The Formal and Solemn Reprimand (1811)

C H A P T E R X I I

The Formal and Solemn Reprimand

[ I811 ]

EFORE leaving for home from New York, Adoniram had an old wrong to set right. He had never forgotten the landlords he once helped cheat out of food and lodgings, when he had traveled with the strolling players three years before. Now he repeated the stops of that tour and paid up his debts. His conscience was clearer when he finally took the stage to Boston and home.

At Andover and Bradford he caught up with the news. The report of Mrs. Norris’s bequest to missions was true, he learned. When she died in March, while Adoniram was in France, it was found that her will gave thirty thousand dollars to the American Board, more than enough to enable four missionaries and their wives to establish a mission station anywhere in the world. Some of the Other heirs had tied up the estate in litigation, and the money was not immediately available; but there seemed little doubt that it would be released eventually, as it was well known that both John Norris and his wife had long been firm believers in missions.

In fact, when Samuel Spring had called on Mr. Norris in Salem as long ago as 1806 with his proposal for a theological seminary, Norris had been cool because he wanted to give money directly to missions. After talking the matter over with his wife, however, he had changed his mind, and the next morning told Spring: “My wife tells me that this plan for a theological school and the missionary enterprise is the same thing. We must raise up the ministers if we would have the men to go out as missionaries.” Forthwith he went to the bank and drew out ten thousand dollars in silver money which he gave for the proposed seminary because, as he said, he “never heard that paper money was given to the temple.”

Mr. Norris had died without seeing his missionary dreams realized, but his wife had not forgotten them. His gifts, her payment of part of Adoniram’s eXpenses to England, and this bequest were devoted to the same end. With thirty thousand dollars in sight, Adoniram and Samuel Nott felt sure that it would not be necessary to take advantage of the London Missionary Society’s offer.

On his return, Adoniram had no opportunity to discuss the meaning of the Norris bequest with Samuel Newell and Gordon Hall. They were not in Andover, but had gone to Philadelphia in June to spend the summer and the following winter studying medicine, wisely thinking that medical skill might be nearly as valuable to a missionary as knowledge of the Bible. In so doing they were setting a precedent for what eventually became a distinct type of work, that of the medical missionary.

Before leaving for Philadelphia, however, Newell had become engaged to Nancy’s youthful friend Harriet Atwood of Haverhill. To Nancy this was even better news than the fact that the mission had become a certainty. It meant that she would not be the only woman to go with the group. Better still, her companion would be someone she had known since girlhood.

The romance had begun even before Adoniram had left for England—in fact, only two days after Nancy had told Harriet she planned to marry Adoniram.

A mutual friend had brought Newell to the Atwood homestead in Haverhill. The two introverts, both serious and intrOSpective, shy and frail, found much in common. Within a week Newell had called again, and Harriet was confiding to her diary: “If such a man, who has devoted himself to the service of the gospel, has determined to labor in the most difficult part of the vineyard and is willing to renounce his earthly happiness for the interest of religion; if he doubts his possessing love of God—what shall I say of myself?”

Newell lacked Adoniram’s impetuosity. It was not until Spring, some six months later, that Harriet received a certain letter. “I broke the seal, and what were my emotions, when I read the name of. This was not a long-wished-for letter,—no, it was a longdreaded one, which, I was conscious, would involve me in doubts, anxiety, and distress. Nor were the contents such as I might answer at a distant period; they required an immediate answer. And now what shall I say? How shall I decide this important, this interesting question? — Shall I consent to leave forever the Parent of my youth; the friends of my life; the dear scenes of my childhood, and my native country; and go to a land of strangers, ‘not knowing the things that shall befal me there’?”

Harriet’s father, Moses Atwood, had died a few years before. She took the problem to her mother, perhaps hoping her mother would say no. Mrs. Atwood would certainly have been justified in refusing to allow Harriet to marry Newell. She was not even seventeen, hardly old enough to know her own mind in the judgment of most people. She was subject to sick headaches. Tuberculosis ran in the family, and had carried away both her father and an uncle. On the other hand, Mrs. Atwood had nine children. She must have seen advantages in marrying one of them off to a minister, most desired of husbands, even though this minister was bound on such a dangerous venture. And after all, competent Nancy Hasseltine would be with her. After much anguish and many prayers, she finally told her daughter, as Harriet wrote to a friend, “If a conviction of duty, and love to the souls of the perishing heathen, lead you to India, as much as I love you, Harriet, I can only say Go.”

Forced, like Nancy, to make her own decision, Harriet spent most of May hesitating. Newell refused to influence her. One of her chief fears was Whether she had the strength to bear up under the hardships of a missionary life. On this one matter he repeated what a friend had told him, “A little slender woman may endure losses and suffering as cheerfully and resolutely as an apostle.” Perhaps this was all the encouragement she needed. At the end of May, shortly before Newell left for Philadelphia, she gave her consent, though with many misgivings.

To Adoniram, once more riding about the countryside near Bradford with Nancy, and preaching in country churches Sundays, all this seemed good news. The closer they drew to the day of leaving the more their spirits rose.

On the eighteenth of September there was to be a meeting of the Board, in Worcester. To this Adoniram and Samuel Nott rode in optimistic mood. At last, they were sure, they would receive the Board’s blessing and be sent on their way without further ado.

If this is what they thought, they were due for a shock. The Board took up their business of the first day in the form of a report by the Prudential Committee on Adoniram’s trip to England. In its report, the committee placed in the record all the correspondence between its secretary, Samuel Worcester, and George Burder, secretary of the London Missionary Society, including its letter of instructions to Adoniram, and Burder’s final reply which Adoniram had carried home with him.

It was clear, said the committee, that the English had made no direct reply to the questions it wanted answered. Instead, the English expressed willingness to take Adoniram and his colleagues under their wing, and were willing to receive funds from the Americans, but this was as far as they could cooperate. The direCtion must remain in English hands.

This was only reasonable, believed the committee. The English organization expected to Spend ten thousand pounds during the Coming year, and already had aIlOtted all of it. The cost of maintaining four American missionaries would be only six hundred pounds. If the Americans could not supply even this much, why should they enjoy any control? Particularly as they had no experience in Operating missions and the English had a vast amount?

But, thought the committee, it would be shameful to resign its own four missionaries to the London Society for lack of a mere six hundred pounds, when Mrs. Norris’s thirty thousand dollars would be available soon, and another fourteen hundred dollars had already been given by others. It urged, therefore, that the four be kept under the Board’s control and that strenuous efforts be made to raise the money immediately.

Some of the leading members of the Board were apathetic. Its President was John Treadwell, fourth Governor of Connecticut. Another leading member, William Bartlet, one of the few whose princely gifts had helped found Andover Theological Seminary, had advanced some of the money which had sent Adoniram to England. But although he was now one of the three members of the Prudential Committee (the other two being Spring and Worcester) he shared with Treadwell the conservative merchant’s point of view. Both felt that for the moment the best policy was a cautious do-nothing policy. The Embargo resulting from the war between England and France had all but paralyzed American maritime trade. For two or three years business had been practically at a Standstill. To men like Treadwell and Bartlet it seemed a poor time to take on the support of four missionaries and their wives, and undertake to raise the money to get them to the Orient and keep them there. Treadwell, now in his late sixties, felt particularly Strong on the subject.

Adoniram and Nott felt just the opposite. They felt it was now or never. A war with England seemed imminent. It might come any time, possibly within a few months. If it did, they might not be able to get away for years. Time was of the essence. They must be sent at once, they urged —in a few weeks, if possible.

This argument had merely annoyed the laymen on the Board. They pooh-poohed the idea of imminent war. Treadwell even pledged his word that there would be no war at all.

At this point Adoniram, backed by Nott, made up his mind to force matters to a decision. Both told the Board quite frankly that if the American Board did not send them as missionaries they would go anyway, under the auspices of London—by the first available ship. Adoniram was especially emphatic. He stated his position so bluntly that it was virtually an ultimatum.

Tempers flared at once. Who was this brash young man, to lay down the law to his elders? Some members of the Board were already incensed because he had not followed his instructions. He had all but begged the London Society to ditch the sponsors who had sent him to England and take him under their own wing. On his return, he had not even given the Board a report in writing. Now he had the audacity to present them with a flat “take it or leave it.” By the end of the first day’s session some were all for dismissing Adoniram on the Spot.

By the second day, however, feelings had cooled —thanl{s largely to Dr. Spring’s diplomacy in dealing with the most irritated of the older men. As Adoniram knew, Spring loved him as if he were his own son. Now he came to his defense by pointing out to his fellow members that the trait which had precipitated the squabble was Adoniram’s excess of self-reliance—and it was precisely this characteristic which would make him of greatest value as a missionary in a strange country, among strange people where he would have no one to depend on but himself.

And after all, he pointed out as he smoothed down various ruffled feelings, with the Norris bequest in prospect the Board could make commitments that would have seemed foolhardy a year ago. Everyone knew of the bequest. What would be thought if the Board did not send missionaries abroad at once, beginning with the men who had started the whole movement and made it practicable by volunteering thémselves?

Dr. Spring’s labors had their effect. On the second day the Board officially appointed Adoniram, Newell, Nott and Hall as its missionaries. But Adoniram’s behavior was not overlooked, for at the same time Dr. Spring delivered to him, in the name of the Board, a rebuke which in later years became known as a “formal and solemn reprimand.” Particularly because it came from Spring, it moved Adoniram deeply. He was well aware of his impetuousness and self-will, admitted it freely, and promised, almost in tears, to do better in the future.

Duly the Board’s decision was inscribed in the records: “That this Board did not advise Messrs. Adoniram Judson, Jr., and Samuel Nott, Jr., to place themselves at present under the direction of the London Missionary Society, but to wait the further intimations of Providence relative to our means of furnishing them with the requisite support in the proposed foreign mission.

“Messrs. Adoniram Judson, Jr., Samuel Nott, Jr., Samuel Newell, and Gordon Hall were appointed missionaries to labor under the direction of this board in Asia, either in the Burman Empire, or in Surat, or in Prince of Wales Island, or elsewhere, as in view of the Prudential Committee, Providence shall open by the most favorable door.”

By a later vote the salaries of the missionaries were established —$666.66 a year if married, $444.45 if unmarried, with an amount for outfitting equal to a year’s salary, and an additional appropriation for all the missionaries of three hundred dollars for books.

Elated, Adoniram rode back to Andover with Nott, “formal and solemn reprimand” already forgotten —so completely forgotten, in fact, that when he was reminded of it some years later he denied that it had ever been given. His memory of it, and of another he was to receive in about a month, was not to return until he was much older, wiser, and humbler.

But reproofs always rolled off him like water off a duck’s back. He had got what he wanted. Now there remained only the actual preparations for departure, the raising of money, and the finding of a ship.