“My dear Brother Newell:
“A few days since we received yours of December 18th, the only one we have ever received since you left us at Port Louis. It brought fresh to my mind a recollection of scenes formerly enjoyed in our dear native country. Well do I remember our first interesting conversations on missions and on the probable events which awaited us in India. Well do I remember the dear parental habitation where you were pleased to favor me with your confidence relative to a companion for life. And well do I remember the time when I first carried your message to the mother of our dear Harriet, when the excellent woman exclaimed with tears in her eyes, ‘I dare not, I can not speak against it.’ Those were happy days. Newell and Judson, Harriet and Nancy, then were united in the strictest friendship, then anticipated spending their lives together in sharing the trials and toils, the pleasures and enjoyments, of a missionary life. But, alas! behold us now! In the Isle of France, solitary and alone, lies all that was once visible of the lovely Harriet. A melancholy wanderer on the Isle of Ceylon is our brother Newell, and the savage, heathen empire of Burmah is destined to be the future residence of Judson and Nancy. But is this separation to be forever? Shall we four never again enjoy social, happy intercourse? No, my dear brother, our separation is of short duration. There is a rest—a peaceful, happy rest, where Jesus reigns, where we four soon shall meet to part no more. Forgive my gloomy feelings, or rather forgive my communicating them to you, whose memory, no doubt, is ever ready to furnish more than enough for your peace.
“As Mr. Judson will not have time to write you by this opportunity, I will endeavor to give you some idea of our situation here, and of our plans and prospects. We have found the country, as we expected, in a most deplorable state, full of darkness, idolatry, and cruelty—full of commotion and uncertainty. We daily feel that the existence and perpetuity of this mission, still in an infant state, depend in a peculiar manner on the interposing hand of Providence; and from this impression alone we are encouraged still to remain. As it respects our temporal privations, use has made them familiar, and easy to be borne; they are of short duration, and when brought in competition with the worth of immortal souls, sink into nothing. We have no society, no dear Christian friends, and with the exception of two or three sea captains, who now and then call on us, we never see a European face. But then, we are still happy in each other; still find that our own home is our best, our dearest friend. When we feel a disposition to sigh for the enjoyments of our native country, we turn our eyes on the miserable objects around. We behold some of them laboring hard for a scanty subsistence, oppressed by an avaricious Government, which is ever ready to seize what industry had hardly earned; we behold others sick and diseased, daily begging the few grains of rice which, when obtained, are scarcely sufficient to protract their wretched existence, and with no other habitation to screen them from the burning sun, or chilly rains, than what a small piece of cloth raised on four bamboos under a tree can afford. While we behold these scenes, we feel that we have all the comforts, and, in comparison, even the luxuries, of life. We feel that our temporal cup of blessings is full, and runneth over. But is our temporal lot so much superior to theirs? Oh, how infinitely superior our spiritual blessings! While they vainly imagine to purchase promotion in another state of existence by strictly worshipping their idols and building pagodas, our hopes of future happiness are fixed on the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. When we have a realizing sense of these things, my dear brother, we forget our native country and former enjoyments, feel contented and happy with our lot, with but one wish remaining—that of being instrumental in leading these Burmans to partake of the same source of happiness with ourselves.
“Respecting our plans, we have at present but one—that of applying ourselves closely to the acquirement of the language, and to have as little to do with Government as possible. Brother Carey has never yet preached in Burman, but has made considerable progress toward the completion of a grammar and dictionary, which are a great help to us. At present, however, his time is entirely taken up with Government affairs. It is now almost a year since he was ordered up to Ava, which time has been wholly occupied in the king’s business. He has just returned from Bengal, and is now making preparations for Ava, where he expects to found a new mission station. His family go with him; consequently we shall be alone until the arrival of brother Rice, who, we hope, will arrive in six or seven months.
“Our progress in the language is slow, as it is peculiarly hard of acquisition. We can, however, read, write, and converse with tolerable ease, and frequently spend whole evenings very pleasantly in conversing with our Burman friends. We have been very fortunate in procuring good teachers. Mr. Judson’s teacher is a very learned man, was formerly a priest, and resided at court. He has a thorough knowledge of the grammatical construction of the language, likewise of the Pali, the learned language of the Burmans.”
