While his name has faded from our collective memory, Adoniram Judson Jr. (1788–1850) was one of the most famous men of his century. In the eyes of the world, Judson seemed destined for greatness. He excelled at nearly everything he did, advancing in Latin, rhetoric, and mathematics so quickly that he entered the College of Rhode Island (later Brown University) at the age of sixteen. During his senior year of college, Judson launched his own school while still managing to graduate as valedictorian. He revered the great men of history, but his “burning ambition” (as he put it) was to surpass them. One day, Judson believed, his name would shine.
He was right. But when it did, it wasn’t his story he told.
Shaken by Death
Something remarkable happened to Judson after college. Frustrated by his unrealized ambition for greatness, he gave up the school he had started to make his career on the stage. But Broadway’s spotlight didn’t satisfy his hunger for fame. Discontented and determined to remake himself yet again, Judson left New York for his hometown near Boston. On the journey, he stopped at a small country inn for the night. He soon discovered that the room adjacent to his was occupied by a dying man. The man’s groans and pitiful cries kept Judson awake for most of the night. Lying in bed, Judson was seized by a surprising question: Was the young man in the next room prepared to die? For that matter, was he?
The question cut to Judson’s core. The son of a Boston pastor, Judson had abandoned Christian faith for the rationalism popular in his day. The writings of Voltaire, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Paine resonated with Judson’s growing cynicism. Rationalistic theology resolved the tension he felt between his burning ambition for greatness and the New Testament’s vision of self-sacrifice. His closest college friend, Jacob Eames, helped to solidify Judson’s conclusion. To adopt deism’s rejection of the supernatural and the authoritative claims of the Bible, Eames had argued, was the mark of intellectual impartiality and sophistication.
But as he lay awake, Judson couldn’t shake the contradiction between the faith he had rejected and his fear of death and judgment.
Settling his bill the next morning, Judson inquired about the young man in the next room. The innkeeper sadly stated that the boy had died. “Who was he?” Judson asked. “A graduate from the college up in Providence,” replied the innkeeper. “Eames. Jacob Eames.” Judson was stunned:
After hours passed — I knew not how — I attempted to pursue my journey. But one single thought occupied my mind. The words dead! lost! lost! were continually ringing in my ears. I knew [in that moment] the religion of the Bible to be true; I felt its truth; and I was in despair.1
The only solution to the despair was to fly to Christ. Repenting of his sin, trusting in the sufficiency of Jesus’s atoning death and victorious resurrection, and seeking to reorient his life around the truth of the gospel, Judson placed himself under the care of faithful men and devoted himself to the study of Scripture. As he grew in the faith, Judson saw that nothing could be more urgent, important, or useful to the world than living for the name of Christ Jesus.
Ambition Redirected
Exactly a year after Eames’s death, Judson read a sermon that called for the proclamation of the gospel and the translation of the Scriptures to the unreached peoples of the Far East. It struck him like a bolt of lightning. What if his good health, education, ambition, and new desire for usefulness in God’s kingdom were for this? Judson recounts,
It was during a solitary walk in the woods behind [Andover] college, while meditating and praying on the subject, and feeling half inclined to give it up, that the command of Christ, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” was presented to my mind with such clearness and power, that I came to a full decision, and though great difficulties appeared in my way, [I] resolved to obey the command at all events.2
And obey he did. In 1812, at the age of 24, Judson; his wife, Ann; and several other pioneering Congregationalist missionaries set sail for Burma — an inhospitable, mysterious land with no gospel witness. Hardship, sickness, grief, opposition, torture, and death lay ahead. But in and underneath the suffering, the triumph of Jesus blazed forth. In his lifetime, Judson would complete the Burmese translation of the Scriptures, publish thousands of evangelistic materials, see the conversion of eight thousand Burmese men and women, and help establish one hundred indigenously led churches. And while Judson, his family, and a happy band of gospel workers quietly labored for the fame of Christ in the tropical heat, Judson’s renown blossomed at home.
Surprising Return
When Judson unexpectedly returned to America in 1845, he hardly recognized what he found. The country was abuzz with excitement over the exploits of frontiersmen as far west as the Oregon territory and as far south as the newly independent Republic of Texas. This was the era of Daniel Boone (1734–1820), Davy Crockett (1786–1836), and the great expedition of Merriweather Lewis and William Clark (1804–1806). An eager public soaked up the stories of pioneers, speculators, frontiersmen, and explorers. The more dramatic the circumstance, the more celebrated the explorer. And eight thousand miles away, in the reclusive and despotic kingdom of Burma, Judson had been numbered among them.
For a decade, magazines had published every scrap of missionary news they could find. Americans read with great interest of the New England man who had translated the Bible into an unknown language, fearlessly held audience with a foreign despot, survived more than a year in a Burmese death prison, buried — in addition to his colleagues — two wives and seven children, and who nevertheless tirelessly proclaimed the gospel to Buddhists on Asia’s golden shore. Brown University, eager to promote its accomplished graduate, even awarded Judson a Doctor of Divinity for his unprecedented service.3
As Judson stepped onto the wharf in Boston’s bustling harbor, he was stunned to see thousands of people awaiting him. Boston’s largest newspapers covered his arrival. Hundreds of people opened their homes in welcome. Churches jockeyed to invite him as a guest. Crowds gathered in hopes of hearing Judson recount stories of his adventures in the Orient.
The Greatest Story
Surprisingly, Judson refused.4 A witness later described Judson’s explanation:
A short time before Dr. Judson left this country, he took considerable pains to visit my native village, and the church with which I first united, though I had long since removed my membership. As the [church building] was small, he had consented to address the congregation; and this, although the day was rainy, brought together quite a crowd.
After the usual sermon was over, he spoke for about fifteen minutes, with singular simplicity, and, as I thought, with touching pathos, of the “precious Saviour,” what he has done for us, and what we owe to him.
As he sat down, however, it was evident even to the most unobservant eye that most of the listeners were disappointed.
After the exercises were over, several persons inquired of me, frankly, why Dr. Judson had not talked of something else; why he had not told a story, etc. Others signified their disappointment by not alluding to his having spoken at all. On the way home, I mentioned the subject to him.
“Why, what did they want?” [Judson] inquired. “I presented the most interesting subject in the world, to the best of my ability.”
“But they wanted something different.”
“Well, I am sure I gave them a story — the most thrilling one that can be conceived of.”
“But they had heard it before. They wanted something new of a man who had just come from the antipodes.”
“Then I am glad they have it to say that a man coming from the antipodes had nothing better to tell than the wondrous story of Jesus’ dying love. My business is to preach the gospel of Christ, and when I [am able to] speak at all, I dare not trifle with my commission. When I looked upon those people today, and remembered where I should next meet them, how could I stand up and furnish food to vain curiosity — tickle their fancies with amusing stories, however decently strung together on a thread of religion? That is not what Christ meant by preaching the gospel. And then, how could I hereafter meet the fearful charge, ‘I gave you one opportunity to tell them of me and you spent it in describing your adventures.’”5
Judson’s earliest ambition had been for his own fame and adventure. But he had been confronted by the love of Jesus, and that had changed everything.
The greatest adventure to be described is the advent of the Son, the one who left his throne of glory to become a servant and, as a servant, to render his righteous life as substitute and ransom for men (Philippians 2:5–11). The story of his perfect life, atoning death, victorious resurrection, and heavenly exaltation eclipses and gives meaning to all other stories. It redefines greatness and reorients our lives (Mark 10:43).
And so it had for Judson. Joy was not to be found in celebrity, but in seeing others celebrate the one worthy of all glory. He could never again look at another human being without thinking about his eternal destiny. Because the love of Christ compelled him, he had only one Story to tell.
Great is our privilege, precious our opportunity, to cooperate with the Saviour in the blessed work of enlarging and establishing His kingdom throughout the world. Most precious the opportunity of becoming wise, in turning many to righteousness, and of shining, at last, as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars, forever and ever. Let us not, then, regret the loss of those who have gone before us, and are waiting to welcome us home, nor shrink from the summons that must call us thither. Let us only resolve to follow them who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises. Let us so employ the remnant of life, and so pass away, that our successors will say of us, as we of our predecessors, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. They rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.”6
Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson (New York, 1883), 13. ↩
Francis Wayland, The Life and Labors of Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D., 2 vols. (Boston, 1853), 1:54. ↩
When Judson finally learned of the honorary D.D., he wrote to Brown University to decline it. When friends and correspondents continued to use the title, Judson wrote the editor of Missionary Magazine asking that they “no longer apply the title to my name.” “I am convinced,” Judson wrote, “that the commands of Christ and the general spirit of the Gospel are paramount.” Honorific titles belonged to Christ, not to men. See Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 320. ↩
Wayland, Life and Labors, 2:213. ↩
Wayland, Life and Labors, 2:369. ↩
Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 501. ↩
Desiring God