David Livingstone

“ In 1839, when David Livingstone was in England, Charles became earnest about religion, influenced partly by the thought that as his brother, to whom he was most warmly attached, was going abroad, he might never see him again in this world, and therefore he would prepare to meet him in the next. A strong desire sprang up in his mind to obtain a liberal education. Not having the means to get this at home, he was advised by David to go to America, and endeavor to obtain admission to one of the colleges there where the students support themselves by manual labor. ”

“ The home in which David Livingstone grew up was bright and happy, and presented a remarkable example of all the domestic virtues. It was ruled by an industry that never lost an hour of the six days, and that welcomed and honored the day of rest; a thrift that made the most of everything, though it never got far beyond the bare necessaries of life ”

“ JOHN, DAVID, JANET, CHARLES, AND AGNES,
FOR POOR AND PIOUS PARENTS.
David Livingstone's birthday was the 19th March, 1813. Of his early boyhood there is little to say, except that he was a favorite at home. The children's games were merrier when he was among them, and the fireside brighter. He contributed constantly to the happiness of the family. Anything of interest that happened to him he was always ready to tell them. The habit was kept up in after-years. ”

“ Probably no human being was ever in circumstances parallel to those in which Livingstone now stood. Years had passed since he had heard from home. The sound of his mother-tongue came to him only in the broken sentences of Chuma or Susi or his other attendants, or in the echoes of his own voice as he poured it out in prayer, or in some cry of home-sickness that could not be kept in. In long pain and sickness there had been neither wife nor child nor brother to cheer him with sympathy, or lighten his dull hut with a smile. ”

“ The first glance set my mind at rest, and that, with the further examination, made me as positive as to the identification of these remains as that there has been among us in modern times one of the greatest men of the human race--David Livingstone."
On Saturday, April 18, 1874, the remains of the great traveler were committed to their resting-place near the centre of the nave of Westminster Abbey. Many old friends of Livingstone came to be present, and many of his admirers, who could not but avail themselves of the opportunity to pay a last tribute of respect to his memory. ”

“ Believing that to labour is to pray, if the work be done for God's glory and not for self-advancement, David Livingstone's life had been one long prayer, and throughout those lonely dangerous journeyings the sense of God's Presence had been his stay and comfort. Around the last hours of the brave man a veil is drawn. ”

“ In a poor but respectable workman's home in Blantyre, near Glasgow, was born a hundred years ago a little lad named David Livingstone, who was to make himself a great and famous name, not only as the discoverer of lakes and rivers, but also as one of the noblest men who ever offered their lives for the welfare of mankind. ”

“ There were traditions of Ulva life that must have been very congenial to the temperament of David Livingstone. In the "Statistical Account" of the parish to which it belongs [2] we read of an old custom among the inhabitants, to remove with their flocks in the beginning of each summer to the upland pastures, and bivouac there till they were obliged to descend in the month of August. The open-air life, the free intercourse of families, the roaming frolics of the young men, the songs and merriment of young and old, seem to have made this a singularly happy time. ”

“ In the forest one day he shot at a lion which sprang upon him, caught him by the shoulder, shook him as a terrier dog does a rat, crushed his arm, and would have ended his life at once if one of the natives had not appeared and quickly shot the lion dead. In 1844 David Livingstone married the daughter of Doctor Moffat. He went back to Scotland several times, where he wrote many books, one of which made him rich; but he used his wealth in further work of discovery and the suppression of the slave-trade. ”

“ When walking he has a firm but heavy tread, like that of an overworked or fatigued man. He is accustomed to wear a naval cap with a semicircular peak, by which he has been identified throughout Africa. His dress, when first I saw him, exhibited traces of patching and repairing, but was scrupulously clean.
"I was led to believe that Livingstone possessed a splenetic, misanthropic temper; some have said that he is garrulous; that he is demented; that he is utterly changed from the David Livingstone whom people knew as the reverend missionary ”

“ Only one son remained at home, Neil, the father of David, who eventually became a tea-dealer, and spent his life at Blantyre and Hamilton. David Livingstone has told us that his father was of the high type of character portrayed in the _Cottar's Saturday Night_. There are friends still alive who remember him well, and on whom he made a deep impression. He was a great reader from his youth upward, especially of religious works. His reading and his religion refined his character, and made him a most pleasant and instructive companion. ”

“ LIVINGSTONE'S BODY-GUARD The work of David Livingstone in Africa was so far that of a missionary-explorer and general that the field of his labor is too broad to permit us to trace individual harvests. No one man can quickly scatter seed over so wide an area. ”

“ Livingstone stood alone. "There are few enough, but a few statesmen. There are few enough, but a few great in medicine, or in art, or in poetry. There are a few great travelers. But Dr. Livingstone stood alone as the great Missionary Traveler, the bringer-in of civilization; or rather the pioneer of civilization--he that cometh before--to races lying in darkness. "I always think of him as what John the Baptist, had he been living in the nineteenth century, would have been. "Dr. Livingstone's fame was so world-wide that there were other nations who understood him even better than we did. ”

“ From then until 1871, when he was found by Stanley, suffering the most pitiful privations, his was a record of important discoveries and explorations. After parting with Stanley in 1872, he continued his explorations, and died in 1873. His body was interred in Westminster Abbey in 1874.
This is a meagre account of the life of David Livingstone. The romance and wonder of it do not appear [427] on the surface; the splendor of the heroic soul is lost in the dry chronology of dates; the marvelous achievement of self-sacrifice is not visible. ”

“ In the entire records of Christian heroism, there are few more remarkable occasions of the triumph of the spirit of holy trust than those which are recorded here so quietly and modestly. We are carried back to the days of the Psalmist: "I will not be afraid of ten thousand of the people that have set themselves against me round about." In the case of David Livingstone as of the other David, the triumph of confidence was not the less wonderful that it was preceded by no small inward tumult. Both were human creatures. ”

“ Livingstone then passed on to the country of the Bakhatla, where he had purposed to erect his mission-station. The country was fertile, and the people industrious, and among other industries was an iron manufactory, to which as a bachelor he got admission, whereas married men were wont to be excluded, through fear that they would bewitch the iron! When he asked the chief if he would like him to come and be his missionary, he held up his hands and said, "Oh, I shall dance if you do; I shall collect all my people to hoe for you a garden, and you will get more sweet reed and corn than myself." ”

“ A stranger in England, without a home, broken in health, with a family of four to care for, often without tidings of her husband for great stretches of time, and harassed with anxieties and apprehensions that sometimes proved too much for her faith, the strain on her was very great. Those who knew her in Africa, when, "queen of the wagon," and full of life, she directed the arrangements and sustained the spirits of a whole party, would hardly have thought her the same person in England. When Livingstone had been longest unheard of, her heart sank altogether ”

“ One day a poor girl comes hungry and naked to the wagons, and is relieved from time to time; then disappears to die in the woods of starvation or be torn in pieces by the hyenas. Another day, as he is preaching, a boy, walking along with his mother, is suddenly seized by a man, utters a shriek as if his heart had burst, and becomes, as Livingstone finds, a hopeless slave. ”

“ A deeper sense of brotherhood, a warmer glow of affection had been kindled in his heart toward Sebituane than had seemed possible. With his very tender conscience and deep sense of spiritual realities, Livingstone was afraid, as in the case of Sehamy eight years before, that he had not spoken to him so pointedly as he might have done. ”

“ Invariably as he goes along, Dr. Livingstone aims at two things: at teaching some of the great truths of Christianity, and rousing consciences on the atrocious guilt of the slave-trade. In connection with the former he discovers that his usual way of conducting divine service--by the reading of prayers--does not give ignorant persons any idea of an unseen Being; kneeling and praying with the eyes shut is better. At the foot of the lake he goes out of his way to remonstrate with Mukaté, one of the chief marauders of the district. ”

“ Not that he looked unkindly on the richer classes,--he used to say in his later years, that he liked to see people in comfort and at leisure, enjoying the good things of life,--but he felt that the burden-bearing multitude claimed his sympathy most. How quick the people are, whether in England or in Africa, to find out this sympathetic spirit, and how powerful is the hold of their hearts which those who have it gain! In poetic feeling, or at least in the power of expressing it, as in many other things, David Livingstone and Robert Burns were a great contrast ”

“ The last words of the hero who had won some of the greatest of England's sea fights were, "Thank God, I have done my duty."
HOW STANLEY FOUND LIVINGSTONE
In the year 1866 David Livingstone, the great African explorer and missionary, started on his last journey to Africa. Three years passed away during which no word or sign from him had reached his friends. The whole civilized world became alarmed for his safety. It was feared that his interest in the savages in the interior of Africa had cost him his life. ”

“ The years of monotonous toil spent in the factory were never regretted by Livingstone. On the contrary, he regarded his experience there as an important part of his education, and had it been possible, he would have liked "to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training [7] ." The fellow-feeling he acquired for the children of labor was invaluable for enabling him to gain influence with the same class, whether in Scotland or in Africa. As we have already seen, he was essentially a man of the people. ”

“ Early on Sunday mornings he would go through the village ringing a bell to rouse the people that they might attend an early prayer-meeting which he had established. His temperament was far too high for most even of the well-disposed people of Blantyre, but Neil Livingstone appreciated his genuine worth, and so did his son. David says of him that "for about forty years he had been incessant and never weary in good works, and that such men were an honor to their country and their profession." Yet it was not after the model of Thomas Burke that Livingstone's own religious life was fashioned. ”

“ To follow an explorer who by his individual exertions has filled up a great space in the map of Africa, who has not only been the first to set foot on the shores of vast inland seas, but who, with the simple appliances of his bodily stature for a sounding pole and his stalwart stride for a measuring tape, lays down new rivers by the hundreds, is a task calculated to stagger him. It may be provoking to find Livingstone busily engaged in bargaining for a canoe upon the shores of Bangweolo, much as he would have secured a boat on his own native Clyde ”

“ Livingstone is in great perplexity what to do. At the rate at which his ship is going it would take him fifteen days to reach Bombay, being one day before the breaking of the monsoon, which would be running it too close to danger. He thinks of going to Aden, but that would require him to go first to Maculla for water and provisions. When he tries Aden the wind is against him; so he turns the ship's head to Bombay, though he has water enough for but ten or twelve days on short allowance. "May the Almighty be gracious to us all and help us!" ”

“ If the work is of God it will came out all right at last. To Him shall be given of the gold of Sheba, and daily shall He be praised. I always think it was such a blessing and privilege to be led into his work instead of into the service of the hard taskmasters--the Devil and Sin."
The reason assigned by Earl Russell for the recall of the Expedition were, that, not through any fault of Dr. Livingstone's, it had not accomplished the objects for which it had been designed, and that it had proved much more costly than was originally expected. ”