ALTHOUGH Judson and his wife reached their home in safety, it was to find it desolated. Shortly after, Mrs. Judson died, doubtless worn out by her incessant sufferings and anxieties, and six months after her death, their little girl died also.
The heroic missionary was left lonely and bereaved amongst the heathen. A few of the native converts had gathered around him, and he labored incessantly, translating, writing, and preaching, but his heart was sad and his spirit was most deeply depressed.
But while the missionary's spirit was overwhelmed, and while he was passing through spiritual experiences of a very painful description, God was greatly using His servant. “Priests and people from the remotest regions are alike eager to get our writings," he writes. "I should have given away double the number if I could have obtained sufficient supplies." He then refers to the great difficulty experienced by his fellow-worker, who was not thoroughly familiar with the language, in printing the Burmese tracts, and adds these strong words on the indifference of the Christians at home to the labors and straits of the missionaries, and to the vast opening for serving the Lord and souls: "We have not been well supported from home. It is most distressing to find, when we are almost worn out, and are sinking one after another into the grave, that many of our brethren in Christ at home are just as hard and immovable as rocks . . . ."
Soon after writing thus, sickness again invaded the mission station, and once more Judson was single-handed in his work. “I am left," he says, “as it were alone; there being not another foreigner in all the country that can preach the gospel to the perishing millions."
But the love of God and love for souls had become implanted by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of several Burmese, and they carried the good news, as well as the written testimony concerning the living God, over the country. And greatly by their means the remarkable work of God among the Karens took place.
A Christian Burman redeemed a Karen slave whom he found in Rangoon, and through the instrumentality of the missionaries this man became a believer in God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Karens inhabit the Burmese mountains, and are a race of whose origin little is known. Being much persecuted by the Burmans they live scattered in small groups on the mountain sides; they were in Judson's time a wild, strange race, far sunk in ignorance and destitution. Yet they proved to be affectionate and truthful. In one striking manner the Karens differed from their Burman masters, they did not worship images; indeed it could hardly be said they had any religion at all, beyond making offerings to demons, who are supposed by them to control sicknesses. How-ever, in their old songs and legends, wherein lay their traditions, handed down from generation to generation, there existed the idea of the One God, invisible and supreme, and also the hope that someday from across the sea, white men would come who should teach the Karens the worship of God. Their legends were evidently derived from the truth, for one of them contains a story of the creation and the fall of man, But whence their legends came no one seems able to discover.
Judson himself did not labor much amongst these interesting people, but it was a great joy for him when he was able to do so.
The Karens received the truth with joy. And in a most remarkable manner the gospel spread among them. In the space of some thirty years Christian schools and Christian villages sprang up among them. Their language was reduced to writing, and the Bible was translated into their tongue. And these poor and despised people became bright examples of Christianity.
On one of his journeys, Judson thus describes the work amongst the Karens. He arrived at a village and "visited the little church, chiefly to receive the confession of two female members, who have been implicated in making some offering to the demon who rules over diseases—the easily besetting sin of the Karens. Spent the rest of the day in preaching to the villagers and visitors from different parts. Had a profoundly attentive assembly.
“Again took the main river. Met a boat full of men coming down the stream. On hailing to know whether they wished to hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, an elderly man, the chief of the party, replied that he had already heard much of the gospel, and there was nothing he desired more than to have a meeting with the teacher." They went ashore, and after some hours of conversation, “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-zalen, his native stream."
Judson's heart rejoiced over these people.
“I feel in my very soul," said he, “the dying words of an aged man of God, when he waved his withered, death-struck arm, and exclaimed,
‘The best of all is, God is with us.' Yes, the great Invisible is in these Karen wilds. That mighty Being who heaped up these craggy rocks and reared these stupendous mountains, He is present by His Holy Spirit, and accompanies the sound of the gospel with converting sanctifying power. The best of all, God is with us."
There were some twenty thousand Karens received into church membership upon their confession of faith, and upon their walk being accepted as satisfactory during a period of twenty-five years.
The arduous, self-sacrificing life of Judson came to a close when he was sixty-two years of age. He was worn out with work and sickness, and it was hoped that a voyage might tend to rally him. But he died on the voyage, and was buried at sea.
Some of his words during the last year of his life, when he was slowly dying, have been preserved, and it will be well to ponder over them. We cannot all be missionaries, but we may all be earnest Christians. We cannot all labor as earnest missionaries for Christ, but we may all help those who do. The secret of all true energy for Christ is the love of Christ constraining us, and this love of Christ did most energetically move the life of Judson. He was known when studying the subject for his preaching to be, at times, so over-whelmed with its vastness as to weep over God's love, and even to be obliged to turn from the subject he had chosen and to select another, the marvels of which less overcame him ! Such preaching, we may be sure, would be full of power!
He was most earnest in prayer, and looked on in faith to the conversion of children's children, and to the meeting of all the family in heaven. He desired that his Christian brethren should be more truly upon his heart as the beloved of it. He did not regard it as sufficient that they should be generally remembered before God, but individually, and in view of Christ's love to them, and of eternity. "As I have loved you, so ought ye also to love one another," was a precept continually in his mind, and he would often murmur, as though unconsciously, “As I have loved you—as I have loved you," and then burst out with the exclamation, “Oh, the love of Christ, the love of Christ."
One day during his prostration he looked up from his pillow, with sudden animation, and exclaimed, “I have gained the victory at last. I love every one of Christ's redeemed, as I believe He would have me love them. Gladly would I prefer the meanest of His creatures, who bears His name, before myself. And now here I lie at peace with all the world, and, what is better still, at peace with my own conscience."
When his severe bodily sufferings prevented him from conversing, he would look up with a smile, and whisper, “Oh, the love of Christ-the love of Christ."
His favorite theme during the last months of his life was the love of Christ.
Thus filled with Christ, passed away one of the most earnest and most energetic missionaries to the heathen of modern times.