At the end of seven months, it was reported that the English army was advancing into the interior; and in the passionate alarm thus excited, the English captives were all loaded with five pairs of fetters and thrown into the common prison among Burman thieves and robbers,—a hundred in a room without a window, and that in the hottest season of the year. Mrs. Judson again besought the governor to relieve them from this horrible condition, by at least allowing them to sit outside the door, and he actually shed tears at her distress, but he told her that he had been commanded to put them all to death privately, and that he was doing his best for them by massing them with the rest. The Queen’s brother had really given this order, but the governor delayed the execution in case they should be required of him by the King, and they continued in this frightful state for a whole month, until Mr. Judson sickened with violent fever, and the governor permitted him to be removed into a little bamboo room, six feet long and four wide, where his wife was allowed to visit him and bring him food and medicine, she meantime living in a bamboo house in the governor’s compound, where the thermometer rose daily to 106°, but where she thought herself happy as she saw her husband begin to recover.
One day, however, when the governor had sent for her and was kindly conversing with her, a servant came in and whispered to him that the white strangers had suddenly been taken away, no one knew whither. The governor pretended to be taken by surprise, but there could be no doubt that he had occupied Mrs. Judson to hinder her from witnessing the removal; and it was not till the evening that she learnt that the prisoners had been taken to Umerapoonah, whither she proceeded with her three months old baby and one servant. There she found that the prisoners had been sent on two hours before to a sort of penal settlement called Oung-pen-lay, whither she followed, to find her husband in a lamentable state. He had been dragged out of his little room, allowed no clothing but his shirt and trowsers, a rope had been tied round his waist, and he had been literally driven ten miles in the hottest part of the day. His feet were so lacerated that he was absolutely falling, when a servant of one of the merchants tore a piece from his turban, and this wrapped round his feet enabled him to proceed, but he could not stand for six weeks after; indeed the scars remained for life. In this state he lay chained to Dr. Price. The intention was to sacrifice them both, in order to obtain success for an intended expedition; but before this could be done, a different woongye, or prime minister, came in, and their condition was somewhat improved, for they only wore one bamboo, through two slits in which their feet were forced, and they were allowed to crawl into the enclosure. Meantime, a poor lion, once a great favourite, which was thought to be connected with the lions on the English colours, was placed in a bamboo cage in sight of the prisoners, and there starved to death, in hopes of thus abating the force of the enemy. When its carcase was removed, Mr. Judson, at his own earnest entreaty, was allowed the reversion of its cage, and there, to his great joy, Moung Ing brought him his MS. translation of part of the Burmese Bible, which he had kept in his pillow at Ava till it was torn away by the jailors on his removal. The faithful Ing, thinking only to secure a relic of his master, had picked up the pillow and secured the treasure.
Solitude was the greatest boon to Judson, whose fastidious delicacy suffered greatly in the thronged prison, but his faithful Ann was suffering terribly. One of the little Burmese girls who lived with her had caught the small-pox, and was very ill: Mrs. Judson inoculated the other child and her own little Maria, but Maria’s inoculation did not take effect, and she caught the disease, and had it very severely. Then Mrs. Judson herself fell ill of a fever, and remained for two months unable to visit her husband, both of them owing all their food to the exertions of their good Bengalee cook. Poor little Maria was nearly starved, no milk was to be had, and the only food she obtained was when the jailers were bribed to let her father carry her round the village to beg a little nourishment from the nursing mothers. Her moans at night rent the heart of her sick mother, and it is scarcely possible to imagine how either survived. By this time, the English troops were so far advancing that the King was reduced to negotiate, and, being in need of an interpreter, he sent an order for Mr. Judson’s release; but as his wife was not named in it, she had great difficulty in effecting her departure, and half-way through the journey a guard came down and carried him off to Ava without her. Arriving next day, she found him in prison, but under orders to embark in a little boat and go at once to the camp at Maloun. She hastened to prepare all that was needful for his comfort, but all was stolen except a mattress, pillow, and one blanket. The boat had no awning, and was so crowded that there was no room to lie down for the three days and three nights of alternate scorching heat and heavy dew; there was no food but a bag of refuse-rice, and the banks on either side of the Irrawaddy were bordered with glittering white sand, which in sunlight emitted a metallic glare intolerable to the eyes, and heat like a burning furnace. The fever returned upon Judson, and, when he reached Maloun, he was almost helpless; but he found himself lodged in a small bamboo hut in the middle of the white sand, where he could not admit air by rolling up the matting without letting in the distressing glare, and where the heat reflected from the sand was like a furnace. He could not stir when the officers came to summon him to the presence of the Burmese general, and they thought it stubbornness, and threatened him; then they brought him papers and commanded him to translate them, while he writhed in torture and only longed that the fever in his brain would deprive him of his senses. This it must have done, for he had only a confused impression of feet around him, and of fancying that he was going to be burnt alive, until he found himself on a bed in a somewhat cooler room. As he lay there, papers were continually brought him to explain and translate, and he found that the greatest difficulty was in making the Burmese understand that a State paper could mean what it said, or that truth and honesty were possible. Sometimes, as he tried to explain the commonest principle: of good faith and fair dealing among Christian nations, his auditors would exclaim, “That is noble,” “That is as it should be;” but then they would shake their heads and say, “The teacher dreams; he has a heavenly spirit, and so he thinks himself in the land of the dwellers in heaven.”
He remained here six weeks, suffering much at night from cold, for his only covering was a small rug and his well-worn blanket. Then, on the advance of the English, he was sent back to Ava, but was marched straight to the court-house without being suffered to halt for a moment at his own abode, to discover whether his wife was there. He was placed in a shed, guarded all day, and left without food, till Moung Ing found him out in the evening, and replied to his questions, that the Mamma Judson and the child were well; yet there was something about his manner that was unsatisfactory, and Judson, thinking it over, became terribly uneasy, and in the morning, being sent for by the governor of the jail, obtained permission to go to his own house.
At the door he saw a fat, half-naked Burmese woman with a child in her arms, so dark with dirt that it never occurred to him that it could be his own; and entering, he found, lying across the foot of the bed, his wife, ghastly white and emaciated, her hair all cut away, and her whole appearance that of a corpse. She woke as he knelt down by her in despair! She had been ill all this time with a horrible spotted fever. The day she had fallen ill, the Burmese woman had offered to take charge of little Maria, and the Bengalee cook had attended on her. Dr. Price was released from prison and had cut off her hair, bled, and blistered her, but she could hardly move when the tidings came of her husband being in the town, and she had sent Moung Ing to him. The husband and wife were at last together again, and Dr. Price was sent to conduct the treaty at the English camp.
As soon as Sir Archibald Campbell heard of the sufferings of the Judsons, he demanded them as well as the English subjects; but the King was aware that they were not English, and would not let them go. This attempt at a treaty failed; but its failure, and the alarm consequent upon a report of the advance of the English, led to Mr. Judson’s being sent off, almost by force, with two officials, to promise a ransom if Ava were spared. Sir Archibald Campbell undertook that the city should not be attacked, provided his terms were complied with before he reached it; and among these was the stipulation that not only English subjects, but all foreigners should have free choice whether to go or to stay. Some of the officials tried to persuade Mr. Judson to stay, declaring that he would become a great man, but he could not refuse the freedom offered him after such cruel sufferings, and he was wont to declare that the joy of finding himself floating down the Irrawaddy in a boat with his wife and baby, made up for their twenty-one months of peril and misery.
They were received with courtesy, and indeed with gratitude, respect, and veneration at the English camp. The Englishmen who had been in captivity bore witness to the kindness with which Mrs. Judson had relieved their wants, as well as those of her husband: how she had brought them food, mended their clothes, obtained new ones, and, as they believed, by her arguments and appeals to the ignorant and barbarous Government, had not only saved their lives, but convinced the authorities of the necessity of accepting the British terms of peace.
These terms included the cession of a large portion of the Burmese territory; and this it was that decided the missionaries to leave Ava; for the state of exasperation and intolerance into which this brought the Court, made it vain to think of continuing to give instruction where they would be regarded with enmity and suspicion. Meantime, the officers in the English camp, who had not seen a lady for nearly two years, could not make enough of the graceful, gentle woman, so pale and fragile, yet such a dauntless heroine, and always ready to exert herself beyond her strength for every sufferer who came in her way.
There was a curious scene at a dinner given to the Burmese commissioners, in a magnificent tent, with all the military pomp the camp could furnish. When Sir Archibald appeared with Mrs. Judson on his arm, and seated her by his side, there was such a look of discomfiture on the faces of the guests, that he asked her if they were not old acquaintance who had treated her ill. “That fellow with the pointed beard,” he said, “seems taken with an ague fit.” Then Mrs. Judson told how, when her husband lay in a burning fever with the five pairs of fetters, she had walked several miles with a petition to this man, had been kept waiting till the noontide sun was at its height, and not only was she refused, but as she departed her silk umbrella was torn out of her hand by his greediness; and when she begged at least to let her have a paper one to go home with, the officer only laughed at her, and told her that she was too thin to be in danger of a sunstroke! The English gentlemen could not restrain their countenances at least from expressing their indignation; and the Burmese, who thought she was asking for their heads, or to have them laid out in the sun with weights upon their chests, were yellow with fright, and trembled visibly. Mrs. Judson kindly turned to them with a smile, assuring them that they had nothing to fear, and, on repeating her words to Sir Archibald Campbell, he confirmed them to the frightened barbarians.
That visit to the English camp was one of the few spaces of comfort or repose in those busy lives. It concluded by the husband and wife being forwarded to their old home at Rangoon.
It was in the height of the war, when anxieties for the fate of Mr. and Mrs. Judson were at the utmost, that, on the 4th of July, 1825, George Boardman and Sarah Hall were married, and sailed for Calcutta, thinking it possible that they might find their predecessors martyred, and that they were coming “to step where their comrades stood.”
At Calcutta they found Mr. and Mrs. Wade, who had with great difficulty escaped, and soon after they heard of the rescue of the Judsons, and welcomed Dr. Price. Rangoon, in the meantime, had been occupied by the English, and then besieged by the Peguans; the mission-house was ruined, and the people dispersed, and Moung Shwaygnong had died of cholera, faithful to the last. The city was to be restored to the Burmese, and the King, though willing to employ Judson politically, refused toleration to his subjects; so that, as the provinces on the Martaban river were to be ceded to the English, it seemed wise to take advantage of the reputation which the Judsons had established to found a mission-station under their protection in the new town of Amherst, which Sir Archibald Campbell proposed to build on the banks of the Martaban river.
Hither was transported the old zayat of Rangoon; and Mount Ing, Moung Shwaba, and a few other of the flock accompanied their teachers, to form the nucleus of the mission. Sir Archibald Campbell had made a great point of Mr. Judson’s accompanying the English embassy that was to conclude the treaty at Ava; and he, hoping to obtain something for the Christian cause, complied, leaving that most brave and patient woman, his wife, with her little delicate girl, in a temporary house in Amherst, which, as yet, consisted only of barracks, officers’ houses, and fifty native huts by the riverside in the space of freshly-cleared jungle. There she set to work with energy that enfeebled health could not daunt, to prepare the way for the Wades and the Boardmans, to superintend a little school, of which Moung Ing was master, and to have a house built for her husband.
She had just moved into it, when she was attacked with remittent fever, and, though attended by an English army surgeon and nursed by a soldier’s wife, she sank under it, and died on the 24th of October, 1826. She was buried under a hopia, or, as her friends loved to call it, a hope tree; and the Wades, coming shortly after, took charge of poor little Maria, who lived to be embraced by her father, on his arrival after three months’ absence; but she continued to pine away, and only survived her mother six months.
Judson endured patiently, thought of his wife’s sufferings as gems in her crown, wrote cheerful letters, and toiled indefatigably, without breaking down, but he was never the same man again. Amherst was probably unhealthy, for several of the Rangoon converts died there, among them one of the little Burmese girls who had been with Mrs. Judson throughout her troubles. Those who died almost always spoke with joy of their hope of seeing Mamma Judson in heaven. “But first,” said one woman, “I shall fall down before the Saviour’s feet, and thank Him for sending us our teachers.”
It was shortly before little Maria’s death that Mr. and Mrs. Boardman arrived, bringing with them a daughter born at Calcutta. Moulmein, the town near at hand, was decided on as their station, and they removed to a mission-house on the border of the jungle, about a mile from the cantonments, with a beautiful range of hills behind them, and the river in front. Opposite lay the Burman province of Martaban, which had been desolated during the war, and was now the haunt of terrible Malay pirates, who came and robbed in the town, and then fled securely to the opposite bank, where they could not be pursued. The English officers had entreated the Boardmans to reside within the cantonments, but they wished to be among the people, so as to learn the language more readily and become acquainted with them.
One night, Mrs. Boardman awoke and found the lamp gone out. She rose and re-lighted it. Every box and drawer lay overthrown and rifled, nothing left but what the thieves deemed not worth taking. She turned round to the mosquito curtain which concealed her husband; it was cut by two long gashes, the one close to his head, the other to his feet. There the robber-sentry must have kept watch, ready to destroy the sleepers if they had wakened for a moment! Nearly every valuable had been carried away, and not a trace of any was ever found. After this, Sir Archibald Campbell gave them a Sepoy guard; and, as population increased, the danger diminished. Indeed, Amherst proved an unsuccessful attempt, and was gradually abandoned in favour of Moulmein, which became the head-quarters both of Government and of the Mission.
The Boardmans were specially devoted to that, because of the work which regarded the Karens. These were a wandering race who occupied a strip of jungle, a hilly country to the south of Burmah, living chiefly by hunting and fishing, making canoes, and clothed in cotton cloth. They had very scanty ideas either of religion or civilization, but were not idolaters, and had a good many of what Judson calls the gentler virtues of savages, though their habits were lazy and dirty. They had been a good deal misused by the Burmese, but occasionally wandered into the cities; and there Judson had asked questions about them which had roused the interest of his Burman converts. During the war, one of these Burmese found a poor Karen, named Ko-Thah-byoo, in bondage for debt, paid the amount, made him his own servant, and, on the removal to Moulmein, brought him thither. He proved susceptible of instruction, and full of energy and zeal; and not only embraced Christianity heartily himself, but introduced it to his tribe, and assisted the missionaries in acquiring the language.
