  FROM CALCUTTA TO CEYLON, BOMBAY, AND ARABIA Two motives made Henry Martyn eager to leave India for a time, and to cease the strain on his fast-ebbing strength, caused by incessant preaching and speaking: he desired to prolong his life, but to prolong it only till he should give the Mohammedans of Arabia and Persia the Word of God in their own tongues. After his first, almost fatal, attack at Dinapore, Corrie, who had gone to help him in his duties, wrote to ‘the Patriarch,’ as they called Mr. Brown, at Aldeen: ‘He wishes to be spared on account of the translations, but with great earnestness said, “I wish to have my whole soul swallowed up in the will of God.”’ Two years after, Corrie wrote to England from Cawnpore: ‘He is going to try sea air. May God render it effectual to his restoration. His life is beyond all price to us. You know what a profound scholar he is, and all his acquirements are dedicated to the service of Christ. If ever man, since St. Paul, could use these words, he may, One thing I do. But the length of his life will depend on his desisting from public duties.’ To Martyn himself, when at last he had left Cawnpore, Corrie wrote: ‘If you will not take rest, dear brother, come away back;’ informing him, at the same time, that he had returned to a Colonel, whom he had married, 1,600 rupees, he and Martyn having resolved to decline all fees for marrying and burying in India, where When he was leaving Cawnpore, Henry Martyn was about to destroy what he called ‘a number of memorandums.’ These afterwards proved to be his Journals from January 1803 to 1811, some of which were written in Latin, and some in Greek, for greater secrecy. Corrie remonstrated with him, and persuaded him to seal them up and leave them in his hands. Lord Minto, the Governor-General, and General Hewett, the Commander-in-chief, after receiving a statement of Martyn’s object, gave their sanction to his spending his sick-leave in Persia and Syria. At first the only ship he could find bound for Bombay, en route to the Persian Gulf, was one of the native buggalows which carried the coasting trade in the days before the British India Steam Navigation Company had begun to develop the commerce of the Indian Ocean all along East Africa, Southern Asia, the Spice Islands, and Australasia. But he wrote to Corrie: The captain of the ship after many excuses has at last refused to take me, on the ground that I might try to convert the Arab sailors, and so cause a mutiny in the ship. So I am quite out of heart, and more than half disposed to go to the right about, and come back to Cawnpore. His uncompromising earnestness as a witness for Christ was well known. Fortunately, a month after, the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone ‘was proceeding to take the residency of Poona,’ and Martyn secured a passage in the same ship, the Hummoody, an Arab coaster belonging to His last message to Calcutta, on the evening of the first Sunday of the year 1811, was on The one thing needful. Next morning he quietly went on board Mr. Elphinstone’s pinnace ‘without taking leave of my two dear friends in Calcutta.’ As they dropped down the Hoogli, anchoring for two nights in its treacherous waters, his henceforth brief entries in his Journal are these: ‘8th. Conversation with Mr. Elphinstone, and disputes with his Persian moulvi, left me weak and in pain. 9th. Reached the ship at Saugur, and began to try my strength with the Arab sailors.’ He found that the country-born captain, Kinsay, had been brought up by Schwartz, and he obtained from him much information regarding the habits and the rule of the Lutheran apostle of Southern India. This is new: It was said that Schwartz had a warning given him of his death. One clear moonlight night he saw a light, and heard a voice which said to him, ‘Follow me.’ He got up and went to the door; here the vision vanished. The next day he sent for Dr. Anderson and said, ‘An old tree must fall.’ On the doctor’s perceiving there was nothing the matter with him, Schwartz asked him whether he observed any disorder in his intellect; to which the doctor replied, ‘No.’ He and General Floyd (now in Ireland), another friend of Schwartz, came and stayed with him. The next fifteen days he was continually engaged in devotion, and attended no more to the school: on the last day he died in his chair. Henry Martyn was well fitted by culture and training to appreciate the society of such statesmen and thinkers as To Lydia Grenfell At Sea, Coast of Malabar: February 4, 1811. The last letter I wrote to you, my dearest Lydia, was dated November 1810. I continued in Calcutta to the end of the year, preaching once a week, and reading the Word in some happy little companies, with whom I enjoyed that sweet communion which all in this vale of tears have reason to be thankful for, but especially those whose lot is cast in a heathen land. On New-year’s day, at Mr. Brown’s urgent request, I preached a sermon for the Bible Society, recommending an immediate attention to the state of the native Christians. At the time I left Calcutta they talked At Captain Rodney’s, the Chief Secretary to Government, we met a good part of the European society of Colombo. The party was like most mixed parties in England, where much is said that need not be remembered. The next day we stretched across the Gulf of Manaar, and soon came in sight of Cape Comorin, the great promontory of India. At a distance the green waves seemed to wash the foot of the mountain, but on a nearer approach little churches were seen, apparently on