Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons | Page 5

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:
[Footnote 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