"It is a most blessed work. If some celestial messenger were to arrive from the court of heaven and acquaint me with the circumstance that my children would grow up to carry on my poor labours; and that they should live to be far more holy, devoted, faithful, and laborious than their parents; I would sing with good old Simeon, 'Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'"
— Samuel Dyer
Source: Letter from Malacca, 17 Sept. 1836, to his former pastor, in Evan Davies, Memoir of the Rev. Samuel Dyer (1846)
Desire, wealth, fame, Christ, glory
Views: 378
""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?" … The sweetest part … is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. … No fear that His resources will be unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me. All this springs from the believer's oneness with Christ."
— James Hudson Taylor
Source: Letter to his sister Mrs. Broomhall, 17 Oct. 1869, in Dr. & Mrs. Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God (1918), ch. 12 "The Exchanged Life"
Strength, support, peace, infant, mother, joy
Views: 430
"I know none of those distinctions of rank or condition which are so common among men. I view the soul of the poor, ignorant, and degraded, to be as precious to its possessor as that of the most accomplished and affluent. ... With me it is regarded as an eternal truth that God has made of one blood all nations. The veriest beggar is my brother, and the same grace is both indispensable and able to qualify either of us for heaven."
— Peter Parker
Source: Journal of self-examination on the missionary call, senior year at Yale; in George B. Stevens, The Life, Letters, and Journals of the Rev. and Hon. Peter Parker, M.D. (1896), p. 45
Nation, Truth, Compassion, Vulnerable
Views: 395
"The object with which these pages have been written is to show that a medical missionary's work in a heathen land has a powerful influence in affecting the minds of the people among whom he may labour, and that such work is very valuable in giving facilities for the more direct preaching of the Gospel."
— William Lockhart
Source: The Medical Missionary in China: A Narrative of Twenty Years' Experience (1861), Preface
Medicine, suffering, truth
Views: 470
""Do? We will 'trust in the Lord and do good'; so shall we 'dwell in the land,' and verily we shall be fed." ... "Did I not tell you this morning that it is always 'all right' to trust in the living God?""
— George Duncan
Source: Howard & Geraldine Taylor, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God (1918), pp. 123–124
"Christianity has been introduced into the world as a plant which will thrive best confronting and contending with all the forces of its environment; not as a feeble exotic which can only live when nursed and sheltered. All unnecessary nursing will do it harm. A pine may be trained into a beautiful and fantastic shape so as to be an object of interest and curiosity, and may flourish in a way; but it will not tower heavenward as the king of the forest, unless from first to last it is subjected to the various and seemingly adverse influences of scorching sun, biting frost and raging tempest."
— John Livingston Nevius
Source: The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches (1886)