God’s Way is Best

Adoniram Judson clearly was appointed by the Holy Ghost to the ministry among the heathen. He reached Calcutta in the summer of 1812 full of ardor for preaching the Gospel, only to receive peremptory orders from the British Government to leave the country at once and return to America. With sad hearts the little missionary company retreated to the Isle of France, wondering why what had seemed a wide and effectual door opened to them should now be violently shut. But with unconquerable determination they returned again to India, reaching Madras in the following June.

Once more their purpose was thwarted, and once more they were ordered from the country; and being compelled to quit the land, with heavy hearts they fled to Rangoon, to a place which Judson had declared that he regarded with the utmost aversion as a missionary field. There he was permitted to stay, only to find bonds and imprisonment awaiting him.

But all is clear now. Judson was forbidden by the Spirit to enter India because God would have him in Burma.

Park Street Church in Boston, whose call the Spirit constrained Judson to decline, is still a large body, numbering perhaps a thousand members; but the Church in Burma which that same Spirit led Judson to found numbered thirty thousand communicants.