This week in Christian history: Indian missionary dies, Rochester Revival ends, Zurich bans Anabaptists

Abdul Masih dies – March 4, 1827

This week marks the anniversary of when Abdul Masih, an East Indian Christian missionary and intellectual, died at the age of 51, a couple of years after being ordained in the Anglican Church.

Born Shaikh Salih to a prominent Muslim family in Delhi, he later took the name Abdul Masih — meaning “Servant of the Messiah” — upon converting to Christianity through the work of missionary Henry Martyn.

Masih was initially a Lutheran missionary but later joined the Anglican Church. He is credited with converting around 50 Indian Muslims and Hindus in the 1810s while living near Agra.

Near the end of his life, Masih reportedly wrote a short hymn:

“Beloved Savior, let not me

In thy kind heart forgotten be.

Of all the plants that deck the bower,

Thou art the fairest, sweetest flower.

Youth's morn has fled - old age come on,

But sin distracts my soul alone.

Beloved Savior, let not me

In thy kind heart forgotten be.”