I
With Henry Martyn the making of history became a habit, a habit so
inveterate that not even death itself could break him of it. He only
lived to be thirty-two; but he made vast quantities of history in that
meager handful of years. 'His,' says Sir James Stephen, 'is the one
heroic name which adorns the annals of the English church from the days
of Elizabeth to our own.' And Dr. George Smith, his biographer, boasts
that Martyn's life constitutes itself the priceless and perpetual
heritage of all English-speaking Christendom, whilst the native churches
of India, Arabia, Persia and Anatolia will treasure the thought of it
through all time to come. Appropriately enough, Macaulay, who dedicated
his brilliant powers to the great task of worthily recording the history
that other men had made, composed the epitaph for that lonely Eastern
tomb.
Here Martyn lies! In manhood's early bloom
The Christian hero found a Pagan tomb:
Religion, sorrowing o'er her favorite son,
Points to the glorious trophies which he won.
Eternal trophies, not with slaughter red,
Not stained with tears by hopeless captives shed;
But trophies of the Cross. For that dear Name
Through every form of danger, death and shame,
Onward he journeyed to a happier shore,
Where danger, death and shame are known no more.
For more than a hundred years the bones of Henry Martyn have reposed in
that far-off Oriental sepulcher; but, as though he had never heard of
his own decease, he goes on making history still. Henry Martyn died
seven years before George Eliot was born, and they had very little in
common. But, in the novel which Dr. Marcus Dods described as 'one of the
greatest religious books ever written,' George Eliot makes the spiritual
crisis in the experience of her storm-beaten and distracted heroine to
turn on the perusal of the _Life of Henry Martyn_. When Janet Dempster,
clad only in her thin nightdress, was driven at dead of night from her
husband's home, she took refuge with good old Mrs. Pettifer, and fell
into a stupor of utter misery and black despair. Nothing seemed to rouse
her. It chanced, however, that Mrs. Pettifer was a subscriber of the
Paddiford Lending Library. From that village treasure-trove she had
borrowed the biography that was lying on the table when, like a hunted
deer, poor Janet took shelter in her home. After a day or two, Janet
picked up the book, dipped into it, and at length 'became so arrested by
that pathetic missionary story that she could not leave it alone.' It
broke the spell of her stupor, gave her a new hold upon life, awoke her
dormant energy, and moved her to renewed action.
'I must go,' she said. 'I feel I must be doing something for someone; I
must not be a mere useless log any longer. I've been reading about that
wonderful Henry Martyn wearing himself out for _other people_, and I sit
thinking of nothing but _myself_! I must go! Good-bye!'
And, like a frightened dove that, having been driven to shelter by a
hawk, recovers from its terror and again takes wing, off she went! Janet
Dempster is all the more real because she is unreal. She is all the more
a substance because she is only a shadow. She is all the more symbolic
and typical because she appears, not in history, but in fiction. If I
had found her in the realm of biography, I might have regarded hers as
an isolated and exceptional case. But, since I have found her in the
realm of romance, I can only regard her--as her creator intended me to
regard her--as a great representative character. She represents all
those thousands of people upon whom the heroic record of Henry Martyn's
brief career has acted as a stimulant and a tonic. She represents all
those thousands of people through whom Henry Martyn is making history.