V
In his own narrative of his conversion, Hudson Taylor quotes James Proctor's well-known hymn--the hymn that, in one of his essays, Froude criticizes so severely:
Nothing either great or small,
Nothing, sinner, no;
Jesus did it, did it all,
Long, long ago.
'It is Finished!' yes, indeed,
Finished every jot;
Sinner, this is all you need;
Tell me, is it not?
Cast your deadly doing down,
Down at Jesus' feet;
Stand in Him, in Him alone,
Gloriously complete.
Froude maintains that these verses are immoral. It is only by 'doing,' he argues, that the work of the world can ever get done. And if you describe 'doing' as 'deadly' you set a premium upon indolence and lessen the probabilities of attainment. The best answer to Froude's plausible contention is the Life of Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor became convinced, as a boy, that 'the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid.' 'There is nothing for me to do,' he says, 'but to fall down on my knees and accept the Saviour.' The chapter in his biography that tells of this spiritual crisis is entitled 'The Finished Work of Christ,' and it is headed by the quotation:
Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die,
Another's life, Another's death
I stake my whole eternity.
And, as I have said, the very words that Froude so bitterly condemns are quoted by Hudson Taylor as a reflection of his own experience. And the result? The result is that Hudson Taylor became one of the most prodigious toilers of all time. So far from his trust in 'the Finished Work of Christ' inclining him to indolence, he felt that he must toil most terribly to make so perfect a Saviour known to the whole wide world. There lies on my desk a Birthday Book which I very highly value. It was given me at the docks by Mr. Thomas Spurgeon as I was leaving England. If you open it at the twenty-first of May you will find these words: '"Simply to Thy Cross I cling" is but half of the Gospel. No one is really clinging to the Cross who is not at the same time faithfully following Christ and doing whatsoever He commands'; and against those words of Dr. J. R. Miller's in my Birthday Book, you may see the autograph of J. Hudson Taylor. He was our guest at the Mosgiel Manse when he set his signature to those striking and significant sentences.