Hudson taylor, god’s venturer



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Chuyển đổi dữ liệu02.01.2022
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Chapter 4


STRENGTH THROUGH PRAYER
Hudson’s first reaction to the doctor’s startling announcement was one of sorrow and disappointment. If he were dying, that meant he could not go to China. China! How he had longed to go there! How deep had been his conviction that God had a work for him in that land! It seemed impossible that he had been mistaken about it. And then the thought came—had he been mistaken? If God really intended him to go to China, thought Hudson, then he must get better, in spite of the doctor’s assertion that there was no hope.

This he endeavored to explain. He was not at all afraid to die, he pointed out. Indeed, the prospect of being with His Master, whom he was learning to love very much, very a very inviting one. However, he was sure he had a work to do for Him in China first, and therefore he must pull through this illness.

“That’s all very well,” the doctor rejoined impatiently. This was no time for the young student to reason why he should live, when it was evident he was going to die! “You get a cab and drive home as fast as you can. You’ve no time to lose. You’ll soon be quite incapable of winding up your affairs...”

It was scarcely a cheering motive for hurrying, and, furthermore, he had not enough money to pay for a four-mile ride in a cab. Hudson smiled a little wryly to himself as he departed. He dragged himself slowly along the road to the place where he could get on a bus, and wearily mounted it, conscious of the pain in his arm as the clumsy vehicle rumbled and bumped along the streets. When at last he reached his lodging and climbed slowly up the three flights of stairs to his attic, he was exhausted. Thinking, however, to improve his condition, he lanced his finger to let out some of the poison. The pain was intense—and that was the last thing he remembered. He fell unconscious to the floor.


* * *
For some weeks Hudson lay in his bed, too weak to move. When he had been found in a dead faint on the floor, an artist uncle of his who lived nearby had been called. This kindly man had taken charge of him, sending immediately for a doctor, despite Hudson’s protestations that he could not afford to be the bill.

“He is my own medical man, and the bill will be sent to me,” he said reassuringly. “Don’t worry over that.” But when the doctor arrived and heard Hudson’s story, he looked grave.

“Well,” he said frankly. “If you’ve been living moderately, you may pull through. But if you’ve been going in for beer and that sort of thing, I’m afraid there’s no hope...”

With vivid memories of apples and brown bread washed down by cold water, Hudson was able to reassure him on that point! If recovery depended on having avoided high living, he knew of no one who stood a better chance!


“But now,” said the doctor, “it’s going to be a hard struggle. You must do everything possible to keep up your strength. A bottle of port wine every day, and as many chops as he can eat!” he told Hudson’s uncle. Hudson had little taste for that sort of diet, but he did his best with it, and after many days and nights of suffering he was at last able to move out of his room and lie for an hour or two on a sofa in the boardinghouse parlor. It was not until then that he learned that two other medical students who had become infected about the same time as he were both dead. Why had his life, then, been preserved? He felt it could be for no other purposes than that there was a work for him to do in China.

One day when the doctor came, after expressing satisfaction at the progress made by his patient, he said,

“The best thing you can do now is to get off to the country as soon as you feel fit to take the journey. You must rest until you have gained more strength. If you start work too soon, the result may still be serious.”

When he had gone Hudson lay back on the sofa to review his position. “Get off to the country.” His thoughts flew to the cozy, happy home in Yorkshire; the Cudworth road along which he had raced so often as a child, rolling his hoop, and teasing Amelia as she came trotting breathlessly behind, corkscrew curls a-bob; the shady glades of the Lunn Woods, where butterflies fluttered, and birds’ nests could be found; the distant view of the Pennines. “Get off to the country.” The doctor’s order was attractive, and commended itself to both heart and head! Hudson realized that he was still far too weak to attempt the strenuous life in the hospital yet, and obviously there was no place where he could regain his health so quickly as his own home. There was only one obstacle in the way, he had no money at all for the fare.

Actually, as he well knew, the money could be obtained with the utmost ease just for the asking. His kindly uncle would undoubtedly be more than willing to forward it. And were he to drop the smallest hint in a letter home, his fare and more would be forthcoming by return post. As he lay on the sofa, exhausted as he was after the exertion of walking down the stairs, there was something in him that refused to consider taking the easy and obvious course. He still wanted to try out this method of getting used to relying on God to answer his prayer, instead of depending on people. They certainly would not be at hand to help him in China. He closed his eyes as he lay there and, telling this to God, asked Him what he should do.

After this he remained quiet for a while. If he had not forwarded that money to Mrs. Finch, he thought, he would have had ample. And if only Finch had not chosen to desert his ship at that particular time, he would have been able to draw the money. Then the thought came that perhaps if he went to the shipping office he might yet be able to draw it. Although it seemed most unlikely, since he had forwarded the remittance to Mrs. Finch on his own responsibility, the thought persisted.

