The first name in the book of members reads, " Taylor, F Howard, MD, MRCP, FRCS (England), the London Hospital."

He later noted:It was suggested by some of my fellow students that I was taking a rash step, that I was perhaps making a mistake in going and burying myself, as they said, amongst the heathen of China.

I did not think so; I did not believe that any one who undertook to go forth and serve the Lord Jesus Christ would be found in the long run to be making a mistake, and I am thankful to be able to say now that it is better than I hoped.On 3 November 1889 Howard Taylor, accompanying his father Hudson Taylor, arrived at Gothenburg, where they were met by Mr. Josef Holmgren, the Secretary of the Swedish Mission in China, who invited them over for special meetings to mobilize the Swedish Christians for China.

Yet his insistence on traveling third class and carrying his own suitcase continued to give the young soon-to-be missionary a model of servanthood.

He was sent to Henan and his leadership was displayed with the opening of the ministry in the province, including the significant medical work which continued into the next 30 years.

[5] In the spring of 1895 a mission station was opened as the result of the medical work for the previous three years at the invitation of Yuan Shikai, a rising political figure who later became President of China.

The medical work was a means which the Lord used very greatly in enabling us to get at the hearts and the affections of the people in those two cities and the surrounding districts.

Such work is always carried on at considerable cost.In 1894 he married Mary Geraldine Guinness, a childhood friend from his youth in Bromley-by-Bow in the East End of London.

Together Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor authored several books: Mary Geraldine Guinness was a noteworthy missionary in her own right with a love of writing.

Ten years after his service began in China, in 1900, he and his wife made a special tour of the American colleges, again at the invitation of the Student volunteer Missionary Union.

This was considered one of the most notable campaigns ever conducted among North American institutions by secretaries of the Student Volunteer Movement on overseas missions.

His aim was to present to medical students the opportunities for service on the mission field, so that only those other colleges could be visited that were in or near the largest cities.

They had been traveling with him since April visiting the different mission stations along the Yangtze, calling at various ports, to Hankow, then by rail into Henan, and finally to Changsha, the capital of Hunan.

At the memorial service held at the China Inland Mission Hall in Shanghai on 13 June, Dr. Howard Taylor spoke about his father’s life, quoting from Hudson Taylor and how his father constantly challenged him, Does it not say that we ought to lay down our lives for the [Chinese] brethen?In February 1922, Howard and his wife were kidnapped by a bandit leader in Yunnan named Pu Shuming.