THE REV. HENRY MARTYN, B.D.,

THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY AND ORIENTAL SCHOLAR.

'Atque opere in medio defixa reliquit aratra.'

'Hopes have precarious life;
They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer oft
In vigorous youth and turned to rottenness;
But faithfulness can feed on suffering,
And know no disappointment.' Spanish Gypsy.

Anyone who would write the life of Henry Martyn, must feel that he is about to tread upon holy ground. For, however clearly we may see, on perusing his 'Journals and Letters,'[102] that his introspection was morbidly minute, his temper naturally irritable, and his religious views generally of the gloomiest as well as of an almost impracticable character, yet his ardent zeal, his saint-like devotion, his self-denial, and his deep humility, afford such an example of earnest piety as is rarely to be met with in the annals of the Church, since the days of the Apostles themselves. His very faults were but 'the shadows of his virtues,' and of Henry Martyn it might truly be said that to him—without religion—

'The pillared firmament was rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble.'

How much of this was due to that frequent correlation which, as Mr. Galton points out, frequently exists between an unusually devout disposition and a weak constitution, it would of course be hard to say.