Chapter 2: The Life and Context of Adoniram Judson

2

The Life and Context of Adoniram Judson

The account of Adoniram Judson is worthy of his numerous biographies. His story is truly captivating with drama, adventure, and tragedy. In order to understand his renowned courage and endurance, this chapter will consider the historical context of his evangelical missionary compulsion, and the theological roots of his spiritual formation. A short biographical sketch of his life will underscore these factors.

The Eighteenth Century

Adoniram Judson came of age and commenced his missionary venture in the last third of the “long” eighteenth century (1688–1837).67 During the early period of Great Britain’s rise to world dominance, the world witnessed King Louis XIV (1638–1715) of France’s declaration of war on England (1689), William of Orange’s (1650–1702) confirmation as king over Charles II (1630–1685), and King George II’s (1683–1760) ascension to the throne in 1727. This was an era when the English, Welsh, and Scottish assimilated into a common identity as British. Two of the chief features in this collective sense of being British were a desire for the prominence of the British Empire and a shared inheritance from the Reformation of Protestantism.68 The three Protestant ethnicities also galvanized their British identity in opposition to France, their threatening Catholic foe. This empire spread through a dominant Royal Navy and an ever-increasing merchant fleet, and concurrently English-speaking missionaries were establishing Christ’s empire. In the latter half the eighteenth century, Evangelicals from Europe and North America rose to the challenge of extending Christianity’s reach into Africa, Asia, and Australasia. According to the church historian, Michael Haykin, this explosion of missionary activism and globalization of the Christians faith “must be regarded as the most salient event in the history of Western churches since the Reformation.”69

Many Christians saw the expansion of the British Empire during this century as the providential working of God to spread around the world the gospel discovered in the Reformation.70 For instance, Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), the Particular Baptist pastor in Kettering and mobilizer for the Baptist Missionary Society, said that the providential aim behind Britain’s vast Empire was “for the very purpose of introducing the gospel.”71 And just as Rome’s conquests paved a way for the gospel to travel to Britain, he said, so “those of Britain may make way for its general introduction in the East.”72 Like the Roman roads of the first and second centuries, the British Empire made international inroads on which the gospel could travel.

Evangelicalism Emerges

David W. Bebbington, Professor of History at the University of Stirling in Scotland, has argued that since 1734 the English-speaking world has seen the unparalleled rise of evangelicalism, influenced by European Continental Pietism, the Great Awakening in America, and the Evangelical Revival in Britain in the eighteenth century. Bebbington demonstrates that eighteenth-century evangelicalism contained four components: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism.73 The “Bebbington quadrilateral”74 provides valuable descriptions of historical evangelical spirituality; it has become the standard grid through which to understand the evangelical spirituality of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.75

Bebbington distinguishes evangelicalism from Puritanism in that the latter lacked the activism of the former, which he traces to Puritanism’s underdeveloped doctrine of assurance.76 He argues that evangelicalism saw assurance as the ordinary experience of every believer,77 and he traces this to the empiricism of the Enlightenment era of the eighteenth century. Evangelicals valued empirical evidence; and, divine encounters became grounds for evidential assurance of conversion.78 Conversely, Haykin maintains that in the Great Awakening of 1740–1742, Jonathan Edwards reconsidered the doctrine of assurance because many in his congregation had false ideas of how to discern true conversion. An undue focus on experience and impressions eclipsed what Edwards called “fruits of grace.” Like the Puritans, Edwards claimed that perseverance was the ground for assurance.79 In other words, evangelical activism and the doctrine of assurance are more similar to Puritan spirituality than Bebbington claims,80 and significant continuity exists between Puritan and evangelical spirituality.

In The Devoted Life, Randall C. Gleason and Kelly M. Kapic broadly define Christian spirituality as seeking “a deeper awareness of God’s presence as defined by the Christian faith according to the Bible.”81 Yet, they delineate seven unique elements of Puritan spirituality.82 First, it was a “movement of spirituality.”83 Church historian, Richard Lovelace, terms it “a Reformed holiness movement.”84 Contemporary evangelicalism commonly uses phrases like “having a quiet time” or “doing devotions” to describe drawing near to God through biblical meditation, which eighteenth-century evangelicalism often called “enjoying” or “practicing religion.” Puritanism would call a similar spiritual practice “communion with Christ.”85 Gleason and Kapic identify this Puritan notion of communion with Christ as fitting well in the category of Christian spirituality because it also emphasizes Spirit-guidance and Bible-saturation.86 Puritanism was essentially the foremost model of Reformed sanctification. Certainly, it valued conversion;87 but the truly converted soul ventures on a pilgrimage of progressive holiness.88 Second, in conjunction with the first point, the Puritans emphasized communion with God as the affectionate response to the mind’s vision of Christ-centered truth.89 Third, to them Scripture was the food that strengthened the affections of their heart and the health of their souls.90 Describing the Bible-saturated writings of the Puritan preacher John Bunyan (1628–1688), the Victorian preacher, Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) famously said, “Why, this man is a living Bible! Prick him anywhere—his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him.”91 Truly, they were a people of the Word.92 Fourth, they were chiefly Augustinian in the weight they placed upon the pervasive depravity of man and the absoluteness of God’s sovereign grace.93 Due to man’s inability and unwillingness to do good, the Puritans stressed their desperation for God’s gracious justifying and sanctifying work. It is by the Holy Spirit alone that God empowers the regenerate to live in obedience. Fifth, the Puritans greatly emphasized the necessity of the Spirit for their pursuit of holiness and their communion with God. Sixth, they passionately disagreed with Roman Catholic sacramentalism and the similar sacramental spirituality they observed in the Anglican Church. And seventh, Puritanism was essentially a “Protestant and Reformed holiness and renewal movement.”94 J. I. Packer sees evidence of this in their constant use of terms such as “reformation” and “reform” to encourage heart transformation, their call for personal revival in their devotional writings, and the fact that God brought revival through the Puritan pastors’ ministry.95

In The Devoted Life, Richard Lovelace sets up the discussion for how evangelical spirituality organically developed out of Puritan spirituality. He says that the Puritans referred to the “half-reformation” of the sixteenth century. He explains, “not that the Reformation itself was at fault, but it needed the church to follow through on its teaching.” Some of the Puritans said, “We have reformed our doctrines, but not our lives.”96 They sought to cultivate the garden of their souls and fan into flame their holy affections for the Triune God. Since Puritanism was essentially a Reformed holiness movement and sanctification is borne out of decisive regeneration, Lovelace suggests that Puritanism was first a “born again” movement, and thus the forerunner to evangelicalism.97

In his book, Evangelical Spirituality, James M. Gordon acknowledges the usefulness of the aforementioned Bebbington quadrilateral: “The experience of conversion in response to the divine grace, the centrality of the cross, the primary authority of the Bible and the imperative to service for Christ’s sake are hallmarks of the Evangelical spiritual tradition.”98 However, Gordon does not limit himself to this standard fourfold filter. As he comments, “Rather than attempt a tidy definition of ‘spirituality,’ I have tried to show that, whatever definition is used, it must include the impact of doctrine on experience and moral practice.”99 He argues that the litmus test for true soul renovation and any spiritual experience “is how far it contributes to growth in love.”100 Equally, Lovelace claims that love to God and love to people must be the fruit of any evangelical spiritual experience.

The goal of authentic spirituality is a life which escapes from the closed circle of spiritual self-indulgence, or even self-improvement, to become absorbed in the love of God and other persons. For the essence of spiritual renewal is “the love of God. . . poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5 NASB). “My love,” said Augustine, “is my weight.” The substance of real spirituality is love.101

Similar to the Puritan spirit of Edwards’s affectionate pursuit of God as the greatest treasure in every good gift and spiritual experience,102 Gordon contends that evangelical spirituality loves God for himself.103

Much like the Puritan emphasis on communion with Christ, Gordon observes that inherent to evangelical spirituality has been a robust Christocentric inclination.104 “Lived doctrine centred on Christ, growth towards maturity measured by Christ, and moral renewal after the image of Christ provide the goals of the Christian spiritual life.”105 John Stott (1921–2011), the great bulwark of evangelical spirituality, whose writing exemplified Christocentric piety said,

God has given us both [Scripture and sacrament] in order to display Christ before the eyes of our heart, to attract our attention to Him and to draw out our faith in him. Scripture and sacrament alike are Christ-conscious, not self-conscious . . . They are binoculars for the magnification of Jesus Christ . . . Our gaze is to be on Christ.106

Stott’s evangelical spirituality truly captures the Christ-enamored heart religion of eighteenth-century evangelical spirituality.

Furthermore, such Christ-pursuing evangelicalism organically grew out of Puritanism. Though Bebbington sees eighteenth-century evangelical spirituality emerging out of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on assurance based on spiritual encounter, both Puritan and evangelical spirituality followed the same Christ-centered compass. Yet, the path and personality of each was unique. Like Puritanism, evangelicalism was a genuine “outpouring of the Spirit of God.”107 It is significant that eighteenth-century evangelicalism, like its Puritan antecedent, demonstrated its inherent value of communion with Christ by the Spirit through the Bible unto personal holiness and mission.108 Moreover, the Christ-enamored, activistic impulse of the evangelical spirituality of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries prominently rose in the form of the modern missionary movement.

Roots of the Modern Missionary Movement

Despite “the hampering effects of the Enlightenment Era,” Protestants rallied for foreign missions in a milieu freed from the “the limitations of medieval Christianity, once they had caught the vision of a world in need.”109 The genesis of the modern missionary movement has been popularly associated with the Baptist missionary to India, William Carey, the “Father of Modern Missions.”110 Yet, there would have been no William Carey if there had not been an Andrew Fuller. Fuller, a humble autodidact and pastor of a small Particular Baptist church in Kettering, was the thinker, mobilizer, organizer, and rope-holder of the first advance of the modern missionary movement.111 He contended against the cheap grace of Sandemanianism,112 and in response to the cold-heartedness of Hyper Calvinism, his ground-breaking treatise, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation,113 fanned into flame evangelical Calvinism.114 As Brian Stanley has noted, “[Fuller’s] book was of prime importance in preparing the ground for Baptist missionary endeavor, precisely because it enabled Particular Baptists to restore concepts of moral obligation and human responsibility to the very centre of their theology of salvation.”115 Fuller’s influence was largely due to the timeliness of his work, which hit a nerve among others who were asking the same questions and searching for an alternative to hyper-Calvinism.116 Regarding his indelible influence as a pastor-theologian, Paul Brewster well-summarizes Fuller’s impact among evangelical Baptists: “His concern for the souls of those who would hear him preach illustrates Fuller’s greatest legacy among Baptists: to support missionary-oriented theology that helped foster deep concern for the salvation of the lost.”117

Fuller’s atonement-centered system of theology predominantly drove his ministry praxis as a preacher, as secretary for the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS), and as an apologist. As a preacher, Fuller’s concern for souls compelled him. Employing as many means as possible, Fuller pressed for decisions, pursued young and old, far, and near, and he practiced prayer as the requirement for Spirit-empowered evangelism. In conjunction with William Carey’s focused devotion to world missions, Fuller’s soteriological convictions and theological articulation birthed the BMS, which would later consume Fuller’s life as a rope-holder through fund-raising, administration, and writing in defense of missions.118

It was from Carey’s friendship with Fuller and their shared evangelical piety that Carey called for the use of means in converting the heathen. Out of this evangelical Calvinism, Carey wrote An Enquiry into the Obligations to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen.119 On par with the Reformer, Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) ninety-five theses, this treatise by Carey may well go down in church history as one of the most influential theological/missiological paradigm shifts in history. It is indeed “the Magna Carta of the Protestant missionary movement.”120

In addition to the unmatched influence of Fuller, Carey’s ideas developed through a juxtaposition of Puritanism, Moravianism, and Pietism.121 According to historian Stephen Neill (1900–1984), Carey’s missions strategy can be summarized in five points: indiscriminate preaching of the gospel by any method possible, widespread publication and distribution of the translated Scriptures, planting a church as soon as possible, studying the culture and worldview of the target people, and training up indigenous pastors and leaders.122 Carey’s five strategies of missions are significant because Judson’s missionary strategies are nearly identical. They are, nevertheless, not original to either Carey or Judson. But these five strategies have largely characterized the philosophy and methodology of the evangelical missions movement.

Judson’s missiological convictions and practices were: the importance of personal faith and believer’s baptism, evangelism and contextualization, linguistic and cultural acquisition, and the establishment of self-supporting indigenous churches.123 Or stated another way, Judson’s methods were learning the language and culture proficiently, publicly preaching the gospel, translating the Bible and distributing tracts, planting churches, and training indigenous pastors.124 “Literate and civilized as they were,”125 the Burmese were ready for the written Word of God, thought Judson initially. Though their literacy was high compared to other parts of Asia, because their literacy level was insufficient for reading the Scriptures, he “opened a school for teaching adults to read.”126 He later said it was his “intention to place [three Karen] men in the adult school, and qualify them to read and interpret the Scriptures to their countrymen.”127

Carey’s missionary inspiration and strategies were not original to him. Carey immersed himself in the Puritans, especially the writings Jonathan Edwards,128 David Brainerd (1718–1747), and John Eliot (1604–1690).129

Puritan missions gave William Carey a workable strategy, an inspirational model, and a conceptual framework for his own missionary endeavors . . . Eliot provided a model for Carey: preacher, translator, agriculturalist, reformer, organizer of churches, humanitarian. It was from him that William Carey drew his missionary strategy.130

Just as Eliot modeled a missionary strategy, Brainerd inspired Carey that missions were worth whatever the cost. “Carey read [Brainerd’s] diary almost daily. The covenant he and other missionaries drew up as a basis for their lives together in India said, ‘Let us often look at Brainerd in the woods of America, pouring out his very soul before God for the people.’”131 Similarly, Judson read of the Moravian missionary, Christian Scwhartz (1726–1798), who worked in the Tamil language in India, and who inspired him greatly. Accounts of John Eliot and David Brainerd also left their evangelical impact on Judson’s soul.132

What is more, Judson, Carey, and Fuller were all aware of the labors of Pietist missionaries, such as the Moravian Brethren, an eighteenth-century renewal movement that emerged from German Pietism.133 The Moravians launched a wave of international evangelical missions through the inspiration and leadership of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760). The Moravian missionaries came from Moravia in present-day Germany. Moravia was essentially a refugee region for persecuted non-Catholics. On August 13, 1727, the Moravian refugees experienced a tremendous revival, from which emerged a great evangelical missionary movement.134

Zinzendorf received his formational training and pietistic ideas at the University of Halle, under the leadership of the activistic Pietist, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727).135 The Pietist leader, Philip Jakob Spener (1635–1705), founded the University of Halle; his famous Pia Desideria ignited Pietistic passion among young men and issued an evangelical renewal movement among scholastic Lutherans.136

Numerous Pietistic missionaries came out of Halle. Yet the Germans did not want to send missionaries because of the University of Wittenberg’s negative view on the extremes of Halle-brand Pietism. Nevertheless, Frederick IV (1671–1730), the king of Denmark, sought to send out missionaries from Denmark, yet he could not find any in Denmark. So, he inquired in Germany and found the Pietists. Denmark actually sent out two German Pietist missionaries, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Heinrich Plutschau (1677–1752), to India to work among the colonies of Denmark.137

Ziegenbalg and Plutschau were the first Protestant missionaries in India. Within the first week in India, they started learning the Tamil language, and after three years they had translated the New Testament into Tamil, which is still used today by Tamil-speakers. After serving in India for nine years (1705–1714), Ziegenbalg and Plutschau returned to Denmark and trained many more Pietist missionaries. In fact, while Zinzendorf was at Halle, Ziegenbalg steadily mentored him. Ziegenbalg proposed these five mission strategies: (1) educate people to read so that they can read the Bible; (2) translate the Bible in the native tongue; (3) learn the culture and the worldview of the people; (4) preach for the personal conversion of the heathen; (5) establish local churches and promote congregational indigenization.138 The five missions strategies that both Carey and Judson promoted were essentially these five points proposed by Ziegenbalg. Clearly, these Pietists influenced the missions strategies of Carey and Judson, which have deeply affected the succeeding missionary movement for generations. Fifty years before the BMS sent Carey to India, the Moravian Church had pioneered the way into pagan countries both by principle and example. The Moravians took the missionary instinct of Pietism and created a missionary culture.

The missionary movement was an activistic fruit of the evangelical eighteenth century. Against all rational explanation, the evangelical aftershocks of the long eighteenth century still continue in the twenty-first century. Stephen Neill said, “The cool and rational eighteenth century was hardly a seed-bed for Christian growth; but out of it came a greater outburst of Christian missionary enterprise than had been seen in all the centuries before.”139

The New Divinity of New England

Adoniram Judson was not the son of an international missionary, but he was the son of a missions-minded Congregationalist pastor. Adoniram Judson, Sr. (1752–1826) was born at Woodbury, Connecticut, the son of William Judson, an immigrant from Yorkshire. Judson, Sr. ministered in three parishes before assuming the pastorate in Plymouth. Prior to going to Plymouth, Judson, Sr. served as a Congregationalist home missionary to Vermont.140

When Adoniram Judson, Jr. was fourteen years old, living in Plymouth, his father preached a message from 2 Corinthians 6:17, which says, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.” Judson, Sr. illustrated how to obey this text by drawing upon the example of their Puritan forbearers who “discovered a remarkable spirit of self-denial, boldness, and perseverance in the cause of religion,”141 and “who left England and came to America. Probably they understood the meaning of the words, as well as many other passages of Scripture of a like import, which might give them courage and strength, through all their trials, in the discharge of duty.”142 He called his congregants to flee the Babylonian system that Scripture uses “to represent all the sin and moral evil in this world of apostasy.”143 However, his call was not to “a separation of any particular society or family, or forsaking all intercourse with the world; but a separation from all moral evil, and faithful discharge of all Christian duty . . . And to return to God, to love him supremely, and to delight in his service.”144 For, “true faith, in the system of grace or truth, will produce Christian practice.”145

In Judson, Sr.’s mind, there was in recent history no greater example of obedience to this text than the Puritans who sailed to the New World. He said that the Puritans were different than most because they esteemed the “gospel system of grace,” and they upheld the doctrines of the Trinity, total depravity, regeneration, Christ’s divinity and atonement, the need for repentance and faith, the perseverance of the saints, heaven and hell, and he exclaimed, “O how evident is their belief in the providence of God!” He went on to say they beseeched the throne of grace and honored God for delivering them by “his sovereign goodness.”146 According to the elder Judson, God has acted for his name’s sake throughout history, and he is progressively advancing the kingdom of his beloved Son and expelling the darkness through the gospel. Judson, Sr. said that “in acting for his own glory, [God] has spread the knowledge of his name among those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death . . . And he is now succeeding the missionary cause, in spreading truth and knowledge.” Judson, Sr. went on to discuss his optimism in the fact that Christianity was more widespread than in any other time in history.147

This homily demonstrates the robust Puritan and Edwardsean spirituality of Judson’s father. Its tenor exhibits a strong adherence to Calvinistic doctrine, a devotion to holiness, and a consecration to costly obedience. Judson’s father loved “the example of primitive Christians.”148 Joan Jacobs Brumberg comments that Judson, Sr. admired the apostolic model of pioneer missionaries, such as John Eliot and David Brainerd. She maintains that Eliot’s successful translation of the Bible into Mohawk amazed Judson, Sr., just as it had astounded Cotton Mather (1663–1728).149 The evangelical piety of Judson, Sr. was not an anomaly in his day in New England; he was a New Divinity man.

The New Divinity movement of New England arose during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Leaders of the movement, such as Congregationalist ministers Samuel Hopkins and Joseph Bellamy (1719–1790), studied under the tutelage of Jonathan Edwards, and they sought to uphold and advance Edwardsean revival theology. They accomplished this primarily through a pastoral training network called the “school of the prophets.” After graduating from divinity school, newly trained ministers would move into the parsonages of Hopkins or Bellamy for a year-long mentorship; they mastered the heart of Edwardsean theology, and they learned the skills of their ministerial trade. In fact, Bellamy mentored Adoniram Judson Sr. for gospel ministry after Judson Sr.’s graduation from Yale (1775) before assuming the pulpit in Malden, where Judson Jr. was born.150

Providentially, the congregations of New Divinity ministers witnessed the revivals of New England that launched the Second Great Awakening (1790s). These revivals, conversely, were not of the same “new measures”151 that the “father of modern revivalism,”152 Charles G. Finney (1792–1875), promoted for effecting revival. Finney’s methods were confrontational, motivational, direct, and he used the means of special music, revival meetings, and imploring sinners to the anxious bench “to demonstrate that sinners really did possess natural ability.”153 In their own Hopkinsian revivalistic ethos, the New Divinity men employed the theological intricacies of Jonathan Edwards, which included his differentiation between the sinner’s moral inability and natural ability. They also upheld his doctrine of disinterested benevolence, which was, as Robert Caldwell has said, “the basis for an exclusive Edwardsean spirituality that motivated a radical self-denial among America’s early missionaries. This mixture of Edwardsean theology with traditional Calvinism resulted in a unique theological school in the Reformed tradition.”154

Edwards published Freedom of the Will in 1754 in order to correct Arminian objections to Calvinism.155 He argued that divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not at odds, and his distinction between natural and moral ability became a hallmark doctrine for New Divinity theology.156 In the legacy of Edwards, the New Divinity men contended that sinful men can indeed repent, but they do not want to repent. Their desires are corrupt, though their natural abilities to comprehend the reasonableness of the gospel are intact. Sinners’ volitions act according to the prevailing motives of their hearts. Edwards said, “It is that motive, which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the Will.”157 Freedom of the will is not the power of contrary choice, but rather, it is the freedom to do as one pleases according to the strongest disposition of the heart.

Edwards and the New Divinity men taught that sinners choose according to their strongest inclinations, and they have the freedom to do as they please according to their hearts’ desires. Therefore, they are accountable and culpable for the actions of their free will. Only through God’s sovereign work of grace to overcome man’s sinful heart can a sinner’s will be set free to desire and delight in God. Thus, divine sovereignty, moral necessity, freedom, and moral accountability are not inconsistent. Since all have the natural ability to repent, New Divinity ministers would make indiscriminate calls to believe the gospel. This call for immediate repentance was in opposition to the Old Calvinist view that said conversion was a gradual process in which God would cause regeneration while sinners were appropriating the means of grace. In Puritan fashion, such means would include: prayer, listening to preaching, reading the Bible, and seeking God. This would result in a long struggle of guilt, anxiety, and introspection.158 In reality, the differentiation between the Old Calvinist view and the New Divinity view was a matter of emphasis; the New Divinity emphasized an immediate application of the means of grace, and the Old Calvinists emphasized a long, drawn out struggle while applying the means of grace. If someone were to ask a New Divinity minister how to repent immediately, the minister’s answer would be similar to that of an Old Calvinist: employ the means of grace and seek God, and he would perhaps create new affections to predispose the sinner to repent and trust in Christ alone. Slowly the New Divinity men moved away from an emphasis on revival to an emphasis on self-examination and inclinations of the heart for or against Christ.159

In addition, Edwards influenced the New Divinity men to seek the good of God and of others over their own interests. This other-centered “disinterested benevolence” emerged from Edwards’s A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections160 and A Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue.161 Edwards said,

Virtue, as I have observed, consists in the cordial consent or union of being to being in general. And that frame of mind, whereby it is disposed to relish and be pleased with the view of this, is benevolence, or union of heart, to being in general; or it is an universally benevolent frame of mind. Because, he whose temper is to love being in general, must therein have a disposition to approve and be pleased with love to being in general.162

For Edwards, self-forgetfulness was a sign of regeneration. Self-disinterest indicated that a person had become so joyfully enamored with God that he did not feel the need to be assured of his salvation. Self-disinterest naturally leads to disinterested love for God and others, which manifests itself in acts of sacrifice for the good of others and the glory of God. Once the Holy Spirit enlightens the heart to see and love God’s glory and beauty at conversion, the Holy Spirit then grants new desires that manifest universal benevolence. The true believer then has a passion for the glory of Christ and affectionately esteems a life lived under the cross. The love and preoccupation with self is severed and the believer discovers his greatest joy in God. Central to the spirituality of Edwards was this benevolent spirit.163

At the headwaters of the New Divinity movement were Joseph Bellamy and Samuel Hopkins; these disciples of Jonathan Edwards “personified the New Divinity.”164 They “both vigorously sought to advance their mentor’s revivalistic, pietistic, and ecclesiastical vision.”165 Bellamy, a rural pastor in Bethlehem, Connecticut, wrote many theological treatises, of which his renowned works are True Religion Delineated166 and The Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin.167 “Bellamy was . . . a thoroughgoing Edwardean as far as the theory of virtue is concerned. Like Edwards, he was also in general upon the plane of the old Calvinism. In many things his positions will be found to be identical with those of Edwards.”168 Bellamy argued against the notion that God foreordains sin; God merely permits sin, which manifests “the heart and character of God as it could not otherwise have been revealed, to give his creatures a true specimen of themselves, and thus to advance his own glory and their good. For the greatest thing we can possibly have is an increased knowledge of God and of ourselves.”169 The American Church historian, E. Brooks Holifield, says that Bellamy emulated Edwards in emphasizing that “the heart of true religion and true virtue consisted in the love of God for God’s own intrinsic excellence.”170

Samuel Hopkins was, more than Bellamy, the theologian for the New Divinity movement. His System of Doctrines became the first American systematic theology.171 Holifield says that Hopkins’s “writing achieved such influence that for many the New Divinity became synonymous with ‘Hopkinsianism.’” Holifield goes on to say that Hopkins’s conversion influenced the rest of his life and ministry. Hopkins was “a melancholy man who remained doubtful of his own salvation.”172 Prior to his conversion, Hopkins had read the biography of Brainerd, which caused him to fear that he had never been born of the Spirit.173 He sought to discern the state of his soul and the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life.

After graduating from Yale, Hopkins went to live with and be mentored by Jonathan Edwards. While Hopkins lived with Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, he edited for publication some of Edwards’s works, including The Nature of True Virtue174 and The History of Redemption.175 From Edwards, Hopkins learned that the genuinely converted minister must “personify the practical piety and self-sacrificing zeal that were among the distinguishing marks of conversion.”176 Edwards also taught him that he was “‘not to expect outward ease, pleasure and plenty.’ . . . A minister could not even ‘depend upon the friendship and respect of men; but should prepare to endure hardness, as one that is going forth as a soldier to war.’”177 When Hopkins entered the ministry, he surrendered his life to the cause of Christ as a frontier preacher. Years after he had renounced the world and had committed to a life of self-denial, Hopkins outlined theologically the self-sacrificing, missionary spirituality that supported him in Housatonic.178 Hopkins lived a life of austerity, living out the Edwardsean vision of self-sacrificing piety, ready and willing to be accursed for the glory of God.

Hopkins established God’s disposition to be one of disinterested benevolence.179 For the people of God, Christ is the model of which this piety seeks to apply itself:

A Christocentric formulation of that disposition is the imperative to love God and love the neighbor as Jesus demonstrated in his life and teaching . . . Moreover, true holiness provides a view of experience in which suffering is transformed and interpreted as a participation in a Christological benevolence.180

Edwards’s notion of “true virtue” influenced Hopkinsian “true holiness” and Bellamy’s “true religion.”181 Edwards illustrated signs of true virtue in the regenerate believer: “a love of Christ, an acceptance of Christian truth, a concern for eternal salvation, a sense of one’s odiousness and smallness.”182 “Where Edwards saw true virtue as essentially a matter of right affections, Hopkins viewed it as right actions.”183 Furthermore, Hopkins contended that true conversion proved itself in a willingness to be damned for the glory of God; and, in imitation of Christ, the true convert manifested an “unconditional surrender to the sovereign will of God.”184

Hopkins sought to improve upon some of Edwards’s theological views. A primary improvement he made was in his understanding of sin and self-love. For Edwards, sin was “any other elective preference than that of the good of being in general.”185 Hopkins expounded upon this, which many of his successors adopted: self-love is enmity with God; self-love blinds the heart to moral excellence; from self-love originates irreverence and godlessness; and, “the opposition between holiness and selfishness is that between a wholly disinterested affection and a wholly interested affection.”186 Just as disinterested benevolence assists in a life of holiness, self-interest assists in a life of sin.

Moreover, the governmental theory of atonement,187 propounded by the New Divinity in response to the Universalist claim that “the doctrine of universal salvation followed logically the doctrine of universal atonement,”188 influenced the New Divinity ethos of self-denial. In God’s government, he permitted moral evil, indeed even willed it, for the greater good and happiness of the whole. Hopkins contended that the world was “much better” because sin prompted the “full display of God’s redemptive love and grace in salvation and allowed God’s ‘power and wrath’ to be manifested in the judgment . . . of sinners.”189

Hopkins said it best in his preface to “Three Sermons from Romans 3:5–8.” He argued that all the sin and pain in the world is “for the general good of the whole.” He claimed that believing this truth is essential for “a true and cheerful submission to God’s will as it is manifested in what he does and what he permits.” If a person submits to God’s will, such a person sees God’s will “as wise and good.” Because God permits sin and misery in the world, it must work for a good end; otherwise, God’s will would not be wise and good, and it would not be worthy of submission. As the believer grows in “true benevolence,” he passionately “seeks the good” of all. He is also, then, “conformed to God . . . in true holiness.” Hopkins went on to contend, “If Christians, therefore, tamely give up this truth, where will they go for support and comfort in dark and evil times?”190 When God’s greatest aim is to manifest his glory and worthiness, then “the purpose of life is not happiness, but holiness. Life is not a state of ease and enjoyment, but a state of trial, in which God will try humanity, proving them, that he might know what is in their hearts.”191 Because God is absolutely sovereign and just, he deserves the unwavering trust and hope of the elect. This submission to God’s holy justice and infallible, sovereign wisdom is the foundation for the theology of self-denial and suffering that pervaded the New Divinity. This New Divinity theology and the spirit of religious renewal converged at the great bastion of orthodoxy and missionary mobilization: Andover Theological Seminary.

Andover Theological Seminary

When Henry Ware, Sr. (1765–1845), a Unitarian minister, assumed the Hollis Professorship of Divinity at Harvard and replaced biblical Hebrew with French, orthodox observers saw this as apostasy. One result was the banding together of faithful New Divinity men to found Andover Theological Seminary in 1807, where they endeavored to stand against the invasion of liberal and Unitarian doctrine. The Andover faculty were to reaffirm a Calvinist creed every five years and confirm their commitment to not only stand against

Atheists and Infidels, but to Jews, Mahommetans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists, and to all other heresies and errors, ancient or modern, which may be opposed to the Gospel of Christ, or hazardous to the souls of men.192

The fires of evangelical Calvinism were still burning bright and hot at Andover when Adoniram Judson enrolled in 1808.

At Andover, the way of life among the faculty was not much different from in the country. They maintained modest lifestyles, hoeing gardens, milking cows, and cutting hay.193 There were only two professors on faculty when Judson enrolled. Eliphalet Pearson (1752–1826), Professor of Sacred Literature, taught for one year and then was replaced by the young Moses Stuart (1780–1852), “the prince of biblical learning in America.”194 Leonard Woods (1774–1854) served as Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, made possible by a donation of twenty thousand dollars from Samuel Abbot of Andover.195 Between 1809 and 1811, Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837) served on the faculty, but torn between his preaching duties at the prominent Park Street Church in Boston and his professorship, he chose to remain in Boston and leave his post at Andover.196 Andover provided

young people of each denomination with a sympathetic host environment for the nurture and maturation of proper religious sentiments. To that end, prospective Congregational clergymen were shaped by Andover’s controlled environment, with its regulated pattern of prayer, study, and useful work . . . In addition to the seminary’s well-known function as an orthodox arsenal for the war against the liberals, it provided the means for directing youthful evangelism.197

Andover became the Hopkinsian bulwark: “Professors were expected to train their guns of orthodoxy against error, whether within or outside the walls of embattled Zion.”198

The professors at Andover Theological Seminary engaged the students intellectually and spiritually. Leonard Woods recounted the illuminating spiritual ethos shared among the faculty and the students of Andover.199 Not more than a few weeks after the seminary opened, Woods called the faculty and students to a meeting for prayer and religious intercourse, which developed into a regular “Wednesday Evening Conference.”200 Every student was supposed to attend. Woods and Stuart would pray with them and give wise counsel in relation to Christian doctrine and practice.201 Woods stated, “While we attached high importance to literary acquisitions, we gave a still higher place to spiritual improvement. We strove to make the impression . . . that spiritual religion and growth in grace should be their paramount object.”202

During these conferences every Wednesday evening, only the students were invited. It was strictly a time for the faculty to mentor the theological students. The faculty addressed the seminarians on matters of “holy religion, both doctrinal, experimental and practical.”203 They spoke on different subjects for six to seven years, and purposefully did not repeat the same subject at least for three years. Woods’s general list of subjects discussed during the three-year rotation of weekly Conferences included

(1) Intellectual and moral improvement as objects of pursuit in the Seminary—moral improvement the first and highest. (2) Directions for intellectual improvement. (3) Importance of taking care of the health. (4) Right use of time. (5) Duty of repentance as obligatory on Christians. (6) Habitual devotion. (7) Dispensations of Providence, the means of moral discipline. (8) Love to the souls of men as a Christian duty—how to strengthen and manifest it. (9) Revivals of religion—several Conferences touching the nature of genuine revivals—the means of promoting them—cautions to be observed—the work of the Holy Spirit—antecedents and consequences of a revival. (10) Self-examination—treated in several Conferences under the following heads:—importance of the duty—hindrances to the right performance of it—how to conduct it—mistakes to be avoided. (11) Doubts of Christians respecting their own piety—how occasioned and how to be removed. (12) Christian hope, its nature, grounds and influence. (13) Social and secret prayer compared—peculiar advantages of each—both should be united. (14) Different virtues and graces connected—all alike in their nature, and promote each other. (15) Brotherly love—occasion for it among students—its happy effects. (16) Government of the appetites and passions—aids to the duty—need of Divine help. (17) Regard to reputation as a motive to action—when right and when wrong. (18) Conquest of easily-besetting sins. (19) Godly sorrow—its nature and use. (20) Duty of confessing sin, both to God and to man. (21) Danger of little sins, so-called. (22) Special dangers of theological students, as ambition, pride, levity, &c.—remedy for these evils. (23) Eminent holiness to be earnestly sought. (24) Declensions in religion—symptoms—causes—evils consequent. (25) Faith as a principle of the Christian life. (26) Humility. (27) Forgiveness of injuries. (28) Love of enemies. (29) Reading the Scriptures and other religious books. (30) Strict observance of the Sabbath. (31) Christian conversation and correspondence. (32) Self-denial. (33) Watchfulness. (34) Dependence upon God practically considered. (35) How to treat doubts and difficulties as to the truths of revelation. (36) Living near to God. (37) Good habits. (38) A good conscience. (39) Indwelling sin—its power, deceitfulness and cure. (40) Justification. (41) Importunity in prayer. (42) Grieving the Spirit. (43) Right example.204

Woods recorded that the students loved these Wednesday night Conferences, and that they were “indispensable to the highest moral improvement and usefulness of the students.”205

During every term, the faculty and students would engage in “the Seminary Fast.”206 They would search their hearts, confess sin, and cry out to God for deliverance from temptation and for growth in grace. They spent the morning in personal reflection and devotion, and then by ten o’clock there was a meeting among the students for prayer. At noon the professors would meet together themselves to confess sin, pray for one another, pray for the students, sing hymns, and seek the Lord for grace to persevere in the faith and the sacred work of the ministry. Woods reflected, “If we ever knew the blessedness of fraternal love and fellowship, and the higher blessedness of communion with our God and Saviour, it was at those favored seasons.” Then in the afternoons of the day of fasting, Woods said the professors would meet for an hour with the class and exhort them from Scripture to stay faithful to their religious and ministerial duties, “looking unto Jesus, and relying on His all-sufficient grace.”207

Woods also recorded the books of experimental and practical religion that the professors would often recommend for the students to read for their spiritual good: “Owen On Spiritual-Mindedness, and On the 130th Psalm, Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, Edwards On the Affections, Doddridge’s Rise and Progress, The Life of Brainerd, and the works of Howe and Leighton.” He said that if students did not read books such as these, they would risk losing “their present advancement in holiness, and their future usefulness in the ministry.”208

From Andover’s birth, missionary zeal burned in the hearts of the young evangelicals. With the convergence of the Hopkinsian calls to radical sacrifice for God’s glory, the collegiate revivals, and the renewed evangelical Calvinism, Andover Theological Seminary was a seedbed of missions mobilization.209 Brainerd-like, self-denying missionary spirituality permeated the culture of the institution. “To get through Andover without reading Brainerd was virtually unthinkable.”210 Attending Andover during Judson’s time were some young men who sensed a call to missions while studying at Williams College: Samuel Nott (1788–1869), Samuel J. Mills Jr. (1783–1818), Samuel Newell (1784–1821), and James Richards (1784–1822). On a Saturday afternoon in August 1806, they had committed themselves to consider missions under a haystack during a rainstorm, which has been famously called the Haystack Prayer Meeting.211 They formed the Society of the Brethren at Williams College, and the leaders of the Brethren went various places after graduation. Subsequently, the Society of the Brethren relocated to Andover Seminary and launched on September 14, 1810.212 Gordon Hall (1784–1826) and Luther Rice (1783–1836) also joined the society at Andover in 1810.213

The spirit of the members was deeply devotional. Every student who joined was required by the constitution to read and pray in order to determine his duty, whether he should spend his life among the heathen. Special devotions were observed on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings, and the second Tuesday in January was kept as a day of fasting and prayer for the missionary cause.214

Andover’s was the primary society that influenced other seminaries. Andover certainly sent out the most missionaries. Brumberg explains that Andover’s youth voluntarism converged with its “new humanitarian Calvinism” and launched a great wave of “youth-initiated evangelicalism.”215

Biographical Sketch

The following summary of Judson’s life and ministry will focus on those people and events that most influenced his spiritual formation. Some biographical facts will remain unmentioned, but in consideration of Judson’s spirituality, this sketch will highlight significant details that are helpful for understanding his overall historical and biographical contexts.

Ambition Building (1788–1804)

Adoniram Judson, Jr., the first child of Reverend Adoniram Judson Sr. and Abigail Brown Judson (1759–1842), was born in Malden, Massachusetts on August 9, 1788.216 Judson’s father, a Hopkinsian Congregational minister, whom Joseph Bellamy had mentored, assumed pulpits in Wenham, Braintree, and finally Plymouth. Having grown up under the New Divinity-influenced preaching of his father, Judson breathed the air of evangelical Edwardsean piety. His father raised him with “a heavy dose of orthodoxy and Christian nurture.”217 Described as “grave and quiet, stern in bearing and strict in family discipline,”218 Judson’s father was a God-enamored man. His God was both benevolent and fearsome. Disobedience to Judson Sr.’s God would have terrible consequences. As Courtney Anderson noted, “Much of the importance of Adoniram’s father resided in books, particularly one Book which he used in church, and into which he would look for hours in the parsonage. This was the Bible.”219

Able to read a chapter from the Bible by age three, Judson also demonstrated a keen facility for math and for languages.220 He was so gifted in Latin that he was nicknamed Virgil.221 His father fed his youthful ambition to strive for greatness, assuring him that he would be a great man, and Judson greatly desired to please his father and to be like him.222 At age four, Judson would often imitate his father and preach to his friends, and the hymn he liked singing the most at that age began with “Go preach my Gospel, saith the Lord.”223 Judson owed much to his father, “his stately courtesy, his dignity of literary style, perhaps his theology, certainly his burning ambition.”224

At age fourteen (1802), not long after his family moved to Plymouth, Judson became critically ill. After being assured that he would live, he still had more than one year of convalescence to endure. “Bookish and intellectualized,”225 he spent much of his recovery “feeding ambition with visions of greatness and glory, such as no mortal had yet won.”226 Though Judson knew that fame, if it were worth anything, must be perpetual, yet he knew there was a contradiction with his ambition for prestige in this life and his desire to enjoy fame in the next. However, he was convinced that being a humble Christian would interfere with his ambitions for greatness. “He was naturally the subject of manifest pride and ambition.”227 He had yet to see that the path to glory was by way of the cross.

From Deism to Hopkinsianism (1804–1810)

Judson entered Rhode Island College at Providence, later Brown University, at sixteen years of age (1804). His entrance examination evidenced that he excelled in Latin, Greek, geography, mathematics, and astronomy. Because of his advanced status, he was able to bypass his first year and enroll as a sophomore. Impressed with his industriousness and sharp intellect, the university president, Asa Messer (1769–1836), wrote a letter to Judson’s father, complimenting him for raising a strong-minded son.228 However, Judson’s heart did not exercise the affections for God as his New Divinity father had raised him. While at Brown, in the “height of the wild-fire delusion of infidelity,”229 Judson, a brilliant mind looking for the next riddle to solve, built an intellectually-stimulating friendship with a skeptic, Jacob Eames (d. 1808). When Judson graduated in 1807, he consequently sought to live as a skeptical Deist.230 Judson knew that this dabbling with Deism would certainly not please his pious father, though he retained a consuming desire to please him. As soon as he received word of earning the honor of valedictorian, he wrote eagerly to his father: “Dear Father, I have got it. Your affectionate son, A. J.”231

Straight out of college, Judson tried his hand at opening a school: Plymouth Independent Academy. By the summer of 1808, Judson had run the school for approximately a year.232 From an outward perspective, he seemed successful and satisfied; but inwardly, his wanderlust raged. Then, on his twentieth birthday, he closed the school. With a horse from his father, Judson set out to explore the west. He rode to Sheffield, Massachusetts where his uncle Ephraim pastored. Leaving his horse there, he traveled to New York. Entertaining dreams of writing for the theater in New York, Judson joined some actors who “lived a sort of vagabond life, slept where they could, and not infrequently skipped without paying their bill.”233

After having his fill of recklessness and revelry, Judson returned to fetch his horse in Sheffield, but his uncle was not home. Yet, staying in his house was a pious young minister whose “conversation was characterized by godly sincerity, a solemn but gentle earnestness, which addressed itself to the heart, and Judson went away deeply impressed.”234

The next day, Judson’s prodigal path came to a full stop when, while staying at a country inn, he endured the wailing of a dying man through the night, just to find out the next morning that the man who died was his infidel-companion from Brown, Jacob Eames. Judson, chilled by the dreadfulness of the death of his Deist friend, experienced a crisis of faith. Not long afterwards, being influenced by reading The Fourfold State235 by Thomas Boston (1676–1732) and being cajoled by a conversation with Moses Stuart and Edward Dorr Griffin, Judson enrolled in the newly founded Andover Theological Seminary.

He did not initially feel assurance of his conversion. Wayland recalled a conversation he had with Judson about his gradual conversion. He said that Judson did not have an “overpowering, Bunyan-like” experience, but that he was “prayerful, reflective, and studious of proofs; and gradually faith, trust in God, and finally a hope through the merits of Christ, took possession of his soul.”236 Nevertheless, approximately six weeks after enrolling at Andover, Judson “was enabled to surrender his whole soul to Christ as his atoning Savior.”237 In December 1808, Judson “made a solemn dedication of himself to God,”238 and in May of 1809, he joined his father’s church in Plymouth, the Third Congregational Church. During this time, Judson’s piety began to manifest as he sought to make future plans no longer for his own fame, but for “being as best to please God.”239 His correspondence during this period revealed “an earnest striving after holiness, and an enthusiastic consecration of every endowment to the service of Christ.”240

In September 1809, exactly one year after his being jolted out of infidelity by the death of Jacob Eames, Judson read Claudius Buchanan’s sermon, “The Star in the East.”241 He came to realize that all his worldly determination for greatness could be satisfied in seeking to please Christ alone. “Everything in his life had prepared him for the idea. A career as the first American foreign missionary curiously combined his many conflicting ambitions. Fame, eminence, humility, self-sacrifice, obscurity, adventure, uniqueness, the service of God—it had all of these.”242 Consequently, he read everything he could about the East and missions. Judson even read the British army officer, Michael Symes’s (1761–1809) Embassy to Ava,243 not knowing he would serve in Burma. Symes painted Burma as a land where

its people were civilized. They could read and write, and had an extensive literature . . . What a prospect for a missionary! thought Adoniram as he turned the pages of Symes’s book. Surely a people like this needed nothing but the true Word of God. Once it was brought to them, literate and civilized as they were, they would certainly seize on it.244

Judson could not attend classes because he was so preoccupied with his missionary burden. Even after the initial excitement waned, he nevertheless carried a deep sense of duty to be a foreign missionary.

In February of 1810, Judson was walking in the woods behind Andover, meditating and praying about the subject. There, impressed upon his mind with force and clarity, the command of Christ to “preach the gospel”245 compelled him to devote his life as Christ’s missionary; he “resolved to obey the command at all events.”246 This resolute conviction of duty and desire to please Christ held Judson firm, not only through difficulty, but also through other good competing prospects.

One such event presented itself in 1810 when the respected Edward Dorr Griffin of Andover visited Judson at his family’s home. Confident of Judson’s command of the Scriptures and preaching gift, Griffin asked Judson to be his assistant pastor at the prestigious Park Street Church in Boston. This was the ambitious opportunity Judson’s father had been priming him for all his life. Yet, in the presence of his overjoyed family, Judson broke their hearts by declining the flattering prospect and laying bare his soul for the cause of missions. As his biographer, Wayland, put it: “From the time of his self-consecration to the missionary service, he became . . . a man of one idea.”247

A Missions Movement (1810–1812)

Judson and some seminary companions had started a study group on missions, called the Society of Inquiry Respecting Missions, of which he became “the enthusiastic, intrepid leader.”248 On June 28, 1810, Judson and his companions went to Bradford to present their case for foreign missions to the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts. Judson offered himself for missionary service to the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, along with Samuel Newell, Samuel Nott, and Gordon Hall.249 Judson forcefully made a case for their missionary desire, though his “excess of self-reliance”250 was not a light irritation to some. The next day Judson received a reprimand for his “impetuousness and self-will”251 for which he expressed regret and repentance. Yet, the sting of the rebuke did not last long; the Board gave its approval and appointed them as missionaries. Consequently, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was born,252 and on September 19, 1811, the ABCFM appointed Judson as a missionary.253

A Consecrated Woman (1810–1812)

Before the afternoon meetings of the aforementioned General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, Judson and his colleagues ate lunch at the home of Deacon John Hasseltine (1756–1837) of Bradford. There at Deacon Hasseltine’s home, Judson met Ann Hasseltine for the first time.254 He cultivated an acquaintance with her through letters and visits.255 Then exactly one month later, he declared his intentions to be her suitor.256 With Hopkinsian pathos, Judson wrote a letter to Ann’s father, seeking consent to take his daughter into the face of certain suffering and hardship “for the sake of him who left his heavenly home, and died for her; . . . for the sake of perishing souls; for the sake of Zion, and for the glory of God.”257 Judson and Ann exchanged letters, in which they declared their ardent devotion to Christ and his service. Ann described Judson as a man with a single-minded “love to Jesus, and a desire to manifest it in all its varied forms.”258 As he expressed his spirituality to Ann, the controlling concern of his life was, “Is it pleasing to God?”259

On February 6, 1812, the day after his marriage to Ann,260 Judson received ordination along with Nott, Newell, Rice, and Hall at America’s oldest Protestant church, the Tabernacle in Salem.261 They accepted the commission as America’s first foreign missionaries.

Leaving and Cleaving to the Call (1812–1814)

Approximately two weeks after their marriage, the Judsons boarded a ship called the Caravan and set sail.262 The ship arrived in Calcutta, India in June 1812.263 During their voyage, in preparation to associate with the Baptist missionaries in India, Judson studied the credobaptist position, and through much biblical exegesis and prayer, Judson was “was compelled, from a conviction of the truth” of the veracity of credobaptism, “though he paid dear for it.”264 Ann, with equal conviction, agreed. This change of sentiments caused the Judsons to forsake their Congregational association, and to receive believer’s baptism in India (September 6, 1812).265 In India, Judson preached a renowned sermon on Christian baptism, which William Carey said was the best he had ever heard.266 Luther Rice also received believer’s baptism in November of 1812, and the missionaries decided Rice should return to America to elicit financial support from the American Baptists. After returning to America the following year, Rice helped mobilize and unify the early organizational efforts of the American Baptists for missions.267 In May of 1814, the first national organization of Baptists in America, the Triennial Convention, began in Philadelphia, which witnessed local and regional Baptist societies unite behind the cause of advancing the work of missions.268

Judson and Ann left India by decree of the British East India Company for fear that foreign missionary work would interfere with trading, and because of the British’s suspicion of Americans due to the raging Anglo-American War of 1812.269 In July of 1813, they arrived in Rangoon, the port of the despotic country of Burma.270 William Carey’s son, Felix Carey (b. 1794),271 had been already serving in Burma for four years, and he aided the Judsons in their initial transition. There was no team or ministry for the Judsons to join.

Translating and Preaching (1814–1821)

While in Burma, Judson devoted himself to the study of Burmese language and culture. His ambition surged because the Scriptures remained untranslated into Burmese. Judson wanted to be the first missionary to pioneer the translation of the first Bible for Burma.272 He would earn the reputation “as the man who gave the Bible to the Burmese.”273 He learned Pali, the scriptural language of Burmese Buddhism, and in July 1816, he finished the Grammatical Notices of the Burmese Language.274 A week later, Judson wrote the first introduction of Christianity into the Burmese language, which revealed his optimistic postmillennialism: A View of the Christian Religion, in Three Parts, Historic, Didactic, and Preceptive.275 Of all the tracts he disseminated, he called it “the staple commodity.”276 The following year, in May of 1817, he completed the translation of the Gospel of Matthew. Two days later, he began compiling a Burmese dictionary, which took him most of his life to finish.277

In April 1819, Judson started hosting public worship gatherings in Burmese. Judson constructed his own zayat, which was a place for public meetings, in order preach the gospel to passersby and disseminate tracts.278 Judson built the zayat on a main thoroughfare to the Buddhist holy site, the Shway Dagon Pagoda. Judson said its purpose was “to be a Christian meeting house, the first erected in this land of atheists, for the worship of God. . . to adore the majesty of heaven, and to sing with hearts of devotion the praises of the incarnate Saviour.”279

In June of 1819, Judson baptized the first Burmese convert, Moung Nau (b. 1784),280 which Judson hoped was “the beginning of a series of baptisms in the Burman empire . . . in uninterrupted succession to the end of time.”281 Moreover, a week later, Moung Nau became the first Burmese to commune at the Lord’s Table, which Judson had long waited to administer.282 Because of the pressure of the government, Judson traveled for over a month to Ava to petition to king for religious freedom. In January of 1820, the king denied liberty to Judson and his fellow missionaries to propagate Christianity unfettered in his kingdom. Nevertheless, within six months, Judson had baptized ten converts. This was a great season of excitement, even though the journey thus far had met many disappointments and challenges.

Darkening Clouds of Providence (1821–1830)

Eight years after landing in Rangoon, Ann became very ill, and in August 1821, she embarked for the United States and did not return to Rangoon till December 1823.283 During her absence, Judson finished translating the Burmese New Testament in July 1823 (though it underwent two subsequent revisions in 1829 and 1837), and he compiled a tract called The Epitome of the Old Testament.284 Judson upheld evangelism, translation, tract distribution, and the equipping of indigenous church leaders as superior for the spread of the gospel over against establishing schools, hospitals, and civilizing the locals with Western culture.

Eight days after Ann arrived back in Rangoon from her voyage to America, they moved to Ava, the imperial capital, and arrived in January 1824. Five months later, Judson was arrested on suspicion of being a British spy during the first Anglo-Burmese War.285 During his imprisonment in Ava, Ann gave birth to Maria Elizabeth Butterworth Judson in January of 1825. Then in May 1825, Judson relocated from the king’s prison in Ava to the vicious prison in Oung-pen-la, where he suffered unremitting torture.286 During more than twenty months of imprisonment and torture, his wife, though sickly herself, cared for him and pleaded with the Burmese officials for his release. Concurrently, Ann was caring for her newborn daughter, Maria. The prison released Judson in December 1825, and they moved to Amherst, a new British settlement, seven months later. At thirty-seven years old, Ann died in October of 1826, while Judson was working for the British embassy as an interpreter in Ava. Heartbroken, he mourned, “notwithstanding the consolations of the gospel, grief claims its right, and tears their course.”287 He returned in January of 1827 to Amherst. With great sorrow, Judson also suffered the loss of two-year-old Maria in April of 1827.288 To add to his despair, he received word three months later that his father had died in November of 1826.

Judson slipped into deep darkness in the aftermath of such suffering. In May 1828, he renounced the title of D.D., which Brown University had awarded him in 1823, and he gave away his property to the American Baptist Board. In October 1828, he isolated himself to a hermitage where he applied himself to the ascetical spiritualities of Madame Guyon (1648–1717),289 Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471),290 and François Fénelon (1651–1715),291 which was odd because these writers were Roman Catholic mystics and Judson’s spiritual roots were in the New Divinity.292 During this time, in February 1829, Judson wrote The Threefold Cord to outline his views of discipleship, which resemble a combination of austere disinterested benevolence and ascetical mysticism.293 In March of 1829, he also wrote The Golden Balance to compare and contrast the Christian system over against the Buddhist system.294 In November 1829, he finished the Septenary, or Seven Manuals to train the Burmese pastors in ministering to the churches; the manuals consisted of his View of the Christian Religion, Ann’s catechism, and guides for conducting public worship, funerals, weddings, and baptisms.295 Around this time, he wrote the well-known hymn, “Come, Holy Spirit, Dove Divine.”296

Toward the end of that dark period, in December 1829, Judson heard of the death of his brother, Elnathan, in Washington D. C. seven months prior.297 Before leaving for Burma, Judson had pleaded with Elnathan and prayed for his conversion to Christ, but Elnathan had refused. Yet when Judson heard of Elnathan’s death, he also discovered that Elnathan had trusted in Christ about ten minutes before dying.298 This good news caused his heart to rejoice, and it marked the termination of the darkness that had weighed him down for so long.299

Fruit-Bearing in All Seasons (1830–1850)

This was a season of abundance and anticipation; the mission in Burma baptized many new believers, received many new missionaries, and printed many new tracts.300 In 1830 and 1831, Judson undertook many evangelistic tours into Rangoon, Prome, and among the Karen people in the jungles. In January of 1834, he completed the first Burmese translation of the Old Testament.

In April 1834, Judson married Sarah Boardman, widow of George Boardman, missionaries to the Karen people.301 The year before Adoniram and Sarah’s marriage, the mission celebrated the baptism of the one hundredth Karen convert north of Maulmain. In December , 1834, Jonathan and Deborah Wade (1801–1868), Sewall M. Osgood (1807–1875), a printer, and his wife, Elhira B. Osgood (d. 1837), and other missionaries arrived in Maulmain.302 On the same ship, the Cashmere, Sarah’s son, George Dana Boardman (1828–1903) returned to America for health concerns. Then in November 1835, Judson baptized the one hundredth member of the Burmese church in Maulmain. Later in February 1836, Howard Malcom (1799–1873) from the American Baptist Board arrived, along with several new American missionaries.303

During this time, Judson preached his only sermon in English in Burma. It was the ordination sermon for S. M. Osgood, in May 1836.304 Judson’s central Christ-enamored theme emerged in this sermon. He observed that Christ was controlled “by a supreme regard to his Father’s will, . . . love to the Father, and desire to please him. The true pastor, and, indeed, every true Christian, must be influenced by the same principle.”305 The following year, 1837, Judson finished a tract called A Digest of Scripture: Consisting of Extracts from the Old and New Testaments; On the Plan of “Brown’s Selection of Scripture Passages,”306 which outlined the basic systems of Christian doctrine, similar to a confession of faith. He also revised the New Testament that year, and the whole Bible in 1840.307

During this abovementioned period of fruitfulness, Sarah bore Judson eight children, three of whom died young: Abby Ann Judson (1835–1902), Adoniram Brown Judson (1837–1916), Elnathan Judson (1838–1896), Henry Judson (1839–1841), Luther Judson (stillborn on March 8, 1841), Henry Hall Judson (1842–1918), Charles Judson (1843–1845), and Edward Judson.308 Because of dysentery, Sarah was obliged to take a voyage back to the United States. Judson, Sarah, and their three elder children left in April of 1845. A week later, Sarah died and was buried at the port of St. Helena. Still grieving Sarah’s death, Judson and his children arrived in Boston in October of 1845 and received a hero’s homecoming. Judson traveled to many churches and universities where he spoke of his desire to please the Savior and to obey his commission.309 Yet, because of his failing voice due to sickness, others had to read aloud many of his sermons in his presence. Many of his messages implored for ardent love to Christ. To truly love Jesus was to fully obey his final commission, he emphasized, and the missionary call was to be a lifelong venture.

Judson met Emily Chubbuck, a novelist, in December 1845,310 and he asked her to write a biography of Sarah Judson, a task that led to their being married in June 1846. They straightaway set sail for Burma five weeks later and arrived in November 1846.311 The following June 1847, Emily had finished the biography of Sarah. Emily bore him two children, one of whom died at birth.312 In January 1849, Judson finished the dictionary.313 Due to illness, he went on a sea voyage to recover his health, but died at sea on April 12, 1850. God had granted his fervent prayers, as his third wife, Emily, put it, “for a long life of labor and self-denial.”314

67. See Marshall, The Oxford History of the British Empire, 1. This era beheld the zenith of the Age of Reason, under the influence of thinkers, activists, and philosophers such as Thomas Paine (1737–1809), John Locke (1632–1704), David Hume (1711–1776), Rousseau (1712–1778), Voltaire (1694–1778), Isaac Newton (1643–1727), Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). This surge of enlightened humanism and individualism played a major role in the American Revolution (1765–1783), the American Declaration of Independence (1776), and the United States Bill of Rights (1791). For two books about this era and its influences, see Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason; and Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution.

68. See Colley, Britons, 10–58, 387–89.

69. Haykin, “Just before Judson,” 9–10.

70. Stanley, “Christianity and Civilization,” 169–97; see also Stanley, The Bible and the Flag.

71. Fuller, “An Apology for the Late Christian Missions to India,” 771–72.

72. Ibid., 769. Though Fuller said the above, he also demonstrated greater concern for the glory of God over the British Empire: “[The] eternal hereafter . . . must be of infinitely greater moment, both to governors and governed, than all the affairs of the greatest empire on earth.” Ibid.

73. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 20. Gillett also supplements assurance, prayer, and holiness to Bebbington’s fourfold filter; see Gillett, Trust and Obey, 34–39. Sheldrake also contends that evangelical spirituality has been historically comprised of communion with God, practical Christianity, and theology; see Sheldrake, Spirituality and History, 52, quoted also in Randall, What a Friend, 20. McGrath proposes, more broadly, four features of Christian spirituality: “[First,] knowing God and not just knowing about God; [second,] experiencing God to the full; [third,] a transformation of existence based on the Christian faith; and [fourth,] attaining Christian authenticity in life and thought.” McGrath, Christian Spirituality, 4. McGrath also aptly defines Christian spirituality as concerned with the “quest for a fulfilled and authentic Christian existence, involving the bringing together of the fundamental ideas of Christianity and the whole experience of living on the basis of and within the scope of the Christian faith.” McGrath, Christian Spirituality, 2.

74. Larsen, “The Reception Given,” 25.

75. Bebbington’s quadrilateral “is now receiving the ultimate compliment of being cited without acknowledgement, as if it is not one scholar’s opinion but simply the truth we all know.” Ibid., 29. More narrowly, Brackney traces evangelical piety and thought within the Baptist tradition, of which Judson would become both a beneficiary and a benefactor. Brackney proposes the genes of Baptist thought in order of predominance: the authority of Christ, the priority of Scripture, Christian experience, a modified Reformed theological tradition, church membership, evangelical nature, and religious liberty. See Brackney, A Genetic History of Baptist Thought, 528–36.

76. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 43, quoted in Haykin, “Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment,” 50. For a thorough argument that the Puritans truly upheld a strong missionary vision, see Rooy, The Theology of Missions.

77. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 45, quoted in Haykin, “Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment,” 51.

78. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 47–50, quoted in Haykin, “Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment,” 51. In an enlightening essay, so to speak, in response to Bebbington’s notion of evangelicalism being closely linked to the Enlightenment, Stanley seeks to clarify and modify the direct relationship between Enlightenment ideology and evangelicalism. See Stanley, “Christian Missions and the Enlightenment,” 8–16.

79. Haykin, “Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment,” 56.

80. See ibid., 55–60.

81. Kapic and Gleason, “Who Were the Puritans?,” 24.

82. Ibid., 24–30.

83. Ibid.,” 24.

84. Lovelace, “Afterword,” 301.

85. Kapic and Gleason, “Who Were the Puritans?,” 24.

86. Ibid.

87. Packer describes Puritan Spirituality as “Bible-based, Christ-centered, conversionistic, and church-oriented.” Packer, “Puritan Spirituality,” 702.

88. Kapic and Gleason identify John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress as an illustration of the Puritan pilgrimage unto personal holiness. See Kapic and Gleason, The Devoted Life, 25.

89. Ibid.

90. In his classic work on meditation, Edmund Calamy (1600–1666) gloried in the fruit of biblical meditation: “Meditation, while it is in the understanding chews upon the things of God, and of Christ, and of Heaven, but when the understanding hath chewed these things, it must not devour all these things it self [sic], but it must convey the meat it hath chewed (as meant the meat is conveyed from the stomack into the liver, and then into the heart, and then into all the other parts of the body) into the heart, and into the will, and into the affections, and into the conversation.” Calamy, The Art of Divine Meditation, 26.

91. Spurgeon, Autobiography, 159.

92. Beeke observes, “The Puritans never tired of saying that biblical meditation involves thinking upon the Triune God and His Word. By anchoring meditation in the living Word, Jesus Christ, and God’s written Word, the Bible, the Puritans distanced themselves from every kind of counterfeit spirituality or mysticism that stresses . . . flights of the imagination at the expense of biblical content.” Beeke, “Puritan Meditation,” 75–76.

93. Consider the evangelical impulse of Augustine’s conversion: “During all those years [of rebellion], where was my free will? What was the hidden, secret place from which it was summoned in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to your easy yoke? . . . How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! . . . You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light, yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves . . . O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.” Augustine, Confessions 9.1 (trans. Coffin, 181).

94. Packer, “Puritan Spirituality,” 702.

95. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 36–37, quoted in Kapic and Gleason, “Who Were the Puritans?,” 30.

96. Lovelace, “Afterword,” 300.

97. Ibid., 301.

98. Gordon, Evangelical Spirituality, 329.

99. Ibid., viii.

100. Ibid., 28.

101. Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life, 18.

102. Jonathan Edwards himself said it best: “God himself is the great good which [the redeemed] are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling-place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honour and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘river of the water of life’ that runs, and ‘the tree of life that grows, in the midst of the paradise of God.’ The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will for ever [sic] entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast.” Edwards, “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” 5.

103. Gordon, Evangelical Spirituality, 321.

104. The ministry of Robert Murray McCheyne helpfully illustrates how Puritan spirituality and eighteenth-century evangelical spirituality shared continuity: “McCheyne brought into the pulpit all the reverence for Scripture of the Reformation period; all the honour for the headship of Christ of the Covenanter struggle; all the freeness of the gospel offer of the Marrow theology; all the bright imagery of Samuel Rutherford; all the delight of the Erskines in the fulness of Christ.” Blaikie, Preachers of Scotland, 294, quoted in Gordon, Evangelical Spirituality, 145. Also, Gordon says, “McCheyne measures his spiritual vitality by the enjoyment and help he gained from regular reading of Scripture . . . It is the assimilation of the truth of God that enables the believer . . . to know the love of God.” Gordon, Evangelical Spirituality, 140.

105. Gordon, Evangelical Spirituality, 4.

106. Stott, Christ the Controversialist, 103.

107. Haykin, “Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment,” 60.

108. Adam proposes harmony within the tension of evangelical and Reformed (or Puritan) spirituality: “Evangelical spirituality tends towards an intense personal relationship with God, is naturally egalitarian, and is suspicious of formality. Reformed spirituality is more concerned with our state before God than our relationship with him, depends more on the authorized minister, and tends to be more formal in style. Spirituality that is both Evangelical and Reformed can avoid the weakness and gain the strengths of both . . . Biblical spirituality can be genuinely Evangelical and Reformed in its ethos.” Adam, Hearing God’s Words, 37–38.

109. Torbet, Venture of Faith, 4.

110. Smith, The Life of William Carey, 315. However, considering the hagiographical accounts of Carey’s missionary career, Neill said, “This was not the beginning of modern missions, not even the beginning of Protestant missions . . . [It meant that] the immense forces of Anglo-Saxon Christianity would now be released for missionary service; this was significance enough.” Neill, A History of Christianity in India, 503–4. Torbet also explained that, “for more than two centuries prior to Carey’s time, Protestants had conducted missions among non-Christians. Chief among these Protestants were the Moravian Brethren, or Unitas Fratrum, who traced their spiritual descent from John Huss and possibly from Peter Waldo.” Torbet, Venture of Faith, 3.

111. For an introductory synopsis of the birth and growth of the Baptist Missionary Society, see Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1–35. For a very significant treatment of the historical, theological, and evangelical context in which the Judsons volunteered for missions, see Leonard, “‘Wild and Romantic in the Extreme,’” 74–95.

112. See Fuller, “Strictures on Sandemanianism,” 561–646.

113. Fuller, “The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation,” 328–416. Fuller’s theology was robustly atonement-centered. In this monumental work, Fuller surveyed the Scriptures and argued from many passages that the prophets, psalmist, apostles, and Jesus himself frequently called unbelievers to repentance and faith. Fuller fought tenaciously against hyper-Calvinist beliefs that said the elect will be saved and therefore evangelism is unnecessary and even cruel for those non-elect, and he battled the hyper-Calvinist notion that someone needed to discern a warrant of faith that they are truly elect before they can believe and be born again. Fuller argued from Scripture that there are numerous examples of the indiscriminate command to believe and repent, and out of such a universal gospel call, the elect are awakened to faith in Christ by the Spirit. Fuller’s thesis, simply put, was that the duty of the minister is to preach the gospel indiscriminately because the duty of all is to believe and repent.

114. This evangelical Calvinism became termed “Fullerism,” which seemed to combine the doctrines of grace and evangelical conversionism and activism. Morden further describes Fullerism as the Particular Baptists’ premier manifestation of “Edwardsean Evangelical Calvinism.” Morden, Offering Christ to the World, 5. Fuller well-contextualized this Edwardsean brand of Evangelical Calvinism into his Particular Baptist milieu. Chris Chun explains, “Fuller was not simply replicating Edwards . . . Fuller’s main contribution was to expand, implicate and apply Edwardsean ideas in his own historical setting. Fuller fully absorbed Edwardsean concepts and made them his own, later applying them in his polemical debates. In the course of these he often cast new light on the ideas of Edwards by implicating the corresponding positive as well as the negative.” Chun, “‘Sense of the Heart,’” 127.

115. Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 5–6

116. Brewster quotes E. F. Clipsham from “Andrew Fuller and Fullerism,” 269. “At the very time when Fuller was working out and propagating his doctrine, others including a group of young ministers of outstanding ability and growing influence were thinking along lines similar to his own . . . In other words, Fuller provided a theology such as thinking men were seeking.” Brewster, Andrew Fuller, 98. Quoting the identical citation from E. F. Clipsham, Mauldin draws a similar conclusion that “the time was right for the success of Fullerism.” Mauldin, Fullerism as Opposed to Calvinism, 65.

117. Brewster, Andrew Fuller, 106.

118. “Fuller’s apologetic skills were also much needed throughout his years of service to the BMS. His ability to engage important officials in word and print regarding the mission’s validity proved invaluable. In this way, Fuller was a great defender for the cause of missions and, in particular, the BMS throughout his lifetime.” Mauldin, Fullerism as Opposed to Calvinism, 52–53.

119. Carey, An Enquiry.

120. Mulholland, “From Luther to Carey,” 88.

121. For an in-depth article on the influence of the Moravians, Puritans, and Pietists, see Mulholland, “Moravians, Puritans,” 221–32.

122. Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 224.

123. See Eitel, “The Enduring Legacy,” 129–48. Similarly, in articles of agreement adopted by Judson and two other missionary companions, Judson briefly described the means of evangelization by which he was convicted: “We agree in the opinion that our sole object on earth is to introduce the religion of Jesus Christ into the empire of Burmah; and that the means by which we hope to effect this are, translating, printing, and distributing the Holy Scriptures, preaching the gospel, circulating religious tracts, and promoting the instruction of native children.” Wayland, Memoir, 1:184; Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 121.

124. One biographer points out that one main area of difference between Carey and Judson was that Carey emphasized establishing schools in order to educate young people with a broad education, whereas Judson was more single-minded in his approach to evangelism, translation, discipleship, church-planting, and instructing young people more narrowly with the Bible. For a brief and interesting discussion about the differences between the methods of Carey and Judson, see Hulse, Adoniram Judson, 47. For another similar summary of Judson’s missionary methods, see Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 249; see also Conant, The Earnest Man, 290–302.

125. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 56.

126. Adoniram Judson, journal, August 17, 1831 to October 23, 1831, Box No. AJ 4, Folder 5 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, ABHS; see also Adoniram Judson, “Mr. Judson’s Journal, Maulmein, Aug. 14th, 1831 [to Dec. 29th, 1831],” 322; and see Wayland, Memoir, 2:11.

127. Adoniram Judson, journal, August 17, 1831 to October 23, 1831, Box No. AJ 4, Folder 5 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, ABHS; see also Adoniram Judson, “Mr. Judson’s Journal, Maulmein, Aug. 14th, 1831 [to Dec. 29th, 1831],” 322–25; and see Wayland, Memoir, 2:12.

128. For Carey’s reference to Edwards on prayer, see Carey, An Enquiry, 11.

129. For Carey’s numerous references to both Brainerd and Eliot, see Carey, An Enquiry, 36, 69, 70, 71, 87. Regarding the influence of Eliot and Brainerd on Protestant missions, see Carpenter, “New England Puritans,” 519–32.

130. Mulholland, “Moravians, Puritans,” 227–28.

131. Ibid., 231. Mulholland also says, “What influenced Carey most was Brainerd’s radical single-mindedness, his passion for souls, his desire to do God’s will regardless of the cost. And the extent that Brainerd’s thoughts became Carey’s thoughts can be seen in many of Carey’s writings.” Ibid.

132. Hulse, Adoniram Judson, 12. See also Brumberg, Mission for Life, 25; and see Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 198–99.

133. See Carey, An Enquiry, 11, 71. See also Hulse, Adoniram Judson, 12. Three general characteristics were common to all of Pietism’s manifestations: first, a mystical element that emphasized emotional experience and heartfelt expression existed especially in the context of personal Bible study; second, the practice of holy living and active compassion developed out of this emphasis on experience; third, because of this orientation towards active compassion, Pietists concerned themselves with the unevangelized heathen. See Spener, Pia Desideria. See also Schattschneider, “William Carey, Modern Missions,” 8–10; and see Schattschneider, “Pioneers in Mission,” 63–67.

134. Mullholland aptly explains, “Moravian history predates the Reformation. Originally known as the Unitas Fratrum, the Unity of the Brethren, these Czech Christians were the followers of the martyred John Hus, a Reformer before the Reformation . . . After Hus’s death (July 6, 1415), his followers, who were sometimes called Hussites, and sometimes Bohemian Brethren, experienced a resurgence . . . Then in the wake of the religious wars of the 1600s, Bohemia came under a Roman Catholic king, who unleashed a fiery persecution against these Moravians . . . Years later, in 1722, a small band of these refugees was searching for some place where they could be secure. When they crossed into Germany, they heard about a place called Herrnhut, which was a small parcel of land on the estate of Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.” Mulholland, “Moravians, Puritans,” 222–23.

135. After studying at Halle, Zinzendorf then studied at the University of Wittenberg, the great Lutheran bastion of scholasticism, which stood against error and mixture. Where Wittenberg was the center of rigid scholarship, Halle was the center of pietistic activism. For further analysis of Zinzendorf’s piety and influence, see Burns, “Moravian Missionary Piety and the Influence of Count Zinzendorf.”

136. In his Pia Desideria, Spener called for six things: (1) pastors should preach from the whole Bible and the church should be broken up into small groups to study the Bible for spiritual formation, not theological debate; (2) the priesthood of all believers needs to be revived, and lay people should be encouraged to be active in the church, as opposed to depending only on the highly educated clergy; (3) more focus on heart issues such as the spiritual life and love for humankind is needed over against theological dogma; (4) the fruit of a true Christian is evidenced by good deeds, witness, and moral living, over against theological precision; (5) Christian leaders should be trained through Bible studies and prayer groups where one’s devotional life could be cultivated; (6) sermons are not occasions for showing off one’s education but for rousing the saints to love and good deeds. Mulholland, “From Luther to Carey,” 90–92. See also Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 194.

137. See Aberly, “Bartholomew Ziegenbalg,” 39–65.

138. Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 195–96. Zinzendorf adapted and promoted Ziegenbalg’s five principles for the Moravian missionaries: “(1) The plain, simple, believing, and consolatory preaching of the gospel; (2) To neglect no opportunity of bearing testimony in other places concerning Jesus as the only way to life; (3) An object of primary concern to promote the printing of various useful and edifying works; (4) They considered how they might be useful to . . . those of other persuasions. (5) They deliberated also upon providing schools for the education of children in a christian-like [sic] manner.” Spangenberg, The Life of Count Zinzendorf, 445.

139. Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 477.

140. Barnes, Pioneers of Light, 9.

141. Adoniram Judson, Sr., A Sermon Preached in the New Meeting House, 5.

142. Ibid., 8.

143. Ibid., 12.

144. Ibid., 13.

145. Ibid., 11.

146. Ibid., 9–11.

147. Ibid., 21.

148. Ibid., 14.

149. Brumberg, Mission for Life, 24. Mather wrote about John Eliot’s labors: “Behold, ye Americans, the greatest honor that ever you were partakers of. The Bible was printed here at our Cambridge, and is the only Bible that ever was printed in all America, from the very foundation of the world.” Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 564, quoted in Brumberg, Mission for Life, 24.

150. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 230; Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 5, 13. For helpful resources on the New Divinity theology and Edwardsean influence of Bellamy and Hopkins, see Foster, A Genetic History; Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders; Conforti, Jonathan Edwards; Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement; Rowe, History of Andover; Woods, Memoirs of American Missionaries; Whittemore, The Transformation of the New England Theology.

151. These New Measures were innovative means of motivation. They “included allowing women to testify (though not to preach) in church, nightly meetings for praise and preaching, and the ‘anxious bench,’ a place set aside near the front of the meeting house where sinners could give their lives to Christ.” Butler et al., Religion in American Life, 178.

152. Hankins, The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists, 137.

153. Sweeney and Guelzo, The New England Theology, 228.

154. Caldwell, “New England’s New Divinity,” 31. Historically, the five points of Calvinism have been a system summarized in the acronym, TULIP: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. To see how the classic five points of Calvinism compares to the tenets of New Divinity theology, see an extract of Hannah Adams’s (1755–1831) “The View of Religions,” in Woods, History of the Andover, 32–34. At the end of her ten-point summary of Hopkinsianism, Adams states, “The Hopkinsians warmly advanced the doctrine of Divine decrees, the doctrine of particular election, the doctrine of total depravity, the doctrine of the special influences of the Spirit of God in regeneration, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the final perseverance of the saints, and the consistency between entire freedom and absolute dependence; and therefore claim it as their just due—to be called Hopkinsian Calvinists.” Adams, “A View of Religions,” 33–34. For a succinct synthesis of how the doctrines of grace permeated Judson’s missionary theology, see Nettles, By His Grace and for His Glory, 148–54.

155. Edwards, “Freedom of the Will,” 3–89.

156. For Edwards’s distinction between natural and moral ability, see ibid., 8–11.

157. Ibid., 5.

158. Caldwell states, “The problem New Divinity ministers saw with this approach is that it sometimes became an excuse for spiritual lethargy (i.e., ‘I’m not ready; God has not begun His work in me yet’). They reacted strongly against such an attitude. ‘You indeed are ready; you can if you will,’ they said. ‘You possess the natural capacity to comply with the claims of the gospel. The only thing keeping you from Christ is your stubborn, sinful will! Repent immediately!’” Caldwell, “New England’s New Divinity,” 46; emphasis in original.

159. Conforti helpfully explains that “love of God and neighbor and not the saving of one’s soul became the core of Hopkinsianism. The true Christian must lose himself in a cause higher than his own salvation—namely, the temporal and eternal well-being of others.” Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 121.

160. Edwards, “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections,” 234–343.

161. Edwards, “A Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue,” 122–42. Edwards’s biography of David Brainerd was his famous illustration of true piety and disinterested benevolence; see Edwards, “Life and Diary of the Rev. David Brainerd,” 313–458.

162. Edwards, “A Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue,” 141; emphasis in original.

163. Caldwell, “New England’s New Divinity,” 47.

164. Brown, “The New Divinity,” 6.

165. Caldwell, “New England’s New Divinity,” 36.

166. Bellamy, “True Religion Delineated,” 3–363. Foster said, “The True Religion Delineated discusses the nature of religion, and gives two answers, apparently different, but in the end coalescing in one, viz., that it consists in a conformity to the law of God, and a compliance with the gospel of Christ. These two answers determine the two parts of the treatise. The first treats the law, which it finds perfectly fulfilled in the one exercise of love. The second then considers the gospel, and is thus led to the successive topics of the ruin of man, the atonement, and the application of that atonement through faith, together with the reward of everlasting life promised to the believer.” Foster, A Genetic History, 108.

167. Bellamy, “The Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin,” 3–270.

168. Foster, A Genetic History, 109.

169. Ibid., 119–20.

170. Holifield, Theology in America, 137.

171. Caldwell, “New England’s New Divinity,” 37. Hopkins, The System of Doctrines. He also wrote the first biography of Edwards; see Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Reverend.

172. Holifield, Theology in America, 136.

173. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 30.

174. See Edwards, “A Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue,” 122–42.

175. Whittemore, The Transformation of the New England Theology, 78; see also Edwards, “A History of the Work of Redemption,” 532–619.

176. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 47.

177. Ibid., 47, quoting Edwards, “The True Excellency of a Gospel Minister,” 955–60.

178. See Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 48.

179. New Divinity theology continued to develop and, later under the influence of Edwards Amasa Park (1808–1900) at Andover Theological Seminary, New Divinity articulated that “the love of God is thus [its] determining principle.” Foster, A Genetic History, 491.

180. Brown, “The New Divinity,” 40.

181. Ibid., 47.

182. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 28, quoting Edwards, “Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God,” 257–77.

183. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 121.

184. Rowe, History of Andover, 8. See also Hopkins, “A Dialogue between a Calvinist and a Semi-Calvinist,” 143–57.

185. Foster, A Genetic History, 153.

186. Ibid., 154.

187. The governmental theory of the New Divinity said, “Christ died not to redeem a debt but to preserve the dignity of the divine government. Having promulgated a moral law, God could not permit its subversion without allowing the destruction of the moral order itself. When Christ died to vindicate the honor of the law, he made it possible for God to forgive sinful rebels without upsetting the moral order.” Holifield, Theology in America, 132–33. Regarding Bellamy and Hopkins, Holifield explains, “Both Bellamy and Hopkins retained older Calvinistic views of atonement even as they said that Christ died to secure God’s moral government. But their use of governmental metaphors and their rejection of a limited atonement opened the door for a more explicit governmental theory.” Ibid., 147. For a systematic definition of the governmental theory, see Grudem, Systematic Theology, 582. As Nicole helpfully explained, “It must be at once apparent that a fundamental flaw afflicts this view. How can the suffering and death of Christ be an expression of divine justice unless he is seen as burdened with sin, with real, not hypothetical, sin? Under the conditions stated, the death of Christ appears as an act of flagrant injustice. How can justice be manifested where it is not exercised? If Christ is indeed seen as the substitute of the sinner, he may be charged with the full burden of the sinner’s guilt and therefore be struck with God’s own wrath as an act of justice. But unless this substitution takes place, there is no way for the Lord’s suffering to be an expression of divine justice. The governmental view fails precisely at the point it had been thought to validate.” Nicole, “Post Script on Penal Substitution,” 450–51.

188. Holifield, Theology in America, 147.

189. Jauhiainen, “Samuel Hopkins and Hopkinsianism,” 108; emphasis in original. See also Hopkins, “Sin, through Divine Interposition,” 503–8, 527–28.

190. Hopkins, “Sin, through Divine Interposition,” 493–94; emphasis in original.

191. Brown, “The New Divinity,” 51.

192. Rowe, History of Andover, 14. See also Brumberg, Mission for Life, 27.

193. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 49.

194. Rowe, History of Andover, 54. “It was [Stuart] who set the standard and fixed the methods of biblical study for the next generation, for he remained at his post in Andover for thirty-eight years until 1848. Men who sat at his feet went to imitate him in their teaching at other seminaries . . . The imprint of Stuart’s mind was felt still farther afield, for Miron Winslow [1789–1864], class of 1818, translated the Bible into the Tamil tongue of India and compiled a Tamil-English lexicon, and Samuel Austin Worcester [1798–1859], class of 1823, translated parts of the Bible into the language of the Cherokees in America, setting an example to other missionaries.” Ibid., 54–55; see also Winslow, A Sketch of Missions. See also Bowden, “Worcester, Samuel Austin,” 748.

195. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 47. For a thorough account of the genesis of Andover and its first professors, see Rowe, History of Andover, 10–22; and see Woods, History of the Andover, 47–62, 145–58. Other professors joined the faculty of Andover in the early days, but Judson’s time at Andover did not overlap with them: Austin Phelps (1820–1890), Edwards Amasa Park, Ebenezer Porter (1772–1834). See Rowe, History of Andover, 40–61.

196. Woods, History of the Andover, 147–50.

197. Brumberg, Mission for Life, 28–29.

198. Rowe, History of Andover, 49. “It is symbolic of Andover’s staunch theology that the first book to be drawn from the Seminary library was a volume of the works of Jonathan Edwards. That Professor Woods was loyal to the Hopkinsian principle that one should be willing to be damned for the glory of God, appears when on the occasion of the birth of his fifth child he was in doubt whether he ought to ask God to save all his children. That Calvinistic theology did not breed hardness of heart is plain from the kindness and affection which Woods showed in his domestic life, and his patience and sympathy with his friends and students.” Ibid., 49.

199. For a full description of the spiritual life fostered at Andover, see Woods, History of the Andover, 159–70.

200. Ibid., 164.

201. Later in life, Stuart said that his “most valuable contribution” to the seminary was the Wednesday evening conferences. Rowe, History of Andover, 50.

202. Woods, History of the Andover, 163; emphasis in original.

203. Ibid., 164.

204. Ibid., 165–66. Also, Woods recorded that, during the summer months, the professors spoke on practical ministerial duties, such as “the nature and importance of the sacred office—qualifications for it—its many and arduous duties—difficulties and discouragements of a minister—also his encouragements and comforts—his duty to doubting, dejected Christians—to offenders and backsliders—to children—to the afflicted, the sick, and the dying—wise distribution of his duties—importance of training up Christians to assist him in his work—intercourse with other ministers—attachment to the cause of Missions—plainness and fidelity in preaching—importance of an affectionate manner—how to treat the thoughtless and those who are under conviction of sin—duty of circumspection—great worth of private character—preparation for death.” Ibid., 166.

205. Ibid., 167.

206. Ibid.

207. Ibid., 168.

208. Ibid., 169.

209. See Kling, “The New Divinity,” 791–819.

210. Brumberg, Mission for Life, 25.

211. For an account of the famous Haystack Prayer Meeting, see Richards, The Haystack Prayer Meeting.

212. Woods compared the society at Williams to the society at Andover: “The objects of the two Societies were in some respects the same. The one at Williams College however, was composed exclusively of such as had already devoted their lives to the cause of Missions. Its object was, to effect a mission to the heathen in the persons of its members. The Society at Andover, seems to have been planned by the same individuals, for the purpose of exciting inquiry, and enlisting others in the same cause.” Woods, Memoirs of American Missionaries, 14; emphasis in original.

213. The Society at Andover persisted for sixty years after transferring there from Williams College; see Rowe, History of Andover, 112.

214. Ibid., 112–13. For a succinct historical summary of the beginning phases of the American foreign missionary enterprise, see Warburton, Eastward, 23–26.

215. Brumberg, Mission for Life, 38. The Second Great Awakening (c. 1790–1840) captured the hearts of many young people, which aroused in them a missionary impulse. Brumberg says, “The moving force behind American foreign missions was a small cadre of zealous young men, students at Williams College and the theological seminary at Andover. The convergence at Andover of Adoniram Judson and Samuel J. Mills provides a striking demonstration of the dynamics of youthful voluntarism.” Brumberg, Mission for Life, 26. For other accounts of the convergence of Mills, Judson, and other youthful volunteers, see Bendroth, A School of the Church, 49–55; see also McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, 344–55; and Richards, Samuel J. Mills, 60.

216. Judson’s younger siblings were Abigail Judson (b. 1791) and Elnathan Judson (1794–1829), and when Judson was eight years old, his seven-month-old sister, Mary (b. February 18, 1796), died. See Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 19.

217. Brumberg, Mission for Life, 22. For an example of godly parenting, Adoniram Judson Sr. said to parents: “We taught them to remember God their creator. We taught them the fear of God, the law of God, and those things which are essential to inherit the kingdom of God. We endeavored to instruct them in all the principles, doctrines, obligations, and duties, to God and man. We labored to indoctrinate them in the glorious scheme of grace through the Redeemer, and to impress their minds with a conviction of sin, and of an eternity of happiness and misery. And O how affecting, how solemn the thought, if any of your children should miss of [sic] salvation by your neglect! Be persuaded, then, to bring them up for God.” Adoniram Judson Sr., A Sermon Preached in the New Meeting House, 19–20.

218. Warburton, Eastward, 4. From his research, Anderson also described Adoniram Judson Sr. as, “stoical, forbidding, and austere.” Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 6.

219. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 12–13.

220. Ibid., 20.

221. Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, xxix; see also Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 20; Warburton, Eastward, 5.

222. Anderson said, “The person Adoniram feared above all others was his father. It was not only that he was a minister. It was not even that he was Adoniram’s father in a day when fathers ruled their children with an iron hand. It was the sheer awesomeness of the man himself. He was nearly incapable of humor. He was just, but with the retributive justice of God Himself. He was stern, austere; and as God did not overlook the sparrow’s fall, so Mr. Judson did not overlook trifles.” Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 19.

223. Ibid., 18. This is the beginning stanza of the hymn, “O Preach My Gospel, Saith the Lord,” by Isaac Watts (1674–1748); see Watts and Rippon, The Psalms and Hymns of Dr. Watts, 679.

224. Warburton, Eastward, 4.

225. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 28.

226. Conant, The Earnest Man, 17.

227. An extract of a letter from Leonard Woods to the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, Daniel Clarke Eddy, on November 25, 1850; Eddy, A Sketch of Adoniram Judson, v.

228. In the letter, Messer said, “This, I can assure you, is not by way of complaint. A uniform propriety of conduct, as well as an intense application of study, distinguishes his character. Your expectations of him, however sanguine, must certainly be gratified. I most heartily congratulate you, my dear sir, on that charming prospect which you have exhibited in this very amiable and promising son; and I most heartily pray that the Father of mercies may make him now, while a youth, a son in his spiritual family and give him an earnest of the inheritance of the saints of light.” Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 17.

229. Babcock, God Glorified in His Servants, 7.

230. The title of his valedictorian address showed his Deistic worldview: “An Oration on Free Enquiry; with the Valedictory Addresses . . . Adoniram Judson.” Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 35.

231. Warburton, Eastward, 9

232. During this time Judson had authored two textbooks: Adoniram Judson, The Elements of English Grammar; Adoniram Judson, The Young Lady’s Arithmetic.

233. Warburton, Eastward, 12. Henry Gouger (1799–1861), a fellow prisoner with Judson in Ava, recorded his discussions with Judson about this time in his life. Gouger admonished Wayland’s account as far too Pollyannaish in describing this season of carousing (see Wayland, A Memoir, 1:23). Gouger said, “I will give the story as I heard it from the actor’s own mouth . . . in his words:—‘In my early days of wildness, I joined a band of strolling players. We lived a reckless, vagabond life, finding lodgings where we could, and bilking the landlord where we found opportunity—in other words, running up a score, and then decamping without paying the reckoning. Before leaving America, when the enormity of this vicious course rested with a depressing weight on my mind, I made a second tour over the same ground, carefully making amends to all whom I had injured.’” Gouger, A Personal Narrative, 179.

234. Wayland, Memoir, 1:23–24.

235. See Boston, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State.

236. Wayland, Memoir, 1:37.

237. Ibid., 1:28. There are no documented details of his conversion narrative, but in his autobiographical record, he included the closest description available to the approximate timing of the beginning of his “change of heart.” He recorded, “1808, Nov., began to entertain a hope of having received the regenerating influences of the Holy Spirit.” See “Autobiographical Record of Dates and Events,” in Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 562. A Baptist pastor in New Zealand, Frank William Boreham (1871–1959), said in his biography of Judson that he knew of three different descriptions of what he thought were the first signs of Judson’s conversion, but none had dates attached to them. See Boreham, A Temple of Topaz, 134. From a letter to his brother, Elnathan, on October 24, 1810, it is evident that Judson still sought greater assurance of his conversion. In an excerpt from his letter, he said, “I think I could never say with so much assurance as I can lately, I do love God . . . Brother, you must pray for me, that I may enjoy the presence of God, and have a spirit of prayer.” Adoniram Judson to Elnathan Judson, letter, October 24, 1810, Box No. AJ 1, Folder 1 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, ABHS. Brumberg explains the significance of the conversion narrative: “Since conversion would determine the future course of the individual and, by implication, the world, evangelical literature was conversion-centered. In fact, there was an intriguing variety of nineteenth-century literature produced by evangelicals, which focused on conversion in one way or another. In addition to spiritual autobiography and conversion narratives, evangelicals wrote books, childrearing literature, memoirs of missionaries and converted heathens, temperance tales, and domestic and sentimental fiction . . . The doctrine of the ‘change of heart’ would be basic to writing about Judson’s life and work.” Brumberg, Mission for Life, 34–35. For a landmark study on the rise of spiritual autobiographies and their significance in the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century, see Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative.

238. Wayland, Memoir, 1:28.

239. Ibid., 1:29; see also Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 50.

240. Wayland, Memoir, 1:29.

241. Buchanan, The Star in the East. Regarding the content of Buchanan’s sermon, Duesing suggests that “what might have caught Judson’s attention was Buchanan’s description of his passion to see the translation of the Scripture into various languages.” Duesing, “Breaking the Strong Attachment to Home and Country,” 11.

242. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 53. Rufus Babcock (1798–1875) pointed out that initially the burgeoning missionary enterprise was highly unpopular. He extracted lengthy quotes from the Edinburgh Review from 1808, and after citing some vitriolic sentiments, Babcock said, “We will not pollute our pages nor pain your ears with the Billingsgate utterances of a coarser and less delicate character . . . To this maligned object the attention of Judson was turned.” Babcock, God Glorified in His Servants, 11–13.

243. See Symes, An Account of an Embassy.

244. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 55–56.

245. See Mark 16:15.

246. Wayland, Memoir, 1:52.

247. Ibid., 1:39.

248. Rowe, History of Andover, 116.

249. Judson subsequently graduated from Andover on September 24, 1810; see Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 84–85.

250. Ibid., 100.

251. Ibid., 101.

252. For a thorough account of the development of the ABCFM, see Tracy, History of the American Board. For the minutes of the meeting, see “Minutes of the First Annual Meeting of the American Board,” 9–10.

253. Prior to this appointment, he had traveled to London in the spring of 1811 to visit the London Missionary Society to solicit missionary funding. Along the way, a French privateer captured his ship and imprisoned him in France for a short time. Nevertheless, after his release, he arrived in London on May 6, 1811. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 562; Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 87–89.

254. Her other name was Nancy Hasseltine.

255. See Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 38.

256. See Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 82–83, and Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 23–25.

257. Knowles, The Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson, 36; also quoted in Wayland, Memoir, 1:31.

258. Wayland, Memoir, 1:31, quoted also in Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 85.

259. Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 13; see also Wayland, Memoir, 1:32.

260. During their marriage, Ann bore Judson three children, one stillborn and two that died in infancy: Roger Williams Judson (1815–1816) and Maria Elizabeth Butterworth Judson (1825–1827). See Hunt, “The Judson Family Tree,” in Bless God and Take Courage, 404.

261. Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 31. Leonard Woods of Andover preached on Psalm 67 at Judson’s ordination. For a rich example of the evangelical Hopkinsian piety in which Judson grew spiritually, see Woods, A Sermon Delivered at the Tabernacle in Salem.

262. Newell, along with his new wife, Harriet Newell (1793–1812) were also onboard the brig. Nott, Hall, and Rice set sail aboard the Harmony the next day.

263. On August 8, 1812, Nott, Hall, and Rice arrived at the port in Calcutta in the ship Harmony. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 562.

264. Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 52–53; Wayland, Memoir, 1:108; Knowles, The Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson, 62–63.

265. See Wayland, Memoir, 1:95–109. William Ward (1769–1823) of the Serampore Trio baptized the Judsons. On November 1, 1812, Luther Rice also received baptism because of his change of sentiments. See Taylor, Memoir of Reverend Luther Rice, 116.

266. Knowles, Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson, 66. See also Adoniram Judson, Christian Baptism.

267. For a testimony of Rice’s zeal and ability to stir up missionary devotion, see Lincoln and Wayland, A Memoir of the Life, 53–55. For examples of Rice’s letters and journals, see Rice, Dispensations of Providence. For an account of his life, see Taylor, Memoir of Reverend Luther Rice.

268. For a thorough synopsis of the genesis of the Triennial Convention and its legacy, see McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, 343–92. The Triennial Convention was a landmark event for Baptist history. Torbet said, “The organization of the Triennial Convention in 1814 was a triumph of the principle of national co-operation in the foreign missionary enterprise . . . In many respects Luther Rice was a fortunate choice as promotional agent of the Board, for he combined vision, untiring energy, and a knowledge of the foreign field. He, therefore, was instrumental in developing financial support.” Torbet, A History of the Baptists, 331. Brackney also observes that Judson’s mission work inspired “a sense of national denominational identity and purpose” for the American Baptists. Brackney, “The Legacy of Adoniram Judson,” 124. Baptist historian Leonard states, “The willingness to use the word denomination to describe this new society was an important step for Baptists in the new nation. It brought together various associations, individuals, and churches concerned about the foreign missionary task.” Leonard, Baptist Ways, 165. The new mission organization adopted the name, The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions. The American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions was often called the American Baptist Board. Then in 1845, they readopted the name, American Baptist Missionary Union; see Wayland, Memoir, 1:126–27. Judson rejoiced at the formation of the American Baptist Board; see his journal entry in Ann Hasseltine Judson, An Account of the American Baptist Mission, 53–54.

269. For a helpful explanation of the historical context surrounding the charter and its effect on the missionaries, see Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 47–50.

270. Anderson recorded that work in Burma seemed hopeless. The Judsons had “put Burma out of their thoughts, for about that country they had learned a good deal more that was unpromising . . . In Burma they would be under both a king and local governors who were absolute despots and that governmental corruption was unbelievable.—And the laws were the bloodiest on earth: the commonest punishments were beheading, crucifixion, and ‘pouring melted lead in small quantities down the throat,’ and these were inflicted for such minor offenses as chewing opium or drinking spirits.” Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 139–40. Though Burma was on Judson’s heart, they were obliged to leave India as soon as possible without a definite destination. They sailed to the Isle of France, met with their American co-laborer, Samuel Newell. Then they discovered that his wife, Harriet, had gone into premature labor, lost the baby, and died herself of tuberculosis. The Judsons decided to try moving to Penang, but they had to stop first in Madras, India. Judson urgently looked for a ship to go anywhere because they did not want to be deported to England and because Ann’s baby was due in weeks. The only ship available, the Georgiana, was bound for Burma. Just as the ship set sail, Ann’s hired European delivery nurse fell dead, and while on the voyage to Burma, Ann gave birth to a stillborn son. Rosalie Hall Hunt describes their voyage as “mingled with horror and sadness,” and “Rangoon was a wretched-looking place . . . scarcely better than a neglected swamp.” Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 49–50.

271. Felix Carey and his wife and two children left for Ava in August of 1814, and their boat capsized, leaving only Felix alive. He later seceded from the mission. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 563; Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 60.

272. See Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 147. Knowles recorded a letter from Ann saying, “[Burma] presents a very extensive field for usefulness . . . and the Scriptures have never been translated into their language. This is a very strong inducement to Mr. Judson to go there as there is no other place where he could be equally useful in translating. But the privations and dangers would be great.” Knowles, Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson, 61.

273. Brumberg, Mission for Life, 67.

274. Adoniram Judson, Grammatical Notices.

275. Adoniram Judson, A View of the Christian Religion; also published in Adoniram Judson, The Septenary. Not long after completing A View of the Christian Religion (completed on July 20, 1816), Judson’s mission printer, George H. Hough (1757–1830) and his wife Phebe, arrived in Burma on October 15, 1816. Also, during his time of tract writing, Judson’s seven-month-old son, Roger Williams Judson, died on May 4, 1816. This was his first tract; the day it was finished, Judson initially called it Summary of Christian Doctrines, but then once Hough printed it later that October, Judson changed it to A View of the Christian Religion. Sometimes, it was even called The Way to Heaven, but that can be confusing because one of Judson’s coworkers, Grover Smith Comstock (1808–1844), later wrote a tract by the same name; see Comstock, “The Way to Heaven,” 55–77. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 563–64.

276. In a letter to the printer, Cephas Bennett (1804–1885), on February 7, 1831; Wayland, Memoir, 1:517.

277. During this time, in September 1818, missionaries James Colman (1794–1822), and his wife Elizabeth (Lucy) Colman (b. 1794), and Edward Willard Wheelock (1796–1819) and his wife Eliza Harriet Newman Wheelock (b. 1798) arrived to join the mission. After Colman’s death, Elizabeth married Amos Sutton (1802–1854), an English General Baptist missionary in Orissa, India. See Collier, Colman and Wheelock; and see Anderson, “Amos Sutton,” 652. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 563–65.

278. Middleditch cited Edward Wheelock’s description of a zayat for those in the West who had never seen one before. Wheelock wrote about the one to which Judson refers. Middleditch recorded Wheelock as saying, “A zayat somewhat resembles an American shed, and is made of bamboos. The one now building [sic] will be much cooler, and better than the generality of zayats. It is to be made partly of bamboos, the top only covered with leaves.” Then Middleditch went on to explain the zayat further: “It was divided in three parts. The first division, which was one third of the whole, was open to the road, and set apart for occupancy by Mr. Judson, for conversation with passers-by. The more central division was made entirely of boards, being intended for worship on the Sabbath, and for a school conducted by Mrs. Judson during the week. The third division was a sort of entry-way to the mission-house, situated in the rear and facing on another road.” Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 122.

279. Wayland, Memoir, 1:212.

280. “Moung” is a title used to designate a young or middle-aged man; see Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 125.

281. Wayland, Memoir, 1:224.

282. Ibid., 1:224. During this time of great celebration of the first Burmese convert, sadness came over the missionary community. Edward Wheelock, who had arrived the year prior, was very ill with tuberculosis and became severely depressed. Also, his wife, Eliza, could not emotionally handle her husband’s terrible illness, and she began imagining that people in the mission were trying to slowly kill him. She decided they both needed to flee Rangoon in order to survive. In August 1819, he and his wife, Eliza, set sail for Bengal. However, two weeks later on the voyage, in a depressed, delirious fit, he threw himself overboard and died. Judson never heard from Eliza again either. She chose to remain in India, where she married “a Mr. Jones of Calcutta.” See Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 215–31, 269. For a grievous account of Edward Wheelock’s battle with deep melancholy and his tragic death, see Collier, Colman and Wheelock, 73–75.

283. Not long after Ann left, in December 1821, Jonathan Price (d. 1828) and his wife, Hope Price (d. 1822), arrived in Burma. Hope Price subsequently died in May 1822. She was buried next to Roger Judson. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 564–65; Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 274–75.

284. Adoniram Judson, The New Testament. Adoniram Judson, The Epitome of the Old Testament.

285. Both Jonathan Price and George H. Hough went to prison in Ava along with Judson. In order to save them from starvation, Ann daily brought food and cared for their needs. See Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 324–31.

286. Wayland insightfully elucidated the reality of imprisonment in Burma: “Imprisonment, among a semi-barbarous people, is something very different from confinement. It is confinement imbittered [sic] by every device of malicious and brutal cruelty.” Wayland, Memoir, 1:329.

287. Ibid., 1:416.

288. One week before Maria’s death, George (1801–1831) and Sarah Boardman (1803–1845) arrived in Amherst on April 17, 1827. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 565.

289. Madame Jeann Guyon, a French mystic, was an advocate of Quietism, which the Roman Catholic Church considered heretical. She published A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, for which the Roman Catholic Church imprisoned her (1695–1703). Quietism was the practice of contemplation and interior passivity in order to grow spiritually and attain union with God. See Guyon, A Short and Easy Method of Prayer.

290. Thomas à Kempis was a German Canon Regular, who lived as a priest under the Rule of St. Augustine. He is best known for his widely read The Imitation of Christ. See à Kempis, Imitation of Christ.

291. Fénelon was a French Roman Catholic archbishop of Cambrai who met Madame Guyon in 1688 and admired her piety. He was best known for his didactic French novel, The Adventures of Telemachus. See Fénelon, The Adventures of Telemachus.

292. See Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 386–89.

293. Adoniram Judson, The Threefold Cord; also published in Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 571–77; and Wayland, Memoir, 2:459–66. Wayland charitably commented on some of Judson’s extreme methods of sanctification and asceticism, in Wayland, Memoir, 2:382–87.

294. Adoniram Judson, The Golden Balance.

295. Adoniram Judson, The Septenary. In this publication, Judson included a short manual he had previously compiled, called, Public Service Hand-Book for Pastors. See Adoniram Judson, Public Service Hand-Book.

296. Adoniram Judson, “Come, Holy Spirit, Dove Divine,” 586. It is possible that Judson began to write parts of this hymn before 1829; for instance, in his journal from September 11, 1819, Judson concluded thus: “Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove!” Wayland, Memoir, 2:234; Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 137; Conant, The Earnest Man, 215.

297. One month after getting word of Judson’s brother’s death, Cephas Bennett, his wife, Stella Kneeland Bennett (1808–1891), and their two children, Elsina and Mary, arrived in Maulmain in January 1830. See Ranney, A Sketch of the Lives and Missionary Work. See also Bennett, Vocabulary and Phrase Book.

298. Wayland, Memoir, 1:474–75. For another example of Judson’s prayers for his family, see a letter on December 13, 1827 to his mother and sister following his father’s death; in it Judson prayed for them to enjoy the “divine presence” in spite of “the repeated strokes of our heavenly Father’s hand” in their anticipation of “the high enjoyment of everlasting life,” in ibid., 1:443–44.

299. See Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 391–92.

300. By 1830, the missionaries were printing a number of pieces of literature. They printed two non-religious educational catechisms called, “A Catechism of Astronomy” and “A Catechism of Geography.” Warburton credited Judson with writing these, though there are no direct references in his known writings of him being the actual author; see Warburton, Eastward, 159. They are generally associated with him because in his journal he listed them in the middle of some tracts he and his colleagues had written, translated, and printed; see Adoniram Judson, journal, November 29, 1829, Box No. AJ 4, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, ABHS; Adoniram Judson, “Mr. Judson’s Journal, Nov. 29th, 1829,” 245–46; Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 252. It is possible Jonathan Price wrote the tracts. In an extract of a journal on May 18, 1826, George Dana Boardman noted, “[Price] proposes to open a school for teaching several branches of useful learning, such as, Geography, Astronomy, Chemistry, &c. and he thinks, that in a few years . . . the whole system of Burman religion, founded as it is, on false Astronomy and Geography, may be completely undermined and subverted.” See Boardman, “Extracts from Mr. Boardman’s Journal,” 44. Also, for an example of how Price’s astronomy, geography, and science courses challenged the Buddhist worldview of the Burmese students, see Knowles, Memoir of Ann H. Judson, 256–57. Years later, Grover Smith Comstock would find great success in evangelism using the catechisms on geography and astronomy; see Comstock, “Journal of Mr. Comstock,” 69. Judson also wrote a tract in 1836, after his revision of the Old Testament, called, “The Life of Christ,” which Sarah B. Judson translated into Peguan. See Adoniram Judson to Dr. Lucius Bolles, letter, Box No. AJ 2, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, ABHS; Adoniram Judson, “Letter of Mr. Judson, Dated Maulmein, Dec. 21, 1837,” 300–301; Wayland, Memoir, 2:118; Wayland dated the letter as December 31, 1837 instead of the December 21, 1837. See also Starr, A Baptist Bibliography, 12:220. For a record of other writings by the missionary team, see Warburton, Eastward, 158–61; see also Bennett, Tracts, In Burmese, 1.

301. George Boardman died on February 11, 1831. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 566. See also King, Memoir of George Dana Boardman, 293–309.

302. For a biographical account of S. M. Osgood, see Smith, Sewall Mason Osgood.

303. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 565–66; Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 400–427. Malcom, the pastor of Federal Street Church in Boston, was eager to meet the legendary Judson; Malcom said Judson was “the most interesting man alive.” Mild, Howard Malcom, 44.

304. See Wayland, Memoir, 2:486–94.

305. Ibid., 2:491–92.

306. Adoniram Judson, A Digest of Scripture.

307. Adoniram Judson, The Holy Bible. During this season, he also wrote on practical matters, such as female dress; see Adoniram Judson, Judson’s Letter on Dress.

308. During this season, on August 29, 1842, Judson heard of his mother’s death on January 31, 1842. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 566–67; Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 402–4.

309. See Wayland, Memoir, 2:368–70.

310. Before Judson even met Emily, he had left Adoniram and Elnathan in Worcester to study, and he had sent Abby Ann to Plymouth on November 13, 1845. Two weeks later, on November 28, 1845, he received word that Charlie had died in Maulmain on August 5, 1845. See Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 402–4; Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 566–67; Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 442–65.

311. Before Judson and his new bride left for Burma, he took leave of Adoniram, Elnathan, and George Dana Boardman on July 4, 1846 and Abby Ann on July 9, 1846. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 567.

312. Emily Frances Judson (1847–1911) was born in Maulmain on December 24, 1847; Charlie Judson (1850) was stillborn on April 23, 1850, ten days after his father’s death on April 12, 1850. Four years later, Emily Chubbuck Judson died on June 1, 1854. See Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 403; Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 506.

313. The dictionary subsequently underwent publication in 1852. See Adoniram Judson, A Dictionary. E. A. Stevens (Edward Abiel Stevens [1814–1886]) should not be confused with his son E. O. Stevens (Edward Oliver Stevens [1838–1910]). Edward Abiel completed Judson’s nearly finished dictionary after his death; see Stevens, A Half-Century in Burma, 17. Edward Oliver expanded the work years later; see Stevens, A Vocabulary, English and Peguan.

314. Wayland, Memoir, 2:366–68.

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