Pioneers and Founders

“Only to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ,”

he joined in with a clear melodious voice, and accompanied him to the end.  Two hours later, about four o’clock in the afternoon of the 13th of February, 1798, Christian Friedrich Swartz breathed his last, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-eighth of his mission service in India.

The cries and wailings of the poor resounded all night around the house, and Serfojee Rajah came from a distance to be present at his burial.  It had been intended to sing a funeral hymn, but the cries and lamentations of the poor so overcame the clergy, that they could scarcely raise their voices.  Serfojee wept bitterly, laid a gold cloth over the bier, and remained present while Mr. Gerické read the Funeral Service,—a most unusual departure from Hindoo custom, and a great testimony of affection and respect.

A few months later arrived the decision of the East India Company, that the weak and rapacious Ameer Singh should be deposed, and Serfojee placed on the throne.  He conducted himself excellently as a ruler, and greatly favoured Christians in his territory, always assisting the various schools, and giving liberal aid whenever the frequently-recurring famines of India brought them into distress.

Three years later, in 1801, Serfojee wrote to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, to beg them to order a “monument of marble” at his expense, to the memory of the late Rev. Father Swartz, to be affixed to the pillar nearest the pulpit.  Accordingly, a bas-relief in white marble was executed by Flaxman, representing the death of Swartz, Gerické behind him, two native Christians and three children standing by, and Serfojee clasping his hand and receiving his blessing.  It was not exactly fact, but it was the monumental taste of the day; and it so much delighted the Rajah, that he kept it in his palace, among the portraits of his ancestors, for two years before he could resolve on parting with it to the church.  The Prince likewise composed the epitaph which was carved on the stone which covers the grave of Swartz, the first instance of English verse by a Hindoo:—

“Firm wast thou, humble and wise,Honest, pure, free from disguise;Father of orphans, the widow’s support,Comfort in sorrow of every sort:To the benighted dispenser of light,Doing and pointing to that which is right.Blessing to princes, to people, to me,May I, my father, be worthy of thee,Wisheth and prayeth thy Sarabojee.”

Swartz had always been striving to be poor, and never succeeding.  Living and eating in the humblest manner, and giving away all that came to him, still recognitions of services from English and natives had flowed in on him; and, after all the hosts of poor he had fed, and of churches and schools he had founded, he was an instance of “there is that scattereth and yet increaseth;” for the property he bequeathed to the Mission was enough to assist materially in carrying it on after his death.  Moreover, Serfojee maintained the blind, lame, and decrepit members of his church, and founded an asylum for the orphan children; so that the good men, Gerické, Kohloff, Pohlé, and the rest, were not absolutely dependent on Europe for assistance; and this was well, since the Orphan-house at Halle and the Society at Copenhagen had in this long course of years ceased to send out funds.

But Swartz’s work under their hands continued to prosper.  He had a sort of apotheosis among the heathen, such as he would have been the last to covet; for statues were raised to him, lights burnt before him, and crowns offered up.  But about Palamcotta and throughout Tinnevelly there was one of those sudden movements towards Christianity that sometimes takes place.  The natives were asking instruction from their friends, and going eagerly in search of the catechists and of Sattianadem, and even burning their idols and building chapels in preparation for the coming of more fully qualified teachers.  Mr. Gerické made a tour among them in 1803, and found their hearts so moved towards the Gospel, that he baptized 1,300 in the course of his journey, and the work of Sattianadem and the catechists raised the number of converts to 4,000.  This was, however, this good man’s last journey.  On his return, he found that his only son, an officer in the Company’s service, was dying, and, under the weight of this and other troubles, his health gave way, and he died in the thirty-eighth year of his mission.  Others of the original Danish and German missionaries likewise died, and scarcely any came out in their stead.  Their places were, therefore, supplied by ordinations, by the assembly of ministers, of four native catechists, of whom was Nyanapracasem, a favourite pupil of Swartz.  No Church can take root without a native ministry.  But the absence of any central Church government was grievously felt, both as concerned the English and the Hindoos.  There were more than twenty English regiments in India, and not a single chaplain among them all.

CHAPTER IV.  HENRY MARTYN, THE SCHOLAR-MISSIONARY

Again do we find the steady, plodding labourer of a lifetime contrasted with the warm enthusiast, whose lot seems rather to awaken others than to achieve victories in his own person.  St. Stephen falls beneath the stones, but his glowing discourse is traced through many a deep argument of St. Paul.  St. James drains the cup in early manhood, but his brother holds aloft his witness to extreme old age.

The ardent zeal of the Keltic character; the religious atmosphere that John Wesley had spread over Cornwall, even among those who did not enrol themselves among his followers; the ability and sensitiveness hereditary in the Martyn family, together with the strong influence of a university tutor,—all combined to make such a bright and brief trail of light of the career of Henry Martyn, the son of the head clerk in a merchant’s office at Truro, born on the 18th of February, 1781.  This station sounds lowly enough, but when we find that it was attained by a self-educated man, who had begun life as a common miner, and taught himself in the intervals of rest, it is plain that the elder Martyn must have possessed no ordinary power.  Out of a numerous family only four survived their infancy, and only one reached middle age, and in Henry at least great talent was united to an extreme susceptibility and delicacy of frame, which made him as a child unusually tender and gentle in manner when at his ease, but fretful and passionate when annoyed.

Of course he fared as ill with his fellow-scholars at Truro Grammar School as he did well with the masters; but an elder boy took him under his protection, and not only lessened his grievances at the time, but founded a lasting friendship.

In 1795, when only fourteen, Henry Martyn was sufficiently advanced to be sent up as a candidate for a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and passed a very creditable examination, though he failed in obtaining the election.  Eight years later, we find him congratulating himself in his journal on thus having escaped the “scenes of debauchery” to which his “profligate acquaintances” might have introduced him.  Was Corpus very much changed, when, only eleven years after, John Keble entered it at the same age?  Was it that Martyn’s Cornish schoolfellows were a bad set, or does this thanksgiving proceed from the sort of pious complacency which religious journalizing is apt to produce in the best of men?

The failure sent Henry back to work for two years longer at the Truro Grammar School, and when at sixteen he was entered at St. John’s, Cambridge (most peculiarly the college of future missionaries), he immediately made proof of his remarkable talent.  Strange to say, although his father’s rise in life had begun in his mathematical ability, Henry’s training in this branch had been so deficient, and the study appeared so repugnant to him, that his first endeavour at Cambridge was to learn the proportions of Euclid by heart, without trying to follow their reasoning.  This story is told of many persons, but perhaps of no one else who in four years’ time, while still a month under twenty, was declared Senior Wrangler.

This was in 1801, and the intervening time had been spent in hard study and regular habits, but neither his sister at home, nor a seriously-minded college friend, were satisfied with his religious feelings during the first part of the time, and he himself regarded it afterwards as a period of darkness.  Indeed, his temper was under so little control that in a passion he threw a knife at a companion, but happily missed his aim, so that it only pierced the wall.  The shock of horror no doubt was good for him.  But the next step he recorded in his life was his surprise at hearing it maintained that the glory of God, not the praise of man, should be the chief motive of study.  After thinking it over his mind assented, and he resolved to maintain this as a noble saying, but did not perceive that it would affect his conduct.

However, the dearest, almost the only hallowed form of the praise of man, was taken from him by the death of his father in 1799, immediately after the delight of hearing of his standing first in the Christmas examination.  The expense of a return home was beyond his means, but he took to reading the Bible, as a proper form to be complied with in the days of mourning; and beginning with the Acts, as being the most entertaining part, he felt the full weight of the doctrine of the Apostles borne in on him, and was roused to renew his long-neglected prayers.  When next he went to chapel, with his soul thus awakened, he was struck by perceiving for the first time how joy for the coming of our Lord rings through the Magnificat.

The great religious influence of the day at Cambridge emanated from the pulpit and the rooms of the Reverend Charles Simeon, who did a truly remarkable work in stirring up young men to a sense of the responsibilities of the ministry.  Henry Martyn regularly attended his sermons, and the newly lighted sparks were also fanned by anxious letters from the good sister at home; but until the strain, pressure, and excitement of preparing for the final examination were over, he had little time or attention for any other form of mental exertion.

When, however, he found himself in possession of the highest honours his University could award, he was amazed to discover how little they satisfied him, and that he felt as if he had grasped a shadow instead of a substance.

This instinctive longing, the sure token of a mind of the higher pitch, was finding rest as he became more and more imbued with the spirit of religion, and ventured upon manifesting it more openly.  He had hitherto intended to apply himself to the law, but the example and conversation of Charles Simeon brought him to such a perception of the greatness of the office of the ministry that he resolved to dedicate himself thereto.  During the term after this decision was made, while he was acting as a tutor at his college, he heard Mr. Simeon speak of William Carey and his self-devotion in India; he read the Life of that kindred spirit, David Brainerd, and the spark of missionary zeal was kindled in his ardent nature.  The commission “Go ye and teach all nations” was borne in on his mind, and, with the promptness that was a part of his nature, he at once offered himself to the “Society for Missions to Africa and the East,” which had been established, in the year 1800, by members of the English Church who wished to act independently of the elder Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.  The name has since been altered to the “Church Missionary Society.”

However, Martyn was only just twenty-one, and not of an age to take Holy Orders, and he had therefore to wait, while studying divinity, and acting as a tutor at Cambridge.  All through his life he kept copious journals of his sensations and resolutions, full of the deepest piety, always replete with sternness towards himself and others, and tinged with that melancholy which usually pervades the more earnest of that school which requires conscious feeling as the test of spiritual life.

In October 1803, he went to Ely for ordination as a deacon, though still wanting five months of twenty-three.  Those were lax days, there was little examination, and a very low standard of fitness was required.  Henry Martyn was so much scandalized by the lightness of demeanour of one of his fellow candidates that he spoke to him in strong reproof—with what effect we do not know, but he records that he never ventured to speak in rebuke, “unless he at the same time experienced a peculiar contrition of spirit.”

He became Mr. Simeon’s curate, and at the same time took charge of the neighbouring parish of Lolworth.  People then had small expectations of clerical care, if a parish could be entrusted to a young deacon, non-resident, acting as tutor and examiner, and with an assistant curacy besides!  His whole mind was, however, intensely full of his duties, and so unworthy did he consider all other occupations that he prayed and struggled conscientiously against the pleasure he could not but feel, in getting up Thucydides and Xenophon for the examinations.  Everything not actually devotional seemed to him at these times under a ban, and it is painful to see how a mind of great scope and power was cramped and contracted, and the spirits lowered by incessant self-contemplation and distrust of almost all enjoyment.  When, at another time, he had to examine on “Locke on the Human Understanding,” the metaphysical study acting on his already introspective mind produced a sense of misery and anguish that he could hardly endure.  It is pleasant, however, to find him in another mood, writing, “Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before; I have received what I suppose is a taste for them, for religion has refined my mind, and made it susceptible of impressions from the sublime and beautiful.”

This, no doubt, was true, but another influence had awakened his heart, earthly perhaps in itself, but so noble and so holy that it bears a heavenly light.  He had become attached to a young lady in Cornwall, named Lydia Grenfell, like-minded enough to return his affection.  His intention of volunteering for the Church Missionary Society was overthrown by a disaster in Cornwall which deprived himself and his unmarried sister of all the provision that their father had made for them, thus throwing her upon him for maintenance, and making it necessary that he should obtain a salary that would support her.  It was suggested by some of his friends that one of the chaplaincies founded by the old East India Company, before the jealousy of religious teaching had set in, would both give him opportunities for missionary work and enable him to provide for his sister at home.  Application was accordingly made, and a man of his talent and character could not fail of being accepted; he was promised the next vacant post, and went down to spend the long vacation in Cornwall, and bid farewell to all whom he loved there, for the journey was long and expensive, and he had resolved not to trust himself among them again.

He writes in his journal, “Parted with Lydia for ever in this life with a sort of uncertain pain, which I knew would increase to violence.”  And so it was, he suffered most acutely for many days, and, though calmness and comfort came after a time, never were hopes and affections more thoroughly sacrificed, or with more anguish, than by this most truly devoted disciple of his Master.

He worked on at Cambridge till he received his appointment in the January of 1805, and he then only waited to receive Priests’ Orders before going to London to prepare for his embarkation.

In those times of war, a voyage to India was a perilous and lengthy undertaking.  A whole fleet was collected, containing merchant, convict, and transport vessels, all under the convoy of the ships of war belonging to the Company; and, as no straggler might be left behind, the progress of the whole was dependent on the rate of sailing of the slowest, and all were impeded by the disaster of one.  The Union, in which a passage was given to the chaplain, contained, besides the crew, passengers, the 59th Regiment, some other soldiers, and young cadets, all thrown closely together for many months.  She sailed from Portsmouth on the 17th of July; but in two days’ time one of the many casualties attendant on at least sixty vessels made the fleet put into Falmouth, where it remained for three weeks.  This opportunity of intercourse with his family might well seem an especial boon of Providence to the young missionary, who had denied himself a last visit to them, and he carried away much comfort from this meeting.  His sister was engaged to be suitably married, so that he was relieved from care on her account, and some hope was entertained that Lydia would be able to come out to him in India.  A correspondence likewise began, which has been in great part preserved.  Two days after weighing anchor, the Union still lingered on the coast, and the well-known outline, with Mount’s Bay, the spire of St. Hilary’s church, and all the landmarks so dear and familiar to the young Cornishman’s eye and heart, were watched from morning to night with keen pain and grief, but with steadfast resolve and constant inward prayer.

Then he addressed himself to the duties of the voyage.  Private study of Hebrew and of Hindostanee was of course a part; but he hoped to be useful to his companions as a friend and as a minister.  He could only obtain permission to hold one service every Sunday, but he hoped to do much by private conversations and prayers, and he tried to gain over the cadets by offering to assist them in their studies, especially mathematics.  Some of them had the sense to see that the teaching of a senior wrangler was no small advantage, and these read with him throughout the voyage; but in general they were but raw lads, and followed the example of their superiors, who for the most part were strongly set against Mr. Martyn.  Those were the times when sailors were utterly uncared for, and when mauvais sujets at home were sent out to India to the corruptions of a luxurious climate and a heathen atmosphere.  Men of this stamp would think it bad enough to have a parson on board at all, and when they found that he was a faithful priest, who held himself bound not to leave them unchecked in their evil courses, they thought themselves aggrieved.  Nor was his manner likely to gain them.  Grave and earnest, he had never in his life known sportiveness, and his distress and horror at the profanity and blasphemy that rang in his ears made him doubly sad and stern.  From the first his Sunday service was by most treated as an infliction, and the officers, both of the ship and of the military, had so little sense of decency as to sit drinking, smoking, and talking within earshot.  The persons who professed to attend showed no reverence of attitude; and when he endeavoured to make an impression on the soldiers and their wives between-decks, he was met with the same rude and careless inattention.

With very little experience of mankind, he imagined that these hardened beings could be brought to repent by terror, and his discourses were full of denunciations of the wrath of God.  He was told that, if he threatened them thus, they would not come to hear him, and his reply was an uncompromising sermon on the text, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God.”  The bravery of the thing, and the spirit of truth and love that pervaded all he said on this solemn verse, was not lost upon all: some of the cadets were moved to tears, and an impression was made upon several persons.  Indeed, there was much that should have induced serious thought, for, after having touched at Madeira and the Azores, it was made known that the 59th was to be disembarked at the Cape, to assist in the struggle then going on between the English and Dutch.  Moreover, there was much sickness on board, and the captain himself, who had been always bitterly opposed to Mr. Martyn, anxiously called for him to attend upon his death-bed.

The 59th were landed in Table Bay just in time to take part in Sir David Baird’s victory.  Martyn went on shore the next day to do his best for the wounded; but they were mostly in hospital, and, being Dutch, he could do little for them.  He found congenial spirits among the Dutch clergy in Cape Town, and spent a happy month there, but the latter part of his voyage was not more satisfactory than the first.  The educated portion of the passengers continued to set their faces against him, treating him with increased contempt, and even turning into ridicule the farewell sermon, in which he took an affectionate leave of all who had sailed with him.

