MR. JUDSON’S FIRST TRACT FOR THE BURMANS.

There is one Being who exists eternally; who is exempt from sickness, old age, and death; who was, and is, and will be, without beginning, and without end. Besides this, the true God, there is no other God. The true God is diverse from all other beings. Uniting three in one, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, these three are one God. God is a spirit, without bodily form. Although omnipresent, it is above the heavens that he clearly discovers his glory. His power and wisdom are infinite. He is pure and good, and possessed of everlasting felicity. Before this world was made, God remained happy, surrounded by the pure and incorporeal sons of heaven. In order to display his perfections, and make creatures happy, God created the heavens, the sun, moon, and all the stars, the earth, the various kinds of brute creatures, and man. The first man and woman, at their original creation, were not liable to sickness or death; they were exempt from every kind of evil, and their mind was upright and pure. Afterwards, because, by violating the command of God, they transgressed against their Benefactor, the sum of all perfections, beyond compare, the light of the divine countenance disappeared, and those two, together with all their posterity, became darkened, and unclean, and wicked; they became subject, in the present state, to sickness, death, and all other evils; and they became deserving of suffering, in the future state, the dreadful punishment of hell. Above four thousand years after mankind was thus destroyed, God, being moved with compassion for man involved in misery, sent to the earth, the abode of man, God the Son, the second yadana among the three _yadanas_ [anything superlatively excellent—in the present application it conveys no additional idea, but is requisite in Burman to the intelligibility of the sentence]. The circumstances of his being sent were thus:—God the Son, uniting the divine and the human natures, without destroying or confounding them, in the land of Israel, and country of Judea, in the womb of a virgin, was conceived by the divine power, and was born. This God-man, who is named Jesus Christ, being man, endured in our stead severe sufferings and death, the punishment due to our sins; and being God, is able by virtue of having endured those sufferings, to deliver all his disciples from the punishment of hell, redeeming them with his own life, and to instate them in heaven. On the third day after Jesus Christ suffered death, his soul re-entered his body, and he lived again. For the space of forty days he remained, giving instruction to his disciples, after which he commissioned them thus—“Go ye into all countries on earth, and proclaim the glad news to all men. He that believeth in me, and is baptized, shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned, or shall suffer endless punishment in hell.” Then, in the presence of many of his disciples, he ascended to heaven, and took up his abode in the place where God displays his glory. According to the final command of Jesus Christ, his disciples, beginning with Judea, travelled about through various countries and kingdoms, and proclaimed the glad news; and many believed, and became disciples of Jesus Christ. The true religion afterwards spread into the countries of the west; and now to this country of Burmah, among the countries of the east, a teacher of religion, from the country of America, has arrived, and is beginning to proclaim the glad news. About one or two hundred years hence the religion of Boodh, of Brahma, of Mahomet, and of Rome, together with all other false religions, will disappear and be lost, and the religion of Christ will pervade the whole world; all quarrels and wars will cease, and all the tribes of man will be like a band of mutually loving brothers. [_End of Part 1._]