Page 97 - Living Epistles

I cannot tell you how often my mind has recurred to this incident, or all the
help it has been to me in circumstances of difficulty in afterlife. If we are
faithful to God in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will
be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life.

But this was not the end of the story, nor was it the only answer to prayer
that was to confirm his faith at this time. For the chief difficulty still
remained. Dr. Hardey had not remembered; and though prayer was
unremitting, other matters appeared entirely to engross his attention. It
would have been so easy to remind him. But what then of the lesson upon the
acquirement of which Hudson Taylor felt his future usefulness depended," to
move man through God, by prayer alone."

"This remarkable and gracious deliverance,” he continued, "was a great joy
to me as well as a strong confirmation of faith. But of course ten shillings
however economically used will not go very far, and it was none the less
necessary to continue in prayer, asking that the larger supply which was still
due might be remembered and paid. All my petitions, however, appeared to
remain unanswered, and before a fortnight elapsed I found myself pretty
much in the same position that I had occupied on the Sunday night already
made so memorable. Meanwhile I continued pleading with God more and
more earnestly that He would Himself remind Dr. Hardey that my salary
was due.

"Of course it was not the want of money that distressed me. That could have
been had at any time for the asking. But the question uppermost in my mind
was this : `Can I go to China ? or will my want of faith and power with God
prove so serious an obstacle as to preclude my entering upon this
much-prized service?'

"As the week drew to a close I felt exceedingly embarrassed. There was not
only myself to consider. On Saturday night a payment would be due to my
Christian landlady, which I knew she could not well dispense with. Ought I
not, for her sake, to speak about the matter of the salary? Yet to do so would
be, to myself at any rate, the admission that I was not fitted to undertake a
missionary enterprise. I gave nearly the whole of Thursday and Friday, all
the time not occupied in my necessary employment, to earnest wrestling with
God in prayer. But still on Saturday morning I was in the same position as
before. And now my earnest cry was for guidance as to whether I should still
continue to wait the Father's time. As far as I could judge I received the