I hold in my hand an album adorned with pictures of missionaries, my
brethren and sisters, the ambassadors of the King. On one of the first
pages is "the tomb of Henry Martyn," given me by Dr. Van Lennep, who
had just visited the sacred spot and described it vividly. When I turn
the pages of my album and come to this, I pause with reverence and the
overflowings of deep and tender emotion, and my mind adds other
pictures, both terrestrial and celestial, to the one upon the page. My
own missionary life as the companion of him whom Dr. Perkins called
"the later Henry Martyn," was spent in Henry Martyn's Persia. They
were alike I think in many things, these two Persian evangelists, and
also in their deaths. When they passed out of the Tabriz gate,
journeying homeward after a course of illness in the fated city, for
each it was a quick ascent, a painful translation, to the heavenly
city with abundant entrance and the Master's "well done"--in heaven;
and on earth, a foreign grave taking possession for Christ, as the
Nestorians reverently say, with "white stones still speaking out."
S. J. R.