Positive Results
Positive Results
As stated earlier, the positive results of Judson’s decision have been evidenced throughout the history of more than 175 years of American Baptist foreign missions outreach. Within the historic context, there were three positive results. First, Luther Rice, due to declining health, returned to America and became a spokesman for Baptist missions. His labor and love for the mission field stirred the hearts of American Baptists throughout the growing country of America. Second, Judson’s letter to Dr. Bolles met with a positive response. The American Baptist churches, through no initiatory action of their own, already had two missionaries on the field. They received this as the hand of God and began a Baptist Association for Foreign Missions. The letter below communicates this decision to Judson.
DEAR BROTHER—by the arrival of the Tartar, in January last, we received the intelligence of your change of views on the subject of Christian baptism, and also intimations of your readiness to embark in a mission under our patronage, should a society be formed among the Baptists in America for that purpose.
Your letters excited peculiar emotions. We considered it as the voice of God calling us to the formation of a missionary society. That we might not, however, be charged with acting prematurely, or be considered as interfering with the Board of commissioners, we ascertained whether they intended to continue you in their service before we formally decided to engage you in ours.
Satisfied on inquiry what was our path of duty, we formed ourselves into a society for propagating the gospel in India and other foreign parts. At a meeting of the trustees, we unanimously agreed to employ you as our missionary, and to stand prepared to support you with all the pecuniary aid we can command.
By the arrival of another vessel, we have heard that the Rev. Mr. Rice entertains the same sentiments as yourself on the subject of baptism. This event gives us joy, because it must add much to your comfort in a foreign land to have a fellow-labourer in the gospel. The board have not met since Mr. Rice’s letter was received, but I am confident that he will be taken under their care. We have not had time to mature our thoughts so as to say with decision whether it would be best for you to be connected with, or independent of, our brethren at Serampore.
At present it appears to us that a connexion with them would most subserve the interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom in India, and be most productive of happiness to yourselves. All the benefits which can be derived from union with men of integrity, disinterested benevolence, and a knowledge of the country, growing out of a twenty years’ experience would accrue to you from a relation with them. These considerations induced us in March last to write to Mr. Fuller, of Kettering, on the subject, expressing our wishes that you might be considered as belonging to the mission family at Serampore. Should it appear, from future events, more desirable that you should act alone, or as American missionaries, separately from the English brethren, then, no doubt, we shall be pleased to have it so; but our present sentiments are, that you had better act with and by their advice.
In behalf of the Society,
Yours affectionately,
Daniel Sharp[51]
Finally, it should be noted that Judson’s relationship with the Congregationalist Board was not permanently severed. In a tender exchange of letters dated twenty-seven years after the separation, Judson wrote to Dr. Anderson, the director of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. His occasion for writing was to ask for a subscription of their newsletter, The Herald, but within the letter he writes:
I am aware that it is not regular to trouble you with this business; but, to tell the truth, I have rather caught at it as giving me an occasion to drop you a line, and perhaps get one in return. Though I have been (as some may think) a wayward son of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, I have always retained the warmest filial affection for that body, under whose auspices I first came out.
I was also afraid that, attempting to change the mode of conveyance, I should, by some accident, lose my Herald altogether, unless I wrote you, and begged you to secure me from such a misfortune.
There are not many, perhaps, now living, who can say, as I can, that they have read every number of the Herald, from the time it first commenced its existence, in the form of the Panoplist and Massachusetts Missionary Magazine, to the present time; and I hope to enjoy the privilege as long as I live. The Herald, in my view, contains more interesting missionary information, and a development of sounder missionary principles, than any other publication in the world.
I remain, reverend and dear sir,
Yours, most sincerely,
A. Judson[52]
Dr. Anderson’s tender reply reads as follows:
REV. ADONIRAM JUDSON, Maulmain, India.
REV. AND DEAR SIR,—A few days since I had the great pleasure of receiving your favour of January 21. If anything was wanted, in addition to your long, devoted, and successful missionary life, to perfect the impression made by your letter to Mr. Evarts, dated June 13, 1880 (and which I replied to February 25, 1831), it was such a letter as lies now before me. But I should not have said, nor am I aware, that anything was necessary to give you a stronger hold upon our hearts than any other one of the brethren of your society can possibly have. We rejoice in the good, the very great good, which has grown out of your change of relation. We see the good hand of our God in this. We would not, therefore, have it otherwise. The old asperities of feeling have perished in the grave, or have been softened down by time and the grace of God. We love to think of you as intimately related to us—having — a common missionary parentage. Hence we send you the Herald, and on this account we mean to send it to you as long as you continue a missionary of our Lord and Master.[53]