11.30.2016 The Life of Saint Anthony by SAINT ATHANASIUS (357 AD)

80  Wisdom to the Wise
He (St. Antony..(A) also had a very high degree of practical wisdom. the wonder was that although he was without formal schooling *

(wherever * appears -this #244, there is a footnote. i will not quote all but parts that seem especially helpful to understand and his situation better....'hertling rightly remarks..this does not necessarily mean that he did not know how to read or write, but only that he had not received the rhetorical and humanistic training usual with sons of parents as comfortably situated as were A's ..Athanasius ..and Jerome ..report that A exchanged letters with (Emperor) Constantine and other men in high position and corresponded with various monks, this does not prove that he could read and write: as he used interpreters in dealing with Greeks, so a fellow monk could assist him as reader and amanuensis. ' he was yet a man of ready wit and understanding.)

to illustrate: once 2 greek philosophers came to him, thinking they could experiment with A. he happened to be on the Outer Mountain at the time. when he had sized up the men from their appearance, he went out to them and said through an interpreter:
'why, philosophers, have you done to so much trouble to come to a foolish man?
when they said that he was not foolish, but very wise, he said to them:
'if you have come to a foolish man, your trouble is to no purpose; but if you do think that I am wise, make yourselves what I am, for one ought to imitate the good. indeed, if I had come to you, I should have imitated you; conversely, now that you have come to me, make yourselves what I am: I am a Christian
the left marvelling at him, for they saw that even demons feared A.

others again of the same kind met him in the Outer Mountain and thought they could fop (def - excessive, vain dress?) him because he had not received any schooling. A said to them:
'well, what do you say, which is first, the mind or letters?
and which is the cause of which - the mind of letters or letters of the mind?

when they stated that the ind is first and the inventor of letters, Antony said:
'therefore, one who has a sound mind has no need of letters.*

(245 Cassian...quotes the abbot Theodore, a master of Scripture interpretation, as saying that one who has a pure heart and, as a result, a clear mind, has all that is required for the understanding of the mysteries of Holy Scripture and has no need of laboring over commentaries. )

this amazed both them and the bystanders. they went away.
81  astonished to see such wisdom in an ordinary man*.

(246 Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 4.23, relates:  'to the good A there came a philosopher of the day and said:  'Father, how do you hold up deprived as you are of he solace of books: A said:  'my book, philosopher, is nature, and thus I can read God's language at will'. )

for he did not have the rough manner of one who had lived and grown old in the mountains, but he was a man of grace and urbanity. his speech was seasoned with divine wisdom*

(247 lit. . 'with divine salt': def. col. 4.6 and mark 9.49)

so that no one bore him ill-will, but rather all rejoiced over him who sought him out.

and indeed, after this still others came*.

248  attracted, no doubt, by the account of the other groups just mentioned.

they were of those who among the pagans are supposedly wise. they asked him to state an argument for our faith in Christ. when they tried to make inferences from the preaching of the divine cross*

249  ..Atheanasius, De Incarn. 53, where he eloquently describes the routing of the gods by the Cross and the acceptance of the crucified Savior by the pagans ('Greekss) who once jeered Him..to be God and to be crucified was a paradox which from the beginning was a stumbling block to the Jews and spelled sheer folly to the pagans (see I cor. 1.23). see Tertullian's defense (Apol. 16; AD nat. 1.12) against the notorious charge that christians adore the Cross and an ass's head; so, too, Minucius Felix, Oct. 29. in this connection it is pointed out that the 'infamy of the Cross' must be understood from the fact that in the world empire of the Romans crucifixion was the most disgraceful form of capital punishment, one reserved for slave, pirates and thieves. but it is often overlooked that this penalty remained in force well into the fourth century, coexistent, therefore , with the rise and full development of Christianity from that cross. the position of Christians explaining and defending their allegiance to it was not easy and non-Christians could be in very good faith if they could not see rhyme or reason in such allegiance.

 and wished to scoff, A paused for a moment and first pitying them for their ignorance, said through an interpreter who gave an excellent translation of his words:  'which is better - to confess the Cross, or to attribute adulteries and pederasties to your so-called gods? for to maintain what we maintain is a sign of manly spirit and betokens disregard for death, whereas your claims bespeak but wanton passions. again which is better - to say that the Word of God was not changed, but remaining the same took on a human body for the salvation and well-being of mankind, so that by sharing human birth, He might make men partakers of the divine and spiritual nature;*

250  see II peter 1.4

 or to put the divine on a level with senseless things and therefore to worship beasts and reptiles and images of men? these precisely are the objects worshipped by you wise men. who dare you revile us for saying that Christ has appeared as man, whereas you derive the soul from heaven, saying that it strayed and fell from the vault of the heavens into the body? would that it were only into the body of man and not that it changed and migrated into beasts and serpents!*

251  here two well-known elements of ancient psychology are adverted to, the pre-existence and the transmigration (metem-psychosis) of the soul. within the Greek sphere of thought and religion this teaching is found particularly in Orphism, Pythagoras, Plato, the Gnostics and Neo-platonism. for the present passage Neo-platonism as developed by Plotinus, a native of Egypt and pupil of Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria , seems to offer the material for A's (or Athanasius') polemic..

82  our faith declares Christ's coming*

252  the word parousia (greek) is used her: 'presence, arrival, coming' - first employed in a technical sense in the profane sphere to designate the official visit of a ruler or other high personage. it is found frequently in the New Testament, notably in the Epistles of St. paul (eg.  I corinthians 15.23; I thessalonians 2.19; II thess. 2.1) and is there employed as a standing term for the second coming of Christ at the Last Judgment. early in the second century the term began to be used to refer also to the first coming of Christ in his Incarnation and Redemption..

 for the salvation of men; but you mistakenly theorize about an uncreated Soul.*

253  the third of Plotinus' Triad of Divine Principles, the 'World-Soul ('all-Soul', 'Soul of the All', 'Cosmic Soul') psuche (greek) from which the individual souls diverge or emanate.

we believe in the power of Providence and His love of men and that this*

254  that is, the Incarnation of the Son of God, the coming of Christ, just referred to.

 also was not impossible with God; but you, calling the Soul an image of the Mind,* impute falls to it and fabricate myths about its ability to change * consequently, you make also the Mind itself changeable because of the Soul. for as was the image, so, too, must be that of which it is the image. but when you have such thoughts about the Mind, remember that you are also blaspheming the Father of the Mind. *
'and regarding the Cross, which would you say is better: when treachery is resorted to by wicked men, to endure the Cross and not to flinch from death in any manner or form,* or to fabricate fables about the wanderings of Osiris and Isis,*

259 Egyptian tutelar (def - guardian, protector)  divinities whose cult also spread to the Greeks and Romans. Isis' wanderings began when her husband, Osiris, was murdered by his plotting brother Typhon and cast into the Nile. she finally found the corpse, only to be forced into another long search when Typhon discovered the body, dismembered it into 14 parts and scattered these to the four winds . she recovered 13 parts, buried them at Philoe. Osiris then inhabited the sacred bull Apis and his wanderings took place from the death of one bull to the reappearance or reincarnation of Apis in another.

the plots of Typhon, the banishment of Cronus,*

260  Cronus (Saturn of the Romans) was one of the Titans. he rebelled against his father Uranus, mutilated him and took the world dominion from him. in the course of time his father's curse was visited upon him. fearing for his throne, he wallowed his own children as they were born - Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon. Zeus alone escaped. when he had grown up, he forced his father to regurgitate his brothers and sisters, defeated him in the battle with the Titans and banished him to Tartarus.
the swallowing of children and slaying of fathers? yes, here we have your wisdom!

'and why is it that while you deride the Cross, you do not marvel at the Resurrection? for those who reported the one also wrote of the other. or why is it that while you remember the Cross, you have nothing to say about the dead brought back to life, the blind who saw again, the paralytics who were cured and the lepers made clean, the walking on the sea and the other signs and wonders which show Christ not as man but as God? at all events, it seems to me that you are but defrauding yourselves and are not really familiar with our Scriptures. but do read them and see that the things which Christ did, prove Him to be God abiding with us for the salvation of mankind.
'but you must also tell us your own teachings.
83  though, what could you say about senseless things except senselessness and barbarism?  but if, as I hear, you wish to say that among you people such things are spoken figuratively;*

261  the frequent castigation by the early christian writers of allegory as a rationalization of the ancient myths, shows how common it was resorted to as a last desperate effort to defend the pagan pantheon against unbelievers and scoffers.

and you make the rape of Persephone* an allegory of the earth, Hephaestus' lameness of the fire, Hera of the air, Apollo of the sun, Artemis of the moon, and Poseidon of the sea: even so you are not worshipping God Himself, but you are rendering service to the creature in place of the God who created all. for it you have composed such stories because creation is beautiful, it was for you to do no further than to admire it and not to make gods of the creatures lest you give the honor that is the maker's * to the things made.  in that case it were time that you transferred the honor due the architect to the house build by him, or the honor due the general to the soldier. now, what have you to say to all this? thus we shall know whether the Cross has anything that deserves to be made a jest of.

they were embarrassed and turning this way and that. A smiled and said, again through an interpreter: 'sight itself bears proof of all that I have said. but since, of course, you pin your faith on demonstrative proofs and this is an art in which you are masters and you want us also not to worship God without demonstrative arguments - do you first tell me this. how does precise knowledge of things come about, especially knowledge about God?  is it by verbal proof or by an act of faith?  and which comes first, an active faith or verbal proof? '  when they replied that the act of faith takes precedence and that this constitutes accurate knowledge, A said:  'Well said! faith arises from the disposition of the soul, while dialectic comes from the skill of those who

84  devise it. accordingly, those who are equipped with an active faith have no need of verbal argument and probably find it even superfluous. for what we apprehend by faith, that you attempt to construct by arguments:;  and often you cannot even express what we perceive. the conclusion is that an active faith is better and stronger than your sophistic arguments.

'we christians, therefore, possess religious truth* not on the basis of Greek philosophical reasoning,*

265  literally, 'in the wisdom of Greek words' - see I cor. 1.17

but founded on the power of a faith vouchsafed us by God through Jesus Christ. and as for the truth of the account given, note how we who have remained unlettered believe in God, recognizing from His works His Providence over all things. and as for our faith being something effectual, note how we lean upon our belief in Christ, while you take support from sophistical wranglings over words; and your phantom idols are passing into desuetude, but our faith is spreading everywhere. and you with your syllogisms and sophisms are not converting anybody from christianity to paganism:*

266  the text: eis 'EllAnismon  (greek for 'the Gentiles)

but we, teaching faith in Christ, are stripping your gods of the fear they inspiried,*

267  the (greek) word used here, dAsidImonEa, which to the pagan mind usually meant 'due respect to the gods' or simply 'religion', but to the christian became synonymous with 'superstition', is undoubtedly a reminiscence of the same term used by St. Paul in addressing the philosophers at Athens, Acts 17.22:  'Men of Athens, wherever I look I find you SCRUPULOUSLY RELIGIOUS'  (dAsidImonestepUs..)

 now that all are recognizing Christ as God and the son of God. you with all your elegant diction do not hinder the teaching of Christ; but we by mentioning the name of the crucified Christ drive away all the demons whom you fear as gods. where the Sign of the Cross appears, there magic is powerless and sorcery ineffectual.*
'indeed, tell us, where are now your oracles? where are the incantations of the Egyptians? where are the phantom illusions of the magicians? when did all these things cease and lose their significance? was it not
85  when the Cross of Christ came? wherefore, is it this that deserves scorn, and not rather the things that have been done away with by  it and proved powerless? this, too, is remarkable, the fact that your religion was never persecuted; ;  on the contrary, among men it is held in honor in every city. Christ's followers, however, are persecuted, and yet it is our cause that flourishes and prevails, not yours. your religion, for all the tranquility and protection it enjoys, is dying; whereas the faith and teaching of Christ, scorned by you and often persecuted by the rulers, has filled the world. when was there a time that the knowledge of God shone forth so brightly? or when was there a time that continence and the virtue of virginity so showed itself? or when was death so despised as when the Cross of Christ came?  and this no one doubts when he sees*

269  among numerous similar passages in the writings of the Fathers, Tertullian's Semen est sanguis christianorum (Apol. 50.6) ..(me..something like 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church)has come down as one of antiquity's most celebrated aphorisms...and Tertullian himself, so tradition has it, owed his conversion from a pagan lawyer and profligate, to his observation of the Christian men and women martyred in the Roman amphitheatre



the martyrs despising death for Christ's sake or sees the virgins of the Church who for Christ's sake keep their bodies pure and undefiled.

'these are proofs sufficient to show that faith in Christ is the only true religion. still, here you are - you who seek for conclusions based on reasoning, you have no faith!  we, however, do not prove, as our teacher said, IN PERSUASIVE WORDS OF GREEK WISDOM; *

270 I corinthians 2.4

but it is by faith that we persuade men, faith which tangibly precedes any constructive reasoning of arguments. see, here we have with us some who are suffering from demons'. these were people who had come to him troubled by demons;  bringing them forward, he said: 'either cleanse these by your syllogisms and by any art or magic you wish, calling on your idols; or, if you cannot, then stop fighting us and see the power of the Cross of Christ . having said this, he invoked Christ and signed the afflicted with the Sign of the
86  Cross, repeating the action a second and third time. and at once the persons stood up completely cured, restored to their right mind and giving thanks to the Lord. the so-called philosophers were astonished and really amazed at the man's sagacity and at the miracle performed. but Antony said: 'why do you marvel at this? it is not we who do it, but Christ who does these things through those who believe in Him. do you, therefore, also believe and you will see that it is not wordcraft which we have, but faith through love that works for Christ; and if you, too, will make this your own, you will no longer seek arguments from reason, but will consider faith in Christ sufficient by itself.

11.29.2016 DE FUTILITATE early 1940s (in the Seeing Eye by C.S. LEWIS)

the editor says this was given at Magdalen College, Oxford during World War II at the invitation of Sir Henry Tizard (ten President of the college)

when I was asked to address you, Sir Henry Tizard suggested that the problem of futility was likely to be present to many of your minds. it would have been raised by the disappointment of all those hopes with which the last war closed and the uneasy feeling that the results of the present war may prove equally disappointing. and if I remember rightly he also hinted that the feeling of futility might go even deeper. the eschatological hopes which supported our more remote and christian ancestors, and the secular hopes which supported the Revolutionaries or even the Liberals of the last century, have both rather faded out. there is a certain vacuity left: a widespread question as to what all this hustling and crowded life is ABOUT or whether indeed it is about anything.

now in one way I am the worst person in the world to address you on this subject. perhaps because I had a not very happy boyhood or perhaps because of some peculiarity

78  in my glands, I am too familiar with the idea  of futility to feel the shock of it so sharply as a good speaker on the subject ought to. early in this war a labouring man who was doing a midnight Home Guard Patrol with another educated man and myself, discovered from our conversation that we did not expect that this war would end wars or, in general, that human misery would ever be abolished.I shall never forget that man standing still there in the moonlight for at least a whole minute, as this entirely novel idea sank in and at last breaking out 'then what's the good of the ruddy world going on?  what astonished me - for I was as much astonished as the workman  - was the fact that this misgiving was wholly new to him. how, I wondered, could a man have reached the middle 40s without ever before doubting whether there WAS any good in the ruddy world going on? such security was to me unimaginable. I can understand a man coming in the end, and after prolonged consideration, to the view that existence is not futile. but how any man could have taken it for granted beat me and beats me still. and if there is anyone present whose fear of futility is based solely on such local and temporary facts as the war or the almost equally threatening prospect of the next peace, I must ask him to bear with me while I suggest that we have to face the possiblity of a much deeper and more radical futility: one which, if it exists at all, is wholly incurable.

this cosmic futility is concealed form the masses by popular Evolutionism, speaking to a scientifically trained audience I need not labour the point that popular Evolutionism is something quite different from Evolution as the biologists understand it. Biological Evolution is a theory

