108 The Fundamentals of prayer. He tells us he said to himself: “When I get to China my only claim will be on God. * * * How important, therefore, to learn before leaving England to move man through God by prayer alone” ( “China Inland Mission,” p. 66). The decision to open the mission is made. For months Hudson Taylor has been bearing the burden of unevangelized China. But the far greater burden is that he can not trust and pray for God to raise up the workers for China and sup port them. It seems his life will go out under the fearful strain. He goes to Brighton by the sea for relief. There on the beach, on a bright Sunday morning in June, we see him fully trusting God, and the burden lifts. Then it was that on the margin of his Bible he made a little record, which ought to be forever memorable in the annals of missions: “Prayed for twenty-four willing, skillful laborers at Brighton, June 25, 1865. The conflict was all ended. Peace and glad ness filled my soul” ( “China Inland Mission,” p. 224). This number and more sailed to China. In the autumn of 1881, at Wu Chang, the China Inland missionaries gathered to meet Hudson Taylor. Funds were low. Five years had passed since the Chefu Convention, which opened every province to the missionary, and every province had been entered by this heroic band. They said: “God has opened the doors to once-sealed lands; why are laborers so few?” The answer came: “You have been definite in prayer for doors to open; why not be definite in prayer for workers to enter them?” Conscious of failure, this little company sits down, each one with pencil and paper. They go over the eleven provinces of Inland China, asking what God’s work must have. Twenty-eight women and forty-two men, just seventy in all! There they are, a little band, poor, uninfluential, hardly known outside of England, though' known, we believe, to God and all His angels on high. Whole working force after fifteen years’ work now less than a hun-
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