On his thirteenth birthday, April 5, 1857, he joined the old Common Street Church in Lynn, Massachusetts where he prepared for college.

At age seventeen Mudge enrolled in Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut., and graduated in 1865 with a Bachelor of Arts.

After his return he was pastor of churches in Massachusetts until 1908, serving also as lecturer on missions at the Boston University School of Theology.

[3] Mudge aspired to missionary service in India after receiving a specific request from James Mills Thoburn, of Lucknow, India who exclaimed that they needed a "first class, scholarly young man of literary turn" to perform missionary work and act as editor of books and periodicals.

[1] Mudge was sent out by the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to become the editor of a weekly newspaper, The Lucknow Witness, a non-denominational but Christian publication.