To the Golden Shore (1850)

C H A P T E R X I

To the Golden Shore

[ I850 ]

HAT time was not to come. For late in September of 1849, just as Emily was returning to something resembling health, Adoniram contracted a severe cold, the consequence of getting up on a chilly, damp night to help Emily with one of the children, whose sudden illness had wakened them. The cold “settled” in his lungs and produced a terrible racking cough. Three or four days later he was attacked by dysentery, followed by a fever which put him to bed in late November and completely stopped work on the dictionary. From November of 1849 to early 1850, he suffered so much that he told his friends he felt as if he had never been sick before. Yet at first neither he nor Emily nor his friends had any fears for his life. Only Dr. Morton had noticed the look of age which had begun creeping over him since his return from America. When he began to recover a little, Emily took him riding in the carriage once or twice, holding the reins herself. But he did not improve fast enough, and Dr. Morton recommended a sea voyage, as much for Emily as for Adoniram. In January of 1850 they took the steamboat to Mergui for a few days. He felt a little better, and they spent a month at Amherst, so that he could have the sea air.

Something else was happening, too. As early as December, Emily noted, Adoniram had been giving more and more time to prayer, trying to complete the self-conquest for which he had struggled ever since Andover. For forty years he had been trying to love everyone else as much as the Saviour had enjoined. He had tried again and again, and failed again and again. For forty years he had considered it a sin to love himself; to have feelings of pride; to place himself higher than others in his own estimation; to love his wife and children and parents more than others. Yet he had sinned, all too often. Now, hour after hour in his bed he prayed for improvement and examined his own feelings, reporting his progress to Emily daily.

Then one day in January he lifted his head from the pillow and told her: “I have gained the victory at last. I love every one of Christ’s redeemed, as I believe he would have me love them.” There was a calm triumph in his voice as he discussed how it felt to have passion spent; hate, envy and ambition spent. He said at last: “And now I lie at peace with all the world, and what is better still, at peace with my own conscience. I know that I am a miserable sinner in the sight of God, with no hope but in the blessed Saviour’s merits; but I cannot think of any particular fault, any peculiarly besetting sin, which it is now my duty to correct. Can you tell me of any?” Emily could not.

From now on Adoniram enjoyed a satisfying sensation of peace. But during their month at Amherst, Emily began to be frightened by his growing weakness. When he thought he was unobserved, he would cling to the furniture and walls in walking. Away from support, he would totter. His face had become ghastly pale. Several hours each day he was in intense pain. In spite of the iron selfcontrol he tried to exercise, at times “his groans would fill the house. At other times a kind of lethargy seemed to Steal over him, and he would sleep almost incessantly for twenty-four hours, seeming annoyed if he were aroused or disturbed.”

When he was more comfortable, he lived much in memory, and told Emily story after story of his boyhood in Wenham and Plymouth, of his college days, of the imprisonment in France, and of the early days of the mission in Rangoon.

He spoke of the dictionary, too. The part done was already capable of becoming a bridge of communication between the Burmese and English-speaking peoples. As for the part unfinished, he hoped a mark could be placed where his own work left off.

As he weakened, Emily became more and more apprehensive. They were alone in Amherst. There was no doctor. After a month they returned to Moulmein. Dr. Morton advised another sea voyage—a longer one. Since there was not at that moment any vessel in the harbor going far enough, the doctor suggested they move out of their house, which he thought damp and unhealthy, to another one.

For a few days after the move, Adoniram seemed to rally. Then he relapsed again.

Emily was far advanced in her second pregnancy. With a baby due in a few months, there was no possibility of her accompanying him on a voyage now. They had resisted the thought of his voyaging alone; but soon it was plain he would have to go, if he were to live. His suffering had become unbearable; but neither could he bear the thought of leaving Emily. In broken phrases he would wish God would let him die in Moulmein, at once. But his strength was failing more rapidly. So far he had been able to make his way slowly from one room to another. Now one evening, as he rose from his chair, he collapsed; and if Emily had not caught him, he would have fallen to the floor. After this he spent all his time on a couch. His symptoms became more ominous. His feet began to swell. With his long experience he knew only too well what the swelling foretold.

Yet he could not quite believe he was dying. Instead, he looked forward more and more eagerly to the voyage. He told Emily he wanted to be free of the suffocating air of the hot season and feel the fresh sea breezes.

In March came news of a ship. The French barque Aristide Marie had come to Moulmein and was due to sail the third of April for Isle of France. Passage for Adoniram was arranged at once. By now, Emily felt certain that he would not return. She knew, of course, that he was always, in a sense, prepared to die; but she “could not bear to have him go away, without knowing how doubtful it was whether our next meeting would not be in eternity.” Perhaps, too, she admitted honestly, she might still be looking “for words of encouragement and sympathy to a source which had never before failed.”

Late one night she saw her opportunity. She had been busy with various small duties in his room when Adoniram suddenly aroused, and in a voice almost as strong and firm as when he had been in health, exclaimed, “This will never do! You are killing yourself for me, and I will not permit it. You must have someone to relieve you. If I had not been made selfish by suffering, I should have insisted upon it long ago.”

For a moment his tone filled Emily with delirious hope. But as she replied that she was not overworked, so long as the work was for Adoniram, his expression lapsed again into slackness. And she added, “It is only a little while, you know.”

He mistook her meaning. “Only a little while,” he murmured sadly. “This separation is a bitter thing, but it does not distress me now as it did — I am too weak.”

“You have no reason to be distressed,” Emily persisted gently, “with such glorious p1'05pects before you. You have often told me it is the one left alone who suffers, not the one who goes with Christ.”

Adoniram gave her “a rapid, questioning glance,” then fell silent with his eyes closed for several minutes. She knew he understood her and was considering her words. When he opened them he looked steadily at her as he said, calmly and positively: “I do not believe I am going to die. I think I know why this illness has been sent upon me; I needed it; I feel that it has done me good; and it is my impression that I shall now recover, and be a better and more useful man.”

“Then it is your wish to recover?” Emily asked him. “If it should be the will of God, yes,” he insisted. “I should like to complete the dictionary, on which I have bestowed so much labor, now that it is nearly done; for though it has not been a work that pleased my taste, or quite satisfied my feelings, I have never underrated its importance. Then after that come all the plans we have formed. Oh -——” he raised his voice a little for emphasis—“I feel as if I were only just beginning to be prepared for usefulness.”

Emily reminded him: “It is the Opinion of most of the mission that you will not recover.”

“I know it is; and I suppose they think me an old man, and imagine it is nothing for one like me to resign a life so full of trials. But I am not old—at leaSt in that sense; you know I am not. Oh, no man ever left this world with more inviting prospects, with brighter hopes or warmer feelings — warmer feelings —- ” He broke off. His expression did not change but the tears rolled down his face from under the closed eyelids and fell to the pillow.

Emily thought he might have some unnecessary doubts whether he was really worthy of salvation; or perhaps he simply had a lingering fear of death, or regretted leaving his family. She voiced some of these thoughts as tactfully as she could, but he rejected them.

“It is not that,” he said. “I know all that, and feel it in my inmost heart. Lying here on my bed, when I could not talk, I have had such views of the loving condescension of Christ and the glories of heaven as I believe are seldom granted to mortal man. It is not because I shrink from death that I wish to live; neither is it because the ties that bind me here, though some of them are very sweet, bear any comparison with the drawings I feel at times towards heaven. But a few years would not be missed from my eternity of bliss, and I can well afford to spare them, both for your sake and the sake of the poor Burmans. I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world. Yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from his school. Perhaps I feel something like the young bride, when she contemplates resigning the pleasant associations of her childhood for a yet dearer home—though only a very little like her, for there is no doubt resting on my future.”

, “Then death would not take you by surprise,’ inquired Emily, “even if it should come before you could get on board ship?”

“Oh, no,” said Adoniram. “Death will never take me by surprise —-- do not be afraid of that—I feel so strong in Christ. He has not led me so tenderly thus far, to forsake me at the very gate of heaven. No, no. I am willing to live a few years longer, if it should be so ordered. If otherwise, I am willing and glad to die now. I leave myself entirely in the hands of God, to be disposed of according to His holy will.”

The next day a visitor mentioned to him that the native Christians did not want him to make the voyage, and that many others agreed with them. Emily thought the words seemed to trouble him. When the visitor had gone, she asked him whether he still felt as he had the night before. “Oh, yes,” he replied. “That was no evanescent feeling. It has been with me, to a greater or less extent, for years, and will be with me, I trust, to the end. I am ready to go today —if it should be the will of God, this very hour. But I am not anxious to die—at least, when I am not beside myself with pa1n.”

“Then why are you so desirous to go to sea?” asked Emily. “1 should think it would be a matter of indifference to you.”

