Let the Will of God Be Done (1840 - 1845)

C H A P T E R V

Let the Will of God Be Done

[ 1840-1845 ]

N October 24, 1840, Adoniram sent to the printing house the revised last sheet of the complete Burmese Bible. Burma now had its first one-volume Bible. It was a big book, about twelve hundred pages in quarto size, and on the whole, Adoniram liked it. He felt the translation of the Old Testament still left a good deal to be desired, but the New Testament had been under sporadic revision for almost twenty years and he felt better satisfied with it “than I ever expected to be.”

But as usual there was a certain frustration along with the sense of accomplishment. The Bible was ready, but, Burma proper being closed to missionary operations, there was no present way to get it into the hands of the people. There was talk about another war between Burma and England. Adoniram took little stock in it and thought the only preparation lay “in the wishes and imagination of certain individuals, here called ‘the war party’, who, having ruined their interest in Burma, see no hope of retrieving their affairs, but by a war.” Nevertheless, the fact remained that the borders of Burma were shut; and when enough Bibles had been printed for immediate use, operations in the printing building ceased.

At any rate, one part of his life’s work was done. He meant to spend the rest of it building and strengthening the native church. Once again he took personal charge of the native assistants, sending them out each day after a morning meeting to all the quarters of Moulmein and the neighboring villages to propagate the Gospel as best they could.

Presently he undertook another task. For some time the Board at home had been pressing him to prepare a dictionary when the Bible was out of the way. Long before, in 1819, he had made a crude one for his own use which had been printed in Serampore in 1826. But it was so incomplete as to be of little help to anyone who did not already know some Burmese. Adoniram’s colleagues felt he could do more good with a new dictionary than in any other way. For a while he resisted, his heart not being in it. But when he found his voice conStantly breaking down, he began to “dabble” at it, although the work gave him little pleasure because “it is such a chaotic affair, and seems to me so unmissionary.”

Even the dictionary soon had to be set aside, however, for on March 8, I841, Sarah gave birth to a stillborn boy who was named Luther. She “fell into a decline, and became quite confined to her bed.” All the children had had whooping cough. Before they were fully recovered Abby Ann, Adoniram Junior and Henry came down with a “bowel complaint” which turned into dysentery.

An English officer, Captain Impey, offered Sarah and the children the use of his seashore house at Amherst, so that they could at least escape the worst of the hot season. Here they seemed to improve for a while. Then Sarah came down with a cold which turned into a fever. Abby Ann and Adoniram Junior grew worse until they were at the point of death. When the family returned to Moulmein they were sicker than when they had left.

Toward June the doctors, their colleagues and all their friends told Adoniram flatly that a sea voyage offered the only hope of recovery of Sarah and the two older children, although, as he wrote, “no one hardly hOped we could all get on board ship alive.”

On June twenty-sixth they embarked for Calcutta. “How I managed to break up housekeeping, and pack up, and get my sick family and all the things aboard, I can hardly tell, now it is passed. But it was done somehow, and the children were stowed away in a range of berths I had made on one side of the cabin, and wife on the Other, while I OCCUpied a movable cot between the parties.”

It was the season of the southwest monsoon. On the fourth night at sea the ship struck a shoal. Everyone aboard expected to drown. “I shall never forget my feelings,” wrote Sarah later, “as I looked over the side of the vessel that night, on the dark ocean, and fancied ourselves with our poor sick, and almost dying children, launched on its stomiy waves.” Nevertheless, weak and distraught as she was, Sarah managed to fill a small trunk with things they might need in the lifeboat. Luckily, the tide was rising, the captain tacked, and after about twenty minutes the ship floated free.

In spite of the excitement, the whole family improved rapidly on the voyage. Adoniram took them to Serampore, where he rented “a nice dry house, on the very bank of the river, at forty rupees a month.”

