David Livingstone by Lora Clement

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 29, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 45.

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David Livingstone

By Lora Clement

Missionary Biography—No. 2

David Livingstone

(Concluded)

LORA CLEMENT

Livingstone’s mind was one of that broad character which at the outset grasps the whole of a problem, and to those who have followed his later course it is clear why he saw no duty in settling down on one fixed spot to teach and preach in a slavery-harrowed land. He knew that, first, there must be a mighty clearing out of this evil. As for his own intent, he said, “Cannot the love of Christ carry the missionary where the slave trade carries the trader?” And so, right through to the west coast he marched, carrying and diffusing everywhere a knowledge of the redeeming Christ, and illustrating by his own kindly life and words the mercies of God.

The physician and the scientist, the minister and the reformer, were all combined in this one purposeful man. The people believed him to be a wizard, and even credited him with power to raise the dead. Heathen, sick and curious, crowded about his wagon, but not an article was stolen. One day the chief of a savage tribe said: “I wish you would change my heart. Give me medicine to change it; for it is proud, proud and angry, angry always.”

Livingstone left on record in his journals invaluable data of rivers, lakes, and streams, treacherous bogs and boiling fountains, plants, animals, seasons, products, and tribes, together with the most accurate maps.

Near the mighty but then unknown Zambesi, Livingstone found the Makololo people, a tribe from which came his most devoted native helpers. When he left them to journey toward the west coast, as many men as he needed willingly agreed to accompany him. After a terrible journey of seven months, involving imminent starvation and endless exposure, the party at last reached their destination, St. Paul de Loanda, a Portuguese settlement.

Full as this journey was of incident, one of the most impressive things about it all was the horrors of the slave trade, which came home to the missionary with heart-rending directness. “Every day he saw families torn asunder, dead bodies along the way, gangs chained and yoked, skeletons grinning against the trees by the roadside. As he rowed along the beautiful river Shire, the paddles of his boat were clogged in the morning with

the bodies of women and children who had died during the night, and were thus disposed of by their masters.” And when he was sure that the wretched system was entrenched from the center of the continent to the coast, is it any wonder that he determined to make the exposure of this gigantic iniquity his principal work until “the open sore of the world” should be healed?

The slave raiders were Livingstone’s bitter enemies, and did everything possible to hinder his work; but the poor heathen learned to know and love the missionary as their friend, and oftentimes as their deliverer. He never once betrayed their confidence. Almost immediately after reaching the Portuguese settlement on the coast he was prostrated with a very severe illness. An English ship in the harbor was about to sail. In his great weakness, Livingstone longed for the bracing air of the Scottish Highlands, and a sight of his beloved wife and children in the homeland. But he prepared his reports, charts, and observations, put them aboard the ship, and, after watching it set sail, made ready to march back into the interior. Why did he not go home? There was just one reason. He had promised his native helpers that if they would journey with him to the coast, he would see them back safely to their homes, and “his word to the black men of Africa was just as sacred as it would have been if pledged to the queen. He kept it faithfully as an oath made to Almighty God. It involved a journey of nearly two years in length, a line of march two thousand miles long, through jungles, swamps, and desert, through scenes of surpassing beauty.” But the result was worth the cost; for two years later, when he came out on the east coast at Quillimane, “he was the best-known, best-loved, and most perfectly trusted man in Africa.”

Many times through all these wanderings he was in danger. Once during his early explorations, he had an adventure with a lion which nearly cost his life. He says of it in a letter: “The beast rushed from the bushes and bit me on the arm, breaking the bone. I hope I shall never forget God’s mercy. It will be well before this reaches you. Do not mention it to any one. I do not like to be talked about.” He never voluntarily referred to it; but “for thirty years thereafter, all adventures and exposures and hardships were undertaken with an arm so maimed that it was painful to raise a fowling piece to his shoulder.” After his death the body was identified by that scar and the compound fracture made by the lion’s teeth.

Livingstone’s visits to the homeland were brief, and each day was filled to the brim with interviews, lectures, and literary work. He returned to Africa for the third and last time in 1866, ascended the Rovuma, and for three years was lost to the outside world. During this time he visited Lakes Moero and Tanganyika, preaching the gospel to thousands and tens of thousands waiting in heathen darkness.

In 1871 his strength utterly gave way, and on October 23, reduced to a living skeleton, he reached Ujiji, after a perilous journey of six hundred miles taken expressly to secure supplies. He was bitterly disappointed to find that the one to whom the delivery of the goods had been charged had disposed of the whole lot. For eighty days he was obliged to keep his bed, and during this time he read his Bible through four times. On the flyleaf he wrote: “No letters for three years. I have a sore longing to finish and go home, if God wills.” Relief, letters, and supplies had all been sent him, but he never received them. Many of the letters which he wrote never even reached the coast, as the Portuguese destroyed them whenever possible.

During all this time England—and, in fact, the world—waited with intense anxiety for news of the hero. A report came that he was dead. Then a relief expedition brought back word that he was alive, and in Africa, but that they had not been able to find him.

Just at this crucial moment Henry M. Stanley was sent out by James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, with the order: “Take what money you want, but find Livingstone. You can act according to your own plans in your search, but whatever you do, find Livingstone—dead or alive.” Stanley went. For eleven months he endured incredible hardships, but his expedition pressed forward into the interior. One day a caravan passed and reported that a white man had just reached Ujiji. “Was he young or old?” questioned Stanley anxiously. “He is old; he has white hair on his face; he is sick,” replied the natives. As the searching party neared the village, flags were unfurled, and a salute fired from the guns. They were answered by shouts from hundreds of Africans. Stanley was greeted by Susi, Livingstone’s servant, and soon stood face to face with the great missionary explorer. He had found Livingstone.

The brief visit which they enjoyed meant much to both men. In vain did Stanley plead with the doctor to go home with him. The old explorer’s heart was resolute, and he set his face as a flint. He felt that his work was not done. At length the newspaper man and his company started eastward. Livingstone went some distance with them, and then, a broken old man, “clad in faded gray clothes,” with bowed head and slow step, returned to his chosen solitude. Five months later the relief party reached Zanzibar, and news of Livingstone’s safety and whereabouts was flashed to all parts of the world.

As the explorer again took up his weary way, physically weak and in constant pain, the buoyant spirit rose above hardship, and Scotch pluck smiled at impossibilities. He wrote in his diary: “Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair. I encourage myself in the Lord my God, and go forward.” Weary months followed, filled with travel, toil, and physical suffering. The last of April, 1873, a year after Stanley left him, he reached the village of Ilala, at the southern end of Lake Bangweolo. He was so ill that his attendants were obliged to carry him as they journeyed, but the heroic spirit was still struggling to finish a work which would make possible the evangelization of the Dark Continent.

While the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak indeed, and on the morning of the first of May, his faithful servants found him kneeling at his bedside, with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. “He had passed away without a single attendant, on the farthest of all his journeys. But he had died in the act of prayer,—prayer offered in that reverential attitude about which he was always so particular; commending his own spirit, with all his dear ones, as was his wont, into the hands of his Saviour; and commending Africa, his own dear Africa, with all her woes and sins and wrongs, to the Avenger of the oppressed and the Redeemer of the lost.”