Was God putting it into his mind? Or was it just a silly idea of his own? He was not sure. So he closed his eyes again and prayed, asking God which it was. Because if the idea did not come from God, the fact remained that the shipping office was two miles away, and he had not the money needed to ride there! To walk, of course, was out of the question. It had been necessary for someone to help him even walk down the stairs! Yes, to walk was out of the question—but was it? Was it? To his own surprise Hudson found himself thinking, that perhaps it was not out of the question, after all. God had already done some quite remarkable and unexpected things after he had prayed. Jesus Christ had said, “Whatsoever you will ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:13) He had said it hundreds of years earlier, but as Hudson lay in the boardinghouse parlor, it all seemed suddenly real and up to date. There was something very convincing about that calm assertion. “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.” In view of it, to walk to the shipping office in Cheapside no longer seemed out of the question. Obviously all that was necessary was to ask to be strengthened to do it. That it was Hudson did. He rang for the boardinghouse servant and asked her to go up and bring him his hat and stick. Having had them handed to him by that respectful but somewhat surprised girl, he slowly emerged from the boardinghouse, and turned along the quiet street into the busy thoroughfare leading toward the city.

His progress, admittedly, was slow. He displayed unusual interest in the contents of ship windows, pausing at almost every other one to lean against the glass. Ladies in crinolines swept past him as he continued his deliberate, leisurely pace, and street vendors cried after him to buy their wares. He not so much as turn his head to watch an elegant coach with briskly trotting horses come along the street. Indeed, it is doubtful if the young Queen Victoria had driven past he would have roused himself to look. Gradually the way was traversed. He had asked for strength to walk it, he reminded himself as he faced the sharp incline that led to Cheapside, and strength would surely be given. Walk it he did! He arrived safely at the shipping offices and sat down on the steps before attempting to climb the stairs to the first floor. It was a little unusual, he realized, to sit there. The top-hatted gentlemen who hurried past him, up and down the stairs, evidently thought so, too. They eyed him with some surprise, as though thinking, “Tut, tut! Quite a respectable young fellow, too...!” However, no one spoke to him, and eventually he climbed the stairs and entered the office.

This was the crucial moment.

After all the exertion of the walk, was he to be met with disappointment? Somehow Hudson felt it was going to be all right. And it was! The clerk who greeted him recognized him immediately.

“Oh, I am so glad you have come,” he exclaimed. “It turns out that after all it was not the mate Finch who ran away, but an able seaman of the same name. I shall be glad to give you the half-pay due Mrs. Finch up to date. It will no doubt reach her more safely through you than through her husband. His ship has just reach Gravesend, and we all know the temptations these men meet when they come ashore after a voyage.” He looked keenly at the young medical student, standing so pale and obviously weak. “But before I give you the money,” he continued, “you must have a rest and something to eat. I’m just going to have my lunch. You must come inside and share it with me.”

Gratefully Hudson accepted the kind invitation. Glad enough he was of the opportunity to rest as well was eat! He took his journey back to Soho in a bus, too! He could afford it now! But the effort he had made seemed to have done him good rather than harm. The next morning he felt so much better that he had no hesitation about going round to the doctor’s surgery to settle his bill. His uncle had already done so much for him, he was unwilling to allow him to pay it and spend his own money on railroad fares to take himself home for a holiday. Although he realized that by paying the doctor’s bill himself he would almost certainly be left with insufficient money to buy his ticket, it seemed the honorable thing to do. To the doctor, there, he betook himself. And there another pleasant surprise awaited him. The doctor refused to charge him anything.


“You’re a young medical student,” he said firmly. “As such, I shall charge you nothing for my services.”

“But medicines...” remonstrated Hudson. “All that quinine. I ought to pay for that.”

“Very well,” said the doctor. “Quinine. We’ll take for the quinine, and that’s all.”
Hudson made a rapid mental calculation as he handed over a surprisingly small sum. There would be just sufficient left for his railway fare to Yorkshire, the bus journey to his home, and the necessary food for the journey! He was overjoyed. This was wonderful. At every step he found his affairs were planned out to what seemed perfection. He simply could not keep it all to himself, this amazing evidence that God was fully prepared to take responsibility for the ordering of his life. And if for his, most certainly for others too. The doctor must be told. “

“Pardon me, sir,” he said respectfully. “But I wonder if you will allow me to speak to you freely, without being offended. I feel that under God I owe my life to your care and attention, and I am truly grateful. And there is something I want to tell you about...” Whereupon he related the whole story of his reason for being in London, his intention to find out if God really answered prayer before he went to China, and the things he had experienced in doing so. The surgeon listened with kind, though skeptical interest until Hudson told him of his walk to Cheapside the previous day. But that he could not believe.

“Impossible,” he exclaimed. “Why, I left you lying on that sofa looking more lie a ghost than a man!”
“I did talk it, indeed, sir,” asserted Hudson, explaining that he had prayed in the name of Jesus to be strengthened to do it, before starting out.
“Do you mean you walked—you did not go by cab, or even by bus?”

“No, I walked.”

“All the way from Soho to Farrindon Street, and then up to Snow Hill to Cheapside...”

“Yes, sir...”

The doctor was interested now. It seemed incredible that one who had been so weakened by illness could take a two-mile walk alone through London’s busy streets, and be none the worse for it. He listened to the recital of the happy outcome of the walk in the money received, how Hudson had been able to settle all his bills, and last of all, that after settling for quinine, he had just enough to see him home. There was a restrained yet evident joy about the convincing way Hudson told his story that touched the older man’s heart. This practical confidence in a God who, after all, could neither be seen nor heard, was something new to him. Unaccustomed tears welled slowly up his eyes as he looked at the strangely radiant expression of the open-faced boy before him, and he said in a voice deepened by emotion:

“I’d give all the world for a faith like yours.”

“You can have it, you know, sir,” answered Hudson quietly. “It’s free to all—without money and without price.”



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