Who was David Livingstone?

Even at the present time there are many places where the gospel has not penetrated. True, there has been a wonderful opening of the world to the gospel of late, and there are not now many countries where the gospel has not entered at all. Still there are vast tracts in many countries where none have ever heard of Christ. We may say we are not called to engage in such pioneer work. Well, so be it; but you can bear up with all your sympathy, your prayers, and with your carnal things those whom God has called to these arduous labours. In how many cases has new ground been opened up by many, who have given up their lives to the cause, e.g. in the case of the Congo-Balolo Mission.

Many, who are not generally called martyrs because disease cut them off rather than the sword, are none the less martyrs, and have literally laid down their lives to open one place or another to the gospel of Christ. Dr. David Livingstone was truly one of these, also the Hon. Keith Falconer, and many others. Probably we know some who are attempting such arduous work, and facing the inevitable dangers. If not, we can easily discover such. What are we doing to help them?

One can be a missionary without being a pioneer. Many go to China, to India and other lands to help in places where the pioneering has been done by others. A true pioneer has the heart of an evangelist, though he may not be gifted as a preacher. David Livingstone and Fred Stanley Arnot are not usually spoken of as evangelists. But they were men of prayer and faith. As pioneers they blazed the trail where other feet have followed.

There is a power of comfort in these pious aspirations which multitudes have adopted and proved. David Livingstone on leaving his Scottish home in 1840 to start on his missionary tour to the unknown African deserts read this Psalm in the early morning to his parents and prayed with them. There were forty years of peril before him, but he learned at the outset to lift up his eyes.

It was said that when David Livingstone was about to disappear in Africa, carrying his life in his hand, not knowing what to expect, but imbued with a desire to open up the dark continent to the Gospel of God, that he declared referring to the blessed Lord, and speaking with the utmost reverence, he was committing himself to the care of a Gentleman, who never went back on His word. He was relying on the strong promise of God with a double negative, which might be translated, “I will never, never, leave thee; never, never, forsake thee.” We are assured that Livingstone was not disappointed. Surely our Lord is the great example today, for any who would seek to follow in the footsteps of the man in Psalm 15.

One bitterly cold night in the winter of 1875 he finished reading a book in which he had grown deeply interested, "How I found Livingstone." It was at that time quite a new book, written by the well-known African explorer, Henry Stanley, who tells in its pages how he and his men, in their search for the pioneer missionary, Dr. Livingstone (who had not for a very long time been heard of by his friends in Scotland or England), had crossed rivers, climbed mountains, and for days and even weeks together forced their way through forests where the trees grew so closely together that though the sun was shining brightly overhead they had sometimes, even at noonday, almost to grope their way.

As he read, all his old interest in and love for Africa seemed to revive. He lingered for a few moments over its last page, then closed the book. As he laid it down, his eye fell upon a packet of books and papers sent from his home in Scotland. Hardly knowing why, he took one up and read with delight, not unmixed with surprise, an appeal for christian men who wished to devote their lives to the Lord's work to go as missionaries to Uganda, in the very heart of Africa; its then king, Mtesa, being, it was said, quite willing to receive and welcome them. It was already past midnight, but Mackay felt he could not sleep until the first step had been taken, and a letter offering himself for Uganda was at once written.

On the voyage to Zanzibar the party met a merchant who had known the missionary, Dr. Livingstone. He had done business with him and been impressed by his fair dealing and kindness. He did not speak very good English, but when asked what he thought of the doctor, replied: "Livingstone very good man, yes, very good man; Livingstone the best man I ever have seen; good for rich man, good for poor man, good for every man."

For the first time in his life Mackay had an opportunity of seeing something of the horrors of the slave-trade. A British man-of-war and several gunboats did good work against the dhows. During one week no less than one hundred and fifty poor slaves who had been stolen from their homes and sold to Portuguese or Arab traders were set free and helped to return to their villages. "The boats and men are," he wrote home, "all too few for the work required. It is like catching a few of the stolen horses after the stable door has been left open."

One of the speakers at the missionary gathering told of a meeting where Robert Moffatt, the celebrated African missionary, the father of David Livingstone’s wife, was present. He could look back as few could. He was asked the secret of success on the mission field. His answer was, “Firstly patience; secondly patience; thirdly patience.” What could his memory not have recalled in the spreading out of that advice in his long life of missionarv labour.

By May day the work was fairly begun, and to his great delight he was able to engage as his personal servant and interpreter Susi, an old servant of Dr. Livingstone's, one of the faithful few who helped to carry his body to the coast, and afterwards went with his remains to England. He could speak several native languages, and proved a real help and comfort to the lonely missionary.

The slave-trade was still a cause of great trouble and anxiety to Mackay. He writes "How many poor slaves are being nightly driven to the coast no man can tell. A well-beaten track leads from here to the sea, and every time I cross it, I shudder to think of the unhappy men, of the helpless women and children who, after being stolen from their homes, are being driven along it to be crowded into the hold of slave-dhows.

A British man-of-war, for the suppression of the trade, was stationed off the coast; but its boats and men were too few for the work that needed to be done. The Sultan could, he said, do nothing to prevent the slave trade, and Mackay soon found that the native interpreters, who were engaged to help the British sailors, were often bribed by the slave traders to allow their dhows to pass unnoticed, or to say that the women on board those captured were the wives or household servants of the owners.

The pessimism of unbelief is one of the deadliest of evils. If it were not for the Calebs who keep up faith and courage in spite of a whole nation's wailing and despairing, what enterprise would ever have been undertaken? In this way the early missionaries, midst universal discouragement, prepared their ventures to attack the citadels of evil: and we have seen with what marvellous result, when even men who reject Christianity, acknowledge with admiration, as Dr. Darwin did, the effects of the holy lives and teachings of the soldiers of the cross on people of the very lowest types. But those who supposed that the day for discouraging such work was past have of late been roughly undeceived, when we have a "Parliament of religions" convened to assist a played-out Christianity, and when in a concourse of ecclesiastical dignitaries it is announced that Christianity in Africa is a failure, and that Mohammedanism is better adapted to raise men in the low condition of the negroes! Mohammedanism, that debases and enslaves its womankind, that says the sword is the key of heaven, that sets the poor negro tribes slaughtering one another in order to carry off the survivors in chain-gangs for slaves! What would Vanderkemp, Moffatt, and Livingstone have thought of that? What would the missionary Shaw's wife have said? When they used to tell her how dangerous and far beneath any hope of christian influence the Kaffirs were, she replied, "If these people are so bad as to be guilty of such atrocities, there is all the more need that we should go forward and teach them better."

Several explorers had tried to trace the river Nile to its source, and about the time that Alexander Mackay was making his first attempts at printing, a great deal of attention and interest had been aroused by hearing of wonderful discoveries. Yes, the old maps were, after all, right. The Congo, a mighty river, was really there, also lakes. Uganda was not a barren waste, but a well-watered and well-peopled country. Every new discovery formed a fresh subject of conversation in the boy's home, and few things gave him greater pleasure than to trace the journeys of Livingstone and Stanley on the map that when no longer required in his father's study, he carried off in triumph to his own room.

"Father," said Alexander one day, "there is one thing that puzzles me very often. I know that till quite recent times, when any skilled work such as building bridges, piers or lighthouses had to be done, we had to send across the Channel for engineers and they had to bring their own workmen with them. Have we had to send for missionaries too? Livingstone and Moffat were, I know, Scotchmen, but I see that quite a number of the missionaries in Africa are Germans."