little boat manned by the three disciples, and was
bidding adieu to Prome. At the water's edge, as the
craft was gliding down the stream, there sat, pensive
and sad, an inquirer a government writer who had
paid sundry visits at the zayat, and had been hanging
about there for hours before embarking. " Mark me
as your disciple," were his parting words, uttered with
much emotion : " I pray to God eveiy day ; do you also
pray for me. As soon as I can get free from my present
engagement, I intend to come down to Rangoon."
The next day was the Sabbath ; and its hours of rest
he dedicated to a solemn review of his three-months'
sojourn in Prome. " There is no part of my missionary
life," he wrote in his diary that day, "which I look
back upon with more satisfaction, or, rather, with less
dissatisfaction. This city was founded several hundred
years before the Christian era. Through how many
ages have the successive generations of its dark in-
habitants lived and died, without the slightest know-
A FAREWELL. 251
ledge of the Great Eternal, and of the only way of
salvation which He has provided ! At length, in the
year 1830, it was ordered that a missionary of the
Cross should sit down in the heart of the city, and
from day to day, for above three months, pour forth
divine truth in language which, if not eloquent and
acceptable, was at least intelligible to all ranks. Thou-
sands have heard of God who never, nor their ancestors,
heard before. Frequently, in passing through the
streets, and in taking my seat in the zayats, I have felt
such a solemnity and awe on my spirit, as almost pre-
vented me from opening my lips to communicate the
momentous message with which I was charged. How
the preacher has preached, and how the hearers have
heard, the day of judgment will show. Oh, how many
will find their everlasting chains more tight and in-
tolerable on account of the warnings and entreaties
they have received from my lips ! But, blessed be
God, there are some few whose faces I expect to see at
the right hand of the great Judge." And, the next
morning, as the city was disappearing in the distance,
he added : " Farewell to thee, Prome ! Willingly
would I have spent my last breath in thee and for thee.
But thy sons ask me not to stay ; and I must preach
the gospel to other cities also, for therefore am I sent.
If hereafter thou call me, though in the lowest whisper,
and it reach me in the very extremities of the empire,
I will joyfully listen and come back to thee."
Arriving in Rangoon, he found that in his absence
new efforts had been made to check the work. Guards
252 THE GARRET AT RANGOON.
had been stationed on the road leading to the house, at
a little distance on each side. Heresy must be put
down. A public example must be made. The result
was, the crowds had vanished; and all the women,
especially, had suspended their visits, lest they should be
apprehended by government. But now the alarm had
subsided ; and inquirers began to show themselves again
at the zayat. " They come," he writes, some weeks
later, " from all parts of the country ; and the thing is
spreading and increasing every day." And, another
day, he adds : " I have chiefly confined myself to the
garret of the house we occupy, in order to get a little
time to go on with the translation of the Psalms, which
was begun three years ago, but has hitherto been post-
poned for more important missionary work which was
pressing upon us. Some of the disciples occupy the
front part of the house below, and receive company and
distribute tracts and portions of Scripture. The more
hopeful visitors are shown the way up-stairs. But, not-
withstanding this arrangement, I am interrupted about
half my time. People find their way to me from all
parts ; and some, I trust, return with that light in their
heads, and that love in their hearts, and that truth in
their hands, which will operate as a little leaven until
the whole mass be leavened."
"What have you been about, mother?" shouted
three Burmans rudely and boisterously, one day, meeting
unexpectedly their aged mother, who, after having been
confined by them for weeks to prevent the deed, had
just bjgen confessing Christ in baptism. Happy that
HOW TO LIVE. 253
she was now a full disciple, life and death, praise and
abuse, had become to her things of no moment ; and,
meeting her sons courageously, she meekly replied " I
have been baptized into the religion of the Lord Jesus
Christ, to the entire renunciation of the religion of our
ancestors." The young men were awed, and, contrary
to her fears, suffered her to proceed quietly home.
His own inner life grew apace. " I send you this
extract," he wrote that autumn to a missionary's wife,
" not because I think you have not given yourself to
God, but to stir up your pure mind by way of remem-
brance. Remember, I pray you, that word of Brainerd,
' Do not think it enough to live at the rate of common
Christians/ True, they will call you uncharitable and
censorious; but what is the opinion of poor worms of
the dust, that it should deter us from our duty?
