Hudson Taylor

Miller apparently felt enormous pressure to “accentuate the positive”. This biography portrays Hudson Taylor as joyfully proceeding from one triumph of faith to another, with songs of praise continually on his lips, always rejoicing, a man full of “desire, passion, zeal”, whose faith and confidence never wavered for a moment. Tragedies such as the death of his first wife and his children receive barely a sentence, and the narrative hurriedly shifts away from Taylor’s grief: after his wife and son died, his soul was flooded “with a joy beyond comprehension,” and “These disappointments were but forerunners of greater victories.” The Taylor that emerges from this tale doesn’t seem human. One could easily walk away from this book with the common misconception that it’s unspiritual for Christians to be sad or struggle with faith. Thankfully, that’s not an example we have to live up to. Christ, our true example, was described as a “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” and His prayers in the garden before His crucifixion reveal very human emotions of fear and doubt.