79  about how organisms change. some of these changes have made organisms, judged by human standards, 'better' - more flexible, stronger, more conscious. the majority of the changes have not done so. as J. B. S. Haldane says,
IN EVOLUTION PROGRESS IS THE EXCEPTION AND DEGENERATION THE RULE.
POPULAR EVOLUTIONISM IGNORES THIS.
FOR IT, 'EVOLUTION' SIMPLY MEANS 'IMPROVEMENT'.
and IT IS NOT CONFINED TO ORGANISMS,
BUT APPLIED  ALSO TO MORAL QUALITIES, INSTITUTIONS, ARTS, INTELLIGENCE and the like. there is thus lodged in popular thought the conception that improvement is, somehow, a cosmic law: a conception to which the sciences give no support at all. there is no evidence that the mental and moral capacities of the human race have been increased since man became man. and there is certainly no tendency for the universe as a whole to move in any direction which we should call 'good'. on the contrary, Evolution - even if it were what the mass of the people suppose it to be - is only (by astronomical and physical standards) an inconspicuous foreground detail in the picture.  the huge background is filled by quite different principles: entropy, degradation, disorganization . everything suggests that organic life is going to be a very short and unimportant episode in the history of the universe. we have often heard individuals console themselves for their individual troubles by saying:  'it will be all the same 100 years hence'.  but you can do the like about our troubles as a species. whatever we do it is all going to be the same in a few hundred million years hence. organic life is only a lightning flash in cosmic history, in the long run, nothing will come of it

now do not misunderstand me. I am not for one moment

80  trying to suggest that this long-term futility provides any ground for diminishing our efforts to make human life, while it lasts, less painful and less unfair than it has been up to date. the fact that the ship is sinking is no reason for allowing her to be a floating hell while she still floats. indeed, there is a certain fine irony in the idea of keeping the ship very punctiliously in good order up to the very moment at which she goes down. if the universe is shameless and idiotic, that is no reason why we should imitate it. well brought up people have always regarded the tumbril and the scaffold as places for one's best clothes and best manners. such, at least, was my first reaction to the picture of the futile cosmos. and I am not, in the first instance, suggesting that that picture should be allowed to make any difference to our practice. but it must make a difference to our thoughts and feelings.

now it seems to me that there are 3 lines, and 3 only, which one can take about this futility. in the first place, you can simply 'take it'. you can become a consistent pessimist, as Lord Russell was when he wrote The Worship of a Free Man, and base your whole life on what he called 'a firm foundation of unspeakable despair. you will feed yourself on the Wessex novels and The Shropshire Lad and Lucretius: and a very manly , impressive figure you may contrive to be. in the second place you can deny the picture of the universe which the scientists paint. there are various ways of doing this. you might become a Western Idealist or an Oriental Pantheist. in either case you would maintain that the material universe was , in the last resort, not quite real. it is a kind of mirage produced by our senses and forms of thought: Reality is to be sought elsewhere. or you might say - as Jews, Mohammedans

81  and christians do , that though Nature is as far as she goes, still there are other realities and that by bringing them in you alter the picture so much that it is no longer a picture of futility. or thirdly, one could accept the scientific picture and try to do something about the futility. I mean, instead of criticizing the universe we may criticize our own felling about the universe, and try to show that our sense of futility is unreasonable or improper or irrelevant. I imagine this third procedure will seem to you, at any rate to begin with, the most promising. let us explore it.

I think the most damaging criticism we can level against our own feeling of cosmic futility is this:  'Futility' is the opposite of 'utility'. a machine or plan is futile when it does not serve the purpose for which it was devised. in calling the universe futile, therefore, we are really applying to it a means-and -ends pattern of thought: treating it as if it were a thing manufactured and manufactured for some purpose. in calling it futile we are only expressing our naive surprise at the discovery that basic reality does not possess the characteristics of a human artifact - a thing made by men to serve the purposes of men - and the demand that it should may be regarded as preposterous: it is rather like complaining that a tree is futile because the branches don't happen to come just where we want them for climbing it - or even a stone because it doesn't happen to be edible.

this point of view certainly seems, at first, to have all the bracing shock of common sense and I certainly believe that no philosophy which does not contain this view as at least one of its elements is at all likely to be true. but taken by itself it will turn out to be rather too simple.

82  if we push it to its logical conclusion we shall arrive at something like this. the proper way of stating the facts is not to say that the universe is futile, but that the universe has produced and animal, namely man, which can make tools. the long habit of making tools has engendered in him another habit - that of thinking in terms of means and ends. this habit becomes so deeply engrained that even when the creature is not engaged in tool-making it continues to use this pattern of thought - to 'project' it (as we say) upon reality as a whole. hence arises the absurd practice of demanding that the universe should be 'good' or complaining that it is 'bad'. but such thoughts are MERELY human. they tell us nothing about the universe, they are merely a fact about Man - like his pigmentation or the shape of his lungs.
there is something attractive about this:  but the question is how far we can go. can we carry through to the end the view that human thought is MERELY human: that he thinks in a certain way: that it in no way reflects (though no doubt it results from) non-human or universal reality? the moment we ask this question, we receive a check. we are at this very point asking whether a certain view of human thought is true. and the view in question is just the view that human thought is NOT true, not a reflection of reality. and this view is itself a thought. in other words, we are asking 'is the thought that no thoughts are true, itself true? if we answer Yes, we contradict ourselves. for if all thoughts are untrue, then this thought is untrue.
there is therefore no question of a total scepticism about human thought. we are always prevented from accepting total scepticism because it can be formulated only by

83  making a tacit exception in favour of the thought we are thinking at the moment just as the man who warns the newcomer 'Don't trust anyone in this office' always expects you to trust him at that moment. whatever happens, then, the most we can ever do is to decide that certain types of human thought are 'merely human' or subjective, and others not. however small the class, SOME class of thoughts must be regarded not as mere facts about the way human brains work, but as true insights, as the reflection of reality in human consciousness.
one popular distinction is between what is called scientific thought and other kinds of thought. it is widely believed that scientific thought does put us in touch with reality, whereas moral or metaphysical thought does not. on this view, when we say that the universe is a space-time continuum we are saying something about reality, whereas if we say that the universe is futile, or that men ought to have a living wage, we are only describing our own subjective feelings. that is why in modern stories of what the Americans call 'scientifictional ' type - stories about unknown species who inhabit other planets or the depth of the sea - these creatures are usually pictured as being wholly devoid of our moral standards but as accepting our scientific standards. the implication is, of course, that scientific thought, being objective, will be the same for all creatures that can reason at all, whereas moral thought, being merely a subjective thing like one's taste in food, might be expected to vary from species to species.
but the distinction thus made between scientific and non-scientific thoughts will not easily bear the weight we are attempting to put on it. the cycle of scientific thought is from experiment to hypothesis and thence to verification an a new hypothesis. experiment means sense-experiences.

84  specially arranged. verification involves inference. 'if X existed, then, under conditions Y, we should have the experience Z.  we then produce the conditions Y and Z appears. we thence infer the existence of X. now it is clear that the only part of this process which assures us of any reality outside ourselves is precisely the inference. 'If X, then Z, or conversely 'Since Z, therefore X. the other parts of the process, namely hypothesis and experiment, cannot by themselves give us any assurance. the hypothesis is, admittedly, a mental construction -something, as they say, 'inside our own heads'. and the experiment is a state of our own consciousness. it is, say, a dial reading or a colour seen if you heat the fluid in the test tube. that is to say, it is a state of visual sensation. the apparatus used in the experiment is believed to exist outside our own minds only on the strength of an inference: it is inferred as the cause of our visual sensations. I am not at all suggesting that the inference is a bad one. I am not a subjective idealist and I fully believer that the distinction we make between an experiment in a dream and an experiment in a laboratory is a sound one. I am only pointing out that the material or external world in general is an inferred world and that therefore particular experiments, far from taking us out of the magic circle of inference into some supposed direct contact with reality, are themselves evidential only as parts of that great inference, the physical sciences, then, depend on the validity of logic just as much as metaphysics or mathematics. if popular thought feels 'science to be different from all other kinds of knowledge because science is experimentally verifiable, popular though is mistaken. experimental verification is not a new kind of assurance coming in to supply the deficiencies of mere
85  logic. we should therefore abandon the distinction between scientific and non-scientific thought. the proper distinction is between logical and non-logical thought. I mean, the proper distinction for our present purpose: that purpose being to find whether there is any class of thoughts which has objective value, which is not MERELY  a fact about how the human cortex behaves. for that purpose we can make no distinction between science and other logical exercises of thought, for if logic is discredited science must go down along with it.
it therefore follows that all knowledge whatever depends on the validity of inference. if, in principle, the feeling of certainty we have when we say 'because A is B therefore C must be K' is an illusion, if it reveals only how our cortex has to work and not how realities external to us must really be, then we can know nothing whatever. I say 'in principle' because, of course, through inattention or fatigue we often make false inferences and while we make them they feel as certain as the sound ones. but then they are always corrigible by further reasoning. that does not matter. what would matter would be if inference itself, even apart from accidental errors, were a merely subjective phenomenon.

now let me go back a bit. we began by asking whether our feeling of futility could be set aside as a merely subjective and irrelevant result which the universe has produced in human brains. I postponed answering that question until we had attempted a larger one. I asked whether IN GENERAL human thought could be set aside as irrelevant to the real universe and merely subjective. I now claim to have found the answer to this larger question. the answer is that at least one kind of thought - logical thought - cannot be subjective and irrelevant to the real universe:  for unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe. we reach our knowledge of the universe only by inference. the very object to which our thought supposed to be irrelevant depends on the relevance of our thought. a universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us that inference is invalid. that would really be a bit too nonsensical. I conclude then that logic is a real insight into the way in which real things have to exist. in other words, the laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time.

this admission seems to me completely unavoidable and it has very momentous consequences.

in the first place it rules out any materialistic account of thinking. we are compelled to admit between the thoughts of a terrestrial astronomer and the behaviour of matter several light -years away that particular relation which we call truth. but this relation has no meaning at all if we try to make it exist between the matter of the star and the astronomer's brain, considered as a lump of matter. the brain may be in all sorts of relations to the star no doubt: it is in a spatial relation, and a time relation, and a quantitative relation. but to talk of one bit of matter as being true about another bit of matter seems to me to be nonsense. it might conceivably turn out to be the case that every atom in the universe thought and thought truly, about every
87  other. but that relation between any 2 atoms would be something quite distinct from the physical relations between them. in saying that thinking is not matter I am not suggesting that there is anything mysterious about it. in one sense, thinking is the simplest thing in the world. we do it all day long. we know what it is like far better than we know what matter is like. thought is what we start from: the simple,  intimate, immediate DATUM. matter is the inferred thing, the mystery.

in the second place, to understand that logic must be valid is to see at once that this thing we all know, this thought, this mind, cannot in fact be really alien to the nature of the universe. or, putting it the other way round, the nature of the universe cannot be really alien to Reason. we find that matter always obeys the same laws which our logic obeys. when logic says a thing must be so, nature always agrees. no one can suppose that this can be due to a happy coincidence. a grat many people think that it is due to the fact that Nature produced the mind. but on the assumption that Nature is herself mindless this provides no explanation. to be the result of a series of mindless events is one thing:  to be a kind of plan or true account of the laws according to which those mindless events happened is quite another. thus the Gulf Stream produces all sorts of results: for instance, the temperature of the Irish Sea. what it does not produce is maps of the Gulf Stream produces all sorts of results: for instance, the temperature of the Irish Sea. what it does not produce is maps of the Gulf Stream. but if logic, as we find it operative in our own minds, is really a result of mindless nature, then it is a result as improbable as that. the laws whereby logic obliges us to think turn our to be the laws according to which every event in space and time must happen. the man who thinks this an ordinary or probable result does not really understand, it is as
88  if cabbages, in addition to resulting FROM the laws of botany also gave lectures in that subject: or as if, when i knocked out my pipe, the ashes arranged themselves into letters which read:  'we are the ashes of a knocked-out pipe'. but if the validity of knowledge cannot be explained in that way, and if perpetual happy coincidence throughout the whole of recorded time is out of the question, then surely we must seek the real explanation elsewhere.

I want to put this other explanation in the broadest possible terms and am anxious that you should not imagine i am trying to prove anything more, or more definite, than i really am. and perhps the safest way of putting it is this: that we must give up talking about 'human reason'. in so far as thought is merely human, merely a characteristic of one particular biological species, it does not explain our knowledge. where thought is strictly rational it must be, in some odd sense, not ours, but cosmic or super-cosmic. it must be something not shut up inside our heads but already 'out there' - in the universe or behind the universe: either as objective as material Nature or more objective still. unless all that we take to be knowledge is an illusion, we must hold that in thinking we are not reading rationality into an irrational universe by responding to a rationality with which the universe has always been saturated. there are all sorts of different ways in which you can develop this position, either into an idealist metaphysic or a theology, into a theistic or a pantheistic or dualist theology. I am not tonight going to trace those possible developments, still less to defend the particular one which I myself accept. I am only going to consider what light this conception, in its most general form, throws on the question of futility.
89  at first sight it might seem to throw very little. the universe, as we have observed it, does not appear to be in any sense good as a whole, though it throws up some particular details which are very good indeed - strawberries and the sea and sunrise and the song of the birds. but these, quantitatively considered, are so brief and small compared with the huge tracts of empty space and the enormous masses of uninhabitable matter that we might well regard them as lucky accidents. we might therefore conclude that though the ultimate reality is logical it has no regard for values, or at any rate for the values we recognize. and so we could still accuse it of futility. but there is a real difficulty about accusing it of anything. an accusation always implies a standard. you call a man a bad golf player because you know what Bogey is. you call a boy's answer to a sum wrong because you know the right answer. you call a man cruel or idle because you have in mind a standard of kindness or diligence. and while you are making the accusation you have to accept the standard as a valid one. if you begin to doubt the standard you automatically doubt the cogency of your accusation. if you are sceptical about grammar you must be equally sceptical about your condemnation of bad grammar. if nothing is certainly right, then of course it follows that nothing is certainly wrong. and that is the snag about what I would call Heroic Pessimism - I mean the kind of Pessimism you get in Swinburne, Hardy and Shelley's Prometheus and which is magnificently summed up in Housman's line 'whatever brute and blackguard made the world. do not imagine that I lack sympathy with that kind of poetry; on the contrary, at one time of my life I tried very hard to write it - and, as far as quantity goes, I succeeded. I
90  produced reams of it. but there is a catch. if a Brute and Blackguard made the world, then he also made our minds. if he made our minds, he also made that very standard in them whereby we judge him to be a Brute and Blackguard. and how can we trust a standard which comes from such a brutal and blackguardly source? if we reject him, we ought also to reject all his works. but one of his works is this very moral standard by which we reject him. if we accept this standard then we are really implying that he is not a Brute and Blackguard. if we reject it, then we have thrown away the only instrument by which we can condemn him.  heroic anti-theism thus has a contradiction in its centre. you must trust the universe in one respect even in order to condemn it in every other.

what happens to our sense of values is , in fact, exactly what happens to our logic. if it is a purely human sense of values - a biological by-product in a particular species with no relevance to reality - then we cannot, having one realize this, continue to use it as the ground for what are meant to be serious criticisms of the nature of things. nor
91  can we continue to attach any importance to the efforts we make towards realizing our ideas of value. a man cannot continue to make sacrifices for the good of posterity is simply an irrational subjective taste of his own on the same level with his fondness for pancakes or his dislike for span=m. I am well aware that many whose philosophy involves this subjective view of values do in fact sometimes make great efforts for the cause of justice or freedom. but that is because they forget their philosophy. when they really get to work they think that justice is really good - objectively obligatory whether any one likes it or not:  they remember their opposite philosophical belief only when they go back to the lecture room. our sense that the universe is futile and our sense of a duty to make those parts of it we can reach less futile, both really imply a belief that it is not in fact futile at all: a belief that values are rooted in reality, outside ourselves. that the Reason in which the universe is saturated is also moral.
there remains, of course, the possibility that Its values are widely different from ours. and in some sense this must be so.  the particular interpretation of the universe which I accept certainly represents them as differing from ours in many acutely distressing ways. but there are strict limits to the extent which we can allow to this admission.
let us go back to the question of Logic. I have tried to show that you reach a self-contradiction id you say that logical inference is, in principle, invalid. on the other hand, nothing is more obvious that that we frequently make false inferences: from ignorance of some of the factors involved, from inattention, from inefficiencies in the system of symbols (linguistic or otherwise) which we

92 are using, from the secret influence of our unconscious wishes or fears. we are therefore driven to combine a steadfast faith in inference as such with a wholesome scepticism about each particular instance of inference in the mind of a human thinker. as I have said, there is no such thing (strictly speaking) as HUMAN reason: but there is emphatically such a thing as human thought  - in other words, the various specifically human conceptions of Reason, failures of complete rationality, which arise in a wishful and lazy human mind utilizing a tired human brain. the difference between acknowledging this and being sceptical about Reason itself, is enormous. for in the one case we should be saying that reality contradicts Reason, whereas now  we are only saying that total Reason - cosmic or super-cosmic reason - CORRECTS  human imperfections of Reason. now correction is not the same as mere contradiction.  when your false reasoning is corrected you 'see the mistakes' :  the true reasoning thus takes up into itself whatever was already rational in your original thought. you are not moved into a totally new world:  you are given MORE  and PURER of what you already had in a small quantity and badly mixed with foreign elements. to say that Reason is objective is to say that all our false reasonings could in principle be corrected by more Reason. I have to add 'in principle' because, of course, the reasoning necessary to give us absolute truth about the whole universe might be (indeed, certainly would be ) too complicated for any human mind to hold it all together or even to keep on attending. but that, again, would be a defect in the human instrument, not in Reason. a sum in simple arithmetic may be too long and complicated for a child's limited powers of concentration:  but it is not a radically different kind of thing from the short sums the child CAN do.

now it seems to me that the relation between our sense of values and the values acknowledged by the cosmic or super-cosmic Reason is likely to be the same as the relation between our attempts at logic and Logic itself. it is, I admit, conceivable that the ultimate Reason acknowledges no values at all: but that theory, as I have tried to show, is inconsistent with our continuing to attach any importance to our own values. and since everyone in fact intends to continue doing so, that theory is not really a live option. but if we attribute a sense of value to the ultimate Reason, I do not think we can suppose it to be totally different from our own sense of value. if it were, then our own sense of value would have to be merely human: and from that all the same consequences would flow as from an admission that the supreme mind acknowledged no values at all.indeed to say that a mind has a sense of values TOTALLY different from the only values we can conceive is to say that that mind has we know not what: which is precious near saying nothing particular about it. it would also be very odd, on the supposition that our sense of values is a mere illusion, that education, rationality and enlightenment show no tendency to remove it from human minds. and a this stage in the argument there is really no inducement to do any of these rather desperate things. the PRIMA FACIE  case for denying a sense of values to the cosmic or super -cosmic mind has really collapsed the moment we see that we have to attribute reason to it. when we are forced to admit that reason cannot be merely human, there is no longer any compulsive inducement to say that virtue is purely human. if wisdom turns out to be something objective and external, it is at least probable that goodness will turn out to be the same. but here also it is reasonable to combine a firm
 94  belief in the objective validity of goodness with a considerable scepticism about all our particular moral judgments. to say that they all require correction is indeed to say both that they are partially wrong and that they are not merely subjective facts about ourselves - for if that were so the process of enlightenment would consist not in correcting them but in abandoning them altogether.

there is, to be sure, one glaringly obvious ground for denying that any moral purpose at all is operative in the universe:  namely, the actual course of events in all its wasteful cruelty and apparent indifference, or hostility,  to life. but then, as I maintain, that is precisely the ground which we cannot use. unless we judge this waste and cruelty to be real evils we cannot of course condemn the universe for exhibiting them. unless we take our own standard of goodness to be valid in principle (however fallible  our particular application of it) we cannot mean anything by calling wast and cruelty evils. and unless we take our own standard to be something more than ours, to be in fact an objective principle to which we are responding, we cannot regard that standard as valid. in a word, unless we allow ultimate reality to be moral, we cannot morally condemn it. the more seriously we take our own charge of futility the more we are committed to the implication that reality in the last resort is not futile at all. the defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. the fact
95  that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still.
I cannot and never could persuade myself that such defiance is displeasing to the supreme mind. there is something holier about the atheism of a Shelley than about the theism of a paley. that is the lesson of the Book of Job. no explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is there given: that is not the point of the poem. the point is that the man who accepts our ordinary standard of good and by it hotly criticizes divine justice receive the divine approval: the orthodox , pious people who palter with that standard in the attempt to justify god are condemned. apparently the way to advance from our imperfect apprehension of justice to the absolute justice is NOT  to throw our imperfect apprehensions aside but boldly to go on applying them. just as the pupil advances to more perfect arithmetic not by throwing his multiplication table away but by working it for all it is worth.

of course no one will be content to leave the matter just where the Book of Job leaves it. but that is as far as I intend to go tonight.  having grasped the truth that our very condemnation of reality carries in its heart an unconscious act of allegiance to that same reality as the source of our moral standards, we then of course have to ask how this ultimate morality in the universe can be reconciled with the actual course of events. it is really the same sort of problem that meets us in science. the pel-mell of phenomena, as we first observe them, seems to be full of anomalies and irregularities; but being assured that reality is logical we go on framing and trying out hypotheses to  show that the apparent irregularities are not really irregular at all. the history of science is the history of that process.

96  the corresponding process whereby, having admitted that reality in the last resort must be moral, we attempt to explain evil, is the history of theology. into that theological inquiry i do not propose to go at present. if any of you thinks of pursuing it, I would risk giving one piece of advice. i think he can save himself time by confining his attention to 2 systems Hinduism and Christianity. I believe these are the 2 serious options for an adult mind. Materialism is a philosophy for boys. the purely moral systems like Stoicism and Confucianism are philosophies for aristocrats. Islam is only a christian heresy and Buddhism a Hindu heresy: both are simplifications inferior to the things simplified. as for the old pagan religions, i think we could say that whatever was of value in them survives either in Hinduism or in Christianity or in both and there only: they are the 2 systems which have come down, still alive, into the present without leaving the past behind them.

but all that is a matter for further consideration. i aim tonight only at reversing the popular belief that reality is totally alien to our minds.  my answer to that view consists  simply in restating it in the form:  'OUR MINDS ARE TOTALLY ALIEN TO REALITY'.  put that way, it reveals itself as a self-contradiction. for if our minds are totally alien to reality then ALL OUR THOUGHTS, INCLUDING THIS THOUGHT, ARE WORTHLESS.  we must, then, grant logic to the reality; we must, if we are to have any moral standards, grant it moral standards too. and there is really no reason why we should not do the same about standards of beauty. there is no reason why our reaction to a beautiful landscape should not be the response, however humanly blurred and partial, to a something that is really there. the idea of a wholly mindless
97  and valueless universe has to be abandoned at one point -ie. as regards logic: after that, there is no telling at how many other points it will be defeated nor how great the reversal of our 19th century philosophy must finally be.

CAN I 'LOSE' MY SALVATION? ie. can i walk away from the Lord who saved me? (in times past they called it 'BACKSLIDING')

GOD SPEAKING TO THE PROPHET EZEKIEL (Ezekiel 3.16-21) taken from Keil-Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

v16  'and it came to pass after the lapse of 7 days, that the word of Jehovah came to me as follows: v17 Son of man, I have set the to be a watchman over the house of Israel; thou shalt hear the word from My mouth and thou shalt warn them from Me. v18 if I say to the SINNER, Thou shalt surely die and thou warnest him not and speakest not to warn the sinner from his evil way that he may live, then shall he, the sinner, die because of his evil deeds, but his blood will I require at thy hand.  v19 but if thou warnest the SINNER and he turn not from his wickedness and his evil way, then shall he die because of his evil deeds, but thou hast saved thy soul. v20 and if a RIGHTEOUS man  *turn from his righteousness, and **do unrighteousness and I  LAY A ***STUMBLING BLOCK before him then shall he die; if thou hast not warned him, he shall die because of his sin, and HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH HE HAS DONE SHALL NOT BE REMEMBERED, but his blood will I require at thy hand. v21 but if thou warnest him - the righteous man - so that the righteous man sin not and he do not sin, then will he live , because he has been warned and thou hast saved thy soul.

COMMENT...Ezekiel is like one standing upon a watchtower (habbakuk 2.1), to watch over the condition of the people, and warn them of the dangers that threaten them (Jeremiah 6.17; Isaiah 41.10,) as such, he is responsible for the souls entrusted to his charge. from the mouth of Jehovah, ie. according to God's word, he is to admonish the wicked to turn from their evil ways, that they die not in their sins...if the prophet does not warn the wicked man, as God has commanded him, he renders himself guilty of a deadly sin, for which God will take vengeance on him as on the murderer for the shedding of blood...the righteous man who backslides is, before God, regarded as equal with the sinner who persists in his sin, if the former, notwithstanding the warning, perseveres in his backsliding (v20)..(* 'to turn oneself from his righteousness' denotes the formal falling away from the path of righteousness), not mere 'stumbling or sinning from weakness'. (**do unrighteousness, act perversely) 'so that in consequence of which he die'.  (***'OBJECT OF OFFENSE', by which any one comes to fall, is not destruction, considered as punishment deserved, but
EVERYTHING THAT GOD PUTS IN THE WAY OF THE SINNER,
IN ORDER THAT THE SIN, WHICH IS GERMINATING IN HIS SOUL,
MAY COME FORTH TO THE LIGHT
AND RIPEN TO MATURITY.
God, indeed, neither cause sin, nor desires the death of the sinner; and in this sense He does not tempt to evil (James 1.13),
but He guides and places the sinner in relations in life in which he must come to
a decision for or against what is good and divine, and
either suppress the sinful lusts of his heart or
burst the barriers which are opposed to their satisfaction.
if he does not do the former, but the latter,
evil gains within him more and more strength,
so that HE BECOMES THE SERVANT OF SIN
AND FINALLY
REACHES A POINT WHERE CONVERSION IS IMPOSSIBLE.
for the subject spoken of (in the next verse..21) is not that the backsliding man 'in general only dies if he is not warned...that meaning is not in v21, it is 'that he (in that verse) gives sure obedience to the warning - but only the possibility is supposed that one who has transgressed upon the way of evil, will yield obedience to the warning, but not that he will of a certainty do this.

other verses along this line: revelation 3.5; matthew 5.21;  I john 5.16; hebrews 6.4-6...

11.23.2016 ON ETHICS taken from The Seeing Eye and other selected essays from christian reflections (1967) by C.S.LEWIS

editor, Walter Hooper, believes this to have been written before Lewis's Abolition of Man (1943). see footnote p 47


59  it is often asserted in modern england that the world must return to christian ethics in order to preserve civilization, or even  in order to save the human species from destruction. it is sometimes asserted in reply that christian ethics have been the greatest obstacle to human progress and that we must take care never to return to a bondage from which we have at last so fortunately escaped. I will not weary you with a repetition of the common arguments by which either view  could be supported. my task is a different one. though I am myself a christian and even a dogmatic christian untinged with Modernist reservations and committed to supernaturalism in its full rigour, i fond myself quite unable to take my place beside the upholders of the first view. the whole debate between those who demand and those who deprecate a return to christian  ethics, seems to me to involve presuppositions which i cannot allow.
60  the question between the contending parties has been wrongly put.

I must begin by distinguishing the senses in which we may speak of ethical systems and of the differences between them. we may, on the one hand, mean by an ethical system a body of ethical injunctions. in this sense, when we speak of Stoical Ethics we mean the system which strongly commends suicide (under certain conditions) and enjoins Apathy in the technical sense, the extinction of emotions; when we speak of Aristotelian ethics we mean the system which finds in Virtuous Pride or Magnanimity the virtue  that presupposes and includes all other virtues; when we speak of christian ethics we mean the system that commands humility, forgiveness, and (in certain circumstances) martyrdom. the differences, from this point of view, are differences of content. but we also sometimes speak of Ethical Systems when we mean systematic analysis and explanations of our moral experience. thus the expression 'Kantian Ethics" signifies not primarily a body of commands - Kant did not differ remarkably from other men on the content of ethics - but the doctrine of the Categorical imperative. from this point of view Stoical Ethics is the system which defines moral behaviour by conformity to nature, or the whole, or Providence - terms almost interchangeable in Stoical thought: Aristotelian ethics is the system of eudaemonism: Christian ethics, the system which, whether by exalting Faith above Works, by asserting that love fulfils the Law, or by demanding Regeneration, makes duty a self-transcending concept and endeavours to escape from the region of mere morality.
it would of course be naive to suppose that there is no profound connection between an ethical system in the one sense and an ethical system in the other. the philosopher's

61  or theologian's theory of ethics arises out of the practical ethics he already holds and attempts to obey and again, the theory, once formed, reacts on his judgement of what ought to be done. that is a truth in no danger of being neglected by an age so steeped in historicism (note - one of the essays of this book) as ours. we are, if anything, too deeply imbued with the sense of period, too eager to trace a common spirit in the ethical practice and ethical theory, in the economics, institutions, art, dress and language of a society. it must, however, also be insisted that Ethical Systems in the one sense do not differ in a direct ratio to the difference of Ethical Systems in another. the number of actions about whose ethical quality a Stoic, an Aristotelian, a Thomist, a Kantian, and a Utilitarian would agree is, after all very large. the very act of studying diverse ethical theories, as theories, exaggerates the practical differences between them. while we are studying them from that point of view we naturally and, for that purpose, rightly seize on the marginal case where the theoretical difference goes with a contradiction between the injunctions, because it is the expedrimentum crucis. but the exaggeration useful in one inquiry must not be carried over into other inquiries.

when modern writers urge us to return or not to return, to Christian Ethics, I presume they mean christian ethics in our first sense; a body of injunctions, not a theory as to the origin, sanctions or ultimate significance. of those injunctions. if they do not mean that, then they should not talk about a return to christian ethics by simply about a return to christianity. i will at any rate assume that in this debate christian ethics means a body of injunctions.

62  and now my difficulties begin. a debate about the desirability of adopting christian ethics seems to proceed upon 2 presuppositions. 1. that christian ethics is one among several alternative bodies of injunctions, so clearly distinct from one another that the whole future of out species in this planet depends on our choice between them. 2. that we to whom the disputants address their pleadings, are for the moment standing outside all these systems in a sort of ethical vacuum, ready to enter which ever of them is most convincingly recommended to us. and it does not appear to me that either presupposition corresponds at all closely or sensitively to the reality.

consider with me for a moment the first presupposition. did christian ethics really enter the world as a novelty, a new, peculiar set of commands, to which a man could be in the strict sense CONVERTED? i say converted to the practical ethics; he could of course be converted to the christian faith, he could accept, not only as a novelty, but as a transcendent novelty, a mystery hidden from all eternity, the deity and resurrection of Jesus, the atonement, the forgiveness of sins. but these novelties themselves set a rigid limit to the novelty we can assume in the ethical injunctions. the convert accepted forgiveness of sins. but of sins against what law?  some new law promulgated by the christians? but that is nonsensical. it would be the mockery of a tyrant to forgive a man for doing what had never been forbidden until the very moment at which the forgiveness was announced. the idea (at least in its grossest and most popular form) that christianity brought a new ethical code into the world is a grave error. if it had done so, then we should have to conclude that all who firs preached it wholly misunderstood their own message: for all of them, its Founder, His precursor, his apostles, came

63  demanding repentance and offering forgiveness, a demand and an offer both meaningless except on the assumption of a moral law already known and already broken.

it is far from my intention to deny that we find in christian ethics a deepening, an internalization, a few changes of emphasis, in the moral code. but only serious ignorance of jewish and pagan culture would lead anyone to the conclusion that it is a radically new thing. essentially, christianity is not the promulgation of a moral discovery. it is addressed only to penitents, only to those who admit their disobedience to the known moral law. it offers forgiveness for having broken and supernatural help towards keeping, that law, and by so doing re-affirms it. a christian who understands his own religion laughs when unbelievers expect to trouble him by the assertion that Jesus uttered no command which had not been anticipated by the Rabbis - few, indeed, which cannot be paralleled in classical, ancient Egyptian, Ninevite, Babylonian, or Chinese  texts. we have long recognized that truth with rejoicing. our faith is not pinned on a crank.
the second presupposition - that of an ethical vacuum in which we stand deciding what code we will adopt - is not quite so easily dealt with, but I believe it to be, in the long run, equally misleading. of course, historically or chronologically, a man need not be supposed to stand outside all ethical codes at the moment when you exhort
64  him to adopt christian ethics. a man who is attending one lecturer or one physician may be advised to exchange him for another. but he cannot come to a decision without first reaching a moment of indecision. there must be a point at which he feels himself attached to neither and weighs their rival merits. adherence to either is inconsistent with choice. in the same way, the demand that we should reassume, or refrain from reassuming, the christian code of ethics, invites us to enter a state in which we shall be unattached.
I am not, of course, denying that some men at some times can be in an ethical vacuum, adhering to no ethical system. but  most of those who are in that state are by no means engaged in deciding what system they shall adopt, for such men do not often propose to adopt any. they are more often concerned with getting out of gaols or asylums. our question is whether the sort of men who urge us to return (or not to return) to christian ethics, or the sort of men who listen to such appeals, can enter the ethical vacuum which seems to be involved in the very conception of choosing an ethical code. and the best way of answering this question is (as sometimes happens) by asking another first. supposing we can enter the vacuum and view all ethical systems from the outside, what sort of motives can we then expect to find for entering any one of them?

