II
The Gospels tell of a certain man who was borne of four to the feet of Jesus. I know his name and I know the names of the four who brought him. The man's name was Henry Martyn, and the quartet consisted of a father, a sister, an author and a minister. Each had a hand in the gracious work, and each in a different way. The father did his part accidentally, indirectly, unconsciously; the sister did her part designedly, deliberately, and of set purpose. The author and the minister did their parts in the ordinary pursuit of their vocations; but the author did his part impersonally and indirectly, whilst the minister did his part personally and face to face. The author's shaft was from a bow drawn at a venture; the minister's was carefully aimed. He set himself to win the young student in his congregation, and he lived to rejoice unfeignedly in his success. Let me introduce each of the four.
The Father bore his Corner. Before Henry Martyn left England, he was one of the most brilliant students in the country, Senior Wrangler of his University, and the proud holder of scholarships and fellowships. But, in his earlier days, he failed at one or two examinations, and, in his mortification, heaped the blame upon his father. In one of these fits of passion, he bounced out of the elder man's presence--never to enter it again. Before he could return and express contrition, the father suddenly died. Henry's remorse was pitiful to see. His heart was filled with grief and his eyes swollen with tears. But that torrent of tears so cleansed those eyes that he was able to see, as he had never seen before, into the abysmal depths of his own heart. He was astonished at the baseness and depravity he found there. Years afterwards he writes with emotion of the distressing discovery that he then made. 'I do not remember a time,' he says, 'in which the wickedness of my heart rose to a greater height than it did then. The consummate selfishness and exquisite instability of my mind were displayed in rage, malice and envy; in pride, vain-glory and contempt for all about me; and in the harsh language which I used to my sister and even to my father. Oh, what an example of patience and mildness was he! I love to think of his excellent qualities; and it is the anguish of my heart that I could ever have been base enough and wicked enough to have pained him. O my God, why is not my heart doubly-agonized at the remembrance of all my great transgressions?' So poor John Martyn, lying silent in his grave, entered into that felicity which, in one of her short poems, Miss Susan Best has so touchingly depicted. 'When I was laid in my coffin,' she makes a dead man say,
When I was laid in my coffin,
Quite done with Time and its fears,
My son came and stood beside me--
He hadn't been home for years;
And right on my face came dripping
The scald of his salty tears;
And I was glad to know his breast
Had turned at last to the old home nest,
That I said to myself in an underbreath:
'This is the recompense of death.'
The Sister bore her Corner. In his letters to her he opens all his heart. He is sometimes angry with her because, when he expected her to show delight in his academic triumphs, she only exhibits an earnest solicitude for his spiritual well-being. But, in his better moments, he forgave her. 'What a blessing it is for me,' he writes to her in his twentieth year, 'what a blessing it is for me that I have such a sister as you, who have been so instrumental in keeping me in the right way.' And, later on, he delights her by telling her that he 'has begun to attend more diligently to the words of the Saviour and to devour them with delight.'
The Author bore his Corner. It was just about a hundred years after the birth of Philip Doddridge, and just about fifty years after his death, that his book, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, fell into the hands of Henry Martyn. Twenty years earlier it had opened the eyes of William Wilberforce and led him to repentance. Doddridge's powerful sentences fell upon the proud soul of Henry Martyn like the lashes of a scourge. He resented them; he writhed under their condemnation; but they revealed to him the desperate need of his heart, and he could not shake from him the alarm which they excited.
The Minister bore his Corner. No preacher in England was better fitted to appeal to the mind of Martyn, at this critical stage of his career, than was the Rev. Charles Simeon, the Vicar of Trinity Church, Cambridge. In his concern, the young collegian found himself strangely attracted to the services at Trinity; and he gradually acquired, as he confessed to his sister, more knowledge in divine things. He made the acquaintance, and won the friendship, of Mr. Simeon, and confided in him without reserve. 'I now experienced,' he says, 'a real pleasure in religion, being more deeply convinced of sin than before, more earnest in fleeing to Jesus for refuge, and more desirous for the renewal of my nature.' The profit was mutual. For, many years after Henry Martyn's departure and death, Mr. Simeon kept in his study a portrait of the young student, and he used to say that he could never look into that face but it seemed to say to him, 'Be earnest! Be earnest!'
And so, to repeat the language of the Gospel, 'there came unto Jesus one that was borne of four,' and his name was Henry Martyn.