In
my last "thought" I shared about Adoniram
Judson. A couple days later I was asked to send one out highlighting the
brave and heroic commitment of his wife -- Ann Hasseltine Judson. This is
her story (or at least part of it). Her profound influence in regard to the
place of women in missions has few rivals. As the first woman missionary
sent out from the U.S., she set the standard for future generations. This
is by far the longest thought I've ever sent out (and it has
been heavily redacted to shorten it to what it is)! Yet, with Mothers Day
fast approaching, I thought honoring her contribution as a wife, mother and
missionary was warranted. Enjoy."Two hundred and nine years ago in 1810, a young man named Adoniram Judson composed an extraordinary letter to the father of the young woman he wanted to marry. He wrote as follows: “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?”
At
21 years of age, her parents left the choice to Ann. She decided to marry
Adoniram and to leave everything behind for the unknown. She knew she would
probably never see her family again. The voyage was far too long, perilous and
expensive for the possibility of any visit from relatives or friends. Letters
took months, and might well never arrive. There was no established mission
network to give support or counsel. There was no American Embassy in Asia to
give protection. There was no certainty that these pioneer missionaries would
even find a place in which they could safely minister. Nothing was guaranteed –
neither safety, health, toleration, and least of all success. But Adoniram,
Ann, and the other young people with them understood that Christ did not issue
the Great Commission on the condition that health, comfort and safety could be
guaranteed. Christ had said simply, “GO.” Therefore they married on
February 5, 1812 and the very next day the newlyweds sailed from Salem,
Massachusetts...
The
religion of Burma was Buddhism: a system of belief that arose in the sixth
century BC with the enlightenment of Gautama, the Buddha The Buddha taught that
all appearance is characterized by transience, that there is not really a soul,
and no eternal God… Ann wrote bluntly in her journal of the emptiness of
Buddhism: “The religion of Burmah, then, is, in effect, atheism; and the
highest reward of piety, the object of earnest desire and unwearied pursuit, is
annihilation. How wretched a system is this; how devoid of adequate motives to
virtue; and how vacant of consolation!” Consequently, the Burmese had no
concept of an eternal God, and no means in their language to express such an
idea. Ann and Adoniram worked hard studying up to 12 hours a day for two years
learning the difficult language. Eventually Adoniram produced a gospel tract in
Burmese and commenced working on a Burmese translation of the New Testament.
Ann authored a Burmese language catechism, translated the books of Daniel and
Jonah into Burmese, and began to teach women’s Bible classes. She was also the
first person to translate Bible passages into Siamese. Ann also formed a
society of native women who met together on Sundays to pray and read the
Scriptures.
By
1820, six years after their arrival in Burma, Ann was so seriously ill that she
had to seek medical help in Calcutta. Two years later she was told that unless
she returned either to Europe or America for treatment, she would die. She had
previously consented to her husband accompanying her to Calcutta, but the
longer voyage to England (and a possible further trip to America) would take at
the least two years, and she refused to consider Adoniram abandoning the infant
church and the crucial Bible translation for that long. As a result, in 1822,
she made the long and difficult journey alone. She sailed first for England,
and Christians there raised funds for her passage to America. Back at
home, she received skilled medical care and was reunited with her family and
that of Adoniram. The whole trip took two years, and of this separation
Adoniram said that it felt like cutting off his right arm and gouging out his
right eye.
Ann
returned in 1824, but her reunion with her husband, though joyful, was
pitifully brief. War between Burma and England began, and all male foreigners
fell under suspicion of being English spies. So Adoniram and his associate Mr.
Price, were thrown into the notorious death prison from which few ever emerged
alive. While in prison they awaited execution in the most filthy and sordid of
conditions, weighed down with fetters so that they could not walk. Daily they
observed the torture and execution of their fellow prisoners, not knowing when
their time would come. Nightly they were placed in the stocks, and their legs
and bodies raised so that only their head and shoulders remained on the ground.
They remained incarcerated for one and a half years, during which time they
were never able to wash, were often ill with no access to medical help, and had
little contact with the outside world...
During
her husband’s imprisonment, Ann petitioned tirelessly on the prisoners’ behalf
with no regard for personal risk. Daily she walked the two miles from their
small home to the prison in hopes of supplying them with food and drink.
Sometimes she was allowed to see them, but often they were forbidden to speak.
She also visited every person of influence to whom she could gain access,
trying to explain that as missionaries they had nothing to do with the English
war effort. She was quite alone through this ordeal, and she was pregnant.
Eight months after Adoniram had been arrested, in February 1825, she gave birth
to little Maria, and was able to visit the prison with the infant, whom the
father could only observe from afar. Their first baby had been stillborn, their
second had died at eight months, and this child’s chances of survival seemed
even more slender. Of this terrible time she wrote: “Sometimes
for days and days together, I could not go into the prison till after dark,
when I had two miles to walk, in returning to the house. O how many, many
times, have I returned from that dreary prison at nine o’clock at night,
solitary and worn out with fatigue and anxiety… My prevailing opinion was, that
my husband would suffer violent death; and that I should, of course become a
slave, and languish out a miserable though short existence in the tyrannical
hands of some unfeeling monster. But the consolations of religion, in these
trying circumstances, were neither `few nor small.’ It taught me to look
beyond this world, to that rest, that peaceful happy rest, where Jesus reigns,
and oppression never enter.”
Eventually
she had to set up a little shelter near the prison, as the daily
four-mile-round-trip proved too much to walk in the blazing heat. As the
weather brought unbearable heat, the conditions in the prison only worsened. Of
this time her memoirs record: “The situation of the prisoners was now
distressing beyond description. It was at the commencement of the hot season.
There were above a hundred prisoners shut up in one room, without a breath of
air excepting from the cracks in the boards. I sometimes obtained permission to
go to the door for five minutes, when my heart sickened at the wretchedness
exhibited. The white prisoners, from incessant perspiration and loss of appetite,
looked more like the dead than the living…”
It
would seem that things could not get worse. But with the British troops
advancing to the capital, the foreign prisoners were removed on a death march
to a remote spot in the country some miles north of the capital, where rumor
had it they were to be buried alive as an offering to the gods in the path of
the advancing troops. Their sufferings on the march were indescribable, their
survival remarkable. Even more remarkable was the determination of Ann to
follow them. With her three-month-old infant, plus two little girls she was
looking after, and a faithful Burmese helper, she immediately set out by boat,
and then by rough cart, in pursuit of the prisoners. For the duration of their
imprisonment outside of the capital she persuaded their jailer to let her and
the children share his two-room hut. From there she continued to try to
minister such help as she could to her husband and Price. During this appalling
period she became so ill that she had no milk for the baby, and the only way
Maria survived was by bribing the jailer to allow Adoniram out of prison to
carry the baby round the local village, begging nursing mothers to let Maria
have a little of their milk.
When
the Burmese realized how hopeless the struggle against England was, they
decided they needed all the help they could get in negotiating the least
humiliating peace settlement. Adoniram and Price were released to help with the
peace negotiations, as they could speak both Burmese and English. Again Ann and
Adoniram had a wonderfully happy but tragically brief reunion. They enjoyed two
blissful weeks of freedom and comfort at the British base before Adoniram was
summoned elsewhere for further negotiations. This was to be their final
separation. Ann’s health had been broken by the sufferings of the previous two
years, and her body, past the point of exhaustion, finally broke and succumbed
to cerebral meningitis. Her final sufferings were to be endured without her
husband. She was thirty-seven.
Adoniram
was shattered not only by her death, but by the knowledge he had not been able
to support her at that time. Shortly thereafter, Maria also died.
Adoniram was left quite alone, and later wrote with the sad news to Ann’s
mother telling her of the burial of his daughter: “The next morning we made her
last bed in the small enclosure that surrounds her mother’s lonely grave.
Together they rest in hope, under the hope tree, which stands at the head of
the graves, and together, I trust, their spirits are rejoicing after a short
separation of precisely six months. And I am left alone in the wide world. My
own dear family I have buried; one in Rangoon, and two in Amhurst. What remains
for me but to hold myself in readiness to follow the dear departed to that
blessed world, “Where my best friends, my kindred dwell, Where God my Saviour
reigns.” Adoniram was so grief-stricken at his loss that he suffered
complete emotional breakdown.
Ann
Hasseltine Judson was converted at 17 during what has come to be called,
"The Second Great Awakening." She was a deeply dedicated
Christ-follower, as well as a gifted teacher, linguist, preacher and author.
She was instrumental in establishing a Christian church in Burma which, though
heavily persecuted, still thrives to this day. She championed the cause
of female education, starting a Burmese girl’s school and tirelessly
petitioning Christian sponsorship for her girls during her medical furlough in
the United States. It is generally agreed had it not been for Ann’s
sacrificial efforts and representations to the governing authorities, Adoniram
would not have survived his time in the death prison. It has been said of her:
“She was a woman who loved intensely, loved her husband, loved her children,
loved the people of Burma, but above all, she loved her God.”
When
I think of Ann one verse comes to mind: "Many women do noble
things, but you surpass them all... let her works bring her praise at the city
gates" (Prov. 31:29 & 31).
If
you would like to read a more full account (this was my primary though not sole
source for this post) you can click here:
In His Service, Pastor Jeff
