IN MEMORIAM. REV. ADONIRAM JUDSON. BORN AUG. 9, 1788. DIED APRIL 12, 1850. MALDEN, HIS BIRTHPLACE. THE OCEAN, HIS SEPULCHRE. CONVERTED BURMANS, AND THE BURMAN BIBLE, HIS MONUMENT. HIS RECORD IS ON HIGH. An old wooden house embosomed among the trees is still pointed out as the birthplace of Adoniram Judson. His father, who also bore the quaint, scriptural name of Adoniram, was a Congregationalist minister, born in Woodbury, Connecticut, in June, 1752. He was married November 23, 1786, to Abigail Brown, who was born at Tiverton, Rhode Island, December 15, 1759. Soon after his marriage he settled in Malden, Massachusetts, and here his eldest son, Adoniram, was born. The boy was very precocious, learning to read when he was only three years old. While his father was absent on a journey, his mother conceived the idea of teaching her child to read, in order that she might give her husband an agreeable surprise on his return. She succeeded so well that upon his father’s return he saluted him by reading a whole chapter in the Bible. His affection for his father must have been deeply tinged with awe; for the elder Adoniram was a stern man, and very strict in his domestic administration. One who saw him in his later life, when he was over seventy years of age, says: “He was, as I remember him, a man of decidedly imposing appearance. His stature was rather above the average. His white hair, erect position, grave utterance, and somewhat taciturn manner, together with the position he naturally took in society, left one somewhat at a loss whether to class him with a patriarch of the Hebrews or a censor of the Romans. He was through life esteemed a man of inflexible integrity and uniform consistency of Christian character.” To the influence of such a father perhaps were due the stately courtesy that characterized Mr. Judson’s social intercourse throughout his whole life, and the dignity of style which pervaded even his most familiar letters. His father stimulated his ambition to the utmost. He seems early to have formed the hope that his boy was to become a great man, and he took no pains to hide this expectation; so that even in childhood Adoniram’s heart came to be full of worldly ambition, which in subsequent years had to be nailed to the cross. For if a man can sink the desire to be great in a passion for doing good, then his greatness really begins. “No man,” says Carlyle, “rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.”