The First Convert (1818 - 1819)

C H A P T E R V I I I

The First Convert

[ 1818—1819 ]

ITH Adoniram’s return, the mission’s troubles seemed to fade away. The war scare died. The cholera epidemic slowly passed. Even the Portuguese priests ——a number of whom had been sent down to Rangoon from Ava ——were allowed to stay. This last was the result of the viceroy’s personal mediation with the emperor, which he made more effective with large presents to his ruler.

The order of banishment still stood on the books, but Adoniram hoped it would be removed in time. He was nOt overly fond of the priests; but if Catholics could be banished, so could Baptists ——“and banishment, as the Burmans tell us, is no small thing—being attended with confiscation of all property, and such various abuses, as would make us deem ourselves happy to escape with our lives.”

In spite of Adoniram’s return and the improved outlook for the mission, however, Hough remained firm in his determination to remove to Calcutta. As the weeks dragged on and the ship was still not ready for sea, Adoniram tried to persuade him to stay. But Hough had had enough of Burma. The only way he could make himself useful to the mission was as a printer, and he could print Adoniram’s manuscripts just as well in Calcutta as in Rangoon, and with more peace of mind.

However, the Houghs were still living in the mission house in the middle of September when two new missionaries arrived, Edward M. Wheelock and James Colman, each with his 'wife. Adoniram and Hough met them at the dock. And to the delighted Burmans, who collected in a huge crowd to watch, the sight of four new foreigners—two of them women! ——in addition to the four they already knew, was something to remember.

To Adoniram, now thirty, and even more to the still older Hough, the new missionaries must have seemed incredibly youthful. Both were in their early twenties; both frail, intense and visionary. Wheelock, in fact, was only twenty-two and his wife Eliza twenty. He had been eighteen when, in 1814, stirred by Adoniram’s example, he had decided on a missionary career.

The mission house had only six living rooms and a hall which was used as a chapel and meeting place. It was badly overcrowded now by the eight adults and three children—the Houghs’ two and Emily Van Someren—but everyone accepted the situation with good nature.

Adoniram helped the newcomers through the usual searching customs examination, which took the better part of a week, and continued their induction into Burmese life by introducing the two men to the viceroy. The viceroy was unusually affable to the new missionaries squatting shoeless on a mat opposite him in the government house. Noticing their discomfort as they tried to imitate the Burmese manner of sitting with crossed legs, he even said to Adoniram, “Let them sit comfortable.”

Part of his affability may have been due to the present the missionaries had brought for him—a small chest of carpenter’s tools which Wheelock and Colman had bought in Calcutta for the use of the mission. Nothing like it had ever been seen in Rangoon; and Adoniram, knowing the viceroy would never be satisfied until he owned it, had decided the mission had better give it to him. When the heavy chest was placed before him he even deigned to arise from his cushion, open it himself, and examine the tools one by oneu—which he admired so much that he even called in one of his own carpenters to see the tools that white men used. With the interview off to this good start, Adoniram now told him that the new teachers had brought their women and wished to take shelter beneath his glory. “Let them stay, let them stay,” the viceroy agreed. “And let your wife bring their wives so that I may see them all.”

In a few days the two young men secured teachers and buckled down to learn the language while their wives, under Nancy’s tutelage, began learning how to manage a Burmese household. In the years Nancy had been in Rangoon she had learned how to repro-

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T H E F I R S T C O N V E R T

duce several New England foods. She churned a rather inferior kind of butter from the poor Burmese milk, and had discovered that the sour fruit of the trees growing in the mission garden made good tarts and preserves. Flour was more of a problem. Along with sugar and tea it had to be ordered from Bengal, but Ava wheat was even better, when it could be procured. If neither was available, which was usually the case, Nancy had learned to use pounded rice mixed with plantains, a banana-like fruit. But for the most part, the mission diet was what it had been in 1814—curried fowl, rice, and vegetables. Eliza Wheelock, perhaps privately a little shocked, but disposed to be charitable in the maturity of her twenty years, noted that “a EurOpean, favoured with health and a good appetite, could, I think, live almost entirely upon the productions of the country.”

Unfortunately, good health was just what Wheelock and Colman lacked. They had no more than settled down to their studies when both began to cough blood and show the dreaded signs of tuberculosis. Within a few days they had to give up studying and take to their beds. It began to look ominously as if the newcomers were fated to accomplish no more than disrupting the work of the mission until they found their graves.

The Houghs finally departed for Calcutta the first of November, taking the press and types with them, and it became possible to reassign the living space in the mission house. The Colmans, the Wheelocks and the Judsons each could take two rooms, one for sleeping, one for study or parlor.

The house had been designed for only two families, and as a consequence the Wheelocks’ two rooms, in the middle of the building, were unconnected with each other, a circumstance which Mrs. Wheelock did not neglect to point out in a letter to the wife of Dr. Baldwin of the Second Church in Boston, secretary of the mission board — although she carefully added, “But we do not feel a disposition to murmur. 0 no! These two rooms in Rangoon are far more preferable to us than the most convenient and elegant edifice in America.”

Adoniram and Nancy had innocently believed the Wheelocks lucky to be “in the coolest and drieSt part of the house”; but the fact was, Eliza Wheelock had begun to conceive a dislike for Adoniram and Nancy which was to grow more intense as time went on. Her idealized conceptions of danger and hardship had not been fulfilled, whereas the real danger, even the probability, that her husband would die of tuberculosis, was so menacing that she could not admit it to anyone, herself least, if with her twenty years she could even grasp it. The hardships, equally unexpected, were twofold: firSt the dull, laborious routine of caring for Wheelock in such inconvenient quarters; second, and greater, acceptance of the fact that she was not considered a heroine but merely another worker in the mission, necessarily subordinate to the older and infinitely more experienced Adoniram and Nancy.

Within a few months Colman grew better. By the beginning of 1819 he had nearly recovered his health; but Wheelock was worse and grew more feeble and emaciated every day. Adoniram and Nancy told Mrs. Wheelock that they feared her husband’s illness could have only one outcome. She refused to believe them; their warning merely angered her. She already resented what seemed to her their dictatorial way of running the mission, and she reacted by making demands for foods, comforts and services which could not be supplied in Rangoon, let alone the mission.

It could well have been true that Adoniram and Nancy ran things with a high hand. The story of the “formal and solemn reprimand” administered Adoniram by Dr. Spring in late 1811 was still circulating in New England, with the embellishment that Adoniram had changed from CongregationaIiSt to Baptist irt Calcutta for revenge; and this very spring Adoniram had written a le/fter home denying that any reprimand had ever been given him—a denial which he retracted many years later with the admission that he had hardly noticed the reprimand because of his intense desire to have the American Board send him abroad. As for Nancy, from childhood she had been famous for her persistence and ingenuity in getting her own way.

Two such determined people, comparing their nearly six years in Burma with the newcomers’ few months, were probably often a good deal less than tactful in reaching decisions concerning the mission. Hough had felt something of the sort, and it may have played a part in his removal to Calcutta. Eliza \Wheelock resented it, and rebelled. But the Colmans, man and wife, understood and accepted it.

The work of the mission had been nearly at a standstill while bOth Wheelock and Colman lay ill. Now as Colman recovered Adoniram felt free to go ahead with his plan for preaching in some place where he could attract more attention than in the secluded mission house.

He had thought of a zayat before. Now he decided to build one, even though the mission could hardly afford the two hundred dollars or so it would cost, partly because he found himself able to buy cheaply a piece of property behind the mission garden which fronted on “Pagoda Road,” some thirty or forty rods distant.

Pagoda Road was the main thoroughfare from the city to the Shwe Dagon pagoda. It will be remembered that it was literally lined with smaller pagodas, their bells tinkling day and night in dissonant chorus; many people lived along the road, and numerous worshipers passed along it every day. On the Burmese Sabbath, which came four times every month—at the change, the quarters, and the full of the moon —— thousands thronged along it on their way to the Shwe Dagon, where they knelt prayerfully for hours with lowered heads, holding flowers or lighted tapers between extended palms. At the annual festivals, the thousands swelled to tens of thousands.

