We appropriately closed the conference with a paper by Peter Law on the great missionary and translator Henry Martyn 1781-1812. It was appropriate in following on from the paper on Islam and this being the two hundredth anniversary of his death. Perhaps his being an Anglican fitted in somehow and even the fact that the paper was given by a graduate of the very Anglican Bash camps for public schoolboys but who is a Baptist but also an Arabic speaker who makes regular trips to the Middle East. Like Pascal, Martyn also died young yet did so much - what a challenge he is! Consciously or unconsciously this paper was no exercise in hagiography but a very human portrait of a man who was a sinner yet whom God greatly used.
Next year's conference is set for December 3, 4 and includes papers on C S Lewis, Isaac Ambrose, Henry Havelock and Edward Irving.
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