Remember that other word of the same holy man
' Time is but a moment, life a vapour, and all its
enjoyments but empty bubbles and fleeting blasts of
wind/ The first duty of every lover of Christ, is to
enter constantly within the veil, offering himself con-
stantly a sacrifice to God, to obtain some sensible com-
munion with the great Invisible; and his second, to
come forth with a shining face, as Moses, and be ready
to speak and do whatever God, by His word, providence,
and indwelling Spirit, shall appoint. If we reverse this
order, and wear out our lives in the most indefatigable
services, without an habitual sense of holy unction and
divine communion, God may, indeed, in mercy to souls,
bless our labours in some degree; but our own souls,
254 HEAVENLY ASPIRATIONS.
just saved, will suffer great, irreparable loss through all
eternity." And he added, in his own kind way :
" I sometimes try to pray for little Elsina, that the first
dawn of her intellect may be accompanied with the
dawn of heavenly light. Perhaps, if you pray a few
words with her alone every day, and endeavour to
direct the first thoughts of her young and tender mind
to the crucified Saviour, she will grow up a better saint
than her own mother."
An invitation reached him from America, to
visit his native shores. "I am happy to inform the
Board," he wrote, in reply, "that my health, which was
rather impaired some time ago, is now quite good ; so
that I should not feel justified in accepting their invi-
tation to return home. At the same time, the kind
feeling which dictated the invitation, and the affection,
though undeserved, which breathes in every line, have
made an indelible impression on my heart. I must
confess, that, in meditating on the subject, I have felt
an almost unconquerable desire to become personally
acquainted with you all, as well as to rove once more
over the hills and valleys of my own native land, to
recognise the still surviving companions of my youth,
and to witness the wide-spread and daily increasing
glories of ImmanuePs kingdom in that land of liberty,'
blest of heaven with temporal and spiritual blessings
above all others. However, I anticipate a happier
meeting, brighter plains, friends the same but more
lovely and beloved; and I expect soon to witness
yea, enjoy that glory, in comparison of which all on
ENGLISH TRAVELLERS. 255
earth is but a shadow. "With that anticipation I con-
tent myself, assured that we shall not then regret any
instance of self-denial or of suffering, endured for the
Lord of life and glory."
Some English travellers, visiting Rangoon, appeared
one evening at the mission, " extremely anxious to see
him." Ascending by a ladder, they entered, through a
space like a trap-door, a large room with a low roof of
uncovered beams, and with open window-frames, the
furniture consisting of a table in the centre, a few
stools, and a desk, with writings and books neatly
arranged on one side. Cordially welcoming them,
he was soon drawn by their inquiries into the most
animated and glowing conversation respecting Burmah
and its hopes. "I have completed the New Testament,"
said he, pointing to his books and manuscripts, lying
before him on the desk, " and am as far as the Psalms
in the Old ; and, this once finished, I trust it may be
the will of my heavenly Father to call me to my ever-
lasting home." And then, speaking with confidence
of the conversion -work going forward in Burmah, he
added : " I do not doubt, that, when the flame of
Christianity does burst forth, it will surprise even me
by its extent and brilliancy." The bats began to take
their evening round ; and, whirling closer and closer,
they so disturbed the strangers with the flap of their
heavy wings, that they reluctantly took their leave and
departed. "And this, thought I, as I descended the dark
ladder," writes one of the little party, " is the solitary
abode of Judsou, whom after-ages will designate most
256 A SPECTACLE.
justly the great and the good. It is the abode of one
of whom the world is not worthy of one who has
been imprisoned, chained, and starved, and yet who
dares still to prosecute his work in the midst of the
people who have thus treated him. And here he is,
amidst the trials, sufferings, and bereavements with
which it has pleased Heaven to afflict him, still standing
with his lamp brightly burning, waiting his Lord's
coming."
Across the river stood clusters of villages, into which
one of the converts went, one day, laden with tracts.
He found the fields in that quarter also ready to the
harvest. " I am more and more convinced," Mr.
