Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons

When an individual attains a position of eminence which commands the admiration of the world, we naturally seek to learn his early history, to ascertain what indications were given in childhood of qualities destined to shine with such resplendent lustre, and to discover the kind of discipline which has developed powers so extraordinary. But in no researches are we more apt to be baffled than in these.

Few children are so remarkable as to make it worth while, even to a parent, to chronicle their little sayings and doings; and of infant prodigies-though there is a superstitious belief that most of them die early, which is expressed in the adage-

"Whom the Gods love, die young,"

those that live commonly disappoint the hopes of partial friends, who watched their infancy with wonder and expectation.

There are certain qualities, however, which we shall rarely miss even in the childhood of those who attain eminence by a wise employment of their talents and acquirements. These are: firmness of purpose, industry and application, and an ardent, and sometimes enthusiastic temperament. These qualities were possessed in no common degree by Ann Hasseltine, the subject of this memoir. She was born in Bradford, Massachusetts, on the 22d of December, 1789. In a sketch which she has given of her life, between twelve and seventeen years of age, we find evidence of an active, ardent, and social disposition, gay and buoyant spirits, persevering industry, and great decision of character.

Whatever engaged her attention, whether study or amusement, was pursued with an ardor that excited the sympathy and love both of her teachers and schoolfellows. Though little of her writing at this period is preserved, and the generation that knew her personally is mostly passed away, yet her whole subsequent career gives evidence of an intellect of a very high order, carefully cultivated by study and reflection.

She seems scarcely to have been the subject of serious impressions before her seventeenth year. Until that time she enjoyed the pleasures of the world with few misgivings and with a keenness of relish which led her to think herself, as she says, "the happiest creature on earth." She adds, "I so far surpassed my friends in gayety and mirth, that some of them were apprehensive I had but a short time to continue in my career of folly, and should be suddenly cut off. Thus passed the last winter of my gay life."

During the spring of 1806, she began regularly to attend a series of conference meetings in Bradford, her native town. She soon felt that the Spirit of God was operating on her mind. Amusements lost their relish; she felt that she must have a new heart or perish forever; and she often sought solitude, that she might, unseen by others, weep over her deplorable state. Soon, however, her fears that her distress might be noticed by her companions, were merged in her greater terrors of conscience, and she "was willing the whole universe should know that she felt herself to be a lost and perishing sinner." Her distress increased as she became more and more sensible of the depravity of her heart, and the holiness and sovereignty of God. Her mind rose in rebellion against a Being, who after all her prayers and tears and self-denial, still withheld from her the blessing of pardon and peace. She says, "In this state I longed for annihilation, and if I could have destroyed the existence of my soul with as much ease as that of my body, I should quickly have done it. But that glorious Being who is kinder to his creatures than they are to themselves, did not leave me to remain in this distressing state." The plan of salvation through a crucified Redeemer, gradually unfolded itself before her; she began to take delight in those attributes of God which before had filled her with abhorrence; and although she did not at first imagine that this was the new heart for which she had sought so earnestly, yet she was constrained to commit all her interests for time and eternity unreservedly to that Saviour, who now seemed infinitely worthy of the service of her whole existence.[1]

The change in her from extreme worldliness to a life of piety and prayer was deep and permanent. Hers was no half-way character. While she was of the world, she pursued its follies with entire devotion of heart; and when she once renounced it as unsatisfying, and unworthy of her immortal aspirations, she renounced it solemnly and finally. Her ardor for learning did not abate, but instead of being inspired, as formerly by a thirst for human applause and distinction, it was now prompted by her sense of responsibility to God for the cultivation of the talents he had given her, and her desire to make herself increasingly useful. In the sketch referred to she remarks, "I attended my studies in school with far different feelings and different motives from what I had ever done before. I felt my obligation to improve all I had to the glory of God; and since he in his providence had favored me with advantages for improving my mind, I felt that I should be like the slothful servant if I neglected them. I therefore diligently employed all my hours in school in acquiring useful knowledge, and spent my evenings and part of the night in spiritual enjoyments." "Such was my thirst for religious knowledge, that I frequently spent a great part of the night in reading religious books." A friend says of her: "She thirsted for the knowledge of gospel truth in all its relations and dependencies. Besides the daily study of the scripture with Guise, Orton, and Scott before her, she perused with deep interest the works of Edwards, Hopkins, Belamy, Doddridge, &c. With Edwards on Redemption, she was instructed, quickened, strengthened. Well do I remember the elevated smile that beamed on her countenance when she first spoke to me of its precious contents. When reading scripture, sermons, or other works, if she met with anything dark or intricate, she would mark the passage, and beg the first clergyman who called at her father's to elucidate and explain it."