“No,” he said quietly, “my judgment tells me it would be wrong not to go; the doctor says criminal. I shall certainly die here; if I go away I may possibly recover. There is no question with regard to duty in such a case; and I do not like to see any hesitation, even though it springs from affection.” And he added, then and later, that there was something pleasing to him in the prospect of being buried at sea. He had always loved the sea—its spaciousness, its many moods, even the motion of the ship in storm. He liked the freedom, the wideness of the sea. He would rather have his body floating in watery space, with wind and current, than confined in smothering darkness, narrowness, under the weight of earth. Thoughts of earth burial brought back to him something of his horror after Nancy’s death. He told Emily, a little apologetically, that it was of no real importance where he was buried, but it was only human to have a choice.

So, not quite willing to admit that he was crossing the threshold, still clinging to life but willing to have it taken, he waited for the day of embarkation.

At the last moment, when everything else was stripped away, this inner driving force still remained, the will to live, the belief in life that was central to his nature.

This, and his faith. One of the last few days in Moulmein, Emily by chance gave him what he considered confirmation of his faith.

She had found a paragraph in a paper from home, the Watchman and Reflector, which told how a tract published in Germany giving an account of Adoniram’s mission to Ava had brought about the conversion of some Jews in Trebizond, one of whom had translated it for the others. Long, long ago Adoniram had toyed with the idea of a mission to the Jewish people but had had to drop it, as Emily knew.

She read him the paragraph and at first was a little disappointed by the light way he spoke of it, though his eyes filled with tears —as they so often did these days. But then he clung to her hand “as though to assure himself of being really in the world,” and said: “Love, this frightens me. I do not know what to make of it.”

“What?”

“Why, what you have just been reading. I never was deeply interested in any subject, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came. At some time— no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape—probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and, while He condescends to use me as His instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart.”

On Wednesday, April 3, 18 50, Adoniram was carried in a palmquin supplied by Captain Lawford, the commandant of artillery, aboard the Aristide Marie. At a meeting of the mission, Thomas Ranney, superintendent of the printing press, had been appointed to accompany him on the voyage. Panapah, a Coringa servant, was to be his body servant.

Doctor Morton had emphasized the extreme importance of getting Adoniram out to sea at once, and the missionaries had applied to the commissioner of the provinces to have the steamer Proserpine, which was going out with a cargo of troops, tow the French barque down the river to Amherst. Permission was granted. But after Adoniram had been put aboard, the troop commander refused to allow the steamer to take the barque in tow. The Proserpine was a military transport and not under the commissioner’s orders. He refused to endanger the lives of his soldiers, he said, by towing another vessel.

Emily had spent all Wednesday on board with Adoniram. At dark she had to go home to care for the children, but Thursday morning she found that the Aristide Marie had dropped only a little way down the river. With the Stevenses and Mr. Stilson, she took a boat and spent the greater part of Thursday with him. He was already feeling a little better and able to take a little food, although he was not able to leave the cot which had been built for him.

Emily was a little encouraged. If she could not go with him herself, at least her Adoniram was in the best of hands. Mr. Ranney and Panapah, she knew well, would take good care of him; and the officers on the vessel, although they could not speak English, were more than considerate. The barque’s captain even carried a French- English dictionary around the ship with him so that he might be able to communicate with Ranney with as little loss of time as possible.

Friday, Emily saw him again. He did not seem as well as before, and when she left the barque she thought she had taken final leave of him. Emily had sent Ko En and Ko Shway Doke, his disciples of many years, on board to fan him until the vessel reached the ocean. They had planned to Stay with Adoniram until the pilot left. But now, seeing him Friday, they pleaded that he be taken back to Moulmein and be permitted to die there. They could not endure the thought of his burial at sea. They wanted his grave to be where they and the other disciples could see it. But there was no choice. To stay would be fatal; to go gave him at least a slim chance. So Mr. Stilson reminded them, and encouraged them to remember the example of Moses, whose place of burial was unknown to his own people.

Saturday, Emily learned that the Aristide Marie had still not reached Amherst. Desperate for one more sight of him, she took a boat in the morning and reached the barque early in the afternoon. Her heart fell when she saw him. He could scarcely whiSper how glad he was to see her. The two disciples begged her again to have him taken on shore. Privately she agreed with them, but reluctantly decided that she could not overrule the doctor. Vtn she left at dark, Adoniram’s lips moved but he made no sound. He had told Ranney earlier that he was in such pain he would be more than glad to die if he could. And Ranney knew that he had hardly been aware of Emily’s visit and departure, he was so absorbed in pain.

This was the last Emily saw of him. She stayed home, with nothing to do but care for the children and wait in dread for the news she was sure would come. Once the vessel was at sea, she might learn nothing for months. Meanwhile, she steeled herself. The two little boys, fortunately, did not quite grasp what was happening, although they cried from time to time because their father had gone away.

Sunday the Aristide Marie reached Amherst. To Ranney’s surprise, Adoniram felt better. He told Ranney that the natives were too much frightened by the swelling of his feet, which they thought a sure sign of death. “But I do not,” he insisted. “I have talked with the doctor about this, and have myself remarked, at different times, the swelling and subsiding. I still feel that there is so much of life in me that I shall recover.”

On Monday, April 6, the Aristide Marie put out to sea. Adoniram was feeling still better. Maung Shway Moung, of the Amherst church, had joined the ship in the harbor, and together with Ko En and Ko Shway Doke went back to land with the pilot. They carried a letter from Ranney to Emily, telling that Adoniram was better, spoke aloud, took a little tea and toast, and was refreshed by the sea breeze. Adoniram had told Ranney to let Emily know that he had “a strong belief it was the will of God to restore him to health.”

The pain came and went. His left side began to swell markedly. Tuesday afternoon he began to vomit frequently. From now on he was unable to retain food. That night and Wednesday the air was still and hot. Ranney gave him laudanum and even ether, so that he was able to sleep a little, but he was nearly ready to give up. The captain had some favorite doses which he induced Adoniram to take—making himself understood by frequent recourse to his French and English dictionary. Adoniram told him he knew the medicines would do no good, but “I do not want anyone to think I died because all was not done that could be done for me.”

Fearful pains preceded each bout of vomiting. During one attack he groaned a heartfelt wish that he could die at once, “and go im—mediately into paradise where there is no pain.”

Wednesday evening, as Ranney sat by his cot, Adoniram said, “I am glad you are here. I do not feel so abandoned. You are my only kindred now—the only one on board who loves Christ, I mean.” That was a comfort, he whispered. In response to a question he said he had no fear that Christ was not near—he believed the pain and suffering were being inflicted to make him fit to die— to make him submissive to God’s will.

Thursday morning he seemed already nearly dead. His eyes were dull and glassy. They remained half closed while he slept. From this lethargy he was aroused from time to time by terrible suffering ending in vomiting. “I-Iow few there are who suffer such torment -——who die so hard!” he said during one of those periods. Occasionally, Ranney gave him ether, which he said helped. During the night his agony became so appalling that Ranney could hardly stand to watch it. Sometimes he called for water, but it gave relief only while he was drinking it, and was followed immediately by the pain.

Late that night Ranney felt his body. His feet were cold, his head hot with fever. He had become so weak he seldom spoke. He indicated his wants by signs.

By Friday morning it was obvious that the end was nor far off. For a few minutes before noon his mind began to wander, but he quickly regained control of it. In the middle of the afternoon he Spoke in Burmese to the weeping Panapah: “It is done; I am going.” A little later he made a downward sign with his hand. When Ranney failed to understand, he took hold of Ranney’s head, drew his ear close to his mouth, and gasped, “Brother Ranney, will you bury me? Bury me? Quick!” A little later Ranney was called out of the cabin for a moment. Adoniram Spoke to Panapah both in English and Burmese, telling him to “take care of poor miStress.”

These were his laSt words.

His pains had left him. He lay quietly, Ranney holding his hand. From time to time he pressed Ranney’s hand, each time less strongly. Panapah stood at a little distance, overcome with grief. The ship’s officers, passing the open cabin door on their way to dinner, forgot their meal and gathered in the doorway to watch the end.

His death [remembered Ranney] was like falling asleep. Not the movement of a muscle was perceptible, and the moment of the going out of life was indicated only by his ceasing to breathe. A gentle pressure of the hand, growing more and more feeble as life waned, showed the peacefulness of the spirit about to take its homeward flight.

At fifteen minutes after four on Friday afternoon, April 12, 1850, Adoniram Judson reached his golden shore.

Ranney, who closed the eyes of the corruptible clay, wanted to hold the body for burial until the next day, but the captain overruled him. The ship’s carpenter went to work at once on a strong plank cofl‘in. Several buckets of sand were poured into it to make it sink. The body was placed inside, and the top nailed shut.

That evening at eight the Aristide Marie hove to. The crew assembled silently. The larboard port was opened. There were no prayers, except those silent ones in the hearts of the living. The captain gave an order. The coffin slid through the port into the night.

The location was latitude 13 degrees north, longitude 93 degrees east, almost in the eastward shadow of the Andaman Islands, and only a few hundred miles west of the mountains of Burma.

Afterwards, in the darkness, the Aristide Marie sailed on toward the Isle of France.