When H. B. Macartney, an Australian pastor, visited Hudson Taylor in China, he was amazed at the missionary’s serenity in spite of his many burdens and his busy schedule. Macartney finally mustered up the courage to say, “You are occupied with millions, I with tens. Your letters are pressingly important, mine of comparatively little value. Yet I am worried and distressed while you are always calm. Tell me, what makes the difference?” Taylor replied, “I could not possibly get through the work I have to do without the peace of God which passes all understanding keeping my heart and mind.”

Macartney later wrote, “He was in God all the time, and God was in him. It was the true abiding spoken of in John 15.”