How evidently to us, though unconsciously to herself, was her Heavenly Father thus fitting her for the work he was preparing for her. Had she known that she was to spend her days in instructing bigoted and captious idolaters in religious knowledge, she could not have trained herself for the task more wisely than she was thus led to do.

While, under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, she was thus cultivating her intellect, that same Spirit was also sanctifying and purifying her heart. She loathed sin both in herself and others, and strove to avoid it, not from the fear of hell, but from fear of displeasing her Father in heaven.

In one place she writes: "Were it left to myself whether to follow the vanities of the world, and go to heaven at last, or to live a religious life, have trials with sin and temptation, and sometimes enjoy the light of God's reconciled countenance, I should not hesitate a moment in choosing the latter, for there is no real satisfaction in the enjoyments of time and sense."

On the fourteenth of August, 1806, she made a public profession of religion, and united with the Congregational church at Bradford, being in her seventeenth year.

Very early in her religious life she became sensible that if unusual advantages for acquiring knowledge had fallen to her lot, she was the more bound to use her talents and acquirements for the benefit of others less favored than herself. Actuated by such motives, she opened a small school in her native place, and subsequently taught in several neighboring villages. Her example in this respect is surely worthy of imitation. Perhaps no person is more admirable than a young lady fitted like Miss Hasseltine by a cultivated mind and engaging manners to shine in society, who having the choice between a life of ease and one of personal exertion, chooses voluntarily, or only in obedience to the dictates of conscience, the weary and self-denying path of the teacher. And probably such a course would oftener be chosen, were young persons aware of the unquestionable fact, that the school in which we make the most solid and rapid improvement, is that in which we teach others.

An extract from her journal will sustain what we have said of her conscientiousness and purity of motive in endeavoring to instruct the young:

"May 12, 1809.-Have taken charge of a few scholars. Ever since I have had a comfortable hope in Christ, I have desired to devote myself to him in such a way as to be useful to my fellow-creatures. As Providence has placed me in a situation in life where I have an opportunity of getting as good an education as I desire, I feel it would be highly criminal in me not to improve it. I feel, also, that it would be equally criminal to desire to be well educated and accomplished, from selfish motives, with a view merely to gratify my taste and relish for improvement, or my pride in being qualified to shine. I therefore resolved last winter to attend the academy from no other motive than to improve the talents bestowed by God, so as to be more extensively devoted to his glory, and the benefit of my fellow-creatures. On being lately requested to take a small school for a few months, I felt very unqualified to have the charge of little immortals; but the hope of doing them good by endeavoring to impress their young and tender minds with divine truth, and the obligation I feel to try to be useful, have induced me to comply. I was enabled to open the school with prayer. Though the cross was very great, I felt constrained by a sense of duty to take it up. O may I have grace to be faithful in instructing these children in such a way as shall be pleasing to my heavenly Father."

Such being the principles by which she was actuated in commencing the work of instruction, we cannot doubt that her efforts to be useful were blessed not only by the temporal, but the spiritual advancement of her pupils, some of whom may appear, with children from distant Burmah, as crowns of her rejoicing in the last great day.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] She thus describes more particularly the exercises of her mind, in an entry in her Journal a year later.

"July 6. It is just a year this day since I entertained a hope in Christ. About this time in the evening, when reflecting on the words of the lepers, 'If we enter into the city, then the famine is in the city and we shall die there, and if we sit still here we die also,'-I felt that if I returned to the world, I should surely perish; if I stayed where I then was I should perish; and I could but perish if I threw myself on the mercy of Christ. Then came light, and relief, and comfort, such as I never knew before."

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In 1810, the calm current of Miss Hasseltine's life was disturbed by circumstances which were to change all her prospects, and color her whole future destiny. From the quiet and seclusion of her New England home, she was called to go to the ends of the earth, on a mission of mercy to the dark browed and darker minded heathen.

