English missionary Henry Martyn (1781-1812) goes to India, is rejected by his girlfriend, and dies among strangers in Turkey

Christian herald and signs of our times (1886)

Henry Martyn Submits to God

Henry Martyn (1781 – 1812) was an Anglican priest and missionary to the peoples of India and Persia.

Martyn was born in England on February 18, 1781.  His father was well-to-do and sent his son to a fine grammar school, as they called them in those days, and then to Cambridge in 1791, when he was sixteen.  Four years later Martyn took highest honors in mathematics, and the year after that first prize in Latin prose composition.

David Brainerd (1718 – 1747) was an American missionary to the Native Americans who had a particularly fruitful ministry among the Delaware Indians of New Jersey.

He had turned his back on God as a youth, but during these days of academic achievement he became disillusioned with his dream. “I obtained my highest wishes, but was surprised to find that I had grasped only a shadow.” The treasure of the world rusted in his hands. The death of his father, the prayers of his sister, the counsel of a godly minister and the Life and Diary of David Brainerd brought him to his knees in submission to God. And in 1802, at the age of 21, he resolved to forsake a life of academic prestige and become a missionary.

Fort William, Calcutta, 1735

He became the assistant of Charles Simeon, the great evangelical preacher at Trinity Church in Cambridge, until his departure to India on July 17, 1805. His ministry was to be a chaplain with the East India Company. He arrived in Calcutta May 16, 1806 and the first day ashore found William Carey.

William Carey (17 August 1761 – 9 June 1834) was a British Christian missionary, Particular Baptist minister, translator, social reformer and cultural anthropologist who founded the Serampore College and the Serampore University, the first degree awarding University in India.

Martyn was an evangelical Anglican; Carey was a Baptist. And there was some tension over the use of liturgy. But Carey wrote that year, “A young clergyman, Mr. Martyn, is lately arrived, who is possessed of a truly missionary spirit…We take sweet counsel together, and go to the house of God as friends.”

Cranmer's 1549 Book of Common Prayer

Alongside his chaplain’s duties Martyn’s main work became translation. Within two years, by March, 1808, he had translated part of the Book of Common Prayer, a commentary on the parables, and the entire New Testament into Hindostanee. He was then assigned to supervise the Persian version of the New Testament. It was not so well received as the other, and his health gave way in the process. So he decided to return to England for recovery, but to go by land through Persia in the hope of revising his translation on the way.


 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. Relation d’un Voyage du Levant, fait par ordre du Roy (1717).

He became so sick with tuberculosis that he could barely press on. He died among strangers in the city of Tocat in Asiatic Turkey, October 16, 1812. He was 31 years old.

In 1887, the Henry Martyn Trust completed the Henry Martyn Hall on Market Street in Cambridge next door to Holy Trinity Church, as a meeting place to encourage others in the university to be involved in the church overseas

What you can’t see in this overview of Martyn’s life is the inner fights and plunges of spirit that make his achievement so real and so helpful to real people. I’m persuaded that the reason David Brainerd’s Life and Diary and Henry Martyn’s Journal and Letters have had such an abiding and deep power for the cause of missions is that they portray the life of the missionary (which we all look up to) as a life of constant warfare in the soul, not a life of uninterrupted calm.

St. Thomas Cathedral Basilica, Chennai

Listen to him on the boat on the way to India: I found it hard (NOTE the word “hard”—our text is a relevant missionary text!) to realize divine things. I was more tired with desires after the world, than for two years past…The sea-sickness, and the smell of the ship, made me feel very miserable, and the prospect of leaving all the comforts and communion of saints in England, to go forth to an unknown land, to endure such illness and misery with ungodly men for so many months, weighed heavy on my spirits. My heart was almost ready to break. (Journal and Letters, p. 212)

Fact and Fiction: the 19th Century love affair between Henry Martyn, a chaplain of the East India Company, and his 'beloved Persis' in Cornwall, Lydia Grenfell, based on their letters and diaries.

On top of this there is a love story to tell. Martyn loved Lydia Grenfell. He didn’t feel right taking her along to India at first without going before her and proving his own reliance on God alone. But two months after he arrived in India on July 30, 1806 he wrote and proposed and asked her to come.


He waited 15 months for the reply. His journal entry on October 24, 1807 reads:


An unhappy day; received at last a letter from Lydia, in which she refuses to come, because her mother will not consent to it. Grief and disappointment threw my soul into confusion at first; but gradually, as my disorder subsided, my eyes were opened, and reason resumed its office. I could not but agree with her, that it would not be for the glory of God, nor could we expect his blessing, if she acted in disobedience to her mother. (p. 395)

 Lydia Grenfell is best remembered as the reluctant paramour of Cornish missionary, Henry Martyn, and for her diary.

He took up his pen and wrote that same day:


My dear Lydia, Though my heart is bursting with grief and disappointment, I write not to blame you. The rectitude of all your conduct secures you from censure…Alas my rebellious heart—what a tempest agitates me! I knew not that I had made so little progress in a spirit of resignation to the Divine will. (p. 395f).


For five years he held out hope that things might change. A steady stream of letters covered the thousands of miles between India and England. “My dear Lydia” became “My dearest Lydia.” The last known letter written two months before his death (August 28, 1812) was addressed to her. It closed:


Soon we shall have occasion for pen and ink no more; but I trust I shall shortly see thee face to face. Love to all the saints. Believe me to be yours ever, most faithfully and affectionately, H. Martyn (p. 466).

TOMB OF HENRY MARTYN (Henry Martyn Saint and Scholar, by George Smith)

Martyn never saw her again on this earth.  But dying was not what he feared most, nor seeing Lydia what he desired most.  His passion was to make known the supremacy of Christ in all life.  Near the very end he wrote, "Whether life or death be mine, may Christ be magnified in me!  If he has work for me to do, I cannot die." Christ's work for Martyn was done.  And he had done it well. His looses and pain made the supremacy of God in his life powerful for all time.

Source: Piper, John. Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003, pages 93-96.