Edward Judson · 39 of 47

Chapter XII. Last Years. 1846-1850 · Part 2

And thus again to her friends in America she wrote:

“Trouble on trouble—trouble on trouble! You could scarce imagine, dear aunt Cynthia, people in a worse condition than we are now. Last Saturday evening Dr. J. came into my room with red eyes and a voice all tremulous with weeping. ‘We must be at the worst now,’ he said; ‘and in all my troubles in this dreadful country, I never before looked on so discouraging a prospect. We are hunted down here like wild beasts; watched by Government and plotted against by Catholic priests. The churches at home have made no provision for our going to Ava, the governor is importuned to send us out of the country, the monsoon is raging, and we could not go to Maulmain if we wished, and you are failing every day—it seems to me dying before my eyes—without the possibility of obtaining either medicines or a physician.”...

509To what straits the family was reduced for food may be seen in the following sketch from Mrs. Judson’s pen:

“Our milk is a mixture of buffaloes’ milk, water, and something else which we can not make out. We have changed our milk-woman several times, but it does no good. The butter we make from it is like lard with flakes of tallow. But it is useless to write about these things—you can get no idea. I must tell you, however, of the grand dinner we had one day. ‘You must contrive and get something that mamma can eat,’ the doctor said to our Burmese purveyor; ‘she will starve to death.’ ‘What shall I get?’ ‘Anything.’ ‘Anything?’ ‘Anything.’ Well, we did have a capital dinner, though we tried in vain to find out by the bones what it was. Henry said it was touk-tahs, a species of lizard, and I should have thought so too, if the little animal had been of a fleshy consistence. Cook said he didn’t know, but he grinned a horrible grin which made my stomach heave a little, notwithstanding the deliciousness of the meat. In the evening we called Mr. Bazaar-man. ‘What did we have for dinner to-day?’ ‘Were they good?’ ‘Excellent.’ A tremendous explosion of laughter, in which the cook from his dish-room joined as loud as he dared. ‘What were they?’ ‘Rats!’ A common servant would not have played such a trick, but it was one of the doctor’s assistants who goes to bazaar for us. You know the Chinese consider rats a great delicacy, and he bought them at one of their shops.”

But amid all the discouragements and sufferings of his life in Rangoon, Mr. Judson did not lapse into despondency. He wrote to a friend:

“My sojourn in Rangoon, though tedious and trying in some respects, I regard as one of the brightest spots, one of the greenest oases in the diversified wilderness of my life. May God make me thankful for all the blessings which have hitherto fallen to my lot, and for the hope of those richer blessings which are just concealed by the cloud of sense from our spiritual vision. If this world is so happy, what must 510heaven be? And as to trials, let us bear up under them, remembering that if we suffer for Christ’s sake, with Him we shall reign.”

At last, however, the intolerance of the Government became so fierce that there was no hope of retaining a foothold in Rangoon, without going to Ava in order to secure the favor of the royal court.

“One Saturday morning,” says Mrs. Judson, “we were startled by some private intimations that the bloody ray-woon, as one of the vice-governors was called, had his eye on us; and a little before evening the hints were fully confirmed. We learned from an undoubted source that a police guard had been stationed in the vicinity of our house, with orders to seize every native, not known to be a servant of the house, seen coming out of it. We inferred that their policy was not to disturb us at present, but the blow was first to fall on the poor Christians. Several Karens were stopping with us, and in addition to our usual company of worshippers quite a number of invited friends and strangers had promised to be with us on the next day. The church had been making individual efforts to enlarge the congregation. I shall never forget the expression of my husband’s face, as though really piercing to the invisible, when he exclaimed, ‘I tell you, if we had but the power to see them, the air above us is thick with contending spirits—the good and the bad, striving for the mastery. I know where final victory lies, but the struggle may be a long one.’ There was not much time for talking, however. He communicated the state of things, as far as he thought expedient, to his two native assistants, and sent them out to warn the nearer worshippers. In this, great caution was necessary, in order to prevent a panic; and I suppose that the Rangoon Christians have never, to this day, known the extent of their danger. As the assistants, by an especial arrangement, did not return till after our landlord’s hour for closing the gate, Dr. Judson, with some difficulty, got the key into his own possession; and so, in the first gray of the morning, the Karens were guided out of town, and advised 511to return to the jungle. The last place to which the assistants carried their warning, on Sunday morning, was a little village five miles from Rangoon, where they remained till toward evening. Dr. Judson was afraid of compromising the Christians by going to any of their houses that day; but he had advised them, through the assistants, how to hold worship, and we knew of several places where little knots of men and women were gathered for prayer.

