“Our progress in the language is slow, as it is peculiarly hard of acquisition. We can, however, read, write, and converse with tolerable ease, and frequently spend whole evenings very pleasantly in conversing with our Burman friends. We have been very fortunate in procuring good teachers. Mr. Judson’s teacher is a very learned man, was formerly a priest, and resided at court. He has a thorough knowledge of the grammatical construction of the language, likewise of the Pali, the learned language of the Burmans.”
It may be well to consider for a moment the _task_ which the young missionary had set before him. What did they propose to do, this man of twenty-five and his young wife, standing amid the level rice fields on the coast of Lower Burmah, with their faces turned landward toward towns and cities swarming with idolaters, and hill-tops crowned with heathen temples and pagodas? Their purpose was to undermine an ancient religion, deeply fixed in the hearts and habits of four hundred millions of human beings. They did not propose to bring to bear influences by which Christianity was to be introduced as a State religion and reluctant knees be forced to bow to the Christ. This would have been indeed an audacious undertaking. But they sought to work out a more searching revolution, nothing less than a change of belief and of heart in each individual. The millions of Burmans were to be taken one by one—their affections subdued, and their characters transfigured by the religion of Christ. They felt sure that in the mass of people about them, there was here and there a man who had been so schooled by the providences of God, and so matured by the Divine Spirit, that if the story of the Cross could once be got to him, he would immediately accept it and say, “That is just what I want.” As the sod of moss, brought from the woods into the house, often contains within its bosom hidden germs, and after a season, in the warmth of the parlor, sends forth sweet, unexpected spring flowers, so out of the unattractive sod of heathenism, under the genial rays of the Holy Spirit, might emerge disciples of Christ, and these disciples, organized by baptism into churches, would, by the same process of reaching individual souls, little by little leaven the whole of the empire.
But what _means_ did Mr. Judson use in his endeavor to bring about this great moral and spiritual revolution? Simply the Gospel of Christ. The sole weapons of his warfare were the old-fashioned truths, the existence of a personal and beneficent God, the fatal sinfulness of man, and salvation by faith in the Son of God, who came to “seek and to save that which was lost.” No system of truth could be devised more diametrically opposed to Buddhism, which teaches that there is no God to save, no soul to be saved, and no sin to be saved from. He felt sure that if he could only plant the seeds of Christian truth in the soil of the Burman’s heart, then, under the mellowing influence of the Holy Spirit, they would germinate and bring forth the fruit of meek and pure behavior. As in flushing a drain, a large body of pure water is poured through the whole length of it, washing out every impurity, so the Gospel of Christ is a cleansing tide, which, as it courses through the individual heart, or through human society, sweeps away before it all the stagnant and loathsome accumulations of sin.
Mr. Judson did not believe that Christianity should follow in the wake of civilization. He did not propose to spend his time in teaching the arts and sciences of the Western world, in imparting more correct astronomical, geographical, and geological conceptions, in order, little by little, to prepare the mind of the Burman to accept his religious ideas. He had implicit confidence in the promise of his Master, “Lo, I am with you alway.” He believed that Christ was with him in the heart of the heathen, unlocking the door from the inside.
Again, he did not say to himself, “It is a hopeless task to attempt the conversion of the hoary heads. I will try to gather the little children together and establish schools, and thus purify the fountains of national life.” He had his schools, indeed, but they were quite subordinate to the work of preaching the Gospel to the adult mind. He reached the children through the parents, and not the parents through the children. He believed that the grown-up Burmans, rather than their children, should bear the brunt of persecution involved in embracing a new religion. He followed the method of the Acts of the Apostles. A preacher of the Gospel, he did not allow himself to shrivel into a mere school-teacher or a school-book maker.