Henry Martyn - Legacy

Legacy

His devotion to his tasks won him much admiration in Great Britain and he was the hero of a number of literary publications. Thomas Babington Macaulay's Epitaph, composed early in 1813, testified to the impression made by his career:

An institution was established in his name in India, called the Henry Martyn Institute: An Interfaith Centre for Reconciliation and Research, Hyderabad, India. John McManners wrote in his Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity that Martyn was a man remembered for his courage, selflessness and his religious devotion. In parts of the Anglican Communion he is celebrated with a Lesser Festival on 19 October.

The Henry Martyn Trust based in Cambridge, England can trace its history back to 1897, at a time of great enthusiasm in Cambridge for overseas missions, when an appeal was launched for a 'Proposed Missionary Library for Cambridge University', to be housed in the Henry Martyn Hall, erected ten years previously.

The Henry Martyn Library opened in the Hall in 1898, and there it remained as a small collection of missionary biographies and other books until 1995. The evolution of the Henry Martyn Library into the present Henry Martyn Centre began in 1992, when Canon Graham Kings, now Bishop of Sherborne, was appointed as the first Henry Martyn Lecturer in Missiology in the Cambridge Theological Federation.

In 1999 the Centre became an Associate Institute of the Cambridge Theological Federation, one of the largest providers of theological education in the United Kingdom.

Today, the Centre continues to seek to promote the study of mission and world Christianity, developing strong links with mission study centres around the world and fulfilling the same aim that was stated by the founders of the Library in 1897.