To be nearer to these people, the Boardmans removed to Tavoy, where they had a Burmese congregation; and Mr. Boardman made an expedition among the Karens, who were, for the most part, by no means unwilling to listen, and with little tradition to pre-occupy their minds, as well as intelligence enough to receive new ideas. At one place, the people were found devoted to an object that was thought to have magic power, and which they kept with great veneration, wrapt up in many coverings. It proved to be an English Common Prayer Book, printed at Oxford, which had been left behind by a Mahometan traveller. On the whole, this has been a flourishing mission; the Karens were delighted to have their language reduced to writing, and the influence of their teachers began to raise them in the scale; but all was done under the terrible drawback of climate. Mrs. Boardman never was well from the time she landed at Moulmein, and her beautiful flower-covered house at Tavoy was the constant haunt of sickness, under which her elder child, Sarah, died, after showing all that precocity that white children often do in these fatal regions. A little boy named George had by this time been born, and shared with his mother the dangers of the Tavoy rebellion, an insurrection stirred up by a prince of the Burmese royal blood, in hopes of wresting the province from the English.
One night, a Burmese lad belonging to the school close to the Boardmans’ house, was awakened by steps; and, peeping through the braided bamboo walls of his hut, saw parties of men talking in an undertone about lost buffaloes. Some went into the town, others gathered about the gate, and, when their numbers began to thicken, a cloud of smoke was seen in the morning dawn, and yells from a thousand voices proclaimed, “Tavoy has risen!”
Boardman awoke and rushed out to the door, but a friendly voice told him that no harm was intended him. The revolt was against the English, and never was a movement more perilous. The commandant, Colonel Burney, was absent at Moulmein, the English officer next in command was ill of a fatal disease, the gunner was ill, and the whole defence of a long, straggling city was in the hands of a hundred Sepoys, commanded by a very young surgeon, assisted by Mrs. Burney, who had a babe of three weeks old. The chief of the fight was at the powder magazine, not very far from the Boardmans’ abode. It was attacked by two hundred men with clubs, knives, spears, but happily with very few muskets, and defended by only six Sepoys, who showed great readiness and faithfulness. Just as their bullets seemed to be likely to endanger the frightened little family, a savage-looking troop of natives were seen consulting, with threatening gestures aimed at the mission-house, and Mr. Boardman, fully expecting to be massacred, made his wife and her baby hide in a little shed, crouching to escape the bullets; but this alarm passed off, and, at the end of an hour, the whole of the gates had been regained by the Sepoys, and the attack on the magazine repulsed. Mr. Boardman took this opportunity of carrying his family to the Government house, where they were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Burney; but it was impossible to continue the defence of so large an extent as the town occupied, and therefore the tiny garrison decided on retiring to a large wooden building on the wharf, whither the Sepoys conveyed three cannon and as much powder as they expected to want, throwing the rest down wells. This was not done without constant skirmishing, and was not completed till three o’clock, when the refugees were collected,—namely, a hundred Sepoys, with their wives and children, stripped of all their ornaments, which they had buried; some Hindoo and Burmese servants; a few Portuguese traders; a wily old Mussulman; Mrs. Boardman and Mrs. Burney, each with her baby; and seven Englishmen besides Mr. Boardman. Among them rode the ghastly figure of the sick officer, who had been taken from his bed, but who hoped to encourage his men by appearing on horseback; but his almost orange skin, wasted form, sunken eyes, and perfect helplessness, were to Mrs. Boardman even more terrible than the yells of the insurgents around and the shots of their scanty escort.
Three hundred persons were crowded together in the wooden shed, roofed over, and supported on posts above the water, with no partitions. The situation was miserable enough, but they trusted that the enemy, being only armed with spears, could not reach them. By and by, however, the report of a cannon dismayed them. The jingals, or small field-pieces, were brought up, but not till evening; and the inexperienced rebels took such bad aim that all the balls passed over the wharf into the sea, and the dense darkness put a stop to the attempt; but all night the trembling inmates were awakened by savage yells; and a Sepoy, detecting a spark of light through the chinks of the floor, fired, and killed an enemy who had come beneath in a boat to set fire to the frail shelter!
In the morning the firing from the walls was renewed, but at long intervals, for there was a great scarcity of powder, though the unhappy besieged apprehended every moment that the right direction would be hit upon, and then that the balls would be among them. They could send nowhere for help, though there was a Chinese junk within their reach, for it could not put to sea under the fire of the rebels; and two more days, and two still more terrible nights, passed in what must have been almost a black hole. The fifth night was the worst of all, for the town was set on fire around, and by the light of the flames the enemy made a furious attack; but just in time to prevent the fire from attaining the frail wooden structure, a providential storm quenched it, and the muskets of the Sepoys again repulsed the enemy. By this time the provisions were all but exhausted, and there were few among even the defenders who were not seriously ill from the alternate burning sun and drenching rain. Death seemed hovering over the devoted wharf from every quarter; when at last, soon after sunrise on the fifth day, the young doctor quietly beckoned the Colonel’s wife to the door that opened upon the sea, and pointed to the horizon, where a little cloudy thread of smoke was rising.
It was the steamer bringing Colonel Burney back, in perfect ignorance of the peril of Tavoy and of his wife! But he understood all at a glance. The women and children were instantly transferred to the steamer, and she was sent back to Moulmein, but Colonel Burney and the few men who came with him landed, and restored courage and spirit to the besieged. Not only was a breastwork thrown up to protect the wharf, but the Colonel led a trusty little band of Sepoys to the wall where the cannon stood, recaptured them, and had absolutely regained Tavoy before the tidings of the insurrection had reached Moulmein. Mrs. Burney’s babe died soon after the steamer had brought the two mothers and their infants to their refuge; but little George Boardman did not suffer any ill effects from these dreadful days and nights, and was, in fact, the only child of his patents who outlived infancy. Another son, born a few months afterwards, soon ended a feeble existence, and Mrs. Boardman was ill for many months. Her husband, delicate from the first, never entirely recovered the sufferings at the wharf; yet in spite of an affection of the lungs, he would often walk twenty miles a day through the Karen villages, teaching and preaching, and at night have no food but rice, and sleep on a mat on the floor of an open zayat.
The Moulmein station was a comparative rest, and the husband and wife removed thither to supply the place of Judson and of the Wades, who were making another attempt upon Burmah Proper; the Wades taking up their residence at Rangoon, and Judson going on to Prome, the ancient capital, where he preached in the zayats, distributed tracts, and argued with the teachers in his old fashion; but the Ava Government had become far more suspicious, and interfered as soon as he began to make anything like progress, requesting the English officer now in residence at the Court to remonstrate with him, and desire him not to proceed further than Rangoon. He was obliged to yield, and again to float down the river in his little boat, baffled, but patient and hopeful.
A great change had come upon the bright, enthusiastic, lively young man who had set out, with his beautiful Ann, to explore the unknown Eastern world. Suffering of body had not altered him so much as bereavement, and bereavement without rest in which to face and recover the shock. A strong ascetic spirit was growing on him. Already on his first return to Moulmein, after joining in the embassy, he had thought it right to cut short the ordinary intercourse of society, to which his residence in the camp had given rise, and had announced his intention in a letter to Sir Archibald Campbell. He was much regretted, for he was a particularly agreeable man; and it is evident, both from all testimony and from the lively tone of his letters, that he was full of good-natured sympathy, and, however sad at heart, was a cheerful and even merry companion.
