“The Highest Will Lead Me Further”: The Life and Legacy of David Livingstone

He needs no epitaph to guard a name,
Which men shall praise while worthy work is done.
He lived and died for good – be that his fame;
Let marble crumble: this is LIVINGSTONE.

"The Highest Will Lead Me Further": The Life and Legacy of David Livingstone, PDF format

  There never was his like in the whole history of Africa.  This was the greatest African explorer of all time, perhaps the greatest explorer the world has known, and a Christian man who sought to preach to African tribes as he travelled.  How true the words of the verse quoted above: although his heart was buried under a tree in the African interior and although his body was buried in a tomb in the great Westminster Abbey in London, in truth this man needs no epitaph, no marble commemoration.  Long after all marble edifices have disappeared, the life of this man will always be his greatest monument.  “He, being dead, yet speaketh” (Heb. 11:4).

  As an African by birth, whose ancestors came from both England and Scotland and settled in South Africa and Rhodesia, I grew up hearing the story of David Livingstone, and it thrilled my young heart just as it did the hearts of countless youngsters before me.  His life story is one of high adventure and derring-do, and any boy with a sense of adventure in his soul finds it stirs his blood and makes him dream of jungles and swamps and wildlife and heat and rain and travel.  But Livingstone’s life story is much more than the adventure and the escapades, the close calls and the brave deeds.  It is a story of God’s mighty work in and through the life and labours of the great missionary-explorer who opened up the Dark Continent to the missionaries who followed him, helped to abolish the terrible African slave trade, and pioneered the coming of Europeans to the African interior, bringing with them all the great benefits of European civilisation and thrusting Africa into the modern world.

  Out of necessity, so much has had to be left out of this very brief examination of David Livingstone’s life and labours.  This is merely a short tribute, paid by an English South African minister, to a man who loved Africa and its people, and wanted nothing but the best for them.  His life has been covered in many biographies, and it is my purpose to give just a brief outline of the man, his remarkable achievements, and the legacy he left.

Birth and Childhood

  David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, on the 19th March 1813.  His parents’ home was a humble cottage, and poverty was such that at the tender age of ten, David went to work at the local cotton mill.   There he laboured six days a week, fourteen hours a day – from six in the morning till eight at night!  But he was no ordinary boy.  He wanted an education!  He loved reading, read all he could borrow, and used his first salary to purchase a Latin grammar, which he set up on his spinning jenny at the mill and glanced at it whenever he could.  In this way he painstakingly educated himself as he worked, and over time he taught himself Latin, Greek, medicine and Christian doctrine.  Not content with this, after those long hours in the mill he then went to night school, and when he got home he continued studying by candlelight well into the night!

  Young David was fascinated by the natural world around him, and would roam the countryside around Blantyre, his keen eye observing the river, the flowers, and the animals.  Little did he know it at the time, but the Lord was preparing him for his life’s work. 

  Of his conversion as a youngster this is what he wrote: “Great pains had been taken by my parents to instil the doctrines of Christianity into my mind, and I had no difficulty in understanding the theory of our free salvation by the atonement of our Saviour, but it was only about this time that I really began to feel the necessity and value of a personal application of the provisions of that atonement to my own case.  The change was like what may be supposed would take place were it possible to cure a case of ‘colour blindness.’  The perfect freeness with which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in God’s book drew forth feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought us with His blood, and a sense of deep obligation to Him for His mercy has influenced, in some small measure, my conduct ever since.”[1]

The Smoke of a Thousand Villages

  Believing it was God’s will for him to become a missionary, he attended lectures at Glasgow University where he studied medicine, and applied to the London Missionary Society.  But when the young man had to preach a sermon to a congregation in the village of Stanford Rivers, he entered the pulpit and announced to the waiting people, “Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say” – and promptly left the pulpit!  Indeed, all his life he found public speaking very difficult.  “Moreover, criticism was made of his extreme slowness and hesitancy in prayer.  Yet the man who was nearly rejected by the Society on this account, died on his knees in the heart of Africa while all the world was awed by the thought that David Livingstone passed away in the act of prayer.”[2]

  He was finally accepted as a missionary, and furthered his medical studies in London in preparation for mission work.  In 1840 he qualified, and was also ordained.

