Henry Martyn

“ Henry Martyn was one of the very few persons whom I have ever met who appeared never to be drawn away from one leading and prevailing object of interest, and that object was the promotion of religion. He did not appear like one who felt the necessity of contending with the world, and denying himself its delights, but rather as one who was unconscious of the existence of any attractions in the world, or of any delights which were worthy of his notice. ”

“ This prayer was answered, and afterwards this very friend became his beloved associate in missionary work in India.
In very early youth Mr. Martyn became fondly attached to a young lady named Lydia Grenfell. She considered herself his superior in social position. The memoirs all speak of her as estimable, and we infer from the little that is said that she somewhat indifferently accepted Henry Martyn's homage, but she did not wholeheartedly and generously respond. ”

“ The manner of his death is not known, whether it resulted from the sickness described, or from the plague, then raging. Whether Hassan was cruel and driving to the last, whether all his heartless Turkish attendants deserted him or not in his hour of final agony, we cannot tell. No relative or friend was there, no tender voice of sympathy, no woman's soothing hand, no alleviations from medicine. Even the commonest decencies and necessities of civilized life were lacking. Earth gave nothing to Henry Martyn in his mortal need, but we are sure heavenly consolations were unstinted. ”

“ Henry Martyn is, first of all, a spiritual force. Personally he was that to all who came in contact with him from the hour in which he gave himself to Jesus Christ. To Cambridge student and peasant alike; to Charles Simeon, his master, as to Kirke White and Sargent, Corrie and Thomason, his admiring friends; to women like Lydia Grenfell, his senior in years and experience, as to children like his cousin’s at Plymouth, and David Brown’s at Aldeen ”

“ Martyn was much dejected, in contemplating the vast multitude of idolaters amongst whom he was now placed.
“Every thing presented the appearance of wretchedness. I thought of my future labours among them with some despondency; yet I am willing, I trust, through grace, to pass my days among them, if by any means these poor people may be brought to God. The sight of men, women, and children, all idolaters, makes me shudder, as if in the dominions of the prince of darkness. I fancy the frown of God is visible;—there is something peculiarly awful in the stillness that prevails. ”

“ Martyn had been labouring to effect the purpose which he then saw completed; namely, the opening of a place of worship. He was permitted to see it, to address the congregation once, and then he was summoned to depart. How often, how very often, are human beings called away, perhaps from this world, at the moment they have been enabled to bring to bear some favourite object. [310] Blessed are those whose object has been such a one as that of Henry Martyn. ”

“ When we think of the bigotry and intolerance of these people and of Mr. Martyn's unflinching courage single-handed and alone, declaring the truth and preaching Christ, exposed to the greatest personal danger, contempt and insult, but unabashed, he stands before the world during his Shiraz residence as one of the bravest and grandest heroes that has ever lived. Such a spectacle is thrilling and sublime. God was with him to protect him and to inspire his magnificent confessions. A figure-head in history! A sight for angels and for men! ”

“ But to turn to the life itself. Henry Martyn, like Martin Luther, sprang from a family of mine captains, and was born at Truro, on Feb. 18th, 1781—the third child of a family of four. His father, who lived [224] at first near Gwennap Church-Town, had been an Accountant at Wheal Virgin; and being, like many others of his calling, an ingenious and self-reliant man, taught himself arithmetic and some mathematics; his abilities attracted the attention of Mr. Daniell, one of the Truro merchants, and ultimately John Martyn became his chief clerk. ”

“ And Jesus was there! And Henry Martyn was satisfied, and is forever satisfied! "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." And the most priceless legacy of the blood-bought and commissioned church is the memory of a life, so gifted, so unselfish, so consecrated. ”

“ The great desire of Martyn’s heart was to excel at college, and to be foremost in his class, and this ambition occupied his mind so entirely, that he lived without God, and as if the world had been created for his honor, instead of the Maker’s. ”

“ It was through his father, as well as younger sister, that the higher influences were rained on Henry Martyn. In the wayward and often wilful years before the boy yielded to the power of Christ’s resurrection, the father’s gentleness kept him in the right way, from which any violent opposition would have driven one of proud spirit. A skilled accountant and practical self-trained mathematician, the father encouraged in the boy the study of science, and early introduced him to the great work of Newton. ”

“ All controversy, from P.H. Xavier’s time to Martyn’s, Wilson’s, and Pfander’s, shows that the key of the position is not the doctrine of the Trinity, as the Shi’ah Moojtahids of Shiraz and Lucknow and the Soonnis everywhere make it, but the genuineness and integrity of the Scriptures, by which the truth of the whole Christian faith will follow, the Trinity included. The Bible, in Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic, with its self-evidencing power, is the weapon which Henry Martyn was busied in forging. ”

“ When time is no object, and opportunities are sought for reading, shooting, and intercourse with the natives, the voyage is delightful in the cool season. Henry Martyn rejoiced in six weeks of this solitary life—alone yet not alone, and ever about his Father’s business. His studies were divided between Hindustani and Sanskrit; he was much occupied in prayer and in the reading of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. Morning and evening he spent himself among the people on the banks, and at the ghauts and bazaars of the mighty river, preaching Christ and spreading abroad the New Testament. ”

“ Martyn spent the vacation of the next summer at college, and had the opportunity of being much alone; and his attention not being absorbed by his studies as formerly, he was able to give a more serious and deep attention to the condition of his soul. He devoted much time to meditation upon his past life, the wandering of his affection from God, and the necessity of some great change in his heart, to bring him to make that willing devotion of himself to his service, which he saw was reasonably required of him, and which he felt ought to be his highest happiness. ”

