China's Spiritual Need and Claims

A manifesto of Taylor’s life and work, it describes in stark detail the desperate lack of Protestant Christian missionary endeavor among the people of China.

The book was reprinted several times over thirty years and motivated uncounted numbers of Christians in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand to volunteer for service in east Asia.

Taylor compiled the book at the urging of his pastor, William Garrett Lewis, of Westbourne Grove Church, who thought that the topic was too weighty not to be printed.

Taylor began by affirming the biblical teachings that all men are lost without Christ, that the Gospel is for all, and that the Great Commission specifies that the church is to “make disciples” of all peoples.

The country was accessible, for the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, ratified at Beijing in 1860, had, in Articles VIII., IX., and XII., promised religious liberty, authorized British subjects to travel inland, and permitted the building of churches and hospitals.

We refer the reader to the deeply important paper appended to the preface to this (the third) edition the comparative table of statistics of Roman Catholic and Protestant Missions in China in 1866 which will prove most suggestive to the thoughtful mind.

Many new missionary societies were formed and hundreds of workers were recruited, largely from the thousands of university students influenced by the ministry of D. L. Moody.