[63] See the Play as collected from oral tradition by the late Sir Lewis Pelly, in two volumes, 1879.
[64] Second edition published by the Church Missionary Society in 1858.
[65] ‘Some of our most eminent Native Christians are converts from Mohammedanism. We may particularly mention the Rev. Jani Ali, B.A.; the Rev. Imad-ud-din, D.D.; the Rev. Imam Shah; the Rev. Mian Sadiq; the Rev. Yakub Ali; Maulavi Safdar Ali, a high Government official; Abdullah Athim, also a high official, now retired, and an honorary lay evangelist.’—Church Missionary Society’s Intelligencer in 1888.
CHAPTER XI
IN PERSIA—TRANSLATING THE SCRIPTURES
Great as saint and notable as scholar, in the twelve years of his young life from Senior Wrangler to martyr at thirty-one years of age, the highest title of Henry Martyn to everlasting remembrance is that he gave the Persians in their own tongue the Testament of the one Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the Hebrew Psalms. By that work, the fruit of which every successive century will reveal till the consummation of the ages, he unconsciously wrote his name beside those of the greatest missionaries in the history of the Church of Christ, the sacred scholars who were the first to give the master races of Asia and Africa, of Europe and America, the Word of God in their vernaculars. Let us write the golden list, which for modern Africa and Oceania also we might inscribe in letters of silver,[66] were not most of the translators still living and perfecting their at first tentative efforts, which time must try:
| A.D. | ||
| 350 | Ulfilas | Gothic (Teutonic) |
| 368 | Frumentius and Edesius (Brothers) | Ethiopic |
| 385 | Hieronymus (Jerome) | Latin |
| 410 | Mesrobes (Miesrob) | Armenian |
| 861 | C. Cyrillus and Methodius (Brothers) | Slavonic (Bulgarian) |
| 1380 | Wiclif (Bede in 735) | English |
| 1516 | Erasmus (new translation) | Latin |
| 1534 | Luther (translation from Latin of Erasmus) | German |
| 1661 | John Eliot (first Bible printed in America) | Moheecan |
| 1777 | Fabricius (Ziegenbalg & Schultze first 1714) | Tamul |
| 1801 | William Carey (O.T. in 1802-9) | Bengali, &c. |
| 1815 | Henry Martyn | Persian |
| 1816 | Henry Martyn (Sabat’s N.T. version) | Arabic |
| 1822 | Joshua Marshman (Morrison & Milne 1823) | Chinese |
| 1832 | Adoniram Judson (O.T. 1834) | Burmese |
| 1865 | Van Dyck | Arabic |
It was David Brown who was wont to call the Bible ‘The Great Missionary which would speak in all tongues the wonderful works of God.’