“These demonstrations on the part of Government were followed up by a series of petty annoyances and insults, which effectually precluded the possibility of accomplishing much good. The governor was friendly, but weak and cowardly; and we soon found that his protection was really worthless, except as he could hold the petty officers in awe. The bloody ray-woon laughed at his authority, and once actually assembled the troops against him, when the poor governor yielded. Both Christians and inquirers, however, still came to us in private; and many a man, who refused to take even a book from the teacher’s hands, would watch his opportunity, when going out, to snatch one from a box placed near the door for that purpose, and hide it in his dress, congratulating himself, no doubt, that he was unsuspected even by us.”

Under these circumstances, the only hope lay in a visit to Ava. Mr. Judson’s heart was set upon this. He believed that it was the only way by which the Gospel could be established in Burmah proper; besides, in the completion of his dictionary, he desired to avail himself of the help of the scholars and the literature to be found only at the capital. And bitter indeed was his disappointment when the policy of retrenchment at home not only prevented his pushing on to Ava, but also compelled him to retreat from Rangoon. It was with an almost broken heart that this wise and intrepid leader, after this last fruitless effort to break the serried ranks of Burman intolerance, returned to Maulmain in obedience to the timid and narrow policy of his brethren in America. He wrote:

“I am persuaded, as I have been for years past, that the only way to keep footing in Rangoon is to obtain some countenance at Ava. My principal object in coming hither was to ascertain the practicability and probable advantage of proceeding to the capital. The present governor has given his permission, and the season favorable for going up the river is not far distant. But at the approaching crisis, I find myself destitute of the requisite means. The Board have approved the measure, but have not been able to accompany their approval with the needful remittance. On the contrary, I learn from my last letters from Maulmain, that the annual appropriation for the Burman mission is ten thousand rupees less than the current expenses require. The brethren have been obliged to retrench in every department, instead of being able to make an appropriation for a new enterprise. My extra expense in Rangoon for assistants and house-rent is eighty-six rupees a month, and they have been able to allow me seventeen and a half only. The Mission Secretary writes me that for anything beyond that sum I must look, not to their treasury, but to the Board. Instead, therefore, of entering on a new and expensive undertaking, I find myself unable to remain in Rangoon. But no; I might hope that an appeal home would provide the means for remaining here; but in present circumstances, unable to remain to any advantage without making friends at Ava, and having no hope that the Board will be able to commence a new station, or even sustain the old ones much longer, there remains nothing for me but to fall back upon Maulmain.

“It is my growing conviction that the Baptist churches in America are behind the age in missionary spirit. They now and then make a spasmodic effort to throw off a nightmare debt of some years’ accumulation, and then sink back into unconscious repose. Then come paralyzing orders to re-trench; new enterprises are checked in their very conception, and applicants for missionary employ are advised to wait, and soon become merged in the ministry at home. Several cases of that sort I encountered during my late visit to the United States. This state of things can not last always. 513The Baptist missions will probably pass into the hands of other denominations, or be temporarily suspended; and those who have occupied the van will fall back into the rear. Nebuchadnezzar will be driven out from men, to eat grass like an ox, until seven times pass over him. But he will, at length, recover his senses, and be restored to the throne of his kingdom, and reign over the whole earth.”earth.”

And how deeply his heroic nature mourned over the signal to retreat may be seen in the description of the situation at Rangoon, as given by her who shared-with him this bitter experience:

