EMQ » January–March 2018 » Vol. 54 Issue 1
by Evan Burns[1]
Adoniram Judson’s spirituality was one of self-denying submission to the sovereign will of God, seeking chiefly to please Christ, his Lord. Pleasing Christ was his motivation, and self-denial was his means of submitting to God’s will; and his heavenly-mindedness gave him a hopeful and optimistic perspective. Recording how the promises of the Bible buttressed Judson’s heavenward orientation, one anonymous missionary said about Judson that there was “no man in India, or elsewhere, whom I thought riper for heaven. I was particularly impressed with his firm reliance on the promises of God.”[2] Judson interpreted all of God’s temporally severe providences through the lens of eternally happy prospects. This hope in future glory comforted him, and he likewise counseled others to endure with their soul’s attention fixed on the same happy hope. His anticipation of receiving an eternal reward for his self-denying labors reinforced his spirituality.
A Lifelong Heavenly-Minded Disposition
Judson’s heavenly-minded spirituality remained as intense during his last days as it was during his early days. He never vacillated in his patience for heaven’s happiness and eternal benefits. In his early years before experiencing the struggles of missionary life, Judson had a heavenward orientation, which he demonstrated in his communications with his fiancée, Ann Hasseltine.
Judson had an eternal perspective from the beginning. Before Judson and Ann married, he was beginning to focus his lifelong vision toward heaven. As he considered the unknown risks of the missionary call, he sought to steady his hope in God’s good will to reward the faithful in eternity. Though Judson did not know what God held in his temporal future, he nevertheless knew that God had ordained immeasurable happiness for his eternal future. In a letter to Ann in December 1810, Judson pondered the brevity of life and that whatever is done today, “is done to all eternity.” He mused on the consequential continuity between one’s earthly and eternal existence:
A life once spent is irrevocable. It will remain to be contemplated through eternity. If it be marked with sins, the marks will be indelible. If it has been a useless life, it can never be improved. Such it will stand forever and ever. . . . When it is once past, it is gone forever. All the marks which we put upon it will exhibit forever. It will never become less true that such a day was spent in such a manner. Each day will not only be a witness of our conduct, but will affect our everlasting destiny. No day will lose its share of influence in determining where shall be our seat in heaven. How shall we then wish to see each day marked with usefulness! It will then be too late to mend its appearance. It is too late to mend the days that are past. The future is in our power. Let us, then, each morning, resolve to send the day into eternity in such a garb as we shall wish it to wear forever. And at night let us reflect that one more day is irrevocably gone, indelibly marked.[3]
Heavenly Comfort
Having endured many hardships, when no other earthly consolation sufficed, Judson’s steady source of comfort lay in his fixed hope in the promises of heavenly rest. Judson sought heavenly comfort in aloneness. There were many seasons where Judson felt the sadness of separation from his loved ones. A most grievous season of aloneness happened in 1821. Ann became very ill, and the extreme nature of her sickness necessitated a voyage back to America for recovery. Saying goodbye to her, Judson wrestled with the feelings of emptiness and sorrow in her sustained absence. He would not see her again for over two years.[4]
Judson wrote a letter to her in September 1821, a few days after her departure. He described his battle with sin and his dissatisfaction with his state of progressive holiness. He prayed that Ann would know the joy of religion more than he was enjoying it at the time. In his struggle with sin, he rejoiced in how “consoling” it was to surrender their missionary work and their lives “into the faithful hands of Jesus.” He said, because “the Lord reigns,” he could “safely trust all in his hands, and rejoice in whatever may betide.” Suffering with Christ must precede being “glorified with him.”[5]
Within a few days of writing the aforementioned letter to Ann, Judson wrote in his journal, demonstrating his struggle with melancholy. He mourned the he too often derived “daily comfort and gratification” from the wrong places, which were deceptively empty. His heart’s depravity, he said, was so strong that he could not be “satisfied with the pure bread of heaven.” Instead, he said he was “continually hankering after the more gross and palatable food of this world—the husks of time and sense.” He explained that only when God strips away such counterfeit comforts do Christians realize the source of true satisfaction, and ostensibly, he was referring to the deprivation he felt after Ann’s departure. He perceived that his heart was so “ill-disciplined” that even in those happy moments of enjoying “glimpses of heaven,” temporal discouragements would “intervene, and swallow up all anticipations of future joy.”[6]
Eighteen years later, while apart from his second wife, Sarah B. Judson, he wrote a series of letters to her. In a letter in March 1839, he said that he wished they could be together again to enjoy each other’s company. He mused that if God allowed “sinful creatures on earth” to enjoy the “exquisite delights” of the bond of love as he and Sarah had, then “what must the joys of heaven be? Surely there is not a single lawful pleasure, the loss of which we shall have to regret there.”[7]
Judson sought heavenly comfort in death, which, more than any type of event, had a way of revealing the true source of his joy and hope. Feeling the pain of a loved one’s death, Judson neither displayed a sulky defeatism nor an indifferent stiffness. His heavenly-minded piety was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.[8] After his fellow-missionary, George Boardman, died, Judson married his widow, Sarah, in April of 1834. They were married for eleven years before Sarah’s death in 1845.[9] The day after her death, Judson wrote to the Burmese mission. Though he felt crushed under a “desolate” and “dreary” mood, Judson said that he derived “consolation” from the fact that she died “longing to depart and be with Christ.” His comfort was rooted in the presence of her heavenly-mindedness in death. He said he was certain that “the love of Christ sustained her to the last,” and he said he happily “congratulated her on the prospect of soon beholding the Saviour in all his glory.” He believed that she was in heaven resting on Christ’s bosom, enjoying heavenly bliss alongside his first wife, Ann.
By meditating on the heavenly reward of Ann and Sarah and his other departed companions, he said, “Heaven seems nearer, and eternity sweeter.” He concluded his letter with a hope-filled exhortation to “follow those who, through faith, inherit the promises.”[10] Judson further described the anguish he felt after burying Sarah. In his “solitude,” with his “poor children crying” around him, he said that he felt desolate under the “heart-breaking sorrow.” However, in their distress, he said the gospel sustained him: “The promises of the Gospel came to my aid, and faith stretched her view to the bright world of eternal life, and anticipated a happy meeting with those beloved beings whose bodies are moldering at Amherst and St. Helena.”[11] Judson’s comfort derived not only from the good news of Christ’s decisive act of forgiveness and justification on the cross, but it also included the good news of Christ’s preserving sanctification and promise of glorification.
Judson sought to communicate heavenly comfort in counseling others; he had a special way with his fellow missionaries who suffered as he did. He could tenderly shepherd their souls to look to Christ, trust him for his sovereign wisdom, and hope eagerly in his promises of rest for labor and reward for service.
After George Boardman’s death, Judson wrote a note in March of 1831 to console the grieving widow, Sarah Boardman. Judson said he had tasted the “dregs” of the cup she was now drinking, which was “far bitterer” than she expected. He said, though she would endure many months of “heartrending anguish,” his only counsel for her was, “Take the cup with both hands, and sit down quietly to the bitter repast which God has appointed for your sanctification.” Judson encouraged her to think of the “diadem which encircles [Boardman’s] brow” and the fact that Boardman is now “an immortal saint, a magnificent, majestic king.” Due to the present reality of Boardman’s reward in heaven, Judson encouraged Sarah to cry “tears of joy.” Judson repeated his earlier line, to emphasize what he learned about finding heavenly sweetness through suffering the loss of loved ones; he again advised,
Yet take the bitter cup with both hands, and sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret, that there is sweetness at the bottom. You will find it the sweetest cup that you ever tasted in all your life. You will find heaven coming near to you.
In addition to family and close friends, others also were beneficiaries of the influence of Judson’s heavenly-minded counsel. For instance, during his last year of life, in a letter to an anonymous missionary in July of 1849, Judson gave words of advice to look away from worldly concerns and look heavenward:
You must endeavor to look away from all outward things—from the satisfactions and discomforts, the commendations and censures, which are the common lot of man, and find your happiness in your own bosoms, in your work, in communion with God, and in the joyful anticipations of that blessed state, the heavenly Jerusalem, the “happy home” to which we are travelling.[12]
At the end of his life, Emily (Judson’s third wife) noted that Judson would often say, “We must look up for direction.”[13] In one of the last letters Judson wrote, in October 1849, he sought to counsel a grieving fellow-missionary, S. M. Osgood.[14] He said that he and Osgood had both experienced the immense pain of losing loved ones, and in light of the severity and sweetness of God’s providence, Judson encouraged Osgood to imagine their loved ones in heaven “reposing in the arms of infinite love, who wipes away all their tears with His own hand.” He charged Osgood to “travel on and look up.” Judson closed by rehearsing the heavenly truth that had been so hope-giving for him; he concluded, “The longer and more tedious the way, the sweeter will be our repose.”[15]
Heavenly Longing
For Judson, a heavenly-minded disposition was not merely supplemental to missionary spirituality; it was crucial. Such an upward gaze would indeed provide solace in a myriad of afflictions and anxieties. Moreover, heavenly-mindedness would be supremely useful if it were stronger than a simple awareness of or assent to heavenly realities. Judson demonstrated that a heavenly disposition must be a dominant instinct of true religion, manifesting itself in an expectant longing for the benefits of Christ, anchored in heaven. Judson believed such a longing was fundamental for any missionary and minister of the cross.
Judson saw longing for heaven as useful for the missionary spirit. In an extract from a letter to a friend in October 1818, Judson showed far more concern for the graces of heavenly-mindedness in fellow missionaries than for skill, education, and strength, though he said that the same education and “mental improvement” given to ministers should be expected of missionaries. He desired the heart of the missionary to be heavenward in its affections. He said he was fully convinced that a qualified missionary should habitually enjoy a “closet religion.” He maintained that a missionary should be “abstracted from this world, and much occupied in the contemplation of heavenly glories,” in addition to exuding various “spiritual graces,” which include “humility, patience, meekness, love.”[16]
Before the Boardman Missionary Society at Waterville College, in 1846, Judson spoke about pleasing the Lord with eternity in view as the foundation of mission work. Judson was speaking to students who were either interested in missions or who were preparing for missions. In light of the trials he had seen, he said he did not want to compel anyone to experience what he had, but he said their compelling sense of duty must come from a heavenly source. He said,
You have but one life to live in which to prepare for eternity. . . .You have only one. Every action of that one life gives coloring to your eternity. How important, then, that you spend that life so as to please the Saviour, the blessed Saviour, who has done everything for you![17]
Judson saw longing for heaven as useful for loving the brethren. Emily recounted that Judson’s heavenly-minded disposition directly motivated his love for people. By contemplating the pervasiveness of brotherly love in heaven, Judson learned to love others for the sake of Christ. Judson would say it is insufficient to be generally pleasant to the people of God; brotherly love requires more than “[abstaining] from evil speaking, and [making] a general mention of them in our prayers.” Emily said that his “ardent temperament” made him “subject to strong attachments and aversions,” which, she said were difficult for him to bring “under the controlling influence of divine grace.” She recorded that he would often say that the Christian’s affection for other believers “should be of the most ardent and exalted character: it would be so in heaven, and we lost immeasurably by not beginning now.” She recalled that the verse, “‘As I have loved you, so ought ye also to love one another [see John 13:34; 15:12],’ was a precept continually in his mind.”[18] Judson was aware of his easily irritated nature, and through his rules of life, he sought to daily confront his lack of affection for people.[19] Throughout his life, because of his meditations on death and heaven, his various rules for spiritual maturity in his relationships generally underlined secret prayer, mortifying disaffection for others, showing benevolence to all, and being cordial in all facets of conduct “to please an ever-present Lord.”[20]
Judson saw longing for heaven as useful for self-denying activity. In a letter to his parents in July 1810, in the context of describing his cordial communion with God in Christ, Judson admitted that his temporal future certainly would meet with troubles and uncertainty, yet, he said his “prospects for another life . . . are still brighter.” He went on to say that the dreams of this life are empty, and he said,
O, if we could always realize this, and live above the world—if we could tread on its trifling vanities, live far from its perplexing cares, and keep an eye fixed on our heavenly inheritance—how . . . useful we might be![21]
In her recollections of Judson, Emily highlighted how useful Judson’s longing for heaven was in relation to his completion of the dictionary. She said that he was so “consecrated” to his work that he found earthly pleasures only in his family. She said, “His thoughts, which were ordinarily fixed with unusual continuity on heaven, seemed to turn thither with a more resistless longing, now that he had accomplished the work which he believed had been appointed to him.”[22]
One of the clearest examples of the relationship between Judson’s heavenly-minded disposition and his resolve to deny himself the comforts of this world was in a letter in December 1830 to Lucius Bolles. Judson’s health had been poor, and the American Baptist Board sent an invitation for him to return home. His heart longed to return to America, he said, to enjoy sweet fellowship with his friends and family and “to witness the wide-spread and daily-increasing glories of Emanuel’s kingdom in that land of liberty, blessed of Heaven with temporal and spiritual blessings above all others.” Nevertheless, he was willing to postpone such an enjoyable reunion because he was waiting for “a happier meeting, brighter plains, friends the same, but more lovely and beloved.” He was convinced that he would soon “enjoy that glory in comparison of which all on earth is but a shadow.” Because of such heavenly anticipation, he said, “I content myself, assured that we shall not then regret any instance of self-denial or suffering endured for the Lord of life and glory.”[23] After marrying Emily in 1846, Judson said that his hopefulness in the dawn of Christ’s heavenly glory led him to welcome all manner of labor, self-denial, and hazards, making his life dissonant with the world’s temporal pursuits. He said that he would even spill his “blood like water in such a cause.”[24]
Conclusion
That Judson fixated his mind upon and lived in light of heavenly realities is evident. His heavenly-minded disposition carried him from his early impulses of missionary devotion all the way to his final hours. Many trials and afflictions were God’s will for his life, but looking heavenward, he sought to do everything to please Christ in order that in heaven his happiness in Christ would be sweeter. His heavenly-minded piety comforted him in aloneness and death. His heavenly-minded instinct helped him to comfort and counsel others in their pain. His longing for the ever-increasing blessings of heaven proved useful for his self-denying missionary activity and his relations with others. He believed that a sustained heavenly longing was essential for true missionary spirituality. Judson believed that the experience of heavenly joy corresponded directly to the love and sacrificial benevolence poured out in this life. Self-denying sacrifice was the means through which he sought to please his Savior and coming King. With bright optimism, Judson could say all his life,
In joy or sorrow, health or pain,
Our course be onward still;
We sow on Burmah’s barren plain,
We reap on Zion’s hill.[25]
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Evan Burns (Ph.D), is director of the Judson Center, a division of Western Seminary. The Judson Center is a missiological network for global proclamation, scripture centrality, missionary theology, and Christ-centered renewal. Visit: http://thejudsoncenter.org/
[1]This essay is from selections of the author’s chapter: Evan Burns, “We Reap on Zion’s Hill: Heavenly-Minded Spirituality,” in A Supreme Desire to Please Him: The Spirituality of Adoniram Judson (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), 143–70.
[2]Ibid., 2:332.
[3]Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, By His Son, Edward Judson (New York: Randolph, 1883), 14–15. Even before Judson wrote this letter to Ann, he had already expressed his heavenly-minded conviction to Ann’s father in asking him to allow Judson to lead Ann into a life and ministry that would certainly face hazards, pangs, and anguish of all kinds. He pleaded, “Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with a crown of righteousness, brightened by the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?” Ann Hasseltine Judson, An Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire: In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Gentleman in London (London: Butterworth & Son and Clark, 1823), 36. See also Jesse Clemént, Memoir of Adoniram Judson, Being a Sketch of His Life and Missionary Labors (Auburn, NY: Derby and Miller, 1851), 25; and Robert T. Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary: Records of the Life, Character, and Achievements of Adoniram Judson (New York: Fletcher, 1854), 38.
[4]Ann left on August 21, 1821 and returned on December 5, 1823. See Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 564.
[5]Adoniram Judson, “Extracts from Mr. Judson’s Letters to His Wife, Rangoon, Sept. 5, 1821,” The Baptist Missionary Magazine 4 (1823), 57.
[6]Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 165.
[7]Wayland, Memoir, 2:140.
[8]See 2 Corinthians 6:10.
[9]For Judson’s personal records and reflections on his decision to marry Sarah, see Adoniram Judson, journal, March 12, 1834 to April 10, 1834, Box No. AJ 4, Folder 4 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, American Baptist Historical Society. For a vivid account of Sarah’s death, see Adoniram Judson to the Rev. Solomon Peck, letter, September 1, 1845, Box No. AJ 3, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, American Baptist Historical Society.
[10]Wayland, Memoir, 2:203–4.
[11]He was referring to Ann, buried at Amherst, and Sarah, buried at St. Helena. Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 352–53.
[12]Wayland, Memoir, 2:333.
[13]Ibid., 2:372. Emphasis in original.
[14]See Arthur Warren Smith, Sewall Mason Osgood, D.D., in Missionary Service for Forty-One Years, 1834-1875 (Boston: Backus Historical Society, 1907).
[15]Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 521–22. See also Wayland, Memoir, 2:328–29. Regarding Elhira Osgood’s death in 1837, in a letter of condolence, Judson concluded as though he were writing to Elhira Osgood herself about her future glory; he said, “We know that thou sleepest in Jesus, and that when the night of death is passed away, and the resurrection morn appears, thou also wilt again appear, blooming in celestial beauty, and arrayed in thy Saviour’s righteousness, a being fitted to love and to be beloved, throughout the ever-revolving hours of an eternal day.” Wayland, Memoir, 2:118.
[16]Wayland, Memoir, 1:211. For one biographer’s apt observations of Judson’s own missionary spirit, see Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 437. Citing comparable graces though not explicitly mentioning heavenly-mindedness, Judson wrote two years earlier to Luther Rice, in November of 1816. He wrote about the kind of missionaries to send: “In encouraging other young men to come out as missionaries, do use the greatest caution. . . . Humble, quiet, persevering men. . . . Men of an amiable, yielding temper, willing to take the lowest place, to be the least of all and the servants of all; men who enjoy much closet religion, who live near to God, and are willing to suffer all things for Christ’s sake, without being proud of it, these are the men, &c.” Adoniram Judson, “Extract of a Letter from Mr. Judson to Mr. Rice, Rangoon, Novem. 14th, 1816,” The Baptist Missionary Magazine 1 (1817), 184–85. See also Wayland, Memoir, 1:185–86. Regarding the strategic role Luther Rice played in promoting and mobilizing for the American Baptist Board and in arousing missionary devotion in others, Robert G. Torbet, A History of the Baptists, 3rd ed. (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1963), 331.
[17]Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 473–74. See also Wayland, Memoir, 2:234–35. In another address, Judson laid out his vision of the continuity of heavenly reality with earthly living. In the context of giving a charge for potential missionary candidates to count the cost of missionary sacrifice, he said, “So far as we are like Christ in this world, so far shall we be like him through eternity. So far as we sustain this cause, which is peculiarly the cause of God, so far we shall be happy through endless ages.” Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 470. See also Wayland, Memoir, 2:233–34; and Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 376.
[18]Wayland, Memoir, 2:338. In a letter to Emily in January of 1847, Judson said, “‘Trust in God and keep your powder dry,’ was Cromwell’s word to his soldiers. Trust in God and love one another is, I think, a better watchword. Let us do the duties of religion and of love, and all will be well.” Asahel Clark Kendrick, The Life and Letters of Mrs. Emily C. Judson (London: Nelson and Sons, 1861), 251.
[19]See Wayland, Memoir, 1:322–23; Wayland, Memoir, 2:61, 103, 190; Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 315–16.
[20]Wayland, Memoir, 2:190. See also Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 316.
[21]Wayland, Memoir, 1:58.
[22]Wayland, Memoir, 2:163. Wayland said, “[Judson] had a passion for saving souls, and he had reason to believe that, by this labor, many souls were saved who would be his joy and his crown in that heaven for which his whole life was a constant preparation.” Ibid., 2:6–7.
[23]Adoniram Judson to Dr. Lucius Bolles, letter, December 20, 1830, Box No. AJ 2, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, American Baptist Historical Society; see also Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 271. For some of Judson’s comments about bearing up under trials and suffering with Christ in order to reign with him, see Wayland, Memoir, 2:295.
[24]Wayland, Memoir, 2:371.
[25]In Wayland’s opinion, Judson’s habitual heavenly-minded disposition was never better expressed than in these words that he penciled in a book he used in making the dictionary. See Wayland, Memoir, 2:381–82.