Judson wrote, alluding to this method of diffusing the
light, " that Burmah is to be evangelised by tracts and
portions of Scripture. They are a reading people,
beyond any other in India. The press is the grand
engine for Burmah. Eveiy pull of brother Bennett at
the press sends another ray of light through the dark-
ness of the empire. By tracts, I mean not the single
sheets or handbills, containing merely a scrap of Scrip-
ture, which, being wholly inadequate to give any full
idea of the Christian religion, it is impossible to satisfy
any poor soul with, when he holds out his hand for
such spiritual food as his soul requires ; but by tracts
I mean, 'The View/ 'The Catechism/ 'The Balance/
and 'The Investigator.' I earnestly beg the brethren
to wake up to the importance of sending a regular
supply of these articles. We want them by thousands.
Yesterday, we were obliged to give away ninety-five
" LOWLINESS ITSELF." 257
tracts and Scriptures, besides refusing several. This
morning, I took twenty in my hand, as usual; and,
although I avoided streets and kept to the jungle, and
walked as fast as possible, yet, notwithstanding every
precaution, they fleeced me of fifteen by sunrise/'
And, to another : " I write in a hurry ; for I am in
the middle of the sixty-fifth Psalm : and, though I keep
snug in the garret, I have had, within an hour, one
man from Mad-dee-yah, who has come for tracts, having
heard the gospel from one of the disciples at Prome ; a
writer from Kyouk-mau, brought hither by your in-
quirer Moung Louk ; a disciple from An-au-len ; and
Moung liming from Pan-ta-nau, who requests baptism,
and brings also a message and request for tracts from
Nah-kau-dau, who says he heard about Jesus Christ
from a foreigner at Prome [Judson himself] . And, as
I am alive, here come at this moment a priest and his
followers. So farewell ! "
Henry Martyn describes a Hindoo convert, whom
he baptized one day, as " lowliness itself." And, another
day, in his diary, Martyn wrote of himself, thus :
" I would wish, like many, to be ever weeping at the
feet of Jesus." And an older saint than either once
said : " Now mine eye seeth thee ; wherefore I abhor
myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Dwelling in
the same light, Judson was learning the same self-
abhorrence. " I hope you will pray for me," he writes ;
" for you have not such inveterate habits to struggle
with as I have contracted through a long course of
religious sinning. Oh, my past years in Rangoon are
s
258 DYING DAILY.
spectres to haunt my soul ; and they seem to laugh
at me, as they shake the chains they have riveted on
me. I can now do little more than beg my younger
brethren and sisters not to live, as I have done, until
the Ethiopian becomes so black that his skin cannot
be changed. And yet," he adds, " I have sometimes
sweet peace in Jesus, which the world can neither give
nor take away. Oh, the freeness, the richness of
divine grace through the blood of the cross ! I love
you both most sincerely, and hope shortly to be happy
with you in the world of light, where we shall under-
stand many mysteries which now seem dark to our
dark minds. However, we have a glimpse of that light
which shineth more and more to the perfect day."
He continued to grow personally in grace. " As
to the other matter," he writes, some months later,
" the land of Beulah lies beyond the valley of the
Shadow of Death. Many Christians spend all their
days in a continual bustle doing good. They are too
busy to find either the valley or Beulah. ( Virtues
they have, but they are full of the life and attractions
of nature, and are unacquainted with the paths of
mortification and death/ Let us die as soon as
possible, and by whatever process God shall appoint.
And, when we are dead to the world, to nature, and
to self, we shall begin to live to God."* And these
* Dr. Judson at this time was much interested in the Life of
Madame Guyon, and used to ascribe to it not a little of his growth
in grace. That remarkable woman was a disciple of Molinos, respect-
ing whom the reader is referred to a small volume entitled, " Thoughts
and Aphorisms on the Christian Life," lately published.
LABOURS. 259
were not the pietistic reveries of a recluse. " On Tues-
day/' he continues, respecting a great Burman festival,
" we gave away three hundred tracts ; on Wednesday,
eight hundred ; on Thursday, nine hundred ; on Friday
(the full moon), seven hundred; on Saturday, eleven
hundred ; on Sunday, eight hundred ; on Monday, five
hundred. On Tuesday, the immense crowd of boats
began to move off. That day, at the house, we gave
away six hundred ; on Wednesday, seven hundred ; on
Thursday (to-day), five hundred." And he adds :
" We don't give to every one we meet, but to those
only who ask earnestly. Don't think the tracts you
print, and stitch, and trim, with a great deal of labour,
and send here, are lost. I am persuaded, after a great
deal of enquiry, that not one in a hundred is destroyed.
