“While, however, he thus sought for aid from all the sources of modern and ancient learning, it is manifest from the whole of his correspondence that he used them all with the discretion of a master mind. It was not in his power to substitute the working of other intellects for the working of his own. He weighed, with critical caution, every recension of the text. He adopted no interpretation unless either convinced of its truth, or else sure that it was the nearest approximation to the truth that could be made in the present state of our knowledge. In order to reach this result, no labor was too great, and no investigation too protracted. United with all this that was intellectual, there was, in his case, a mind deeply impressed with its own fallibility, and turning with unutterable longing to the Holy Spirit for guidance and illumination. The importance of his work to millions of immortal souls was ever present to his view. He had been called by the providence of God to unfold to a whole nation, in their own language, the revelation of the Most High. He conceived it to be a momentous undertaking; and a heavy weight would have rested on his soul if a single idea in the Scriptures had been obscurely rendered in consequence of haste, impatience, negligence, or culpable ignorance on the part of the translator.
“But after he had satisfied himself as to the meaning of the original, a most difficult labor yet remained to be accomplished. It must be now transferred into a language peculiar and strongly idiomatic, and, moreover, a language destitute of terms in which to express the elementary and peculiar ideas of the New Testament. To furnish himself in this respect was the daily labor of his life. He read Burmese prose and poetry wherever he could find it. He was always surrounded by Burmese assistants and transcribers. As fast as his missionary brethren became acquainted with the language, he was incessantly calling upon them for corrections. They cheerfully aided him in this respect to the utmost of their power. Every correction or emendation he examined with the minutest care. Many—I think he says most—of them he adopted; and none of them were rejected without the most careful and diligent inquiry.
“The result of this able and indefatigable labor was such as might have been expected. Competent judges affirm that Dr. Judson’s translation of the Scriptures is the most perfect work of the kind that has yet appeared in India. On this subject it will not be inappropriate to introduce a few sentences from the pen of a gentleman high in rank in India, himself a distinguished linguist, and a proficient in the Burmese language:
“‘To Judson it was granted, not only to found the spiritual Burman Church of Christ, but also to give it the entire Bible in its own vernacular, thus securing that Church’s endurance and ultimate extension; the instances being few or none, of that word, after it has once struck root in any tongue, being ever wholly suppressed. Divine and human nature alike forbid such a result; for, when once it has become incorporated in a living tongue, holiness and love join hands with sin and weakness to perpetuate that word’s life and dominion. We honor Wickliffe and Luther for their labors in their respective mother tongues; but what meed of praise is due to Judson for a translation of the Bible, perfect as a literary work, in a language so foreign to him as the Burmese? Future ages, under God’s blessing, may decide this point, when his own forebodings, as he stood and pondered over the desolate, ruinous scene at Pugan, shall be fulfilled.
“‘One and twenty years after his first landing at Rangoon, Judson finished his translation of the whole Bible; but, not satisfied with this first version, six more years were devoted to a revision of this great work; and on the 24th of October, 1840, the last sheet of the new edition was printed off. The revision cost him more time and labor than the first translation; for what he wrote in 1823 remained the object of his soul: “I never read a chapter without pencil in hand, and Griesbach and Parkhurst at my elbow; and it will be an object to me through life to bring the translation to such a state that it may be a standard work.” The best judges pronounce it to be all that he aimed at making it, and also, what with him never was an object, an imperishable monument of the man’s genius. We may venture to hazard the opinion that as Luther’s Bible is now in the hands of Protestant Germany, so, three centuries hence, Judson’s Bible will be the Bible of the Christian churches of Burmah.’
“The following extract from a letter written in November, 1852, by a missionary in Burmah, expresses very fully the estimation in which this version is held by those who are daily in the habit of using it, and of commending it to the natives:
“‘The translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Burman language by the late Dr. Judson is admitted to be the best translation in India; that is, the translation has given more satisfaction to his contemporaries and successors than any translation of the Bible into any other Eastern language has done to associate missionaries in any other parts of India. It is free from all obscurity to the Burmese mind. It is read and understood perfectly. Its style and diction are as choice and elegant as the language itself, peculiarly honorific, would afford, and conveys, doubtless, the mind of the Spirit as perfectly as can be.’
“Judson might well have adopted the words of the blessed Eliot, the apostle to the Indian tribes, when he had finished his translation of the Scriptures into their dialect—‘Prayer and pains, with the blessing of God, can accomplish anything.’”
Having diverged in order to give the reader a general idea of this work of translating the Bible into Burmese, we again take up the thread of Mr. Judson’s life at the point where he has just finished the first rough draft in 1834.[[52]] He entered with ardor upon the work of revision without neglecting, however, his favorite employments of teaching and preaching. A letter from Mrs. Judson to her husband’s mother shows his ceaseless, every-day activity:
“Mr. Judson preaches every Lord’s day to a crowded assembly, and every evening to a congregation averaging thirty. We find our old chapel too small, and are about having a new one erected. The native assistants go about the town every day preaching the Gospel, and Mr. Judson holds a meeting with them every morning before breakfast, when he listens to their reports, prays with them, gives them instruction, etc. Besides this, the care of the Burman Church, ninety-nine in number, devolves upon him, as does all the revision, superintendence of the press, etc., etc., etc. He has lately baptized eighteen persons—seven English soldiers, five Indo-Britons, three Burmans, one Hindoo, one Arracanese, and one Mahometan. The latter is faithful old Koo-chil, the Hindoo cook mentioned in Mrs. Judson’s ‘Narrative.’ The poor old man resisted long and stubbornly the truth, and we were sometimes almost discouraged about him. But divine grace was too mighty for him, and on last Lord’s day we saw him bow beneath the Salwen’s yielding wave, and rise, I trust, to ‘newness of life.’ Two others have applied for baptism, and there are many hopeful inquirers both among European and natives.”