What a Boy Saw in the Face of Adoniram Judson
With the present world-wide interest in Christian missions, and with the multitude of American missionaries in various parts of the earth now representing the score and more of American missionary societies of different religious denominations, it is difficult for a young Christian to realize that at the opening of the nineteenth century there was not an American missionary in all of God’s great field outside of the United States, while no missionary society was as yet formed for the purpose of sending out such a worker. It is, perhaps, still more difficult to realize that many now living have looked into the Christ-illumined faces of some of the pioneer missionaries, who first went, in the Master’s name, from the newest land to the oldest, from America to Asia; yet those who have looked into such faces cannot forget them, nor fail to realize this glad fact.
Of the first company of American missionaries who were ordained for the foreign field, in 1812, Adoniram Judson, Samuel Nott, Samuel Newell, Gordon Hall, and Luther Rice, perhaps the first-named was the object of more romantic interest than any of the others because of the circumstances of his life course, both before he reached the missionary field and after he was there.
Going out as a foreign missionary from America was, at the best, a very different matter in those days and in these. There was at that time back of one no organized and experienced society, having a recognized position in the sight of one’s government and of the world. There was then in no sense, as now in many a case there is, a measure of similarity between the home and the foreign field, with the privilege of working hopefully in a chosen region. The foreign missionary’s work and field were then uncertain and doubtful, as he went out from the known into the unknown, walking wholly by faith and in no degree by sight. This was forcefully illustrated in the case of Adoniram Judson.
Even after graduating from Brown University, young Judson was skeptically inclined. He actually thought of giving himself up to the profession of a theatrical actor, and even connected himself with a dramatic company for the purpose of becoming familiar with the rules and life of the mimic stage. Being, however, aroused to a sense of truth and duty, he thought of being a Congregational clergyman, as his father had been. Entering with this thought in his mind, but before his purpose was fully formed, Andover Theological Seminary, he there met young Samuel J. Mills, Gordon Hall, and James Richards, who had come thither as missionary student volunteers from Williams College.
It was while reading Buchanan’s “Star in the East,” that his special interest was aroused in behalf
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of the foreign missionary cause. Added to this, the example and influence of his student volunteer associates at Andover fired his heart with zeal for the service, and at once he offered himself for the work to the new society. But six young men were, in that day, quite too many for America to assume the support of, all at once, and Judson went to England to seek the co-operation of the London Missionary Society in this enormous undertaking.
On that voyage, the English ship in which Judson was a passenger was captured by the French, and taken into Bayonne, where he was thrown into prison. When he was released, he was still unsuccessful in the purpose of his voyage, and he returned to America, nothing daunted. He was then appointed a missionary to India, or Burmah, by the American Board, the new missionary society in America, formed to provide for these young men and those who might follow them, and he made the tedious voyage to Calcutta in a slow sailing-vessel. Being led by Bible study, on shipboard, to change his views on the subject of baptism, he, soon after reaching Calcutta, severed his connection with the American Board, and was again all afloat as to his plans for work. A Baptist missionary society was, in consequence, formed in this country, and assumed the support of Judson and Rice to begin with.
During the war between Burmah and England, or between Burmah and the English East India Company, Judson was once more in trouble. Suspected of being a spy, he was arrested in his own house, by an officer accompanied by an executioner, was thrown on the floor, bound with cords, and taken to the death-prison. For more than a year and a half he was in the loathsome prisons of Burmah, at times being bound with three, and again with five, pairs of fetters, suffering excruciatingly from heat, from hunger, from fever, and from the cruelty of his keepers. Yet in all this his faith neither failed nor wavered.
As a boy, I was deeply impressed with the story of Adoniram Judson, as I read of it, with a vivid illustration of his cruel arrest, in a volume in our village library. When I was a little more than fourteen years old, in my Stoiiington home, on the then principal route between Boston, Providence, and New York, Dr. Judson stopped at the railroad station there for several hours one evening, on his way from Boston to Philadelphia-. Knowing that he was in this country, I recognized him from his pictures, as I saw him on the steamboat at the Stonington dock. Not venturing to speak to him myself, although I now wish I had done so, I hastened to the house of the Baptist pastor, the Rev. Dr. Albert G. Palmer, the well-known poet and preacher, and told him that the great missionary was so near. Delighted to know it, he went immediately to the steamboat to pay his respects to the illustrious Christian hero.
I stood during this interview at a little distance from the two, and watched the face of the good and great man while he talked with his fellow-disciple of his Master and of his mission. All the while his face glowed with the light of his theme. The sight of that countenance was an inspiration and a blessing to me. I have never forgotten it. I never can forget it. In
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appearance, Dr. Judson was tall, spare, wiry, of firmly compacted nerves. In his face were the signs of the many battles through which he had passed, and of the spirit in which he had been a victor through all; and under all and in all there was a spiritual uplook showing that he had endured as seeing Him who is invisible. It was the look of Michel Angelo’s David, with his sling across his shoulder, ready to meet the grim giant of Gath, and doubting not that he should overcome in the combat, in the name of Him for whom he stood a champion.
In the nearly threescore years since then, the look on that missionary hero’s face has been ever before me, and I have often prayed, as I pray to-day, that the light that illumined his face may in some measure be reflected from my face in my best service of his Master and of mine.