“If you have a house at Amherst during the hot season, some of the brethren, too, may be benefited by an excursion thither. Brother Bennett will certainly need a week’s relaxation there or somewhere else.... However, I only submit these hasty thoughts for your consideration. You are on the spot, and know better than I what is necessary and proper. May God preserve your precious lives many years; for, though the prospect of death may not be grievous, but joyous, ‘the harvest is plenteous, and the laborers are few.’”
While in Rangoon he received the heavy tidings that the beloved Boardman had died in the jungles back of Tavoy.
He thus wrote to the Corresponding Secretary:
“One of the brightest luminaries of Burmah 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 expedition 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 since the beginning of the year, besides the thirty-two that were brought in during the two preceding 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 ‘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 begun.”
Sorrow had come upon the Boardman household in quick and uninterrupted succession. Mrs. Boardman wrote:
“In our domestic relation, the hand of the Lord has been very heavy upon us. About a year and a half ago we lost our eldest child, a lovely daughter, two years and eight months old; four months since, we buried our youngest, a sweet little boy of eight months and a half.”
The death of the eldest child is thus pathetically described by Mrs. Boardman’s biographer:
“‘Sarah is as plump and rosy-cheeked as we could wish. Oh! how delighted you would be to see her, and hear her prattle!’ Thus wrote the mother in her happiness; and, in a little more than two weeks after, she saw her darling, speechless and motionless, in her little shroud. ‘I knew all the time,’ says the bereaved parent, ‘that she was very ill; but it did not once occur to me that she might die, till she was seized with the apoplexy, about three hours before she closed her eyes upon us forever. Oh! the agony of that moment!’ And in that agonized moment, as the shadow of eternity fell upon the spirit of the little sufferer, and a vista, which her eye could not discern, but from which her failing nature instinctively recoiled, opened before her, she looked with anxious alarm into her mother’s face, and exclaimed: ‘I frightened! mamma! I frightened!’ What a strange thing is death. The tender nursling, who, in moments of even imagined ill, had clung to the mother’s bosom, and been sheltered in her arms, now hovered over a dark, unfathomed gulf, and turned pleadingly to the same shield—but it had failed. The mother’s arm was powerless; her foot could not follow; and the trembling babe passed on alone, to find her fears allayed on an angel’s bosom.”
Little Sarah’s death was soon followed by the revolt of Tavoy, and during this brief uprising of the Burmans against their masters, Mr. Boardman had been subjected to an exposure and hardship such as his consumptive habit was ill able to endure. From that time he visibly declined. To use Mrs. E. C. Judson’s words: “His cheeks were a little more hollow, and the color on them more flickering; his eyes were brighter, and seemingly more deeply set beneath the brow, and immediately below them was a faint, indistinct arc of mingled ash and purple like the shadow of a faded leaf; his lips were sometimes of a clayey pallor, and sometimes they glowed with crimson; and his fingers were long, and the hands of a partially transparent thinness.”
The newly-appointed missionary to the Karens, Mr. Mason, arrived in Tavoy June 3, 1831. “On the jetty,” he wrote, “reclining helplessly in the chair which had served the purpose of a carriage, a pale, worn-out man, with the characters of death in his countenance, waited to welcome his successor.” Mr. Boardman was preparing to take a tour into the jungle in order to baptize some recent Karen converts. His emaciated form was to be carried on a litter several days’ journey into the wilderness. Remonstrance was unavailing; for he had set his heart upon accomplishing his purpose. Besides, it was thought that the change of air might do him good. Even after setting out, he was advised to return; but his reply was: “The cause of God is of more importance than my health, and if I return now, our whole object will be defeated. I want to see the work of the Lord go on.” The closing scene of his life is thus described by Mrs. Boardman: