260 – Sept. 17 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

Not the Length but Depth that Counts

 

1835 – Henrietta Hall Shuck, raised in a godly home, sailed with her husband Lewis for missionary service in China, along with twenty-two other missionaries. She was but a teen bride, the daughter of Col. Addison Hall of Merry Point, Virginia. Henrietta was saved in a Baptist camp meeting and baptized at thirteen years of age. At sixteen she moved to Richmond Virginia where she met Lewis Shuck who was studying theology and later married. After leaving Boston their ship stopped at Calcutta, India and then on to Amherst in Burma where the Shuck’s were able to visit the grave of Ann Judson whose life had provided great inspiration for Henrietta. Finally they reached Singapore where they would study the Malay language, and then it was on to Canton, China, and to Hong Kong to minister after it was ceded to the British in 1841. Within four months, two chapels had been built and dedicated and before long there was a third. By Sept. of 1844 there were thirty-two boarding students. On Nov. 26, Henrietta became very ill. The doctors could not save her, and in the early hours of the following morning, she fell asleep in Jesus. Only ten years after she had begun her work for her Lord whom she loved, her work on earth was over. It’s not the length but the depth that really counts.
[Majorie Dawes, Great Baptist Women (London: Carey Kingsgate Press Limited, 1955), p, 75. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 509-11.]
Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

 

256 – Sept. 13 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

The Faith of the Lepers

 

1876 – Dr. James M. Haswell died after forty-one years of missionary service in Burma, with his dear wife Jane Mason, who he had married on August 23, 1835, and sailed for their chosen field one month later. He was more fruit from the Hamilton Theological Institute in Bennington, Vermont. Dr.Haswell mastered the Burmese language and then turned to the Pegulan dialect to reach the 80,000 of that tribe. He only took two furloughs, one in 1849 and another in 1867 and those were used to spur interest in missions. He was most diligent that his son James should follow him which he did but tragically died of cholera but a year after his father in 1877. But the Haswell vision lived on through their daughter Susan who founded the Maulmein Leper Colony in which she invested sixty years of her life. The government gave the land and the lepers themselves built the thatched roof buildings with, in some cases, stumps for hands and feet. It stood for years as a memorial to her and the faith of the lepers. Untold thousands were saved. [A.H. Burlingham, The Story of Baptist Missions in Foreign Lands (St. Louis: C.R. Barns Publishing Co., 1892), p. 944. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 501-02.]
Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon