chapter I
keep in mind every day in prayer. We cannot believe too much or hope too much. Happy our eyes that they see, and our ears that they hear.
As it may be a year or more before I shall be back, you may direct one letter after receiving this, if it be not of a very old date, to Bombay, all after to Bengal, as usual. Believe me to be ever, my dearest Lydia, your most affectionate,
H. MARTYN.
_April 22._--Landed at Muscat with Lockett and walked through the bazaar; we wished to ascend one of the hills in the neighbourhood, but on the native guards expressing disapprobation, we desisted.
We turn to her _Diary_ for the corresponding passage.
_1812, February 1._--Heard yesterday from,[45] and wrote to-day to, India. My conviction of being declining in spiritual life is deeper and deeper. I would stop and pause at what is before me. It is no particular outward sin, but an inward loss I mourn.
Every word of Henry Martyn's _Journal_ regarding Arabia is precious, alike in the light of his attempt to give its people the Word of God in their own tongue, and of the long delayed and too brief efforts of his successors, Ion Keith-Falconer in Yemen in 1887, and Bishop French in Muscat in 1891. To David Brown, all unknowing of his death, he wrote on April 23:
I left India on Lady-day, looked at Persia on Easter Sunday, and seven days after found myself in Arabia Felix. In a small cove, surrounded by bare rocks, heated through, out of the reach of air as well as wind, lies the good ship Benares, in the great cabin of which, stretched on a couch, lie I. But though weak I am well--relaxed but not disordered. Praise to His grace who fulfils to me a promise which I have scarcely a right to claim--'I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.'
Last night I went ashore for the first time with Captain Lockett; we walked through the bazaar and up the hill, but saw nothing but what was Indian or worse. The Imam or Sultan is about thirty miles off, fighting, it is said, for his kingdom, with the Wahabees.
You will be happy to learn that the pirates whom we were to scourge are got out of our way, so that I may now hope to get safe through the Gulf without being made to witness the bloody scenes of war.
_April 24._--Went with one English party and two Armenians and an Arab who served as guard and guide, to see a remarkable pass about a mile from the town, and a garden planted by a Hindu in a little valley beyond. There was nothing to see, only the little bit of green in this wilderness seemed to the Arab a great curiosity. I conversed a good deal with him, but particularly with his African slave, who was very intelligent about religion. The latter knew as much about his religion as most mountaineers, and withal was so interested, that he would not cease from his argument till I left the shore.
To Corrie he wrote on the same day:
The Imam of Muscat murdered his uncle, and sits on the throne in the place of his elder brother, who is here a cipher. Last night the Captain went ashore to a council of state, to consider the relations subsisting between the Government of Bombay and these mighty chieftains. I attended as interpreter. The Company's agent is an old Hindu who could not get off his bed. An old man in whom pride and stupidity seemed to contend for empire sat opposite to him. This was the Wazeer. Between them sat I, opposite to me the Captain. The Wazeer uttered something in Arabic, not one word of which could I understand. The old Hindu explained in Persian, for he has almost forgot his Hindi, and I to the Captain in English. We are all impatient to get away from this place.
To the last he was busy with his Arabic translation of Scripture. The ships of war crossed and recrossed the Gulf from shore to shore, surveying its coasts and islands in the heat of May, tempered by a north-wester which tossed them about. On May 6 he wrote in his _Journal_:
Much cast down through a sinful propensity, which I little thought was in me at all, till occasion manifested its existence.
On the 19th:
Preached to the ship's company on John iii. 3. My thoughts so much on Lydia, whose old letter I had been reading the day before, that I had a sense of guilt for having neglected the proper duties of the day.
_May 20._--We have now a fair wind, carrying us gently to Bushire.
_May 22._--Finished the syllabus of Ecclesiastical History which I have been making all the voyage, and extracts from Mosheim concerning the Eastern Church.
On May 21, 1811, Henry Martyn at last reached Persian soil.
Landed at Bushire this morning in good health; how unceasing are the mercies of the Lord; blessed be His goodness; may He still preserve me from danger, and, above all, make my journey a source of future good to this kingdom of Persia, into which I am now come. We were hospitably received by the acting Resident. In the evening I walked out by the sea-side to recollect myself, to review the past, and look forward to the future.
Suffering the will of God is as necessary a part of spiritual discipline as doing, and much more trying.
But he landed still with the desire 'to go to Arabia circuitously by way of Persia,' a course which he declared to be rendered necessary by the advanced state of the season. The people of Arabia were first in his heart.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] In two volumes (John Murray), 1884, see p. 231, vol. i.
[40] _Memoirs_, edited by his son, second edition, London (Moxon), 1836. See vol. ii. pp. 86, 268.
[41] _The Life of John Wilson, D.D., F.R.S._ (John Murray), 2nd edit., p. 137.
[42] _Life and Correspondence_, vol. ii. p. 65 (Smith, Elder & Co.), 1856.
[43] _Bap·re_ = 'O Father!' the exclamation of Hindus when in surprise or grief; hence a noise or row; hence a Bobbery-pack or hunt is the Anglo-Indian for a pack of hounds of different breeds, or no breed, wherewith young officers hunt jackals or the like. See the late Colonel Sir Henry Yule's _Hobson-Jobson, or Anglo-Indian Glossary_ (John Murray), 1886.
[44] C.R. Low's _History of the Indian Navy_, chapter x . vol. i. (Richard Bentley), 1877.
[45] By letter written April 22 or June 23, 1811.
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