Collins, Judson Dwight

Collins, Judson Dwight superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal missions in China, was born in Wayne County, N. Y., Feb. 12, 1822. He removed with his parents to Michigan in 1831, was converted in 1838, graduated in Michigan University 1845, entered the itinerant ministry in the Michigan Conference, and was appointed teacher in the Wesleyan Seminary at Albion in the same year. He was sent as missionary to China and superintendent in 1847, returned with impaired health in 1851, and died May 13, 1852, in Washtenaw County, Michigan. His mind was clear and vigorous, more solid than brilliant, and more logical than eloquent. "Years before the Church established the China mission, and while prosecuting his collegiate studies, he pursued a course of reading on China, preparatory to a whole life of missionary labor among its benighted millions, and his mind had no rest until it was actually surrounded by their darkness and misery. No temporary impulse led him thither, no transient fervent feelings urged him to a life of toil in that distant land; but a permanent conviction of duty possessed his mind, one great idea of supreme service to Christ controlled his whole existence, and carried all his thoughts, all his affections, all his impulses, to that extensive territory of heathenism, and his martyr-like attachments to his work were only loosened by death." — Minutes of Conferences, 1852, p. 113; Sprague, Annals, 7:831.