ided, and then the families of the officers and
residents began to attend, though at first they were much scandalized by
his preaching extempore. In fact there was a good deal in his whole tone
that startled old orthodoxy; and in the opposition with which he met at
times, there was some lawful and just distrust of the _onesidedness_ of
his tenets, together with the ordinary hatred and dislike of darkness to
light. So scrupulous was he in the Jewish force given by his party to
the Fourth Commandment, that, having one Sunday conceived the plan of
translating the Prayer-book into Hindostanee, he worked at it till he had
reached the end of the _Te Deum_; and there, doubting whether it were a
proper employment for the day, desisted until the Monday, to give himself
up to prayer, singing hymns, Scripture-reading, and meditation. The
immediate value of this work was for the poor native wives of the English
soldiers, whom he found professing Christianity, but utterly ignorant;
and to them every Sunday, after the official English service, he repeated
the Liturgy in the vulgar tongue. In this holy work he was the pioneer,
since Swartz's service was in Tamul. While working at his translations
with his moonshee, or interpreter, a Mussulman, he had much opportunity
for conversation and for study of the Mahometan arguments, so as to be
very useful to himself; though he could not succeed in convincing the
impracticable moonshee, who had all that self-satisfaction belonging to
Mahometanism. "I told him that he ought to pray that God would teach him
what the truth really is. He said he had no occasion to pray on this
subject, as the word of God is express." With the Hindoos at Dinapore,
he found, to his surprise, that there was apparently little
disinclination to "become Feringees," as they called it, outwardly; but
the difficulty lay in his insistance on Christian faith and obedience,
instead of a mere external profession.

It was while he was at Dinapore that we first acquire anything like a
distinct idea of Henry Martyn; for there a short halt of the 53rd
Regiment brought him in contact with one who had an eye to observe, a
heart to honour, and a pen to describe him; namely, Mrs. Sherwood, the
wife of the paymaster, a woman of deeply religious sentiments and
considerable powers as an author. Mutual friends had already prepared
Mr. Martyn to expect to find like-minded companions in the Sherwoods,
invited to stay with him for t