“No. I still have some oatmeal in a pot over the fire. That should stick to your ribs for a while,” replied the innkeeper, picking up a wooden bowl from the table and walking over to the fire. “So, how did you sleep? I hope the noise didn’t disturb you too much.”
“No,” lied Adoniram. “And how is the man in the next room?”
“Dead,” replied the innkeeper, ladling out a big helping of oatmeal. “He died at about four this morning.”
The word dead echoed around Adoniram’s head. Being the son of a pastor, Adoniram was used to hearing about deaths and funerals. But there was something about this death that unnerved him. “I’m sorry to hear he died,” he said. “Who was he, anyway?”
The innkeeper plopped down the bowl of oatmeal in front of Adoniram. “A smart young man by all accounts. They said he had been to college in Providence. Brown University, I think it was.”
Adoniram felt the goosebumps rising on the back of his neck. “Do you know his name?” he asked soberly.
“Of course,” replied the innkeeper. “I’ve had to send for his family. His name was Eames, Jacob Eames.”
Adoniram let out a loud gasp. Jacob Eames was dead! It was almost too unbelievable to grasp. His closest friend from college had died not more than ten feet away from him, and he had not known. Every groan, every rasped breath he had heard in the night was Jacob’s. The questions he had asked himself in the night all had answers now. Jacob Eames did not believe in life after death. He did not believe his soul would live on. He was gone forever, and well before he had accomplished the things he’d set out so determinedly to accomplish.
“Are you all right?” asked the innkeeper. “Surely it wasn’t someone you knew?”
Adoniram nodded, unable to speak. In fact, he said very little for the next several hours. He just sat by the fire staring into the flames, the bowl of oatmeal now stone cold on the table in front of him. People came and went. Jacob Eames’s body was carried out in a pine coffin, but Adoniram did not move. It was well into the afternoon before he had recovered enough from the shock of Jacob’s death to saddle up his horse and ride on.
Adoniram had ridden about an hour westward when he could stand it no more. Repeated over and over in the clop of his horse’s hooves Adoniram could hear the words “He’s dead. He’s lost.” When he came to a fork in the road, instead of turning right, Adoniram turned his horse completely around and headed back the way he had come. He was going home to Plymouth to get some answers.
When he finally arrived home on September 22, 1808, his parents were surprised to see him. His mother assumed he had come home to reopen the academy, and she bustled around making plans for him. However, Adoniram made it clear to her he did not want to become a schoolteacher again. He did not want to settle back into the life he had left. Thoughts of Jacob Eames’s death haunted him, and he needed to decide whether or not he could accept the faith his father had taught him. In his heart, Adoniram felt pulled towards Christianity, which provided so many answers to the questions about having peace and purpose in life. But he had a well-trained mind that would not yield to things that didn’t seem logical. There were just too many unanswered questions for him to throw his lot in with his parents’ religion.
During his first week at home, Adoniram explained what he was feeling to his parents, but they had no idea how to help him. During his second week at home, two important visitors came to stay with the Judsons. Dr. Stuart and Dr. Griffin were well-respected pastors who had graduated from Yale University. They had come to discuss the final plans for opening a theological seminary in Andover, Massachusetts, where they had both been invited to teach. Mr. Judson had long been interested in the project and supported it in any way he could.
Adoniram plied the two men with questions, but every answer they gave led to another question, and before they could answer all the questions it was time for the guests to leave. However, they had sensed Adoniram’s sincerity and made him a strange offer. They invited him to enroll in the new Andover Theological Seminary, not as a regular student going on to become a pastor, but as a non-Christian who wanted to study more about Christianity. Adoniram thanked them for the offer and then turned it down. Instead he went to Boston, where he got a job as an assistant teacher. He was happy enough doing this, except for one thing: the memory of Jacob Eames’s death. The questions about it would not go away, and Adoniram knew he would not be happy until he found the answers he sought. As he thought about it, there was only one place where he would find those answers: the new theological seminary in Andover.
On October 12, 1808, Adoniram Judson entered the seminary at Andover. It was not at all like he’d expected. To begin with, Andover was the most remote town he’d ever lived in. Being there was like going back a hundred years. The mail was delivered only three times a week, and there were no newspapers delivered to the town at all. The religion of the pilgrims was still practiced and enforced by law. It was illegal to travel anywhere but church from sundown on Saturday until sundown on Sunday, and all work, including cooking and hobbies, was forbidden during this time. Also, Christian sermons and the Bible were the only things allowed to be read on Sundays. Anyone caught disobeying these laws was thrown into prison.
Life inside the seminary was also like going back in time. The students chopped their own firewood to heat their rooms, drew their own water from the well, and took turns helping the cook, Mrs. Silence Smith. Adoniram smiled at her name, wondering whether she had been a very quiet baby or whether her parents had given her the name in hope she would not grow up to be as loud as her brothers and sisters. The seminary had its own cows, which the students took turns milking. It had hay fields and gardens where the students also did chores. All this work meant that the cost for renting a room was low. Adoniram paid only four dollars a year for his dormitory room. On top of this, the professors gave their teaching time free of charge.
