In the morning Chrysostom earnestly begged for a brief respite, but in vain. He was hurried off, but scarcely had he gone three or four miles when a violent attack of fever compelled them to retrace their steps.
On reaching the martyrium, Chrysostom, led within, stripped on his soiled garments, clothed himself in white baptismal vestments, joined in the communion of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, offered his last prayer ‘for present needs,’ uttered his accustomed doxology: ‘Glory be to God for all things,’ and, having said ‘Amen,’ breathed his last on September 14, 407, in his sixtieth year. His body was laid beside that of Basiliscus. A generation after, the children of the Empress and Emperor who had thus slaughtered the saint brought back his body and gave it imperial sepulture in Constantinople, while they publicly asked Heaven to forgive the wrong of the past.
From Basiliscus, Basil, and Chrysostom to Henry Martyn, the fourteen centuries tell of the corruption of the Church of Christ in the East, and the rise upon its ruins of Mohammedanism, which covered the northern half of Africa, and Spain, and reached as far as Tours and Vienna in Europe. It is to the glory of Henry Martyn that he was the first missionary of the Reformed Church of the West to the Mohammedans, giving those of India and Central Asia the Gospel and the Psalms in two of their own vernaculars, and dying for them before he could complete his work at the Arabic Bible.
We shall see whom his example inspired to follow him. His death became a summons, first to his own evangelical circle in England and India, and then to the whole Church of Christ, to follow in the path that he marked out alike by his toiling and his writing.
Sergius, the Armenian, must at once have pursued the journey from Tokat to Constantinople, which is distant from Tabreez 1,542 miles, and not 1,300 as roundly estimated by Henry Martyn. He presented the letters of his master to Mr. Isaac Morier, in the Sultan’s capital, father of Sir Gore Ouseley’s secretary and successor. On February 12, 1813, Charles Simeon wrote thus to Mr. Thomason in Calcutta:
The day before yesterday a letter arrived from Mr. Isaac Morier, of Constantinople, announcing that on October 16 (or thereabouts) our beloved brother entered into the realms of glory, and rested for ever in the bosom of his God.... But what an event it is! How calamitous to his friends, to India, and to the world! Methinks I hear God say: ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ ... I had been forming plans in my mind with a view to the restoration of his health in England, and should now have been able to carry into execution whatever might have been judged expedient; but I am denied the joy of ministering to him!
Again on April 2:
We are making collections for Mr. Martyn’s brother’s family, who in him have lost their main support. We have got about 400l., and Mr. Thornton has sent you a paper for the purpose of getting them some aid in India.
The news reached Lydia Grenfell on February 14, 1813. She was then for a fortnight at Marazion, where every spot recalled the past. She thus communed with herself and God in her Diary:
Marazion: February 20, 1813.