But through these years, throughout constant care and unrelaxed activity of mind and body, his heart was aching for the wife he had no time to mourn; and the agony thus suppressed led to an utter loathing for all that he thought held him back from perfect likeness to the glorified Saint whom he loved. He took delight in the most spiritual mystical writings he could find,—à Kempis, Madame Guyon, Fénélon, and the like,—and endeavoured to fulfil the Gospel measure of holiness. He gave up his whole patrimony to the American Baptist Mission Board (now separate from England and Serampore), mortified to the very utmost his fastidious delicacy by ministering to the most loathsome diseases; and to crush his love of honour, he burnt a letter of thanks for his services from the Governor-General of India, and other documents of the same kind. He fasted severely, and having by nature a peculiar horror of the decay and mouldering of death, he deemed it pride and self-love, and dug a grave beside which he would sit meditating on the appearance of the body after death. He had a bamboo hermitage on the borders of the jungle, where he would live on rice for weeks together—only holding converse with those who came to him for religious instruction; and once, when worn out with his work of translation, he went far into the depths of the wildest jungle, near a deserted pagoda, and there sat down to read, pray, and meditate. The next day, on returning to the spot, he found a seat of bamboo, and the branches woven together for a shelter. Judson never learnt whose work this was, but it was done by a loving disciple, who had overcome the fear of tigers to provide by night for his comfort, though the place was thought so dangerous that his safety, during the forty days that he haunted it, was viewed by the natives as a miracle. He spent several months in retirement. It was indeed four years after his bereavement, but it is plain that he was taking the needful rest and calm that his whole nature required after the shock that he had undergone, but which he had in a manner deferred until the numbers of workers were so increased that his constant labour could be dispensed with. He came forth from his retirement renovated in spirit, for the second period of his toils.
Meantime, the Boardmans had returned to Tavoy, where they were eagerly welcomed by their Karen flock, and found many candidates for baptism. Weak as he was, Mr. Boardman examined them. He was sometimes able to sit up in his chair and speak for himself, but oftener so weak that his wife sat on his couch and interpreted his feeble whispers; but he was so happy that tears of joy often filled his eyes. The actual baptism, performed by going down into the water like Philip with the Ethiopian, could hardly have been carried out by a man in his state; but Moung Ing, who had been admitted to the pastorate, touched at Moulmein, on a mission to Mergui, and undertook the baptisms. The Karens carried Mr. Boardman to the water in his cot, along a street filled with lamaseries, whence the yellow-clothed priests looked down in scorn, and the common people hooted and reviled: “See! see your teacher, a living man borne as if he were already dead!” with still worse unfeeling taunts. The Christians, about fifty in number, reached the spot, a beautiful lake, nearly a mile in circumference, and bordered by green grass overshadowed by trees. There they all knelt down and prayed, and then Moung Ing baptized the nineteen new disciples, while the pastor lay pale and happy, and his wife watched him with her heart full of the last baptism, when it had been he who poured the water and spoke the words.
Mr. Boardman lived on into the year 1831, and welcomed a new arrival from America, Francis Mason and his wife, on the 23rd of January, and a week later set out to introduce the former to the Karens, a band of whom had come down to convey the party. Mr. Boardman was carried on his bed, his wife in a chair, and on the third day they reached a spot where the Karens, of their own accord, had erected a bamboo chapel beside a beautiful stream beneath a range of mountains. Nearly a hundred had assembled there, of whom half were candidates for baptism. They cooked, ate, and slept in the open air, but they had made a small shed for Mr. Mason, and another for the Boardmans, too small to stand upright in, and so ill-enclosed as to be exposed to sun by day and cold air by night.
The sufferer rapidly became worse, but he had an ardent desire to see this last baptism, and all the thirty-four women, who were sufficiently prepared, were baptized in his sight, though he was so spent as scarcely to be able to breathe without the fan and smelling-bottle. In the evening he contrived to speak a few words of exhortation to the disciples, and to give them each a tract or a portion of Scripture. The next morning the party set out on their return, but in the afternoon were overtaken by a great storm of thunder and lightning, with rain that drenched his mattress and pillows; and when they reached a house, they found it belonged to heathens, who would scarcely let the strange teacher lie in the verandah.
His cot was so wet that he was forced to lie on the bamboo floor, and the rain continued all night. A boat was expected at twelve the next day, and it was resolved to wait for this, while the Tavoyans looked grimly on, and refused even to sell a chicken to make broth for the sick man. By nine o’clock he was evidently dying, and the Karens rubbed his hands and feet as they grew cold. Almost immediately after being conveyed to the boat, the last struggles came on, and in a few minutes he had passed away. He was buried at Tavoy, beside his little Sarah; all the Europeans in the town attending, as well as a grateful multitude of Burmese and Karens.
“The tree to which the frail creeper clung
Still lifts its stately head,
But he, on whom my spirit hung,
Is sleeping with the dead,”
wrote Sarah Boardman; and her first thought was of course to go home with her child, but the Masons had not learnt the languages, and had no experience, and, without her, there would be no schools, no possibility of instruction for the converts of either people until they could speak freely, and she therefore resolved not to desert her work. She was keeping school, attending to all comers, and interpreting from sunrise till ten o’clock at night, besides having the care of her little boy, and her schools were so good that, when the British Government established some, orders were given for conducting them on the same system.
She tried to learn Karen, but never had time, and it was the less needful that a little Burmese was known to some Karens, and thus she could always have an interpreter. She sometimes made mission tours to keep up the spirit of the Karens till Mr. Mason should be qualified to come among them. Her little George was carried by her attendants, and there is a note to Mrs. Mason, sent back from one of the stages of her journey, which shows what her travels must have been: “Perhaps you had better send the chair, as it is convenient to be carried over the streams when they are deep. You will laugh when I tell you that I have forded all the smaller ones.” But there is scarcely any record of these journeys of hers, she was too modest and shy to dwell on what only related to herself; and though she several times, with the help of her Burmese interpreter, led the devotions of two or three hundred Karens, it was always with a sense of reluctance, and only under necessity.
She had been a widow four years, when Adoniram Judson, who had returned from Rangoon, and was about to take charge of the station at Moulmein, made her his second wife, on the 10th of April, 1834. At the same time, an opportunity offered of sending little George back to America for education; but year after year filled the house at Moulmein with other little ones,—careful comforts, in that fatal climate, which had begun to tell on the health of both the parents. Pain and sorrow went for little with this devoted pair. To be as holy as the Apostles though without their power, was the endeavour which Judson set before himself, and the work of such a man was one of spirit that drew all to hear and follow him. The Burmese converts were numbered by hundreds, and one of the missionaries in the Karen country could write: “I no longer date from a heathen land. Heathenism has fled from these banks; I eat the rice and fruits cultivated by Christian hands, look on the fields of Christians, see no dwellings but those of Christian families. I am seated in the midst of a Christian village, surrounded by a people that live as Christians, converse as Christians, act as Christians, and, to my eyes, look like Christians.”
All this, like every other popular conversion, involved many individual disappointments from persons not keeping up to the Christian standard, and from coolness setting in when the excitement of the change was over; and great attention had to be paid to rules, discipline, &c., as well as to providing books and schools. Judson himself had to work hard at the completion and correction of the Burmese Bible, to which he devoted himself, the more entirely because an affection of the throat and cough came on, and for some time prevented him from preaching. In 1839, he tried to alleviate it by a voyage to Calcutta, where he was received by both Bishop Wilson and by the Marshman family at Serampore; but, as he observes, “the glory of Serampore had departed,” and his stay there must have been full of sad associations. His work upon the Scriptures was finished in 1840, and he then began a complete Burmese dictionary, while his wife was translating the Pilgrim’s Progress; but both were completely shattered in health, and their children, four in number, had all been brought low by the hooping cough, and then by other complaints. A voyage to Calcutta was imperatively enjoined on all; but it was stormy and full of suffering, and soon after they arrived at Serampore their youngest child, little Henry, died. A still further voyage was thought advisable, and the whole family went as far as the Isle of France, where they recovered some measure of health, and their toil at Moulmein was resumed. Four more years passed, three more children were born, and then the strength that had been for nineteen years so severely tried, gave way, and the doctors pronounced that Sarah Judson’s life could only be saved by a voyage to America. The three elder children were to go with her, but the three little ones were to remain, since their father only intended to go as far as the Isle of France, and then return to his labour. The last words she ever wrote were pencilled on a slip of paper, intended to be given to him to comfort him at their farewell:—
“We part on this green islet, love:
Thou for the Eastern main,
I for the setting sun, love;
Oh! when to meet again?My heart is sad for thee, love,
For lone thy way will be;
And oft thy tears will fall, love,
For thy children and for me.The music of thy daughter’s voice
Thou’lt miss for many a year,
And the merry shout of thine elder boys
Thou’lt list in vain to hear.* * * * *
Yet my spirit clings to thine, love,
Thy soul remains with me,
And oft we’ll hold communion sweet
O’er the dark and distant sea.And who can paint our mutual joy
When, all our wanderings o’er,
We both shall clasp our infants three
At home on Burmah’s shore?But higher shall our raptures glow
On yon celestial plain,
When the loved and parted here below
Meet, ne’er to part again.Then gird thine armour on, love,
Nor faint thou by the way
Till Boodh shall fall, and Burmah’s sons
Shall own Messiah’s sway.”
What a trumpet-note for a soldier to leave after nineteen years service “through peril, toil, and pain,” undaunted to the last! For by the time the ship left the Isle of France, she was fading so rapidly that her husband could not quit her, and sailed on with her to St. Helena. She was fast dying, but so composed about her children, that some one observed that she seemed to have forgotten the three babes. “Can a mother forget?” was all her answer. She died on board the ship, at anchor in the bay of St. Helena, and was carried to the burial-ground, where all the colonial clergy in the island attended, and she was laid beside Mrs. Chater, the wife of that Serampore missionary whose expulsion had led to the first pioneering at Rangoon, and who had since worked in Ceylon. She was just forty-two, and died September 1st, 1845.
Her husband found her beautiful farewell; and, as he copied it out, he wrote after the last verse, “Gird thine armour on,” “And so, God willing, I will yet endeavour to do; and while her prostrate form finds repose on the rock of the ocean, and her sanctified spirit enjoys sweeter repose on the bosom of Jesus, let me continue to toil on all my appointed time, until my change too shall come.”
On the evening of the day of her burial, he sailed with the three children, and arrived at Boston on the 15th of October, 1845. He remained in his native country only nine months, and, if a universal welcome could have delighted him, he received it to the utmost. So little did he know of his own fame, that, returning after thirty years, he had been in pain to know where to procure a night’s lodging at Boston, whereas he found half the city ready to compete for the honour of receiving him, and every one wanted to meet him. Places of worship where he was to preach were thronged, and every public meeting where he was expected to speak was fully attended; but all this fervour of welcome was a distress to him, his affection of the throat made oratory painful and often impossible, and the mere going silently to an evening assembly so excited his nerves that he could not sleep for the whole night after. Any sort of display was misery to him; he could not bear to sit still and hear the usual laudation of his achievements; and, when distinguished and excellent men were introduced to him, he received them with chilling shyness and coldness, too humble to believe that it was for his goodness and greatness that they sought to know him, but fancying it was out of mere curiosity.
His whole desire was to get back to his work and escape from American notoriety, and, disregarding all representations that longer residence in the north might confirm his health, he intended to seize the first opportunity of returning to Moulmein. But a wife was almost a necessity both to himself and his mission, and even now, at his mature age and broken health, he was able to win a woman of qualities almost if not quite equal to those of the Ann and Sarah who had gone before her.
Emily Chubbuck, born in 1817, was the daughter of parents of the Baptist persuasion, living in the State of New York. She was the fifth child of a large family in such poor circumstances that, when she was only eleven years old, she was sent to work at a woollen factory, where her recollections were only of “noise and filth, bleeding hands and aching feet, and a very sad heart;” but happily for her, the frost stopped the works during the winter months, and she was able to go to school; and, after two years, the family removed to a country farm. They were all very delicate, and her elder sisters were one after the other slowly dying of decline. This, with their “conversions” and baptisms, deepened Emily’s longing to give the tokens required by her sect for Christian membership, but they came slowly and tardily with her, and she quaintly told how one day she was addressed by one of the congregation whose prayers had been asked for her, “What! this little girl not converted yet? How do you suppose we can waste any more time in praying for you?” Her intelligence was very great, and in 1832, when her mother wanted her to become a milliner, she entreated to be allowed to engage herself as a school teacher. “I stood as tall as I could,” she says, when she went to offer herself, and she was accepted, although only fifteen. The system was that of “boarding round”—i.e. the young mistress had to live a week alternately at each house, and went from thence to her school, but she found this so uncomfortable that she ended by sleeping at home every night. She struggled on, teaching in various schools, doing needlework in after-hours, trying to improve herself, and always contending with great delicacy of health, which must have made it most trying to cope with what she calls in one of her letters “a little regiment of wild cats” for about seven years, when some of the friends she had made obtained of two sisters who kept a boarding school at Utica that she should be admitted there to pursue the higher branches of study for a year or two, and then to repay them by her services as a teacher.
The two ladies, Miss Urania and Miss Cynthia Sheldon, and their widowed sister, Mrs. Anable, proved Emily’s kindest friends, and made a thoroughly happy home for her. She was very frail and nervous, but of great power of influence, and even while still only a pupil had this gift. Here she spent the rest of her maiden days, and here she supplied the failure of her labours in needlework by contributions to magazines, generally under the nom de plume of Fanny Forester. They were chiefly poems and short tales, and were popular enough to bring in a sum that was very important to the Chubbuck family. The day’s employment was very full, and she stole the time required from her rest. Late one night, Miss Sheldon seeing a light in the room looked in, and found her trembling in nervous agitation, holding her head with her hands and her manuscript before her; and when gently rebuked, and entreated to lie down at once, she exclaimed with a burst of tears, “Oh! Miss Urania, I must write; I must help my poor parents.”
Her brave and dutiful endeavours prospered so much that she was actually able to buy a house for them. It was during her stay at Utica that she was baptized, and several of her writings were expressly for the Baptist Sunday School Union; and though others were of a more secular cast, all were such as could only be composed by a religious woman. A little book of hers fell into the hands of Dr. Judson, and struck him so much that he said, “I should be glad to know her. A lady who writes so well ought to write better.” She was then at Philadelphia, and at the moment of his introduction to her was undergoing the process of vaccination. As soon as it was over he entered into conversation with her with some abruptness, demanding of her how she could employ her talents in writings so trifling and so little spiritual as those he had read.
Emily met the rebuke without offence, but defended herself by describing the necessity of her case, with her indigent parents depending upon her; so that her work must almost of necessity be popular and profitable, though, as a duty, she avoided all that could be of doubtful tendency.
The missionary was thoroughly softened, and not only acquitted her, but begged her to undertake the biography of his wife Sarah: and this threw them much together. He was fifty-seven, she twenty-eight, when he offered himself to her in the following letter, sent with a watch:—
“I hand you, dearest, a charmed watch. It always comes back to me, and brings its wearer with it. I gave it to Ann when a hemisphere divided us, and it brought her safely and surely to my arms. I gave it to Sarah during her husband’s lifetime (not then aware of the secret), and the charm, though slow in its operation, was true at last.”
The charm worked. Emily Chubbuck was ready to follow Dr. Judson to the deadly climate of Burmah, to share his labours, and become a mother to the babies he had left there.
They were married on the 2nd of June, 1846, and five weeks later sailed for Burmah, leaving the three children at school.
Emily seems to have differed from Ann and Sarah, in that she had less actual missionary zeal than they. Sarah at least was a missionary in heart, and, as such, became a wife; but Emily was more the wife, working as her husband worked. She had much more literary power than either; her letters to her friends were full of vivid description, playful accounts of their adventures, and lively colouring even of misfortunes, pain, and sickness. She arrived at Moulmein in November. One little boy had died during Dr. Judson’s absence, but the other two were tenderly cared for by the new Mrs. Judson, who threw herself into all the work and interests of the mission with great animation. It proved, however, that both the Burman and Karen missions were well supplied with teachers; and Dr. Judson thought he should be more useful at Rangoon, where there had, since one attempt on the part of the Wades, been no resident missionary. He heard accounts of the Court which made him hope to recover a footing at Ava, and decided on again living at Rangoon; but he soon heard that there was less hope than ever at Ava. The king whom he had known was dead, and had been succeeded by a devoted Buddhist, whose brother and heir, “having been prevented from being a lama,” writes Dr. Judson, “poor man! does all that he can. He descends from his prince-regal seat, pounds and winnows the rice with his own hands, washes and boils it in his own cook-house, and then, on bended knees, presents it to the priests. This strong pulsation at the heart has thrown fresh blood through the once shrivelled system of the national superstition, and now every one vies with his neighbour in building pagodas and making offerings to the priests. What can one poor missionary effect, accompanied by his yet speechless wife, and followed by three men and one woman from Moulmein, and summoning to his aid the aged pastor of Rangoon and eight or ten surviving members of the church?”
The Vice-governor, or Raywoon, was a violent and cruel savage, whose house and court-yard rang with shrieks from the tortured, and the old remnant of Christians were sadly scattered. When they were collected to worship on Sunday, they durst not either come in or go out in company, and used to arrive with their garments tucked up to look like Coolies, or carrying fruit or parcels, while the Karens crept down from the hills in small parties. The Governor was friendly, but a weak man, whose authority the Raywoon openly set at defiance; and all sorts of petty annoyances were set in action against the teachers, while the probability that the converts would suffer actual persecution daily increased. Dr. Judson used to call the present difficulties the Splugen Pass, and illness, of course, added to their troubles.
The great Buddhist fast of the year had never before been imposed on strangers, but now the markets contained nothing but boiled rice, fruit, or decaying fish, and terrible illness was the consequence both with themselves and the children, until some boxes of biscuit arrived from Moulmein, and a Mahometan was bribed to supply fowls.
But the finances of the Society at home were at a low ebb, and it was thought needful to diminish the number of stations. The intolerance of the Burmese Government led to the decision that there was less benefit in maintaining that at Rangoon than those in the British provinces; and, as Dr. Judson had no private means, he was obliged to obey and return to Moulmein. Here he had a curious correspondence with the Prince of Siam, whose letter began in his own English: “Venerable sir, having received very often your far-famed qualities, honesty, faithfulness, righteousness, gracefulness, and very kindness to poor nation, &c., from reading the book of your ancient wife’s memoir and journal.” . . . The object of this letter was to ask for some of his Burmese translations, and, in return for them, his Royal Highness sent “a few artificial flowers, two passion flowers, one mognayet or surnamed flower, and three roses manufactured by most celebrated princess the daughter of the late second king or sub-king.”
The Dictionary continued to be Judson’s chief occupation, for his affection of the voice rendered him unable to take charge of a congregation. He continued to work at it till the November of 1849, when he caught a severe cold, which brought on an attack of fever, and from that time he never entirely rallied.
One of the last pleasures of his life deserves to be mentioned. He had always had a strong feeling for the Jews, and had longed to work for their conversion, praying that he might at least do something towards it. After his last illness had begun, a letter was read to him by his wife, giving an account of a German Jew who had been led, by reading the history of his toils in Burmah in the Gospel cause, to study Christianity and believe. “Love,” he said presently, his eyes full of tears, “this frightens me. I do not know what to make of it.” “What?” “What you have just been reading. I never was deeply interested in any object; I never prayed sincerely and fervently for anything, but it came at some time—no matter how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised, it came. And yet I have always had so little faith.”
After spending a month at Amherst in the vain hope of improvement, a sea-voyage was recommended; but his reluctance was great, for his wife was expecting a second child, and could not go with him. There are some lines of hers describing her night-watches, so exquisite and descriptive, that we must transcribe them:—
“Sleep, love, sleep!
The dusty day is done.
Lo! from afar the freshening breezes sweep
Wide over groves of balm,
Down from the towering palm,
In at the open casement cooling run;
And round thy lowly bed,
Thy bed of pain,
Bathing thy patient head,
Like grateful showers of rain
They come;
While the white curtains, waving to and fro,
Fan the sick air;
And pityingly the shadows come and go,
With gentle human care,
Compassionate and dumb.
The dusty day is done,
The night begun;
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!
Is there no magic in the touch
Of fingers thou dost love so much?
Fain would they scatter poppies o’er thee now;
Or, with its mute caress,
The tremulous lip some soft nepenthe press
Upon thy weary lid and aching brow;
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!On the pagoda spire
The bells are swinging,
Their little golden circlet in a flutter
With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter,
Till all are ringing,
As if a choir
Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing;
And with a lulling sound
The music floats around,
And drops like balm into the drowsy ear;
Commingling with the hum
Of the Sepoy’s distant drum,
And lazy beetle ever droning near.
Sounds these of deepest silence born,
Like night made visible by morn;
So silent that I sometimes start
To hear the throbbings of my heart,
And watch, with shivering sense of pain,
To see thy pale lids lift again.The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes,
Peeps from the mortise in surprise
At such strange quiet after day’s hard din;
Then boldly ventures out,
And looks around,
And with his hollow feet
Treads his small evening beat,
Darting upon his prey
In such a tricksy, winsome sort of way,
His delicate marauding seems no sin.
