“All I can add in my loneliness is, May heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one — American, English or Turk — who will help to heal the open sore of the world.” These words, penned by Livingstone exactly one year before he died, were eventually engraved in the tablet which was placed in his honour in Westminster Abbey. They form an eloquent expression of the longing which carried him through the last weary years — the longing to see the slave trade blotted out. And weary years they were (1866-73) as Livingstone, officially in the service of the Geographical Society, searched for the source of the Nile. He never did trace it, though in his travels he made many other important discoveries. It may seem strange to think of Livingstone spending his last strength tramping back and fore in the execution of geographical exploits. But his motives were pure, and his mind was as clear as ever. He knew that if he discovered the source of the Nile he would have a greatly boosted influence. He knew also how he would use that influence if once he got it — to marshal the moral feelings of mankind to help him fight the slave trade to the death. This, he was convinced, was not only an inherent evil. It was also the great barrier that must be removed before the gospel could get into Central Africa, and therefore he wrote about this time “I would forget all my cold, hunger, suffering and trials, if I could be the means of putting a stop to this cursed traffic.”
To list Livingstone’s miseries in these closing years would be to provide melancholy reading: we will not dwell upon them here. Details of this period are given in the other Magazine, and here we do no more than remember his remarkable death, which took place on the first of May, 1873. His last months had been spent traversing trackless, watery wastes: now he crossed the Jordan River, and his journey had an end. Now he was where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.
Lessons from Livingstone
Looking once more over the life which has been the subject of these articles, it might be of benefit to emphasise some of the points which have impressed the present writer.
Livingstone’s character was of course a remarkable one: the combination of qualities which he displayed mark him as one of the most extraordinary personalities which Scotland has ever produced.
He was a truly humble man. This view is not based on Livingstone’s words, but on his actions. Men’s words must always remain suspect, as a basis for judging their character, but their deeds are a surer guide. When Livingstone was tried beyond ordinary endurance by the faults of others, he still exercised restraint. Instead of railing on those who upset his plans and thwarted his purposes, he remembered his own faults, and could say, “consciousness of my own defects makes me lenient . . . I have my weaknesses.” Another expression of his humility which arose from his self-knowledge is found in a letter from Livingstone to Arthur Tidman, Secretary of the L.M.S. in London. Livingstone is discussing his proposed trek to the West Coast in 1851 and writes, “Some of the brethren do not hesitate to tell the natives that my object is to obtain the applause of men. This bothers me, for I sometimes suspect my own motives.” This calm and humble reaction to the malicious gossip of his colleagues gives the measure of the man. It is not merely that he refuses to strike out in righteous anger against those misrepresenting him. He acknowledges there is that in him which might possibly give some substance to their talk, and openly confesses this before his superiors at home.
He was a hard working man. Whoever has the slightest acquaintance with what Livingstone accomplished knows this. And his hard work was not an ostentatious display of how his spirit triumphed over his flesh. Rather, he enjoyed hard work, as he wrote: “The sweat of one’s brow is no longer a curse when one works for God, it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing.”
He was a happy man. In writing of the privations and trials which Livingstone endured, it is dangerous to describe his sufferings in full detail. The reason is that when we read a list of his woes, we naturally assume that he must have been perpetually downcast in his mind. In fact he was a happy man. Perhaps the most wonderful confirmation of this fact comes from Stanley, in his description of Livingstone at the time when they met at Ujiji. The signs of weariness were there and they were not lost on Stanley. There was a wanness over his features and a heaviness in his tread which bespoke the excessive work and worry to which he had been subjected. But there was something else, which to Stanley was more remarkable: “I never saw any spleen or misanthropy in him . . . it is notorious that the Doctor has a fund of quiet humour which he exhibits at all times when he is among friends . . . His gentleness never forsakes him; his hopefulness never deserts him. No harassing anxieties, distraction of mind, long separation from home and kindred, can make him complain. He thinks ‘all will come out right at last’; he has such faith in the goodness of Providence . . . There is a good-natured abandon about Livingstone which was not lost on me. Whenever he began to laugh, there was a contagion about it that compelled me to imitate him . . .”
When contemplating the journey to the West Coast Livingstone was directed by those in London to take a suitable white companion with him. However, Livingstone replied that the only suitable person was Moffat, and that he could not leave Kuruman. Proposing that he go himself, and that loneliness would be no object, Livingstone said “I am not given to despondency or lowness of spirits.” Writing again just on the eve of his departure for the West, Livingstone referred to the severe bout of fever he had just endured, and to the uncomfortable heat. But he went on: “A merry heart doeth good like medicine. If I allowed my mind to dwell constantly on the miserable degradations, wickedness and sad prospects of the people here, I might become melancholy and soon die. But we have a fair world, and all the wonderful works of our Father in it, and I believe we ought to allow our minds to dwell on the beautiful more than on the evil. I am never low spirited.”