And I trust that most of them will come to light in
the day of judgment."
The viceroy had lately been solicited by two sub-
ordinate officers to persecute ; but, being a quiet, good-
natured man, and wishing to preserve the peace,
though in no way favourable to the gospel, he de-
clined. Each act of worship was conducted so secretly,
that the government scarcely knew that there were any
native converts ; but the work, nevertheless, proceeded.
" The most prominent feature in the mission at pre-
sent/' Judson writes, " is the surprising spirit of
inquiry which is spreading everywhere, through the
whole length and breadth of the land. I sometimes
feel alarmed, like a person who sees a mighty engine
beginning to move, over which he knows that he has
260 " A MIGHTY ENGINE."
no control." And he adds: "Our house is fre-
quently crowded with company ; but I am obliged
to leave them to Moung Ing, one of the best of
assistants, in order to get time for the translation.
Is this right ? Happy is the missionary who goes
to a country where the Bible is translated to his
hand."
In the midst of these labours, a stroke startled
him, deeply wounding his tenderly sensitive heart.
" One of the brightest luminaries of Burmah," he
writes, " is extinguished. Dear brother Boardman has
gone to his eternal rest. I have heard no particulars,
except that he died on returning from his last ex-
pedition to the Karen villages, within one day's march
of Tavoy. He fell gloriously at the head of his troops,
in the arms of victory, thirty-eight wild Karens having
been brought into the camp of King Jesus within the
preceding two months, besides the thirty-two who were
brought in during the two previous years. Disabled
by mortal wounds, he was obliged, through the whole
of his last expedition, to be carried on a litter ; but his
presence was a host, and the Holy Spirit accompanied
his dying whispers with almighty influence. Such
a death next to that of martyrdom must be glorious
in the eyes of Heaven. Well may we rest assured that
a triumphal crown awaits him on the great day, and
1 Well done, good and faithful Boardman, enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord ! ' I have great confidence in
sister Boardman, that she will not desert her husband's
post, but carry on the work which he has gloriously
CONSOLATIONS. 261
begun." And to the bereaved widow he wrote :
" You are now drinking the bitter cup, whose dregs
I am somewhat acquainted with. I can only advise
you to take the cup with both hands, and sit down
quietly to the bitter repast which God has appointed
for your sanctification. As to your beloved, you know
that all his tears are wiped away, and that the diadem
which encircles his brow now outshines the sun. Little
Sarah and the other have again found their father
not the frail, sinful mortal whom they left on earth,
but an immortal saint, a magnificent, majestic being.
What more can you desire for them ? While, there-
fore, your tears flow, let a due proportion be tears
of joy. Yet take the bitter cup with both hands, and
sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret,
that there is sweetness at the bottom. You will find it
the sweetest cup that ever you tasted in all your
life. You will find heaven coming near to you ; and
familiarity with your husband's voice will be a con-
necting link, drawing you almost within the sphere of
celestial music."
Some months passed; and another great Burman
festival summoned vast multitudes from the remotest
parts to worship at the Rangoon pagoda, where were
enshrined " several real hairs of Gautama." Ten
thousand tracts were given, in each case to those only
who asked. And at the house there were not fewer
than six thousand inquirers. " Sir," were the touch-
ing words of some visitors, who had come two or
three months' journey from the borders of Siam
262 INQUIRERS.
and China, " we hear that there is an eternal hell.
We are afraid of it. Do give us a writing, which
will tell us how to escape it." " Sir/' asked another
group, from the frontiers of Kathay, a hundred miles
north of Ava, " we have seen a writing which tells
about an eternal God. Are you the man who gives
away such writings ? If so, pray give us one ; for we
want to know the truth before we die." " Are you/'
enquired a third group, from the interior of the country,
where the name of Jesus Christ was now a little known,
" Are you Jesus Christ's man ? Give us a writing
which tells about Jesus Christ."
From these scenes the Macedonian cry was wafted
across the ocean. " It is most distressing to find,"
was Judson's burning appeal, " that when we are
almost worn out, and are sinking one after another
into the grave, many of our brethren in Christ at home
are just as hard and immoveable as rocks just as cold
and repulsive as the mountains of ice in the Polar Seas.
