A Wish for a Thousand Lives to Give

An excerpt from a letter by Lottie Moon, missionary to China from 1873 to 1912, to Henry Allen Tupper, the Corresponding Secretary of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. Miss Moon constantly appealed for more workers to be sent to China, especially for women who could assist in work to the Chinese women. One of her oft repeated messages back home, found also in this letter was, “If only our people would wake up!” Here she pleads for more workers to be sent. The letter was written August 27, 1888.

I should be most heartily glad of ten women for the P’ingtu region. Nobody who has not seen can imagine the wide field opened there for woman’s work. I would I had a thousand lives that I might give them to the women of China! As it is, I can only beg that other women & many of them be sent. Above all, we need mature women. The Chinese have a high respect for such, but, for many reasons, I think young women had best not be sent. It would not be proper, in Chinese eyes, for young women to go out in the independent way necessary in doing rough country work in the interior. Besides, it seems to me too hard on the young ladies themselves. Of course, there may be exceptional cases.

Send the Light: Lottie Moon’s Letters and Other Writings, edited by Keith Harper, Mercer University Press, 2002, pp. 131-32.

Obedience to Christ and Compassion for the Perishing

A selection from a letter by Sarah Boardman to her parents about the death of her husband, George Boardman. The Boardman’s went to Burma to serve with Adoniram Judson in the mission work that he had begun. George Boardman died at age 30. Mrs. Boardman told her parents that he refused to leave the primitive area where they were trying to reach the Karens with the gospel for a place that would be better for his health. In a letter written on March 7, 1831, she recounted the words of her husband, who said:

And even should my poor, unprofitable life be somewhat shortened by staying, ought I, on that account merely, to leave this interesting field? Should I not rather stay and assist in gathering in these dear scattered lambs of the fold? You know, Sarah, that coming on a foreign mission involves the probability of a shorter life, than staying in one’s native country. And yet obedience to our Lord, and compassion for the perishing heathen, induced us to make this sacrifice. And have we ever repented that we came? No; I trust we can both say that we bless God for bringing us to Burmah, for directing our footsteps to Tavoy, and even for leading us hither.

The Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons, by Arabella Stuart, first published in 1851, reprinted by Particular Baptist Press, 1999, pp. 175-76.