The Hermitage; Give Us a Writing (1828 - 1831)

C H A P T E R I I

The Hermitage; Give Us a Writing

[ 1828—1831 ]

ARLY in 1828 the missionaries decided to spread out from Moulmein, and in late March the Boardmans moved to Tavoy, one hundred and fifty miles or so south of Amherst down the Tenasserim coast. At this time Boardman was 27. A native of Maine, he had been graduated in 1822 from what is now Colby College, then “The Maine Literary and Theological Institute.” Inspired by Colman’s death that year he had chosen a missionary career, and studied at Andover, many of whose 150 students were now preparing to become missionaries. More than six feet tall, thin, lightcomplexioned, he was unlike Adoniram in appearance. But in drive, intellectual brilliance, flair for languages, and charm the two men had much in common.

As Colman’s death had influenced Boardman’s choice of career, so it had been reSponsible for his meeting his wife Sarah, who in her own way was as remarkable and well suited to him as Nancy had been to Adoniram.

Sarah, now 24, had been born to Ralph and Abiah Hall on November 3, 1803, in Alstead, New Hampshire, but the family had moved to Salem when she was a little girl. She was the eldest of thirteen children, and much of the care of her younger brothers and sisters had fallen on her shoulders. Nevertheless, by putting every spare minute into study, she taught herself almost single-handed rhetoric, logic, geometry and Latin, and even acquired a good grounding in theology. Even in her childhood she kept a journal and by her teens she was writing articles and verse for religious papers.

Colman’s death had affected her much as it had Boardman and a poem by her about him had appeared in one of these papers. Boardman, deeply impressed by it, had tracked down its author. When he discovered she was a stunningly beautiful eighteen-year-old blue-eyed girl with light brown hair, shy but gracious, who taught school, took the lead in church activities and had considered missions for herself, the outcome was inevitable. They were engaged within a few months, and were married in the First Baptist Church of Salem on Sunday, July 3, I825, a few weeks before their departure for India.

Sarah’s poem about Colman had also resulted in her meeting Nancy, when on her American visit Nancy had addressed a Salem missionary gathering. It was already known that Sarah would some day join the Judsons, and when at the end of the meeting some well—meaning person proposed that Sarah should read her poem to Nancy, who had actually known Colman, the audience welcomed the suggestion with enthusiasm. Blushing and trembling, the protesting Sarah was all but dragged before what were to her the awe-inspiring dignitaries, and a copy of the poem forced into her unwilling hands. She got through it somehow, but it was not an experience she ever recalled with much pleasure.

The Boardmans had waited out the Anglo-Burmese War at Chittapore, near Calcutta, with the Wades and Colman’s widow. With their help and that of a native Burman teacher they soon acquired a remarkably good knowledge of the Burmese language. They had proved themselves as pioneers at Moulmein, which was a most dangerous post in its early days, infested with robbers from Martaban, across the Salween, and with cobras, tigers and leopards from the jungles and hills above the cleared patches along the river.

One morning at Moulmein, for instance, they were awakened by a before-dawn sound to discover that robbers had cut into their bamboo hut, ransacked their trunks and boxes, and gone off with Boardman’s watch, a mirror, the silver spoons, and even their keys. Even more unnerving, a long slash directly above their heads had been made in the mosquito net around their beds. Evidently the visitors had looked in and considered whether to slit their throats before thinking better of it. Another day, a guard assigned to their house by Sir Archibald Campbell had been mauled—fortunately not seriously—by a wild beast on their very veranda.

With them to Tavoy the Boardmans took a Siamese Christian, four of their schoolboys and a 50-year-old convert, as yet unbaptized, who was to prove one of the most famous apostles to his own people, and become an almost legendary figure.

This man, Ko1 Tha Byu by name, belonged to a wild jungle nation who lived in the mountains of lower Burma. Adoniram and Nancy had seen small parties of them straggling past the mission house even in their earliest days in Rangoon and had been told “that they were called Karens; that they were more numerous than any similar tribe in the vicinity; and as untamable as the wild cow of the mountains; [and]... that they shrunk from association with other men, seldom entering a town, except on compulsion.”

