Had it not been for

Freedom to travel in inland China and full toleration to missionaries and Chinese Christians had been recently guaranteed by foreign treaties; for the Protestant world the four decades from 1865-1905 were a period of growing prosperity and comparative peace; there were, too, in nearly all Protestant denominations large numbers who believed, as did [Hudson Taylor], in the imperative necessity of giving the Gospel to the non-Christian world and who rallied to his support; Taylor, moreover, developed unusual powers of organization and administration.

All of these favoring conditions would have been ineffective, however, had it not been for Taylor’s daring, simple faith, utter sincerity, and completely unselfish devotion.

This one man, frail in body and of no unusual intellectual powers, called into being a mission which, consecrated to one great task, the giving of the Faith to all Chinese who had never heard it, was to bear witness to the Gospel in every inland province of China.

–“A History of Christian Missions in China,” Kenneth Scott Latourette, p. 385