“Dr. Judson, when he could keep down his groans, used to speak of our position as ‘the pass of the Splugen,’ and say he had no doubt we should find sunny vales and fruited vineyards the other side. The Government was certainly very bad, and our prospects, at the best, misty; yet as soon as his health and the children’s began to amend, our courage revived. We could not bear, now we had gone so far, and been through so much, to think of retreating, without an effort to get to Ava. For myself, as I believe is natural to the practical minds of women, I sat down to examine the worst features of the case in detail. We should of course be subjected to inconceivable annoyances, but we must trust Providence to give us wise thoughts. We very likely might be banished; but we could always hold ourselves in readiness to go, and the loss of the few goods we had would not be much. Possibly we should be imprisoned; but I did not think that very likely, and we should always have means of informing our friends in Maulmain. Death was the worst. We must endure it some time. If it came a little earlier, it would be in a good cause; and there would be faithful Christians about us, who would never rest till they had taken the children to Maulmain. The way seemed clear to me. Dr. Judson said it was scarcely possible for us to encounter the complication of troubles that we had already passed through in Rangoon. Ava, he said, was always better governed than Rangoon; and this starving of people 514during Lent had never occurred before in all his missionary-life, and was not likely to occur again; besides, the rains were less heavy, and consequently the rainy season less sickly. In addition to this, he had a friend at court—a Burman of rank, who loved him, and was exerting himself to the utmost to gain respect for the ‘wise man,’ and to explain that Americans were not Englishmen. The plan of going to Ava really seemed, on the whole, feasible. Accordingly Dr. Judson used his first returning strength to call on the governor, to obtain permission to go. Not that we could not go without permission; but it was polite and conciliatory to ask, and in the permission would be an implied exemption from annoyance in getting away, and protection—probably that of a Government flag or official umbrella—on the river. The Lent was not yet over; but what with boxes of biscuit from Maulmain, bribing a Mussulman—a rascally fellow, who afterward came and robbed us of our dearly-bought treasure—to obtain fowls for us secretly, and the improved health of some of us, we began to be quite valorous. As Dr. Judson expressed it, ‘our faces began to shine.’ Indeed, we had not been very desponding any of the time. Never, except during an occasional hour, when his illness was most alarming, did his courage falter. It was delightful to be so directly in the hands of God. Then, we had not expected much when we left Maulmain. The church in Rangoon had been aroused, a few baptisms had taken place, and several more hopeful conversions; and the way to Ava, if not the golden city itself, was open before us.

“The letter from Maulmain with no appropriation for our contemplated expedition, and giving us only twenty rupees to cover the eighty-six rupees we were even then monthly expending, came upon us like a sudden tornado in a sunny day. Oddly enough, it had not once occurred to us that the money could be wanting. You will readily appreciate the one broad feature of the case, which would have made the blow heavy to any sincere Christian having much of the missionary spirit; but to my husband there was additional bitterness in the manner of his disappointment, and in the hands from which 515it came. ‘I thought they loved me,’ he would say, mournfully, ‘and they would scarcely have known it if I had died.’ ‘All through our troubles, I was comforted with the thought that my brethren in Maulmain, and in America, were praying for us, and they have never once thought of us.’ At other times he would draw startling pictures of missionaries abandoning the spirit of their mission, and sacrificing everything to some darling project; and at others he would talk hopelessly of the impulsive nature of the home movements, and then pray, in a voice of agony, that these sins of the children of God might not be visited on the heathen. This was an unnatural state of excitement—for him peculiarly unnatural—and he was not long in recovering from it. He very soon began to devise apologies for everybody, and said we must remember that so far as we were concerned, or the missionary cause itself, God had done this thing, and done it, as He always does, for good. It was not His will that we should go to Ava then, and we had no right to complain of the means He made use of to prevent it. He insisted, too, that our obedience was not to be yielded grudgingly; that it must be a cheerful acquiescence in all that God had done, and a sincere, careful study of the indications of His providence afterward, without any suspicion that our ways were hedged by anything harder or thornier than His love and mercy. By the time he had an opportunity to send letters to Maulmain and Boston, his mind was restored to its usual serenity. My impression, however, is, that his first letter to the Board was written in a slightly discouraged tone. He wrote more hopefully to Maulmain, but I have sometimes thought that his generosity took the point from his letter, and that his meaning was not understood in saying that it was for the best. I think now that they mistook resignation to God for a personal willingness to abandon the enterprise.”

Two years afterward, only a few months before his death, he received permission from the Board to go to Ava. It was couched in the following resolutions:

1. “That the Executive Committee accede to the proposition of Dr. Judson to visit Ava, for the purpose of perfecting his Burman dictionary.

5162. “That the sum of one thousand rupees be appropriated to defray the expense of said visit.

3. “That the Foreign Secretary be requested to assure Dr. Judson of the earnest wish of the Committee, that he should carefully avoid all that may jeopard his life, or interfere with his invaluable labors.”

But this permission came too late. The opportunity of penetrating Burmah proper had passed, and the aid of an excellent Burmese scholar, once a priest at Ava, had been secured at Maulmain, and then the toiling translator replied to the resolutions as follows:

“Considering, therefore, the uncertainty of life, and the state of my manuscripts, so effaced by time, or so erased and interlined as to be illegible to any other person but myself, I have thought it was my duty to forego, for the present, what I can not but regard as an interesting expedition, in order to drive forward the heavy work of the dictionary in the most satisfactory manner, and without increasing the hazard of any serious interruption.”

Thus after spending half a year of toil and suffering at Rangoon, he was compelled to fall back upon Maulmain. He arrived there with his family on September 5, 1847.

From the time of his return to Maulmain until his last sickness, he worked steadily at the dictionary. Again and again in his letters he alludes to this colossal undertaking.

“Since my return from America, with the exception of a visit of a few months at Rangoon, I have been occupying my old stand, engaged chiefly in preparing a Burmese dictionary, which is now in the press; that is, the English and Burmese part. The Burmese and English part will, I hope, be ready for the press in the course of another year. They will make two quarto volumes of five or six hundred pages each.... I am still hard at work on the dictionary, and shall be for above a year to come, if I live so long. The work will make two volumes quarto, containing above a thousand pages. No one can tell what toil it has cost me. But I trust it will be a valuable and standard work for a long time. 517It sweetens all toil to be conscious that we are laboring for the King of kings, the Lord of lords. I doubt not we find it so, whether in Maulmain or in Philadelphia.”...

“I have taken shelter in the house lately occupied by brother Simons, though remote from missionary operations, where I intend to make an effort to finish the dictionary.”

His wife, in one of her letters, thus describes his indefatigable industry:

.... “‘The goodman’ works like a galley slave; and really it quite distresses me sometimes, but he seems to get fat on it, so I try not to worry. He walks—or rather runs—like a boy over the hills, a mile or two every morning; then down to his books, scratch-scratch, puzzle-puzzle, and when he gets deep in the mire, out on the veranda with your humble servant by his side, walking and talking (kan-ing we call it in the Burman) till the point is elucidated, and then down again—and so on till ten o’clock in the evening. It is this walking which is keeping him out of the grave.”

At the same time he took a general oversight of the mission work in Maulmain, being, in the nature of the case, a guiding and inspiring force. He preached occasionally in the native chapel, “one sermon at least every Lord’s day.” When his beloved fellow-missionary, Mr. Haswell, was compelled to return home for a short visit on account of his ill health, the whole care of the native church devolved on him.

These literary and pastoral labors were, however, lightened by social and domestic pleasures. Though he had come to the ripe age of sixty, he had within him the fresh heart of a boy. It has been truly said of him that his spirit was intensely, unconquerably youthful. He loved to romp with his children, and early in the morning to brush

In a life of self-sacrifice he had discovered the perennial 518fountain of joy. While he followed the narrow path of stern duty, the butterfly pleasure which the worldling chases from flower to flower, had flown into his bosom. Byron, on his thirty-ninth birthday, breathed the sigh:

How different Judson’s words uttered on his death-bed:

“I suppose they think me an old man, and imagine it is nothing for one like me to resign a life so full of trials. But I am not old—at least in that sense; you know I am not. Oh, no man ever left the world with more inviting prospects, with brighter hopes, or warmer feelings—warmer feelings.”

We are indebted for the following description of his personal appearance at this time to Dr. Wayland’s Memoir:

“In person, Dr. Judson was of about the medium height, slenderly built, but compactly knitted together. His complexion was in youth fair; but residence in India had given him the sallow hue common to that climate. His hair, when in this country, was yet of a fine chestnut, with scarcely a trace of gray. The elasticity of his movement indicated a man of thirty, rather than of nearly sixty years of age. His deportment was, in a remarkable degree, quiet and self-possessed, and his manner was pointed out as perfectly well bred, by those who consider the cultivation of social accomplishments the serious business of life. A reviewer writes on this subject as follows:

