Born in England, Hodgkin received his education at King's College, Cambridge. He was chairman of the English Student Missionary Union from 1902 to 1905. He went to China with the Friends' Foreign Missionary Association in 1905 and remained until 1909. For the next ten years (1910-1920) he was secretary of the Friends' Foreign Missionary Association. He lectured in China in 1921 and then assumed duties (1922-1929) as one of the secretaries of the National Christian Council of China. During the last four years of his life he directed a graduate school in England for the Society of Friends. A prolific author, he wrote The Christian Revolution (1923), Friends beyond the Seas (1916), and Living Issues in China (1932).