Henry Martyn

Another fellow Mark and I have been reading about, is Henry Martyn. He was an incredible person, whose passionate love for one woman, the whole of his life, went unsatisfied. Every member of his family also died, leaving him alone in the world. He never swerved from his missionary travels, and published the New Testament in Hindustani, Arabic, Urdu, Persian and Judaeo-Persic. He also translated the Psalms into Persian and the Book of Common Prayer into Urdu. You can read a snippet about his 31 years on Wikipedia.

Marcus Loane, from They Were Pilgrims, writes this of him:

"He was willing to give up all for the kingdom of God, and that meant all hope of wife and home and earthly comfort."

Martyn, while in India, on his passion to witness to the lost:

"What a wretched life shall I lead if I do not exert myself from morning till night in a place where through whole territories I seem to be the only light."

And from Martyn, after the death of his final family member, his sister:

"I have not a relation left to whom I feel bound by the ties of Christian fellowship, and I am resolved to form no new connection of a worldly nature so that I may henceforward hope to live entirely as a man of another world."

Marcus Loane, on Martyn's death at age 31:

"Like the evening sun which sinks with golden glory beyond the rim of earth or sea, his bright spirit passed in lonely splendour beyond the world of space and time...The grave of Henry Martyn like that of Moses is now unknown, but he was a burning and a shining light in his own generation. That light went out on earth when he died at Tokat; but it went out only that he might burn and shine with cherubim and seraphim before the throne of God for ever."