But, whatever they do, we cannot sit still and see the
dear Burmans flesh and blood like ourselves, and,
like ourselves, possessed of immortal souls, that will
shine for ever in heaven, or burn for ever in hell go
down to perdition without doing our very utmost to
save them. And, thanks be to God, our labours are
not in vain. We have three lovely churches, and
about two hundred baptized converts ; and some are in
glory. A spirit of religious enquiry is extensively
spreading throughout the country; and the signs of
the times indicate that the great renovation of Burmah
MACEDONIAN CRY.
is drawing near. Oh, if we had about twenty more
versed in the language, and means to spread schools,
and tracts, and Bibles, to any extent, how happy I
should be ! But those rocks, and those icy mountains,
have crushed us down for many years."
At Maulmain, meanwhile, new blanks had occurred ;
for the Wades had been ordered home. And, at the re-
quest of the enfeebled remnant, Dr. Judson returned, to
the great joy of the native Christians, who crowded to
welcome him on the shore. " I am startled and terrified
to find," he writes, " that, by several unexpected moves,
I am left, as it were, alone, there being not another
foreigner in all the country who can preach the gospel
to the perishing millions, north and south, or can feed
the infant churches. My prayers to God, and my
entreaties to my brethren at home, seem to have equal
efficacy. Since the last missionaries left home, I per-
ceive no farther signs of life. All seem to have gone
to slumbering and sleeping." And he adds : " Pour
out, Lord, Thy Holy Spirit upon all our feeble
efforts, that we may be more successful; and upon
Thy baptized people at home, that they may begin at
last to wake up to the subject of missions, even though
they have been sleeping these eighteen years not to
say, centuries !"
Aiming, with his -characteristic energy, at the
utmost possible measure of communion with his God,
he laboured to subdue every passion which might
hinder his heavenliness. From his earliest youth, for
example, he had felt a craving for fame ; and, even yet,
264 SELF-CRUCIFIXION.
after all his sufferings, he was not without the emotion
of the stricken warrior, who
" Is glad that his wounds are salved with glory."
A posthumous reputation was the form which the
" sweet self-homage " now assumed. Startled one
day by that saying of the Lord, " How can ye believe,
who receive honour one of another?" he committed
to the flames a letter of thanks which he had received
from the Governor-general of India for his services,
and gave the most peremptory instructions for the
destruction of all his correspondence.
Another snare which he dreaded, was his intense
love for his friends. " How much I love you all, dear
brethren, and sisters, and disciples," he had written, one
day, from Prome, to friends in Rangoon and Maulmain,
" I cannot tell ! And, did I not expect soon to meet
you in heaven and be happy with you for ever, I should
be quite unwilling to live an exile, far from you, in this
dark land." But, finding, on his return to some of
them, that they threatened to supplant in his heart the
blessed God as the supreme object of his affection, he
adopted the expedient of retiring to a small bamboo
house in the jungle, where, for weeks together, he
devoted himself to his studies and to converse with
God, living on the most spare food, and seeing only
inquirers who came to him for instruction. Once, for
forty days, he retired from this hermitage to a thick
jungle, so remote from all human habitation, that even
a pagoda, once erected near it by some stern devotee of
THE RETREAT. 265
Gautama, was now moss-grown and forsaken. Wan-
dering over the hills each morning early with his Bible,
he would sit down among the wild bushes to read, and
meditate, and pray, returning at night to the hermit-
age to sleep. One morning, on arriving at the spot, he
found in it a rude bamboo-seat, surmounted by a canopy
of branches to shield him from the scorching sun.
Long afterwards, a friend discovered that the kind hand
was that of a convert, whose warm affection for Judson
had led him to go out in the dusk, in the face of
prowling tigers and hyasnas, and do this little deed of
love. The natives, when they heard of these forty days'
retreat in the jungle, and of Judson's preservation from
the wild beasts, used to pronounce it a repetition of
the miracle of Daniel in the lions* den.
Another temptation which beset him was " a peculiar
form of the dread of death not the separation of the
soul from the body, nor any doubt of his acceptance
with God, but a nervous shrinking from decay and cor-
ruption, from the mildewing and mouldering in dark,
damp, silent ghastliness." It was the result, he be-
lieved, of "pride and self-love;" and, to mortify it,
he had a grave dug, and would sit for hours gazing
into it, " imagining how each feature and limb would
appear days, months, and years after it had lain