“With all this, he has told me that he felt, when making his translation, an almost overpowering sense of the awfulness of his work, and an ever-present conviction that every word was as from the lips of God.”
In regard to the merits of his Burman Bible, Mr. Judson’s estimate was very modest. He writes:
“The _beau ideal_ of translation, so far as it concerns the poetical and prophetical books of the Old Testament, I profess not to have attained. If I live many years, of which I have no expectation, I shall have to bestow much more labor upon those books. With the New Testament I am rather better satisfied, and the testimony of those acquainted with the language is rather encouraging. At least, I hope that I have laid a good foundation for my successors to build upon....
“As to the merits of the translation, I must leave others to judge. I can only say that, though I have seldom done anything to my own satisfaction, I am better satisfied with the translation of the New Testament than I ever expected to be. The language is, I believe, simple, plain, intelligible; and I have endeavored, I hope successfully, to make every sentence a faithful representation of the original. As to the Old Testament, I am not so well satisfied. The historical books are, perhaps, done pretty well; but the poetical and prophetical books are doubtless susceptible of much improvement, not merely in point of style, but in the rendering of difficult passages, about which the most eminent scholars are not yet agreed.”
How far his own humble view falls short of doing justice to the excellence of his monumental task, may be gathered from the following statement by the late Dr. Wayland:
“From the incidental allusions to it in Dr. Judson’s letters and journals, we may form some conception of the labor which he spent upon this work. He had enjoyed the best opportunities which this country then afforded for the study of interpretation; and his progress in this department of knowledge had awakened the highest expectations of his future success as a translator. He had made himself familiar with the Burmese language to a degree never before attained by a foreigner. He determined, if it were possible, to transfer the ideas of the Holy Scriptures, from their original languages, into Burman, in such a manner that his work should need as little revision as possible by his successors. He had an intense desire for rendering perfect every labor which he undertook; indeed, he said of himself, that one of his failings was ‘a lust for finishing.’ Hence he availed himself of all the means of information which the progress of biblical science, either in Germany or America, placed within his reach. As early as the visit of Mrs. Ann Judson to this country, his demand for books was large, and it was all for the very best, the foundation books. I well remember the pleasure with which I stripped my library of what I considered some of its choicest treasures, to supply a part of his most urgent necessities. Thus he continued until he had surrounded himself with a most valuable apparatus for carrying on his work in the manner which its importance deserved.
“While, however, he thus sought for aid from all the sources of modern and ancient learning, it is manifest from the whole of his correspondence that he used them all with the discretion of a master mind. It was not in his power to substitute the working of other intellects for the working of his own. He weighed, with critical caution, every recension of the text. He adopted no interpretation unless either convinced of its truth, or else sure that it was the nearest approximation to the truth that could be made in the present state of our knowledge. In order to reach this result, no labor was too great, and no investigation too protracted. United with all this that was intellectual, there was, in his case, a mind deeply impressed with its own fallibility, and turning with unutterable longing to the Holy Spirit for guidance and illumination. The importance of his work to millions of immortal souls was ever present to his view. He had been called by the providence of God to unfold to a whole nation, in their own language, the revelation of the Most High. He conceived it to be a momentous undertaking; and a heavy weight would have rested on his soul if a single idea in the Scriptures had been obscurely rendered in consequence of haste, impatience, negligence, or culpable ignorance on the part of the translator.