The society that he began was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country who started 125 schools[1] and directly resulted in 20,000 Christian conversions, as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work with more than 499 local helpers in all 18 provinces.

Under his leadership, the CIM was singularly non-denominational in practice and accepted members from all Protestant groups, including individuals from the working class, and single women as well as multinational recruits.

Primarily because the CIM campaigned against the opium trade, Taylor has been referred to as one of the most significant Europeans to visit China in the 19th century.

[3][page needed] Historian Ruth Tucker summarizes the theme of his life: No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor.

The great interest awakened in England about China through the civil war, which was then erroneously supposed to be a mass movement toward Christianity, together with the glowing but exaggerated reports made by Karl Gützlaff concerning China's accessibility, led to the founding of the Chinese Evangelisation Society, to the service of which Hudson Taylor offered himself as their first missionary.

Taylor left England on 19 September 1853 as an agent of the Chinese Evangelisation Society before completing his medical studies, departing from Liverpool and arriving in Shanghai on 1 March 1854.

Taylor made 18 preaching tours in the vicinity of Shanghai starting in 1855 and was often poorly received by the people, even though he brought with him medical supplies and skills.

He made a decision to adopt the native Chinese clothes and queue (pigtail) with a shaven forehead and was then able to gain an audience without creating a disturbance.

Scottish evangelist William Chalmers Burns of the English Presbyterian Mission began work in Shantou, and for a period in 1855-56, Taylor joined him there.

Four Chinese men joined them in their work: Ni Yongfa, Feng Ninggui, Wang Laijun, and Qiu Guogui.

[12] Hudson met Maria in Ningbo where she lived and worked at a school for girls which was run by Mary Ann Aldersey, one of the first female missionaries to the Chinese, and they were married at the British Consulate there.

On 25 June 1865 at Brighton, Taylor dedicated himself to God for the founding of a new society to undertake the evangelization of the "unreached" inland provinces of China.

The following summary by Taylor came to be held as the core values of the CIM in what came to be a classic description of future faith missions: Object.

That duly qualified candidates for missionary labor should be accepted without restriction as to denomination, provided there was soundness in the faith in all fundamental truths.

"[17][independent source needed] They traveled down the Grand Canal of China to make the first settlement in the war-torn city of Hangzhou.

In 1869 Hudson was influenced by a passage on personal holiness from a book called "Christ Is All" by Henry Law that was sent to him by a fellow missionary, John McCarthy.

Taylor later sent out "How to Live on Christ", a booklet by Harriet Beecher Stowe that first appeared as an introduction to "Religion as it Should Be", a book written by Christopher Dean and published in 1847.

Her death shook Taylor deeply, and in 1871 his health began deteriorating further, leading to his return to England later that year to recuperate and take care of business items.

Meanwhile, in England, the work of General Secretary of the China Inland Mission was done by Benjamin Broomhall, who had married Hudson's sister, Amelia.

Their son Ernest Hamilton Taylor, who had been educated at Monkton Combe School and the Glasgow Institute of Accountants, joined them at the China Inland Mission in 1898 where he remained as a missionary for much of his working life.

In the U.S. he traveled and spoke at many places, including the Niagara Bible Conference where he befriended Cyrus Scofield, and Taylor filled the pulpit of Dwight L. Moody as a guest in Chicago.

Though the CIM suffered more than any other mission in China (58 missionaries and 21 children were killed), Taylor refused to accept payment for loss of property or life, to show the 'meekness and gentleness of Christ'.

Jennie died of cancer in 1904 in Les Chevalleyres, Switzerland, and in 1905 Taylor returned to China for the eleventh and final time.

His great-grandson, James Hudson Taylor III, found the marker and was able to help a local Chinese church erect it within their building in 1999.

The beginning of "faith missions" (the sending of missionaries with no promises of temporal support, but instead a reliance "through prayer to move men by God") has had a wide impact among evangelical churches to this day.

Notable examples are: missionary to India Amy Carmichael, Olympic Gold Medalist Eric Liddell, twentieth-century missionary and martyr Jim Elliot, founder of Bible Study Fellowship Audrey Wetherell Johnson,[21] as well as international evangelists Billy Graham and Luis Palau.

Descendants of James Hudson Taylor continued his full-time ministry into the 21st century in Chinese communities in East Asia.

In the course of his life he became close to the "Open Brethren" such as George Müller, and was a member of the Westbourne Grove Church pastored by William Garrett Lewis.

Feeble health in childhood instilled in Taylor a sense that his life was not his own; and thus, from an early age, he professed ‘a genuine desire for holiness’.

[26] Ernest (died 1948) and Amy (died 1953) are buried in the same grave plot at the Kent & Sussex Cemetery, Royal Tunbridge Wells Manuscripts and letters relating to James Hudson Taylor are held as part of the China Inland Mission collection by the Archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.