Modern heroes of the mission field

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

In accedingf to the wish that I should continue my sketches of missionary heroes, and bring down the history of missionary enterprise to our own day, I have prescribed to myself the same rule which guided me in the former series* — namely, that the characters chosen should be those not only of typical men, but representative, as far as possible, of different fields of labour, and various modes of action. The theme has

* Published in the Clergy marCs Magazine for 1878, and also separately as a volume by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, Paternoster Row, London; and Whittaker, Bible House, New York. The present sketches were originally printed in the same Magazine, i88i.

vi _ PREFACE.

been resumed with the commencement of the present century, for the life of Schwartz (which closed the former series) brought us down to the end of the eighteenth.

In reviewing the long, grand muster-roll of illustrious names which belong to the period that has intervened between his day and ours, the chief difficulty lay in the exercise of choice. It has been thought better, for many reasons, to make no mention of living men, although some of these might well take their place beside any of the noblest who have preceded them ; but even with this additional limitation, the task of selection, if not an invidious, has certainly not been an easy one.

We trust that these sketches will furnish some idea of the extent and progress of missionary work during this century, and of the varied instrumentalities which are now employed in carrying it on. Beginning

PREFACh, vil

with a time when the " messengers of the Churches" were sneered at as ** consecrated cobblers/* they carry us on to our own happier days, when their hames find grateful record in royal speeches, and their remains find honourable repose in our national sanctuaries ; they show us how all sorts of culture, linguistic, medical, and scientific, are being made subservient to the spread of the gospel of Christ ; they prove that the age of chivalry is not past, and that the spirit of martyrdom is not extinct in the Church of God; and they bear testimony that the Gospel has lost neither its vitality nor its power, inasmuch as amongst all races, whether savage or civilized, it has achieved, and is still achieving, triumphs which may well compare with those of apostolic times.

We may challenge the history of the world to produce instances of heroism

X PREFACE.

to deepen sympathy, and to call forth help on behalf of this great cause, — more especially if they be the means of enlisting new warriors in this noblest of all services, — they will have answered the purpose for which they were written, and realized the prayer with which they are now sent forth.

/ 1

PREFACE. ix

furnishes undeniable evidence that, amidst many unhappy differences, there exists amongst Christian people a grand underlying agreement both as to faith and duty To quote the words of one* of whom any Church or nation might be proud : — ** The spirit of missions is the spirit of our Master ; the very genius of true religion. A diffusive philanthropy is Christianity itself. It requires perpetual propagation to attest its genuineness." And he adds, what is of vast importance to bear in mind — " the Church must send her ablest, most highly educated, and best men to the heathen ; . . . for the work in the foreign field is more difficult than the work at home ; " and he describes as a " popular delusion '* the supposition that ** an army requires to be better led in peace than in war." If these sketches help to attract attention,

* Dr. Livingstone.

Contents

CMAr. f>AGI

I. HENRY MARTYN: INDIA AND PERSIA, 1805-181* I

II. WILLIAM CAREY: INDIA, 1793-1834 . • 3I

I

HENRY MARTYN. INDIA AND PERSIA^

1805 — 1812.

As to the name that should stand foremost on the list of *' Modern Heroes of the Mission-field/* there can scarcely be a doubt. That of Henry Martyn does not, indeed, take the first place chronologically; for of those whose lives are to be sketched, one at least preceded him in the mission field ; but for the saintliness of his character, the devotedness of his life, and the influence of his bright though brief career, his name stands confessedly pre-eminent

It is most natural, and appropriate also, considering the purpose for which these sketches were written, that a member of the Church of England should enjoy this distinction ; and we have no doubt that Nonconformists themselves will rejoice to see

Martyn*s name taking such a position on a roll which records the achievements of some of their own most distinguished missionaries. His claim to this place in our own ranks is unquestionable. What Herbert is amongst our poets, and Wilson amongst our bishops, Henry Martyn is amongst our missionary heroes. High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, or whatever other sections there may be amongst us, unite with one accord in giving their meed of honour to this most saintly of men. We cannot, indeed, go so far as Sir James Stephen, and say that ** Martyn's is the one heroic name which adorns the annals of the English Church from the days of Elizabeth to our own ; " but we can assign him a foremost place amongst our best and noblest worthies. Although, in respect to direct missionary success, his career must be considered as almost a failure, yet, in its indirect effects, no other has been more fruitful. His **Life'' has awakened the missionary spirit in more human hearts than any other memoir ever given to the world; and not only has it