Ko Tha Byu had been a “wicked and ungovernable boy” who had left home at the age of fifteen, become a robber and murderer, and by his own estimate been involved in at least thirty murders. After the war he had entered Hough’s service at Rangoon. Leaving Hough, he fell into trouble and was up for sale as a slave for debt when Shway-bay came across him, bought him, and took him as a servant. But he had an uncontrollable temper and Shway-bay had been glad to turn him over to Adoniram for the debt. Slowly Adoniram had made an impression on K0 Tha Byu. He learned to read the Burmese Testament. His entire personality changed. Eventually he became a Christian, and, his immense energies focused in this new direction, became the virtual father of Karen Christianity.

It was no wonder that the Boardmans, sensing his ability, took him along with them to a region abounding in Karens. It was no wonder that the Boardmans were the natural choice for the Tavoy mission. And it was no wonder that Adoniram should miss them.

Although the Boardmans’ departure—particularly that of Sarah and her daughter, who must have reminded him of Nancy and his own little Maria—may have intensified Adoniram’s melancholy, it was not responsible for the development of his underlying feelings of guilt or self-blame, or his apparently only partly conscious conclusion that he had been punished, and deserved further punishment, for his self-love and self-serving motives of ambition in performing the otherwise good work of bringing the Gospel to the Burmese. At any rate, these inner feelings continued to deepen

1 “K0” is a title applied to mature men, just as “Maung” is applied to younger mcn. throughout all of the year 1828, and with them came all kinds of attempts to make atonement through what looks from this distance of years remarkably like self-punishment.

Securing the testimony of the Burman converts and Dr. Richardson about the details of Nancy’s death had been Adoniram’s first action in trying to assuage these feelings. Now, as he restudied the “quietism” of Madame Guyon, long a favorite of his since even before the Death Prison days, he came further under her influence and the mysticism of Thomas a Kempis, Fénelon and other writers, mostly of a distinctly un-Baptist sort, who expounded almost abject humility, solitary asceticism, and variously disguised forms of selfmortification.

Even before the Boardmans left for Tavoy he began by dropping his Old Testament translation —— a labor of love —— after doing thirty of the Psalms, and spending his days in one of the most hateful environments he could think of, a zayat “in a little shed, projecting into one of the dirtiest, noisiest public streets, in Moulmein.” Wade occupied a somewhat similar zayat in another part of the city.

Little by little he continued cutting himself off from the world and divesting himself of anything that might conceivably support his pride or promote his pleasure.

Sir Archibald Campbell and other British officials had been in the habit of inviting him for dinners, which he keenly enjoyed; now he told them he would no longer dine out of the mission. He had received letters of commendation and praise from them which he valued highly; these he destroyed. In 182 3, Brown, his alma mater, had conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity; this he renounced in a letter to the American Baptist Magazine.

But these privations were of no more permanent help than a tiny dose of a drug is to one who is becoming an addict. He tried bigger doses.

When he left the United States he had brought with him a fairsized amount of money, some of it earnings, some of it gifts from relatives and friends. Over the years this had grown at interest to some twelve thousand rupees, about six thousand dollars. He gave it ——all his private wealth—to the Baptist Board. A little later, along with Wade, he offered to give up one twentieth of his missionary salary to support missions, plus another twentieth if a hundred Baptist ministers in America would do the same. Later, he asked that his salary be reduced by an additional one quarter.

But he still was not satisfied. Toward the end of October he built a little but, which he dubbed “the Hermitage,” in the jungle some distance from the Moulmein mission house—itself no very safe location, as the Boardmans had discovered. He moved into the hut on October 24, 1828, the second anniversary of Nancy’s death, and from it that night wrote to Mary and Abigail Hasseltine in Bradford:

It proves a stormy evening, and the desolation around me accords with the desolate state of my own mind, where grief for the dear departed combines with sorrow for present sin, and my tears flow at the same time over the forsaken grave of my dear love and over the loathsome sepulchre of my own heart.

Nancy’s grave... his own heart a “loathsome sepulchre.” There was some mysterious equation in thought between Nancy in the grave with her body moldering, and his own inner corruption—his soul moldering, with his own eventual destination, his body too undergoing dissolution—bis, Adoniram Judson’s, in physical person neatest and cleanest of men. He was obsessed with such thoughts. Try as he would, he could not free himself from them, and from his feelings of guilt and self-disgust. Presently he concluded that it was a mistake to try. Perhaps he should immerse himself in them until he could accept them with resignation.

So he had a grave dug near the Hermitage and for days sat beside it, deliberately considering the stages of the body’s decay in all its gruesome detail, in hopes that he might thus rise above fleshly considerations and through solitary reflection bring himself close to some intimation of Divinity. He apparently had in mind the Abbé de Paris, who “after having tried various modes of self—denial, in order to subdue his spirit, and gain the victory over the world, at length selected a crazy man to be the inmate of his miserable hut.”

But this grave-watching period did not last long, for in addition to his doubts about such self-inflicted austerities some remaining sense of the ridiculous must have come to his rescue. After all, the grave was not a real grave. There was no more sense in sitting beside it, staring into it, than in sitting beside and staring into any other excavation.

Nevertheless, solitude and self-denial — less obvious forms of selfpunishment — still held their attractions, as became clear when early in 1829 he began writing in a mood far more mystical than his original orthodoxy, in some ways even faintly resembling the New England Transcendentalism Emerson was to enunciate in another decade or so. For example, when Sir Archibald Campbell left Moulmein Adoniram wrote him a letter of warning about his soul:

True religion is seldom to be found among mitred prelates and high dignitaries. It consists not in attachment to any particular church, nor in the observance of any particular forms of worship.... True religion consists in a reunion of the soul to that great, omnipresent, infinite Being, from whom we have all become alienated, in consequence of the Fall.

He developed some aspects of his thoughts further in a tract, called The Tbreefold Cord, which he wrote primarily for the guidance of repentant Burmans. The three cords if graSped with “the hand of faith” would draw the convert infallibly to heaven.

The first cord was secret prayer.

The second cord—to which he gave the most space—was Self-denial:

Self-love, or the desire of self-gratification in the enjoyment of the riches, the honors, and the pleasures of this world, is the ruling principle of fallen man.... And the way to dispossess self-love is to cease indulging it; to regard and treat self as an enemy, a vicious animal, for instance, whose propensities are to be thwarted, whose indulgences are to be curtailed, as far as can be done consistently with his utmost service-ableness.... Adopt a course of daily, habitual self-denial... fast often; keep thy body under.... Cease adorning thy person.... Occupy a poor habitation; suffer inconveniences, yea, prefer them ever to slothful ease and carnal indulgence. Allow no amusements.... Get rid of the encumbrance of worldly property.... “Not only be content, but desirous, to be unknown, or being known, to be condemned and despised of all men, yet without any faults or deservings, as much as thou canst.” Finally, renounce all terms with this world, which lieth in the arms of the wicked one.

This way of life would lead to God’s graciousness and was a way of following in the steps of Jesus as He bore the Cross.

The third cord was that of doing good, which strengthened the “principle of holy benevolence.”

How literally Adoniram took this principle of self-denial and cutting off all ties with the world he loved, we have already seen. And he went farther with it. Soon he wrote Abigail at Plymouth to destroy all his old letters, even those to her and their mother, except three or four recent ones “which you may wish to keep as mementoes.” And he enforced his demand by making it a condition of signing a quitclaim against his father’s estate: “.. I am so very desirous of effecting a complete destruction of all my old writings, that you must allow me to say positively (as the only means of bringing you to terms) that I cannot send you the instrument you desire until I have”an assurance, under your hand, that there is nothing remaining, except as mentioned above.”

Self-denial. Seclusion. No matter how far he carried it, self-denial failed to bring him the spiritual peace he sought; perhaps deeper seclusion might help. After all, although he lived alone in the Hermitage, his days had always been at least partly occupied with exhortations in Moulmein, writing and translating. At some time during this period of melancholy he decided to drop all these activities for a while and try solitary meditation. So, his Bible under his arm, he went over the hills behind Moulmein, deep into the tigerinfested jungle, until he found a place that suited him near a longabandoned, moss-overgrown pagoda. Here he began spending his days reading, reflecting, praying. Each evening he returned to the Hermitage.

