China’s Spiritual Need and Claims

James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), the founder of the large and respected China Inland Mission, wrote the pamphlet China’s Spiritual Need and Claims in 1865. It was subsequently published as a book and reprinted in numerous editions. This volume contains the seventh edition, first published in 1887. The work is both a survey of Protestant missionary activity in China since the treaty of Tientsin in 1858 and a recruitment pamphlet that inspired many English men and women to travel to China as missionaries. It provides a wealth of demographic and cultural information about nineteenth-century China and about the western missionaries stationed there. As one of the most popular works on Protestant missions during the nineteenth century, it is an essential source for understanding the motivations of Victorian missionaries in general as well as Taylor’s own beliefs. It is an indispensable source for researchers in mission history.