one thing is immediately clear. we can have no ETHICAL (note - most capitalization, thruout is mine) motives for adopting any of these systems. it cannot, while we are in the vacuum, be our duty to emerge from it. an act of duty is an act of obedience to the moral law. but by definition we are standing outside all codes of moral law. a man with no ethical allegiance can have no ethical motive for adopting one if he had,it would prove that he was not really in the vacuum at all. how then does it come

65  about that men who talk as if we could stand outside all moralities and choose among them as a woman chooses a hat, nevertheless exhort us(and often in passionate tones) to make some one particular choice?  they have a ready answer. almost invariably they recommend some code of ethics on the ground that it and it alone, will preserve civilization or the human race. what they seldom tell us is whether the preservation of the human race is itself a duty or whether they expect us to aim at it on some other ground. 
now if it is a duty, then clearly those who exhort us to it are not themselves really in a moral vacuum, and do not seriously believe that we are in a moral vacuum. at the very least they accept and count on our accepting, one moral injunction. their moral code is, admittedly, singularly poor in content. its solitary command,compared with the richly articulated codes of Aristotle, Confucius, or Aquinas, suggests that it is a mere residuum; as the arts of certain savages suggest that they are the last vestige of a vanished civilization. but there is a profound difference between having a fanatical and narrow morality and having no morality at all. if they were really in a moral vacuum, when could they have derived the idea of even a single duty?
in order to evade the difficulty, it may be suggested that the preservation of our species is not a moral imperative but an end prescribed by Instinct. to this I reply, firstly, that it is very doubtful whether there is such an instinct; and secondly, that if there were, it would not do the work which those who invoke instinct in this context demand of it.
have we in fact such an instinct? we must here be careful about the meaning of the word. in english the
66  word INSTINCT is often loosely used for what ought rather to be called APPETITE;  thus we speak of the sexual instinct.  Instinct in this sense means AN IMPULSE WHICH APPEARS IN CONSCIOUSNESS AS DESIRE AND WHOSE FULFILLMENT IS MARKED BY PLEASURE.
that we have no instinct (in this sense) to preserve our species, seems to me self-evident. desire is directed to the concrete - this woman, this plate of soup, this glass of beer; but the preservation of the species is a high abstraction which does not even enter the mind of unreflective people and affects even cultured minds most at those times when they are least instinctive. but instinct is also and more properly, used to mean BEHAVIOUR AS IF FROM KNOWLEDGE. thus certain insects carry out complicated actions which have in fact the result that their eggs are hatched and their larvae nourished: and since (rightly or wrongly)  we refuse to attribute conscious design and foreknowledge to the agent we say that it has acted 'by  instinct'.  what that means on the subjective side, how the matter appears, if it appears at all, to the insect, I suppose we do not know. t say, in this sense, that we have an instinct to preserve the human raced, would be to say that we find ourselves compelled, we know not how, to perform acts which in fact (though that was not our purpose) tend to its preservation. this seems very unlikely. what are these acts? and if they exist, what is the purpose of urging us to preserve the race by adopting  (or avoiding) christian ethics? had not the job better be left to instinct?
yet again, instinct may be used to denote these strong impulses which are, lie the appetites, had to deny though they are not, like the appetites, directed to concrete physical pleasure. and this, I think, is what people really mean when they speak of an instinct to preserve  the human race. they mean that we have a natural, unreflective, spontaneous

67  impulse to do this, as we have to preserve our own offspring. and here we are thrown back on the debatable evidence of introspection. I do not find that I have this impulse and i do not see evidence that other men have it. do not misunderstand me. I would not be thought a monster. i acknowledge the preservation of man as an end to which my own preservation and happiness are subordinate: what i deny is that that end has been prescribed to me by a powerful, spontaneous impulse. the truth seems to me to be that we have such an impulse to preserve our children and grandchildren, an impulse which progressively weakens as we carry our minds further and further into the abyss of future generations, and which, if left to its own spontaneous strength,soon dies out altogether. let me ask anyone in this audience who is a father whether he has a spontaneous impulse to sacrifice his own son for the human species in general. i am not asking whether he would so sacrifice his son. I am asking whether, if he did so, he would be obeying a spontaneous impulse. will not every father among you reply that if this sacrifice were demanded of him and if he made it, he would do so not in obedience to a natural impulse but in hard won defiance of it? such an act, no less that the immolation of oneself, would be a triumph over nature.
but let us leave that difficulty on one side.  let us suppose, for purposes of argument, that there really is an 'instinct' (in whatever sense) to preserve civilization or the human race. our instincts are obviously in conflict. the satisfaction of one demands the denial of another. and obviously the instinct, if there is one, to preserve humanity, is the one of all others whose satisfaction is likely to entail the greatest frustration of my remaining instincts. my hunger and thirst, my sexual desires, my family affection
68  are all going to be interfered with. and remember, we are still supposed to be in the vacuum, outside all ethical systems. on what conceivable ground, in an ethical void, on the assumption that the preservation of the species is not a moral but a merely instinctive end, can i be asked to gratify my instinct for the preservation of the species by adopting a moral code? why should this instinct be preferred to all my others?  it is certainly not my strongest. even if it were, why should I not fight against it as a dipsomaniac is exhorted  to fight against his tyrannous desire? why do my advisers assume from the very outset, which argument, that this instinct should be given a dictatorship in my soul? let us not be cheated with words. it is no use to say that this is the deepest or highest or most fundamental or noblest of my instincts. such words either mean that it is my strongest instinct (which is false and would be no reason for obeying it even if it were true) or else conceal a surreptitious re-introduction of the ethical.
and in fact the ethical has been re-introduced. or, more accurately, it has never really been banished. the moral vacuum was from the outset a mere figment. those who expect us to adopt a moral code as a means to the preservation of the species have themselves already a moral code and tacitly assume that we have one too their starting point is a purely moral maxim THAT HUMANITY OUGHT TO BE PRESERVED. the introduction of instinct is futile. if you do not arrange our instincts in a hierarchy of comparative dignity, it is idle to tell us to obey instinct, for the instincts are at war. if you do, then you are arranging them in obedience to a moral principle , passing an ethical judgement upon them. if instinct is our only standard,  no instinct is to be preferred to another: for each of them will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. those

69  who urge us to choose a moral code are already moralists. we may throw away the preposterous picture of a wholly unethical man confronted with a series of alternative codes and making his free choice between them. nothing of the kind occurs. when a man is wholly unethical he does not choose between ethical code. and those who say they are choosing between ethical codes are already assuming a code.
what, then, shall we say of the maxim which turns out to e present from the beginning - THAT HUMANITY OUGHT TO BE PRESERVED? where do we get it from? or, to be more concrete, where do I get it from? certainly, i can point to  no moment in time at which i first embraced it. it is, so far as I can make out, a late and abstract generalization from all the moral teaching I have ever had. if I now wanted to find authority for it, I should have no need to appeal to my own religion. I could point to the confession of the righteous soul in the Egyptian Book of the Dead -'I have not slain men'. I could find in the Babylonian Hymn that he who meditates oppression will find his house overturned. I would find, nearer home in the Elder Edda that 'Man is man's delight'. I would find in Confucius that the people should first be multiplied, then enriched and then instructed. if I wanted the spirit of all these precepts generalized I could find in Locke that 'by the fundamental law of Nature Man is to be preserved as much as possible'.
thus from my point of view there is no particular mystery about this maxim. it is what I have been taught, explicitly and implicitly, by my nurse, my parents, my religion, by sages or poets from every culture of which I have any knowledge. to reach this maxim I have no need to choose one ethical code among many and excogitate impossible motives for adopting it. the difficulty would be

70  to find codes that contradict it. and when I had found them they would turn out to be, not radically different things, but codes in which the same principle is for some reason restricted or truncated: in which the preservation and perfection of Man shrinks to that of the tribe, the class, or the family or the nation. they could all be reached by mere subtraction from what seems to be the general code:  they differ from it not as ox from man but as dwarf from man.

thus far as concerns myself. but where do those others get it from those others who claimed to e standing outside all ethical codes? surely there is no doubt about the answer. they found it where I found it. they hold it by inheritance and training from the general (if not strictly universal) human tradition. they would never have reached their solitary injunction if they had really begun in an ethical vacuum. they have trusted the general human tradition at least to the extent of taking over from it one maxim.
but of course in that tradition this maxim did not stand alone. i found beside it many other injunctions: special duties to parents and elders, special duties to my wife and child, duties of good faith and veracity, duties to the weak, the poor and the desolate (these latter not confined, as some think, to the Judaic-Christian texts. and for me, again, there is no difficulty. i accept all these commands, all on the same authority. but there is surely a great difficulty for those who retain one and desire to drop the rest? and now we come to the heart of our subject.

there are many people in the modern world who offer us, as they say, NEW MORALITIES.  but as we have just seen there can be NO MORAL MOTIVE for entering a new morality unless that motive is borrowed from the traditional morality
71  which is neither christian nor pagan, neither Eastern nor Western, neither ancient nor modern, but general. the question then arises as to the reasonableness of taking one maxim and rejecting the rest. if the remaining maxims have no authority,
what is the authority of the one you have selected to retain?
if it has authority, why have the others no authority?
thus a scientific Humanist may urge us to get rid of what he might call our inherited Taboo morality and realize that the total exploitation of nature for the comfort and security of posterity is the sole end. his system clashes with mine, say, at the point were he demands the compulsory euthanasia of the aged or the unfit. but the duty of caring for posterity, on which he bases his whole system, has no other source than that same tradition which bids me honour my parents and do no murder (a prohibition I find in the Voluspa as well as in the Decalogue).
if, as he would have me believe,
I have been misled by the tradition when it taught me my duty to my parents,
how do I know it has not misled me equally in prescribing a duty to posterity?
again, we may have a fanatical Nationalist who tells me
to throw away my antiquated scruples about universal justice and benevolence
and adopt a system in which nothing but the wealth and power of my own country matters.
but the difficulty is the same.
I learned of a special duty to my own country in the same place where I also learned of a general duty to men as such.
if the tradition was wrong about the one duty, on what ground does the Nationalist ask me to believe that it was right about the other?
the Communist is in the same position. I may well agree with him that exploitation is an evil
and that those who do the work should reap the reward.
but I only believe this because I accept certain traditional notions of justice.
when he goes on to attack
72  JUSTICE as part of my BOURGEOIS ideology, he takes away the very ground on which I can reasonably be asked to accept his new communistic code.
let us very clearly understand that, in a certain sense, IT IS NO MORE POSSIBLE TO INVENT A NEW ETHICS THAN TO PLACE A NEW SUN IN THE SKY.
SOME PRECEPT FROM TRADITIONAL MORALITY ALWAYS HAS TO BE ASSUMED.
WE CAN NEVER START FROM A TABULA RASA (note -'original, pure state):
if we did , we should end, ethically speaking, with a tabula rasa. NEW MORALITIES CAN ONLY BED CONTRADICTIONS OR EXPANSIONS OF SOMETHING ALREADY GIVEN. and all the specifically modern attempts at new moralities are contractions. they proceed by retaining some traditional precepts and rejecting others: but the only real authority behind those which they retain is the very same authority which they flout in rejecting others. of course this inconsistency is concealed; usually, as we have seen, by a refusal to recognize the precepts that are retained as moral precepts at all.
but many other causes contribute to the concealment. as in the life of the individual so in that of a community, particular circumstances set a temporary excess of value on some one end. when we are in love, the beloved, when we are ill, health, when we are poor, money, when we are frightened, safety, seems the only thing worth having. hence he who speaks to a class, a nation or a culture, in the grip of some passion, will not find it difficult to insinuate into their minds the fatal idea of some one finite good which is worth achieving at all costs and building an eccentric ethical system on that foundation. it is, of course, no genuinely new system. whatever the chose goal may be, the idea that I should seek it for my class or culture or nation at the expense of my own personal satisfaction has no authority save that which it derives from traditional

73  morality. but in the emotion of the moment this is overlooked.

added to this, may we not recognize in modern thought a very serious exaggeration of the ethical differences between different cultures? the conception which dominates our thought is enshrined in the word IDEOLOGIES,  in so far as that word suggests that the whole moral and philosophical outlook of a people can be explained without remainder in terms of their method of production, their economic organization and their geographical position. on that view, of course, differences and differences to any extent, are to be expected between ideologies as between languages and costumes. but is this what we actually find? much anthropology seems at first to encourage us to answer Yes. but if I may venture on an opinion in a field where I am by no means an expert, I would suggest that the appearance is somewhat illusory. it seems to me to result from a concentration on those very elements in each culture which are most variable (sexual practice and religious ritual) and also from a concentration on the savage. I have even found a tendency in some thinkers to treat the savage as the normal or archetypal man. but surely he is the exceptional man. it may indeed be tgrue that wse were all savages once, as it is certainly true that we were all babies once.  but we do not treat as normal man the imbecile who remains in adult life what we all were (intellectually) in the cradle. the savage has had as many generations of ancestors as the civilized man: he is the man who, in the same number of centuries, either has not learned or has forgotten, what the rest of the human race know. I do not see why we should attach much significance to the diversity and eccentricity (themselves often exaggerated) of savage codes. and if we turn to civilized man, I claim that we shall find far fewer

differences of ethical injunction than is now popularly believed. in triumphant monotony the same indispensable platitudes will meet us in culture after culture. the idea that any of the new moralities now offered us would be simply one more addition to a variety already almost infinite,  is not in accordance with the facts. we are not really justified in speaking of different moralities as we speak of different languages or different religions.
you will not suspect me of trying to reintroduce in its full Stoical or medieval rigour the doctrine of Natural Law. still less am I claiming as the source of this substantial ethical agreement anything like Intuition of Innate Ideas. Nor, Theist though I am, do I here put forward any surreptitious argument for Theism. my aim is more timid. it is even negative, I deny that we have any choice to make between clearly differentiated ethical systems. I deny that we have any power to make a new ethical system. I assert that wherever and whenever ethical discussion begins we find already before us an ethical code whose validity has to be assumed before we can even criticize it. for no ethical attack on any of the traditional precepts can be made except on the ground of some other traditional precept. you can attack the concept of justice because it interferes with the feeding of the masses, but you have taken the duty of feeding the masses from the world-wide code. you may exalt patriotism at the expense of mercy; but it was the old code that told you to love your country. you may vivisect your grandfather in order to deliver your grandchildren from cancer: but, take away traditional morality and why should you bother about your grandchildren?

out of these negatives, there springs a positive. men say 'how are we to act, what are we to teach our children, now that we are no longer christians? you see, gentlemen,

75  how I would answer that question. you are deceived in thinking that the morality of your father was based on christianity. on the contrary, christianity presupposed it. that morality stands exactly where it did; its basis has not been withdrawn for, in a sense, it never had a basis. the ultimate ethical injunctions have always been premises, never conclusions. Kant was perfectly right on that point at least: the imperative is categorical. unless the ethical is assumed from the outset, no argument will bring you to it.
in thus recalling men to traditional morality I am not of course maintaining that it will provide an answer to every particular moral problem with which we may be confronted. M. Sartre seems to me to be the victim of a curious misunderstanding when he rejects the conception of general moral rules on the ground that such rules may fail to apply clearly to all concrete problems of conduct. who could ever have supposed that by accepting a moral code we should be delivered from all questions of casuistry (def specious (apparently good or right though lacking real merit), deceptive or oversubtle reasoning, esp. in questions of morality? obviously it is moral codes that create questions of casuistry, just as the rules of chess create chess problems. the man without a moral code, like the animal, is free from moral problems. the man who has not learned to count is free from mathematical problems. a man asleep is free from all problems. within the framework of general human ethics problems will, of course, arise and will sometimes be solved wrongly. this possibility of error is simply the symptom that we are awake, not asleep, that we are men, not beasts or gods. if I were pressing on you a panacea, if I were recommending traditional ethics as a means to some end, I might be tempted to promise you the infallibility which I actually deny.  but that, you see, is not my position. I send you back to your nurse and your father, to all the poets and sages and law givers, because,

76  in a sense, I hold that you are already there whether you recognize it or not: that there is really no ethical alternative: that those who urge us to adopt new moralities are only offering us the mutilated or expurgated text of a book which we already possess in the original manuscript. they all wish us to depend on them instead of on that original, and then to deprive us of our full humanity. their activity is in the long run always directed against our freedom.

