"Not now; for dungeon walls look stern and gloomy,
And prisoners' sighs sound strangely on the breeze
Man's prisoners—but thy Savior's noble treemen—
Hast thou no ministry of love for these?”
MR. JUDSON'S imprisonment must I have been a very trying time alike to the missionary and his wife. They had said "Good-bye" to their pleasant home, and to their many friends in America, to live in Burmah. They loved the poor heathen Burmese, and longed to tell them about the one true God; and it must have seemed hard at times to trust the love of that God, when His servant, who seemed so needed for teaching and preaching the word, was shut up in prison; and such a prison, too. The death prison, as it was called, was not unlike a cattle shed, its walls and roof being of planks roughly fastened together. There were no windows, so no light or fresh air could get in, except such as found its way through cracks between the boards. The prisoners, loaded with heavy iron chains, were crowded so closely that they could hardly move. No regular food was given them, and many of them died from hunger, or the much dreaded prison fever, and yet the place was always full.
The prison keepers, too, were hard, unfeeling men, who often added by their cruelty to the sufferings of the poor captives committed to their care. These keepers, who were called "the children of the prison," had nearly all been guilty of some great crime, formed a class who were looked down upon by their fellow countrymen, and treated as the lowest of the low.
No ray of sunlight ever brightened the dark gloomy place I have been trying to describe to you, and yet the prison had a visitor whose coming must have often brought comfort and hope during the long weary days they passed without books or writing material—to some at least of its inmates.
For some time Mrs. Judson had worn the same kind of dress as the native women of Burmah. It was at once simple and pretty, and its tight-fitting jacket of bright red or yellow, with its long flowing skirt of silk, suited her tall figure and graceful movements. She visited the prison as often as she was allowed to do so, and would often carry food or fetch water for others beside her husband.
One day the governor, to whom she had given money, sent for her. He was very angry, saying in a loud, harsh voice as she entered, "You are very bad; why did you tell the king's officer that you had given me money not to ill-treat your husband?”
Mrs. Judson replied, "I am sorry to have displeased you; but the officer asked me if I had given you anything, and what could I say?”
"Say? Why you ought to have said you had given me nothing.”
“But that would have been untrue, and I cannot tell a lie. The Christian religion differs from that of the Burmese. The God of the Christians is holy, and His children are forbidden to lie.” The governor, still looking very much out of temper, said, “But I would have made the teachers more comfortable; I could even have taken off their chains, and now perhaps I shall put them back into the inner prison.”
Tears were in Mrs. Judson's eyes, but her trust in God was unshaken as she answered, "If you had been standing by my side with your knife raised to kill me when the officer came to question me I could not have said what you wish.”
"She is right! she is right!" interposed the wife of the governor, "and I like her for being so honest. There must be something good in the religion of Jesus when it can make its followers so brave and true; you must not be angry with her." And from that day she became her firm friend.
Mrs. Judson was not free to go to the prisoners at any time. Sometimes she had to wait for hours under a burning sun in the prison yard, in the hope of being allowed to see and speak to her husband for just a few minutes. When she took a fever and was for some days too ill to leave her bed, she tried to send Mr. Judson a note by a trusty native servant. But the attempt was found out and the messenger driven away with blows.
A present of cloth and a pocket-knife induced the head keeper to allow Mr. and Mrs. Judson to converse for a short time in the prison yard one evening. They spoke in low tones and in English of a treasure they much wished to preserve-a translation of the New Testament which had cost Mr. Judson many months of hard work to prepare, and which Mrs. Judson had hidden by burying in the mission garden just before the house was searched. So far it had been safe, but the rainy season was coming on, and the damp would spoil it if it were allowed to remain in the ground; and yet they knew, only too well, it would not be safe to keep it in the mission cottage.
What was to be done with it? It was decided that Mrs. Judson should sew it up in a pillow so hard and uncomfortable, and with such a ragged cover, that even the prison keepers would not be likely to take it away, and that Mr. Judson should have it. The pillow proved a success, and years after the missionary, when telling a friend about it, said, "I had been too long loaded with chains and with only the ground to sleep on to take much notice of a hard pillow.”
Mrs. Judson was again laid aside by illness, and when three weeks later she returned to the prison gate, a baby girl only a fortnight old, and very small and sickly, lay in her arms. Maria, as the wee, wan stranger was named, was the third child of Mr. and Mrs. Judson. Her two little brothers were with the Lord, and the sight of his infant daughter, born while her father was in prison, must have given as much pain as pleasure to the loving heart of Mr. Judson.
Seven long weary months of imprisonment had dragged slowly by, when late one night a band of rough soldiers entered the prison, loaded the prisoners with more chains, and thrust them into the inner prison. News had reached Ava of a victory gained in Burmah by the British troops, and it was said that all the white prisoners were to be put to death next morning.
Mr. Judson's first thought on hearing this was, "Am I to go like this? Without one good-bye to my wife: without one last kiss to my child." Then the rest and peace of knowing that he and they were in the hands of a loving Father filled his soul, and he could say, "All is well; my wife will be spared some hours of suffering by not hearing of this till all is over and I am forever with my Savior." And he pressed the pillow, which in all the confusion he had not lost, still closer, as he prayed that the "glad tidings" hidden there might one day be known and loved in Burmah.
A silence like that of death had fallen upon that terrible prison-a silence only broken by Mr. Judson's voice as he prayed, not so much for himself as for his loved ones and fellow prisoners.
The sentence of death was not carried out. Long years of work for the Master he served lay between that dark night in the death prison at Burmah and the moment when the faithful servant was to see His face, and know the joy of being at home with the One who had loved him and washed him from his sins in His own blood.
“When Satan appears, to stop up our path,
And fill us with fears, we triumph by faith;
He cannot take from us, the' oft he has tried,
The heart-cheering promise, The Lord will provide.
Should life sink apace, and death be in view,
This word of His grace shall comfort us through;
No fearing or doubting with Christ on our side,
Through faith we'll die shouting, The Lord wild provide.”