“Rice! what is rice? Is it matter or spirit? Is it an idea or a nonentity?”
If she answered, “It is matter,” he would reply, “And what is matter? Are you sure there is such a thing in existence, or are you merely subject to a delusion of the senses?”
Mr. Judson was struck with the expression of this man’s one eye, which had “as great a quantity of being as half-a-dozen common eyes.” After the first exposition of the Christian doctrine, the philosopher began with extreme suavity and politeness: “Your lordship says that in the beginning God created one man and one woman. I do not understand (I beg your lordship’s pardon) what a man is, and why he is called a man.”
Mr. Judson does not record his own line of argument, only that the Buddhist sceptic was foiled, and Shwaygnong, who had often argued with him, was delighted to see his old adversary posed. He came again and again, and so did his wife, the ablest woman whom Mrs. Judson had met, asking questions on the possibility of sin finding entrance to a pure mind, and they were soon promising catechumens; but in the midst of all this hopefulness, a season of cholera and fever set in, both the Judsons were taken ill at the same time, and could not even help one another, and the effect on Ann’s health was such that, as the only means of saving her life, she was sent off at once to England, while her husband remained at his post quite alone, for Colman had died a martyr to the climate.
She was warmly welcomed by the Missionary Societies in London and Edinburgh, and thence returned to America, where her mother and sisters were still living to hail her return. Her narratives, backed by her natural sweetness, eloquence and beauty, had a great effect in stirring up the mission spirit among both her countrymen and countrywomen, and there was no lack of recruits willing to return with her and share her toil.
The account of Colman’s devotion and death had had an especial effect upon a young girl named Sarah Hall, of Salem, Massachusetts, one of those natures that seem peculiarly gifted with poetic enthusiasm, yet able to stand the brunt of the severest test of practice. She was the daughter of one of those old-fashioned New England families, where a considerable amount of prosperity and a good deal of mental culture is compatible with much personal homely exertion. As the eldest of thirteen, Sarah had to work hard, but all the time she kept a prim little journal, recording, at an age when one is surprised to see her able to write at all, that her mother is too busy to let her go to school, and she must improve herself at home; and this she really did, for her notes, as she grew older, speak of studying Butler’s Analogy, Paley’s Evidences, logic, geometry, and Latin. Her library of poetry is said to have consisted only of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, and Macpherson’s Ossian; but hymns must have filled her ear with the ring of rhyme, for she was continually versifying, sometimes passages of Scripture, sometimes Ossian, long before she was halfway through her teens. Very foolish, sing-song, emotional specimens they are, but notable as showing the bent of nature that forms itself into heroism. Her family were Baptists, and she was sixteen when the sense of religion came on her so strongly as to lead her to seek baptism. Remarkably enough, the thought of the ignorance of the heathen, and the desire to teach them, began to haunt her from that time, and is recorded in the last page of her childish journal, dated a month later than her baptism.
In fact, her zeal seems to have been pretty strong towards the persons around her. While staying at a friend’s house, she found a pack of cards left by a young man on the table, and wrote on it the text beginning, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,” &c. Hearing that the owner was
very curious to know the perpetrator, she wrote down this verse for him:
“And wouldst thou know what friend sincere
Reminds thee of thy day of doom?
Repress the wish, yet thou mayst hear
She shed for thee a pitying tear,
For thine are paths of gloom.”
She also says that she had been for six weeks engaged, with the assistance of a gentleman, in working out proofs of the immortality of the soul, apart from those in Scripture. She had prayer-meetings for her young friends in her own room, and distributed tracts in the town, while still acting at home, as her mother’s right hand, among her little brothers and sisters.