“You want to hear of some poor benighted Burman brought to taste that the Lord is gracious; but O, not more than I want to speak of it. I hope, I do hope, my dear sir, that we shall both one day be gratified.” On April 4, 1819, even before the _zayat_ was completed, the first public service was held. Mr. Judson was thirty-one years old, and had been in Rangoon nearly six years before he ventured to preach to a Burman audience in their own tongue. This marks an era in the history of the Burman mission; for it is a noteworthy fact that the institution of public worship was soon followed by the first in a series of conversions. It was on June 27, 1819, about seven years and four months after Mr. Judson left America, and about six years after his arrival in Rangoon, that he was permitted to baptize the first Burman convert, Moung Nau. The secret of that sublime faith which enabled him to endure without a misgiving so many long, weary years of sowing without the joy of seeing a single blade of grain, may be learned from the following lines, which he wrote in pencil on the inner cover of a book which he was using in the compilation of the Burman dictionary: “In joy or sorrow, health or pain, Our course be onward still; We sow on Burmah’s barren plain, We reap on Zion’s hill.” The following extracts from his journal, with a letter of Mrs. Judson’s, afford a vivid description of the commencement of public worship among the Burmans, and the progress of that religious movement which culminated in the baptism of the first three converts, Moung Nau, Moung Byaa, and Moung Thahlah: “_April 4, 1819._ My close application to the Burman dictionary during the year 1817, and my subsequent loss of nearly a year in the unsuccessful attempt to visit Chittagong, have occasioned a long interruption in my journal. Since my return to Rangoon, the little I have to say I have communicated in letters. With this day, a new, and I hope important, era in the mission, I resume the journal.