And still the curtains swing,
But noiselessly;
The bells a melancholy murmur ring,
As tears were in the sky:
More heavily the shadows fall,
Like the black foldings of a pall,
Where juts the rough beam from the wall;
The candles flare
With fresher gusts of air;
The beetle’s drone
Turns to a dirge-like, solitary moan;
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt, alone.”
In spite of all this tender care, Dr. Judson became so much worse that, as a last resource, a passage was taken for him and another missionary, named Ramney, on board a French vessel bound for the Isle of Bourbon. The outset of the voyage was very rough, and this produced such an increase of illness, that his life closed on the 12th of April, 1850, only a fortnight after parting from his wife, though it was not for four months that she could be informed of his loss. During this time she had given birth to a dead babe, and had suffered fearfully from sorrow and suspense.
She had become valuable enough to the mission for there to be much anxiety to retain her, and at first she thought of remaining; but her health was too much broken, and in a few months she carried home her little girl and her two step-sons. She collected the family together, and spent her time in the care of them, and in contributing materials for the Life of her husband; but the hereditary disease of her family had already laid its grasp on her, and she died on the 1st of June, 1854, the last of a truly devoted group of workers, as remarkable for their cheerfulness as for their heroism.
CHAPTER VII. THE BISHOPRIC OF CALCUTTA: THOMAS MIDDLETON, REGINALD HEBER, DANIEL WILSON.
Perhaps dying in a cause is the surest way of leading to its success. Henry Martyn was sinking on his homeward journey, while in England the renewal of the Charter of the East India Company was leading to the renewal of those discussions on the promotion of religion in Hindostan which had been so entirely quashed twenty years before, in 1793. Claudius Buchanan had published his “Christian Researches,” the Life of Schwartz had become known, the labours of Marshman and Carey were reported, and the Legislature at length attended to the representations, made through Archbishop Manners Sutton, by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and consented to sanction the establishment of a branch of the Church, with a Bishop to govern it at Calcutta, and an Archdeacon there and also at Madras and Bombay; the Bishop to have 5,000l. a year but no house, and each Archdeacon 2,000l. Such was all that the efforts of Wilberforce could wring from the East India Company for a diocese, in length twenty degrees, in breadth ten, and where the inconvenience of distances was infinitely increased by the difficulties and dangers of travelling.
One excuse for the insufficiency of this provision had more weight with the supporters of the Church than we can understand. England had for more than a thousand years been accustomed to connect temporal grandeur with the Episcopacy; a Bishop not in the House of Lords seemed an anomaly, and it was imagined that to create chief pastors without a considerable endowment would serve to bring them into contempt; whereas to many minds, that very wealth and station was an absolute stumbling-block. However, a beginning was made, and a year after Henry Martyn’s death, in 1814, the first of the Colonial Bishops of England was appointed, namely, Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, the son of a Derbyshire clergyman, who had been educated at Christ’s Hospital, and Pembroke College, Cambridge, and had since been known as an excellent Greek scholar, and an active clergyman in the diocese of Lincoln. Thence he removed to the rectory of St. Pancras, London, where he strove hard to accomplish the building of a new church, but could not succeed, such was the dead indifference of the period. He was also Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and one of a firmly compacted body of friends who were doing much in a resolute though quiet way for the awakening of the nation from its apathy towards religion. Joshua Watson, a merchant, might be regarded as the lay-manager and leader, as having more leisure, and more habit of business than the clergy, with and for whom he worked. This is no place for detailing their home labours, but it may be well to mention that to their exertions we owe the National Society for the education of the poor, and likewise that edition of the Holy Scriptures, with notes, which is commonly known as Mant’s Bible. They were the chief managers at that time of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; and when, in 1813, a Danish missionary was sent out by that Society to take charge of the congregations left by Schwartz and his colleagues, it was Archdeacon Middleton who was selected to deliver a charge to him. It was a very powerful and impressive speech, and perhaps occasioned Dr. Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, to recommend the speaker to the Earl of Buckinghamshire for the bishopric created the next year.
The office would be, humanly speaking, most trying, laborious and perplexing, and neither Archdeacon Middleton’s age (forty-five) nor his habits inclined to enthusiasm. He shrank from it at first, then “suspected,” as he says, “that I had yielded to some unmanly considerations,” and decided that it was his duty to accept the charge as a call from his Master. He was consecrated in the chapel at Lambeth, by Archbishop Manners Sutton, with the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Salisbury assisting. The sermon was preached by Dr. Rennell, Dean of Winchester, but was withheld from publication for the strange reason that there was so strong an aversion to the establishment of episcopacy in India, that it was thought better not to attract attention to the fact that had just been accomplished.
Bishop Middleton, his wife, and two of his Archdeacons (the third was already in India) sailed on the 8th of June, 1814, and they landed at Calcutta on the 28th of November. There was no public reception, for fear of alarming the natives, though, on the other hand, they were found to entertain a better opinion of the English on finding they respected their own religion. The difficulties of the Bishop’s arrival were increased by the absence of Lord Moira, the Governor-General, who was engaged in the Nepaulese war; and as no house had been provided for the Bishop, he had to be the guest of Mr. Seton, a member of the Council, till a house could be procured, at a high rent.
One of the first visitors was a Hindoo gentleman, who told him, “Sir William Jones was a great man and understood our books, but he attended only to our law. Your lordship will study our religion; your people mistake our religion; it is not in our books. The Brahminee religion and your lordship’s are the same; we mean the same thing.”
The man seems to have been one of those of whom there are now only too many in India, who have thrown off their old superstitions only to believe in nothing, save the existence of a Supreme Being, and who fancy that all other religions can be simplified into the like. This is the class that has, for the seventy years during which Christianity has been preached in earnest, been the alternate hope and anxiety of the missionary; intellectually renouncing their own paganism, but withheld by the prejudices of their families from giving up the heathenish customs of caste; admiring divine morality, but not perceiving the inability of man to attain the standard; and refusing to accept the mysteries in the supernatural portion of Revelation. Such was probably Serfojee; such was the celebrated Brahmin Ram Mohun Roy, with whom Bishop Middleton had much discussion, and of whom he had at one time many hopes, a man of very remarkable powers of mind and clear practical intelligence. Roy’s endeavour at first was to purify the native forms of religion, and, recurring to the Vedas, to find a high philosophy in them; but he and the friends he gathered round him soon became convinced that these contained no system of reasonable theology, still less of morality, and they then constructed for themselves a theory culled from Christianity, but rejecting whatever did not approve itself to their intellect, in especial the holy mysteries regarding the nature of the Godhead and the Incarnation of our Lord. This teaching, called Brahmoism, from Brahma, the purest and highest of Hindoo divinities, is, under another form, the Neo-Platonism of the Greeks, or the Soofeeism of the Persians. There was even the germ of it in the grotesque medicine-man encountered by David Brainerd. It is the form of opposition which the spirit of evil always stirs up, wherever the natural character is elevated enough to appreciate the beauty of Christian morality. It only prevails where there are refined and cultivated men, afraid of all belief in the supernatural, as a humbling of their intellect to superstition; and just at present a form of it is very prevalent in India, owing to the amount of education which the natives receive, which uproots the old belief, but does not always implant the new. Whether it will become a stepping-stone to Christianity, or whether it has substance to become a separate sect, remains to be proved.
To return to Bishop Middleton. He knew when he left home that his work would be heavy, and that to set in order the things that were wanting must be his first undertaking; but no words could have conveyed the dead weight of care and toil that lay on him. The huge diocese was shamefully deficient in all that was needful for the keeping up of religious ordinances; the Company’s chaplains, few in number, were stationed at immense distances apart, and for the most part had no attempt at a proper church for their congregations. Verandahs or dining-rooms were used on Sundays; and at Meerut, an edifice was actually built for the purpose of a riding-school in the week, and a place of worship on Sunday. Moreover, these chaplains were accustomed to look to the Governor-General as their only superior, and, living so far apart, each followed his own independent line of action, as if entirely unaccountable. Some, such as Mr. Corrie at Cawnpore, were admirable and earnest men; but Henry Martyn’s successor at Dinapore had let the place sink into a lamentable state, and there were several chaplains who greatly resented the being brought under authority. The brunt of the battle fell of course upon the first Bishop, and being a man as sensitive as he was firm, it tried him severely. His entreaty was constantly for more men; and in order to obtain a ministry beyond that which the East India Company would provide for, he occupied himself in procuring the foundation of Bishop’s College, close to Calcutta, a seminary where young men, both European and native, could receive a good theological and classical education, and be prepared for Holy Orders. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge granted 5,000l. for the purpose, and private subscriptions came in, until on the 15th of December, 1820, the Bishop was enabled to lay the foundation-stone of an institution that has, now for half a century, admirably answered its purpose.
It has long been found that Christianity cannot take root without a native ministry, and Bishop Middleton was most anxious to ordain such catechists of Schwartz’s training as were ready; but he found great technical difficulties in the way, since the ordination form in the Prayer Book left no opening for persons who, not being British subjects, could not be expected to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; and, moreover, it was not certain what language ought to be used with men not speaking English. The arrangement of these difficulties hindered him from ordaining Christian David, the godson and pupil of Schwartz, and a subject of Tanjore, on his visitation to the Presidency. This good man met him, together with the minister of Palamcotta, bringing a deputation about thirty in number. The minister was an exceedingly dark man, with a very interesting countenance. Addresses, interpreted by Christian, were made on either side, and the thirty sang a psalm of thanksgiving in Tamul. They were only a small deputation, for there were several Christian villages in Tinnevelly, with churches built of unburnt brick, and roofed with palmyra leaves, where the English Liturgy was used, having been translated into Tamul by David.
At Tanjore, the Bishop was received in the most friendly manner by Serfojee, who came down from his throne to welcome him, and caused Mrs. Middleton to be conducted to visit the ladies of his zenana. He conducted the Bishop into his library, which contained books in various European languages; also on medicine and anatomy, this being his favourite study, to assist him in which he had an ivory skeleton. He returned the visit in great state, with six elephants, two of enormous size, going before him, and accompanied by his troops, with a wild, horrid dissonance of cannon and native music. Two thousand persons escorted the Rajah to the Bishop’s tent, where he conversed very sensibly on various subjects, especially English history, or as he called it, “the Generations of English Kings.” He was keeping up the good works he had established, under the encouragement of the British resident, Colonel Blackburne, and in this district the native Christians numbered about 500, who were under the direction of Schwartz’s companion, Pohlé.
On the Malabar coast Bishop Middleton had much intercourse with the Christians of St. Thomas, visited their churches, and held much conversation with their Bishop, convincing himself that the distinctive tenets of Nestorianism had died out among them, and arranging for their receiving assistance in books and teachers.
His visit to Ceylon followed, and was always regarded by him as a time of much gratification; the good Governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, had done so much for the improvement of the people, and the missions were flourishing so well. Here Christian David became a catechist, and on the Bishop’s second visitation, in 1821, he ordained as deacon a man named Armour, whose history one longs to know more fully. He had come out to Ceylon originally as a private soldier, and finding a number of natives, probably the remnant of the Dutch Mission, whose profession of Christianity was only nominal, he had taken upon himself “almost the work of an evangelist,” never varying from the teaching and services of the English Church. He had taught himself to speak and preach fluently in Cingalese, and could use the Dutch and Portuguese languages freely. He had even some knowledge of Latin and Greek, and was so staunch Churchman that he had resisted all invitations from the Baptists to join them. He had gone through frightful difficulties and dangers in the swamp and the jungle, and travelled thousands of miles; and when he came to the Bishop it was with deep humility, and the hope that he had not been presumptuous in taking on himself the charge of souls without sanction. It was his great desire to obtain this commission, and the Bishop, finding how sound in faith, pious, and excellent he was, admitted him to deacon’s orders before leaving Colombo.
Ceylon was erected into an archdeaconry and attached to the Bishopric of Calcutta, and shortly after the same arrangement was made respecting Australia—an archdeaconry a great deal larger than the continent of Europe! Thence Bishop Middleton received and attended to the petition of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, a devoted worker in the vineyard, of whom our next chapter will speak.
Distinct missionary labour was scarcely possible to a man overtasked like Bishop Middleton. The district that kept St. Paul in continual “journeyings often” would have been but a quarter of that which depended on him for “the care of all the churches,” and the long journeys by sea and land were by far the least harassing part of his life; for he had to fight the battles, sometimes of his Church, sometimes of the whole Christian cause, with unfair and prejudiced officials, and a malignant newspaper press, by which the bitterest attacks were circulated against him and his doings. And, “besides those things that were without,” there were the troubles of dealing with men used to do “that which was right in their own eyes,” and determined to oppose or neglect one whose powers could only thoroughly be defined by actual practice. To go into these conflicts would be wearisome and vain. They have lost their interest now; but it must be remembered that it is by manfully and firmly enduring vexations such as these, that systems are established which form the framework and foundation of more visible labours, which gain more praise for those who are allowed to carry them out.
The constant wearing effort, the daily vexation, the inability to gain support, the binding of his hands from free action by the machinery of State regulations only applicable to home ecclesiastics, the continual making beginnings that never were allowed to progress—or, as he himself called it, the continual rolling of the stone of Sisyphus—could not but exhaust his powers, above all in such a climate; and that same sickly summer of 1822 which proved fatal to Felix Carey was his last. In July, one of his clergy, on whom he had been obliged to pass censure, instituted proceedings against him in the Supreme Court—a most improper and disloyal act, which much grieved and agitated him. He had to spend eight hours in writing in preparation for this painful matter, and afterwards went out in the carriage with his wife, but too early in the evening, for the slanting rays of the sun, not yet down, fell full on him, and their force is always especially dreaded at that damp and sickly season. He immediately said that the sun had struck him, and returned home; a most distressing fever, chiefly on the nerves, and accompanied by grievous restlessness and afterwards delirium, set in, and he died on the 8th of July, 1822, in his fifty-fourth year, absolutely worn out by toil and worry. But his career had established both the needfulness and the position of a Bishop, and his successor was appointed without the same opposition, still to a path perhaps only less thorny because briefer.