He thought he was completely alone in his wilderness; but he was not, for at first he was secretly followed and watched by K0 Dwah, devoted deacon of the little native church. K0 Dwah even braved the jungle’s dangers one evening after Adoniram had returned to the Hermitage to make a “rude bamboo seat” and weave some branches into a canopy. Next morning Adoniram found the shelter, but he never knew who placed it there.

The forty days Adoniram spent in this solitary meditation by the old pagoda, his entire diet nothing but a little rice, probably marked the extreme in his search for some sign that God had forgiven him. It failed. As he wrote on October 24, 1829, the third anniversary of Nancy’s death, to Abigail and Mary Hasseltine: “Have either of you learned the art of real communion with God, and can you teach me the first principles? God is to me the Great Unknown. I believe in him, but I find him not.”

But at least by this time he was becoming resigned. The paralyzing melancholy was slowly lifting. He was beginning to resume some of his activities. The Hermitage had been moved a little nearer to the mission house, so that he was within sound of a bell that called him to meals when he felt like eating with the missionaries. At other times, Mrs. Wade sent him food.

Thus he was able to bear up better, and even find some consolation, when he learned in mid-December of 1829 that Elnathan had died in Washington May 8, at the age of thirty-five. Long ago, when Adoniram and Elnathan had left Plymouth for Adoniram’s wedding and ordination, they had dismounted from their horses and knelt in the snow beside the road while Adoniram had prayed for Elnathan’s soul. So far as Adoniram knew, however, his brother had never experienced religion.

But now Dr. Sewall wrote:

A few hours before his death, and when he was so low as to be unable to converse or to move, he suddenly raised himself up, and clasping his hands, with an expression of joy in his countenance, cried “Peace, peace!” and then he sunk down without the power of utterance. About ten minutes before he expired, it was said to him, “If you feel the peace of God in your soul, open your eyes.” He opened his eyes, and soon after expired, and, as we believe, in the triumph of the faith. Of this, Adoniram wrote Abigail, “When I read this account, I went into my little room, and could only shed tears of joy.. .” 2

The turning point had been passed. All through the year 1830, Adoniram continued climbing out of the depths. Sadness still shadowed his spirit, but he was slowly concluding that neither solitary

2 Elnathan’s family did not long survive him. His daughter, Ann H. judson. died May 30, 1832, at the age of seven. His wife, Ellen Young Judson, dlcd November 25, 1832, aged thirty. reflection nor self-denial in and of themselves would bring him relieving happiness or a sense of communion with God. Instead, he was turning more and more to the third principle of The Threefold Cord, that of good works, of useful activity. Of course, he had never entirely ceased practicing good works, except during the forty days of meditation beside the old mossy pagoda, but neither since Nancy’s death had he thrown himself into them so completely as he began to now.

It was an encouraging time for missionary activities. Reinforcements were arriving, activity was increasing, conversions were being made steadily—~although success itself stirred up opposition, as when the mother of one of the girls in the mission school, on hearing that her daughter was ready to embrace Christianity, waylaid her, hit her on the head with an umbrella, and threatened to sell her as a slave. The mother of another, who had been baptized, ran one day into the schoolroom, dragged her daughter into the yard by the hair, and was arming herself with a stick of wood from the woodpile when Mrs. Wade intervened to save the girl’s life. A sixty-yearold man was driven out of his house by his wife and family after his baptism, and forced to take refuge with the missionaries. Some women were threatened by their husbands—a man tore a child from his wife’s breast and chased her with a knife. Curiously, he soon became interested in Christianity himself, and Adoniram eventually reported that he “has become a lamb.”

Adoniram himself was now a venerated figure among missionaries and Burmans alike. In fact, his forty days in the jungle were proof to the Burman Christians that a miracle had occurred. Everybody knew that tigers were bigger, stronger, fiercer and less reluctant to attack men than lions——- and if Daniel’s survival in the lions’ den, as recounted in the Bible, was a miracle, then the survival of the teacher Yoodthan in the tigerish jungle, which they had witnessed themselves, was far more miraculous.

In January of 1830 Mr. and Mrs. Cephas Bennett arrived at Moulmein with their two children. Bennett was a printer. Now tracts could be produced in quantity. Also, the Bennetts’ arrival freed the Wadcs, for an attempt to revive the mission in Rangoon.

Not long after the Wades’ departure, Sarah Boardman returned to Moulmein. Her health had been poor since the birth of her third child and second son, Judson Wade Boardman, and she had not recovered from the previous summer—when, together with her family, several hundred women and children and a few Europeans and Sepoy troops, she had undergone a siege by rebellious Tavoyans in a six-room wooden building on the Tavoy wharf until rescued by the ubiquitous steamer Diana. Her eldest child, Sarah Ann, had died just before the rebellion; her son George had been ill to the brink of death; and she and her husband had adopted the two sons of Dr. Price, who by now had died in Ava. It was not surprising that she needed rest and Moulmein’s medical care. Boardman remained behind, but he had been suffering from an ominous cough for months and was shortly to join Sarah in Moulmein.

Meanwhile, the Wades had written Adoniram that Rangoon offered encouraging prospects—would he join them? As soon as Adoniram learned that Boardman would presently be in Moulmein, so that with both the Boardmans and Bennetts on hand the Moulmein station would be amply served, he set out for Rangoon.

He arrived May 2, 1830, to find the Wades living in the center of the city, where they had a great many visitors and inquirers—some of them, thought Adoniram, most promising. The viceroy of Rangoon turned out to be an old acquaintance of Adoniram’s—an Atwinwun he had met on his first Visit to Ava with Price; this dignitary now invited Adoniram to stay under his protection. One of the Wades’ inquirers was another acquaintance, a man of rank and close friend of the old governor of the North Gate at Ava who had stood security for Adoniram at the war’s end to prevent his return to Oung-pen-la.

But Adoniram did not Stay long in Rangoon...

for every day deepens in me the conviction that I am not in the place where God would have me be. It was to the interior and not to Rangoon, that my mind was turned long before I left Maulmain; and while I feel that brother and siSter Wade are in the right place, I feel that I am called elsewhere. Under these impressions, I am about proceeding up the river, accompanied by Maung lng, Maung En, Maung Dway, Maung Dan... and Maung Like... The boat on which we embark will take us to Prome, the great half-way place between this and Ava, and there I hOpe and pray that the Lord will show us what to do.

This party left Rangoon on May 29, I830. The trip up river had almost the quality of a triumphal procession, so many Burmese wanted tracts. For instance, wrote Adoniram, only a dozen or so miles above Rangoon, “I went on shore, entered into conversation with several, and gave away a dozen of the old tracts; and it was amusing and gratifying to see the groups of boatmen, about sunset, employed in reading and listening to the truth; and some would be constantly coming to our boat for a tract. I could have given away a hundred to advantage.. .” At a village farther up, he gave away thirty and was sure he could have distributed two hundred.

By now Adoniram had learned a certain guile.

It is my way to produce a few tracts or catechisms, and after reading and talking a little, and getting the company to feel kindly, I offer one to the most attentive auditor present; and on showing some reluctance to give to every person, and on making them promise to read attentively, and consider, and pray, they get furious to obtain a tract, many hands are eagerly stretched out, and “Give me one, give me one,” resounds from all sides.

On the Irrawaddy, the missionaries were so badgered for traCts that late one evening the captain decided to push a little way out into the river so the party could get some rest, out of reach of inquirers.

However, it would not answer: for they came to the shore, and called out, “Teacher, are you asleep? We want a writing to get by heart.” And, on being promised one if they would come and get it, they contrived to push off a long canoe... and got so near that they could reach a paper stuck in the end of a long pole.... Once, during the evening, our captain went on shore and said that in almost every house there was some one at a lamp, reading aloud one of our papers. Everyone in Burma seemed to want to learn about the new Gospel. Sometimes after the missionaries’ boat had started up the river from a village, people would even put out in boats after it to secure tracts. Adoniram had to write for more tracts, and suggest the printing of another edition.

But towards Prome, the atmosphere began to change. Listeners were more inclined to raise objections. Fewer wanted tracts. In one village some of the townsmen even treated Adoniram “rather uncivilly.”

At Prome a European was living. He invited Adoniram to stay in his house and took him to the governor and deputy governor of the town. They heard Adoniram preach and read, “but seemed to be more taken with the sound than the sense.” When Adoniram tried to rent a house in Prome he found that the common people were afraid to deal with a foreigner. Major Burney was in Ava on a mission to the Golden Feet, and ever since his passage up the river the country had resounded with alarming rumors. Prome was already terrorized and debt-ridden from one war. Now the Burmese foresaw another, and even the face of a white man scared them. Adoniram could understand why people would be afraid to talk to him. But without conversations, how could there be conversions?

Being unable to rent a house, Adoniram decided to build one. He found an old zayat with some vacant land around it in the center of the city and petitioned for permission to buy it. After a few days of negotiation the deputy governor and magistrates agreed to let him have it. The zayat was a good-sized building, forty-five by twenty-five feet, the teak posts, roof and floor still in fair condition, but the whole was overgrown with wild creeping vines and made “a pretty venerable ruin.”

He moved in Saturday, June 26, 1830, with good hopes. If the population feared him, at least the officials were friendly. After worship the next morning with Maung Ing and Other disciples, he spent the rest of the day at the great San—dan (San Daw) pagoda, Prome’s equivalent of Rangoon’s golden-spired Shwe Dagon. It happened to be the Burmese day of worship and the pagoda was thronged. Adoniram and the disciples settled down in a zayat beside it, “and some heard with attention.”

But in less than a week he found himself under Government suspicion of being a Spy. Maung Ing returned from a nearby town to report the same suspicion spreading everywhere. People were afraid to liSten to missionaries, whether Burmese or white. By the next Sunday “All smiles and looks of welcome are turned away; people view me with an evil eye, and suffer their dogs to bark at me unchecked.” Still, he “found a vacant place under a shed built over a large brick idol” near the great pagoda. Here he sat on the ground and talked with a few small groups. “But it is really affecting to see a poor native when he first feels the pinch of truth. On one side he sees hell; on the other side, ridicule, reproach, confiscation of goods, ilnprisonment, and death.” At least, he discovered, the suspicions attracted attention. On the following Sunday, he seated himself as before “on a brick under the shed over the big idol.” Crowd after crowd came to hear. “Some became outrageously angry, and some listened with delight. ‘Some said, He is a good man; but others said, Nay, he deceiveth the people.’ ”

He was closely queStioned by the magistrates—not on religion, but on all his actions in Burma. The record was sent to Ava. The magistrates were ostentatiously neutral, but Adoniram foresaw the outcome. “At Ava I have been regarded as a suspicious character ever since I deserted them at the close of the war, and went over to the British.”

Meanwhile, he learned there was no doubt that Boardman had tuberculosis. Barring a miracle, he could not last long. Wade was planning to leave Rangoon for Moulmein. Adoniram began to wonder whether he should not return to Rangoon to take Wade’s place; but he finally decided to stay in Prome a little longer because he had noticed that although most of the spectators thronging around him in the zayat were hostile, there were always some “in distant corners” who listened attentively.

By September firSt, the disturbance Adoniram was Stirring up in Prome had been brought to the attention of Major Burney in Ava by the king’s ministers. Burney noted in his journal that they charged Adoniram with “abusing the Burmese religion, much to the annoyance of the king. I told them that Dr. Judson is now exclusively devoted to missionary pursuits; that I possess no power or authority over him, but that I know him to be a very pious and good man, and one not likely to injure the Burmese king or government in any manner.” Burney warned them tactfully that “the Burmese king and government have always enjoyed a high reputation among civilized nations for the toleration which they have shown to all religious faiths; that there are thousands in Europe and America, who would be much hurt and disappointed to hear of any change in the liberal policy hitherto observed by the King of Ava, and that I hoped the ministers would not think of molesting or injuring Dr. Judson, as such a proceeding would offend and displease good men of all nations.”

The minister replied that of course they would not hurt Adoniram -——that was why they had come to Major Burney. Could he not write Adoniram about the king’s feeling toward him? This Burney finally agreed to do, after explaining that he could not and would not give any orders whatever, and that Adoniram must act according to his conscience.

Actually, the king’s order had been peremptory. The ministers, as usual, had hoped to use Burney to do their work for them. But of this Adoniram knew nothing at the time. For before anything was done he had left Prome for Rangoon, partly because Rangoon was a better center for combining translation with exhortation. But he viewed his stay in Prome with a good deal of satisfaction. He felt that he had gone into the heart of the enemy’s country and, in a manner of speaking, thumbed his nose at them. Something of that lighthearted feeling came out in a letter he wrote in the middle of September:

Afloat on my own little boat, manned by none other than my three disciples, I take leave of Prome and her towering god Shway San-dau, at whose base I have been laboring, with not the kindest intentions, for the past three months and a half. Too firmly founded art thou, old pile, to be overthrown just at present; but the children of those who now plaster thee with gold will yet pull thee down, nor leave one brick upon another.

Adoniram had diStributed some five hundred tracts in Prome and made at least one convert, though the man was still unbaptized. Adoniram gave out another five hundred tracts on the way down the river.

In Rangoon, he found that the Wades had left and the mission had dropped once more to “a very low ebb.” Men had actually at one time been “stationed at a little distance, on each side of the house, to threaten those who visited the place, and take away the tracts they had received. Reports were circulated that Government was about to make a public example of heretics; the crowds that used to come for tracts all disappeared, and Pastor Thah-a, who continued to occupy the house, became intimidated, and retreated to his own obscure dwelling.”

There were still a few stouthearted inquirers and disciples around, of course, and these he saw often. But most of the time he Spent translating. By now, he was well into the Old Testament.

He was visited here by a traveling Englishwoman, a Miss Emma Roberts, who was most anxious to see this missionary now celebrated throughout the civilized world. She found him in his “Burmese habitation, to which we had to ascend by a ladder; and we entered a large, low room through a space like a trap door. The beams of the roof were uncovered, and the window frames were open, after the fashion of Burman houses. The furniture consisted of a table in the centre of the room, a few Stools, and a desk, with writings and books neatly arranged on one side.”

The two talked through a good part of the afternoon, but...

As we were thus conversing, the bats, which frequent the houses at Rangoon, began to take their evening round, and whirled closer and closer, till they came in almost disagreeable contact with our heads; and the flap of the heavy wings so near us interrupting the conversation, we at length took our leave and departed. And this thought I, as I descended the dark ladder, is the solitary abode of Judson, whom after ages shall designate, most juStly, the great and the good.

In this garret he pressed on with his translation, while the disciples taught and gave out tracts in the room below. A little after the beginning of the new year of 1831 he had finished Psalms, the Song of Solomon, and Daniel. There had been several conversions. But most impressive to Adoniram was the development of a “spirit of inquiry that is spreading every where, through the whole length and breadth of the land.”

I sometimes feel alarmed [he reported] like a person who sees a mighty engine beginning to move, over which he knows he has no control. Our house is frequently crowded with company; but I am obliged to leave them to Moung En, one of the best of assistants, in order to get time for the translation. Is this right? Happy is the missionary who goes to a country where the Bible is translated to his hand.

Although the missionaries never gave away a tract without being asked for it, they found themselves giving away hundreds every day. The great annual feStival at the Shwe Dagon pagoda fell this year on February 25. To be ready, Adoniram wrote Bennett for fifteen or twenty thousand copies. On March 4 he wrote that during the feStival he had distributed...

nearly ten thousand tracts, giving to none but those who ask. I presume there have been six thousand applications at the house. Some come two or three months’ journey, from the borders of Siam and China—“Sir, we hear that there is an eternal hell. We are afraid of it. Do give us a writing that will tell us how to escape it.” Others come from the frontiers of Kathay, a hundred miles north of Ava— “Sir, we have seen a writing that tells about an eternal God. Are you the man that gives away such writings? If so, pray give us one, for we want to know the truth before we die.” Others come from the interior of the country, where the name of Jesus Christ is a little known -- “Are you Jesus Christ’s man? Give us a writing that tells about Jesus Christ.”

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