“It is with the utmost sincerity, and with my whole heart, that I wish you, my love, a happy new year. May it be a year in which your walk will be close with God; your frame calm and serene; and the road that leads you to the Lamb marked with purer light. May it be a year in which you will have more largely the spirit of Christ, be raised above sublunary things, and be willing to be disposed of in this world just as God shall please. As every moment of the year will bring you nearer the end of your pilgrimage, may it bring you nearer to God, and find you more prepared to hail the messenger of death as a deliverer and a friend. And now, since I have begun to wish, I will go on. May this be the year in which you will change your name; in which you will take a final leave of your relatives and native land; in which you will cross the wide ocean, and dwell on the other side of the world, among a heathen people. What a great change will this year probably effect in our lives! How very different will be our situation and employment! If our lives are preserved and our attempt prospered, we shall next new year’s day be in India, and perhaps wish each other a happy new year in the uncouth dialect of Hindostan or Burmah. We shall no more see our kind friends around us, or enjoy the conveniences of civilized life, or go to the house of God with those that keep holy day; but swarthy countenances will everywhere meet our eye, the jargon of an unknown tongue will assail our ears, and we shall witness the assembling of the heathen to celebrate the worship of idol gods. We shall be weary of the world, and wish for wings like a dove, that we may fly away and be at rest. We shall probably experience seasons when we shall be ‘exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.’ We shall see many dreary, disconsolate hours, and feel a sinking of spirits, anguish of mind, of which now we can form little conception. O, we shall wish to lie down and die. And that time may soon come. One of us may be unable to sustain the heat of the climate and the change of habits; and the other may say, with literal truth, over the grave—
“‘By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed; By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed; By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned;’
but whether we shall be honored and mourned by strangers, God only knows. At least, either of us will be certain of _one_ mourner. In view of such scenes shall we not pray with earnestness, ‘O for an overcoming faith,’ etc.?”
But what steps did he and his young associates take in order to execute their sublime purpose? There was at that time no foreign missionary society in America to which they could offer their services, and which would undertake their support in the foreign field.
There was, indeed, the Massachusetts Missionary Society, founded in 1799, the object of which was to diffuse a missionary spirit among the Congregational churches in New England, and to carry the Gospel to the Indians and to the newly-settled parts of our own land. But this Society had not yet launched upon the work of foreign missions; and so Mr. Judson, and the young men who shared his purpose, first proposed to each other to enlist as missionaries under the London Missionary Society. Accordingly Mr. Judson wrote the following letter to the venerable Dr. Bogue, the President of the Seminary in Gosport, England, where the missionaries of the London Society received their training:
“DIVINITY COLLEGE, ANDOVER, MASS., _April, 1810_.
“REV. SIR: I have considered the subject of missions nearly a year, and have found my mind gradually tending to a deep conviction that it is my duty personally to engage in this service. Several of my brethren of this college may finally unite with me in my present resolution. On their as well as my own behalf, I take the liberty of addressing you this letter. My object is to obtain information on certain points—whether there is at present such a call for missionaries in India, Tartary, or any part of the _Eastern_ Continent as will induce the directors of the London Missionary Society to engage new missionaries; whether two or three young, unmarried men, having received a liberal education, and resided two years in this Divinity School, wishing to serve their Saviour in a heathen land, and indeed susceptible of a ‘_passion for missions_,’—whether such young men, arriving in England next spring, with full recommendations from the first Christian characters in this country, may expect to be received _on probation_ by the directors, and placed at the seminary in Gosport, _if that be judged expedient_; and whether, provided they give satisfaction as to their fitness to undertake the work, all their necessary expenses after arriving in England shall be defrayed from the funds of the Society, which funds will, it is hoped, be ultimately reimbursed by supplies from the American churches.