“I won’t trifle” - Charles Simeon
When a portrait of his friend Henry Martyn, missionary to India, arrived in Cambridge and was being unpacked, Charles Simeon responded:
“I could not bear to look upon it but turned away, covering my face and, in spite of every effort to the contrary, crying aloud with anguish. . . . Shall I attempt to describe to you the veneration and the love with which I look at it? . . . In seeing how much he is worn, I am constrained to call to my relief the thought in Whose service he has worn himself out so much; and this reconciles me to the idea of weakness, of sickness, or even, if God were so to appoint, of death itself. . . . I behold in it all the mind of my beloved brother.”
The portrait was hung over the fireplace in Simeon’s dining room. Often, with friends there for dinner, he would look at the likeness and say, “There, see that blessed man! What an expression of countenance! No one looks at me as he does; he never takes his eyes off me and seems always to be saying, ‘Be serious. Be in earnest. Don’t trifle. Don’t trifle.’” Then, smiling at the portrait and gently bowing, Simeon would add, “And I won’t trifle. I won’t trifle.”
Cf. H. C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London, 1956), page 108.
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