There were many zayats along Pagoda Road, some small, some large with roof over roof. They were really shelters where travelers could rest, men gather to talk or listen, and Buddhist lay teachers teach. They served a different purpose from the pagodas, which were special places for the saffron-robed priests, who left them only to carry their begging bowls through the streets. The zayats were reserved for the laity. The priests came there to teach and preach only on special occasions.

Adoniram and Nancy spent all their free time for a month superintending their zayat’s construction. By the beginning of April the wide porch in front and the steps leading up to it were the only parts not complete.

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It was a small hutlike building not quite thirty feet long and twenty feet wide, and the front ten feet of the length consisted of the thatched bamboo porch where Adoniram planned to sit and exhort passers-by. The enclosed part was one room made of whitewashed boards with a large glassless window in each wall where the men could study and public worship could be held. Behind was a sort of entryway opening into the mission garden, where the women could study. Like all the buildings in Burma, it stood on posts about four feet above the ground.

As Adoniram and Nancy surveyed their Baptist zayat they had to admit it could not compare with the gorgeous Buddhist ones up and down the street, with their many roofs up-tilted at the gables, but they were proud of it. At last they had “a Christian meeting house, the first erected in this land of atheists.” They decided to begin using it immediately, without waiting for the porch to be finished.

Adoniram held his first service there on Sunday, April 4, 1819. His congregation consisted principally of about fifteen adults whom he had been able to collect in the neighborhood. The service was also attended by numerous uninvited children, richly decked with necklaces, bracelets and anklets, but Otherwise in their state of customary nudity. Very few of his audience had ever attended any kind of religious service, and they occupied themselves looking around, commenting loudly on the construction and appearance of the zayat, and discussing the manners and dress of the English teacher and each other. Afterwards Adoniram congratulated himself on having held their attention at least part of the time. A few days later he and Nancy went to a Buddhist service in a neighboring zayat to see what they could learn about Burmese congregations. Everything was as different as could be. The worshipers were seated on mats spread on the floor, the men on one side, the women on the other. When Adoniram and Nancy entered, some of the people said, “There come some wild foreigners.” But when they sat down quietly and took off their shoes, they said, “No, they are not wild; they are civilized.” And a few, who recognized Adoniram, added, “It is the English teacher.” The preacher was seated in the center of the room on a low stand a little more than a foor high. He welcomed them... “but on learning that I was a missionary, or, in their idiom, a religion-making teacher, his countenance fell, and he said no more.”

The people now being convened, one appointed for the purpose called three times for silence and attention. Each one then took the flowers and leaves which had been previously distributed, and placing them between his fingers, raised them to his head, and in that respectful posture remained motionless until the service closed. This ceremony we of course declined.

When all things were properly adjusted, the preacher closed his eyes, and commenced the exercise, which consisted in repeating a portion from their sacred writings. His subject was the conversion of the two prime disciples of Gaudama, and their subsequent promotion and glory. His oratory I found to be entirely different from what we call oratory. At first he seems dull and monotonous; but presently his soft, mellifiuous tones will their way into the heart, and lull the soul into that state of calmness and serenity which somewhat resembles the boasted perfection of their saints of old. His discourse continues about half an hour; and, at the close, the whole assembly burSt out into a short prayer, after which all rose and retired. Adoniram and Nancy, putting on their shoes and returning to the mission house, had to admit the Buddhist service had a decorum and even a beauty they had not achieved in their own zayat.

The next Sunday Adoniram tried again. More people came than the week before and they behaved with more order; but it seemed impossible to get their attention and hold it. Afterwards he confessed, “I never felt so deeply the immense difficulty of making a first impression on a heathen people.”

Nevertheless, his audience grew slowly. Toward the end of the month, when the stairs leading from Pagoda Road were finished, he took to sitting on the porch every day and hailing passers with a “Ho! Everyone that thirsteth for knowledge!”

Soon the zayat had such a stream of visitors that Adoniram had no time for study. Some were openly, even virulently, hostile. The majority were half curious, half indifferent. But within a week a visitor came who aroused Adoniram’s highest hOpes.

The important visitor had walked in off the street one Friday, the last day of April, and for several hours had sat silently on the zayat veranda listening to Adoniram debate with various inquirers. His name was Maung Nau.1 He was about thirty-five years old, poor, without family, a man who had to work hard for a living. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance or manner, and he seemed to have no Special abilities. That first Friday Adoniram would scarcely have noticed him except for his attentiveness and for the fact that he was unusually reticent for a Burman.

Saturday he came again. This time he hesitantly asked a few questions. I-Iis manner was that of one sincerely looking for information, not leading the teacher on into one of those hair-splitting metaphysical arguments the Burmese men enjoyed so much.

Sunday he attended service, which was attended by about thirty peOple. By now Adoniram had come to think of him as “the quiet and modest Maung Nau.” Maung Nau really listened. Of the others, Adoniram thought, “Very few paid much attention, or probably received any benefit.”

Monday and Tuesday Maung Nau visited Adoniram several times and Adoniram realized that the man had “a teachable and humble spirit.”

By Wednesday, the fifth of May, 1819, Adoniram was a1m05t afraid to record the conclusion to which he was coming:

I begin to think that the Grace of God has reached his heart. He expressed sentiments of repentence for his sins, and faith in the Saviour. The substance of his profession is, that from the darknesses, and uncleannesses, and sins of his whole life, he has found no other Saviour but Jesus Christ; nowhere else can he look for salvation; and therefore he proposes to adhere to Christ, and worship him all his life long.

It seems almost too much to believe that God has begun to manifest his grace to the Burmans; but this day I could not resist the delightful conviction that this is really the case. PRAISE AND GLORY BE TO HIS NAME FOREVERMORE. Amen.

It was really happening. After six years, day by day Maung Nau grew in grace. At the next Sunday’s worship in the zayat he openly

1 Mazmg (or “Moung,” as Adoniram often spelled it) is really a sort of title for “boy," or expresses the idea of “young.” professed himself a believer in Christ in the presence of at least thirty people.

Maung Nau worked for a timber merchant. Monday he had to leave on a trip for timber—probably teak, much prized for shipbuilding, which grew upriver, but he told Adoniram he hoped he could be baptized when he returned.

By now all the missionaries and their wives were excitedly talking about Maung Nau. Even Wheelock, so low that it was obvious to everyone but Eliza Wheelock that he could not live many months, was interested. Nancy Spent hours by his bed telling him all the details of the conversion of the first Burman, much to the annoyance of Eliza, who was beginning to cherish an irrational suspicion that the Judsons had some evil intention toward her husband.

No one had expected to see Maung Nau for several weeks, but he showed up in a few days. He had discovered the timber merchant to be untrustworthy, thrown up his job and abandoned the trip. He was not out of work long. The next week he was offered a job in Ava with a boat owner. Ava was several hundred miles up the river. If he took the job he would not see the missionaries for a long time, perhaps a year. He asked Adoniram what he should do. He did not want to go to Ava, but he had to have work.

The missionaries did not want him to go either, not while he was in his present interesting situation. If he were away for several months, there was no telling what might happen to his new convic—tion. On the other hand, they did not like to tell him to stay. After discussing the matter with Nancy and the Colmans, Adoniram finally invited Maung Nau to stay at the mission with the missionaries. They would pay him ten ticals a month for making himself useful copying pamphlets, which they had no way of getting printed now that Hough was gone. When Maung Nau accepted, the missionaries heaved a sigh of relief. They were positive that a few days in the mission would make him fit for baptism.

They did. On the sixth of June, a Sunday, only a little more than a month after first appearing at the zayat, Maung Nau bashfully presented Adoniram with a letter. That evening, after communion, all the missionaries but the dying Wheelock assembled to listen to it. Adoniram translated it, aloud:

I, Maung Nau, the constant recipient of your excellent favor, approach your feet. Whereas my lords three have come to the country of Burmah, not for the purpose of trade, but to preach the religion of Jesus Christ, the Son of the eternal God, I, having heard and understood, am, with a joyful mind, filled With love.

I believe that the Divine Son, Jesus Christ, suffered death, in the place of men, to atone for their sins. Like a heavy laden man, I feel my sins are very many. The punishment of my sins I deserve to suffer. Since it is so, do you, Sirs, consider, that 1, taking refuge in the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ, and receiving baptism, in order to become his disciple, shall dwell with yourselves, a band of brothers, in the happiness of heaven, and grant me the ordinance of baptism. It is through the grace of Christ that you, Sirs, have come by ship from one country and continent to another, and that we have met together. I pray my lords three that a suitable day may be appointed, and that I may receive the ordinance of baptism.

As it is only since I have met with you, Sirs, that I have known about the eternal God, I venture to pray that you will still unfold to me the religion of God, that my old disposition may be destroyed, and my new disposition improved.

No one in the mission doubted that Maung Nau had experienced the grace of God, and it was agreed that he should be baptized the following Sunday, after which he would be received into church fellowship. The “church” had consisted of six members—the two Judsons, the two Colmans and the two Wheelocks. Now it would number seven, but in the eyes of the other members the seventh was the most important. For the seventh would be the first Burman ever to become a Baptist.

As it happened, however, Maung Nau’s baptism had to be deferred for three weeks. The cause was a crisis of state, the greatest in Burma in a generation.

From the mission’s humble point of view the first omen appeared a few weeks after Maung Nau began attending the zayat. It took the form of a demand on the missionaries to pay a special head tax of forty-eight ticals of pure silver—about thirty dollars—for the servants in the household. Inquiring, Adoniram learned that it was a new tax being levied throughout the empire. Adoniram and Nancy went to the Viceroy about it. He replied “that it was an extraordinary tax, and must be paid; but that we might be excused from paying it to the proper officer, and have the privilege of paying it to himself! We were, therefore, obliged to produce the money.”

At the same time, attendance at the zayat suddenly fell off to nearly nothing — a result, surmised Adoniram, of distress at the tax. He was mistaken. It was a second omen of something far more serious.

A week later a parcel of letters and a box arrived for the missionaries from Bengal. It was no sooner out of the ship and on shore than the mission “received peremptory orders from the collector of the district to pay four hundred and fifty ticals of pure silver.” This was about three hundred dollars, more than the zayat and its land had c05t. To Adoniram and Nancy it looked like another attempt at extortion. But they were in a dilemma. Everything indicated that the demand came by the authority of the Viceroy. He had insisted they pay the head tax a few days before. He had not been long in office and they did not know him well. How could they refuse? If they paid, there would be other demands and the mission would be unable to afford to stay in Rangoon. Such a big tax would make it worth while to go to Ava and protest to the emperor—but the Viceroy would certainly deny Adoniram permission to make the trip.

There were two Englishmen in Rangoon who for reasons of their own had found it advisable long ago to leave India, become Burmese subjects, and enter the service of the emperor. One was named Rodgers, the other Gibson. Adoniram determined to appeal to them for help.

But with Rodgers, who had been in Burma nearly forty years, he got nowhere. That Englishman had spent years intriguing in court circles at Ava against a Spaniard named Lanciego, for the lucrative collectorship of Rangoon. In 1782 Rodgers had attacked the first mate of a ship on which he was fourth mate with a loaded cane — known in the East as a “Penang lawyer” —and left him for dead. He had fled the East India Company’s territory and, after a year of wandering through Arakan, had made his way to Rangoon. He had married a Burman woman of Portuguese descent and had a child. Now, in spite of his Yorkshire accent, bright blue eyes, and tall European stature, he considered himself Burman, dressed in Burman fashion, and even trimmed his long gray beard in the Burmese style, thinned to one long tuft straggling goatlike from his chin. Taking up the case of the mission would not help him secure the collectorship, and therefore Adoniram’s pleas had no effect on him.

Gibson, the other Englishman, although cool at first, was more friendly, and, thought Adoniram, more to be trusted. Gibson finally agreed to intercede with the viceroy, and the affair turned out as might have been expected. An underling of the Raywoon, who was second in command to the viceroy, had merely thought he saw a chance to make some easy money. The underling was reprimanded and the “tax” forgotten.

But the episode was disquieting. Apparently something mysterious was going on at Ava which was emboldening officials to make extortionary attempts, unusual even for Burma. A little later the mission was called on for still anOther tax, this one for fifteen ticals, which they finally escaped by paying half. Minor officials now visited the mission nearly every day with one kind of demand or another.

Slowly Adoniram became aware that all Rangoon was in an unprecedented state of confusion which had a curious undernOte of apprehension. Shortly after Maung Nau presented his petition to be baptized, they learned the viceroy was preparing to leave for Ava. An immense multitude of boats was being collected just above the city to accommodate his huge retinue; evidently the viceroy’s trip was to be made in the greatest pomp and state. This must be the reason for the confusion in Rangoon, thought Adoniram. At any rate, he decided it would be best to delay Maung Nau’s baptism until things quieted down.

Late in June the viceroy left Rangoon to join the fleet of river boats. By now the city was “in the utmost anxiety and alarm,” and the rumors about its cause had finally reached Adoniram.

Order after order has reached our viceroy to hasten his return to Ava, with all the troops under arms. Great news are whispered. Some say there is a rebellion; some say the king is sick, some that he is dead. But none dare say this plainly. It would be a crime of the first magnitude; for the “lord of land and water” is called immortal. The eldest son of his eldest son (his father being dead) has long been declared the heir of the crown; but he has two very powerful uncles, who it is supposed, will contest his right; and in all probability the whole country will soon be a scene of anarchy and civil war. The next day Adoniram neglected the zayat and was “out all morning, listening for news, uncertain whether a day or an hour will nor plunge us into the greateSt diStress.”

The whole place is sitting in sullen silence, expecting an explosion. About 10 o’clock, a royal dispatch-boat pulls up to the shore. An imperial mandate is produced. The crowds make way for the sacred messengers, and follow them to the high court, where the authorities of the place are assembled.

Listen ye: The immortal king, wearied, it would seem, with the fatigues of royalty, has gone up to amuse himself in the cele5tial regions. His grandson, the heir-apparent, is seated on the throne. The young monarch enjoins on all to remain quiet, and wait his imperial orders.

It appears that the Prince of Toung 00, one of his uncles, has been executed, with his family and adherents, and the Prince of Pyee placed in confinement. There has probably been bloody work; but it seems, from what has transpired, that the business has been settled so expeditiously that the distant provinces will not feel the shock.

There had been bloody work indeed; but it was over and old King Bodawpaya dead two weeks before Adoniram heard of it. The new king’s firSt act, according to the stories which later seeped into Bengal, was to have his brother, his brother’s children, his brother’s grandchildren and the re5t of his brother’s family sewn up in red sacks, as befitted royalty, and drowned. His uncle was Strangled after his bones were crushed on the rack. One of the prime miniSters, governor of the Western Provinces, met the same fate. Their property was confiscated and devoted to the support of the army.

Altogether, it was believed, some fourteen hundred members of the upper classes were put to death and some ten to fifteen thousand commoners. In this manner were newly ascended emperors of Burma in the habit of making certain that their reigns would be long, peaceful and serene.

The new ruler was named Bagyidaw. It was in the fourth week of his reign, on Sunday, June 27, 1819, that Maung Nau was baptized.

In the zayat, before the little congregation—there were several new faces this day, and it numbered somewhat more than thirty—Adoniram called Maung Nau before him, “read and commented on an appropriate portion of Scripture, asked him several questions concerning his faith, hope and love, and made the baptismal prayer.”

The whole party then left the zayat and proceeded to a large pond nearby, on the bank of which stood a huge statue of Buddha. Here, with the Buddha benignly looking down on the scene, Adoniram led Maung Nau waist-deep into the dark water, immersed him, and received him into the Baptist faith, while a wondering crowd of gaily clad Burmans watched from the hill above.

One baptism was not much to show for six years of work. But as Adoniram and Maung Nau returned dripping to the mission house, followed by Nancy, the Colmans, and the rest of the company, he hoped: “0, may it prove the beginning of a series of baptisms in the Burman empire which shall continue in uninterrupted succession to the end of time!”