and temporal enjoyment, as well as for immortal happiness; yet who, having said in their heart there is no God ‘that minds the affairs of men,’ have built up for themselves a fabric of absurd superstitions, and unmeaning rites, and senseless formalities, to which they cling with a stubbornness that nothing but the power of God can subdue; on such a shore are cast by the providence of God two ‘pilgrim strangers,’ not endowed with apostolic gifts; not able to control disease, or raise the dead, or even to speak in a foreign tongue without long and patient and assiduous study to acquire it; and yet with a simple and sublime faith in the clear and sure word of their master, “Go—­preach my Gospel—­lo, I am with you,” these pilgrim strangers can CONFIDENTLY BELIEVE that God will visit this land with gospel light, and that those gilded fanes which now glisten in the morning and evening sun, on every hill-top, will fall, and those poor idolaters will say, “What have we to do any more with idols?” “our trust is in the name of the Lord that made heaven and earth.”

In one of the last paragraphs of her private journal which has been preserved, dated Oct. 8th of the same year, she says:  “To-day I have been into the town, and I was surprised at the multitude of people with which the streets are filled.  Their countenances are intelligent; and they appear to be capable under the influence of the Gospel, of becoming a valuable and respectable people.  But at present their situation is truly deplorable, for they are given to every sin.  Lying is so universal among them that they say, ’we cannot live without telling lies.’  They believe the most absurd notions imaginable.  My teacher told me the other day, that when he died he would go to my country; I shook my head, and told him he would not; but he laughed, and said he would.  I did not understand the language sufficiently to tell him where he would go, or how he could be saved.  Oh thou Light of the world, dissipate the thick darkness that covers Burmah.  Display thy grace and power among the Burmans—­subdue them to thyself, and make them thy chosen people.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 2:  The war had almost produced a famine.]

CHAPTER VI.

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE.—­MRS. JUDSON VISITS THE WIFE OF THE VICEROY.—­HER SICKNESS.—­HER VOYAGE TO MADRAS.—­HER RETURN TO RANGOON.—­BIRTH OF A SON.

Those who have acquired a modern European language with the aid of grammars, dictionaries, and other suitable books, can scarcely estimate the labor of learning without such aids, such a language as the Burman.  In fact Mr. Judson thinks more progress can be made in the French in a few months, than in the Burman in two years.  Mrs. Judson took the whole management of family affairs on herself, in order to leave her husband at liberty to prosecute his studies and the consequence was, that being obliged constantly to use all the Burman she knew, in her intercourse with servants, traders, and others, her progress was more rapid than his.