Just before she contracted her fatal illness, Mary said to Livingstone, “You must always be as playful as you have always been. I would not like you to be as grave as some folks I have seen.” Livingstone noted in his journal that his wife’s remark confirmed him in “what I have always believed to be the true way, to let the head grow wise, but keep the heart always young and playful.”
The great thing about Livingstone’s profession of Christianity was that it was matched by his practice. Stanley watched him hour by hour for over four months, and afterwards wrote, “His religion is not of the theoretical kind, but it is a constant, earnest, sincere practice. It is neither demonstrative nor loud, but manifests itself in a quiet practical way, and is always at work. It is not aggressive, which sometimes is troublesome, if not impertinent. In him religion exhibits its loveliest features; it governs his conduct, not only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the bigoted Mohammedans, and all who come in contact with him . . . religion has made him the most companionable of men and indulgent of masters — a man whose society is pleasurable to a degree.”
As a man, he had that gentle strength seen in the humble, the unaffected, and the realistic. As a Christian he had that irresistible appeal of those who are truly like their Lord.
Turning to look at aspects of the science of missions met with in our study of Livingstone’s life, we can only mention here three points.
Of course Livingstone placed the greatest possible emphasis on the necessity of becoming intimately acquainted with the native language. In one of his books he mentions the phenomenal numbness of moral perception which missionaries encountered. He says, however, that this may be in part explained by “the mode of communication, either by interpreters, or by the imperfect knowledge of the language, which not even missionaries of talent can overcome save by the labour of many years.”
On the financing of the missionary projects. Livingstone’s views were forcefully expressed: “We Protestants provide missionaries with a bare subsistence, and are unsparing in our praise of them for not being worldly-minded when our niggardliness compels them to live as did the prodigal son . . . It is quite possible to find men whose devotion to the work of spreading the gospel will make them ready to submit to any sacrifice. What, however, can be thought of the justice of Christians who not only work their agents at the lowest terms, but regard what they give as charity!” On more than one occasion Livingstone recorded his indebtedness, not to Christian societies, but to Mr Oswell, the gentleman hunter with whom he travelled to Lake Ngami in 1849. In March, 1852, Livingstone wrote London to explain, not only that the whole of the present year’s salary had already been spent on “oxen, waggon repairs, wages, etc., etc.,” but that he had already been forced to spend £57 of his next year’s salary as well. It is pathetic to read how he says in this connection: “I have now to crave your indulgence with respect to this overdrawing,” and to hear him protest that his life has been innocent of all luxuries apart from meal, tea and coffee. As to a way out of his financial troubles, Livingstone stated: “Had Mr Oswell not presented us with about £170 since we came here, I should have been in a fix.” When he heroically faced the distressing separation from his family which his work demanded, he had to ask for an extra allowance so that they could be provided for at home. Why did the most noble and independent of men have to degrade himself to ask for money so that he could support his wife and children? Is the answer what it seems to be — because he was a Christian missionary? Is this a class of people who are doomed to exploitation till the end of time?
Only one last matter can here be raised out of the many facets of Livingstone’s missionary experiences. We refer to his relations with the authorities at home. Of course Livingstone’s connections with the L.M.S. were severed during his first furlough. But during his single term under their auspices he experienced to the full the bitter difficulties of working in Africa under the direction of men in London.
One example will suffice. Livingstone knew to his bitter cost that some of the men who were his colleagues were worse than useless. The man who was with him at Kolobeng grew so green with envy at his success, that Livingstone felt constrained to leave, and begin afresh elsewhere. At the time Livingstone wrote nothing home. After some years, however, when he was away from these parts and was ploughing a lonely furrow to the North and West, he felt that he should communicate his views to the Society Secretary at home. He got little thanks. How could Livingstone reasonably expect, the secretary asked, that the directors would accept his side of things on the bare assumption that he was right and that his colleagues were wrong?
We know that Livingstone was capable of reporting only what was, to the best of his knowledge, true. But we have to admit that the Society secretary in London was not unreasonable either in the reply he gave to the missionary in the field. What then is the key to the situation in which both men differed, and were yet, from their own points of view, quite right? The obvious answer is that the men were all right but the system all wrong. It was a sheer impossibility to run a mission successfully when you were six thousand miles away. And because the system was wrong misunderstandings arose, heartbreak was endured and missionary time and talent were thrown away.
Hudson Taylor had a different idea, and most missions have long since accepted it. He ran the mission from the field itself. If Livingstone had been backed on the spot by men of sympathy, foresight and zeal, what would he not have achieved?
J.T.