Some letters I received from Calcutta agitated my silly mind, because my magnificent self seemed likely to become more conspicuous. O wretched creature, where is thy place but the dust? it is good for men to trample upon thee. Various were my reveries on the events apparently approaching, and self was the prominent character in every transaction. I am yet a long way from real humility; oh, when shall I be dead to the world, and desire to be nothing and nobody, as I now do to be somebody?
Throughout the 18th enjoyed a solemn sense of Divine things. The promise was fulfilled, ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you.’ No enemy seemed permitted to approach. I sometimes saw naught in the creation but the works of God, and wondered that mean earthly concerns had ever drawn away my mind from contemplating their glorious Author. Oh, that I could be always so, seeing none but Thee, taught the secrets of Thy covenant, advancing in knowledge of Thee, growing in likeness to Thee. How much should I learn of God’s glory, were I an attentive observer of His Word and Providence. How much should I be taught of His purposes concerning His Church, did I keep my heart more pure for Him. And what gifts might I not expect to receive for her benefit, were I duly earnest to improve His grace for my own! Oh, how is a life wasted that is not spent with God and employed for God. What am I doing the greater part of my time; where is my heart?
Sabat lives almost without prayer, and this is sufficient to account for all evils that appear in saint or sinner.
I feel disposed to partake of the melancholy with which such persons (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) close their lives. Oh, what hath grace done for us! The thought sometimes bursts upon me in a way which I cannot describe. It is not future bliss, but present peace, which we have actually obtained, and which we cannot be mistaken in; the very thing which the world seeks for in vain; and yet how have we found it? By the grace of God we are what we are.
Truly love is better than knowledge. Much as I long to know what I seek after, I would rather have the smallest portion of humility and love than the knowledge of an archangel.
At night I spoke to them on ‘Enoch walked with God.’ My soul breathed after the same holy, happy state. Oh that the influence were more abiding; but I am the man that seeth his natural face in a glass.
This last short sickness has, I trust, been blessed much to me. I sought not immediately for consolations, but for grace patiently to endure and to glory in tribulation; in this way I found peace. Oh, this surely is bliss, to have our will absorbed in the Divine Will. In this state are the spirits of just men made perfect in heaven. The spread of the Gospel in these parts is now become an interesting subject to you—such is the universal change.
Perpetually assaulted with temptations, my hope and trust is that I shall yet be sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of my God. ‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’ When I really strive after purity of heart—for my endeavours are too often little more than pretence—I find no consideration so effectual as that of the exalted dignity and infinitely precious privileges of the saints. Thus a few verses of 1 Eph. are more influential, purifying, and transforming than the most laboured reasoning. Indeed, there is no reasoning with such temptations, and no safety but in flight.
I would that all should adore, but especially that I myself should lie prostrate. As for self, contemptible self, I feel myself saying, Let it be forgotten for ever; henceforth let Christ live, let Christ reign, let Him be glorified for ever.
Henry Martyn, by service, escaped the weakness and the danger of the mystic who seeks absorption into God, in the mental sense, as the remedy for sin, instead of a free and purified individuality in Christ. He felt that the will sins; he saw the cure to lie not in the destruction of the will, but in its rectification and personal co-working with God. Absorption is spiritual suicide, not service. Martyn realised and taught that a free individuality is the best offering we can make to God after Christ has given it to us to offer to Him. With Martyn moral service helped spiritual contemplation to rise heavenward, and to raise men with it. The saint was also the sacred scholar and translator; the mystic was the prophet preacher, the Persian controversialist, the unresting missionary. His Christian life was guided by the motto, ‘To believe, to suffer, and to hope.’ His praying realised his own ideal of ‘a visit to the invisible world.’ His working was ever quickened like St. Paul’s by the summons, alike of the Old dispensation and the New, which he cut with a diamond on the window of his college rooms Ἕγειραι, ὁ καθεύδων, καὶ ἀνάστα, ‘Awake thou that sleepest and arise.’ When the fierce flame of his love and his service had burned out his frail body, his picture, painted at Calcutta the year before he died, spoke thus to Charles Simeon, and ever since it has whispered to every new generation of Cambridge men, ‘Be serious, be in earnest; don’t trifle—don’t trifle.’