16 October: Boreham on Henry Martyn

An Idyll of the Orient
October 16 marks the anniversary of one of the strangest and most solitary deaths in history. On a beautiful Summer afternoon, in the middle of last century, George Eliot and Lord Macaulay met by chance in Piccadilly. Discussing every subject under the sun, and agreeing on none of them, George Eliot, with womanly tact, struck a singularly felicitous note before they parted. "Ah, well," she laughed, "we seem to differ as to most things; but we are at one in our mutual admiration of Henry Martyn. Your epitaph for his tomb is, if you will allow me to say so, one of the finest things that even you have ever done, whilst I am trying to frame a worthy tribute to him in a work that Blackwood's will be publishing in the Autumn." Macaulay acknowledged the comment, wished the lady every success with her own work, and, with a cordial handshake, they parted.

Henry Martyn made history on the grand scale and made it in an extraordinary brief span of time. Born at Truro in Cornwall in 1781, he lived to be only 32, but, within the compass of that meteoric career, he established a record that has proved an inspiration to every subsequent generation. "His," says Sir James Stephen, of the most penetrating of all our critical historians, "his is the one heroic name which adorns the annals of the English Church from the spacious days of great Elizabeth to those in which we ourselves figure." And Dr. George Smith, his biographer, boasts that Martyn's life constitutes itself the priceless and perpetual heritage of all English-speaking peoples; whilst the native churches of India, Arabia, Persia, and Anatolia will treasure the thought of it through all time to come.

Classical Tributes In Poetry And Prose
Most people know the famous epitaph to which, in the conversation in Piccadilly, George Eliot referred. But few probably realise—perhaps George Eliot herself failed do so—that it was one of the very first poems that Macaulay ever penned. He was only 12 at the time; but Macaulay's mind was such a masterpiece of precocity that, at the age of 12, he had almost attained maturity.

Here is the epitaph:—

Here Martyn lies! In manhood's early bloom,
The Christian hero found a pagan tomb.
Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son,
Points to the glorious trophies that he won—
Eternal trophies, not with slaughter red,
Not stained with tears by hopeless captives shed;
But trophies of the Cross; for that dear Name,
Through every form of danger, death, and shame,
Onward he journeyed to a happier shore
Where danger, death, and shame are known no more.

In the novel which Dr. Marcus Dods described as the greatest religious romance of the 19th century, George Eliot makes the spiritual crisis in the experience of her storm-beaten and distracted heroine turn on the perusal of the "Life of Henry Martyn." It was the story of Henry Martyn that transformed Janet Dempster's abject despair into magnificent courage. Janet Dempster is all the more real because she is unreal. She is all the more a substance because she is only a shadow. She is all the more symbolic and typical because she appears, not in history, but in fiction. If we had found her in the realm of biography, we might have regarded her as an isolated and exceptional case. But, having come upon her in the realm of romance, we can only regard her, as George Eliot intended us to regard her, as a representative of all those thousands of people upon whom the noble record of Henry Martyn's brief career has acted like a stimulant and a tonic.

Lofty Ambition Of An Outstanding Genius
Dazzlingly brilliant, Henry Martyn became senior wrangler of Cambridge University at the age of 20. Profoundly impressed by a perusal of the Journal of David Brainerd, he determined, in an era in which missionary societies were practically unknown, to devote himself to evangelistic enterprise overseas. Hearing that the East India Company was thinking of sending a chaplain to India, he secured the appointment, sailed on July 5, 1805, and reached his destination nine months later. Realising that the permanence of his influence in the East must depend upon his ability to give the peoples the Scriptures in their own tongues, he devoted himself without stint to the strenuous task of translation. Producing the New Testament, first in Hindustani, and then in Persian, he set himself to the same task in Arabic. Close application to such exacting tasks, however, soon undermined his health, and he was forced to recognise that, unless he relaxed, or at least varied his employment, his days would be pitifully few.

He was advised to travel. Having seen his own particular work at Cawnpore crowned by the opening of a Christian Church, he decided to visit the rulers and potentates of other Oriental peoples, to seek their favour and co-operation and to present to each a copy of the Scriptures in his own language. Having obtained a horse, and engaged one or two companions on whose discretion and fidelity he thought he could rely, he audaciously set out on his stupendous ride through Afghanistan, Persia, Asia Minor to Constantinople. The difficulties proved to be immensely greater than he had for a moment imagined. The courts of the eastern princes were less hospitable, and the peoples less friendly than he had hoped, whilst the climates were more cruel and the roads more formidable. His Arabic helper, Nathaniel Sabat, turned out to be particularly tactless and trying, straining his master's patience to the breaking-point. Again and again Mr. Martyn was prostrated by fever; but his guide, hoping to reach a congenial environment and to secure medical attention, hustled him on. The end is shrouded in mystery. We only know that he died on that October 16, 1812, but how death came to him has never been discovered. It matters little. He did the work that he wanted to do; and, to attain that end, he would have deemed a thousand deaths worthwhile.

F W Boreham

Image: Henry Martyn