But, complained Sarah, the weather was very unfavorable. “At one time it was so oppressively hot, that we could scarcely breathe, and the next hour the cold, bleak winds would come whistling in, at the high windows, completely chilling the poor little invalids.” In these circumstances, the children relapsed. Soon the dOCtors told Adoniram that another sea voyage was absolutely necessary. Just as he was looking for a ship bound for the Isle of France, the health—iest place in the East, Captain Hamlin of the Ramsay, a Moulmein acquaintance, offered a round trip there and then home to Moulmein. Thinking of the dangerous monsoon in the Bay of Bengal, Adoniram and Sarah hesitated. But the children were not improving, and there seemed no alternative.

The Ramsay was to sail in ten days. In the interval Sarah went to Calcutta with Abby and young Adoniram, “Pwen,” to make purchases for the long voyage. Adoniram stayed in Serampore with Henry and Elnathan.

fell In Calcutta the two older children with Sarah promptly sicker. Besides his dysentery, Pwen was now attacked by fever. A physician managed to reduce the fever, but he warned Sarah that it would be all he could do to keep the children alive until they went to sea.

In Serampore, meanwhile, Elnathan grew feverish, and on July 27 little Henry suddenly became acutely ill. Until now Adoniram and Sarah had concentrated their attention on the older children, but next day, Henry was so much worse that Adoniram wrote Sarah she had better return. By evening Adoniram began to be afraid the baby might not live.

Sarah received his note the following morning. She decided to return at once, but the boat she hired could not start up the river until six o’clock, when the tide turned. At sunset, she put Abby and Pwen to bed aboard the boat and the boatmen began the long row.

It was at the neap tide; and for the last four or five miles the men were unable to row, but pushed the boat up the stream with long bamboos. The moon was setting, and I shall never forget the melancholy feelings which crept over me, while I watched the long shadows of the trees on the darkening waters.

At Serampore, meanwhile, the doctor told Adoniram he had given Up hope for Henry, “and we ceased from giving him any more medicine, for he could keep none on his stomach for a single minute; and my only prayer was, that he might not die before his mother arrived.”

Slowly the heavy hours passed. It was two in the morning before the boat finally nosed in at the bank by the house. ‘Adoniram met Sarah at the door, embraced her, and told her Henry was dying. Sarah “flew to him, but oh, how changed! I had left him a bright little boy, running about the floor, with cheeks far from having lost their plumpness. Now, his eyes were dim, his cheek colourless, and his little form so emaciated, that, in the sincerity of my heart, I involuntarily exclaimed, ‘Can this be Henry!’ ”

Sarah refused to believe he was dying, but in a few hours she had to admit there was no hope. Somehow Henry existed through the day, racked by occasional convulsions but still usually able to recognize his parents, raise his arms for help, and call out “Nahnee!” —-for “naughty”-—-— in protest. But late that night of july 30 he died. The next morning he was buried in the mission cemetery. He had lived one year and seven months.

A few weeks later they went on board the Ramsay and after one of the stormiest voyages Adoniram had ever experienced—during one series of squalls two topmasts, a topgallant mast and the jib boom with all their sails were carried away—they arrived at Port Louis on the Isle of France October I, 1841.

It had been a remarkable trip in another reSpect. Captain Hamlin was an extremely pious man. He and Adoniram had alternated in conducting worship every evening; and Adoniram preached every Sunday. The home port of the Ramsay was Greenock, Scotland, and Captain Hamlin and most of the crew hailed from there. By the time the ship sailed into Port Louis nineteen members of the ship’s complement, in addition to Captain Hamlin and Adoniram, had signed a covenant in the ship’s Bible to try “to live as sincere Christians ought to live, avoiding all known sins so far as possible, and striving to keep all the commands of God... .” Of the nineteen only two “yielded to temptation at Port Louis,” and public worship was held on board the ship every Sunday while she lay at anchor.

By the time they had arrived at Port Louis, Abby Ann and Elnathan had made a complete recovery. Sarah was much better. Only young Adoniram did not improve. “The poor boy has been ill so long, that he seems to have stopped growing.... Elnathan, on the contrary, who has had but little illness, is nearly as thick as long, has a broad back and face, is actually stouter and stronger than his elder brother.”

Food and clothing in Port Louis were “most exorbitantly dear,” thought Adoniram. “A fowl is one dollar, and a common pair of shoes three dollars, and every other article almost in the same proportion.” He felt certain that he would be deeply in debt by the end of the year.