It may be that his manner was ill-judged, but it is a fearful thing to find that it was possible for so many Christian people to have been in daily contact with as true a saint as ever lived, and yet make him their mock!  Perhaps some of his words, and far more his example, may have borne fruit in after years, such as he never knew of.

The whole voyage had lasted nearly ten months before entering the Hooghly.  While ascending the stream, the lassitude produced by the climate was so great that Martyn’s spirits sank under it: he thought he should “lead an idle, worthless life to no purpose.  Exertion seemed like death; indeed, absolutely impossible.”  Yet at the least he could write, “Even if I should never see a native converted, God may design, by my patience and continuance, to encourage future missionaries.”

This feeling of exhaustion was the prelude to a severe attack of fever, which assailed him almost immediately after his arrival; but happily not till he was safely lodged at Aldeen, in the kindly house of the Rev. David Brown, where he was nursed till his recovery.  His friends wanted to keep him among the English at Calcutta, but his heart was set on ministering to the heathen, and the sights and sounds of idolatry that constantly met him increased his eagerness.  He once rushed out at the sight of the flames of a Suttee, hoping to rescue the victim, but she had perished before he reached the spot.

His arrival was when the alarm about the meeting at Vellore was at its height, and when the colony at Serampore had been forbidden to preach or distribute tracts in Calcutta.  He by no means agreed with all the Baptist doctrines, but he held in great esteem and reverence such men as Carey and Marshman, was glad to profit by their experience and instructions, and heartily sympathised in all their difficulties.  Mr. Carey might well write, “A young clergyman, Mr. Martyn, is lately arrived, who is possessed with a truly missionary spirit.”  Together the Serampore missionaries, with Mr. Martyn, Mr. Corrie, and Mr. Brown, united in dedicating to the worship of God a heathen pagoda, which the last-mentioned had succeeded in purchasing from the natives.  Altogether he was much cheered and refreshed.  During the time that he waited at Aldeen he improved himself in Hindostanee, and began to study Sanscrit, and learnt the most approved method of dealing with the natives.  Moreover, he found that his allowance as a chaplain was so liberal as amply to justify him in writing to urge Miss Grenfell to come out and join him; and, during the long period of sixteen or eighteen months before her refusal to do so reached him, he was full of the hope of receiving her.

His appointed station was Dinapore, where his primary duty was to minister to the English troops there posted, and to the families of the civilians; but he also hoped to establish native schools, to preach in their own language to the Hindoos, and to scatter translations of portions of Scripture, such as the Parables, among them.

He had to read prayers to the soldiers from the drum-head by way of desk; there were no seats, and he was desired to omit the sermon: but afterwards a room was provided, and then the families of the officers and residents began to attend, though at first they were much scandalized by his preaching extempore.  In fact there was a good deal in his whole tone that startled old orthodoxy; and in the opposition with which he met at times, there was some lawful and just distrust of the onesidedness of his tenets, together with the ordinary hatred and dislike of darkness to light.  So scrupulous was he in the Jewish force given by his party to the Fourth Commandment, that, having one Sunday conceived the plan of translating the Prayer-book into Hindostanee, he worked at it till he had reached the end of the Te Deum; and there, doubting whether it were a proper employment for the day, desisted until the Monday, to give himself up to prayer, singing hymns, Scripture-reading, and meditation.  The immediate value of this work was for the poor native wives of the English soldiers, whom he found professing Christianity, but utterly ignorant; and to them every Sunday, after the official English service, he repeated the Liturgy in the vulgar tongue.  In this holy work he was the pioneer, since Swartz’s service was in Tamul.  While working at his translations with his moonshee, or interpreter, a Mussulman, he had much opportunity for conversation and for study of the Mahometan arguments, so as to be very useful to himself; though he could not succeed in convincing the impracticable moonshee, who had all that self-satisfaction belonging to Mahometanism.  “I told him that he ought to pray that God would teach him what the truth really is.  He said he had no occasion to pray on this subject, as the word of God is express.”  With the Hindoos at Dinapore, he found, to his surprise, that there was apparently little disinclination to “become Feringees,” as they called it, outwardly; but the difficulty lay in his insistance on Christian faith and obedience, instead of a mere external profession.