They continued throwing stones at me every day, till happening one day to tell Jaffir Ali Khan, my host, how one as big as my fist had hit me in the back, he wrote to the Governor, who sent an order to all the gates, that if any one insulted me he should be bastinadoed, and the next day came himself in state to pay me a visit. These measures have had the desired effect; they now call me the Feringhi Nabob, and very civilly offer me the kalean; but indeed the Persian commonalty are very brutes; the Soofis declare themselves unable to account for the fierceness of their countrymen, except it be from the influence of Islam. After speaking in my praise one of them added ‘and there are the Hindus too (who have brought the guns), when I saw their gentleness I was quite charmed with them; but as for our Iranees, they delight in nothing but tormenting their fellow creatures.’ These Soofis are quite the Methodists of the East. They delight in everything Christian, except in being exclusive. They consider that all will finally return to God, from whom they emanated, or rather of whom they are only different forms. The doctrine of the Trinity they admired, but not the atonement, because the Mohammedans, they say, consider Imam Husain as also crucified for the sins of men; and to everything Mohammedan they have a particular aversion. Yet withal they conform externally. From these, however, you will perceive the first Persian Church will be formed, judging after the manner of men. The employment of my leisure hours is translating the Psalms into Persian. What will poor Fitrut do when he gets to the poetical books? Job, I hope, you have let him pass over. The Books of Solomon are also in a very sorry condition in the English. The Prophets are all much easier, and consequently better done. I hear there is a man at Yezd that has fallen into the same way of thinking as myself about the letters, and professes to have found out all the arts and sciences from them. I should be glad to compare notes with him. It is now time for me to bid you good night. We have had ice on the pools some time, but no snow yet. They build their houses without chimneys, so if we want a fire we must take the smoke along with it. I prefer wrapping myself in my sheepskin.
Your accounts of the progress of the kingdom of God among you are truly refreshing. Tell dear H. and the men of both regiments that I salute them much in the Lord, and make mention of them in my prayers. May I continue to hear thus of their state, and if I am spared to see them again, may we make it evident that we have grown in grace. Affectionate remembrances to your sister and Sherwoods; I hope they continue to prosecute their labours of love. Remember me to the people of Cawnpore who inquire, etc. Why have not I mentioned Col. P.? It is not because he is not in my heart, for there is hardly a man in the world whom I love and honour more. My most Christian salutations to him.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, dearest brother. Yours affectionately,
H. Martyn.
Martyn’s Cambridge Persian studies were continued for practical Hindustani purposes at Dinapore, in 1809, and the following incident unconsciously lights up his Persian scholarship at that date. Writing to the impatient David Brown at Aldeen, from Patna, on March 28, he says:
You chide me for not trusting my Hindustani to the press. Last week we began the correction of it; present, a Sayyid of Delhi, a poet of Lucknow, three or four literates of Patna, and Baba Ali in the chair; Sabat and myself assessors.
I was amazed and mortified at observing that reference was had to the Persian for every verse, in order to understand the Hindustani. It was, however, a consolation to find that from the Persian they caught the meaning of it instantly, always expressing their admiration of the plainness of their translation.
But when the Persian translation of the four Gospels was printed at Serampore, nearly two years after, Martyn himself was dissatisfied with it. His Cawnpore and especially Lucknow experience had developed him in Persian style, and led him to see that in Persia itself only could the great work be done of translating the Word of God into a language spoken and read from Calcutta and Patna to Damascus and Tabreez.
When Henry Martyn did the noblest achievement of his life, the production of the Persian New Testament, he unknowingly linked himself with the greatest of the Greek Fathers, near whose dust his own was about to be laid. Until the Eastern Church ceased to be aggressive—that is, missionary—Persia, like Central Asia up to China itself, promised to be all Christian. Islam, a corrupted mixture of Judaism and Christianity, took its place. Persia sent a bishop to the Council of Nicæa in 325, and the great Constantine wrote a letter to King Sapor, recommending to his protection the Christian Churches in his empire.[77] Chrysostom (347-407), in his second homily on John, incidentally tells us that ‘the Persians, having translated the doctrines of the Gospel into their own tongue, had learned, though barbarians, the true philosophy.’ In his homily on the memorial of Mary he puts the Persians first, and our British forefathers last, in this remarkable passage: ‘The Persians, the Indians, Scythians, Thracians, Sarmatians, the race of the Moors, and the inhabitants of the British Isles, celebrate a deed performed in a private family in Judea by a woman that had been a sinner.’ The isles of Britain, Claudius Buchanan well remarks, then last, are now the first to restore this memorial to the Persians as well as to other Mohammedan nations. Even so late as 1740 the tyrant Nadir Shah, inquiring as to Jesus Christ, asked for a Persian copy of the Gospels, and had presented to him the combined work of an ignorant Romish priest and some Mohammedan moollas, which excited his ridicule. The traveller, Jonas Hanway, tells us that when Henry Martyn saw this production he exclaimed that he did not wonder at Nadir’s contempt of it.
Martyn arrived in Shiraz on June 11, 1811; in a week he began his Persian translation of the New Testament, and in February 1812 he completed the happy toil, carried on amidst disputations with Soofis and Shi’ahs, Jews and Christians of the Oriental rites, while consumption wasted his body. His ‘leisure’ he spent in translating the Hebrew Psalter. Let us look at him, in that South Persian summer and winter and summer again, now in the city of Shiraz, now driven by the sultry heat to the garden of roses and orange-trees outside the walls near the tomb of Hafiz. The Christian poet has pictured the scene—Alford, when Dean of Canterbury in 1851. Twenty years after, he himself was laid in the churchyard of the mother church of England, St. Martin’s, under this inscription—‘Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam Proficiscentis’: