A Praying Mother's Missionary Son: Asa Thurston
A DESCENDANT of one of the “Mayflower” Pilgrims was born in Litchfield County, Connecticut, in 1783. Married in Canaan, New York, to the son of a Revolutionary soldier, she moved to East Windsor, Connecticut, and thence to Ellington. Heartily she loved her Saviour, and longed to do something in his service. At the close of the busy day in her Ellington home she was accustomed to go out into a quiet corner of her garden to commune with her Saviour in prayer. But thoughtless boys finding this out, ridiculed and annoyed her at her garden-devotions. On this account she poured out her soul in a little hymn of meditation, which came to be sung in New England church prayer-meetings although that was farthest from her thoughts as she wrote the lines. I was accustomed as a boy to hear that hymn sung in the church prayer-meetings of my native place. The hymn began:
“I love to steal awhile away
From every cumb’ring care,
And spend the hours of setting day
In humble, grateful prayer.”
Meanwhile she taught a loved son to enjoy God’s work, and to feel that nothing that one could do or could have in this world was to be compared with the being faithful in God’s service. Little did she then think that God was to do so much for his cause and for the good of souls, as has since been accomplished through the missionary labors of her loved son in two distant lands, and in a sense for all mankind. In my young manhood I was brought into such relations with the family of that good woman and her missionary son, and came to know so much of his God-blessed missionary efforts, that her story has a prominent place in my heart of hearts and therefore I speak of it.
Her son, Samuel R. Brown, sailed as a missionary to China in 1838, but as the “American Board” had not at that time funds to sustain him in the field as a missionary, he took charge of the “Morrison School” in Canton, the first Christian school in China. His being turned aside from work in the lines of his planning proved — as is so often the case — to be a great blessing to him and to others. God knows best where and how we should work. Dr. S. R. Brown did much work in subsequent years as a missionary in China and Japan. But his life work was chiefly as an educator and as a translator, and in having Chinese and Japanese youth educated in the United States and in England. He was a pioneer in this work, and as such he made his impress on humanity to an extent that it is privileged to few individuals to make. All of us have been indebted to S. R. Brown, as few of us have realized.
Yung Wing, a Chinese boy first reached by Mrs. Gutzlaff, wife of the German missionary, was one of the first youths sent by Dr. Brown to this country. He was taken into the home of Dr. Brown’s mother, at Monson. He prepared himself for Yale College and was in the class of 1854. In that class was a loved brother of mine, and Judge Howland of New York City, and men afterwards eminent in our country’s life. But that young Chinese youth took the first prize in English composition in contest with them all. Yale afterwards honored itself in honoring him with its highest degree of LL. D. Yung Wing was the first diplomatic representative of China to any Western nation, and his influence has been greater over that country by the different methods of policy that he influenced her to adopt, than any man of the century past among his people, not even excepting Li Hung Chang.
It were indeed a life work in itself to have brought Yung Wing to America for an education. Wu Ting Fang, the present Chinese minister to the United States, although educated in England, is in his education and training a direct result of the policy that Yung Wing induced China to adopt. In my Hartford home I was a near neighbor of and a member of the same church with Yung Wing; and the members of the Chinese Educational Commission occupied a building near by. A neighbor of mine, and in the same church with me in Hartford, was a brother-in-law of Dr. S. R. Brown, and it was at his home that I met, in the summer of 1867, the saintly man who had done so much for Christ and for souls.
Dr. Brown became a missionary in connection with the Reformed (Dutch) Church in Japan, and while ii6 Old Time Student Volunteers
thus connected he induced the Japanese Government to send a number of the princes and higher class youth to America and Europe to be educated. It was a book from Dr. Brown’s library that fell into the hands of Joseph Neesima, and first interested him in America as the land where he could learn more about the Christian’s God. Dr. Brown was also instrumental in securing the translation of the Bible into Japanese, and thus of opening to a new nation the treasures of God’s Word.
As I had the privilege of meeting Joseph Neesima while he was at Amherst College and while he was planning the Doshisha University, I came to have an added interest in him and his Christian work. Amherst conferred the degree of LL. D. upon her alumnus Joseph Neesima, as Yale had conferred the same degree on Yung Wing, an alumnus of hers. As I was privileged to know Dr. Brown, who had been the means of accomplishing so much for China and Japan through Dr. Yung Wing and Dr. Joseph Hardy Neesima, I must ever have a special interest in the special good that has come to the world through that praying mother in Monson who was back of all this even while she thought her sphere in life was so limited and there seemed so little for her to do for Christ in the world.
As my good wife and her father’s family were lovingly intimate with the family of that mother, I lived in that missionary atmosphere. We shall know more about all this when we get to heaven. But even here there is enough to interest us profoundly, and to make us grateful to God for his varied ways of working.