11.17.2016 J. HUDSON TAYLOR; A Man in Christ by roger steer

note: a most readable biography of Taylor, where he comes alive (especially in his wooing and 'letting go of' his precious wife, Maria (this 'picture of him/them would have been immeasurably improved had i time to share pp 123-55 when he wins her and pp 240-2 when he loses her). am looking forward to reading the author's biographical work on George Mueller.

9  the HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN ADVANCE INTO CHINA begins with a remarkable adventure. in AD 431 a man named nestorius was condemned as a heretic, but by late in the fifth century the Persian church had become officially Nestorian and the nestorian church continued to reach out eastwards. in AD 635, nestorian christian A-lo-pen arrived in China, in the capital of the Tang Empire. the emperor received him well, studied christianity, approved of it and ordered that it should be propagated.
nestorian christianity lasted more than 2 centuries in china. its brand of the faith was mainly monastic - a familiar way of life in a land used to Buddhism - and the influence of the monks probably did not extend far beyond their monastery walls.
trouble hit the nestorians in 845 when another Tang Emperor, in a move against monasticism in general, issued a decree prohibiting buddhism, dissolving the monasteries, and ordering all monks to return to private life. the christian
12  church in china dwindled for several centuries after that; in 987 a monk returned to europe with the news that he could find no trace of christians in the whole chinese empire.

in the 13th century, the mongol Genghis Khan conquered northern china. he understood the importance of religion and laid it down that all religions were to be respected. as a result the nestorian church was re-established throughout central asia and in 1275 an archbishopric was set up in beijing (peking), the new capital of Genghis's grandson, Kublai Khan.

in this same period, the explorer Marco Polo visited china several times. on return from their first journey to china, marco polo's uncles brought a message to the Pope from kublai khan asking for 100 men of learning, devoted to the christian faith. their job would be to prove 'to the learned of (kublai khan's) dominions, by just and fair argument, that the faith professed by christians is superior to and founded on more evident truth than any other.
20 years passed before much attention was paid to this request and then the pope sent John of Monte Corvino to china. john arrived in beijing in about 1294 and was warmly received by Timur, kublai knan's successor. he didn't manage to convert the emperor, who had 'grown too old in idolatry'. but he built a church and claimed to have baptized 6000 people by 1305. pope Clement V mad john an archbishop, but following john's death in 1328 the christian church in china went into 200 years of decline.
in 1557 the Portuguese managed to install themselves in the tiny settlement of macao not far from Hong Kong. the colony became a jumping-of point for many missionary enterprises including those of Jesuit Matthew Ricci, one of the most famous Roman Catholic missionaries in the East. in 1600, ricci entered beijing and won the emperor's admiration through his ability as a clock repairer and map maker. ricci remained in the capital for 10 years, gradually bringing into being a church of about 2000 people which included some members of notable families and

13  distinguished intellectuals. he also produced a chinese liturgy and other christian literature.

like many misionaries after him, ricci had to grapple with the problem of finding chinese equivalents for christian terms and of deciding how far ancient chinese customs could be reconciled with the christian faith. if christianity were to be acceptable to the chinese, its foreign aspects would need to be minimized - but this was easier said than done. after much study and thought, he decided that chinese rites in honour of confucius and the family only had civil significance and that new converts to christianity could continue to engage in them. he would trust chinese christians to decide eventually what they could and couldn't do.
ricci was succeeded by a german Jesuit, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, who arrived in beijing in 1622. schall was a clever astronomer who prophesied eclipses and earned himself a place on the board which regulated the calendar. baptisms into the christian church increased, including one of the Emperor's wives and her child. Schall survived the fall of the Ming dynasty by convincing the manchu conquerors that he was indispensable.
during the course of the 17th century other orders, mainly Franciscans and Dominicans, joined the Jesuits and worked with some success in china. in 1674 the pope appointed the first chinese bishop.

controversy continued, however, over which chinese terms to use for God in the liturgy and the extent to which chinese between the Vatican and the chinese church became sour. persecution of christians in china increased during the 18th century; congregations declined and churches were ruined. by the end of the century the work of roman catholic missionaries in the chinese empire had very nearly collapsed, although a few valiantly held on in secret, often in danger of their lives.

hudson taylor's father must often have told him about

14  the first protestant missionary to china, robert morrison, who arrived in Guangzhou (Canton) in an american ship in september 1807. for a while he was forced to live virtually in hiding; but by 1809 he was appointed translator to the East india Company. this gave him protection, a measure of security and an income to live on. he became an expert in chinese literature and wisdom, describing this as 'one of the greatest gifts ever bestowed by God on any race.

for more than 25 years morrison stayed in guangzhou, the only foothold europeans had been able to secure in mainland china. he believed that what the chinese needed above all was Christ and he worked long and hard to extend his knowledge of chinese culture and language so that he might communicate the gospel more effectively. morrison's first convert was baptized in 1814 and by 1819 he had translated the whole Bible into chinese; he then completed a great chinese dictionary. more chinese converts were baptized, one of whom was ordained to be an evangelist to his fellow-countrymen.
but when morrison died in 1834, two years after hudson taylor was born prospects for the evangelization of china were almost as bleak as when he had arrived, up to that time only 3 more protestant christians had gone to serve God in china. Walter Medhurst, a printer who had arrived in china in 1817, traveled inland in disguise to distribute christian literature in chinese. Dr. Wells Williams arrived in 1833, wrote a well known book The Middle Kingdom and worked in china fro many years. and an american surgeon, peter Parker, opened an eye hospital in guangzhou and began to reduce prejudice against missionaries.
during hudson's youth the name of the Honorable Dr Charies Guzlaff, a member of the Netherlans Missionary Society and later interpreter  to the british government in hong kong, had been well known in England. his books had stirred the hearts of christians, and his exploits on the chinese coast were familiar among merchant, naval officers and politicians. he had imaginative ideas for the chinese
15  themselves to take the gospel to all 18 provinces of their country and he established an organization called the Chinese Christian union to distribute and teach the Scriptures in mainland china.

unfortuately gutzlaff was badly hoaxed by chinese evangelist members of his organization. almost all of them turned out to be frauds and opium addicts, writing journals of travels they had never made and producing lists of converts they had never bapized. gutzlaff, who seems to have been genuinely unaware of what had been going on, was overcome with grief when the scandals were exposed. he set out to reorganize his work but died before his new projects had got anywhere,

chines hostility to foreigners meant that, away from guangzhou, the empire was virtually inaccessible. for half a century english christians had prayed that missionaries would be allowed to work more freely in china. this eventually came about primarily because of commercial and political pressures on china from the western nations. the first 'opium war' between england and china broke out in 1839, partly because the british insisted on importing indian opium into china against the wishes of the chinese government. other factors were at work too, particularly general chinese obligations and their hostility to foreigners.
the war ended in the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, which secured a number of advantages for westerners in china. hong kong became a british colony; 5 'treaty ports' - guangzhou, xiamen (amoy), fuzhou, ningbo and shanghai - were opened so that foreigners could live there; foreigners were guaranteed the right of trial under their own laws and by officials of their own country. consuls were to take up residence in each treaty port, with equality of rank and access to the senior chinese officials, the mandarins. british citizens were to be guaranteed freedom (at least  on paper) from molestation and restraints'. the treaty actually said little about religion, but it was clear that missionaries no less than merchants would take advantage of these privileges.

16  of course missionaries deplored the war, but they believed that God had overruled what was deplorable in itself to open up china to the gospel. however, the fact that christianity seemed to enter china in the wake of gunboats was often a handicap to it later.

news of the treaty alerted british christians to the new era of opportunity. the way was open for missionaries to study chinese on chinese soil, and even to build houses, schools, hospitals and churches in the british and international settlements in the treaty ports.

impressed by these opportunities and also by gutzlaff's energy and vision, british businessmen launched a magazine, The Gleaner in the Missionary Field, to promote overseas missions - and the taylor family took the publication from its beginnings in march 1850. hudson also discovered that an interdenominational society called the Chinese Association had been organized in London. it planned to employ chinese evangelists to cooperate with existing missions in taking the gospel to the unreached interior of china.
hudson wrote to the secretary of the Association, George Pearse, asking him to send circulars , collecting cards and anything which could help him introduce the work of the Association to his friends.
he also heard that Barnsley's Congregational minister had a copy of printer medhurst's China: Its State and Prospects and decided to try to borrow it.
'you may certainly borrow the book, the minister told him. 'and what, may i ask, is your interest in it?

'God has called me to spend my life in missionary service in china, hudson replied.
'and how do you propose to go there?
'I don't know. but i think it likely that i shall need to go as the 12 and the 70 disciples did in Judea, without stick, or bag, or food, or money - relying on Him who had sent them to supply all their needs.
the minister gently placed his hand on hudson's shoulder.

17  'Ah, my boy, as you grow older  you will become wiser than that. such an idea would do very well in the days when Christ Himself was on earth, but not now.

many years later, taylor recalled the incident and wrote: 'i have grown older since then, but not wiser. i am more and more convinced that if we were  to take the directions of our master and the assurance He gave to His first disciples more fully as our guide, we should find them just as suited to our times as to those in which they were originally given.
medhurst's book stressed the value of medical missions, and taylor decided to concentrate on medical studies as a preparation for work in china. he also began to take more open air exercise and got rid of his feather bed and other comforts in order to prepare for a tougher life.

he embarked on the study of the chinese language with enormous enthusiasm. this was a task which an earlier missionary had said required 'bodies of iron, lungs of brass, heads of oak, hands of spring-steel, eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels and lives of Methuselah.

hudson had neither a chinese grammar nor a dictionary, but he had been given a copy of the gospel of luke in the chinese mandarin dialect. he and cousin John set about learning together. they would select a short verse in the english version of luke and then pick out a dozen or more verses, also in english, which had one worked in common with the first verse. then they would turn up the first verse in chinese, and search through all the other verses for some character in common that seemed to represent the english word. they would write these down on a slip of paper as probable equivalents; then they would look through the chinese for this same character in different connections. if, in every case, they found the same word in the english version, they copied the character in ink in their dictionary adding the meaning in pencil. if later study confirmed this to be the true meaning, they inked it in.
after a while they grew familiar with most of the common
18  chinese characters.
hudson began to get up at 5 in the morning. 'I must study (he writes his sister) if i mean to go to china. i am fully decided to go and am making every preparation i can. i intend to rub up my Latin, to learn Greek and the rudiments of Hebrew, and to get as much general information as possible. i need all your prayers.
(interested in a young woman for his wife)..1850 turned out to be a year of turmoil for hudson. he was sure God had called him to china, but how could he be sure it was right to take Marianne with him? and yet he couldn't bear the thought of going to china without her. amelia suggested he could best provide for marianne by being sent out by a recognized missionary society.

'very true, replied hudson, but what society?
the wesleyans had no station in china . the church of england had one of two, but he was not a churchman and wouldn't, he thought, do for them. the Baptists and independent churches had stations there, but he didn't share their views. the Chinese Association was very poor. 'so God and God alone is my hope and I need no other...
19  5 years in his father's business had made hudson expert in dispensing medicines. but he needed to earn his own living....
24  in preparation  for his great adventure, hudson now had 2 objectives: learning to endure hardships and to live cheaply.  he found that he could survive on very much less than he had though possible. he discovered a brand of brown biscuits which were as cheap as bread and, he told his mother, much nicer. so for breakfast he ate brown biscuits and herring, which was cheaper than butter, washed down with coffee. lunch might be roast potatoes and tongue followed by prune-and-apple pie; or rice pudding, peas instead of potatoes and now and then some fish. he found a little place where he could buy cheese at 4 to 6 pence a pound
25  - and he fancied it tasted better than some he had had at home for eightpence. he pickled a penny red cabbage with three halfpence worth of vinegar and made a large jarful.
living cheaply but imaginatively meant that he was able to give away up to 60% of his earnings, and he  discovered that the more he gave away the happier he became. he recorded: 'unspeakable joy all the day long and every day, was my happy experience. God, even my god, was a living, bright reality; and all i had to do was joyful service.
but still he felt that his 'spiritual muscles' needed strengthening. when I get to china, he thought, I shall have no claim on anyone for anything; my only claim will be on god. how important, therefore, to learn before leaving england TO MOVE MAN, THROUGH GOD, BY PRAYER ALONE.

and so he embarked on a series of experiments with God.

26  'remind me whenever your salary is due, Robert Hardey, (the doctor under whom hudson worked) had told taylor breezily. this was his cur. he made up his mind never to speak to his employer about his pay, but ask God to do the reminding.
for a while there was no difficulty. but then the time came when a quarter's salary was due and Hardy had apparently forgotten. on totting up his weekly accounts one saturday night, Taylor found he had only a single coin left - one half crown piece. He prayed hard.

next day, after the sunday morning service, he made his way along a familiar rutted farm track to the dockland area of Hull where hundreds of irish labourers lived crowded together in slums and lodging houses. the area was notorious for violence and crime and the police seldom visited it in groups of less than 6. perhaps  because he worked for the will-loved Dr. Hardy, Taylor found he could go into much of the area alone visiting patients, handing out tracts and even preaching to small groups. 'at such times, he recorded, it almost seemed to me as if Heaven were begun below, and that all that could be looked for was an
27  enlargement of one's capacity for joy.
at about 10 o'clock in the evening, he was addressed in a strong Irish accent.
' my wife is dying. will you please come and pray with her?
Taylor agreed, but asked: 'why haven't you sent for the priest?
'I did. but he refused to come without a payment of 18 pence. i don't have enough - my family is starving.
Taylor thought of his solitary half-crown. it was all he had and it was in one coin. back in his room, he had enough food for tomorrow's breakfast by nothing for lunch.
'it's very wrong of you to have allowed matters to get to this state. why haven't you applied to the relieving officer?
'I have and am to meet him tomorrow. but i'm afraid she won't last the night.
if only, thought Taylor, I had 2 shilling coins and a sixpence instead of this half crown, how gladly I would give these poor people a shilling!
Taylor followed the man into a courtyard where, on his last visit, they had torn his tracts to pieces and promised far worse treatment if he ventured there again. anxiously he followed the man up a narrow flight of stairs into a dirty room.
5 children with hollow cheeks and eyes stood looking at him. their mother lay exhausted, holding a newly born baby.
If only I had 2 shillings and a sixpence, Taylor thought again.
'don't despair, he found himself saying, 'there's a kind and loving Father in Heaven.
but something inside him said, you hypocrite! telling these people about a loving God and not prepared yourself to trust Him without half a crown!
he turned to the man. 'you asked me to come and pray with your wife.
he knelt down. 'Our Father, who art in Heaven, he began.
28  but his conscience spoke too. Dare you kneel down and call Him Father with that half-crown in your pocket? he could hardly get through the prayer.
'you see what a terrible state we're in, sir, said the man.
'if you can help us, for God's sake do!
Taylor looked and him and then at his wife and children. he remembered the words in matthew 5.42, 'Give to the one who asks you.
he put his hand in his pocket and took out the half-crown.
'you may think it a small thing for me to give you this, he said as he handed over the coin.
''but it's all the money  i have. what i have been trying to tell you is true. god really is a Father, and may be trusted.
as he walked through now-deserted streets and along the dark and muddy farm track to his cottage, his heart was 'as light as his pocket'. back at No 30 he ate a bowl of thin porridge and decided that he wouldn't have exchanged it for a prince's feast.
'dear God, he prayed as he knelt beside his bed, 'your Word says that he who gives to the poor lends to the Lord. don't let the loan be a long one or I shall have no lunch tomorrow!
the woman lived and the child's life was saved.
Taylor reflected that his own spiritual life might have been wrecked had he not had the courage to trust God at that time .
next morning, as he was eating his breakfast, Hudson Taylor heard the postman knock at the door. Mrs Finch handed him a letter. the handwriting was unfamiliar and his landlady's wet hand had smudged the postmark. opening it, held discovered a pair of kid gloves inside a blank sheet of paper. as he held them a gold half-sovereign fell to the floor.
'Praise the Lord! he exclaimed. '400% for 12 hours investment; that is good interest. how glad the merchants of Hull would be if they could lend their money at such a rate!

he resolved that 'the bank which could not break' -
29  - it was a phrase George Muller loved - should have all his money. 'if we are faithful in little things, he concluded we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life.
this experience boosted Taylor's faith. but 10 shillings, even then, didn't last forever and he had to keep praying for the larger sum he needed.
but now none of his prayers seemed to be answered. 10- days after receiving the half-sovereign he was in almost the same scrape as before.
'Dear God , please remind Dr. Hardey that my salary is over due, he prayed urgently. it was not only a question of money: if his power with God in prayer proved inadequate, he would feel unable, in good conscience, to go to china.
on the saturday a payment would be due to Mrs. Finch. shouldn't he, for her sake, speak to Hardy about his salary? but this would amount to admitting that he wasn't fit to be a missionary. he devoted nearly all his spare time on the thursday and friday to wrestling with God in prayer. on the saturday he prayed, 'Dear Father, please show me whether I should speak to Dr. hardy about my salary. it seemed to him that the answer came, 'wait. My time is best.  he felt sure that God would act in some way on his behalf and was quite relaxed.
at about 5 o'clock on the saturday afternoon, Taylor and Hardey were together in the surgery. the doctor had finished his visiting rounds and had written all his prescriptions. he threw himself back in his armchair in his usual way and began talking about this and that.
Taylor was standing with his back to the doctor, watching a pan in which he was heating some medicine. suddenly, Hardey said: 'By the way, Taylor, isn't your salary due again?
Hudson swallowed three times before he answered. without lifting his eyes from the pan he replied, as unemotionally as he could, 'it has been overdue for some time.
'Oh, I'm sorry you didn't remind me. you know how busy i am. i wish I'd thought of it sooner, because only this afternoon
30  I sent all the money I had to the bank. otherwise i would pay you at once.

Taylor (T) felt sick. fortunately the pan boiled at that moment,  and he had good reason to rush with it out of the room, where the doctor wouldn't see how upset he was.

as soon as Hardey had left the surgery, T poured out his heart in prayer to god. after a while, he regained his composure and felt sure that god would not fail him.

he spent the Saturday evening in the surgery reading his Bible and preparing some talks. at about 10 o'clock he put on his overcoat and prepared to leave for Cottingham terrace, glad that he would be able to let himself in with his own key. Mrs. Finch would have gone to bed and perhaps he would be able to pay her early the following week.
just as he was about to turn out the gaslight in thee surgery, he heard Hardey's footsteps in the garden. he was laughing heartily.
'let me have the ledger, T. an extraordinary thing has happened. one of my richest patients has just come to pay his bill - in cash!
T too thought it odd that a man rolling in money should come late in the evening to pay a doctor's bill and paying in cash rather than by cheque made it even odder. he joined in Hardey's laughter.

Hardey entered the amount in the ledger and was about to leave. then he turned to Hudson (H) and handed him the was of bank notes.
'by the way, T, you might as well take these notes. I haven't any change, but we can settle the balance next week.
T returned  to Drainside praising God: he might, after all, go to China!

41  the Taiping rebellion was a response to the unpopularity of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). the manchus, who had established this dynasty, were still regarded as aliens by the Chinese. they had become lazy, weak and oppressive and during the first half of the 19th century discontent grew:; secret societies flourished and armed uprisings increased.

the founder of the Taiping rebellion was Hong Xiu-quan. Hong had been influenced by a series of christian books written by Lian A-fa, who had become a christian through the missionaries Robert Morrison and William Milne. in 1843, Hong Xiu-quan and his cousin baptized each other and began to preach to their relatives, some of whom where converted. Hong met the american missionary Issacher Roberts, who studied the Bible with him.
Later, as a result of Hong's preaching, a sect calling themselves Worshippers of shangdi (God worshippers) appeared on the scene and by 1849 , Hong was accepted as their leader. he kept in touch with Issacher Roberts who reported these developments in optimistic letter home.

some of the local leaders who emerged among the worshippers of shangdi were less well-taught and more militant than Hong. they began to drill fighting units and make common cause with members of a secret society, the
42  Triads, whose ambition was to overthrow the Qing dynasty and restore the ming.

hostilities between Hong's followers plus associated and the imperial manchu government began in 1850. the rebels saw themselves as he founders of a new dynasty, the 'heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace'. Hong was the emperor, the Tai Ping Wang, hence the name of the rebellion.

the Taipings set out their aims and objectives and established a system of belief and codes of conduct. they would overthrow the manchus, abolish idols and stamp out the abuse of opium. in the early days they honoured the Bible, attached great importance to the 10 commandments, used the lord's prayer, held daily services at which they sang hymns in honour of the triune God, recited creeds and listened to sermons. they baptized adults. although they permitted polygamy, their moral  code was in many ways strict and wherever they went they destroyed idols.

these developments in China naturally aroused intense interest and excitement among christians in England, Europe  and America. a christian dynasty and the abolition of idolatry and heathenism appeared possible. even more encouraging for christian missionaries was the apparent attitude of the Taipings to foreigners. 'the great God, one Taiping leader said, 'is the universal Father of all under heaven. china is under His government and care. foreign nations are equally so. there are many men under heaven, but all are brethren.
the Gleaner led the way in reporting details of what was going on and H T was strongly tempted to abandon his medical course and sail for china at once.

58  during the Han dynasty also, 4 centuries before the first christians came, Buddhist missionaries arrived from india and established Buddhism as a major religion. it made great advances in china. H T was to discover that Buddhist monks and shaven-headed priest in yellow robes were a familiar feature. Buddhism never, however, displace confucianism or Daoism. chinese religion was often an amazing mixture of the three.
166  in july 1861 H T had attended a series of meetings at Christ Church, Barnet, arranged by its evangelical vicar, william pennefather, author of the lovely hymn Jesus Stand Among Us in Thy Risen Power. Penne..has been describd as 'the George muller of the Church of england...a man who walked with God'. Horatius Bonar, the hymn writer, including miss stacey were there to hear pennefather expound the scriptures. in july 1862, H and maria were at Christ Church again for these meetings with were the forerunners of the mildmay Confrence, the first of which H T was to  attend in 1864.
the Mildmay Conferences led on to the keswick Convention with its motto 'All One in Christ Jesus'. HT loved this openminded attitude -ecumenical in the best sense of the word - and during this period in england he gladly preached wherever he was invited, at Anglican, Baptist,

167  Methodist, Presbyterian, Brethren and many more churches, in the same spirit in which he worked with or for a great variety of missionary societies.

170  'The chinese will make the best christians in the world - they will thoroughly study the Bible as they do their own classics. HT was aware of this claim but also knew that the chinese would only become christians if missionaries went there in large numbers and penetrated the interior.

one task he had set himself was that of trying to persuade the boards of missionary societies to send men to work in the 11 unevangelized provinces of inland china. he had interviews or correspondence with all three main english societies, who listened to him sympathetically but over and over again gave him the same answer.
our funds are not equal to current demands, let alone new commitments,  the societies told him. 'it is surely better to wait until in God's providence china is widely open to the gospel.

but where would European Christianity be,  T wondered, if the apostles had waited for better conditions? if the existing
171  missionary societies cannot or will not rise to the occasion, then who will do so?

as he and Fredrick Gough spent those long hours working at the revision of the Ningbo New Testament, they often looked up at a large map of china on the wall and thought of the millions who  had never heard the gospel 33,000 people will die in china today without hope - without god, T thought.
175  T intended that the CIM would have 6 distinctive features.
first, its missionaries would be drawn not from any particular denomination but from all the leading christian churches - provided they could sign a simple doctrinal declaration. in practice, as the mission developed, they would come from many different countries too.
second, the missionaries would have no guaranteed salary, but trust in the lord to supply their needs. income would be shared. no  debts would be incurred.
third, no appeals for funds would be made; there would be no collectors; the names of donors wouldn't be published - instead each would receive a dated and numbered receipt by which he would be able to trace his own contribution into  the list of donations and then into the annually published accounts.
fourth, anxious to learn from the mistakes made by the CES, H T was determined that the work abroad would be directed not by home committees, but by himself and eventually other leaders on the spot in china.
fifth, the activities of the mission would be systematic and practical. a comprehensive plan to evangelize the whole of china would seek to establish footholds in strategic centres. the aim would not be to secure the largest number of converts for the CIM, but rather to bring about as quickly as possible the evangelization of thee whole empire. who actually garnered the sheaves would be regarded as of secondary importance.
sixth, as a courtesy to the chinese people, the missionaries would wear chinese clothes and worship in buildings built in the chinese style - unlike the Gothic-style church in ningbo.

176  at the meeting HT used his large map of china and described to  his audience the size, population and spiritual need of china. afterwards Colonel Puget, sensing that many in the hall were impressed by what they had heard, rose to speak. 'Mr T requested that the notices announcing

177  this meeting carried the words 'No collection'. however i do feel that many of you would be distressed if you were not given an opportunity to contribute to the work in china. as what i am about to propose emanates entirely from myself and, I'm sure, expresses the feeling of many in the audience, I trust that Mr T will not object to a collection being taken.

Mr T however jumped quickly to his feet.

'Mr. Chairman, i beg you to keep to the condition you agreed to. among other reasons for making no collection, the reason put forward by your kind self is, to my mind, one of the strongest. my wish is not that members of the audience should be relieved of making such contributions might now be convenient, under the influence of emotion,  but that each one should go home burdened with the deep need of china and ask God what He would have them to  do.

if after thought and prayer they are satisfied that a gift of money is what he wants of them, it can be given to any missionary society having agents in china; or it may be posted to our London office.

but in many cases what god wants is not a money contribution, but personal consecration to his service abroad; or the giving up of a son or a daughter - more precious than silver or gold - to his service. i think a collection tends to leave the impression that the all-important thing is money, whereas no  amount of money can convert a single soul. what is needed is that men and women filled with the holy Ghost should give THEMSELVES to the work. there'll never be a shortage of funds for the support of such people.
206  HT's own understanding of the case for wearing chinese clothes was rooted in his deep respect for chinese culture and his sensitive perception of the role of the missionary, in which he was far ahead of his time.
'we have to deal with a people whose prejudices in favour of their own customs and habits are the growth of centuries and millenniums.nor are their preferences ill-founded. those who know them most intimately respect them most and see the necessity for many of their habits and customs - this being found in the climate, productions and conformation of the people.

'there is perhaps no country in the world where religious tolerance is carried to so great an extent as in china; the only objection that prince or people have to christianity is that it is a foreign religion and that its tendencies are to approximate believers to foreign nations.

'I am not peculiar in holding the opinion that the foreign dress and carriage of missionaries - to a certain extent affected by some of their converts and pupils - the foreign appearance of the chapels and indeed, the foreign air given to everything connected with religion, have very largely hindered the rapid dissemination of the truth among the chinese. but why need such a foreign aspect b given to christianity?  the word of God does not require it; not I conceive would reason justify it. it is not their denationalization but the christianization that we seek.

'we wish to see christian chinese -true christins, but withal CHINESE  in every sense of the word.we wish to see churches and christian chinese  presided over by pastors and officers of their own countrymen, worshipping their true God in the land of their fathers, in the costume of their

207  fathers, in their own tongue wherein they were born and in edifices of a thoroughly chinese style of architecture...
'let us in everything unsinful become Chinese, that by all means we may save some. let us adopt their costume, acquire their language, study to imitate their habits and approximate to their diet as far as health and constitution will allow. let us live in their houses, making no unnecessary alterations to external appearance and only so far modifying internal arrangements as attention to  health and efficiency for work absolutely require.
'our present experience is proving the advantage of this course. we do find that we are influencing the chinese around us in a way which we could not otherwise have done. we are daily coming into contact with them, not in one point, but in many; and we see the people becoming more or less influenced by the spirit, piety and earnestness of some of those labouring among them. but this cannot be attained without some temporary inconvenience, such as the sacrifice of some articles of diet. knives and forks, plates and dishes, cups and saucers, must give place to chopsticks, native spoons and basins (and food)...
'in chinese dress, the foreigner, though recognized as such, escapes the mobbing and crowding to which, in many places, his own costume would subject him. in preaching, while his dress attracts less notice his words attract more.he can purchase articles of dress and also get them washed and repaired without difficulty and at a trifling expense in any part of the country.

these were the ideas, and this was the vision, that inspired H and maria in their work. in directing the mission, H shied away from drawing up lists of rules and regulations. but he passionately believed that the Chinese would only be won for Christ if those from the west who brought them the gospel understood and respected their ancient culture. he expected the cheerful cooperation of his fellow workers in the task.

212  ...not everyone agreed with this strategy. william berger pleaded with Taylor to consolidate what had already been achieved, but most of the team in china agreed with his vision of expansion H expressed his thought well in a poem.
who spoke of rest? there is rest above.
no rest on earth for me. on, onto do
my Father's business. He, who sent me here,
Appointed me my time on earth to bide,
and set me all my work to do for Him,.
He will supply me with sufficient grace -
grace to be doing, to be suffering,
not to be resting. there is rest above.

214  the christian gospel's emphasis on the individual was at odds with the chinese ethic that the family was above the individual. might not person conversion undermine the very fabric of society? the act of preaching was often seen as an insult, for the preacher assumed the position of a teacher,
215  and who could teach the scholars? and didn't christian preachers challenge chinese ancestral practices and deny the truth and validity of Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism?..

232  throughout the summer of 1869 HT's morale was low. irritability was his 'daily hourly failure', and sometimes he even wondered whether someone so dogged by failure could be a christian at all. long periods of separation from maria added to his inner tension and a bout of severe illness in august, probably pneumonia, didn't help.
with all this went a sense of need. he saw that both he himself and the CIM needed more holines, life and power. he believed the personal need was greater: 'I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living nearer to God.
he prayed, he agonized, he fasted, he tried to do better, he made resolutions. he read the bible more carefully, he ordered his life to give more time for rest and meditation. but all this had little effect. 'every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed me. i knew that if only I could ABIDE in Christ all would be well, but I COULD NOT.  I began the day with prayer, determined
not to take my mind off Him for a moment; but pressure of duties, sometimes very trying, constant interruptions apt to be so wearing, often caused me to forget Him. then one's nerves get so fretted
233 in this climate that temptations to irritability, hard thoughts, and sometimes unkind words are all the more difficult to control. each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power. to will was indeed present with me, but how to perform I found not.

he began to ask himself a series of questions: is there no rescue? must it be thus to the end - constant conflict and, instead of victory, too often defeat? how can i preach with sincerity that to those who receive Jesus, 'to them gave He power to become the sons of God' (ie. Godlike) when it is not in my experience.
instead of growing spiritually stronger, he seemed to be growing weaker and giving in more to sin. he hated himself, he hated his sin. ' I felt I was a child of God: His Spirit in my heart would cry, in spite of all, 'Abba, Father': but to rise to my privileges as a child I was utterly powerless...I began to think that, perhaps to make heaven the sweeter, God would not give it down here. I do not think I was striving to achieve it in my own strength. I knew I was powerless. I told the Lord so and asked Him to give me help and strength; and sometimes I almost believed He would keep and uphold me. but on looking back in the evening, alas! there was but sin and failure to confess and mourn before God.

this wasn't his state of mind and spirit every minute or even every day of those summer months. rather, be said, it was a 'too frequent state of soul; that toward which i was tending and which almost ended in despair. and yet never did Christ seem more precious - a Saviour who COULD  and WOULD  save such a sinner!...and sometimes there were seasons not only of peace but of joy in the Lord. but they were transitory and at best there was a sad lack of power.

throughout the period, he recalled, 'I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out'. with the biblical picture of Christ as the vine (John 15) on his mind, he wrote, 'He was rich, truly, but I was poor; He strong, but I weak. I knew full

234  well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question.
gradually he began to gain insights which were to bring him through this period. first, he saw that FAITH was the precondition for gaining what he wanted - it was 'the hand to lay hold on His fullness and make it my own. but he didn't have this faith. he struggled for it, but it wouldn't come . he tried to exercise it, but in vain. 'seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Saviour - my helplessness and guilt seemed to increase. sins committed appeared by as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at His word, but rather made Him a liar!  unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world - yet I indulged in it. i prayed for faith, but it came not. what was I to do?

the second insight came in the shape of a letter from John McCarthy. H had shared with Mc something of the turmoils through which he was passing and they had often discussed the pursuit of holiness together. T was working in Zhenjiang when Mc's letter arrived. Mc's struggles had echoed those of his leader.
I do wish I could have a talk with you now, about the way of holiness. at the time you were speaking to me about it, it was the subject of all others occupying my thoughts - not from anything I had read, not from what my brother had written even, so much as from a consciousness of failure: a constant falling short of that which i felt should be aimed at; and unrest; a perpetual striving to find some way by which I might continuously enjoy that communion, that fellowship at times so real, but more often so visionary, so far off!...
do you know, dear brother, I now think that this striving, effort, longing, hoping for better days to come, is not the true way to happiness, holiness or usefulness; better, no doubt far better, than being satisfied with
235  our poor attainments, but not the best way after all. I have been struck with a passage from a book of yours left here, entitled Christ is all. it says:
'the Lord Jesus received is holiness begun; the lord Jesus cherished is holiness advancing; the Lord Jesus counted upon as never absent would be holiness complete.

