Probably we have all realised that this is the centenary of David Livingstone’s death. We have all also pondered the tremendous changes that have swept across the “dark continent” since he laid its centre bare before the world.
As Christians we ought to be interested in Livingstone. In practical Christianity he was a giant. This is what led Stanley to say, after living in the closest proximity to Livingstone for over four months: “I was converted by him, although he had not tried to do it.”
As missionary-minded Christians we ought to be especially interested in Livingstone. The narrow-minded of his day could not appreciate him, but that was the inevitable result of the greatness of his soul. He was too big for them, and they could not take him in. For ourselves we feel we must approach the subject with humility. Studying his life in that spirit, it may be that something of lasting value will transfer itself to us.
We as a church, of course, have a greater reason than many to follow with interest the steps of the pioneer from Blantyre. Mark his trail around Rhodesia and wait for a few decades after his death. There you will see arising the mission of the Free Presbyterian Church.
The following articles are not offered as a substitute for the close study of Livingstone’s life. Rather, if they serve to spur readers to search in the surer guide of the missionary’s own writings, they will have achieved their purpose. Recipients of the “Young People’s Magazine” will notice that a series is being run there which describes some of the incidents and personalities which coloured Livingstone’s eventful life. Intended primarily for the young, that series may yet be found by older readers a good complement to this.
About his early days Livingstone is reticent. However we have all heard how his boyhood years were filled with honest labour. At ten years of age he went to the local factory at Blantyre, and with his first week’s wage bought “Rudiments of Latin”. His daily routine at this tender age thus became: work at the factory from 6 a.m. till 8 p.m., Night School from 8 p.m. till 10 p.m., homework from 10 p.m. till midnight or later. Today men go on strike to have their working week reduced to less than half that which Livingstone worked at the age of ten.
Livingstone is also quiet about his conversion and subsequent spiritual experiences. However he does tell us that in his youth he had a spiritual experience comparable to the cure of colour blindness, if such could be effected. He had been acquainted in theory with all the doctrines of Christianity from childhood: now he saw their application to himself.
Having felt the love of God in his heart, Livingstone soon resolved to devote his life “to the alleviation of human misery”. His thoughts travelled to China, and his heart was affected by the misery that must reside in a vast empire lying in darkness and the shadow of death. So he decided to become a doctor in preparation for the work of a pioneer missionary in China. Now that he had a distinct objective in view, he attacked his studies with renewed zeal, and brought his books with him to the factory. His spinning jenny became also his reading desk, and as he passed back and forth at his work he also trained himself to absorb his text books, sentence by sentence.
His heavy work as a cotton spinner was sufficiently paid to enable him to attend medical and Greek classes in winter, and divinity classes in summer. Thus he would have been able to prepare himself independently for going to China, but he was drawn to join the London Missionary Society “on account of its unsectarian character” sending, as was reputed, “neither episcopacy, nor presbyterianism, nor independency, but the gospel of Christ to the heathen”.
By the time Livingstone had finished his training, an obstacle had come between him and going to China. The opium war was now raging, and it was thought unsafe for him to go. The problem of the missionary novice was solved by the appearance of the veteran from South Africa, Robert Moffat. So it was decided: to Africa Livingstone would go.
For Livingstone, the night of November 16th, 1840, was a memorable one. It was the last that he ever spent at home with his father. David proposed to stay up all night with his family, but his mother, who had often taken books from her son in the small hours and sent him off to bed, said ‘no’. As it was, the father and son talked long and earnestly around the fire about the prospects of Christian missions. At five the next morning the whole family was astir. The others said goodbye at Blantyre, but his father walked with him to catch the Liverpool steamer at Glasgow. Watching David sail down the Broomielaw, his father saw him for the last time on this earth.
On the 20th of November Livingstone was ordained in England, and on the 8th of December he sailed for Algoa Bay. Travelling by ox-cart he eventually arrived at Kuruman, seven hundred miles north of the Cape. This was the head station established by Moffat, but Livingstone did not wait here long. He left for the North as soon as the oxen had been rested, and began investigating the possibility of opening another station in that direction. The tribe he now visited were called Bakwains—a branch of that large group of natives called Bechuanas. The trip North was not a prolonged one, and soon Livingstone was back at Kuruman. The missionary who accompanied him may not have had the same determination as Livingstone, and perhaps this explains their early return. At any rate Livingstone himself was set on becoming personally acquainted with the language and habits of the Bakwains, so he set out once again for the North after a three months’ rest at Kuruman. The insights which he gained in this six month ordeal, when he never saw a white face, were to stand him in good stead in the years to come.
Coming back to Kuruman, Livingstone prepared to move bag and baggage to his chosen sphere of labour. However, here he met the first of the many disappointments and frustrations which were to meet him in his work. Tribal warfare broke out in the North, and the Bakwains left the station which Livingstone had begun to establish among them. There was nothing for it: he had to think of somewhere else, and this time he selected the beautiful valley of Mabotsa. Here he settled in 1843, the year when his homeland was agog with the debates surrounding the Disruption. For Livingstone personally the next year held the opposite of a disruption when he “screwed up courage to put a question beneath one of the fruit trees” to Moffat’s oldest daughter, Mary.
These years had been spent in “preparatory labours” between Kuruman and Mabotsa. In 1845 Mr and Mrs Livingstone set up house at Chonuane, residence of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains. But again trouble seemed to stalk Livingstone, and a severe drought made life in Chonuane impossible. After some months there they decided to shift to Kolobeng where was a stream which would make irrigation possible. Fortunately Chief Sechele and his people were now sufficiently under Livingstone’s influence to follow him in this removal of forty miles.
The drought, however, continued. This brought Livingstone face to face with the superstition of the African doctors that they could make rain, and he found them very astute in defending their belief. They did not maintain that their medicines produced rain by magic, but rather that God had given them the means by which to approach Him, when seeking rain. They respected the many gifts which God had given in love to the white man. Why, the doctors asked, should the white man not acknowledge the simple, gift of rain-making which God had given to the black man?
It must have been most trying for Livingstone to see the rain fall often on the hills ten miles away, and never come near Kolobeng. One day Chief Sechele’s uncle enforced the point: “We like you,” he said, “as well as if you had been born among us; you are the only white man we can become familiar with; but we wish you to give up that everlasting preaching and praying; we cannot become familiar with that at all. You see we never get rain, while those tribes who never pray as we do obtain abundance.”
And there were other trials, too, which Livingstone felt, as he indicated in a letter to his father about this time:
“We have a difficult, difficult field to cultivate here. All I can say is that I think knowledge is increasing. But for the belief that the Holy Spirit works and will work for us, I should give up in despair. Remember us in your prayers, that we grow not weary in well-doing. It is hard to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be looked on by most of those to whom our lives are devoted, as having some sinister object in view. Disinterested labour—benevolence—is so out of their line of thought that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view. But He who died for us, and whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. May we have grace to follow in His steps!”
The house which Livingstone erected at Kolobeng was the third that he had built with his own hands since arriving in the Africa. Here, despite the troubles attendant on the continuing drought, he lived happily with his wife. They were very much cast on their own resources for the most elementary of home comforts, but Livingstone denied that there was much hardship involved, and said that “married life is all the sweeter when so many comforts emanate directly from the thrifty housewife’s hands.” (The comforts referred to were candles, soap and such like.)
Their daily routine was as follows. Family worship and breakfast had taken place before seven in the morning. School then lasted till eleven o’clock, attended by men, women and children. Livingstone then engaged in some manual work until dinner, which was followed by an hour’s rest. Mary then held either an infant school or a sewing class, both of which were attended by about a hundred pupils. In the evening Livingstone went to the village to talk with the natives. On three nights of the week he held a service, and on another evening he held a class of practical instruction on some useful subject. Apart from this he also attended the sick, and did what he could to help feed the poor. He held absolutely to the principle that a missionary must show love in a practical way to the people—love to all and at all times. Surely here above everything else is the secret of his extraordinary influence over the natives, and of the unrivalled esteem in which he was held.
Livingstone, however, was never a man to rest on what he had done. His eyes were always on the horizon, wondering what lay beyond. Twice during his stay at Kolobeng he undertook journeys of three hundred miles to the East, seeking to help the tribes oppressed by the Boers. Then in June, 1849, he was ready to start another trip to the North. This time he did not travel on his own, but in the company of two white hunters, and their presence was the occasion of some debate among the natives. Livingstone’s motives were clear to them, but why did these other men leave their homes and endure the privations of desert travel just to kill wild animals? Had they no meat at home? When Livingstone, in defence of his fellow-countrymen, tried to explain the motivation of a sportsman, the Africans had a good laugh. Whatever Oswell and Murray thought they were doing, chasing over the sweltering plains of the Kalahari after game, the natives proudly reflected that they themselves had “turned to good account the folly of an itinerant butcher”.
It was on the 1st of August that European eyes first gazed over the waters of Lake Ngami. Oswell and Murray doubtless indulged the wonder of it to the full, but Livingstone was now so preoccupied with thoughts about regions beyond, that the Lake itself meant little to him. Coming up the Zouga, which flows out of Lake Ngami, they had encountered another river, which joined the Zouga from the North. Enquiring where it came from, Livingstone had been told, “Oh, from a country full of rivers—so many no one can tell their numbers.” It was the thought of this, and of the possibility of penetrating the heart of Africa by rivers connected in this way, that had overshadowed for Livingstone the discovery of Lake Ngami. Until this time western belief had been that the centre of Africa consisted of a “large sandy plateau”. Livingstone now knew this to be wrong, and was determined to demonstrate it. He also knew that if the centre of Africa were well watered, it would be fertile, and that if it were fertile it must support countless thousands of human beings. To open up the way for the gospel to reach them became particularly the obsession of his soul.
J.T.