Henry Martyn, Saint and Scholar / First Modern Missionary to the Mohammedans, 1781-1812

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

In the year 1819, John Sargent, Rector of Lavington, published A Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn . The book at once became a spiritual classic. The saint, the scholar, and the missionary, alike found in it a new inspiration. It ran through ten editions during the writer’s life, and he died when projecting an additional volume of the 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 Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D. , with an introduction on Sargent’s life. Sargent had suppressed what Bishop Wilberforce describes as ‘a great variety of interesting materials’. Especially in the lifetime of Lydia Grenfell it was thought necessary to omit the facts which give to Henry Martyn’s personality its human interest and intensify our appreciation of his heroism. On the lady’s death, in 1829, Martyn’s letters to her became available, and Bishop Wilberforce incorporated these in what he described as ‘further and often more continuous selections from the journals and letters of Mr. Martyn.’ But, unhappily, his work does not fully supplement that of Sargent. The Journal is still mutilated; the Letters are still imperfect.