Henry Martyn: A Life to Inspire Two men breakfasted together in Calcutta on 16th May 1806. The older of the two was baldheaded, unassuming and plain in manner, and about forty-five years old; the other man was twenty years younger with a mop of dark hair, clean-shaven, more refined and scholarly in bearing. The older man was William Carey; the younger, Henry Martyn. It is interesting to compare these two men; their backgrounds were so very different. Carey had little formal education, a cobbler by trade who later took up school teaching; a plain working man, no small talk, unpolished. Martyn was a quiet scholar and a Cambridge Fellow. Yet they had in common an extraordinary ability for languages and a burning heart for Christian Missions. It is then to the life of Henry Martyn that we turn. He was born in Truro in Cornwall in 1781. (John Wesley was still alive and travelling and preaching up and down England at the age of seventy- eight! He often visited Truro and preached there). As a young boy Martyn was very bright, and attended Truro Grammar School. From there he went, when he was not quite seventeen, to St John's College, Cambridge. He excelled in mathematics and became Senior Wrangler of his year (that simply meant that he was top of his year in Mathematics). But more important things were happening in those early years. His sister Sally – a year or two younger – was a devout Christian with a deep concern for her brother's salvation. At first he resisted her pleas but finally agreed to read the Bible. He was greatly affected at that time by the death of his father and began to think of 'that invisible world to which he has gone and to which I one day must go'. Slowly the Christ of Scripture became to him the living Lord and Saviour and Henry Martyn was 'born from above'. Zealous Christian undergraduates at Cambridge – and there were all too few in those days – almost all worshipped at the same church – Holy Trinity church in the very centre of the city. The minister was Charles Simeon. For the past fifteen years he had maintained a faithful witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the evangelical faith, in the face of all manner of ridicule and scorn from all levels of University life. To be an earnest Christian in those days was to earn the nickname 'Sims' (after Charles Simeon). Between this young undergraduate and the minister of Holy Trinity there grew up a deep friendship. Simeon had a consuming interest in missionary work, especially in India and the East. The East India Company needed chaplains and Simeon undertook to find them – a good number of 'Simeonites' were eventually to sail for India. So Martyn came to share Simeon's burden for missions. Henry Martyn stayed on at Cambridge, but changed over from Mathematics to Classics. Once more he excelled, and was eventually offered a fellowship at St John's, and so joined the junior teaching staff of the University. He made time for Christian reading and was deeply affected by the Diary of David Brainerd, which Jonathan Edwards published. Brainerd had been a missionary to the North American Indians, and his ardent love for the souls of men struck a chord in Martyn. The life of a Fellow in the University was highly attractive to Martyn, with its time for study and quiet reading, with all earthly needs adequately met. To face poverty and hardship for Christ's sake was a challenge which he increasingly knew he must face up to. Martyn was ordained by the Bishop of Ely in October 1803, and became a curate to Charles Simeon at Holy Trinity church, and so for the next eighteen months he came more than ever under the influence of that good man. He worked hard, visiting the people of Cambridge, and reading the Scriptures and praying with them. There was an urgency and a reality about his preaching. He preached: 'As never sure to preach again, as dying man to dying men'. He did not however have Simeon's flare for preaching to ordinary people. His growing conviction that the Lord was calling him to missionary service was viewed by others, when they knew of it, both in the University and at home in Cornwall, as sheer madness; even his sister Sally was not encouraging. He wrote in his Journal of 'his need to fit himself for a long life of warfare and constant self-denial'. 'I resolved on my knees to live a life of far more self-denial than ever I had yet done, and to begin with little things. Accordingly, I ate my breakfast standing at a distance from the fire, and stood reading at the window, though the thermometer stood at freezing point ... To climb the steep ascent, to run, to fight, to wrestle, was the desire of my heart'. He read widely, but favoured Jonathan Edwards above all: The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended; The History of Redemption, Concerning the Religious Affections, and, of course, the Life of David Brainerd. He wrote, 'Read Brainerd, and feel my heart knit to this dear man, and really rejoice to think of meeting him in heaven'. Such reading served him well for his ministry in Cambridge and far beyond. This period of work under Simeon's direction was of great help to him. His Journal shows a growing awareness of his own shortcomings, along with a deepening devotion to Jesus Christ. Listen to him on 18th February 1803: 'This is my birthday and I am ashamed to review the past; Lord Jesus, watch over me in the deceitful calm! Let me beware of lethargy, lest it terminate in death. I desire this day to renew my vows to the Lord, and oh, that every succeeding year of my life may be more devoted to His glory than the last.' His Journal reveals his introspective tendencies and his proneness to melancholy, but he is a good corrective to our shallowness and dislike of self- examination. He applied himself to his ministry – preaching, visiting, praying – with great diligence and, it must be said, with great joy. Sargent's account of these years – full of quotations from Martyn's journal – is very challenging. His happiest days were days of prayer and preaching and visiting. Constance Padwick says, 'His relaxation and reward after work was the grammar of some Eastern language.' It was at this time that he began his work on Eastern languages. He studied Bengali, Persian, Arabic, Hindustani and Sanskrit. His circle of friends was now widened and enriched – he was introduced to a group of men known as 'the Clapham Sect' (or 'the Clapham Saints' – a more fitting term!) – and came under the influence of William Wilberforce, 'that little man with powdered hair, bright eyes, a diamond brooch and an eye glass'. He was introduced also to the elderly John Newton – the father figure among English evangelicals. The road to overseas service seemed to be through a chaplaincy in the East India Company. The reasons for this were partly financial. Martyn needed to be able to provide support for his sister, and service with the East India Company would provide sufficient income for him to do this. Martyn preached his farewell sermon at Holy Trinity on Palm Sunday 1805, and then travelled to London. There is a love story entwined in these events, to which I allude only briefly. I do so because it highlights a part of the costliness of Martyn's missionary call. Henry Martyn fell in love with Lydia Grenfell. He met her when preaching at Marazion in Cornwall. She was five years older than he, and an earnest Christian. She had been engaged to a young solicitor from that town, but when she discovered that he was not all she had thought him to be she broke off the engagement. He soon took up with another woman and a few years later they were married. But – and here is the strange twist in the tale – Lydia felt bound to remain free from all other ties until this man married. It was an unreasonable scruple and one which caused Martyn – and herself – much heartache. Martyn loved her passionately – he could never be a lukewarm lover! And yet there was an obstacle – his call to missionary work, which he knew would mean hardship and toil in some far off land. He had set his face to serve his Lord and Master as a missionary and nothing could turn him aside from that call. There was never a courtship as such and yet he loved Lydia. They went for walks in the lanes and over the uplands, and Martyn treasured those memories. When at last the day came for him to sail she would not give him permission to write – courtship was a very formal affair in those days! I ought to add that he received conflicting advice over marriage – Richard Cecil said he was acting like a madman to go unmarried! Charles Simeon, himself a bachelor, urged celibacy! In the event they did correspond, and he had hopes of marriage almost to the end. To be fair to Simeon, 2 sometime later he actually travelled down to Cornwall to meet Lydia and try to resolve her scruples, but failed. Martyn sailed in August 1805 in a convoy of one hundred and fifty ships, many of which were heavily armed. The danger came from the French fleet. It was the year of the Battle of Trafalgar.