the royal patronage had been refused, he might be molested by ill-disposed persons; but finding that this would be exceedingly costly, he preferred 'trusting in the Lord to keep us and our poor disciples.'
It was encouraging that at Pyece, a place on the banks of the Irrawaddy, the missionaries met Shwaygnong, who had come thither to visit a sick friend, and came on board eagerly to know the result of their journey. They told him all, even of the good confession beneath the iron mall, and he seemed less affected and intimidated than they expected, though he had nearly made up his mind to cast in his lot with them. 'If I die, I shall die in a good cause,' he said. 'I know it is the cause of truth.' And then he repeated his actual faith: 'I believe in the Eternal God, in His Son Jesus Christ, in the Atonement which Christ has made, and in the writings of the Apostles as the true and one Word of God.' He also said he had never, since their last conversation, lifted up his folded hands before a pagoda, though on the day of worship, to avoid persecution, he would walk up one side of the building and down the other. To this Mr. Judson replied, 'You may be a disciple of Christ in heart, but you are not a full disciple. You have not faith and resolution enough to keep all the commands of Christ, particularly that which commands you to be baptized though in the face of persecution and death. Consider the words of JESUS-'He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.''
He listened in profound silence, and with the manner with which he always received what he considered deeply; but there was still a long struggle to come, and many fluctuations, and the simpler minds were the stay and comfort of the missionaries, when on their return to Rangoon they considered what steps to take. Their first proposal was to move to a district between Bengal and Arracan, where were several Christian natives now destitute of a pastor, and where the language was very like Burmese, though the place was beyond the power of the Emperor, and to take their three baptized converts with them. Nau and Thaahlah were ready to follow them everywhere, but Byaay was married, and no Burmese woman was allowed to leave the country. He, with several others who were on the point of conversion, entreated the missionaries not to leave them, and Thaahlah made a remarkable speech. 'Be it remembered,' he said, 'that this work is not yours or ours, but the work of God. If He give light, the religion will spread.'
It was decided, according to the earnest wish of these poor people, that they should not be deserted till there were enough of them to form a congregation and have a teacher from among themselves set over them, and this-as the sect to which the Judsons belonged has no form of setting apart for the ministry-was all that they regarded as requisite. The Arracan converts were not, however, to be neglected, and Mr. Colman therefore was to go to Chittagong, and there establish a station, which might receive those from Rangoon in case it should become needful to leave the place. He was doing well there, when he died from an attack of fever.
The Judsons remained, and held their worship in the zayat on Sunday with the doors closed and only the initiated present; but it seemed as if the fear of losing their teachers quickened the zeal of the Christian converts in bringing their friends to inquire. Shwaygnong had long been unconsciously preparing the way by his philosophical instructions, going so much deeper than the popular Buddhism, and he brought several of his pupils, both male and female, telling them that 'he had found the true wisdom;' but he still hung back. {f:137} Mr. Judson suspected him of wanting a companion of his own rank to keep him in countenance, and doubted whether it were fear of the world or pride of heart that kept him back; but he seems to have had a genuine battle with his own sceptical spirit, and the acceptance of such ordinances as the Baptists required was a difficulty to him. Four or five later converts were baptized before him, and at last he kept away from the mission for so long that Mr. Judson thought they had lost him; but when he reappeared it turned out that he had been ill with fever, and had had much sickness in his family, and had meantime fought out his mental conflict, and made up his mind to the full acceptance of Christianity at all risks.
He came again with five disciples, one of them a woman of fifty-one years old, named Mah-menlay, with her husband, all formally requesting baptism; but Mr. Judson was not sufficiently satisfied of the earnestness of any to receive them at once, excepting Shwaygnong himself, whom Mr. Judson kept till evening; and then, after reading the history of St. Philip's baptism of the Ethiopian, and praying, led him down to the water in the woods and baptized him, like others, in the pool, by the light of the stars in the tropical night. That same night Mah-menlay came back, entreating so earnestly for baptism, that she, too, was led down to the water and baptized. 'Now,' she said, 'I have taken the oath of allegiance to JESUS CHRIST, and I have nothing to do but to commit myself, soul and body, to the hands of my Lord, assured that He will never suffer me to fall away.'
This was the last thing before the Judsons embarked for Serampore, a journey necessitated by a severe attack of liver complaint, from which Mrs. Judson had long been suffering and their little girl had also died.
To these devoted people a visit to Calcutta was a change for the sake of health! On their return, after half a year's absence, the first thing they heard was that their kind friend Mya-day-men had come as Myowoon to Rangoon, and they were met on the wharf by all their disciples, led by Shwaygnong, in a state of rapture. They found that such as had lived in the yard of the mission had been subjected to a petty official persecution, which had made them fly to the woods; but that the good Mya- day-men had refused to hear an accusation brought against Moung Shwaygnong by the lamas and officials of the village, who had him before the tribunal, accusing him of trying 'to turn the priest's rice-pot bottom upwards.'
'What matters it,' said the Myowoon; 'let the priests turn it back again.'
This was enough to ensure the safety of the Christians during his viceroyalty, though at first he paid little attention to Mr. Judson, being absorbed in grief for the death of his favourite daughter, one of the wives of the Emperor. She does not seem to have been the child of the amiable Vice-reine, or, as her title had now become, Woon-gyee-gaadaw, who had been promoted to the right of riding in a
There were now twenty-five disciples. Ing likewise joined them having returned from his voyage, and was shortly after baptized. Mah-menlay opened a school for little girls, and Shwaygnong was regularly engaged by Mr. Judson to revise his translation of the Epistle to the Ephesians and the first part of the Book of Acts, before they were printed. Another remarkable man came to study the subject, Moung Long, a philosopher of the most metaphysical kind, whose domestic conversations with his wife were reported to be of this description.-The wife would tell him, 'The rice is ready.'
'Rice! what is rice? Is it matter or spirit? Is it an idea or a nonentity?'
If she answered, 'It is matter,' he would reply, 'And what is matter? Are you sure there is such a thing in existence, or are you merely subject to a delusion of the senses?'
Mr. Judson was struck with the expression of this man's one eye, which had 'as great a quantity of being as half-a-dozen common eyes.' After the first exposition of the Christian doctrine, the philosopher began with extreme suavity and politeness: 'Your lordship says that in the beginning God created one man and one woman. I do not understand (I beg your lordship's pardon) what a man is, and why he is called a man.'
Mr. Judson does not record his own line of argument, only that the Buddhist sceptic was foiled, and Shwaygnong, who had often argued with him, was delighted to see his old adversary posed. He came again and again, and so did his wife, the ablest woman whom Mrs. Judson had met, asking questions on the possibility of sin finding entrance to a pure mind, and they were soon promising catechumens; but in the midst of all this hopefulness, a season of cholera and fever set in, both the Judsons were taken ill at the same time, and could not even help one another, and the effect on Ann's health was such that, as the only means of saving her life, she was sent off at once to England, while her husband remained at his post quite alone, for Colman had died a martyr to the climate.
She was warmly welcomed by the Missionary Societies in London and Edinburgh, and thence returned to America, where her mother and sisters were still living to hail her return. Her narratives, backed by her natural sweetness, eloquence and beauty, had a great effect in stirring up the mission spirit among both her countrymen and countrywomen, and there was no lack of recruits willing to return with her and share her toil.
The account of Colman's devotion and death had had an especial effect upon a young girl named Sarah Hall, of Salem, Massachusetts, one of those natures that seem peculiarly gifted with poetic enthusiasm, yet able to stand the brunt of the severest test of practice. She was the daughter of one of those old-fashioned New England families, where a considerable amount of prosperity and a good deal of mental culture is compatible with much personal homely exertion. As the eldest of thirteen, Sarah had to work hard, but all the time she kept a prim little journal, recording, at an age when one is surprised to see her able to write at all, that her mother is too busy to let her go to school, and she must improve herself at home; and this she really did, for her notes, as she grew older, speak of studying Butler's Analogy, Paley's Evidences, logic, geometry, and Latin. Her library of poetry is said to have consisted only of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and Macpherson's Ossian; but hymns must have filled her ear with
