July 27

J. Hudson Taylor, gospel pioneer to China, though raised in a Christian home, remained ignorant of what it meant to become a true believer. He tried to “make” himself a Christian, but after failing in his attempts, he grew skeptical. He writes: “The inconsistencies of Christian people, who, while professing to believe their Bibles, were yet content to live just as they would if there were no such Book, had been one of the strongest arguments of my skeptical companions.” At age seventeen, to fill a boring afternoon, Taylor read a gospel tract that opened his eyes to see the finished work of Christ. He says: “Then came the thought, ‘If the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid, what is there left for me to do?’ And with this dawned the joyful conviction, as light was flashed into my soul by the Holy Spirit, that there was nothing in the world to be done but to fall down on one’s knees, and, accepting this Savior and His salvation, to praise Him forevermore.”