UNPTTBLI&HBD LETTERS OF THE 



Sir James Stephen on Eev. Henry Martyn, B.D. 



(Extracted from the Edinburgh Review, July, 1844) 



''Towards the middle of the last century, John Martyn, of 

 Truro, was working with his hands in the mines near that 

 town.*' He was a wise man, who, knowing the right use of 

 leisure hours, employed them so as to qualify himself for 

 higher and more lucrative pursuits ; and who, knowing the right 

 use of money, devoted his enlarged means to procure for his 

 four children a liberal education. Henry, the younger of his 

 sons, was accordingly entered at the University of Cambridge, 

 where, in January, 1801, he obtained the degree of bachelor of 

 arts, with the honorary rank of senior wrangler. There also 

 he became the disciple, and, as he himself would have said, the 

 convert of Charles Simeon. Under the counsels of that eminent 

 teacher, the guidance of Mr. Wilberforce, and the active aid of 

 Mr. Grant, he entered the East India Company's service as a 

 chaplain. After a residence in Hindoostan of about five years, 

 he returned homewards through Persia in broken health. 

 Pausing at Shiraz, he laboured there during twelve months with 

 the ardour of a man, who, distinctly perceiving the near 

 approach of death, feared lest it should intercept the great 

 work for which alone he desired to live. That work (the 

 translation af the New Testament into Persian) at length 

 accomplished, he resumed his way towards Constantinople, 

 following his Mihmander (one Hassan Aga) at a gallop, nearly 

 the whole distance from Tabriz to Tocat, under the rays of a 

 burning sun, and the pressure of continual fever. On the 6th 

 of October, 1812, in the thirty-second year of his age, he 

 brought the journal of his life to a premature close, by 

 inscribing in it the following words, while he sought a 

 naomentary repose under the shadow of some trees at the foot 

 of the Caramanian mountains: "I sat in the orchard, and 

 "thought with sweet comfort and fear of God — in solitude, my 

 " company, my friend, and comforter. Oh when shall time give 



* Corrected by Mr. Jeffery in the Cornwall Gazette, March, 1881, and in 

 the preceding preface. 