'this (grace of faith) is the chain which binds the soul to Christ and makes the saviour and the sinner one...A channel is now formed by which Christ's fulness plenteously flows down. the barren branch becomes a portion of the fruitful stem...One life reigns throughout the whole.

'they who most deeply feel that they have died in Christ and paid in Him sin's penalties, ascend to highest heights of godly life. he is most holy who has most of Christ within and joys most fully in the finished work. it is defective faith which clogs the feet and causes many a fall.

this last sentence I think I now fully endorse. to let my loving Saviour work in me His will, my sanctification is what I would live for by His grace. abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off unto Him; trusting Him for present power; trusting Him to subdue all inward corruption; resting in the love of an almighty Saviour, in the conscious joy of a complete salvation 'from all sin' (this is His Word); willing that His will should truly be supreme - this is not new, and yet 'tis new to me. i feel as if the first dawning of a glorious day had risen upon me. I hail it with trembling, yet with trust. I seem to have got to the edge only, but of a sea which is boundless; to have sipped only but of that which fully satisfies. Christ literally all seems to me now the power, the only power for service; the only ground for unchanging joy. may he lead us into the realization of His unfathomable fulness. how then to have our faith increased/ only by thinking of all that Jesus is and all He is for us: His life, His

236  death, His work. He Himself as revealed to us in the Word, to be the subject of our constant thoughts. not a striving to have faith, or to increase our faith, but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need: a resting in the Lord One entirely, for time and for eternity.

H T put Mc's letter down and later recalled, 'as I read I saw it all! 'if we believe not, He abideth faithful. i looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed! ) that He had said, 'I will never leave you'. Ah, there is rest! I thought, I have striven in vain to rest in Him I'll strive no more. for has He not promised to abide with me -- never to leave me, never to fail me?

that day. T shared Mc's letter with the others who were staying in the CIM house in Zhenjiang. emily blatchley wrote in her journal, 'he too has now received the rest of soul that Jesus gave me some little time ago.
in the next few days, H T continued to reflect on the subject. god gave him new insights and clarified his thinking. 'as I thought of the vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured into my soul!  how great seemed my mistake in having wished to get the sap, the fulness OUT  of Him. I saw not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that i was a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. the vine now I see, is not the root merely, but all - root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is oil and sunshine, air and showers and 10,000 times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth!

'...it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Saviour; to be a member of Christ! think what it involves...
'the sweetest part, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is the REST which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything

237  as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His WILL and His will is mine.

...'I cannot say (I am sorry to have to confess it) that since I have seen this light I have not sinned; but I do feel there was no need to have done so. and further - walking more in the light, my conscience has been more tender;  sin has been instantly seen, confessed, pardoned; and peace and joy (with humility) instantly restored...
'faith, I now see, is the SUBSTANCE  of things hoped for', and not mere shadow. it is not LESS than sight, but MORE. sight only shows the outward forms of things; faith gives the substance. you can REST on substance, FEED on substance. Christ dwelling in the heart by faith (ie. His Word of Promise credited) is POWER indeed, is LIFE indeed. and Christ and sin will not dwell together; nor can we have His presence with love of the world, or carefulness about 'many things.

when he visited Yangzhou, one of the first people H T spoke to was charles judd. judd, who had joined the CIM the previous year through the influence of Dr. Barnardo, was recovering from an illness.

Oh, Mr Judd, T said, walking up and down the room as he so often did with his hands behind his back,  '
God has made me a new man! God has made me a new man! I have not got to MAKE myself a branch, the Lord Jesus tells me I AM a branch. I am PART OF HIM, and have just to believe it. if I go to shanghai, having an account, and ask for 50 dollars, the clerk cannot  refuse it to my outstretched had and say that it belongs to mr T. what belongs to Mr T my hand may take. it is a member of my body. and I am a member of Christ and may take all I need of His fullness. I have seen it long enough in the Bible, but I BELIEVE it now as a living reality.
'He was a joyous man now, Judd wrote, a bright happy christian. he had been a toiling, burdened one before, with latterly not much rest of soul. it was resting in Jesus now and letting Him do the work - which makes all the difference! whenever he spoke in meetings after that a new

238  power seemed to flow from him, and in the practical things of life a new peace possessed him. troubles did not worry him as before.
since 1868, The Revival magazine in britain had been publishing a series of articles on holiness by R Pearsall Smith, whose thinking was one of the main influences giving rise to the Keswick Convention meetings. copies of the magazine reached every CIM station in china during 1869; this almost certainly explains Emily Blatchley's comment that Taylor had 'received the same rest of soul that Jesus gave me some little time ago. 'the exchanged life and 'union with Christ' came to sum up the CIM thinking.
the bergers (in charge of CIM operations in england) who were familiar with The Revival articles, expressed reservations about overstressing the passive, receptive aspect of holiness; they under lined the need for active resistance to evil and of effort to obey God in his books a few years later, Bishop Ryle was also to correct what he considered the imbalance of the Keswick teaching. but there is no evidence that HT and his colleagues in china were deficient in effort or active service.

244  ...reflecting on Maria's death, william berger wrote, 'hers was indeed a useful life. to us its prolongation appeared necessary, for her dear husband's sake , the children's and the work's . but the Lord saw differently. her knowledge of the chinese customs, their language and modes of though was at once comprehensive and intimate; and at the very time of her last illness she was engaged in writing and correcting important works for the press. she is gone; she has ceased from her labours; she sleeps in Jesus. her sun went down while yet in its meridian and the place on earth which knew her, which she so efficiently and untiringly filled, will know her again no more. it remains for us to imitate so bright an example
in Robert White's home high above zhenjiang with a grand view of the yangzi, H T sat alone with his thoughts. he wrote: 'a few months ago, my house was full, now so silent and lonely - Samuel, Noel,(two of their children who also recently died of illnesses), my precious wife with Jesus; the elder children far, far away and even little Charles in Yangzhou. often, of late years, has duty called me from my loved ones, but i have returned and so warm has been the welcome. now I am alone. can it be that there is no return from this journey, no home-gathering to look forward to! is it real, and not a sorrowful dream, that those dearest to me lie beneath the cold so? Ah, it is indeed true. but not more so than that there is a homecoming awaiting me which no parting shall break into...'I go to prepare a place for you'. is not one part of the preparation the peopling it with those we love?

he wrote to Jennie Faulding, thanking her for her letter of sympathy: 'the more I feel how utterly i am bereaved, and how helpless and useless I am rendered, the more I joy in her joy and in the fact of her being beyond the reach of sorrow. but i cannot help sometimes feeling, oh! so weary...My poor heart would have been overwhelmed and broken, had I not been taught more of His fullness and indwelling...I am not far from her whom I have loved so long and

245  so well; and she is not far from me. soon we shall be together...Goodnight.  and then he seems to have remembered that Jennie was single for he added, 'Jesus is your portion...Yours affectionately in Him, J Hudson Taylor.
'from my inmost soul, H wrote to his mother 10 days after maria's death, 'I delight in the knowledge that God does or deliberately permits ALL things and causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him.
'He and He only, knew what my dear wife was to me. He knew how the light of my eyes and the joy of my heart were in her...but He saw that it was good to take her; good indeed for her and in His love he took her painlessly; and not less good for me who must henceforth toil and suffer alone - yet not alone, for God is nearer to me than ever.

252  in october, Hudson and Jennie Taylor arrive back in china, at first making their home in hangzhou. J took John mc's place as the overseer of the church there and H made plans to visit the cities south of Hangzhou after christmas.
in april 1873, jennie gave birth to stillborn twins. it was typical of her resilience tht she wrote to her mother, 'it was a very anxious time for H. she now looked forward to moving to Yangzhou in mid-may and making it their base in china.
T's plan was that much of the work in hanghou should now be done by chinese christians. this was typical of his overall strategy: he wanted to make the CIM's work more and more, as he put it, NATIVE AND INTERIOR with as few foreign workers as possible. his eventual aim was to have one superintendent and two assistant foreign missionaries in a province, with chinese helpers in each important city, and colporteurs (Bible distributors) in the less important places. he hoped that before the end of `873 he would be able to open a college to train chinese workers.

he was delighted to find that chinese christians were growing more and more efficient in the work of evangelism and church building and had no doubt that the future of the church in china lay with them. 'I look on all us foreign missionaries as a platform work round a rising building, he wrote. 'the sooner it can be transferred to other places, to serve the same temporary purpose, the better for the work sufficiently forward to dispense with it, and the better for the places yet to be evangelized. this approach remains a keystone of missionary strategy today.

257  Oh! my dear brother, T wrote to treasurer John Challice, 'the joy of KNOWING the LIVING God, of resting on the LIVING God...I am but His agent; He will look after His own honour, provide for His own servants, supply all our need according to His own riches, you helping by your prayers and work of faith and labour of love.
258  ..for his first birthday after their marriage, Jennie presented H with a new Baxter polyglot Bible.  he began, as usual, to note the dates as he read it through. on a blank page at the end, he wrote in pencil:
January 27th, 1874. asked God for 50 to 100 additional native evangelists and as many foreign superintendents as may be needed to open up 4 fu (prefectures) and 48 xian (counties) still unoccupied in Zhejiang. also for the men to break into the 9 unoccupied also for the men to break into the 9 unoccupied provinces.
263  one donor to the mission, appropriately named Mrs Rich, wrote to say she had heard CIM missionaries were frequently so poor that they had to give up the work and take secular employment.

HT replied swiftly, asking mrs Rich to show her informant his reply. 'He has been entirely misled...I do not believe that any child or member of the family of anyone connected with our mission has evr lacked food or raiment for a single hour, though in many cases the supply may not have come BEFORE  it was needed.
'NO ONE has been hindered in work by lack of funds; NO ONE  has ever suffered in health from this cause; NO ONE  has ever left the mission on this ground or has remained dissatisfied on this score, to my knowledge...' he conceded that there had been 'periods of stringency' but argued that these had stirred up the chinese to give their own money to sp5read the gospel, rather than thinking that rich societies could do  it all.  he explained why various members of the mission had left or been dismissed - in no case for financial reasons. mrs Rich resumed her support.

265  foreigners were now guaranteed safe travel throughout china, providing they held a passport.  within 4 months of the signing of the Convention, CIM missionaries had entered 6 new provinces, travelling to parts of china never before reached by foreigners. the young missionaries met a mixture of friendliness and hostility. 'the women, recorded Henry Taylor, on a journey to honan, 'go in, heart and soul, for idolatry, as you know, but still find their hearts unsatisfied and their minds in a maze.

within a month T's box of documents turned up in Zhenjiang and from then on he was fully stretched. 'I have 4 times the amount of work i can do, he complained. Charles Fishe had gone home on furlough and there was no one else to take his place as secretary to the CIM in china. then there was the work of editing China's millions.
at the end of the day - or sometimes at 2 or3 am -H would sit down at his harmonium and play his favourite hymns, usually getting round to:
Jesus, I am resting, resting, in the joy of what Thou art;
I am finding out the greatness of Thy loving heart.
on one occasion, george nicol was with him when a pile of letters brought news of dangers and problems facing a number of missionaries. T leaned against his desk to read them and began to whistle JESUS, I AM RESTING, RESTING.
'how can you whistle, when our friends are in such danger? Nicol asked.
'suppose I were to sit down here and burden my heart with all these things; that wouldn't help them and it would unfit me for the work I have to do. I have just to roll the burden on the Lord.

271  ...his son Howard commented some years later, 'he prayed about things as if everything depended upon the praying...but he worked also, as if everything depended on the working.

290  'when God's grace is triumphant in my soul, T said at the Shanxi meetings, and I can look a chinaman in the face and say, 'GOD IS ABLE TO SAVE YOU, WHERE AND AS YOU ARE', that is when i have power. how else are you going to deal with a man under the craving for opium? the cause of want of success is very often that we are only half saved ourselves. if we are fully saved and confess it, we shall see results...
'let us feel that everything that is human, everything

291  outside the sufficiency of Christ, is only helpful in the measure in which it enables us to bring the soul to Him. if our medical missions draw people to us, and we can present to them the Christ of God,  medical missions are a blessing; but to substitute medicine for the preaching of the gospel would be a profound mistake, if we put schools or education in the place of spiritual power to change the heart, it will be a profound mistake. if we get the idea that people are going to be converted by some educational PROCESS, instead of by a regenerative recreation, it will be a profound mistake. let all our auxiliaries by auxiliaries  - means of bringing Christ and the soul into contact - then we may be truly thankful for them all...let us exalt the glorious gospel in our hearts and believe that IT is the power of God unto salvation. let everything else SIT AT ITS FEET ...We shall never be discouraged if we realize that in Christ is our Sufficiency.

292  ..'God was to him a tremendous reality. constantly and in everything he dealt with God, in a very real way he dealt with SATAN too. his conflicts with the evil one at time were such that he would give himself for days to fasting and prayer. even when travelling, i have known him fast a whole day over some difficult matter that needed clearing up. that was always his resource - FAST AND PRAY.

294  'we shall read from Philippians chapter three, T began. as he read the chapter through he seemed to place particular emphasis on verses seven and eight. 'that things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. yes doubtless and i count all things loss for Christ. yes doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I may will Christ...
WHAT WE GIVE UP FOR CHRIST WE GAIN (my own) T said in his talk, AND WHAT WE KEEP BACK IS OUR REAL LOSS...(my own)
299  (note - when HT was on leave in england) ..'and now, if this principle of taking everything to God and accepting everything from God is a true one - and I think the experience of the China Inland Mission proves that it is - ought we not to bring it to bear more and

300  more in daily life? the Lord's will is that His people should be an unburdened people, fully supplied,strong, healthy and happy...shell we not determine to be 'careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving' bring those things that would become burdens or anxieties to God in prayer and live in His perfect peace?
...'I have not known what anxiety is since the Lord taught me that the work is His. MY GREAT BUSINESS IN LIFE IS TO PLEASE GOD. (mine) walking with Him in the light, I never feel a burden.
a friend wrote to T from Ireland: 'I have had conversations with 3 people, all of them christians, who seem to have received a new thought at your meetings - as if God really MEANS WHAT HE SAYS  when He gives us His promises.
313  ..1888...'we are passing through wave after wave of trial, T wrote. 'each day has its full quota. God seems daily to be saying, 'can you say, 'even so, Father, to THAT? but He sustains and will sustain the spirit, however much the flesh may fail. our house has been a hospital; it is now an asylum. all that this means the Lord only knows...the night and day strain are almost unbearable...but I know the Lord's ways are all right and i would not have them otherwise.

on top of all this, some members of the London Council and other friends of the mission in england were disagreeing with what had happened in America. (note - as i recall, HT had gone to America with the firm thought of not having an American  'chapter' of the CIM there and while there he reversed himself 100% behind this new expansion)  in reply to criticism, T wrote to one member of the Council telling him that he would be glad to have his views on the American question but pointing out that without visiting America it was difficult fully to understand the issue.  'I should have been as fearful as you are, if I had not been there...I purposely made all the arrangements tentative, pending my return to england and having opportunity for full conference about them. he told Jennie, 'Satan is simply raging. He sees his kingdom attacked all over the land and the conflict is awful. but that our Commander is Almighty, I should faint. I think I never knew anything like it, though we have passed through some trying times before.
he had been separated from Jennie for many months now. he wrote: 'I feel sometimes, dearie, as if the charm and even power of life were taken out of me by these long absences from you...Hope deferred makes the heart sick...but I cannot shake it off. longing removes the power of thought...the cross does not get more comfortable, does it? but it bears sweet fruit.
perhaps the fruit he had in mind was the spiritual life of the mission. he spoke of it as 'higher than ever before' and reported conversions to Christ in a number of areas.
trials hitting the mission and his own daughter's acute mania, naturally tested John Stevenson: 'I never went through such a distressful period; everything seemed crowded into
314  those terrible months. i do not know what we would have done without Mr T; but oh, the look on his face at times! the special day of fasting and prayer was a great help. we never found it to fail. in all our troubles, in all our forward movements, in times of need, whether as to funds or spiritual blessing, we always had recourse to fasting and prayer and with a quick response.

...T decide that tensions at home were too serious to deal with by letter. he hadn't achieved half he'd intended to on this visit - but Mary Stevenson was recovering and plans for the new CIM premises in Wusong Road, Shanghai, were complete and with the builder. a mission house, prayer meeting hall, business quarters and homes for senior mission staff were to be built . T had spent hundreds of hours working on the plans and pretty well knew by heart the measurement of every door and window.

he arrived back in england in may 1889. to his great relief he was able to report to John Stevenson, 'I do not think things have been so cordial for years. in all this there is abundant cause for gratitude and praise.  however, tensions between the London and China Councils and complaints about T's leadership style were to rumble on for years. H
315  H and Jennie celebrated Jennie's 46th birthday on sunday Oct. 6..at her father's home in Hastings. on another sunday by the sea 24 years before, H T had committed his life to God for the evangelization of inland china. now he reflected on the words of Jesus recorded in Mark 156.15, 'God ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. until that day in Hastings he had never asked himself the question: 'what did our Lord REALLY mean by TO EVERY CREATURE? he'd worked for years carrying the gospel far and wide; he'd never realized the plain meaning of Christ's words.
'how are we going to treat the Lord Jesus with reference to this command? he wrote that sunday. 'shall we definitely drop the title 'Lord' as applied to Him and take the ground that we are quite willing to recognize Him as our Saviour, so far as the penalty of our sin is concerned, but are not prepared to own ourselves 'bought with a price' or Him as having any claim on our unquestioning obedience? what we say that we are our own masters, willing to yield something as His due, who bought us with his blood, provided He does not ask too much? our lives, our loved ones, our possessions are our own, not His: we will give Him what we think fit and obey any of His requirements that do not demand too great a sacrifice? to be taken to heaven by Jesus Christ we are more than wiling, but we will not have this man to REIGN over us.

'the heart of every christian will undoubtedly reject the proposition,so formulated; but have not countless lives in each generation been lived as though it were proper ground to take? how few of the Lord's peo-ple have practically recognized the truth that Christ is either LORD OF ALL,  or
NOT LORD AT ALL! if we can judge God's Word, instead of being judged by that Word; if we an give to God as much or as little as we like, then WE  are lords and He is the indebted one, to be grateful for our dole and obliged by our compliance with His wishes. if , on the other hand, He is Lord, let us treat Him as such.
316  so HT made his decision. a definite, systematic effort must be made to carry the good news of the gospel to EVERY man, woman and child in china. that was Christ's command. it should be obeyed. this was how it could be done: if a 1000 evangelists each taught 250 people a day. but many years earlier he and William Burns had used methods which enabled them to do just that. he well understood that his calculation took no account of the work being done by more than a 1000 missionaries already in china; or of the immense work being done by chinese christians, which he knew would become increasingly important and effective.

another objection might be that at the end of Matthew's gospel the command was not just to preach but also to baptize and instruct - 'teaching them to observe all thins whatsoever I have commanded you. that was why so many missionaries were busy with schools work and in building up chinese churches. T recognized this and counted it a vital part of the work of the CIM.  what he was suggesting was a new initiative in addition to the variety of work already being carried on.

so T prepared for the december edition of China's Millions a paper headed 'To Every Creature, arising from the insights and vision had given him at hastings. his target audience was the whole christian church, not just the CIM and its supporters. he argued for urgent action on 4 fronts.
first, prayer for 1000 evangelists for china;
second, 'united, simultaneous action by the whole body' of christians;
third, intelligent cooperation to avoid neglect in one region or duplication in another;
fourth, sacrificial giving by churches and individuals in support of their missions.


318  ...when T finally addressed the large audience in Shanghai drawn from all the protestant societies working in china, he spoke for an hour and departed from his prepared address with a passage on the power of the Holy spirit.  this was to be one of his greatest themes during the closing

319  year of his life.
'if as an organized conference, we were to set ourselves to obey the command of the Lord to the full, we should have such an outpouring of the Holy spirit, such a Pentecost as the world has not seen since the Holy Spirit  was outpoured in Jerusalem. God gives His Spirit not to those who desire to be filled always - but He DOES  give His Holy spirit 'to them that OBEY Him'. if as an act of obedience we were to determine that every district, every town, every village, every hamlet in this land should hear the gospel and that speedily and were to set about doing it, I believe that the spirit would come down in such mighty power that we should find supplies springing up we know not how. we should find the fire spreading from missionary to flock and our native fellow workers and the whole Church of God would be blessed. god gives His Holy Spirit to them that obey Him. let us see to it that we really apprehend what His command to us is, now in the day of our opportunity -this day of the remarkable openness of the country, when there are so many facilities, when God has put steam and telegraph at the command of His people for the quick carrying out of His purposes...

'it would only take 25 evangelists to be associated with each society to give us 1000 additional workers.
the conference closed by issuing an appeal for a 1000 men within 5 years for all forms of missionary work in china including teachers and medics. it was a weighty appeal, coming as it did from the leaders of English, American and European societies. T was appointed chairman of the committee set up to report the outcome.
345  back home that summer, funds for the general purposes of the mission were low. T prayed and worked, taking
346  on a heavy load of meetings which eventually damaged his health. a severe bout of neuralgia and headaches forced him to accept his doctor's advice.
'take a complete rest. leave the running of the mission to others for several months.

so H and Jennie travelled to Davos in switzerland. the best tonic, over and above the healthy effect of the mountain air, was news of an answer to their prayers. J T Morton, a London wholesaler and merchant, had given 10,000 pounds to the mission's general fund.

within a few days of making this generous donation morton died. on their return to England, H and Jennie learned the contents of M's will. he had left the CIM a quarter of his estate, a share which would amount to at least 100,00 pounds! the legacy was to be used for evangelistic and educational work and would be paid in installments of 10 to 12,000 pounds a year for 10 years.

this gift represented a major transformation of the CIM's financial position, especially bearing in mind the value of money at that time and the purchasing power of the pound sterling in China. we should multiply the amount by 50 to appreciate its equivalent value today.

T saw that the donation could prove a mixed blessing. it might reduce the mission's sense of dependence on God, and cause difficulties at the end of the period when new initiative financed on the strength of the money would have to continue. he had no doubt that the gift was form God in answer to prayer, but it would be useless unless it went hand in hand with an increase in spiritual power, faith and prayer. he linked it in his mind with the prayers he had been bringing to God for 8 years - that christians from all over the world would support taking the good news of Jesus TO EVERY CREATURE in china. 
H and Jennie sailed via America for china in november 1897, planning to do all they could to add impetus to evangelistic efforts in every province of the Empire.

349 ..for some months after arriving in Shanghai for his 10th visit to china, T was virtually confined to his room with another bout of illness. ..'Ah, how much pains the Lord takes to empty us and to show us He can do without us! T wrote to (AT) Pierson..(who had suffered a serious illness.)

...1898...first CIM martyr, Australian William Fleming..

350  the conference gave T a chance to meet and hold discussions with Bishop Cassels and other leaders of the CIM's work in Sichuan. but he had to abandon plans to visit other western mission stations, partly due to an outbreak of rioting in the area but also because the 66 year old T became very ill with bronchitis and seemed likely to die. Jennie nursed him night and day, holding on to god in faith that he would recover. then, in the quiteness of another room, she knelt to pray.
Lord, we can do nothing! do what You will. Undertake for us. 

H knew nothing of Jennie's prayer, but when she returned to his room he looked up.
'I feel better, dear, he whispered.
from that moment he began to regain his strength....

H spent long hours that summer praying for the Forward Movement...despite his illnesses, T attended all but one of the
351 8 meeting of the China Council ..between January 1898 and September 1899. then (they)sailed..

3500 people filled every seat in the vast Carnegie Hall, New York, for the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in april 1900. large overflow meetings allowed the public to join the nearly 1900 official delegates from over 100 missionary societies. ...
the subject of HT's address had been billed as 'The source of power for foreign missionary work. now a month away from his 68th birthday, he sat on the platform with the most distinguished men in the missionary world. as he waited to speak he looked out into the great auditorium with its 2 tiers of boxes and 3 circular galleries. he stepped forward, characteristically stood a moment in silent prayer, then he raised his head and smiled briefly.
'Power belongeth unto God, he began.
...'as he begins to speak, his voice takes on a kindly, compassionate quality. a hush which can be felt falls on the vast audience. old and experienced leaders in missionary service, seated on the platform, lean forward to catch the quiet words.
T continued..'we have tried to do, many of us, as much good as we felt we could easily do, or conveniently do, but there is a wonderful power when the love of god in the heart raises us to this point that we are ready to suffer and with paul we desire to know Him in the power of His resurrection ( which implies the death of self) and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to his death. it is ever true that WHAT COSTS LITTLE IS WORTH LITTLE (mine)...

Frost recalled: 'the people in the body of the house are deeply moved. and all through the audience, hearts are opened to the Lord, spirits become eager to be and to do what God desires and resolutions are formed to give and go. over 30 years later, Frost still met men and women who told him that HT's address that morning radically changed their lives.

...series of meetings in boston with Dr ATPierson, now fit again after his illness. at one of these T seemed to lose his train of thought and began to repeat two sentences over and over again:
YOU MAY TRUST THE LORD TOO LITTLE, BUT YOU CAN NEVER TRUST HIM TOO MUCH.  (mine) ...
T's doctor son, Howard, described the illness which followed as a 'rather serious breakdown'...his later biographer AJBroomhall says that the 'breakdown was physical exhaustion sapping his memory and mental ability. the American visit had to be cut short and H and Jennie arrived back in London in june 1900.
353  ...since H and Jennie had left china, in september 1899, the political situation had deteriorated. the country's defeat by japan, the seizure of ports by european powers, the beginning of railway construction by foreigners, fear that the Empire would be partitioned by European powers, bitter feeling against some missionaries and outbreaks of famine all contributed to a growing sense of unrest. the hostility to missionaries was stirred up, as so often, by rumors about cruel and immoral practices and disturbance of cherished customs.
the Empress Dowager ordered local militia units to stand ready to defend the country; becuse these units practised gymnastic exercises they became know as 'Boxers'. the units began to adopt the slogan mie yang, 'Destroy the foreigner'; they were joined by undisciplined mobs, became associated with secret societies and indulged in charms and occult practices which they believed would protect them from enemy weapons.
 by the end of 1899, Boxer bands began to persecute christians with little discouragement from provincial authorities. on the last day of the year an english missionary from the society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts was murdered.  the British authorities protested vigorously and succeeded in having several men punished. in June 1900 the Empress Dowager, ignoring more moderate counsel from some advisers and against the wishes of her son the Emperor, issued an edict ordering foreigners to be killed throughout the Empire. thus china pitted herself against the rest of the world. 
354  although the Boxer uprising of 1900 was as much anti-foreign  as anti-christian, missionaries and chinese converts to Christ became the chief sufferers. missionaries were more widely scattered outside the ports than other foreigners; and the Boxers dubbed Chinese Christians 'secondary devils', believing them to be traitors against their country and its culture.
violence was much worse in the northeast than in many other parts. this was partly because many chinese officials tried to protect foreigners, realizing how foolish it was for their country to take on the western world. in fact moderate officials managed to alter the words of the imperial order from 'whenever you meet a foreigner you must slay him' to 'you must protect him' in the telegrams sent to may provinces...
356  ..away from the northeast, the most severe persecution was in Zhejiang, south of shanghai. here the telegram ordering the extermination of foreigners seems to have come through unaltered. after hesitating, the governor published it, although he soon withdrew it. but at Qu Xian a mob killed the magistrate for striving to protect foreigners and went on to massacre 11 members of the CIM.

in other provinces, no protestant missionaries died. most of them seem to have taken the consuls' advice and made their way to the treaty ports. many churches and chapels were destroyed and chinese christians roughly handled, but comparatively little blood was shed. 

altogether in china, over 130 protestant missionaries and over 50 of their children died. the CIM lost 58 missionaries and 21 children. the total number of chinese protestants killed may have approached 2000.
some attempt was made at first to keep the full story of the Boxer massacres from a very weak HT, convalescing in Davos. but it was inevitable that he eventually learned the tragic news contained in a succession of telegrams from china. still in the state of mental and physical exhaustion which had broken him down in America, he said 'I CANNOT READ ; I CANNOT THINK; I CANNOT EVEN PRAY; BUT I CAN TRUST. (mine)
Jennie sent a letter to china in july, part of which read:  'day and night our thoughts are with you all. my dear husband says 'i would do all I could to help them: and our heavenly Father, who has the power, WILL do for each one according to His wisdom and love. when some of the worst news arrived in the middle of august, T was so weak that he could hardly cross the room unaided; his pulse rate fell to only 40 per minute.
358  when it was all over, western countries agreed that the chinese government shold pay missionary societies and chinese christians a total of 450,000,000 taels (nearly 70,000,000pounds ) in compensation. at first HT believed that it would be right to refuse compensation for loss of life, but to accept it for mission premises and property. later after the London and China Councils discussed it, the CIM decided not to claim anything nor accept any compensation even if it was offered. they wanted to show the chinese 'the meekness and gentleness of Christ. this became the firm policy of the CIM, which had suffered more than any other society. individuals, however, could accept compensation for personal losses if they wished. some criticised the decision, but the British Foreign office approved of it and the British Minister in Beijing sent a private gift of 100 pounds to the CIM and expressed his admiration and sympathy.

..the heroism and steadfastness shown by both Roman Catholic and protestant missionaries in china during the Boxer uprising can hardly be praised too highly. not one missionary attempted to recant or wavered in the face of death. and none of the letters written by CIM members at this time reveal any bitterness against the men of violence or any thought of revenge.

359  the majority of chinese converts also remained true to their faith when a simple act of compromise could have saved their lives. some non-christian chinese officials also, at risk of imperial displeasure and sometimes at the cost of their lives, protected foreignersin their areas and helped others to escape.
'I have been writing to some relative of those we have lost, T said towards the end of 1900, 'to comfort them in their sorrow and to my surprise they forgot their own bereavement in sympathizing with me. in fact 300 members of the mission wrote to him from shanghai expressing sympathy at the news of his illness. he replied in december `900:
'as we have read over your signatures one by one we have thanked God for sparing you to us and to china. the sad circumstances through which we have all suffered have been permitted by god for His glory and our good and when He has tried us and our native brethren He will doubtless reopen the work at present closed, under more favourable circumstances than before.

'we thank god for the grace given to those who have suffered. it is a wonderful honour He has put upon us as a mission  to be trusted with so great a trial, and to have among us so many counted worthy of a martyr's crown. some who have been spared have perhaps suffered more than some of those taken and our Lord will not forget. how much it has meant to us to be so far from you in the hour of trial we cannot express, but the throne of grace has been as near to us here as it would have been in china.
'when the resumption of our work in the interior becomes possible we may find circumstances changed, but the principles we have proved, being founded on His own unchanging Word, will be applicable as ever. may we all individually learn the lessons God would teach and be prepared by His Spirit for any further service to which He may call us while waiting for the coming of our Lord.