As a student at Andover Seminary, Judson heard and read of the work that William Carey and his associates were opening up in India. This influenced him to give serious consideration to the question of foreign missions. His first conclusion was that surely the love of Christ, which had so marvelously banished the darkness from his own soul, was meant for all mankind. By day he was haunted by the vision of vast nations bound and dying in the darksome prison house of sin. By night he spent long, sleepless hours contemplating the hapless condition of teeming multitudes beyond the sea sinking into Christless graves. But it was not easy to find and accept his place in the divine program. There was a terrific struggle in his soul between his worldly ambitions and the claims of the love of Christ. Then one epochal day he went out into the woods and fell down, praying: "More than all else, I long to please Thee, my Lord. What wilt Thou have me to do?" As he prayed, he felt the presence of Jesus close beside him and heard His voice saying, "Go to the uttermost parts and preach the gospel of My love. I send you forth, like Paul, as a witness to distant nations." And; also like Paul, he rose up determined not to be disobedient to his Lord's commission.
He soon gathered around him a group of kindred spirits. Among these were four young men who had come to Andover from William's College: Samuel J. Mills, Jr., James Richards, Luther Rice and Gordon Hall. Already, while in college, these young men had taken refuge from a storm under a haystack and had solemnly dedicated their lives to take the gospel to the "far away places." But there was no missionary society to send them forth. The question which now burdened Judson and his associates was that which Paul raised, "How shall we preach unless we be sent?" In response to the challenge of these consecrated young lives, a missionary society was formed, consecrated money poured in, the necessary equipment was provided and the missionaries arranged to depart. On the 5th day of February, 1812, Judson was married to Ann Hasseltine, who was destined to become the heroic "Ann of Ava." The next day he and his fellow appointees received solemn ordination at Salem, and on the 19th the Judsons embarked on the sail ship Caravan, bound for Calcutta.
During the long voyage the Judsons changed not only their physical, but also their denominational, latitude and longitude. As the result of a protracted study of the New Testament in the original Greek, they decided to become Baptists. Upon reaching Calcutta they had blessed fellowship with the English Baptist missionaries, Carey, Marshman and Ward, and formally aligned themselves with the Baptists.
This was a serious decision. They could no longer expect support from the churches that sent them out. Would the Baptists of the United States, at that time a very feeble people, rise up to their support? Just at this critical juncture another difficulty arose. They were peremptorily ordered out of India by the East India Company, on the expectation that the missionaries would interfere with its nefarious trading practices. After a long journey to the Isle of France, they returned to India and landed at Madras. Again the East India Company ordered them to leave the country immediately, else they would be deported back to England and America. Accordingly, they embarked on the Georgianna, which Judson described as a "crazy old vessel." For three weeks they were tossed about by a fierce monsoon in the Bay of Bengal. Ann became desperately ill, and Judson expected her death momentarily. Attended only by her husband, Ann gave birth to her first baby, which soon died and was buried at sea. As they sailed into the harbor of Rangoon, Ann finally rallied. Before them lay a squalid, unspeakably filthy village, whose uncivilized life had been utterly untouched and unsoftened by western influence. The night was made terrible by the cries of the dogs and pigs fighting for the garbage littered throughout the village. That night, said Judson in a letter written soon thereafter, "we have marked as the most gloomy and distressing we have ever passed." Instead of rejoicing that at last they had reached a heathen land where they might stay and proclaim the gospel, they found consolation, he writes, "only in looking beyond our pilgrimage, which we hoped would be short, to that peaceful region where the weary are at rest." Speedy death, either from disease or at the hands of Burma's notoriously cruel officials, seemed to stare them in the face and they were sorely tempted to return to America, concluding that God had shut the door in their face. But as they prayed through the long vigils of the night, the voice of the Lord comforted them, saying, "Fear not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God." Assured that their blessed Lord was with them and that their commission was still binding, they determined to go forward, whatever the cost, soothed and sustained by the constraints of divine love. They were:
Assured of their Lord's presence!
