“Employed all the day in translating the first chapter of the Acts into Hindoostanee.” That could be the diary entry of many Bible translators if we replace the name of the language.
Henry Martyn (1781–1812) recorded these words in 1806 as he traveled up the Ganges River to his station for the first time. A mere 25 years old, Martyn was no seasoned veteran and had arrived in India from England only four months earlier. Here he was, in the relentless heat of India, beginning work on his foundational translation into Urdu, a language spoken by more than two hundred million people today.
Sadly, Martyn would die just six years later. It is astounding to see what God did through him both in India and in Persia during that time — including both Urdu and Persian translations of the New Testament and a year of personal evangelism in Persia as his health worsened. What accounts for Martyn’s remarkable missionary labor? Which ingredients combined to make him the missionary that he was?
God used his classical education at Cambridge alongside his spiritual maturity formed by intentional mentorship to get him ready for his unique task of engaging Muslims and translating the Bible. As we consider how best to send men and women into cross-cultural ministry, Martyn’s story helps us recognize that particular approaches to education and spiritual formation can open up opportunities for kingdom fruitfulness.
Cambridge ‘Wrangler’
Henry Martyn was born into a prosperous and hard-working family in southwest England. His mother died when he was young, however, and both he and his sisters suffered from tuberculosis their entire lives. We may now forget the seriousness of tuberculosis, but it was considered the leading cause of death in England in 1800 — the year Martyn’s father died. Like David Brainerd (1718–1747), whom he deeply admired, Martyn suspected that his time on earth would be short. But that bodily weakness never dampened his ambition.
Martyn received the best education available in his town and qualified to study at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He distinguished himself by winning the prize of “Senior Wrangler,” which meant (and still means) the top student in mathematics — and this at a time when Cambridge was known as the top school for mathematics. Lest we think his skills one-sided, he also won a prize in Latin composition, was appointed fellow of his college after he graduated, and served as an examiner who graded oral and written exams for two years. In addition to examining students in works of philosophy, he also tested them on their knowledge of Xenophon’s Anabasis in Greek.
His journal often records entries like this one from 1803: “I read Hebrew, and the Greek of the Epistle to the Hebrews” (The Life and Letters of Henry Martyn, 42). That reflects his classical training, a distinct privilege in the early 1800s and a tool that he carried directly into his ministry.
Mentored by Charles Simeon
Martyn’s education was complemented by work with a mentor, Charles Simeon (1759–1836). Simeon was minister at Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge and a strong advocate of evangelical Anglicanism. A lifelong bachelor, he trained many young men for ministry, often inviting undergraduates to his house on Friday evenings and teaching how to preach on Sunday afternoons. He was also one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society, the Anglican mission arm that still exists today.
After the death of his father, Martyn, at age twenty, began to read the Bible and “attend more diligently to the words of our Saviour in the New Testament, and to devour them with delight” (Life and Letters, 13). Simeon became Martyn’s mentor and advocate as he prepared for cross-cultural ministry. After graduation, Martyn served as assistant minister to Simeon while also studying the Urdu language with a Cambridge scholar.
Learning with Simeon gave Martyn access to top evangelical thought and the principal advocates of evangelical reform and missions, including William Wilberforce and the elderly John Newton. At the same time, Martyn immersed himself in spiritual classics from the Puritans and Jonathan Edwards. By the time he left for India, Martyn had received two invaluable gifts from Simeon: the advice and direction of a mentor and a season of digging deep spiritual wells through the study of classic theological works. These gave him both the confidence he needed for ministry and the experience of observing a ministry life well spent.
Scholar and Cobbler
Martyn’s preparation, then, consisted of a high degree of academic rigor matched by spiritual formation among a fervent group of evangelical Anglicans. When he arrived in Calcutta in 1806, Martyn still had a lot to learn about cross-cultural ministry, but his preparation equipped him with the skills and stamina for engaging other languages, cultures, and religions.
The pioneer missionary William Carey (1761–1834) recognized Martyn’s gifts and entrusted him with the Urdu translation within weeks of his arrival. Martyn’s education set him apart — even from Carey himself, who trained as a cobbler, was primarily self-taught. Martyn’s most recent commentator remarks, “Martyn’s qualifications in Greek and Latin gave him a foundation as a translator that the Baptist missionaries, despite great zeal, could not match” (The Letters of Henry Martyn, 37).
Martyn chose candid moments to express some criticism of other translations. In 1807, concerning the early drafts of a Hindi translation effort from Carey and his team in Serampore, Martyn wrote, “Many important sentences are wholly lost, from faults in the order or other small mistakes. The errors of the press are also very considerable. Remind them, though not from me, that the more haste the worse speed” (Journals and Letters of the Rev. Henry Martyn, 2:79). (One wonders if Martyn had offered one too many suggestions already and so wanted his criticism passed on indirectly.) It is no secret that the ambitious plans for translations by the Serampore team meant the early Bibles went through several editions before they were easily understood by local people. Whatever the case, Martyn was determined that Bible translations should reach the widest audience possible.
Martyn believed he had received invaluable training at Cambridge and hoped that others with similar training would join him. “I have grievous complaints to make,” he wrote to his Cambridge classmate John Sargent, “that the immense work of translating the services into the languages of the East is left to Dissenters [the Baptist missionaries], who cannot in ten years supply the want of what we gain by a classical education” (Journals and Letters, 1:494).
Indeed, the linguistic competence achieved through that education was invaluable for opening doors for conversation and ministry. During his year in Persia before his death, he would entertain guests who interrupted his translation work in order to have a conversation in Persian about Christianity. He gives no report of having an interpreter with him during these visits. His ability to communicate made him an object of attention. When a Sufi scholar published a tract against Christianity because of Martyn’s witness, Martyn responded with three brief tracts in Persian that became standard texts for studying Muslim apologetics in the next decades (Letters of Henry Martyn, 54). Trained at a high level and mentored by Christian leaders, Martyn’s few years of missionary service were remarkably fruitful.
Scholars and Cobblers Today
Missionaries have long debated what level of education is ideal for men and women engaging in cross-cultural Great Commission work. On the one hand, a herald of the gospel has a simple message whose authority is not based on the quality of the messenger; any earnest follower of Jesus — scholar or cobbler, mechanic or mathematician — may participate in the task. On the other hand, deep analytical thinking alongside linguistic competence may provide missionaries with the skills needed for new and complex situations.
How, then, will churches continue to produce fruitful missionaries like Henry Martyn? We do not have to agree with the nineteenth-century headmaster of Eton, who challenged his students that if they were unskilled in composing classical Greek poetry they would never “be of use in the world” (Climbing Parnassus, 128). Composing original Greek poetry (or examining students on Xenophon) is not the key to making one useful in God’s service. But perhaps a serious attempt at renewing classical education today has the potential to produce gifted and tenaciously flexible missionaries. If parents or students are tempted to ask why they must study Latin, I wonder if a classical headmaster could respond, “So that they might become a missionary like Henry Martyn.”
Martyn’s education prepared him in the best way possible for the tasks of analysis and communication that were crucial for bringing the gospel to bear in new circumstances. Christians interested in missions today need the same countercultural focus on the slow arts of communication and deep thinking. A missions-focused church will cultivate an education environment that believes God speaks through clear and thoughtful human witnesses, and then rejoice when men and women from their own community go.
Missionaries today may not be the ones to begin a Bible translation into a language as broadly spoken as Urdu, but it may be a fruitful goal to send a message home like this one: “I worked all day at listening and speaking in order to find the right words for presenting the gospel in this language.” Like Henry Martyn, they would know the joy of fresh gospel communication.
