

The Lord IS my shepherd. Not was, not may be, nor will be ... is my shepherd on Sunday, is on Monday, and is through every day of the week; is in January, is in December, and every month of the year, is at home, and is in China; is in peace, and is in war; in abundance, and in penury. — Hudson Taylor

To every toiling, heavy-laden sinner, Jesus says, Come to me and rest. But there are many toiling, heavy-laden believers, too. For them this same invitation is meant. Note well the words of Jesus, if you are heavy-laden with your service, and do not mistake it. It is not, Go, labor on, as perhaps you imagine. On the contrary, it is stop, turn back, Come to me and rest. Never, never did Christ send a heavy laden one to work; never, never did He send a hungry one, a weary one, a sick or sorrowing one, away on any service. For such the Bible only says, Come, come, come. — Hudson Taylor

Are you in a hurry, flurried, distressed? Look up! See the Man in the Glory! Let the face of Jesus shine upon you - the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is He worried, troubled, distressed? There is no wrinkle on His brow, no least shade of anxiety. Yet the affairs are His as much as yours. — Hudson Taylor

As our Father makes many a flower to bloom unseen in the lonely desert, [let us] do all that we can do, as under God's eye, though no other eye ever take note of it. — Hudson Taylor

God does not permit persecution to arise without sufficient reason...He was leading us by a way that we knew not; but it was none the less His way. — Hudson Taylor

So if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in places of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that HIs resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me. — Hudson Taylor

If it is true in anything, it is especially true of divine things, what costs little is worth little. — Hudson Taylor

All God's giants have been weak men and women who have gotten hold of God's faithfulness. — Hudson Taylor

The real secret of an unsatisfied life lies too often in an unsurrendered will. — Hudson Taylor

One difficulty follows another very fast - but God reigns, not chance. — Hudson Taylor

Truly Jesus is the great need of our souls. — Hudson Taylor

I have seen many men work without praying, though I have never seen any good come out of it; but I have never seen a man pray without working. — Hudson Taylor

It matters not how great the pressure is, only where the pressure lies. As long as the pressure does not come between me and my Savior, but presses me to Him, then the greater the pressure, the greater my dependence upon Him. — Hudson Taylor

A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in little things is a great thing. — Hudson Taylor

China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women ... The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, souls first and foremost in everything and at every time - even life itself must be secondary. — Hudson Taylor

Satan may build a hedge about us and fence us in and hinder our movements, but he cannot roof us in and prevent our looking up. — Hudson Taylor

In Shansi I found Chinese Christians who were accustomed to spend time in fasting and prayer. They recognized that this fasting, which so many dislike, which requires faith in God, since it makes one feel weak and poorly, is really a Divinely appointed means of grace. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are-dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon. — Hudson Taylor

Would it not be well if the people of God had always tell-tale faces, evincing the blessings and gladness of salvation so clearly that unconverted people might have to call conversion "becoming joyful" instead of "becoming serious"? — Hudson Taylor

The hardest part of a missionary career is to maintain regular, prayerful Bible study. Satan will always find you something to do, when you ought to be occupied about that - if it is only arranging a window blind! — Hudson Taylor

It is not lost time to wait upon God! — Hudson Taylor

Nothing can take the place of a real hunger for souls, or make up for the lack of it. — Hudson Taylor

There are three indispensable requirements for a missionary: 1. Patience 2. Patience 3. Patience. — Hudson Taylor

The harvest here is indeed great, and the laborers are few and imperfectly fitted, without much grace, for such a work. And yet grace can make a few feeble instruments the means of accomplishing great things - things greater even than we can conceive. — Hudson Taylor

With God all things are possible, and no conversion ever takes place save by the almighty power of the Holy Ghost. The great need, therefore, of every Christian worker is to know God. — Hudson Taylor

Let us never forget that what we are is more important than what we do. — Hudson Taylor

The good works of the unsaved may indeed benefit their fellow-creatures; but until life in Christ has been received, they cannot please God. — Hudson Taylor

But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One. — Hudson Taylor

Believing prayer will lead to whole-hearted action. — Hudson Taylor

Dream a dream so big that unless God intervenes it will fail. — Hudson Taylor

Consider six or eight hours a day sacred to the Lord and His work, and let nothing hinder your giving this time (to language study and practice) till you can preach fluently and intelligibly. — Hudson Taylor

Abiding in Jesus isn't fixing our attention on Christ, but it is being one with Him ... A man is abiding just as much when he is sleeping for Jesus, as when he is awake and working for Jesus. Oh, it is a very sweet thing to have one's mind just resting there. — Hudson Taylor

If we are faithful to God in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life. — Hudson Taylor

God's work is not man working for God; it is God's own work, though often wrought through man's hands. — Hudson Taylor

An easy, non-self-denying life will never be one of power. — Hudson Taylor

Were it not for the consciousness of Christ in my life, hour by hour, I could not go on. But He is teaching me the glorious lessons of His sufficiency, and each day I am carried onward with no feeling of strain or fear of collapse. — Hudson Taylor

You do not need a great faith, but faith in a great God. — Hudson Taylor

Satan, the Hinderer, may build a barrier about us, but he can never roof us in, so that we cannot look up. — Hudson Taylor

Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees. — Hudson Taylor

The missionary spirit is the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of the incarnation and the cross. — Hudson Taylor

Unless there is the element of extreme risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith — Hudson Taylor

If in the sight of God you cannot say you are sure that you have a special call to stay at home, why are you disobeying the Saviour's plain command to go? — Hudson Taylor

When we work, we work. When we pray, God works. — Hudson Taylor

Carrying the cross does mean following in Jesus' footsteps. And in His footsteps are rejection, brokenheartedness, persecution and death. There are not two Christ's - an easy going one for easy going Christians, and a suffering one for exceptional believers. There is only one Christ. Are we willing to follow His lead? — Hudson Taylor

It is the consciousness of the threefold joy of the Lord, His joy in ransoming us, His joy in dwelling within us as our Saviour and Power for fruitbearing and His joy in possessing us, as His Bride and His delight; it is the consciousness of this joy which is our real strength. Our joy in Him may be a fluctuating thing: His joy in us knows no change. — Hudson Taylor

The branch of the vine does not worry, and toil, and rush here to seek for sunshine, and there to find rain. No; it rests in union and communion with the vine ... Let us so abide in the Lord Jesus. — Hudson Taylor

Fruit-bearing involves cross-bearing. There are not two Christs
an easygoing one for easygoing Christians, and a suffering, toiling one for exceptional believers. There is only one Christ. Are you willing to abide in Him, and thus to bear much fruit? — Hudson Taylor

There are three stages in the work of God: impossible, difficult,done. — Hudson Taylor

There are three great truths, 1st, That there is a God; 2nd, That He has spoken to us in the Bible; 3rd, That He means what He says. — Hudson Taylor

Not infrequently our GOD brings His people into difficulties on purpose that they may come to know Him as they could not otherwise do. — Hudson Taylor

Christ liveth in me. And how great the difference ... instead of bondage, liberty; instead of failure, quiet victories within; instead of fear and weakness, a restful sense of sufficiency in Another. — Hudson Taylor

Unless you intend your wife to be a true missionary, not merely a wife, home-maker, and friend, do not join us. — Hudson Taylor

Christ is either Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all — Hudson Taylor

Learn to move man, through God, by prayer alone — Hudson Taylor

While salvation is a free gift, the 'winning Christ' can only be through unreserved consecration and unquestioning obedience. Nor is this a hardship, but the highest privilege. — Hudson Taylor

Let us see that we keep God before our eyes; that we walk in His ways and seek to please and glorify Him in everything, great and small. Depend upon it, God's work, done in God's way, will never lack God's supplies. — Hudson Taylor

The cold, and even the hunger, the watchings and sleeplessness of nights of danger, and the feeling at times of utter isolation and helplessness, were well and wisely chosen, and tenderly and lovingly meted out. What circumstances could have rendered the Word of God more sweet, the presence of God more real, the help of God more precious? — Hudson Taylor

Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives. — Hudson Taylor

Too often we attempt to work for God to the limit of our incompetency, rather than to the limit of God's omnipotency. — Hudson Taylor

The prayer power has never been tried to its full capacity ... if we want to see might wonders of divine power and grace wrought in the place of weakness, failure and disappointment, let us answer God's standing challenge, "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and might things which thou knowest not." — Hudson Taylor

We sometimes hear the argument, 'All the world' thinks this, or does that, given as a reason for our doing likewise; but that is an argument that should have no weight with the Christian, who is commanded not to be conformed to the world. — Hudson Taylor