Henry Martyn

HENRY MARTYN

Henry Martyn (1781 - 1812) was the most capable undergraduate at Cambridge University of his generation. To the surprise and consternation of many, Martyn, at 24 years of age, sailed to India to attempt to reach the peoples of that vast land for Christ.  He is considered by some to be the first modern missionary to the Muslims.

On the way to India, after leaving everyone and everything behind, Martyn wrote: 

I am born for God only. Christ is nearer to me than father or mother or sister–a nearer relative, a more intimate friend; and I rejoice to follow Him and to love Him.[1]

Preparation for Service

What would lead a cultured young man with so much promise to ‘bury’ his life in the Orient? I found it helpful to trace the influences that led him first to come to know Jesus, then to grow as a Christian, and finally to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave his girlfriend to obey God’s call.   Martyn’s spiritual journey challenged my own life; I share some details with you, often quoting his own words.

His Conversion

Raised in a devout Christian home, when Martyn left for university his sister made him promise that one day he would read the Bible for himself, and she prayed diligently for him. The excitement of university life pushed her words aside. However, the crushing death of his father forced him to think of eternity and whether he himself was ready to die. As a result he began reading the Bible, searching for answers.

Through reading most of the New Testament, his spirit came to discover not a doctrine, but a Person (p. 47) and he experienced conversion. Four years later he wrote,

The work is real. I can no more doubt it than I can my own existence. The whole current of my desires is altered, I am walking quite another way, though I am incessantly stumbling in that way (p. 48).

Charles Simeon

At Cambridge, Martyn was greatly influenced by Charles Simeon, the minister of Trinity Church. In an ambience of resistance and ridicule, Simeon’s powerful and passionate biblical preaching “drove the plowshare of conviction deep into [his] soul” and he became ever afterwards a father in God, a robust and fearless leader to the young man (p. 54). Simeon gathered students in his rooms for Bible study. He had six groups meeting regularly, each with about 20 members. He was a man “always vivid, often quaintly humorous… with touching gentlenesses” (p. 55) and was just what Martyn needed to launch him and guide him on his Christian walk.

As Simeon grew to know Martyn better, he felt constrained to speak to him repeatedly of “the transcendent excellence of the Christian ministry” (p. 63). At first, he resisted. His university honors placed him in a position to choose a path of money, position, and studious leisure. He wrote in his journal, “I could not consent to be poor for Christ’s sake,” not to mention the very humiliation served out to Simeon’s friends in clerical life (p. 64).   The battle was fierce, but the Lord’s call was insistent. He later wrote to his sister:

The soul that has truly experienced the love of God will not stay meanly inquiring how much he shall do, and thus limit his service; but will be earnestly seeking more and more to know the will of our heavenly Father that he may be enabled to do it (p. 66).

Scripture

Three times a day he set aside time to meditate on passages from the Bible and learned whole books by heart. Though he appreciated his fellow students he marveled at their lack of spiritual sensitivity.

It sometimes appeared astonishing that men of like passions with myself, of the same bodies, of the same minds, alike in every other respect, knew and saw nothing of that blessed and adorable Being, in whom my soul findeth all its happiness, but were living a sort of life which to me would be worse than annihilation (p. 69).

David Brainerd

While still a student, Martyn read the journal of David Brainerd, the American missionary to the Indians in New England, and found his hero. Brainard’s passion for the salvation of his indigenous friends touched Martyn deeply. He wrote in his journal: 

I thought of David Brainerd, and ardently desired his devotedness to God and holy breathings of soul…I long to be like him; let me forget the world and be swallowed up in a desire to glorify God (p. 75). 

Called to Missions

Challenged by his young hero, and against the inclinations of his own nature, Martyn decided to seek service in India as a missionary. Both in Cambridge and in his hometown, his decision was regarded as “fantastic and absurd.” One of his friends “thought it a most improper step for [him] to leave the university to preach to the ignorant heathen, which any person could do” (p. 76). Martyn recognized that following this path would be a “life of warfare and constant self-denial.” He wrote in his journal, “To climb the steep ascent, to run, to fight, to wrestle was the desire of my heart” (p. 77). 

The Lord gifted him with personal friendship with such spiritual giants as William Wilberforce[2] and John Newton[3] who encouraged his dedication and vision for ministry. The latter supposed that “Satan would not love me for what I was about to do” (p. 93).

Lydia

Perhaps the most difficult experience Martyn had to work through was his love for Lydia Grenfell. He daydreamed about a country manse together with Lydia, a quiet study, and children in the garden. But he soon saw this relationship coming in direct opposition to his devotedness to God and his call to missions. Though she had feelings for him, she would not consent to go to India with him. He wrote in his journal:

At night I continued an hour and a half in prayer, striving against this attachment… I was about to triumph, but in a moment my heart had wandered to the beloved idol. I went to bed in great pain, yet still rather superior to the enemy; but in dreams her image returned, and I awoke in the night, my mind full of her (p. 99).

The next morning, he reviewed his call to sacrifice and made his decision. 

My dear Lydia and my duty call me different ways, yet God hath not forsaken me but strengthened me….At chapel my soul ascended to God, and the sight of a picture at the altar, of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, animated me exceedingly to devotedness to the life of a missionary (p. 103).

Though the decision was made, she was not forgotten. Six years later, on his way to Persia, he wrote in his journal, “My thoughts so much on Lydia, whose old letter I had been reading the day before…” [4].

Last Thoughts

Six years later he had translated the New Testament into Hindi and Persian (with the help of national scholars), supervised its translation into Arabic, and translated the Psalter into Persian and the Prayer Book into Hindi.  He spent his last year in Persia revising his New Testament. The next year he died in Tokat, Armenia, suffering the last effects of tuberculosis and fever, while on his way back to England hoping to regain his health.  He was 31.  Seven months earlier he wrote the last entry in his journal:

I sat in the orchard, and thought with sweet comfort and peace of my God; in solitude my company, my Friend and comforter. Oh, when shall time give place to eternity?! When shall appear the new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness! (p. 252).[5]

Henry Martyn’s Fight

 Henry Martyn was a young missionary to India and Arabia and Persia in the early 1800’s. He had left his fiancé Lydia Grenfell behind in England in 1806 and would never see her again — he died at 31.

On the boat he fought back self-pity and discouragement with the promises of God’s Word. He arrived in Calcutta in May and two months later had a devastating experience. One of the veteran missionaries preached a sermon directed against Henry Martyn and his doctrines. He called his teaching inconsistent, extravagant, and absurd. He accused him of seeking only to “gratify self-sufficiency, pride and uncharitableness.”

How could this lonely young man endure such a crushing experience, and not only endure but during the next six years have the perseverance to translate the New Testament into Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic?

We can hear the answer in his own journal:

In the multitude of my troubled thoughts I still saw that there is a strong consolation in the hope set before us. Let men do their worst, let me be torn to pieces, and my dear Lydia torn from me; or let me labour for fifty years amidst scorn, and never seeing one soul converted; still it shall not be worse for my soul in eternity, nor worse for it in time. Though the heathen rage and the English people imagine a vain thing, the Lord Jesus, who controls all events, is my friend, my master, my God, my all.

Henry Martyn fought the battle against discouragement and hopelessness with the truths of God’s Word: “Jesus is my friend, my master, my God, my all!” And that is the way we must fight every day, and never stop until the war is over and the Commander puts the wreath of victory on our heads.