September 20.—First day of the fast of Ramazan. All the family had been up in the night, to take an unseasonable meal, in order to fortify themselves for the abstinence of the day. It was curious to observe the effects of the fast in the house. The master was scolding and beating his servants; they equally peevish and insolent, and the beggars more than ordinarily importunate and clamorous. At noon, all the city went to the grand mosque. My host came back with an account of new vexations there. He was chatting with a friend, near the door, when a great preacher, Hajji Mirza, arrived, with hundreds of followers. ‘Why do you not say your prayers?’ said the new-comers to the two friends. ‘We have finished,’ said they. ‘Well,’ said the other, ‘if you cannot pray a second time with us, you had better move out of the way.’ Rather than join such turbulent zealots they retired. The reason of this unceremonious address was, that these loving disciples had a desire to pray all in a row with their master, which, it seems, is the custom. There is no public service in the mosque; every man here prays for himself.
Coming out of the mosque some servants of the prince, for their amusement, pushed a person against a poor man’s stall, on which were some things for sale, a few European and Indian articles, also some valuable Warsaw plates, which were thrown down and broken. The servants went off without making compensation. No kazi will hear a complaint against the prince’s servants.
Hajji Mahommed Hasan preaches every day during the Ramazan. He takes a verse from the Koran, or more frequently tells stories about the Imams. If the ritual of the Christian Churches, their good forms and everything they have, is a mere shadow without a Divine influence attend on them, what must all this Mahometan stuff be? and yet how impossible is it to convince the people of the world, whether Christian or Mahometan, that what they call religion is merely an invention of their own, having no connection with God and His kingdom! This subject has been much on my mind of late. How senseless the zeal of Churchmen against dissenters, and of dissenters against the Church! The kingdom of God is neither meat nor drink, nor anything perishable; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Mirza Ibrahim never goes to the mosque, but he is so much respected that nothing is said: they conclude that he is employed in devotion at home. Some of his disciples said to Seyd Ali, before him: ‘Now the Ramazan is come, you should read the Koran and leave the Gospel.’ ‘No,’ said his uncle, ‘he is employed in a good work: let him go on with it.’ The old man continues to inquire with interest about the Gospel, and is impatient for his nephew to explain the evidences of Christianity, which I have drawn up.
September 22. (Sunday.)—My friends returned from the mosque, full of indignation at what they had witnessed there. The former governor of Bushire complained to the vizier, in the mosque, that some of his servants had treated him brutally. The vizier, instead of attending to his complaint, ordered them to do their work a second time; which they did, kicking and beating him with their slippers, in the most ignominious way, before all the mosque. This unhappy people groan under the tyranny of their governors; yet nothing subdues or tames them. Happy Europe! how has God favoured the sons of Japheth, by causing them to embrace the Gospel. How dignified are all the nations of Europe compared with this nation! Yet the people are clever and intelligent, and more calculated to become great and powerful than any of the nations of the East, had they a good government and the Christian religion.
September 29.—The Soofi, son of the Moojtahid, with some others, came to see me. For fifteen years he was a devout Mahometan; visited the sacred places, and said many prayers. Finding no benefit from austerities he threw up Mahommedanism altogether, and attached himself to the Soofi master. I asked him what his object was, all that time? He said, he did not know, but he was unhappy. I began to explain to him the Gospel; but he cavilled at it as much as any bigoted Mahommedan could do, and would not hear of there being any distinction between Creator and creature. In the midst of our conversation, the sun went down, and the company vanished for the purpose of taking an immediate repast.
Mirza Seyd Ali seems sometimes coming round to Christianity against Soofi-ism. The Soofis believe in no prophet, and do not consider Moses to be equal to Mirza Abulkasim. ‘Could they be brought,’ Seyd Ali says, ‘to believe that there has been a prophet, they would embrace Christianity.’ And what would be gained by such converts? ‘Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.’ It will be an afflicted and poor people that shall call upon the name of the Lord, and such the Soofis are not: professing themselves to be wise, they have become fools.
October 7.—I was surprised by a visit from the great Soofi doctor, who, while most of the people were asleep, came to me for some wine. I plied him with questions innumerable; but he returned nothing but incoherent answers, and sometimes no answer at all. Having laid aside his turban, he put on his night-cap, and soon fell asleep upon the carpet. Whilst he lay there his disciples came, but would not believe, when I told them who was there, till they came and saw the sage asleep. When he awoke, they came in, and seated themselves at the greatest possible distance, and were all as still as if in a church. The real state of this man seems to be despair, and it will be well if it do not end in madness. I preached to him the kingdom of God: mentioning particularly how I had found peace from the Son of God and the Spirit of God; through the first, forgiveness; through the second, sanctification. He said it was good, but said it with the same unconcern with which he admits all manner of things, however contradictory. Poor soul! he is sadly bewildered.
As a Persian scholar and controversialist Henry Martyn found a worthy successor in the German, and afterwards Church Missionary Society’s missionary, C.G. Pfander, D.D. When for some twelve years stationed at Shushy Fort, on the Russian border of Georgia, he frequently visited Baghdad and travelled through Persia by Ispahan and Teheran. In 1836 the intolerant Russian Government expelled all foreign missionaries from its territories, and Dr. Pfander joined the Church Mission at Agra. In 1835 he first published at Shushy, in Persian, his famous Mizan ul Haqq, or Balance of Truth. A Hindustani translation was lithographed at Mirzapore in 1843, and Mr. R.H. Weakley, missionary at Constantinople, made an English translation, which was published by the Church Missionary Society in 1867. This, as yet, greatest of works which state the general argument for Christianity and against Islam, was followed by the Miftah ul Asrar, in proof of the Divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity, and by the Tarik ul Hyat, or the nature of sin and the way of salvation, of both of which Hindustani translations appeared. In his little English Remarks on the Nature of Muhammadanism,[64] as shown in the Traditions, Dr. Pfander quotes from Martyn’s Controversy. By these writings and the personal controversy in India, Dr. Pfander, following Henry Martyn, was the means of winning to Christ, in tolerant British India, many Mohammedan moulvies like him who is now the Rev. Imad-ud-din, D.D.[65]
Henry Martyn’s description of the Persian is no less applicable to the Indian Mohammedan, in the opinion of Sir William Muir; ‘he is a compound of ignorance and bigotry, and all access to the one is hedged up by the other.’ The Koran and the whole system of Islam are based on partial truths, plagiarised from Scripture to an extent sufficient to feed the pride of those who hold them. But beyond these corruptions of Judaism and Christianity, for which the dead Eastern Churches of Mohammed’s time and since are responsible, Persians, Turks, Arabs, Afghans, and Hindustan Muhammadans know nothing either of history or Christian Divinity. All controversy, from P.H. Xavier’s time to Martyn’s, Wilson’s, and Pfander’s, shows that the key of the position is not the doctrine of the Trinity, as the Shi’ah Moojtahids of Shiraz and Lucknow and the Soonnis everywhere make it, but the genuineness and integrity of the Scriptures, by which the truth of the whole Christian faith will follow, the Trinity included. The Bible, in Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic, with its self-evidencing power, is the weapon which Henry Martyn was busied in forging.