Stirred up many a brave spirit to follow him to the same great battle-field, but it has sustained and cheered many a soldier of the cross amidst his arduous conflicts. Thus Weitbrecht writes: *' During my leisure hours I read Henry Martyn's life. Dear Martyn ! how I love his tender heart and his intense love to his Saviour! If any reading besides the Bible is calculated to bring a missionary into a proper frame of mind, while engaged in his labour of love, it is the * Life ' of this holy man. It raised my mind to holy aspirations for the same spirit. Oh ! how I can feel with him in griefs and sorrows, being tempted and tried by an unbelieving world much in the same way.*'

A valued friend whom I consulted in reference to these sketches said to me, *' I fear the life of Henry Martyn is a hackneyed subject ; *' and in one sense he was right, for no story has been more frequently read, or is better known ; but I do not think that the public are tired of it, and others are evidently of the same opinion ; for there has lately issued from the press, as one of a series of books entitled '* Men Worth Remembering," another sketch of our hero's life (by Canon Bell). This paper, however, does not pretend to be more than a loving ** memorial " of one *^ whose praise is in all the churches," and a grateful record of labours which ought never to be forgotten. Born (178 1 ) in the humble home of one who had been a Cornish miner, but who, having learned the value of a little education for himself, desired to give a fuller measure of it to his son, Henry Martyn fought his way through difficulties and adversities up to the highest honours that his university could bestow. Cambridge may well be proud of her senior wrangler, and St. John's may well link together in honour the names of two illustrious students, who within her walls knew and loved each other ; destined each of them to shine with an undying lustre, though in widely different spheres — Henry Kirke White as the poet, and Henry Martyn as the missionary.

How little we can determine, from his first attempts, concerning a man's future career stirred up many a brave spirit to follow him to the same great battle-field, but it has sustained and cheered many a soldier of the cross amidst his arduous conflicts. Thus Weitbrecht writes : ** During my leisure hours I read Henry Martyn's life. Dear Martyn ! how I love his tender heart and his intense love to his Saviour ! If any reading besides the Bible is calculated to bring a missionary into a proper frame of mind, while engaged in his labour of love, it is the * Life ' of this holy man. It raised my mind to holy aspirations for the same spirit. Oh ! how I can feel with him in griefs and sorrows, being tempted and tried by an unbelieving world much in the same way.*'

A valued friend whom I consulted in reference to these sketches said to me, ** I fear the life of Henry Martyn is a hackneyed subject ; *' and in one sense he was right, for no story has been more frequently read, or is better known ; but I do not think that the public are tired of it, and others are evidently of the same opinion ; for there has lately issued from the press, as one of a

Edmund Burke's famous saying on the occasion of a great election: ''What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue! *' But Martyn had begun the search after enduring happiness. The influence of his younger sister, combined with that of a college friend who had been formerly his school companion, had led him to the study of the Holy Scriptures ; and the death of his father, which occurred just as his son had attained the highest summit of his ambition, deepened his religious impressions, and he soon found rest and satisfaction in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Up to this time he had resolved on going to ** the law" as a profession, and had preferred it to entering the ministry, *' chiefly," as he confesses, " because he would not consent to be poor for Christ's sake." But now a new ambition seized him, and he resolved not only to become a clergyman, but to devote his life to the work of God amongst the heathen. He accordingly offered himself, at the close of the year 1802, to the Church Missionary Society, and professed himself ready to go

*

may be illustrated from the fact that Martyn began his college studies by committing the propositions of Euclid to memory, and yet at the end of four short years he was the foremost mathematician of his class. It augured well for his many-sidedness of mind, that though he mainly applied himself to mathematics, he carried off the first prizes of his year in Latin composition, was elected fellow of his college, and was again and again appointed as Examiner in classics and metaphysics. Indeed, he was known amongst his fellow-students as *' the man who had not lost an hour." But the time was at hand when he was to lay down all his honours at the Master's feet, and to consecrate all his abilities and attainments to that Master's service.

He had already realized the insufficiency of earthly honours to make him happy. He thus describes his own feelings at the moment when all men were applauding and many envyijig him : ** I obtained my highest wishes, but was surprised to find that I grasped a shadow." It reminds us of position of a missionary was held in pity and contempt — in pity by those who esteemed their work as an earnest but wild enthusiasm — in contempt by those who considered them more in the light of fools than fanatics. It was the day when the authorities openly opposed missionary effort in India, and when a Governor-General declared that the man who could be mad enough to speak of religion to the natives would fire a pistol into a magazine of gunpowder. Our missionary-designate had to encounter these prejudices, and to learn that not even his admitted talents or his academic distinctions could save him from scorn and misconception. **Yet I desire," he writes, ** to take the ridicule of men with all meekness and charity, looking forward to another world for '^ approbation and reward." And this moreover was a life-long trial; for towards the end of his career we find him repeating lines, which were often upon his lips during his seven years of incessant toil —

" If on my face for Thy dear name Shame and reproaches be, to any part' of the world as a missionary of the cross of Christ.

This choice was mainly determined by two things ; first, by an observation of the Rev. Charles Simeon, to whose ministry at Cambridge he had attached himself. This observation had reference to the wonderful benefits which had resulted from the labours of a single missionary (Dr. Carey) in India, and the young graduate could not divest his mind of the impression which it made. It haunted him day and night. Soon after this he was led to read an account of David Brainerd, who had devoted a short but noble life to the evangelization of the Red Indians ; and this memoir not only confirmed his growing resolve to dedicate himself to missionary work, but often guided and cheered him afterwards, amidst his arduous labours in the East. Most truly may it be said that he became what Brainerd often wished to be, — '*a flame of fire in the service of his God.'*

It must not be forgotten that at the time Henry Martyn came to this resolve the lo MODERN HEROES OF

pangs to which an affectionate and sensitive nature can be subjected, that Henry Martyn found himself taking leave of honours and fame and friends at home, to encounter the unknown but certain trials of what he was determined should be a missionary career. He makes no secret of his feelings ; and his letters and journals bear witness that he took his last look at England with an almost breaking heart: '*I find by experience that I am as weak as water," They are touching words — all the more touching for their honesty and truthfulness.

And there was besides, in his case, " a beautiful sad story** of tender and deep attachment to one who seemed well worthy of him, but whose union to the man she loved was hindered both then and afterwards by circumstances upon which we have neither time nor heart to linger. It is very affecting, as one reads his memoir, to see how her image again and again rises to his view, now as he gazes from the deck of the vessel that bears him far away, or again as he looks out on the pale moonlight of an Eastern sky, or

All hail reproach, and welcome shame, If Thou remember me 1 "

And yet, strange to say, it was not as a professed missionary that this most devoted of all missionaries found his way to the East. Just at this crisis of his history all his little patrimony was lost, and as his sister was involved in the disaster, it appeared scarcely justifiable to leave her unprovided for, so long as his presence in England could alleviate her distress. His friends, in order to meet the difficulty, procured him a chaplaincy in the East India Company's service, and it was avowedly in that capacity he went forth to foreign lands ; but how he used his position to further the great aim* of his life let his whole subsequent history declare ; and in what spirit he received the appointment let the following extract from his journal testify : — ** The prospect of this world's happiness gave me rather pain than pleasure, which convinced me that I had been running away from the world rather than overcoming it." Let no one imagine, however, that it was without the deepest both to degraded Hottentot and brave British soldier the words of eternal life.

India was reached at last, and the heart of our missionary was filled with conflicting* emotions — of joy, to find himself in the scene of his long-anticipated labours — of despondency, when he looked around and saw the ** gross darkness " of the land, and the apparently insuperable hindrances in his path. With all his enthusiasm, he was not the man to under-estimate the difficulties of his work ; and with a temperament which was not so much the result of melancholy as of an exquisite sensitiveness, his heart often sank within him at the scenes he witnessed, and the abominations by which he was surrounded. His righteous soul was vexed, now by the apathy or the opposition shown by his fellow-countrymen in India towards the truth which he preached ; now by their ungodly lives, which raised up the most fearful stumbling-blocks against the reception of Christianity by the natives. At one time we find him saddened and depressed by gross idolatries in the pagoda of Juggernaut,

THE MISSION FIELD. ii

once more as he finds himself amidst the solitude and dreariness of some comfortless caravansary. The last letter he ever wrote was to Lydia Grenfell, when from his distant station at Tabriz, though labouring under illness and weakness, he looked forward to a meeting with her whom he hoped one day to call his wife. But it was not to be. Their union and their joy were to be reserved for heaven.

We cannot dwell upon the eventful voyage, during which, ** instant in season and out of season," he preached Christ to his fellow-passengers, with a boldness that made some angry, and yet with a tenderness that made others weep. Nor can we stay to tell how on the Brazilian coast he gained alike the love of wealthy planter and of poor slave, and held conversations in Latin with priests and friars, endeavouring to win them to the *' truth as it is in Jesus." Neither can we tarry to relate how at the Cape, where a fierce war was waging, he went ashore, regardless of all danger, to minister to the wounded and the dying, and to speak character and worth. Indeed, every effort was made to detain him at Calcutta, that he might minister to the English, but his heart was set on his special work, and from the first he sedulously devoted himself to the acquisition of Sanscrit and Hindustani, in order to fit himself for it, often wearying his Munshees by his untiring assiduity.

At the end of four months he was sent to Dinapore, and began his regular duties as chaplain to the troops. To a man like Martyn these were not matters of mere routine; nor did he confine his ministrations to the ordinary services from the drum-head, or to the visitation of sick soldiers in the hospital. He had special meetings in the evening for such as were desirous of further spiritual instruction; he gathered the native wives of the soldiers every Sunday afternoon for a service in their own tongue ; he prepared for their use a Hindustani translation of our Lord's parables, with a simple commentary ; and he opened, at his own cost, five schools for native children. Frequently his duties were of a most painful kind. At at another horrified at finding himself just too late to rescue a deluded woman from the blazing fire of the Suttee. It was no marvel that he should say, *' I shivered as if standing as it were in the neighbourhood of hell; " and again, ** The fiends of darkness seem to sit in sullen repose in this land."

Still his faith failed not ; he knew what God could do in His own good time, and in that confidence he wrote these almost prophetic words : ** Even if I never should see a native converted, God may design, by my patience and continuance in the work, to encourage future missionaries.*'

His first home in India was appropriately enough in a ruined pagoda which was fitted up for his use, and it was a joy to him that ** the place where once devils were worshipped was now become a Christian oratory.'' He soon made the acquaintance of men likeminded with himself — Browa and Corrie, and also of the Serampore missionaries — Carey and Marshman. He had really beei) given to India in answer to their prayers, and they were not slow to appreciate his pathy cheered him, and whose graphic pen has left us such vivid portraits both of our hero and his work. Her first impressions of him are thus recorded : ** He was dressed in white, and looked very pale, which however was nothing singular in India ; his hair, a light brown, was raised from his forehead, which was a remarkably fine one. His features were not regular, but the expression was so luminous, so intellectual, so affectionate, so beaming with Divine charity, that no one could have looked at his features and thought of their shape or form; the outbeaming of his soul would absorb the attention of every observer." She describes him as most polished and refined ; with a voice and ear most musical ; and her picture of her little Lucy, eighteen months old, creeping up to the pale, white-clad missionary, as he lay upon his sofa, with all his books around him, and perching herself on the big Hebrew Lexicon, which he needed at every turn, but from which his gentle love would not displace her, is most beautiful and touching, and shows that his was not the morose and v^wr one time he is remonstrating with a colonel who is living in open and flagrant sin; at another he is rebuking an apostate official who has abjured Christianity, and built a mosque in honour of the false prophet. But amidst all this his heart is fixed upon his chosen work ; he is mastering Arabic and Persian ; he is disputing with Brahmins, and becoming acquainted with their tenets ; he is studying the Ramayuna and the Koran ; he is translating portions of the New Testament and of the Prayer Book into oriental tongues; and all this in a place where, to use his own regretful language, ** not one voice is heard saying, ' I wish you good luck in the name of the Lord.' "

Three years of this prefatory work, and he is transferred to Cawnpore (1809), where we find him preaching to a thousand soldiers drawn up in a hollow square, when the heat is so intense that many of the men drop down around him, and where his own health suffers continually from ague and fever. It was here that he had the happiness of meeting Mrs. Sherwood, whose Christian sym to their heels ; every countenance toui and frightful with evil passions ; the lips black with tobacco, or crimson with henna. One man who came in a cart, drawn by a bullock, was so bloated as to look like an enormous frog; another had kept an arm above his head, with his hand clenched till the nails had come out of the back of his hand ; and one very tall man had all his bones marked on his dark skin with white chalk, like the figure of grim Death himself."

Such was the congregation of the gifted and accomplished Fellow of St. John's, but it realized to him the happy experience of the Master — ** To the poor the gospel is preached ; " and though at the time he only knew of one old Hindu woman (whom he had baptized) as the fruit of his labour, a seed had fallen in that unlikely place, which brought forth much fruit in after days. Amongst some young Mussulmans who sat one evening on the wall of the missionary's garden, amusing themselves with the *' folly" of the English padre, was a pundit named Sheik Salah. To him the word of God gloomy temperament with which he has sometimes been unfairly credited.

