Not all the books written by Mrs. Howard Taylor are in such demand that they simply must be reprinted again and again. But there are several reasons why Behind the Ranges deserves to be called a ‘classic’, to be re-read by those who know it, and to be introduced to a wider circle of new readers. Although it is twelve years since members of Abe China Inland Mission were evacuated from China, including the area ‘behind the ranges’ in the southwest with which the book is chiefly concerned, yet from that very area large numbers of Lisu tribespeople have crossed―or been driven―into Burma, and missionaries who once served in Yunnan are in close contact with them. Moreover, the pattern of work initiated by J. O. Fraser is one which may well be studied and copied by younger missionaries facing not very dissimilar conditions among tribespeople in Thailand or Laos or the Philippines. The Overseas Missionary Fellowship―the new name by which the C.I.M. is known over a great part of the Far East from Thailand to Japan―recognizes the obligation to spread the Gospel amongst the cultured and sophisticated as well as the most primitive of peoples, and it is amongst the latter that our pioneers of the nineteen-sixties who read this book will find parallels in plenty―the hardships, the heartaches and the thrill of the first clear signs of God’s working. Will they not be given faith to expect to see the greater things which Fraser and his companions saw in Lisuland?
But all who are concerned that the Church of Christ should recognize the urgency of making Him known ‘to every creature’ before our Lord’s return cannot but be stirred by this record of the Spirit’s working. To the majority of these general readers the challenge will not be to offer themselves for service overseas. Some of them should do so―surely some of them will. But obviously many of them cannot respond in this way, and God is not calling them to do so. And the major challenge of this book is the emphasis laid upon prayer. Fraser―himself a man who wrestled with God in prayer―discovered how close was the connection between the prayers of his mother (and the circle of friends who joined her in intercession) and the victory of Christ over the powers of darkness in Lisuland. So he made it his business to supply them with all possible detailed intelligence of what was happening, and what was planned, amongst the mountains of western Yunnan. When some of the early converts turned back to heathenism he wrote to his mother: ‘I am going to pray for them as much as ever―will you?’ No one who prayerfully reads this book can fail to be challenged to more purposeful and personal intercession for those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. The familiar expression, ‘the prayer of faith’, takes on a new and deeper meaning after reading chapter 12, for ‘this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith’ (1 John 5: 4). Fraser was called Home in 1938 at the early age of 52, but ‘he being dead yet speaketh’, calling all Christians, without exception, to join in the prayer warfare through which victories are won, souls are saved, churches are established, the devil confounded, and our Saviour glorified.
FRANK HOUGHTON, Bishop
October, 1963.