Page:Our Hymns.djvu/349

 THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN.

Grammar,&quot; and &quot; The Young Lady s Arithmetic.&quot; In 1808 he gave up his school and entered Andover Theological Seminary. He was not yet decidedly religious, but he was an earnest inquirer. At length, on the 28th of May, 1809, he became a member of the third congregational church, Plymouth.

In the year 1809, the reading of Buchanan s &quot; Star in the East&quot; stirred his whole soul with the thought of entering upon the missionary work ; and, meeting with others likeminded, he decided in February, 1810, to begin to prepare for it. In 1811, he went with others to confer with the directors of the London Missionary Society in London, and to offer themselves to them, but they wisely remitted the enterprise to their American cousins, who were well able to undertake it. At length Mr. Judson and his first wife and others were sent forth to India by the American Board of Commissioners. On their way they became Baptists, and after meeting with much opposition from the East India Company, they at length, to avoid reshipment to England, sailed from Madras in a vessel bound to Rangoon. Thus they reached Burmah, where it was found that Providence had a great work for them to do. Their mission was commenced about the year 1815. They worked in connection with the American Baptists, and by the time the British war broke out in 1824, the mission had been already attended with some success.

On the 8th June, 1824, Rangoon having been taken by the British, Dr. Judson was seized with violence by the natives, cruelly bound, and cast into prison, and it was not till April, 1826, when the Burmese were obliged to capitulate, that he obtained his release. During his term of incarceration, he was removed from prison to prison, exposed to privations that brought on dangerous fever, and sometimes threatened with imme diate death ; but, like Paul and Silas, he cheered himself in his prison with Christian songs. It was during this period that he wrote the hymn referred to at the beginning of this sketch. His faithful wife soon after fell a sacrifice to her fatigue and anxiety. She died 24th October, 182G, aged thirty-seven.

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