When we consider the misery and darkness of the unregenerate
world, oh! with how much reason shall we burst out into
thanksgiving to God, who has called us in His mercy through
Christ Jesus! What are we, that we should thus be made objects
of distinguishing grace! Who, then, that reflects upon the rock
from which he was hewn, but must rejoice to give himself
entirely and without reserve to God, to be sanctified by His
Spirit. The soul that has truly experienced the love of God,
will not stay meanly inquiring how much he shall do, and thus
limit his service, but will be earnestly seeking more and more
to know the will of our Heavenly Father, and that he may be
enabled to do it. Oh, may we both be thus minded! may we
experience Christ to be our all in all, not only as our
Redeemer, but also as the fountain of grace. Those passages of
the Word of God which you have quoted on this head, are indeed
awakening; may they teach us to breathe after holiness, to be
more and more dead to the world, and alive unto God, through
Jesus Christ. We are as lights in the world; how needful then
that our tempers and lives should manifest our high and heavenly
calling! Let us, as we do, provoke one another to good works,
not doubting that God will bless our feeble endeavours to His
glory.
The next year, 1802, saw Martyn Fellow of his College and the winner
of the first University prize for a Latin essay, open to those who had
just taken the Bachelor of Arts degree. It ended in his determination
to offer himself to the Church Missionary Society. He had no sooner
resolved to be a minister of Christ than he began such home mission
work as lay to his hands among his fellow members of the University,
and in the city where, at a recent period, one who closely resembled
him in some points, Ion Keith-Falconer, laboured. When ministering to
a dying man he found that the daughters had removed to another house,
where they were cheerful, and one of the students was reading a play
to them. 'A play! when their father was lying in the agonies of death!
What a species of consolation! I rebuked him so sharply, and, I am
afraid, so intemperately, that a quarrel will perhaps ensue.' This is
the first of those cases in which the impulsively faithful Christian,
testifying for his Master, often roused hatred to himself. But the
student afterwards thanked him for his words, became a new man, and
went out to India, where he laboured for a time by his side. After a
summer tour--during which he walked to Liverpool, and then through
Wales, ascending Snowdon--Henry Martyn found himself in the old home
in Truro, then occupied by his brother. From the noise of a large
family he moved to Woodbury: 'With my brother-in-law[7] I passed some
of the sweetest moments in my life. The deep solitude of the place
favoured meditation; and the romantic scenery around supplied great
external sources of pleasure.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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