With little else to distract him, Adoniram threw himself into study, hoping to find answers to his questions. He studied the Bible in its original languages, Hebrew and Greek, and spent many hours with Dr. Pearson, who had given up his position as professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages at Harvard University to help start the Andover seminary. Adoniram liked Dr. Pearson a lot, and the two men spent many hours in discussion together.
Finally, on December 2, 1808, Adoniram quietly came to the conclusion that the Bible was correct and that he should commit his life and future to God. He did this alone, standing under a bare apple tree at the far end of the seminary property. With a cold wind whipping at his face, he prayed a simple prayer and dedicated himself to God. No one was around to witness his commitment, but he didn’t care. For the first time in his life that he could recall, he felt free. It was not his father’s faith in God he was relying on now, it was his own. Later, as he walked back to his dormitory room, Adoniram wondered what this dedication of his life to God would mean. He had no idea what direction his future would take.
Six months later, in June 1809, Adoniram went home to Plymouth and officially joined his father’s Congregational church. It was a day of great joy for him and the whole Judson family, who were all together in one place with one common faith. Adoniram enjoyed the moment, but he had the strangest feeling he would not always be surrounded by people who loved and appreciated him. He couldn’t say why he felt that way; he just did.
When Adoniram returned to Andover for his second year, a new professor had joined the staff. The professor was Dr. Griffin, the same man who had visited the Judson home and encouraged Adoniram to sign up for Andover in the first place. Adoniram was glad to see him again.
Adoniram worked hard in his classes, and since he was a fast worker, he often found himself with extra time on his hands. He liked to pass this time in the small but growing seminary library, reading all the new books and pamphlets donated by pastors in the area.
One day as he rifled through a stack of books, Adoniram came across a pamphlet he had not seen before. It was entitled The Star of the East, and it was written by a Dr. Buchanan who had been chaplain to the British East India Company for many years. Adoniram signed the pamphlet out and took it to his room to read. The type was small, and he had to sit by the window to get enough light to read by. As he read, his heart began to race. Dr. Buchanan told how the people of India were steeped in superstition and practiced idolatrous religions, and how the time was right to share the gospel with them. Something stirred deep inside Adoniram. He knew he was staring at his destiny.
Over the next several weeks, Adoniram could hardly pay attention to his studies. His head was filled with the stories he had been reading. There was the story of William Carey, the English shoemaker who had gone as the first Baptist missionary to India, where he had started a thriving Bible translation, printing, and distribution network. And there was the story of Robert Morrison, who had managed to translate the Bible into Chinese right under the noses of the Chinese authorities, who would have killed him had they any idea what he was up to.
But most inspiring of all was the book An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava, written by Michael Symes, a British army officer whom the governor general of India had sent to Burma in 1795. While the book had lots of dull facts about the various successes and failures of Symes’s diplomatic efforts, shining through its pages was a glimpse into a strange and distant land—a land where the king’s word was law and a man could have his hand cut off if he failed to lower his eyes when the royal shadow passed his way. It was a land where the people worshiped Buddha and believed that they each had many lives and that what they did in this life determined the form in which they would return. If they were bad, they might come back in the next life as a rat or an ant; if they were good, as a prince or princess.
Adoniram read all he could about Burma and the Buddhist religion. The more he read, the more convinced he became that God was calling him to be a missionary to these people. He would be the first missionary ever to leave the shores of America for a foreign land. He didn’t know how it would happen, and he didn’t know when, but he did know it would happen.
Chapter 5
A Most Wonderful Opportunity
It was a cold December day in 1809 when Adoniram Judson threw his carpetbag up to the driver and climbed aboard the stagecoach bound for Plymouth. He was looking forward to spending Christmas with his family. After the Christmas break he would return to Andover seminary to finish his final year of study.
As he sat on the wooden bench seat in the stagecoach, staring out the window at the snowy countryside, Adoniram had one question on his mind: How would he tell his parents and his sister, Abigail, that he planned to be America’s first foreign missionary? So far he had told no one, not even his professors at Andover, about his plans. But he felt sure that once his family got used to the idea they would be proud of his decision to go to Burma. He imagined his mother quizzing him on how he had come to the decision to go and Abigail asking if he planned to marry first and take a wife with him. And of course his father would want to discuss the theology of missions with him. By the time the stagecoach pulled to a halt in Plymouth, Adoniram had almost convinced himself that his family would be delighted that he had set his heart on becoming a missionary.
For the first three days at home, Adoniram did not mention his secret, and for one simple reason. He began to get the feeling that his family had a secret of their own and were waiting to tell him. Sometimes he would catch his sister and mother whispering together, and when he came close, they would smile at each other and go about their chores. Or his father would make some comment about what a “bright and prosperous future” Adoniram had in front of him.