It is perhaps impossible for us to realize now what was then the magnitude of such an enterprise. Our wonderful facilities for intercourse with the most distant nations, and the consequent vast amount of travel, were entirely unknown forty years ago. A journey of two hundred miles then involved greater perplexity and required nearly as much preparation, and was certainly attended with more fatigue than a voyage to England at the present day. The subject of evangelizing the heathen in foreign countries had scarcely received any attention in Europe, and in this country there was not even a Missionary Society. That a female should renounce the refinements of her enlightened and Christian home, and go thousands of miles across unknown oceans

"to the farthest verge

Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes,"

to spend her life in an unhealthy climate, among a race whose language was strange to her ear, whose customs were revolting to her delicacy, and who might moreover make her a speedy victim to her zeal in their behalf,-a thing so common now as to excite no surprise and little interest-was then hardly deemed possible, if indeed, the idea of it entered the imagination. To decide the question of such an undertaking as this, as well as another question affecting her individual happiness through life, was Miss Hasseltine now summoned.

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Mr. Judson, a graduate of Brown University, "an ardent and aspiring scholar," was one of four or five young men in the then newly founded Theological Seminary at Andover, whose minds had become deeply impressed with the wants of the heathen, and a desire to go and labor among them. By their earnestness and perseverance, they so far awakened an interest in their project, that a Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was appointed, and the young men were set apart as missionaries. During the two years in which Mr. Judson and his associates were employed in efforts to accomplish this result, he had formed an acquaintance with Miss Hasseltine, and made her an offer of his hand. That he had no wish to blind her to the extent of the sacrifices she would make in accepting him, his manly and eloquent letter to her father, asking his daughter in marriage, abundantly proves. He says:

"I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure for a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death? Can you consent to all this for the sake of Him who left his heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing immortal souls; for the sake of Zion and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness, brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?"

The writer of this letter, who, after nearly forty years of missionary labor in which he endured all and more than all he has thus almost prophetically described, has just gone to join "the noble army of martyrs" and "those who came out of great tribulation," in his final home,-as he looks back on the hour when he thus gave up his life and what was more precious than life to the service of those souls, dear as he believed to the Redeemer, though perishing for lack of vision,-with what deep and serene joy must he contemplate the sacrifice! And she-

"Not lost, but gone before,"

who was there to meet and welcome him to

"happier bowers than Eden knew,"

where they rest from their labors, does she now regret that to his solemn appeal, she answered, "I will go?"

Mr. and Mrs. Judson were married at Bradford on the fifth of February, 1812, and on the nineteenth of the same month embarked on the brig Caravan, bound for Calcutta. Mr. and Mrs. Newell, also missionaries sailed in the same vessel. We will here give some extracts from letters written by Mrs. Judson to her friends at home, dated "at sea."

To her sister she writes, "I find Mr. Judson one of the kindest, most faithful and affectionate of husbands. His conversation frequently dissipates the gloomy clouds of spiritual darkness which hang over my mind and brightens my hope of a happy eternity. I hope God will make us instrumental of preparing each other for usefulness in this world, and greater happiness in a future world."

"June 16.-Day before yesterday, we came in sight of land, after having been out only one hundred and twelve days. We could distinguish nothing but the lowering mountains of Golconda. Yesterday we were nearer land ... and the scene was truly delightful, reminding me of the descriptions I have read of the fertile shores of India-the groves of orange and palm trees. Yesterday we saw two vessels.... You have no idea how interesting the sight-a vessel at the side of us, so near we could hear the captain speak-for he was the first person we have heard speak since we sailed, except what belong to our ship.

"Tuesday.-Last night was the most dangerous, and to me, by far the most unpleasant we have had.... To-day the scene is truly delightful. We are sailing up the river Hoogly, a branch of the Ganges, and so near the land that we can distinctly discover objects. On one side of us are the Sunderbunds, (islands at the mouth of the Ganges.) The smell which proceeds from them is fragrant beyond description.

"Wednesday.-On each side of the Hoogly are the Hindoo cottages, as thick together as the houses in our seaports. They are very small, and in the form of hay-stacks, without either chimneys or windows. They are situated in the midst of trees which hang over them and appear truly romantic. The grass and fields of rice are perfectly green, and herds of cattle are everywhere feeding on the banks of the river, and the natives are scattered about, ... some fishing, some driving the team, and some sitting indolently on the bank of the river. The pagodas we have passed are much handsomer and larger than the houses. There are many English seats near the shore.... Oh, what reason we have to be thankful for so pleasant and prosperous a voyage....

"Well, sister, we are safe in Calcutta harbor, and almost stunned with the noise of the natives. Mr. Judson has gone on shore to find a place for us to go. The city is by far the most elegant of any I have ever seen. Many ships are lying at anchor, and hundreds of natives all around. They are dressed very curiously-their white garments hanging loosely over their shoulders. But I have not time to describe anything at present.

