I
The day on which James Hudson Taylor--then a boy in his teens--found
himself confronted by that tremendous text was, as he himself testified
in old age, 'a day that he could never forget.' It is a day that China
can never forget; a day that the world can never forget. It was a
holiday; everybody was away from home; and the boy found time hanging
heavily upon his hands. In an aimless way he wandered, during the
afternoon, into his father's library, and poked about among the shelves.
'I tried,' he says, 'to find some book with which to while away the
leaden hours. Nothing attracting me, I turned over a basket of pamphlets
and selected from among them a tract that looked interesting. I knew
that it would have a story at the commencement and a moral at the close;
but I promised myself that I would enjoy the story and leave the rest.
It would be easy to put away the tract as soon as it should seem prosy.'
He scampers off to the stable-loft, throws himself on the hay, and
plunges into the book. He is captivated by the narrative, and finds it
impossible to drop the book when the story comes to an end. He reads on
and on. He is rewarded by one great golden word whose significance he
has never before discovered: '_The Finished Work of Christ!_' The theme
entrances him; and at last he only rises from his bed in the soft hay
that he may kneel on the hard floor of the loft and surrender his young
life to the Saviour who had surrendered everything for him. If, he asked
himself, as he lay upon the hay, if the whole work was finished, and the
whole debt paid upon the Cross, what is there left for me to do? 'And
then,' he tells us, 'there dawned upon me the joyous conviction that
there was nothing in the world to be done but to fall upon my knees,
accept the Saviour and praise Him for evermore.'
'_It is finished!_'
'_When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar he said, "It is
finished!" and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost._'
'_Then there dawned upon me the joyous conviction that, since the whole
work was finished and the whole debt paid upon the Cross, there was
nothing for me to do but to fall upon my knees, accept the Saviour and
praise Him for evermore!_'