“T. Y. Chaufa Mongkut.”
To his fellow-missionaries his wide experience and affectionate disposition made him an invaluable adviser and friend. When they found themselves in trouble and sorrow they were sure to receive from his lips words of comfort and counsel. To Mrs. Moore, of Maulmain, who had lost her child, he wrote:
“Dear Sister: I do sympathize with you while suffering under the loss of your little babe. It is true that it breathed the breath of life a day or two only; but your heart—a mother’s heart—feels anguish never before conceived of; and as the coffin-lid shuts out the sweet face from your longing gaze, and bars all further maternal care, the tears you shed will be, O, so bitter!
“You need not my suggestion that God has done this thing in infinite wisdom and love. While, therefore, you mourn, be thankful. A part of yourself has gone before you to heaven. Yours is the early privilege of furnishing a little seraph to occupy its place in Paradise. There it will wait to welcome its mother’s arrival. The prayers you have frequently offered for the little creature will yet all be answered; the warm affections now apparently crushed in the bud will expand and bloom in heavenly glory; and every succeeding age of eternity will heighten your song of praise to God for making you the mother of a little immortal, and then, for some special purpose, bearing it away thus early to the grave, and to heaven.
“Your sympathizing friend and brother,
“A. Judson.”
And to his afflicted fellow-laborer, the Rev. Mr. Osgood, he sends these words of comfort:
“So the light in your dwelling has gone out, my poor brother, and it is all darkness there, only as you draw down by faith some faint gleams of the light of heaven; and coldness has gathered round your hearth-stone; your house is probably desolate, your children scattered, and you a homeless wanderer over the face of the land. We have both tasted of these bitter cups once and again; we have found them bitter, and we have found them sweet too. Every cup stirred by the finger of God becomes sweet to the humble believer. Do you remember how our late wives, and sister Stevens, and perhaps some others, used to cluster around the well-curb in the mission compound at the close of day? I can almost see them sitting there, with their smiling faces, as I look out of the window at which I am now writing. Where are ours now? Clustering around the well-curb of the fountain of living water, to which the Lamb of heaven shows them the way—reposing in the arms of infinite love, who wipes away all their tears with His own hand.
“Let us travel on and look up. We shall soon be there. As sure as I write or you read these lines, we shall soon be there. Many a weary step we may yet have to take, but we shall surely get there at last. And the longer and more tedious the way, the sweeter will be our repose.”
The great pressure of his public cares and other labors did not make him moody or absent-minded at home. His love for his children was deep and tender. To his daughter Abby, who was living at Bradford in the old homestead of the Hasseltine family, he wrote as follows: