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James Taylor was intrigued by all things Chinese. It fascinated him that once-famous empires, like those in Persia, Greece, and Rome, had risen and fallen, but the Chinese Empire remained—the world's greatest monument to ancient times. In the early months of 1832, he knelt beside his 24-year-old wife, Amelia, in the parlor at the back of his busy chemist shop in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England. "Dear God," he prayed, "if you should give us a son, grant that he may work for you in China."

When their child was born on May 21, 1832, James and Amelia called him James Hudson Taylor—Hudson was his mother's maiden name. Immersed in a Methodist family fascinated with China, the young Hudson sometimes blurted out, "When I am a man, I mean to be a missionary and go to China"—though his parents were not to tell him of their prayer for some years.

Yet his faith and life calling were not always clear to him. By age 17, he was in the spiritual doldrums, experiencing, as one biographer put it, "teenage restlessness and rebellion" against his impatient father. He became the anxious prayer concern of his sister and mother, among others, which led to a story that has become a legend in missions circles.

According to Taylor, in June 1849, when he was 17, his mother locked herself in a room 50 miles from home. She was visiting her sister at the time, and she had felt moved not only to pray that Taylor would become a Christian but to stay in the room until she was sure her prayers had been answered. That same afternoon, Taylor later recalled, he picked up a gospel tract about the finished work of Christ and accepted "this Savior and this salvation."

Such "coincidences" were to attend the rest of Taylor's life—a single-minded, even strong-headed life completely dedicated to one thing: bringing the gospel to the interior of China.

Within a few months of this "new birth," as he called it, Taylor's call to China was confirmed during a night of intense prayer when Taylor lay stretched "before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy." He spent the next few years in frantic preparation, medical and language studies, and a deeper immersion into the Bible and prayer.

Finally, on Monday, September 19, 1853, the little three-masted clipper Dumfries, weighing less than 500 tons, slipped quietly out of Liverpool harbor with Taylor aboard headed for China. Just 21 years old, he said an emotional good-bye to his mother.

For Taylor life had become an adventure of faith, of learning to trust God in impossible circumstances. The first leg of this journey only reinforced the pattern.

Off the Welsh coast, the ship ran into a severe storm that lasted for hours. The captain described the sea as the "wildest he had ever seen." Taylor alternated between dread and trust in God's care. When the captain, a devout Methodist himself, grew convinced that they weren't going to survive a half-hour longer, he turned to Taylor and asked, "What of your call to labor for the Lord in China?"

Taylor said that he wouldn't wish to be in any other position and that he still expected to reach China. But if not, "The Master would say it was well that I was found seeking to obey his command."

In fact they did survive the storm, and in March 1854, the ship arrived in Shanghai, one of the five "treaty ports." The 1842 Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing), ending the first Opium War between England and China, had opened these trading links with the West, giving foreigners the right to live only in these cities. Taylor quickly settled in and began his work as an agent of the Chinese Evangelization Society, a fledgling independent missionary organization started under the inspiration of pioneer missionary Karl Gützlaff. A local teacher taught Taylor the Mandarin dialect, variations of which were used all over China.

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