It was at Cawnpore he made his first essay at public preaching to the natives ; and his was a weird and motley congregation. On Sunday evenings he opened the gates of his garden to the devotees and vagrants who haunted the station, and who were easily induced to attend by the promise of a pice apiece. Sometimes from five to eight hundred of these Jogees and Fakeers would crowd around him, as he read to them some striking verse of Scripture, and then endeavoured to explain to them, in language most simple but most beautiful, the Fatherhood of God and the love of Jesus Christ our Saviour, It was a scene that might have inspired the pencil of some great artist. Mrs. Sherwood says that *' no dreams in the delirium of a raging fever could surpass the realities" presented on these occasions. She describes this frightful crowd, ** clothed with abominable rags, or nearly without clothes, or plastered with mud and cow-dung, or with long matted locks streaming down named Mirza, of Benares, who seems to have been a comfort as well as a help to him ; but Sabat, the Arabian, whom he employed to aid him in the Persian, and who afterwards became an apostate from Christianity, was a constant trouble and perplexity ; his wild, passionate nature breaking out perpetually into all kinds of insubordination. In one passage of his journal, Martyn speaks thus truly though unconsciously of his own spirit, when he says, ''And this also I learnt, that the power of gentleness is irresistible." But not even Martyn' s gentleness could tame this Ishmaelite ; and one result of his proud and unbending superciliousness was that the missionary's better judgment was often overborne in the work which he had in hand ; so that after the translation was completed he had the mortification of finding that whilst in the opinion of competent judges his Hindustani was all that could be desired, his Persian was too lofty in its style, and too full of Arabic idioms, to be generally useful. On making this discovery, he resolved to go into Persia and Arabia, with the view of revis-

7HE MISSION FIELD. 19

proved quick and powerful, and we meet with him afterwards in mission history as Abdul Messeh, the earliest of our Indian pastors, who was ordained by Bishop Heber, and of whom that discerning and lamented prelate speaks in his journal with such commendation. More than forty Hindus were converted to Christianity by the instrumentality of this one man ; and when he died, a monument was erected by the Resident at Lucknow, to commemorate his devotedness and success. Truly the labours of Henry Martyn were **not in vain in the Lord," although in this case, as in others, he was not privileged to see the fruits for himself.

But his great work was his translation of the New Testament, first into the Hindustani, and next into the Persian tongue. To use an expression of his own, he felt that ** the translation of the Scriptures was the grand point," and that it would be ** a work of more lasting benefit " than his preaching would be, and therefore to this he gave himself unremittingly. His assistant in the Hindustani translation was a famous scholar

He left India on the 7th of January, 181 1, without a companion, without even an attendant, and it is only from fragments of his letters and journals we can trace his progress. Now he is on board a vessel for Bombay, and delights in hearing from the captain, who had been a pupil of Schwartz, the story of that noble missionary; now he is standing by the tomb of Xavier at Goa, and visiting the chambers of the Inquisition close by; now he is suffering from sunstroke at Bushire; now he is traversing in oriental dress the mountain paths of Persia, with the thermometer rising to 126° at noon, and with the nights so piercingly cold that he has to gather all his wraps about him to keep himself from shivering — **a fire within my head, my skin like a cinder, my pulse violent." But as we read of the countless **parasangs" he travelled day after day, and contrast the object of his journey with that of a Cyrus or an Alexander, we cannot fail to see that the humble missionary was a truer hero than the mighty conquerors who preceded him in those classic regions. Artaig his Persian Testament under the most favourable circumstances, and of completing an Arabic version which was nearly finished.

He quitted India in bad health. Symptoms of consumption, the hereditary disease of his family, had begun to show themselves, and his incessant toil had greatly enfeebled him. His friend, Mr. Browne (at whose instigation he first took up the work of translation), wrote to him, with oriental expressiveness, ** Can I then bring myself to cut the string, and let you go? I confess I could not if your bodily frame were strong, and promised to last for half a century. But as you burn with the intenseness and rapid blaze of phosphorus, why should we not make the most of you? Your flame may last as long, and perhaps longer in Arabia, than in India. Where should the phoenix build her odoriferous nest, but in the land prophetically called the * blessed ' ? And where should we ever expect but from that country the true Comforter to come to the nations of the East?''