It may be well to consider for a moment the task which the young missionary had set before him. What did they propose to do, this man of twenty-five and his young wife, standing amid the level rice fields on the coast of Lower Burmah, with their faces turned landward toward towns and cities swarming with idolaters, and hill-tops crowned with heathen temples and pagodas? Their purpose was to undermine an ancient religion, deeply fixed in the hearts and habits of four hundred millions of human beings. They did not propose to bring to bear influences by which Christianity was to be introduced as a State religion and reluctant knees be forced to bow to the Christ. This would have been indeed an audacious undertaking. But they sought to work out a more searching revolution, nothing less than a change of belief and of heart in each individual. The millions of Burmans were to be taken one by one—their affections subdued, and their characters transfigured by the religion of Christ. They felt sure that in the mass of people about them, there was here and there a man who had been so schooled by the providences of God, and so matured by the Divine Spirit, that if the story of the Cross could once be got to him, he would immediately accept it and say, “That is just what I want.” As the sod of moss, brought from the woods into the house, often contains within its bosom hidden germs, and after a season, in the warmth of the parlor, sends forth sweet, unexpected spring flowers, so out of the unattractive sod of heathenism, under the genial rays of the Holy Spirit, might emerge disciples of Christ, and these disciples, organized by baptism into churches, would, by the same process of reaching individual souls, little by little leaven the whole of the empire.
But what means did Mr. Judson use in his endeavor to bring about this great moral and spiritual revolution? Simply the Gospel of Christ. The sole weapons of his warfare were the old-fashioned truths, the existence of a personal and beneficent God, the fatal sinfulness of man, and salvation by faith in the Son of God, who came to “seek and to save that which was lost.” No system of truth could be devised more diametrically opposed to Buddhism, which teaches that there is no God to save, no soul to be saved, and no sin to be saved from. He felt sure that if he could only plant the seeds of Christian truth in the soil of the Burman’s heart, then, under the mellowing influence of the Holy Spirit, they would germinate and bring forth the fruit of meek and pure behavior. As in flushing a drain, a large body of pure water is poured through the whole length of it, washing out every impurity, so the Gospel of Christ is a cleansing tide, which, as it courses through the individual heart, or through human society, sweeps away before it all the stagnant and loathsome accumulations of sin.
Mr. Judson did not believe that Christianity should follow in the wake of civilization. He did not propose to spend his time in teaching the arts and sciences of the Western world, in imparting more correct astronomical, geographical, and geological conceptions, in order, little by little, to prepare the mind of the Burman to accept his religious ideas. He had implicit confidence in the promise of his Master, “Lo, I am with you alway.” He believed that Christ was with him in the heart of the heathen, unlocking the door from the inside.
Again, he did not say to himself, “It is a hopeless task to attempt the conversion of the hoary heads. I will try to gather the little children together and establish schools, and thus purify the fountains of national life.” He had his schools, indeed, but they were quite subordinate to the work of preaching the Gospel to the adult mind. He reached the children through the parents, and not the parents through the children. He believed that the grown-up Burmans, rather than their children, should bear the brunt of persecution involved in embracing a new religion. He followed the method of the Acts of the Apostles. A preacher of the Gospel, he did not allow himself to shrivel into a mere school-teacher or a school-book maker.
There were only two channels through which the truths of the Gospel could be conveyed to the conscience of the Burman—the eyes and the ears. The natives were emphatically a reading people. They had their ancient scriptures embodying the teachings of Gaudama, and the first question asked of the propagator of a new religion would be, “Where are your sacred books?” So that one way in which Mr. Judson communicated the Gospel was by the translation of tracts—either succinct and concrete statements of Christian truth, or portions of the Bible. These were not scattered about like autumn leaves, but were given discriminatingly to individuals, the gift often being accompanied by a solemn injunction to read, followed by a fervent prayer. The following letter to the Rev. Dr. Baldwin shows how earnestly he engaged in this work of imparting Christian truth in a printed form: