HENRY MARTYN
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
Henry Martyn.From the portrait in the University Library.Cambridge.
HENRY MARTYN
SAINT AND SCHOLAR
FIRST MODERN MISSIONARY TO THE MOHAMMEDANS
1781-1812
BY
GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D.
AUTHOR OF ‘LIFE OF WILLIAM CAREY’ ‘LIFE OF ALEXANDER DUFF’ ETC.
Now let me burn out for God
WITH PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
56 Paternoster Row, 65 St Paul’s Churchyard
and 164 Piccadilly
1892
PREFACE
In the year 1819, John Sargent, Rector of Lavington,published A Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn. Thebook at once became a spiritual classic. The saint, thescholar, and the missionary, alike found in it a newinspiration. It ran through ten editions during the writer’slife, and he died when projecting an additional volume ofthe Journals and Letters. His son-in-law, S. Wilberforce,afterwards Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester, accordingly,in 1837 published, in two volumes, Journals and Lettersof the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D., with an introductionon Sargent’s life. Sargent had suppressed what BishopWilberforce describes as ‘a great variety of interestingmaterials’. Especially in the lifetime of Lydia Grenfellit was thought necessary to omit the facts which give toHenry Martyn’s personality its human interest and intensifyour appreciation of his heroism. On the lady’sdeath, in 1829, Martyn’s letters to her became available,and Bishop Wilberforce incorporated these in what he describedas ‘further and often more continuous selections fromthe journals and letters of Mr. Martyn.’ But, unhappily,his work does not fully supplement that of Sargent. TheJournal is still mutilated; the Letters are still imperfect.
Some years ago, on completing the Life of WilliamCarey, who had written that wherever his friend HenryMartyn might go as chaplain the Church need not send a[vi]missionary, I began to prepare a new work on the firstmodern apostle to the Mohammedans. I was encouragedby his grand-nephew, a distinguished mathematician, thelate Henry Martyn Jeffery, F.R.S., who had in 1883 printedTwo Sets of Unpublished Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn,B.D., of Truro. For a time I stopped the work on learningthat he had come into possession of Lydia Grenfell’s papers,and was preparing the book which appeared in 1890,Extracts from the Religious Diary of Miss L. Grenfell, ofMarazion, Cornwall. Except her letters to Henry Martyn,which are not in existence now, all the desirable materialsseemed to be ready. Meanwhile, the missionary bishopwho most resembled Martyn in character and service,Thomas Valpy French, of Lahore and Muscat, had writtento Canon Edmonds of S. Wilberforce’s book as ‘a work forwhose re