“ With an acute and cultivated intellect, which enabled him to bear away the highest University honors, Henry Martyn combined a fervor of devotion, an unworldly forgetfulness of self, and a passion for the spiritual welfare of his fellow-men, which in another age would not have failed to win him the canonization of a saint. The transparent confessions of such a man, describing the struggles and triumphs of the interior life, must be welcomed by every religious reader. ”

“ There Meer Kasim murdered sixty Englishmen in 1763; and so little did a century’s civilisation affect the place, which Christian missionaries, except Martyn, neglected till recently, that in 1857 it was a centre of the Mutiny, and in 1872 it was the nucleus of Wahabi rebellion. The second city in Bengal next to Calcutta, and the fifth city in all India in inhabitants, Patna with Bankipore and Dinapore commanded an accessible native population of half a million. Such was Henry Martyn’s first ‘parish’ in the East. For the mass of these he opened schools and translated the Word of God ”

“ Corrie had to flee from it, or he would never have lived to be the first and model Bishop of Madras. But such labours, such incessant straining of the voice through throat and lungs, acting on his highly neurotic constitution, and the phthisical frame which he inherited from his mother, became possible to Henry Martyn only because he willed, he agonised, to live till he should give at least the New Testament to the peoples of Arabia and Persia, and to the Mohammedans of India, in their own tongues. ”

“ Not one of these brightly dressed people was, however, the strongest power there. A man in black clothes was the real centre of the group. Very slight in build, not tall, clean-shaven, with a high forehead and sensitive lips, young Henry Martyn seemed a stripling beside the flaming Arab. Yet Sabat, with all his sound and fury, was no match for the swift-witted, clear-brained young Englishman. Henry Martyn was a chaplain in the army of the East India Company, which then ruled in India. ”

“ From Basiliscus, Basil, and Chrysostom to Henry Martyn, the fourteen centuries tell of the corruption of the [536] Church of Christ in the East, and the rise upon its ruins of Mohammedanism, which covered the northern half of Africa, and Spain, and reached as far as Tours and Vienna in Europe. It is to the glory of Henry Martyn that he was the first missionary of the Reformed Church of the West to the Mohammedans, giving those of India and Central Asia the Gospel and the Psalms in two of their own vernaculars, and dying for them before he could complete his work at the Arabic Bible. ”

“ His sensitive nature and violent passionateness when roused, at once marked him out as the victim of the older boys. In a happy moment Dr. Cardew put ‘little Henry Martyn’ under the care of one of them, who became his protector, tutor, and friend, not only at school but at college, and had an influence on his spiritual as well as intellectual life next only to that of his father, sister, and Charles Simeon. ”

“ It is wanting in no element of moral heroism. Our souls confess its grandeur. The contemplation lifts us into a higher atmosphere than that of mammon, and self, and earth. We rejoice to see a crown so rare, so fair, so precious, laid at the feet of Jesus, the King. He is worthy. And we long to see the youth of our land and the church inspired by Henry Martyn's example, as he was inspired by David Brainerd's. And so we would have the apostolic succession continued till the millennium, of such as shall not count their lives dear for the testimony of the gospel. ”

“ He was ever restless because ever dissatisfied with himself, and his want of inward peace only increased the natural irritability of his temper. He indulged in bursts of passion on slight provocation, and sometimes on none at all, save that of an uneasy conscience. Like Clive about the same age, Henry Martyn on one occasion hurled a knife at his friend, Cotterill, who just escaped, leaving it quivering in the panel of the dining-hall. ”

“ Oh, what folly to be wise where ignorance is bliss!... The further I push my inquiries the more I am distressed. It must be now my prayer, not ‘Lord, let me obtain the knowledge which I think would be so useful,’ but ‘Oh, teach me just as much as Thou seest good for me.’ Compared with metaphysics, physics and mathematics appear with a kind and friendly aspect, because they seem to be within the limits in which man can move without danger, but on the other I find myself adrift. Synthesis is the work of God alone.
Henry Martyn’s first practical work was in Hindustani. ”

“ The father of Henry Martyn was a workman in the tin mines of Cornwall, in England. As the miners worked very deep in the earth, shut out from the light of the sun, and breathing an unwholesome air, it was their custom to labour four hours, and then to spend the same length of time in resting. ”

“ During these hours of rest, John Martyn devoted himself to improving his education, which had been very slight; and by his industrious application, he soon became so well acquainted with arithmetic, that he was at length engaged, as clerk, by a merchant in the town of Truro, in the county of Cornwall. The conduct of this man is an example to all persons whose occupations afford them any leisure. There is scarcely any one who is so constantly occupied, as not to have some time in the week, for the improvement of his mind. ”

“ And he doubtless found Him still nearer in his dying hour, when flesh and strength failed him; for the Saviour adapts his consolations to the circumstances [Pg 193] of his people, and in proportion to their necessities, he imparts more of the gifts of his Holy Spirit, and they are enabled to say, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”
When Mr. Martyn left England for India, it was his expectation and desire to be employed principally in preaching to the natives. ”

“ What must the Mohammedans think of us? Well may they call us “dogs,” when even in Divine worship we choose to kennel ourselves in such places.’ The General delayed to forward to Government the proposal for a church.
Henry Martyn’s missionary work among the natives became greatly extended at Cawnpore, as his scrupulous conscience and delicate scholarship allowed him to use in public the colloquial Hindustani, and in conversation the more classical Persian. To Corrie he wrote, five months after his arrival there:
What will friends at home think of Martyn and Corrie? ”