Martyn

“ New names, new saints, new heroes ever rise and dazzle the eyes of common men. So it should be, for God lives, and through Him men live and manifest His unexhausted power. But Martyn is a perennial. He springs up fresh to every generation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Somehow I had never thought of Martyn. He had simply seemed to me a boy, and I had decided that Anne would be the crown of Clarence’s labours. I answered ‘Nonsense; they are both children together!’
‘The nonsense was elsewhere,’ he said. ‘They always were devoted to each other. I saw how it was the moment he came into the room.’
‘Don’t give up,’ I said; ‘it is only the old habit. When she knows all, she must prefer—’
‘Hush!’ he said. ‘An old scarecrow and that beautiful young creature!’ and he laughed. ”

“ Martyn has always been her favorite because he is a boy. Throughout his babyhood she invariably spoke of him as “little-Martyn-God-bless-his-dear-chubby-little-face,” and she unconsciously resents it, now that little Martyn has grown up and has ceased to be chubby—which he did long before she ceased to call him so. As for the formula of benediction, I think Claire feels that God, in all probability, experiences exactly the same difficulty as herself in viewing Sallie and Martyn as real people at all. ”

“ Henry Martyn has now been in heaven twenty-six years, having died in his thirty-second year. Dearest Corrie was born like myself in 1778, and died in 1837, aged fifty-nine, and after having been thirty-one years in India. He has been at home now a year and five months. When, where, how, I may be called hence I know not. The Lord make me a follower of them who through faith and patience have inherited the promises. In H. Martyn’s Journals the spirit of prayer, the time he devoted to the duty, and his fervour in it, are the first things which strike me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These discouragements are mentioned, not to exalt the praises of Martyn; for had he been a perfect man, they would have appeared too insignificant to affect him at all, but to show that God gives strength to those who serve Him, and depend upon Him, proportionate to their trials and necessities; that his grace can enable a man to do actions of benevolence, which no other influence could; and that the sacrifices which Martyn made, are a proof of the reality of religion, as well as of the sincerity of his own profession. ”

“ Martyn had been so diligent in order to gain this supposed reward, that his fellow-students called him ‘the man who had not lost an hour;’ he found too late that he had for ever lost many hours of opportunity of acquiring the knowledge of divine truth, and of his own duty, and many hours of happiness, such as all the honours, and even all the pleasures [Pg 16] of learning, can never confer, or compensate a man for its loss. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Martyn, who, when he was asked by the prince, what were the laws of Christianity, (meaning how often it required its believers to pray, wash, &c.,) said, that it had two commandments—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy strength; and thy neighbour, as thyself.” In these debates he had to endure great contempt from his opponents, which is one of the severest trials a man of honourable feeling, and a minister of the gospel, can be called to suffer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And still each true minister will feel, as Martyn felt, as St. Paul himself felt, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ The riper he is in his ministry, the more delicate his touch of human souls, [572] alike in their strivings and in their inertness; the closer his walk with God and his wonder at the vastness and the silent secrecy of God’s ways, the more he will say in his heart what Martyn said but a few days after his feet had ceased to tread our Cambridge streets. ‘Alas! do I think that a schoolboy or a raw academic should be likely to lead the hearts of men! ”

“ 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 never would have attained style, but he could, I think, have learned to make his characters express themselves in a way nearer to true dramatic speech than the lifeless dialogue of his that only just manages to give you their thought, with none of their mood of the moment or of their personality.
In every one of Mr. Martyn's plays the plot is interesting, save in "The Place Hunters"; in every other play it is significant; and in all it is come largely of his individual experience of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Martyn, the saint from Calcutta, called here. He is a man of acuteness and learning; his meekness is excessive, and gives a disagreeable impression of effort to conceal the passions of human nature.
Both had the Celtic fire, but Sir James Mackintosh had not lived with Sabat. Another month passed, and the two were learning to appreciate each other.
Padre Martyn, the saint, dined here in the evening; it was a very considerably more pleasant evening than usual; he is a mild and ingenious man. We had two or three hours’ good discussion on grammar and metaphysics. ”

“ Born in Truro on February 18, 1781, Henry Martyn came from a land the oldest and most isolated in Great Britain; a Celtic people but recently transformed from the rudest to the most courteous and upright; a family created and partly enriched by the great mining industry; and a church which had been the first, in these far-western islands, to receive the teaching of the Apostles of Jesus Christ.
The tin found in the lodes and streams of the Devonian Slates of West Cornwall was the only large source of supply to the world down to Henry Martyn’s time. ”

“ When Mr. Martyn had finished his translation of the New Testament into Hindoostanee, the book was given Abdool to bind. This he considered as a fine opportunity; nor did he let it slip. On reading the word of God, he discovered his state, and perceived therein a true description of his own heart. He soon decided in favour of the Christian religion; but still concealed what was passing within him, till Mr. Martyn being about to leave Cawnpore on account of his health, Abdool could no longer refrain from asking his advice with respect to his future conduct ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Marshman, in frequent letters, as his ‘dear brother,’ anticipating the catholic tenderness of Bishop Heber. [22] Martyn attended those family lectures of Ward on the Hindus which resulted in his great book on the subject. In the Pagoda, ‘Carey, Marshman, and Ward joined in the same chorus of praise with Brown, Martyn, and Corrie.’ Martyn himself gives us these exquisite unconscious pictures of Christian life in Serampore, in which all true missionaries face to face with the common enemy have followed the giants of those days. ”

“ Parson, began that good work in the 53rd which Martyn and Corrie afterwards carried on. When it continued the voyage up the Ganges, after a season, by Dinapore to Cawnpore, Mr. Parson gave the Sherwoods a letter of introduction to Martyn, then about to leave Dinapore. To this fact we owe the fullest and the brightest glimpses that we get of Henry Martyn, from the outside, all through his career. We are enabled to supplement the abasing self-revelation of his nature before God, as recorded in his Journal, by the picture of his daily life, drawn by a woman of keen sympathy and some shrewdness. ”

“ Wherever the believer lives or dies, Christ is with him. God is his Father, and he has nothing to fear. It seems to us distressing, that Martyn should die so far away from his home, and his friends, in a nation of idolaters; but it is probable these things did not affect him, and that the dying missionary at Tocat was happier than he would have been in health and peace, among his friends in England. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MARTIN or MARTYN, HENRY (d. 1721) , essayist, was the eldest son of Edward Martyn of Upham, in the parish of Aldbourn, Wiltshire, and was brother of Edward Martyn, Gresham professor. He was a lawyer by profession, but in consequence of bad health was unable to attend the courts. He wrote a few papers in the 'Spectator.' No. 180 is undoubtedly his, and possibly Nos. 200 and 232. In No. 555 Steele acknowledges his indebtedness to him. He says that Martyn's name could hardly be mentioned in a list in which it would not deserve precedence ”