In the early months of 1832, he knelt beside his 24-year-old wife, Amelia, in the parlor at the back of his busy chemist shop in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England. “Dear God,” he prayed, “if you should give us a son, grant that he may work for you in China.” When their child was born on May 21, 1832, James and Amelia called him James Hudson Taylor—Hudson was his mother’s maiden name. Immersed in a Methodist family fascinated with China, the young Hudson sometimes blurted out, “When I am a man, I mean