They sailed from Port Louis November 1 and arrived in Moulmein December 10. Sarah was still thin but feeling well, and Adoniram junior was at least convalescent, although his father doubted whether he could ever recover completely in the climate of Moulmein.

The religious atmosphere aboard the Ramsay had persisted. Captain Hamlin had been baptized as an infant, but at Moulmein, together with his first officer and two of the crew, he was baptized again by Adoniram. He had refused absolutely to accept any money from the Judsons for the cruise, although Adoniram estimated that a fair charge would have been more than two thousand rupees. Adoniram sent him four hundred rupees as “ a small expression of gratitude,” but the captain promptly returned it, “saying that he considered it a privilege to have been able to show some kindness to the servants of Christ.” Not knowing what else to do, Adoniram finally wrote to the Corresponding Secretary of the Board and suggested that the Board send Hamlin a formal letter of thanks together with “what he would prize more than money—some valuable religious books, say a set of the Comprehensive Commentary, or such other as you shall think suitable.”

February 21, 1842, a little more than two months after their return, the Judsons moved into a more comfortable house which had formerly been occupied by the Stevenses. At one corner Adoniram had a little guest house erected, “partly with a view to accommodate company, and partly in the hope that dear sister, if left alone, will think of coming out to see us. So, if the people of Plymouth get tired of you, you may be sure of a home with your most affectionate brother.”

Although Adoniram did not yet know it, Abigail had already been left alone. Their mother had died January 3!, 1842, in her eighty-third year, and been buried in the graveyard on Fort Hill, overlooking the harbor from the upper end of Leyden Street. But this he would not learn until late August. His thoughts had turned often to Abigail and his mother these years, and several times he had invited Abigail to Burma to live with the family. Sometimes he Speculated whether after thirty years away from home he would recognize his mother and sister if he should see them. He felt sure he would know his mother, but he suspected that Abigail, who was in her twenty-second year when he left, might be. too changed.

As for himself, he was certain his appearance had altered beyond recognition. He was mistaken. His features had aged surprisingly little through the years. His face was a little fuller. There were a few lines under the eyes and beside the mouth, but that was all.

But much of the Adoniram within the body’s shell had changed more than once. The self-confident, almOSt arrogant, Adoniram had shattered under imprisonment and the impact of Nancy’s death until nothing was left but a soul consumed by guilt and self-blame trying vainly to take refuge from painful reality in a mystical com—- munion with God. This Adoniram had given away its property and income and renounced the world. Its attempt had not succeeded. The deeper Adoniram—the one which never changed—had eventually recognized the futility of the effort, come to terms with life, married Sarah Hall Boardman and created a new life out of healthy adult love. This altered Adoniram had a true humility more genuine than the spurious humility of the hermit days; the kind of humility, for instance, that gladly accepted frequent gifts of money from Abigail and his mother for the good of the family.

This new, warm, outlooking Adoniram, more realistically aware of himself and humanity and the world around him, honestly faced the fact that life must be lived to the end, that events can be molded by sheer will only a little, that what cannot be cured must be endured. This Adoniram kept on at the dictionary, disagreeable though the work was as measured by his real preference. This Adoniram, recognizing that Sarah was failing in physical health little by little, did his best within his limitations to foster the sense of security based on affection in his children.

For on July 8, 1842, Sarah gave birth to another son, this one named Henry Hall Judson in memory of the little Henry who had died at Serampore. Afterwards her health slowly worsened, although for a while she continued translating—she was working at Pilgrim’s Progress—and trying to take care of the children.

They were quite a handful by now. Abby Ann was almost seven, the boy Adoniram five, Elnathan four. Abby could read anything easy and Adoniram could “read a little, but on account of his illness his education has been very much neglected.” With the children of the other missionaries— James Haswell, Sarah and Edward Stevens, Julia Haswell and Brainerd Vinton—they made the mission compound a lively place.

There were stories, both secular and Biblical, to act out. They even had their own baptismal services, sometimes with young Adoniram acting as the minister, in imitation of his father. \When Adoniram interrupted one of these he must have been reminded of his own childhood in Malden, when he gathered the neighborhood children around him and preached as he had seen his own austere father do.

