REV, HENRY MARTYN, B.D. 11 



watching and in fastings, in toils and perils, and amidst the 

 decay of all other earthly hopes, this human love blends so 

 touchingly with his diviner enthusiasm, that even from the life 

 of Henry Martyn there can scarcely be drawn a more valuable 

 truth, than that, in minds pure as his, there may dwell 

 together in most harmonious concord, affections which a coarse, 

 low-toned, ascetic morality, would describe as distracting the 

 heart between earth and heaven. 



Yet it is a life pregnant with many other weighty truths. It 

 was passed in an age, when men, whom genius itself could 

 scarcely rescue from abhorrence, found in their constitutional 

 sadness, real or fictitious, not merely an excuse for grovelling in 

 the stye of Epicurus, but even an apology for deifying their 

 sensuality, pride, malignity, and worldly-mindedness, by hymns 

 due only to those sacred influences, by which our better nature 

 is sustained in the warfare with its antagonist corruptions. 

 .Not such the gloom which brooded over the heart of Henry 

 Martyn. It solicited no sympathy, was never betrayed into 

 suUenness, and sought no unhallowed consolation. It assumed 

 the form of a depressing consciousness of iU desert; mixed with 

 fervent compassion for a world, which he at once longed to quit, 

 and panted to improve. It was the sadness of an exile gazing 

 wistfully towards his distant home, even while soothing the 

 grief of his brethren in captivity. It was a sadness akin to 

 that, which stole over the heart of his Master, while, pausing on 

 the slope of the hills which stand round about Jerusalem, he 

 wept over her crowded marts and cloud-capped pinnacles, 

 hastening to a desolation already visible to that prescient eye, 

 though hidden by the glare and tumult of life from the 

 obdurate multitude below. It was a sadness soon to give place 

 to an abiding serenity in the presence of that compassionate 

 Being, who had condescended to shed many bitter tears, that he 

 might wipe away every tear from the eyes of his faithful 

 followers." 



