Page:Our Hymns.djvu/350

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830 OUR HYMNS :

Coming out of the furnace of affliction, Dr. Judson pursued his mission work with extraordinary devotion and success, and while labouring for others, carefully cultivated his own spiritual nature, and became a " vessel of gold " meet for the Master s use. In the memoir the man pleases us as much as his mission. On the 10th April, 1834, he married at Tavoy his second wife, Mrs. Sarah H., the widow of his companion in labour, the Rev. George D. Boardman. In 1845 he returned to America, and on the passage he suffered the loss of his second wife, who had taken a deep interest in the mission work, and had written Burmese hymns. It has been remarked that each of the three wives of Dr. Judson was an authoress. In the following year he mar ried his third wife, Miss Emily Chubbuck, at Hamilton, New York. And soon after he again set out for the mission field in Burmah ; but as his years increased, his absorbing duties began to tell upon his strength, and at length in 1850 he approached his end. At his own request he went on a voyage in a French barque, the " Aristide Marie," bound for the Isle of Bourbon, but the sea air came too late, and he sank peacefully in death on the 12th of April, 1850, and was committed to the deep. As death approached he had enjoyed the happy fruit of a life of habitual and elevated Christian godliness.

Dr. Judson was a scholar and an author as well as a mission ary. In 1823 he received the degree of D D. from Brown Uni versity, where he had once declined a tutorship. He wrote a work on " Christian Baptism," and two hymns on the same subject. He translated the Bible into Burmese in 1835 (three volumes), and he produced Burmese tracts and other works ; and after his death, in 1852, a Burmese and English Dictionary was compiled from his papers.

THOMAS RAFFLES, D.D., LL.D.

1788 18C3. THIS eminent Congregational minister was born in London, on

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