December 18, 1843, Sarah gave birth to Charles Judson and on December 27, 1844, to Edward Judson. She had had eleven children in all—three by George Boardman, eight by Adoniram. Six of her children by Adoniram lived, and one by Boardman. That one, George Dana Boardman, Junior, had left Moulmein for the United States in 1834, when he was six. He was sixteen now, perhaps Still dearest to her heart of all her children. But she had nOt seen him, nor he her, in all these ten years.

By now she was exhausted with childbearing. Her old dysentery had returned. The doctors shook their heads gravely and, as usual, prescribed a change of scene. With Abby Ann she made a trip to Mergui and Tavoy in February of 1845 at the invitation of the Civil Commissioner and his wife, while Adoniram tried to cope with the rest of the family.

From Mergui, Abby Ann sent a box of sea shells. “The boys are delighted with the shells,” her father reported to her gravely, “and Henry has picked out some for his own; and they have agreed to give me for my share the large coral shell.” Edward, he told her:

... has become a fat little fellow; I am sure you would not know him again. He begins to look pleased when he is played with. But he has nor yet made any inquiries about his absent mother and sister. Indeed, I doubt much whether he is aware that he has any such relatives. Or if he ever exercises his mind on such abstruse topics, perhaps he fancies that black Ah-mah is his mother since she nurses him, and does not know what a fair, beautiful, fond mother he has at Mergui, who thinks of him every day. However, when he gets larger, we will tell him all about these matters.

When she returned, Abby Ann would have a new cot, too, a longer one. Her old one had been handed down to her brother Adoniram, his to Elnathan. And there was tragedy to report. “Both the kittens are dead, and the old yellow cat has been missing for several days.” Most of all, though, her father concluded seriously, he wished that the Saviour would give her “his converting, sanctifying grace, and make you his own child.” And He would if she helped, for “If you trust in the Saviour and try to be good, he will make you good.”

Sarah returned in early April unimproved. Adoniram was appalled by her condition. It was far worse than he had dreamed. In desperation he wrote to the Corresponding Secretary of the Board in the United States:

The hand of God is heavy upon me. The complaint to which Mrs. Judson is subject has become so violent, that it is the unanimous opinion of all the medical men, and indeed of all our friends, that nothing but a voyage beyond the tropics can possibly protract her life beyond a period of a few weeks, but that such a voyage will, in all probability, insure her recovery.

... She is willing to die, and I hope I am willing to see her die, if it be the divine will; but though my wife, it is no more than the truth to say that there is scarcely an individual foreigner now alive who speaks and writes the Burmese tongue so acceptably as she does; and I feel that an effort ought to be made to save her life. I have long fought against the necessity of accompanying her; but she is now so desperately weak, and almost helpless, that all say it would be nothing but savage inhumanity to send her off alone. The three younger children, the youngest but three months and a half old, we muSt leave behind us, casting them, as it were, on the waters, in the hope of finding them after many days. The three elder, Abby Ann, Adoniram, and Elnathan, we take with us, to leave in their parents’ native land.

So, all at once, his previous resolution never to return home was broken. All at once his children whom he loved were to be separated. He knew he would never again see them together, as one family. But, Sarah, mother of his children and first in his heart, must be saved. Any action, almost, seemed the wrong one. But there was no choice. The real question was: Could her life be saved? Or was it already too late?

The ship Paragon was preparing to sail for London late in April. In a rush Adoniram arranged for passage. Henry Hall, not quite three, he took to Mrs. Haswell in Amherst, along with his lancet and pox material, so they could be inoculated against smallpox. In Moulmein, the Osgoods took sixteen-month-old Charles and the Stevenses took four-month-old Edward, Mrs. Stevens nursing him herself along with her own baby.

The dictionary was a vexing problem. He had given it a couple of years now, and his notes and manuscripts were in such a state “that if I should die before this work is completed, or at least carried forward to a much more advanced state, all my previous labor would be nearly or quite lost.” Among his native assistants, two were willing to make the trip with him. “They are both Christians, the one a settled character, a convert of long standing, formerly a government writer in Rangoon; the other a nephew of the late premier of the court of Ava, a person of noble extraction, and though not a tried Christian, I hope a sincere one.”

