THE LOVE OF CHRIST ANIMATED ALL HIS UNDERTAKINGS
Judson had two master passions. One was to translate the Bible into the Burmese language so that multitudes whom he would never see could read it and hear God's voice speaking directly to their own hearts. Having mastered the intricacies of this very difficult tongue, he spent long days, weary months and exhausting years in translation. It was while engaged in this pursuit that he was dragged away to languish in prison at Ava and Oung-Pen-La. Ruffians were plundering every white man's house. What was to be done to preserve the precious manuscripts? What seemed to be a clever plan occurred to Ann: She would hide the manuscripts in a pillow! Having done this, she brought the pillow to the prison and no one dreamed that the white man's head rested at night on the most precious of treasures -- the Word of God.
Then came a crushing misfortune. Taking a fancy to the pillow, the jailer grabbed it and kept it as his own. Judson's spirit groaned within him. What an irreparable loss! But Ann's ingenuity was not yet exhausted. Having made a prettier, nicer pillow, she brought it to the prison and Judson said to the jailer, "How would you like to exchange the old, soiled pillow for this bright new one?" Mr. Spotted Face readily agreed, wondering at the odd taste of the white man. Thus the precious manuscripts were recovered. Many times, smitten down with disease and at death's door, he breathed out the prayer, "Lord, let me finish my work. Spare me long enough to put Thy saving Word into the hands of a perishing people." What a day of rejoicing it was when the Word of God came off the press with its stupendous invitation, "Whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely."
Judson's concern to get the gospel into the language of other tribes and nations was shared by his wife. Ann was the first missionary to learn Siamese and to translate a portion of Scripture, the Gospel of Matthew, into that tongue.
Judson had a second passion and prayer, namely, to lead individuals to know Christ in His transforming power and to live to see one hundred converts. With great tact and consuming zeal, he preached by the road side and dealt with inquirers. Years went by without a single convert, but he refused to be discouraged. When a member of the Mission Board in America wrote, deploring the lack of results, and inquired concerning the prospects, this intrepid ambassador of Christ replied, "The prospects are as bright as the promise of God." There were many disappointments, but six years of unwearied effort and fervent supplication were finally rewarded. His Journal, of June 27, 1819, gives the thrilling record. "We proceeded," he says, "to a large pond, the bank of which is graced with an enormous image of Buddha, and there administered baptism to Maung Nau, the first Burman convert. Oh, 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!"
With a judicious admixture of gentle entreaty and stern warning, he sought one day to point out to a native woman the momentous alternatives that lay before her. Making two divergent marks on the ground, he said, "This leads to eternal life, while this leads to eternal destruction. Will you leave this straight and narrow path drawn by the Saviour's finger for that which leads to everlasting despair? Will you? Will you?"
Many years later this woman, now an earnest and active Christian, said, "Even now I can hear that terribly earnest 'Will you?' coming from the teacher's lips as though it was the voice of God." Yes, the voice of God! Many listened wistfully to the foreigner's preaching, for even their depraved hearts discerned in his message the tender and imperious accents of the voice of God.
The voice of God!
Its tenderness!
Its imperiousness!Will you heed the tender and imperious accents of the Voice of God?
Judson frequently went on extended preaching trips to villages scattered through the jungles. As Lower Burma is a delta region with innumerable streams, he usually traveled by boat. While living at Amherst, he became exceedingly burdened for the salvation of his boatman. He frequently went to the man's house to converse with him on his favorite theme, the love of Christ, but as soon as Judson justify, the man and his wife would scrub the bamboo house to remove the contaminations caused by contact with the foreigner. As they traveled by boat from village to village, Judson had many hours in which to enlighten his unwilling auditor concerning his soul's need and to tell him of the Redeemer's love. When a trip was completed and the man asked for his wages, Judson would say, "Come to the service Sunday morning and I will pay you." Greatly impressed by the missionary's life and passionate concern on his behalf, the man eventually came to appreciate and to appropriate "the riches of love in Christ Jesus." And so it was that the erstwhile depraved and stony-hearted boatman became not only a Christian, but also a very zealous evangelist among his own people.
The desperate need of a perishing people was matched by the love of Christ blazing in the soul of Adoniram Judson. In a letter pleading for missionary reinforcements, he speaks of "the sin of turning a deaf ear to the plaintive cry of millions of immortal beings, who, by their darkness and misery, cry, day and night, 'Come to our rescue, ye bright sons and daughters of America. Come and save us, for we are sinking into hell!'"
