Geraldine Taylor Books: Pastor Hsi, Hudson Taylor, Borden and More

Biography Missions Christian Life

Geraldine Taylor (1862–1949), who signed her books "Mrs. Howard Taylor," spent her life telling the stories of people God used in China. She wrote more than twenty books. TheWay Library has four of them, all free to read: three biographies and one travel account. Each one is a true story, told from letters, diaries and her own time on the mission field, and each one asks the reader what a life wholly given to Christ looks like. For her own story, see who was Geraldine Taylor.

Where to start

Start with Pastor Hsi of North China. It's her best-known book, it's a gripping conversion story, and it shows a Chinese believer leading the Chinese church. Then choose by what you want:

To see how a missionary is made: Hudson Taylor in Early Years.
For students and young adults: Borden of Yale '09.
For missions history and the unreached peoples of Asia: The Call of China's Great North-west.

Every quotation below is checked against the book it comes from. For many more, see our collection of Geraldine Taylor quotes.

Pastor Hsi of North China (1903)

Hsi Shengmo was a Confucian scholar of Shansi province, proud, gifted and enslaved to opium. He came to the missionary David Hill to help judge an essay contest and was won to Christ. Freed from opium, he took the name Shengmo, "conqueror of demons," and became a pastor and leader of the North China church.

Mrs. Taylor based the book on Hsi's own short account of his life, written at the missionaries' request before his death, and on what she learned from those who knew him. The chapters follow his conversion, his battles with demonic powers, the "starving" of the village idols, and his life-work: the opium refuges, where addicts were cared for and taught the gospel, which spread through the province and became mission stations. Later chapters cover his ordination, the strains of leadership, and his death.

It's a book about prayer, spiritual warfare and the cost of shepherding a church. It's also about money. Hsi learned to trust God with nothing in hand:

Hsi was beginning to prove not only the trial but the blessing of an empty treasury that casts one upon God.
Pastor Hsi of North China, How God Provided

A note on this copy: the preface is missing its opening lines. The rest of the book is complete. Read Pastor Hsi of North China.

Hudson Taylor in Early Years: The Growth of a Soul (1911)

This is the first volume of the authorized life of Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, written by Geraldine and her husband Howard, Hudson Taylor's son. It's long, forty-two chapters, and it's the fullest account of his early life you can read.

It begins two generations back, with his great-grandfather's Methodist faith and his parents' home in Barnsley. Hudson is converted at seventeen while reading a tract about the finished work of Christ. He hears God's call to China and prepares by living on very little in Hull and London, studying medicine and learning to trust God for money and health before he sails. In 1853 he lands in Shanghai in the middle of civil war. He makes preaching trips inland, works beside the Scottish evangelist William Burns, leaves his mission society to trust God directly, and settles at Ning-po, where he marries Maria Dyer and sees his first converts.

The authors never let the story turn into a list of events. They keep asking what God was teaching him:

The cross of Christ had cut him off for ever from the old life, and from rest in anything the world could give.
Hudson Taylor in Early Years, Here Am I; Send Me

We have a chapter-by-chapter summary of Hudson Taylor in Early Years, and Hudson Taylor's own books are covered in our Hudson Taylor reading guide. Read Hudson Taylor in Early Years.

Borden of Yale '09: The Life That Counts (1927)

William Whiting Borden was born to wealth in Chicago. After school he made a trip around the world, and during it he gave himself fully to Christ and sensed a call to missions. At Yale he led Bible and prayer groups and founded the Yale Hope Mission for the down-and-out men of New Haven. He set his heart on reaching the Muslims of Kansu in north-west China with the China Inland Mission, went to Cairo to study Arabic, and died there of meningitis in 1913, at twenty-five.

Mrs. Taylor lets Borden speak for himself through his diaries and letters, and gathers tributes from friends, teachers and the men he helped. The chapter on stewardship is the one many readers remember. Borden gave freely all through his life and left most of his fortune to the work of God. She compares his will with that of the banker J. Pierpont Morgan, probated the same spring:

Mr. Morgan at the age of seventy-five left little more than half as much to the work of God as William Borden left at twenty-five.
Borden of Yale '09, Stewardship

The last chapter, "The Unfinished Task," calls readers to take up the work he didn't live to begin. This is the book to give a college student. The scanned text has some misread words and stray page numbers, but it reads well. Read Borden of Yale '09.

The Call of China's Great North-west (1923)

This one is a travel book with a purpose. Around 1920 the Taylors went with China Inland Mission workers through Kansu, the far north-western province where China meets Tibet and Central Asia. Mrs. Taylor describes the Sundays spent at mission stations on the road, the arrival at Lanchow, and the great earthquake that struck while they were kneeling in prayer one December night, followed by the relief work.

The later chapters move west to Liangchow and Sining and the peoples of the borderland: the mountain tribes, Tibetan Buddhists at the Great Butter Festival, a "Living Buddha," the Muslim Salars, and the wider Muslim population she calls the "sons of Ishmael." Short appendices explain Tibetan religion. The book closes with an appeal for workers and with hope:

We are moving forward with the dawn. Day is beginning to break over these distant regions.
The Call of China's Great North-west, With the Dawn

This copy is uncorrected OCR, and the chapter called "Western Peace" ends in a block of garbled characters where the scan picked up a map or table. Read The Call of China's Great North-west.

How the four books fit together

Read them together and you'll see one thread. Hudson Taylor in Early Years shows the founder of the China Inland Mission learning to trust God. Pastor Hsi shows a Chinese believer, converted through that kind of missionary work, leading his own people. Borden of Yale shows a young American giving everything to reach the north-west, and The Call of China's Great North-west shows the very field he was preparing for, a few years after his death.

Why read Geraldine Taylor today

She writes true stories with warmth and without exaggeration, and she always points past her heroes to their Lord. If you want to pray for missions, give to missions, or ask whether God is calling you, these books will help. Begin with Pastor Hsi, then go on to Hudson Taylor in Early Years. All four books are on the Mrs. Howard Taylor author page, and you'll find more stories like them in our list of the best missionary biographies.