Comforted by His promise!
Made strong in His love!
The next morning, July 13, 1813, they disembarked. Look ye mortals! Look ye angels! Look ye ages to come! Behold the scene as these two intrepid souls leave the vessel, thereby committing themselves irrevocably to the dark uncertainties of the future, although Mrs. Judson was still so ill she had to be carried in a stretcher! Behold and weep as they go forth together into the chamber of horrors and the vale of bitter tears! Then began the third great epoch in Judson's memorable pilgrimage.
THE LOVE OF CHRIST GLORIFIED HIS TRIBULATIONS
Following the missionaries in their holy adventure, we behold scenes too horrible for words. On one occasion Judson, pitifully weak and emaciated, was driven in chains across the burning tropical sands, until, his back lacerated beneath the lash and his feet covered with blisters, he fell to the ground and prayed that the mercy of God might grant him a speedy death. For almost two years he was incarcerated in a prison too vile to house animals. He was bound with three pairs of chains and his feet were fastened in stocks which at times were elevated, so that only his shoulders touched the ground. The room into which he and many other prisoners were crowded, was without a window and felt like a fiery furnace under the merciless glare of the tropical sun. The stench of the place was terrible, vermin crawled everywhere and the jailer, Mr. Spotted Face, was a brute in human form. And, as Judson saw other prisoners dragged out to execution, he lived in terrifying suspense and was able to say with Paul, "I die daily."
Surely he would have fallen and perished under the weight of his cross, except for the tender, persistent, beautiful ministrations of Ann. As often as possible she bribed the jailer and then, under cover of darkness, crept to the door of Judson's den, bringing food and whispering words of hope and consolation. Finally for three long weeks she did not appear; but, upon her return, she bore in her arms a newborn baby to explain her absence. An epidemic of smallpox was raging unchecked through the city and little Maria was smitten with the dread disease. Due to the double strain of concern for her imprisoned husband and the suffering baby, Ann found herself unable to nurse the little one. Tormented by its pitiful cries, Ann took her baby up and down the streets of the city, pleading for mercy and for milk: "You women who have babies, have mercy on my baby and nurse her!"
Near the prison gate was a caged lion, whose fearful bellowings had told all that he was being starved against the day when he would be turned loose upon some of the prisoners. But the lion died of hunger before the plan was executed. Thereupon, plucky Mrs. Judson cleaned out the cage and secured permission for her husband to stay there for a few weeks, since he was critically ill with a fever.
One of the most pathetic pages in the history of Christian missions is that which describes the scene when Judson was finally released and returned to the mission house seeking Ann, who again had failed to visit him for some weeks. As he ambled down the street as fast as his maimed ankles would permit, the tormenting question kept repeating itself, "Is Ann still alive?" Upon reaching the house, the first object to attract his attention was a fat, half-naked Burman woman squatting in the ashes beside a pan of coals and holding on her knees an emaciated baby, so begrimed with dirt that it did not occur to him that it could be his own. Across the foot of the bed, as though she had fallen there, lay a human object that, at the first glance, was no more recognizable than his child. The face was of a ghastly paleness and the body shrunken to the last degree of emaciation. The glossy black curls had all been shorn from the finely-shaped head. There lay the faithful and devoted wife who had followed him so unwearily from prison to prison, ever alleviating his distresses and consoling him in his trials. Presently Ann felt warm tears falling upon her face and, rousing from her stupor, saw Judson by her side.
And there were other sorrows. Before he had been in Burma fourteen years he buried Ann and all of his children. But "the love that never fails" sustained him. "If I had not felt certain," he says, "that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings." Judson joined with Paul in declaring: "The love of Christ constraineth me ... Therefore I will glory in reproaches, in persecution and in distresses for Christ's sake." Thus began the fourth epoch in the life of this amazing man, this apostle of the love of Christ in Burma.
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