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| Maria Jane Dyer |
10 A wife of noble
character who can
find? She is worth far more than rubies.
11 Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.
12 She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.
13 She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands.
14 She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.
15 She gets up while it is still night; she provides food for her family and portions for her female servants.
16 She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17 She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks.
18 She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.
19 In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
20 She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.
21 When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
22 She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
23 Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
11 Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.
12 She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.
13 She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands.
14 She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.
15 She gets up while it is still night; she provides food for her family and portions for her female servants.
16 She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17 She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks.
18 She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.
19 In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
20 She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.
21 When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
22 She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
23 Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
24 She makes linen
garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes.
25 She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.
26 She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
27 She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”
30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.25 She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.
26 She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
27 She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”
31 Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
Maria Jane Dyer, the youngest child of pioneer
missionary Samuel Dyer and his wife Maria, was born in Penang, Malaya. Her
father died in 1843. Her mother, Mary Tarn Dyer, married fellow missionary J.G.
Bausum in 1845 and remained in Penang. She died the next year, however, so
Maria and her older sister Burella were sent back to England to live with their
uncle, William Tarn, a director of the Religious Tract Society, and his wife,
who were their guardians. The sisters were inseparable, so Maria accompanied
Burella when she went to college to train as a teacher, and again when she set
sail for China in 1852 at the invitation of Miss M.A. Aldersey to help in her
school for girls in Ningbo.
She had been brought up as an Anglican, but her religion was merely formal until sometime during the voyage to China, when she placed her trust in Christ alone as Saviour from sin. The girls were taught Chinese during the journey, having learned a bit when they were children in Penang. After arriving in Ningbo at the age of sixteen, she pursued language study and became quite fluent in the Ningbo dialect, able to read straight from an English book, translating it into Chinese for her students as she went. In addition to helping in Miss Aldersey’s school, she ran ‘an infant school’. Three years later, she was described as “vivacious, witty and intelligent, a very attractive nineteen-year-old with her fine, warm light-brown hair and slim figure.” Like most educated women of her time, she played the piano-forte.
She had been brought up as an Anglican, but her religion was merely formal until sometime during the voyage to China, when she placed her trust in Christ alone as Saviour from sin. The girls were taught Chinese during the journey, having learned a bit when they were children in Penang. After arriving in Ningbo at the age of sixteen, she pursued language study and became quite fluent in the Ningbo dialect, able to read straight from an English book, translating it into Chinese for her students as she went. In addition to helping in Miss Aldersey’s school, she ran ‘an infant school’. Three years later, she was described as “vivacious, witty and intelligent, a very attractive nineteen-year-old with her fine, warm light-brown hair and slim figure.” Like most educated women of her time, she played the piano-forte.
What did Maria see in Hudson Taylor that made her choose him above all her suitors? The young missionary impressed her as having longings like her own, after holiness, usefulness and nearness to God. He seemed to live in such a real world and to have such a real, great God. Other missionaries disliked his wearing Chinese dress, and did not approve of his making himself so entirely one with the people. His Chinese dress - how she loved it! Or what it represented. His poverty and generous giving to the destitute - how well she understood, how much she sympathized! Did others think him visionary in his longing to reach the great beyond of untouched need? Why, that was just the burden of her heart, the life she too would live, only for a woman it seemed if anything more impracticable.
They were married on January 23, 1858, one week after Maria turned twenty-one. Maria immediately became Hudson Taylor’s indispensable companion and partner in ministering to Chinese of all sorts, but principally the poor. She continued visiting Chinese women and receiving them in their home in Ningbo, while he engaged in preaching, medical work, and constant interviews with inquirers and new believers. The congregation soon grew.
“Her hand wrote for him, her faith strengthened his own, her prayers undergirded the whole work and her practical experience and loving heart made her the Mother of the whole Mission.” Their home began to fill up with candidates for service in China, while Maria not only ran the household but served as Hudson’s secretary. On the four months’ journey to China on the Lammeruir with the first batch of new missionaries, Hudson Taylor taught them Chinese in the mornings and Maria in the afternoons, though she was ill most of the time. After arriving in Shanghai in October, 1866, they all changed into Chinese dress, Maria helping the women make the adaptation, though at first wearing Chinese costume was a real trial to her. A keen observer of the Chinese, she knew the additional responsibilities which this change would entail: I feel there is considerably more danger of our offending Chinese prejudice in the native costume than in our own. Things which are tolerated in us as foreigners in foreign dress could not be allowed for one moment in (Chinese) ladies. . . The nearer we come to (the Chinese) in outward appearance, the more severely will any breach of their notions of propriety be criticized. Henceforth I must never be guilty, for instance, of taking my husband’s arm in the street. And in fifty or a hundred other ways we may most inadvertently shock the Chinese by our grossly immodest and unfeminine conduct.
They moved up the Yangzi River in houseboats, finally stopping in Hangzhou, where the party of missionaries moved into what had been a mandarin’s residence. A dispensary, a chapel, and the usual activities of missionary work commenced. Maria began an “Industrial School for Women.” “While the women worked, mostly at sewing, Maria talked and read to them, with the result that they became familiar with the gospels. Several were among the first to be baptized.” The Taylors commenced their practice of having one or more unmarried missionary women attached to their household for training as well as to help them. Frequently, Maria kept things going while Hudson made pioneer trips into the interior. “Though ‘always ailing,’ . . . Maria was the one to whom others turned.”
After two months on houseboats in the summer of 1868, they settled in Yangzhou.
Initial friendliness gave way to murderous hatred as a vicious crowd, stirred
up by the local literati, threatened to storm their house. When the mob finally
stormed the house, Maria and others held off the rioters. Some missionaries
escaped from the second story when the house was set on fire. An assailant
tried to throw one of the men off the roof, “Mrs. Taylor and I together caught
hold of him and dragged him into the room. The man (then) snatched an immense
brick from the wall which had been partly broken down in the scuffle and lifted
his arm to dash it at Mr. Rudland’s head.” Rudland continued the narrative:
“Mrs. Taylor put up her hand and stopped the blow; whereupon the man turned to
strike her with the brick, but she said to him, ‘Would you strike a defenceless
woman?’ The man, hearing her speak his own language and with such beautiful
calmness, was amazed and dropped the brick.” Finally she and the others jumped
out the window to the ground, about fifteen feet below. She was six months pregnant
with their fourth son, Charles Edward. She received some injury to her ankle,
was almost faint from loss of blood, and feared she might have a miscarriage,
“But God was our stay, and He forsook us not. That confidence He gave me - that
he would surely work good for China out of our distress.”
A CIM missionary who visited them wrote, “When I saw them Mrs.
Hudson Taylor was sitting down in the middle of the room amidst all this
confusion as composedly as possible, going on with the composition of the Ningbo
Dictionary. She had a wonderful power of concentration. Mr. Taylor lay sick on
a bed in the same room . . . She struck me as remarkable for her Christian
faith and courage. She had a delicate, sweet face - a fragile body, but a sweet
expressive face of indomitable perseverance and courage.”
She had suffered permanent injury, however, and became more and more
frail and sickly. Still, when Hudson Taylor traveled she occasionally went with
him, especially when he was called upon for help with the delivery of a child.
She “sometimes joined him at his patient’s home to nurse the mother and infant
after Hudson’s work was done.” Always, she kept up his correspondence along
with Emily Blatchley.
At a time when Hudson Taylor was going through the intense spiritual
struggle that would lead to his learning of “the exchanged life,” a missionary
wrote of Maria, “Only Maria was unmoved, wondering ‘what we are all groping
after,’ . . . an experience she had long been living in the enjoyment of. I have rarely met as Christlike a Christian
as Mrs. Taylor.” Another said, “It gave her that beautiful calmness and
confidence in God (in which) up to that time she so surpassed her husband.”
In 1870, with the approach of the heat of summer, the Taylors saw that
their children were suffering from the heat and the privations of life in
China, and decided that they must be sent home to England. Miss Emily Blatchley
offered to care for them. Even before they sailed, however, the chronic
condition of the youngest son Samuel, who was five years old, worsened
dramatically. He was buried in a cemetery in Zhenjiang, on the Yangzi River
upstream from Shanghai, whence the others departed shortly thereafter.
Others in the Mission became sick as well, and had
to be tended by the Taylors. When the wife of one worker was desperately ill
and Hudson Taylor could not leave another patient, Maria went herself, arriving
in the middle of the night in a wheelbarrow (a most uncomfortable conveyance).
Her husband recalled: Suffering though Mrs. Taylor was at the time and worn with
hard travelling, she insisted on my going to bed and that she would undertake
the nursing. Nothing would induce her to rest. “No,” she said, “You have quite
enough to bear without sitting up at night any more. Go to bed, for I shall
stay with your wife whether you do or not.” Never can I forget that firmness
and love with which it was said - her face meanwhile shining with the
tenderness of Him in whom it was her joy and strength to abide.
Their eldest daughter, Grace, died during their first year in China.
Maria felt the loss deeply, and poured out her emotions in poetry, as she had
done earlier in life after the death of her parents. Amid the struggle of the first year back in China, she wrote: “As to the harsh judgings of the world, or the more
painful misunderstandings of Christian brethren, I generally feel that the best
plan is to go on with our work and leave God to vindicate our cause.”
Of Maria's and Hudson's nine children, three died at birth and two in
childhood. The four who reached adulthood all later became missionaries with
the China Inland Mission. In 1897, Hudson's & Maria's only surviving
daughter, Maria Hudson Taylor, the wife of John Joseph Coulthard, died in
Wenzhou, leaving four little children and her husband in sorrow. She had been
instrumental in leading many Chinese women to Christianity during her short
life. Later in the summer, another son, Noel,
was born, but Maria was stricken with cholera and could not adequately nurse
him; he died after only one week, on July 20, before a suitable Chinese nurse
could be found. Maria’s condition, tuberculosis enteritis, worsened and soon
she was dying also.
Years later, Hudson Taylor wrote this: When I said, “My
darling, do you know you are dying?” She said, “I am so sorry, dear,” and
paused, as if half correcting herself for venturing to feel sorry. I said, “You
are not sorry to go to be with Jesus, dear?” I shall never forget the look she
gave me, and as looking right into my eyes, she said, “Oh, no, it is not that;
you know, darling there has not been a cloud between my soul and my Savior for
ten years past; I cannot be sorry to go to Him. But I am sorry to leave you
alone at this time.”
PRAYERS
Hebrews 4 :1 - 3a
“Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. 3 Now we who have believed enter that rest,”
“Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. 3 Now we who have believed enter that rest,”
Lord, that I may enter into Your rest in simple child-like faith and
know the pleasure of serving you effortlessly and accomplishing much in my day in
Jesus’ name.
Help me to always remember that someone like Maria Hudson Taylor gave so
much of her life in such a very short space of time, Amen.
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