“‘A person overtaking Judson in one of his early morning walks, as he strode along the pagoda-capped hills of Maulmain, would have thought the pedestrian before him rather under-sized, and of a build showing no great muscular development; although the pace was good and the step firm, yet there was nothing to indicate great powers of physical endurance, in the somewhat slight and spare frame tramping steadily in front of the observer. The latter would scarcely suppose that he had before him the man who, on the 25th of March, 1826, wrote, “Through the kind interposition of our heavenly Father, our lives have been preserved in the most imminent danger from the hand of the executioner, and in repeated instances of most alarming illness during my protracted imprisonment of one year and seven months; nine months in three pairs of fetters, two months in five, six 519months in one, and two months a prisoner at large.” Illness nigh unto death, and three or five pairs of fetters to aid in weighing down the shattered and exhausted frame, seemed a dispensation calculated for the endurance of a far more muscular build. But meet the man, instead of overtaking him, or, better still, see him enter a room and bare his head, and the observer at once caught an eye beaming with intelligence, a countenance full of life and expression. Attention could scarce fail of being riveted on that head and face, which told at once that the spiritual and intellectual formed the man; the physical was wholly subordinate, and must have been borne through its trials by the more essential elements of the individual, by the feu sacre which predominated in his disposition. Nor was this impression weakened by his conversation. Wisdom and piety were, as might be expected in such a man, its general tone; but there was a vivacity pervading it which indicated strong, buoyant, though well, it may be said very severely, disciplined animal spirits. Wit, too, was there, playful, pure, free from malice, and a certain quiet Cervantic humor, full of benignity, would often enliven and illustrate what he had to say on purely temporal affairs. His conversation was thus both very able and remarkably pleasing.’”

His reputation had extended through the whole of India, and he was held in the highest esteem even by eminent Buddhists, as may be seen in the following letter addressed to him by his Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Siam, who subsequently became king:

.... “I put together with my box, comprising a few artificial flowers, two passion flower, one mogneyet, or surnamed flower, and three roses, manufactured by most celebrated princess the daughter of late second king, or sub-king, who was my royal uncle, for your memorial, but are, indeed, that I don’t know what would be in your necessity from me, beg to let me know without hesitation, I shall endeavor for your desire how my power would allow.

“If you desire to visit Siam some time, don’t come by land, as the strangers are prohibited to come by northern way from command of his majesty, and you would be tributed for coming by way of three pagodas, though traveling of strangers by it was allowed by political authority. It would be best if you embark on board the steamer for Singapore, and lodge little while at residence of my beloved friend Tan Tock Sing, whom I can request to comfort or make attention to you respectfully, and take passage by Siamese vessels that visit the Singapore almost every month to our country, and on your ascending and descending to and fro between this post and Singapore you need not expend any of your own, as I can pay or request the owners of ships for you if you let me be aware.

520“Whenever do you please to send me packet or letters, or to certain of your friend herein, you shall send by sea to Singapore with the direction thus:

“To His Royal Highness, T. V. Chaufa Mongkut, of Bangkok, Siam. Kind care of Tan Tock Sing, of Singapore.

“If you have opportunity to send by land, you shall send by hand of Rahany messengers, or credible traveling trademen of the same, for care of my friend the Rahany chief governor, with Siamese characters in direction as follows [here is inserted the direction in Siamese], because there is none interpreter of English. I am not pleasing the Peguen, or Pegunese, or Mons messenger, who were dignified and appointed to visit Maulmein once for a year from our court, as they generally are proud in vain and ignorant of foreign custom, and wondering or surprising themselves that they are embassadors from the king improper to carry letters from others. I think if you commit your letter or pack to them, lest they might say or do any laughable.

“All white race at Bangkok, both clergymen and merchant, are well during time of cholera, as the missionaries were generally prevented themselves from filling of disease by using of drinking the dissolved mixture of calomel and opium with some spirit and oil put in water, and others by generally use of brandy.

“On the ninth day of the current month, eight of Roman Catholic French priests disputed away from Siamese kingdom, on account of disagreement with the king, for ordinance the annual taxes, which were ordained upon all inhabitants of district of Bangkok. You will hear exactly from letters, perhaps, of your friends. I have no time to write you more.

“I wrote you so long to fulfill your desire to hear from again as you had requested, in your addressed, as I am seeming to be, your curious but little as I was just studied of some way of English 4 years ago, commencing June, 1845, during one less of which I learned from mouth of my teacher, and on rest but by reading only.

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.

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, 522as 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.