With their help Adoniram thought he could continue work on the dictionary during the long months at sea and probably in the United States. His throat and lungs would prevent his preaching aloud, and in any case he felt he had so nearly forgotten spoken English that “I can scarcely put three sentences together in the English language. I must therefore beg the board to allow me a quiet corner, where I can pursue my work with my assistants, undisturbed and unknown.”

On April 26, 1845, Adoniram, Sarah, Abby Ann, young Adoniram, Elnathan and the two assistants embarked on the Paragon. She set sail for Amherst on the third of May. The first month at sea was very rough, everyone was seasick, and Adoniram was busy most of the time taking care of Sarah. He seized what spare moments he had for the dictionary, but they were not many. The second month, Sarah began to improve and Adoniram “had most sanguine hopes for her recovery.”

Soon after crossing the line, the Paragon sprung a leak. The captain decided to put in at Port Louis on the Isle of France. Meanwhile, the weather was beautiful. Many years later the boy Adoniram recalled how

. crossing the Indian Ocean, one night, when the wind had died away and the stars were out, the ship stood still in a calm, the family gathered on deck and Mother sang to the group, which included some of the sailors and officers of the ship. The hymn was “the Star of Bethlehem,” beginning:

When marshaled on the nightly plain The glittering hosts bestud the sky,

One star alone of all the train

Can fix the sinner’s wandering eye.
Hark! Hark! to God the chorus breaks
From every host, from every gem,
But one alone the Saviour speaks,

It is the star of Bethlehem.

As the Paragon approached Port Louis, everything was optimism. Sarah was much better; the latter part of the voyage had been delightful. Adoniram and Sarah, discussing the matter together, began to believe she would not need Adoniram’s care the rest of the way to London. Adoniram belonged in Burma. There would certainly be a ship bound for Moulmein at Isle of France. It would be hard to separate, but they could hope to meet each Other, if not the children, in a few years.

This was the decision, as much Sarah’s as Adoniram’s. The thought brought to life Sarah’s long-neglected habit of verse. Within sight of the Island she penciled, on a scrap of paper:

We part on this green islet, Love,
Thou for the Eastern main,
I, for the setting sun, Love —
Oh, when to meet again?

My heart is sad for thee, Love,
For lone thy way will be;
And oft thy tears will fall, Love,
For thy children and for me.

The music of thy daughter’s voice
Thou’lt miss for many a year;
And the merry shout of thine elder boys,
Thou’lt lisr in vain to hear.

She went on through the next stanzas to mention Henry’s death, when they had been together and could console each Other; but at least, though parted, their souls could “hold communion sweet, O’er the dark and distant sea.” And eventually, they would be reunited in Burma, and after that in heaven, never to be separated again. Meanwhile,

Then gird thy armor on, Love,

Nor faint thou by the way, Till Boodh shall fall, and Burmah’s sons

Shall own Messiah’s way.

TheParagon dropped anchor on the fifth of July. Adoniram found a ship bound for Moulmein almost immediately. He sent the two assistants home by this vessel, while he tentatively engaged passage for himself on another which was to sail for Calcutta in two or three weeks. Meanwhile, they found an American vessel in port, the bark Sophia IVal/eer. Captain Codman, her master, told Adoniram that Sarah and the children were more than welcome to transfer to her on better terms than they received aboard the Paragon. Codman was sailing directly home to Boston. Sarah could expect to land at “the very doors of her friends” a month sooner than if she went to England and transhipped there.

Adoniram accepted Codman’s offer gratefully. Then, while they were waiting, Sarah suffered a relapse. In a few days she was deathly ill again, even worse than when they had left Moulmein. Adoniram could not possibly leave her now. Once more all their plans had to be changed. When the Sophia IVal/eer sailed out of Port Louis on July 25, Adoniram was aboard.