In the year 1828 an event of vast significance took place. Having come in contact with the Karens, a race of wild people living in remote and almost inaccessible jungles, Judson longed for the opportunity of winning a Karen for Christ and thus reaching his race. This opportunity came to him through Ko Tha Byu, a Karen slave who was sold one day in the bazaar in Moulmein and bought by a native Christian, who forthwith brought him to Judson to be taught and, if possible, evangelized. Ko Tha Byu was a desperate robber bandit. He had taken part in approximately thirty murders and was a hardened criminal with a vicious nature and an ungovernable temper. Patiently, prayerfully, and lovingly, Judson instructed the wretched, depraved creature, who eventually not only yielded to the transforming power of Christ but went through the jungles as a flaming evangelist among his people. The hearts of the Karens were remarkably and providentially prepared for the reception of the gospel message by a tradition prevalent among them to this effect:
Long, long ago the Karen elder brother and his young white brother lived close together. God gave each of them a Book of Gold containing all they needed for their salvation, success and happiness. The Karen brother neglected and lost his Book of Gold and so he fell into a wretched type of existence, ignorant and cruelly oppressed by the Burmese. The white brother, however, prized his Golden Book, or Book of God, and so, when he sailed away across the oceans, God greatly blessed him. Some day the white brother will return, bringing with him God's Book, which, if the Karen people will receive and obey, will bring to them salvation and untold blessings.
Accordingly, as Ko Tha Byu went on his unwearying preaching tours through the jungles, declaring that the long-looked-for white brother had returned with God's Book, hundreds received the message with gladness.
When a depraved slave, a bandit and murderer, was brought to Judson in 1828, who would have imagined that, a century later, the Christian Karens alone would have many splendid high schools, hundreds of village schools, some 800 self-supporting churches and a Christian constituency of more than 150,000?
Being a missionary meant, to Judson, just one thing: to join with Christ in a supreme endeavor "to seek and to save the lost." He was a tireless seeker of souls and the theme of his message never varied. The following entry from his diary is typical: March 11, Lord's day. Again took the main river. Soon came upon a boat full of men. Their chief, an elderly man, stated that he had already heard much of the gospel ... We went to the shore and spent several hours very delightfully, under the shade of the overhanging trees and the banner of the love of Jesus ... The old man went on his way, rejoicing aloud and declaring his resolution to make known the eternal God and the dying love of Jesus, all along the banks of the Yoon-za-len, his native stream.
In these deserts let me labor,On these mountains let me tellHow He died -- The blessed Savior,To redeem a world from hell.
The banner of the love of JesusThe dying love of Jesus!The redeeming love of the blessed Saviour!
Answering a communication from a group of missionary candidates in Hamilton, New York, Judson warned of the danger of growing weary in preaching the gospel and of substituting other activities for the business of winning lost souls. He says: Satan will sympathize with you in the matter and he will present some chapel of ease in which to officiate in your native tongue, some government situation, some professorship or editorship, some literary or scientific pursuit, some supernumerary translation, or, at least, some system of schools; anything, in a word, that will help you without much surrender of character, to slip out of real missionary work.
If all missionaries in all lands had shared Judson's passion for souls, his vision of missionary conquest would not now be so far short of realization. In his first tract for the Burmese people, written in 1816, he included this sanguine prediction: About one or at most two hundred years hence the religion of Buddha, of Brahma, of Muhammad and of Rome, together with all other false religions, will disappear and the religion of Christ will pervade the whole world; all quarrels and wars will cease and all the tribes of men will be like a band of mutually loving brothers.
More than a century and a quarter have passed since that prediction was made. We are hastening toward the termination of the two hundred years of which he spoke and, due to the tremendous increase in population, there are more -- vastly more -- unreached and unsaved people in heathen lands today than there were when Carey inaugurated the modern missionary movement. Adoniram Judson is still the voice of God, calling us to pray, witness and sacrifice.
By the mercy of God, Judson lived not only to translate the entire Bible into the Burmese tongue, but also to see thousands pass from darkness and death to light and immortality. At the time of his death there were sixty-three churches and seven thousand converts. "In achieving these triumphs," writes Dr. Boreham, "Judson constantly adhered to his favorite theme -- the love of Christ." He seemed convinced, as Dr. Wayland intimates, that the whole world could be converted if only each individual could be persuaded that there was a place for him in the divine love.
After eight years of loneliness following the death of Ann, Judson had married Sarah Boardman and, during their eleven years of married life, eight children were born to them, three of whom died at an early age. Upon Sarah's death, Judson returned to his homeland after thirty-three years absence for his only furlough. While at home he married Emily Chubbuck, who returned with him to Burma to share the fervent labors of his closing years. The year 1850 ushered in the final epoch in the life of this hero of the Cross.
