Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons. Arabella M. Willson
"She thirsted for the knowledge of gospel truth in all its relations and dependencies. Besides the daily study of the scripture with Guise, Orton, and Scott before her, she perused with deep interest the works of Edwards, Hopkins, Belamy, Doddridge, &c. With Edwards on Redemption, she was instructed, quickened, strengthened. Well do I remember the elevated smile that beamed on her countenance when she first spoke to me of its precious contents. When reading scripture, sermons, or other works, if she met with anything dark or intricate, she would mark the passage, and beg the first clergyman who called at her father's to elucidate and explain it."
How evidently to us, though unconsciously to herself, was her Heavenly Father thus fitting her for the work he was preparing for her. Had she known that she was to spend her days in instructing bigoted and captious idolaters in religious knowledge, she could not have trained herself for the task more wisely than she was thus led to do.
While, under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, she was thus cultivating her intellect, that same Spirit was also sanctifying and purifying her heart. She loathed sin both in herself and others, and strove to avoid it, not from the fear of hell, but from fear of displeasing her Father in heaven.
In one place she writes: "Were it left to myself whether to follow the vanities of the world, and go to heaven at last, or to live a religious life, have trials with sin and temptation, and sometimes enjoy the light of God's reconciled countenance, I should not hesitate a moment in choosing the latter, for there is no real satisfaction in the enjoyments of time and sense."
On the fourteenth of August, 1806, she made a public profession of religion, and united with the Congregational church at Bradford, being in her seventeenth year.
Very early in her religious life she became sensible that if unusual advantages for acquiring knowledge had fallen to her lot, she was the more bound to use her talents and acquirements for the benefit of others less favored than herself. Actuated by such motives, she opened a small school in her native place, and subsequently taught in several neighboring villages. Her example in this respect is surely worthy of imitation. Perhaps no person is more admirable than a young lady fitted like Miss Hasseltine by a cultivated mind and engaging manners to shine in society, who having the choice between a life of ease and one of personal exertion, chooses voluntarily, or only in obedience to the dictates of conscience, the weary and self-denying path of the teacher. And probably such a course would oftener be chosen, were young persons aware of the unquestionable fact, that the school in which we make the most solid and rapid improvement, is that in which we teach others.
An extract from her journal will sustain what we have said of her conscientiousness and purity of motive in endeavoring to instruct the young:
"May 12, 1809.—Have taken charge of a few scholars. Ever since I have had a comfortable hope in Christ, I have desired to devote myself to him in such a way as to be useful to my fellow-creatures. As Providence has placed me in a situation in life where I have an opportunity of getting as good an education as I desire, I feel it would be highly criminal in me not to improve it. I feel, also, that it would be equally criminal to desire to be well educated and accomplished, from selfish motives, with a view merely to gratify my taste and relish for improvement, or my pride in being qualified to shine. I therefore resolved last winter to attend the academy from no other motive than to improve the talents bestowed by God, so as to be more extensively devoted to his glory, and the benefit of my fellow-creatures. On being lately requested to take a small school for a few months, I felt very unqualified to have the charge of little immortals; but the hope of doing them good by endeavoring to impress their young and tender minds with divine truth, and the obligation I feel to try to be useful, have induced me to comply. I was enabled to open the school with prayer. Though the cross was very great, I felt constrained by a sense of duty to take it up. O may I have grace to be faithful in instructing these children in such a way as shall be pleasing to my heavenly Father."
Such being the principles by which she was actuated in commencing the work of instruction, we cannot doubt that her efforts to be useful were blessed not only by the temporal, but the spiritual advancement of her pupils, some of whom may appear, with children from distant Burmah, as crowns of her rejoicing in the last great day.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] She thus describes more particularly the exercises of her mind, in an entry in her Journal a year later.
"July 6. It is just a year this day since I entertained a hope in Christ. About this time in the evening, when reflecting on the words of the lepers, 'If we enter into the city, then the famine is in the city and we shall die there, and if we sit still here we die also,'—I felt that if I returned to the world, I should surely perish; if I stayed where I then was I should perish; and I could but perish if I threw myself on the mercy of Christ. Then came light, and relief, and comfort, such as I never knew before."
CHAPTER II.
HER MARRIAGE, AND VOYAGE TO INDIA.
In 1810, the calm current of Miss Hasseltine's life was disturbed by circumstances which were to change all her prospects, and color her whole future destiny. From the quiet and seclusion of her New England home, she was called to go to the ends of the earth, on a mission of mercy to the dark browed and darker minded heathen.
It is perhaps impossible for us to realize now what was then the magnitude of such an enterprise. Our wonderful facilities for intercourse with the most distant nations, and the consequent vast amount of travel, were entirely unknown forty years ago. A journey of two hundred miles then involved greater perplexity and required nearly as much preparation, and was certainly attended with more fatigue than a voyage to England at the present day. The subject of evangelizing the heathen in foreign countries had scarcely received any attention in Europe, and in this country there was not even a Missionary Society. That a female should renounce the refinements of her enlightened and Christian home, and go thousands of miles across unknown oceans
| "to the farthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes," |
to spend her life in an unhealthy climate, among a race whose language was strange to her ear, whose customs were revolting to her delicacy, and who might moreover make her a speedy victim to her zeal in their behalf—a thing so common now as to excite no surprise and little interest—was then hardly deemed possible, if indeed, the idea of it entered the imagination. To decide the question of such an undertaking as this, as well as another question affecting her individual happiness through life, was Miss Hasseltine now summoned.
Mr. Judson, a graduate of Brown University, "an ardent and aspiring scholar," was one of four or five young men in the then newly founded Theological Seminary at Andover, whose minds had become deeply impressed with the wants of the heathen, and a desire to go and labor among them. By their earnestness and perseverance, they so far awakened an interest in their project, that a Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was appointed, and the young men were set apart as missionaries. During the two years in which Mr. Judson and his associates were employed in efforts to accomplish this result, he had formed an acquaintance with Miss Hasseltine, and made her an offer of his hand. That he had no wish to blind her to the extent of the sacrifices she would make in accepting him, his manly and eloquent letter to her father, asking his daughter in marriage, abundantly proves. He says:
"I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure for a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern