328 OUK HYMNS :
remained till his death, October 9, 1829, at the age of seventy- five. He. was an eminently devoted, conscientious, and useful minister of the gospel. His work, " Reasons for Secession," was published posthumously, 1830, with a short memoir by his nieces.
ADONIRAM JUDSON, D.D.
17881850. " Our Father, God, who art in heaven." No. 558.
THIS hymn was written at the most critical time in the history of one of the most useful of American missionaries, Dr. Judsou, whose course excited so deep an interest that his memoir is said to have sold in America twenty-five thousand copies in sixty days. The hymn is signed " Prison, Ava, March, 1825." It was written during the author s twenty-one months imprison ment at Ava, at a time when his sufferings were very severe and his life was in peril from day to day. It is found at page 308 in Vol. I. of " A Memoir of the Life and Labours of Dr. A. Judson, by Francis Wayland, D.D., President of Brown Uni versity, in two vols., 1853." After some beautiful "Lines Addressed to an Infant Daughter, twenty days old, in the con demned prison at Ava," a child born January 26th, 1825, we read with regard to this hymn : " The following versification of the Lord s Prayer was composed a few weeks later. It illustrates the nature of the subjects which occupied the thoughts of the missionary during his long-protracted agony. It is said by the author to be comprised in fewer words than the original Greek, and in two more only than the common translation."
Adoniram Judson was born August 9th, 1788, at Maldon, Massachusetts. His father, of the same name, was a minister, and lived till 1826. In the year 1804, at the age of sixteen, young Adoniram entered Providence College, now called Brown Univer sity. He graduated B.A. in 1807, and commenced a private school at Plymouth, He also published a work on "English
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