August 29.—I walked to Truro, with my mind almost all the way taken up with Lydia. But once reasoning in this way—If God made me, and wills my happiness, as I do not doubt, then He is providing for my good by separating me from her; this reasoning convinced my mind. I felt very solemnly and sweetly the excellence of serving God faithfully, of following Christ and His Apostles, and meditated with great joy on the approach of the end of this world. Yet still I enjoyed, every now and then, the thought of walking hereafter with her, in the realms of glory, conversing on the things of God. My mind the rest of the evening was much depressed. I had no desire to live in this world; scarcely could I say where I would be, or what I would do, now that my self-will was so strongly counteracted. Thus God waits patiently my return from my backsliding, which I would do immediately. If He were to offer me the utmost of my wishes, I would say, ‘Not so, Lord! Not my will, but Thine be done.’
August 30.—Passed the morning rather idly, in reading lives of pious women. I felt an indescribable mixture of opposing emotions. At one time, about to ascend with delight to God, who had permitted me to aspire after the same glory, but oftener called down to earth by my earthly good. Major Sandys calling, continued till dinner conversing about India. I consented to stay a day with him at Helston, but the thought of being so near Marazion renewed my pain, especially taken in connection with my going thither on the subject of my departure. After dinner, walked in the garden for two hours, reasoning with my perverse heart, and, through God’s mercy, not without success. You preach up deadness to the world, and yet not an example of it! Now is the time, my soul, if you cannot feel that it is best to bear the cross, to trust God for it. This will be true faith. If I were put in possession of my idol, I should immediately say and feel that God alone was, notwithstanding, the only good, and to Him I should seek immediately. Again I weighed the probable temporal consequence of having my own will gratified; the dreadful pain of separation by death, after being united, together with the distress I might bring upon her whom I loved. All these things were of small influence till I read the Epistle to the Hebrews, by which my mind, made to consider divine things attentively, was much more freed from earthly things. ‘Let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need,’ was very precious and comforting to me. I have found grace to help in this time of need; I still want a humble spirit to wait upon the Lord. I almost called God to witness that I duly resigned my pleasure to His, as if I wished it to be remembered. In the evening had a serious and solemn time in prayer, chiefly for the influences of the Spirit, and rose with my thoughts fixed on eternity; I longed for death, and called on the glorious day to hasten; but it was in order to be free from the troubles of this world.
August 31.—Passed the morning partly in reading and writing, but chiefly in business. Rode to Rosemundy, with my mind at first very unhappy, at the necessity of mortifying my self-will, in the same particulars as for some days. In conversing on the subject of India with Major Sandys, I could not help communicating the pain I felt at parting with the person to whom I was attached; but by thus dwelling on the subject my heart was far more distressed than ever. Found my mind more easy and submissive to God at night in prayer.
St. Hilary Church, in which Henry Martyn preached, is one of the oldest in England, containing, in the tower of Edward III.’s reign, two stones with inscriptions of the time of the Emperor Flavius Constantinus, who was killed by Honorius in 411. What Lydia Grenfell thought of Martyn’s sermon on that day, August 26, thenceforth memorable to both, we find in her Diary of that date:
1804, August 26.—Heard H.M. on ‘Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin (i.e. sin-offering) for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.’ Exordium on the honourable employment of a minister of the Gospel. In the text two things were implied. First, we were at enmity with God. Second, we were unable to restore ourselves to His favour. There were two things expressed in the text—the means of reconciliation, and God’s invitation to be reconciled; a threefold address to saints, backsliders, and sinners; and a farewell address. A precious sermon. Lord, bless the preacher, and those that heard him!
At that time, in 1804, the lady was still preoccupied, in conscience or heart, or both, by her imaginary ties to Mr. S. John. But six months before that she had heard of his approaching marriage, though, in fact, that did not take place till 1810. All that time, if she did not feel, to one to whom her heart had been more closely united than to any ‘earthly object,’ as she had written in her Diary, what Mr. H.M. Jeffery describes as the attachment of a widow with the responsibility of a wife, her scrupulous introspective habit was an obstacle to a healthy attachment. The preacher, younger than herself, was in 1804 evidently to her only an interesting and gracious second cousin, or perhaps a little more.
On his way back to London Henry Martyn again visited Plymouth, where he learned from his cousin ‘that my attachment to her sister was not altogether unreturned, and the discovery gave me both pleasure and pain.’ He left them, his thoughts ‘almost wholly occupied with Lydia.’ London, Cambridge, his reading and his walking, his work and even his sleep, bring him no rest from the absorbing passion. His Journal is full of it, almost every day. Fortescue’s poems recall the happy mornings at St. Hilary, but his pensive meditation subsided into a more profitable one on the vanity of the world: ‘they marry and are given in marriage,’ and at the end of a few years what are they more than myself?—looking forward to the same dissolution, and expecting their real happiness in another life. ‘The fashion of this world passeth away,’ Amen. ‘Let me do the will of God while I am in it.’
The first day of the year 1805 led him to review the past five years, and to renew his self-dedication to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be His servant for ever. The time for his departure to India was at hand, and his last act, on leaving London for Cambridge, to complete his arrangements for sailing, was deliberately to engage himself to Lydia Grenfell in the following letter to her sister.[11] It is thus referred to in his Journal:
I was in some doubt whether I should send the letter to Emma, as it was taking a very important step, and I could scarcely foresee all the consequences. However, I did send it, and may now be said to have engaged myself to Lydia.