To the last he was busy with his Arabic translation of Scripture. The ships of war crossed and recrossed the Gulf from shore to shore, surveying its coasts and islands in the heat of May, tempered by a north-wester which tossed them about. On May 6 he wrote in his Journal:
Much cast down through a sinful propensity, which I little thought was in me at all, till occasion manifested its existence.
On the 19th:
Preached to the ship’s company on John iii. 3. My thoughts so much on Lydia, whose old letter I had been reading the day before, that I had a sense of guilt for having neglected the proper duties of the day.
May 20.—We have now a fair wind, carrying us gently to Bushire.
May 22.—Finished the syllabus of Ecclesiastical History which I have been making all the voyage, and extracts from Mosheim concerning the Eastern Church.
On May 21, 1811, Henry Martyn at last reached Persian soil.
Landed at Bushire this morning in good health; how unceasing are the mercies of the Lord; blessed be His goodness; may He still preserve me from danger, and, above all, make my journey a source of future good to this kingdom of Persia, into which I am now come. We were hospitably received by the acting Resident. In the evening I walked out by the sea-side to recollect myself, to review the past, and look forward to the future.
Suffering the will of God is as necessary a part of spiritual discipline as doing, and much more trying.
But he landed still with the desire ‘to go to Arabia circuitously by way of Persia,’ a course which he declared to be rendered necessary by the advanced state of the season. The people of Arabia were first in his heart.