Hudson Taylor - Final Years

Final Years

Due to health issues, Taylor remained in Switzerland, semi-retired with his wife. In 1900, Dixon Edward Hoste was appointed the Acting General Director of the CIM, and in 1902, Taylor formally resigned. His wife, Jennie, died of cancer in 1904 in Les Chevalleyres, Switzerland, and in 1905, Taylor returned to China for the eleventh and final time. There he visited Yangzhou and Zhenjiang and other cities, before dying suddenly while reading at home in Changsha. He was buried next to his first wife, Maria in Zhenjiang near the Yangtze River.

The small Protestant cemetery in Zhenjiang was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s by the Red Guards. Today there are industrial buildings over the site. However, the marker for Hudson Taylor was stored away in a local museum for years. His great-grandson, James H. Taylor III, found the marker and was able to help a local Chinese church re-erect it within their building in 1999.

His re-erected tombstone reads:

Sacred
to the memory
of
the Rev.
J. Hudson Taylor,
the revered founder
of
the China Inland Mission.
Born May 21, 1832,
Died June 3, 1905
"A MAN IN CHRIST" 2 Cor. XII:2
This monument is erected
by the missionaries of the China Inland Mission,
as a mark of their heartfelt esteem and love.

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