"Thursday.-Harriet and I are yet on board the vessel, and have not been on land. Mr. Judson has not yet gained permission for us to live in the country. He and Mr. Newell are gone again to-day, and what will be their success I know not. The East India Company are violently opposed to missions, and have barely given permission to their own countrymen to settle here as preachers. We have nothing to expect from man, and everything from God.... If God has anything for us to do here, he will doubtless open a door for our entrance, if not he will send us to some other place."

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Mr. and Mrs. Judson landed at Calcutta on the 18th of June, 1812, and were hospitably received by the venerable Dr. Carey, who immediately conducted them to his home in Serampore. There they found a delightful mission family, consisting of Messrs. Carey Marshman and Ward, with their wives and children who welcomed them most cordially, and invited them to remain until the arrival of their brother missionaries.

Of the arrangements in this truly Christian family-the schools, the religious exercises, the cultivation of the gardens belonging to the establishment, and the instruction communicated to the natives, they express themselves in the highest terms of eulogy.

Hitherto the course of our missionaries in their enterprise had indeed run smooth, and they had begun to flatter themselves that they had over-estimated the trials and dangers of the life they had chosen; but sad reverses awaited them. They had been in Serampore but ten days, when Messrs. Judson and Newell were summoned to Calcutta, where an order from government was read to them, commanding them immediately to leave the country, and return to America. The British East India Company were at that time unfriendly to missions, and especially intolerant to missionaries from America. The idea of returning, without effecting the object for which they had left their native land, was too painful to be endured by the missionaries, and they immediately attempted to gain permission to go to some country not under the company's jurisdiction.-Burmah, the field to which they had been assigned by their brethren at home, seemed, for various reasons, utterly inaccessible; but they finally got leave to take passage in a ship bound for the Isle of France. The vessel would, however, accommodate but two passengers, and the health of Mrs. Newell requiring that she should be in a place of quiet, it was agreed that she and her husband should embark in it. For three months the rest of their company remained in Calcutta, watched with jealousy by the British Government, but unable to find a vessel to convey them away. At length they had peremptory orders to embark in a vessel bound to England. All hope of escape seemed now cut off, when Mr. Judson accidentally learned that a ship was about sailing for the Isle of France. They applied for a passport to go on board of her, but were refused. They informed the captain of the vessel of their circumstances, and were allowed to go on board without a pass. They had got but a few miles down the river, however, when a government despatch overtook them, commanding the pilot to conduct the ship no further, as there were persons on board who had been ordered to England.

By advice of the captain, the missionaries left the ship, and went on shore, while the pilot wrote a certificate that no such persons were on board. The captain being angry at the detention of his vessel, ordered them to take their baggage from it immediately, but at length consented to let it remain on board until he should reach a tavern sixteen miles further down the river. Mrs. Judson also remained in the ship until it came opposite the tavern, "where," she says, "the pilot kindly lent me his boat and a servant to go on shore. I immediately procured a large boat to send to the ship for our baggage. I entered the tavern a stranger, a female and unprotected. I called for a room and sat down to reflect on my disconsolate situation. I had nothing with me but a few rupees. I did not know that the boat which I had sent after the vessel would overtake it, and if it did, whether it would ever return with our baggage; neither did I know where Mr. Judson was, or when he would come, or with what treatment I should meet at the tavern. I thought of home and said to myself, These are some of the trials attendant upon a missionary life, and which I have anticipated. In a few hours Mr. J. arrived, and toward night our baggage."

After two or three days of great perplexity and distress, and when they had given up all hope of being able to proceed to the Isle of France, they unexpectedly received from an unknown friend a magistrate's pass to go on board the Creole, the vessel they had left. Their only difficulty now was that she had probably got out to sea, as it was three days since they had left her. However they hastened down the river seventy miles, to Saugur, where, among many ships at anchor, they had the inexpressible happiness to find the Creole, on which they embarked for the Isle of France, their first destination.

Their dangers on the passage to the Isle of France were great, the vessel being old and leaky; and when they reached there, they found little encouragement to remain. While on the island, Mrs. J. had a severe attack of illness, as well as much depression of spirits from the uncertainties of their situation. After much deliberation they determined to establish themselves on an island near Malacca, to reach which they must first go to Madras, and they accordingly sailed for that place. War having broken out between England and America, the hostility of the East India Directors to American missionaries was of course much increased, so that it would be impossible for them to make any stop at all in Madras, without incurring the danger of being sent back to America. What, then, was their distress on their arrival there, to find no ship bound for the island they wished to visit! Their way seemed entirely hedged up, for the only vessel in Madras harbor ready for sea, was destined to Burmah, a country pronounced by all their friends in India, utterly inaccessible.

In her journal, at this time, Mrs. J. writes: "Oh, our heavenly Father, direct us aught! Where wilt thou have us to go? What wilt thou have us to do? Our only hope is in thee, and to thee only do we look for protection. Oh, let this mission live before thee!" "To-morrow," she adds, at a somewhat later date, "we expect to embark for Rangoon, (in Burmah.) Adieu to polished, refined, Christian society. Our lot is not cast among you, but among pagans, among barbarians, whose tender mercies are cruel. Indeed, we voluntarily forsake you, and for Jesus' sake choose the latter for our associates. O may we be prepared for the pure and polished society of heaven, composed of the followers of the Lamb, whose robes have been washed in his blood!"

Everything combined to render the passage to Rangoon unpleasant and perilous;-sickness, threatened shipwreck, and the want of all comforts;-but at length on the 14th of July, 1813, about eighteen months from the time they left Salem, in Massachusetts, they set their 'weary, wandering feet' on that shore which was to be their future home.

Among the depressing circumstances that had occurred in this gloomy period, not the least painful was the death of Mrs. Judson's early friend, and companion in her eastern voyage, Mrs. Harriet Newell. Of less mental and physical vigor than Mrs. Judson, this amiable and ardent Christian had gladly relinquished all other objects in life, for that of sharing the privations and soothing the cares of a husband to whom she was tenderly attached, in his labors among the heathen. But this privilege was denied her; she was not even permitted to reach a scene of missionary labor. Her heart-broken husband was compelled to bury her in a far distant isle of the ocean, and finish his short earthly course alone. But he lived to see the grave of that young martyr missionary visited by many pilgrim feet, and her name embalmed in many admiring hearts.

How keenly Mrs. Judson felt her loss, may be learned from a letter written from the Isle of France, whither she and her husband went on being driven from Calcutta:-"Have at last arrived in port; but oh, what news, what distressing news! Harriet is dead. Harriet, my dear friend, my earliest associate in the mission, is no more. Oh death, could not this wide world afford thee victims enough, but thou must enter the family of a solitary few whose comfort and happiness depended so much on the society of each other? Could not this infant mission be shielded from thy shafts!" "But be still, my heart, and know that God has done it. Just and true are thy ways, oh thou King of saints!"

Another heavy trial, was the separation of herself and husband from the church in which they were both educated, from the missionary association on which they depended for support, and from the sympathies of those Christians in their native land who had hitherto given them the most cordial encouragement in their enterprise. This separation was in consequence of a change in their sentiments in regard to baptism. So liberal has the church become at this day, that all now look upon this change as having decidedly advanced the cause of missions by enlisting a large and respectable body of Christians in this country, not hitherto engaged in it. But in 1813, a step like this on the part of beneficiaries of the Board, could not but be regarded with much disfavor and prejudice, render those who had taken it highly unpopular, and even subject their motives to unworthy imputations. Whatever may be thought of the soundness of their new views, therefore, there is not the shadow of a reason to doubt their conscientiousness in adopting them. That they did it in the face of every worldly motive, their letters and journals abundantly prove. Mrs. Judson writes: "It is extremely trying to reflect on the consequences of our becoming Baptists. We must make some very painful sacrifices." "We must be separated from our dear missionary associates, and labor alone in some isolated spot. We must expect to be treated with contempt, and to be cast off by many of our American friends-forfeit the character we have in our native land, and probably have to labor for our own support wherever we are stationed." "These things are very trying to us, and cause our hearts to bleed for anguish-we feel that we have no home in this world, and no friend but each other." "A renunciation of our former sentiments has caused us more pain than anything which ever happened to us through our lives."

Thus "perplexed but not in despair, cast down but not destroyed," they reached Rangoon, then the capital of the Burman Empire, and established themselves in what they regarded as their future home. Here, "remote, unfriended" and solitary-"reft of every stay but Heaven"-they were destined to pass nearly two years, before their hearts could be cheered by the intelligence from America, of the general interest awakened for them there in the denomination with which they had connected themselves; and the formation of a Baptist Board of Missions, which had appointed them its Missionaries. Of one thing, however, they must have felt sure, that they were conducted there by the special providence of God. The honor of commencing the Burman Mission, says Prof. Gammell, "is to be ascribed rather to the Divine Head of the Church, than to any leading movement or agency of the Baptist denomination. The way was prepared and the field was opened by God alone, and it only remained for true-hearted laborers to enter in and prosecute the noble work to which they had been summoned."

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