the beach, with a row of little huts on each side. Was it these maritime situations that recalled to my mind Perran church and town in the way to Gurlyn; or that my thoughts wander too often on the beach to the east of Lamorran? You do not tell me whether you ever walk there, and imagine the billows that break at your feet to have made their way from India. But why should I wish to know? Had I observed silence on that day and thenceforward, I should have spared you much trouble, and myself much pain. Yet I am far from regretting that I spoke, since I am persuaded that all things will work together for good. I sometimes try to put such a number of things together as shall produce the greatest happiness possible, and I find that even in imagination I cannot satisfy myself. I set myself to see what is that ‘good for the sons of men, which they should do under heaven all the days of their life,’ and I find that paradise is not here. Many things are delightful, some things are almost all one could wish; but yet in all beauty there is deformity, in the most perfect something wanting, and there is no hope of its ever being otherwise. February 10.—To-day my affections seem to have revived a little. I have been often deceived in times past, and erroneously called animal spirits joy in the Holy Ghost. Yet I trust that I can say with truth, ‘To them who believe, He is precious!’ Yes, Thou art precious to my soul, my transport and my trust. No thought now is so sweet as that which those words suggest On the 7th we landed at Goa, the capital of the Portuguese possessions in the East. I reckoned much on my visit to Goa, expecting, from its being the residence of the archbishop and many ecclesiastics, that I should obtain such information about the Christians in India as would render it superfluous to make inquiries elsewhere, but I was much disappointed. Perhaps it was owing to our being accompanied by several officers, English and Portuguese, that the archbishop and his principal agents would not be seen; but so it was, that I scarcely met with a man who could make himself intelligible. We are shown what strangers are usually shown, the churches and monasteries, but I wanted to contemplate man, the only thing on earth almost that possesses any interest for me. I beheld the stupendous magnificence of their noble churches without emotion, except to regret that the Gospel was not preached in them. In one of the monasteries we saw the tomb of Francis Xavier, the Apostle of India, most richly ornamented, as We visited among many other places the convent of nuns. After a long altercation with the lady porter we were admitted to the antechamber, in which was the grate, a window with iron bars, behind which the poor prisoners make their appearance. While my companions were purchasing their trinkets I was employed in examining their countenances, which I did with great attention. In what possible way, thought I, can you support existence, if you do not find your happiness in God? They all looked ill and discontented, those at least whose countenances expressed anything. One sat by reading, as if nothing were going on. I asked to see the book, and it was handed through the grate. Finding that it was a Latin prayer-book, I wrote in Latin something about the love of the world, which seclusion from it would not remove. The Inquisition is still existing at Goa. We were not admitted as far as Dr. Buchanan was, to the Hall of Examination, and that because he printed something against the inquisitors which came to their knowledge. The priest in waiting acknowledged that they had some prisoners within the walls, and defended the practice of imprisoning and chastising offenders, on the ground of its being conformed to the custom of the Primitive Church. We were told that when the officers of the Inquisition touch an individual, and beckon him away, he dares not resist; if he does not come out again, no one must ask about him; if he does, he must not tell what was done to him. February 18.—(Bombay.) Thus far I am brought in safety. On this day I complete my thirtieth year. Farewell, my beloved Lydia, and believe me to be ever yours most affectionately, H. Martyn. All through the voyage, in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, the scholar was busy with his books, the Hebrew Old Testament, ‘reading Turkish grammar, Niebuhr’s Arabia, making extracts from Maracci’s Refutation of the Koran, in general reading the Word of God with pleasure.’ February 10. (Sunday.)—Somewhat of a happy Sabbath; I enjoyed communion with the saints, though far removed from them; service morning and night in the cabin. January 14 to 17.—When sitting on the poop Mr. Elphinstone kindly entertained me with information about India, the politics of which he has had such opportunities of making himself acquainted with. The Afghans, to whom he went as ambassador, to negotiate a treaty of alliance in case of invasion by the French, possess a tract of country considerably larger than Great Britain, using February 17.—Mostly employed in writing the Arabic tract, also in reading the Koran; a book of geography in Arabic, and Jami Abbari in Persian. I would that all should adore, but especially that I myself should lie prostrate. As for self, contemptible self, I feel myself saying, let it be forgotten for ever; henceforth let Christ live, let Christ reign, let Him be glorified for ever. February 18.—Came to anchor at Bombay. This day I finish the 30th year of my unprofitable life, an age in which Brainerd had finished his course. He gained about a hundred savages to the Gospel; I can scarcely number the twentieth part. If I cannot act, and rejoice, and love with the ardour some did, oh, let me at least be holy, and sober, and wise. I am now at the age at which the Saviour of men began His ministry, and at which John the Baptist called a nation to repentance. Let me now think for myself and act with energy. Hitherto I have made my youth and insignificance an excuse for sloth and imbecility: now let me have a character, and act boldly for God. February 19.—Went on shore. Waited on the Governor, and was kindly accommodated with a room at the Government House. The Governor was the good Jonathan Duncan, in the last year of his long administration and of his benevolent life. In the first decade of the nineteenth century Bombay was a comparatively little place, but the leaders of its English society were all remarkable men. In the short time, even then, Bombay had become the political and social centre of all the Asiatics and Africans, from Higher Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Arabia, to Abyssinia, Zanzibar, and the Comoro Isles; especially had it then begun to be what every generation since has made it more and more, the best centre from which to direct a Christian mission to the Mohammedans. With Poona, it is the capital of the most subtle and unimpressionable class, the Marathi Brahmans, and it is the point from which most widely to influence the Parsees. But as a base of operations against Islam it has never yet been fully used or appreciated. The late Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer preferred Aden, or the neighbouring village of Sheikh Othman, the British door into Arabia, of which he took possession for the Master by there laying down his life in the ripeness of his years, his scholarship, and his prosperity. But even in Arabia such work may be directed from Bombay. The city, like its harbour for commerce, stands without a rival as a missionary and civilising focus. Henry Martyn spent his weeks there in mastering the needs of its varied races and religionists, Jewish and Arabic, Persian and Brahman, talking with representative men of all the cults, and striving to influence them. He kept steadily in view his duty to the Mohammedans, writing his Arabic tract, and consulting as to his Persian translation of the Scriptures. It was not given to him to remain there. Dr. Taylor, whom he had joined with Brown and the Serampore Brotherhood at Aldeen in com The friend of Mountstuart Elphinstone and guest of the Governor, Henry Martyn was welcomed by the literary society of the city, which at that time was unrivalled in the East. It is fortunate that we thus obtain an impartial estimate of his personal character and scholarship from such men as Elphinstone, Mackintosh, and Malcolm. In their journals and letters, written with all the frankness of private friendship, we see the consistent and ever-watchful saint, but at the same time the lively talker, the brilliant scholar, and, above all, the genial companion and even merry comrade. Since he had left Cambridge Henry Martyn had not enjoyed society like this, able to appreciate his many-sided gifts, and to call forth his natural joyfulness. In Bombay we see him at his best all round as man, scholar, saint, and missionary. In Sir T.E. Colebrooke’s Life of that most eminent Indian statesman who twice refused the crown of the Governor-General, Sir John Malcolm, fresh from his second mission to Persia, was writing his great History of Persia in the quiet of Parell and Malabar Hill, with the help of the invaluable criticism of Sir James Mackintosh, whom he described to his brother Gilbert as ‘a very extraordinary man.’ Malcolm introduced Mackintosh and Elphinstone to each other, and Elphinstone lost not a day in taking Martyn to call on the Recorder. Although the distinguished Scots Highlander, who had become the admiring friend of Robert Hall when they were fellow students at Aberdeen University, was in full sympathy with missionary enthusiasm, and condemned the intolerance of the East India Company, 1811, February 22.—Talked a good deal with the Governor about my intended journey. February 23.—Went with him to his residence in the country, and at night met a large party, amongst whom were Sir J. Mackintosh and General Malcolm: with Sir James I had some conversation on different subjects; he was by no means equal to my expectations. Mackintosh’s account of their first interview was this: February 24. (Sunday.)—Elphinstone introduced me to a young clergyman called Martyn, come round from Bengal on his way to Bussora, partly for health and partly to improve his Arabic, as he is translating the Scriptures into that language. He seems to be a mild and benevolent enthusiast—a sort of character with which I am always half in love. We had the novelty of grace before and after dinner, all the company standing. Again, a week after: March 1.—Mr. 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. Henry Martyn’s growing appreciation of Mackintosh is seen in this later passage in his Journal: 1811, March 1.—Called on Sir J. Mackintosh, and found his conversation, as it is generally said to be, very instructive and entertaining. He thought that the world would be soon Europeanised, in order that the Gospel might spread over the world. He observed that caste was broken down in Egypt, and the Oriental world made Greek by the successors of Alexander, in order to make way for the religion of Christ. He thought that little was to be apprehended, and little hoped for, from the exertions of missionaries. Called at General Malcolm’s, and though I did not find him at home, was very well rewarded for my trouble in getting to his house, by the company of Mr. ——, lately from R. Dined at Farish’s with a party of some very amiable and well-behaved young men. What a remarkable difference between the old inhabitants of India and the new-comers. This is owing to the number of religious families in England. March 4.—Dined at General Malcolm’s, who gave me a Chaldee missal. Captain Stewart, who had accompanied him as his secretary into Persia, gave me much information about the learned men of Ispahan. March 8.—Spent the first part of the day at General Malcolm’s, who gave me letters of introduction and some queries respecting the wandering tribes of Persia. The reference to young Mr. Farish, is to one who afterwards became interim Governor of Bombay, and the friend of John Wilson, and who, because he taught a class in the Sunday School that used to meet in the Town Hall, was for the time an object of suspicion and attack by the Parsees and Hindus, on the baptism of Dhanjibhai Naoroji, the first Parsee to put on Christ. On Malcolm, according to Sir John Kaye, his biographer, He requested me to give him a line to the Governor of Bushire, which I did, as well as one to Mahomed Nebbee Khan. But I warned him not to move from Bushire without your previous sanction. His intention is, I believe, to go by Shiraz, Ispahan, and Kermanshah to Baghdad, and to endeavour on that route to discover some ancient copies of the Gospel, which he and many other saints are persuaded lie hid in the mountains of Persia. Mr. Martyn also expects to improve himself as an Oriental scholar; he is already an excellent one. His knowledge of Arabic is superior to that of any Englishman in India. He is altogether a very learned and cheerful man, but a great enthusiast in his holy calling. He has, however, assured me, and begged I would mention it to you, that he has no thought of preaching to the Persians, or of entering into any theological controversies, but means to confine himself to two objects—a research after old Gospels, and the endeavour to qualify himself for giving a correct version of the Scriptures into Arabic and Persian, on the plan proposed by the Bible Society. I have not hesitated to tell him that I thought you would require that he should act with great caution, and not allow his zeal to run away with him. He declares he will not, and he is a man of that character that I must believe. I am satisfied that if you ever see him, you will be pleased with him. He will give you grace before and In such social intercourse in the evening, in constant interviews and discussions with Jews and Mohammedans, Parsees and Hindus, during the day, and in frequent preaching for the chaplains, the weeks passed all too rapidly. A ropemaker who had just arrived from London called on him. ‘He understood from my preaching that he might open his heart to me. We conversed and prayed together.’ Against this and the communion with young Farish and his fellows, we must set the action of those whom he thus describes in a letter to Corrie: 1811, February 26.—Peacefully preaching the Word of life to a people daily edified is the nearest approach to heaven below. But to move from place to place, hurried away without having time to do good, is vexatious to the spirit as well as harassing to the body. Hearing last Saturday that some sons of Belial, members of the Bapre Hunt, His last message to India, from the ‘faithful saying’ of 1 Timothy i. 15, was misunderstood and resented, as his first sermon in Calcutta had been in similar circumstances. March 24. (Sunday).—Speaking on the evidence of its truth, I mentioned its constant efficacy in collecting the multitude, and commanding their attention, which moral discourses never did. This was considered as a reflection on the ministers of Bombay, which distressed me not a little. Henry Martyn was granted a passage to Arabia and Persia in the Benares, Captain Sealey, one of the ships of the old Indian Navy, ordered to cruise along with the Prince of Wales in the Persian Gulf. At that time the danger was considerable. For a century the Joasmi Arabs, of ‘the pirate coast’ of Oman, had been the terror of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, driving off even the early Portuguese, and confining the Persians, then invulnerable by land, to their own shores. The Wahabee puritans of Islam having mastered them, they added to their own bloodthirsty love of plunder and the slave-trade the fanaticism of Mohammed-ibn-Abdul-Wahab, the ‘bestower of blessings,’ as the name signifies. The East India Company tolerated them, retaining two or three ships of war in the Gulf for the protection of the factories at Gombroon, Bushire, and Busrah. But, in an evil moment, in the year 1797, the Joasmi pirates dared to seize a British vessel. From that hour their fate was sealed, though the process of clearing the southern coast of Asia of pirates and slavers ended only with the accession of Queen Victoria, in the year when Aden was added to the empire. In 1809-10 the Bombay Government expedition, under To Lydia Grenfell Muscat: April 22, 1811. My dearest Lydia,—I am now in Arabia Felix: to judge from the aspect of the country it has little pretensions to the name, unless burning barren rocks convey an idea of felicity; but perhaps as there is a promise in reserve for the sons of Joktan, their land may one day be blest indeed. We sailed from Bombay on Lady-day; and on the morning of Easter saw the land of Mekran in Persia. After another week’s sail across the mouth of the Gulf, we arrived here, and expect to proceed up the Gulf to Bushire, as soon as we have taken in our water. You will be happy to learn that the murderous pirates against whom we were sent, having received notice of our approach, are all got out of the way, so that I am no longer liable to be shot in a battle, or to decapitation after it, if it be lawful to judge from appearances. These pestilent Ishmaelites indeed, whose hand is against every man’s, will escape, and the community suffer, but that selfish friendship of which you once We are likely to be detained here some days, but the ship that will carry our letters to India sails immediately, so that I can send but one letter to England, and one to Calcutta. When will our correspondence be established? I have been trying to effect it these six years, and it is only yet in train. Why there was no letter from you in those dated June and July 1810, I cannot conjecture, except that you had not received any of mine, and would write no more. But I am not yet without hopes that a letter in the beloved hand will yet overtake me somewhere. My kindest and most affectionate remembrances to all the Western circle. Is it because he is your brother that I love George so much? or because he is the last come into the As it may be a year or more before I shall be back, you may direct one letter after receiving this, if it be not of a very old date, to Bombay, all after to Bengal, as usual. Believe me to be ever, my dearest Lydia, your most affectionate, H. Martyn. April 22.—Landed at Muscat with Lockett and walked through the bazaar; we wished to ascend one of the hills in the neighbourhood, but on the native guards expressing disapprobation, we desisted. We turn to her Diary for the corresponding passage. 1812, February 1.—Heard yesterday from, Every word of Henry Martyn’s Journal regarding Arabia is precious, alike in the light of his attempt to give its people the Word of God in their own tongue, and of the long delayed and too brief efforts of his successors, Ion Keith-Falconer in Yemen in 1887, and Bishop French in I left India on Lady-day, looked at Persia on Easter Sunday, and seven days after found myself in Arabia Felix. In a small cove, surrounded by bare rocks, heated through, out of the reach of air as well as wind, lies the good ship Benares, in the great cabin of which, stretched on a couch, lie I. But though weak I am well—relaxed but not disordered. Praise to His grace who fulfils to me a promise which I have scarcely a right to claim—‘I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.’ Last night I went ashore for the first time with Captain Lockett; we walked through the bazaar and up the hill, but saw nothing but what was Indian or worse. The Imam or Sultan is about thirty miles off, fighting, it is said, for his kingdom, with the Wahabees. You will be happy to learn that the pirates whom we were to scourge are got out of our way, so that I may now hope to get safe through the Gulf without being made to witness the bloody scenes of war. April 24.—Went with one English party and two Armenians and an Arab who served as guard and guide, to see a remarkable pass about a mile from the town, and a garden planted by a Hindu in a little valley beyond. There was nothing to see, only the little bit of green in this wilderness seemed to the Arab a great curiosity. I conversed a good deal with him, but particularly with his African slave, who was very intelligent about religion. The latter knew as much about his religion as most mountaineers, and withal was so interested, that he would not cease from his argument till I left the shore. To Corrie he wrote on the same day: The Imam of Muscat murdered his uncle, and sits on the throne in the place of his elder brother, who is here a To the last he was busy with his Arabic translation of Scripture. The ships of war crossed and recrossed the Gulf from shore to shore, surveying its coasts and islands in the heat of May, tempered by a north-wester which tossed them about. On May 6 he wrote in his Journal: Much cast down through a sinful propensity, which I little thought was in me at all, till occasion manifested its existence. On the 19th: Preached to the ship’s company on John iii. 3. My thoughts so much on Lydia, whose old letter I had been reading the day before, that I had a sense of guilt for having neglected the proper duties of the day. May 20.—We have now a fair wind, carrying us gently to Bushire. May 22.—Finished the syllabus of Ecclesiastical History which I have been making all the voyage, and extracts from Mosheim concerning the Eastern Church. On May 21, 1811, Henry Martyn at last reached Persian soil. Landed at Bushire this morning in good health; how unceasing are the mercies of the Lord; blessed be His goodness; may He still preserve me from danger, and, above all, make my journey a source of future good to this kingdom of Persia, into which I am now come. We were hospitably received by the acting Resident. In the evening I walked out by the sea-side to recollect myself, to review the past, and look forward to the future. Suffering the will of God is as necessary a part of spiritual discipline as doing, and much more trying. But he landed still with the desire ‘to go to Arabia circuitously by way of Persia,’ a course which he declared to be rendered necessary by the advanced state of the season. The people of Arabia were first in his heart. FOOTNOTES: |
|