After a while, in the cold weather off the Cape of Good Hope, Sarah grew much better and Adoniram had high hopes that she would recover. But soon she began to sink again. She would improve for a day or two at a time, but even Adoniram began to lose hope for her. As the vessel approached the island of St. Helena in late August, it was obvious she had not long to live.

The Sophia IValker arrived at St. Helena on the twenty-sixth of August and anchored in St. James’s Bay. Sarah was sinking fast. She knew she was dying, and Adoniram had even expected she might have to be buried at sea. Adoniram spent most of his time in the cabin with her. Sometimes the children came in for a few minutes, sobered and apprehensive, but not quite able to grasp what was happening to their mother.

On one of these occasions he said: “My love, I wish to ask pardon for every unkind word or deed of which I have ever been guilty. I feel that I have, in many instances, failed of treating you with that kindness and affection which you have ever deserved.”

“Oh,” she said, “you will kill me if you talk so.... I... should ask pardon of you.... I only want to get well that I may have an Opportunity of making some return for all your kindness, and of showing you how much I love you.”

In spite of her tranquillity, she had some regrets. She told Adoniram she wished she could see Salem again after twenty years, and her son George, and the three children left in Moulmein. Between these wishes and her longing to leave life, she said, “I am in a strait between the two — let the will of God be done.”

The last few days, wrote Adoniram later...

Her mind became liable to wander; but a single word was Sufficient to recall and Steady her recollection. On the evening of the 31st of August, she appeared to be drawing near to the end of her pilgrimage. The children took leave of her, and retired to rest. I sat alone by the side of her bed during the hours of the night, endeavoring to administer relief to the distressed body, and consolation to the departing soul. At two o’clock in the morning, wishing to obtain one more token of recognition, I roused her attention, and said, “Do you still love the Saviour?” “0, yes,” she replied, “I ever love the Lord jesus ChriSt.” I said again, “Do you Still love me?” She replied in the affirmative by a peculiar expression of her own. “Then give me one more kiss,” and we exchanged that token of love for the last time. Another hour passed, life continued to recede, and she ceased to breathe. For a moment I traced her upward flight, and thought of the wonders which were opening to her view. I then closed her sightless eyes, dressed her, for the last time, in the drapery of death; and being quite exhausted with many sleepless nights, I threw myself down and slept.

In the morning he was awakened by the three children. They were standing around their mother’s body, weeping bitterly, and crying out for her to answer them. Adoniram and everyone aboard the ship had been prepared for Sarah’s death. The captain and friends on shore had even had mourning suits made for the children and sent on board. But Abby Ann, young Adoniram and Elnathan could not realize until this terrible September first exactly what impended and what death meant. Now they knew.

But there was no time to waste. A coffin was sent from shore. A minister of the town, the Reverend Mr. Bertram, offered a prayer in the cabin, and the funeral party—-a strange little flotilla towed by a rowboat— followed Sarah’s body, itself in a single boat behind the one occupied by the oarsmen, to the land.

The shops of Jamestown were closed in respect as the funeral procession passed silently through the town, the coffin now home forward by stalwart seamen, with four “chief women” of the island serving as pallbearers.

A grave had been dug “in a beautiful shady spot” beneath a banyan tree in the cemetery next to that of Chater’s wife, who had died like Sarah on the way home from Ceylon. Here Sarah was buried at about six in the evening. Bertram and the members of his congregation took Adoniram and the children into the home of one of them for a few hours.

A little later Adoniram and the children, exhausted with their grief, went aboard the ship. She set sail immediately. When the children, weeping afresh, woke him in the morning, they were in the open ocean, out of sight of the lonely rocky island.

For a few days, in the solitude of my cabin, with my poor children crying around me, I could not help abandoning myself to heart-breaking sorrow. But the promise of the Gospel came to my aid, and faith stretched her View to the bright world of eternal life, and anticipated a happy meeting with those beloved beings whose bodies are mouldering at Amherst and St. Helena.

It was a long, sad ,voyage home.

But the human spirit has nearly endless reserves of buoyancy. By the end of six weeks, when the Sophia Walker dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, the children were eagerly anticipating their future in the country they had never seen. Even Adoniram was looking forward, half with hope, half with dread, to the experiences that awaited him in his almost forgotten native land.