  In England he met the missionary Robert Moffat who was home on furlough, a fellow-Scot who had been labouring for many years in a place called Kuruman, a dry, hot desert portion of what would later be the country of South Africa, ministering to the Tswana people.  Moffat spoke the words which David never forgot, and which spurred him on through all the trials and tribulations of his adventurous life.  In Moffat’s own words: “By and by he [David] asked me whether I thought he would do for Africa.  I said I believed he would, if he would not go to an old station, but would advance to unoccupied ground, specifying the vast plain to the north [of Kuruman], where I had sometimes seen in the morning sun the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been.”

  These words sparked a continent-wide vision in David’s heart, the burning desire to preach in that unknown African interior where no missionary had ever gone before.  He once wrote: “I hope to be permitted to work as long as I live beyond other men’s line of things and plant the seed of the Gospel where others have not planted.”

  After a sad parting from his beloved parents, who stood fully behind him in his work, he sailed for Africa in 1840.  He was 27 years old.

In Africa at Last

  While on board ship on the voyage to Algoa Bay (present-day Port Elizabeth, South Africa), Livingstone asked the captain to teach him how to navigate.  He knew that such knowledge could be very beneficial to him in his work.

  The interior of Africa was at that time a vast, unknown, mysterious land, peopled in Europeans’ imaginations by strange animals and even stranger men.  Thus far it had defied all attempts to open its secrets to the world.  David Livingstone would change all that.  He journeyed hundreds of miles to Moffat’s mission station at Kuruman by ox wagon.  It took him ten weeks and he revelled in the life, camping under the stars, shooting for the pot.  There were no roads, just the wild African bush all around him, filled with Africa’s great wildlife.  Staying only a short while at Kuruman, he pushed further north, into the land of the Bakwena tribe.  By living among them he learned their language and began preaching to them, and they came to respect him greatly.  Once, travelling on the edge of the Kalahari desert, he overheard some of his Bakwena bearers discussing him.  They said, “He is not strong, he is quite slim and only appears stout because he puts himself into those bags (trousers).  He will soon crack up.”  Livingstone was to report on this: “This caused my Highland blood to rise, and made me despise the fatigue of keeping them all at the top of their speed for days together, until I heard them expressing proper opinions of my pedestrian powers.” 

  He was a tough man in a wild and dangerous country – the ideal man for the task.  He ate what there was at the time, even (like John the Baptist) locusts and wild honey.  Once he wrote, “I have drunk water swarming with insects, thick with mud, putrid from rhinoceros’ urine and buffalo’s dung.”

  At one point he wrote: “I shall try to hold myself in readiness to go anywhere, provided it be forward.”

Mauled by a Lion

  In 1845, when he went to a place called Mabotsa to start a mission among the Bakhatla people, he was attacked by a lion.  He was helping to hunt some lions that were troubling the village, and when he saw one he shot it; but while he was reloading the lion sprang on him, buried its teeth in his arm and (in his own words) “shook me as a terrier dog does a rat.”  He was saved by two blacks, one of whom had himself been saved by Livingstone previously, who distracted the lion and were both bitten.  Livingstone’s shots finally took effect and the lion dropped dead. 

  But his arm was shattered and would never work properly again.  The crushed bone was sticking out the skin.  And “for thirty years afterwards all his labors and adventures, entailing such exertion and fatigue, were undertaken with a limb so maimed that it was painful for him to raise a rifle, or, in fact, to place the left arm in any position above the level of the shoulder.”[3]  And yet even this, in God’s providence, was for an important purpose, as shall be seen.

His Marriage

  When Robert Moffat returned from England he brought his daughter Mary with him.  David and Mary fell in love, and the spot where he proposed to her under a tree is still to be seen in the grounds of the Moffat mission station in Kuruman.  There they were married.  Theirs was a happy and loving marriage, and Mary proved to be the ideal wife for such a man.

 

Mary Moffat Livingstone

Plunging into the Unknown

  Livingstone still longed to explore further, and so it was that he took his wife and headed to Chonuane, where he was made welcome by the Bechuana chief, Sechele.  And it was there that Mary gave birth to their first child, Robert.  This earned her the name of “Ma Robert” among the natives, according to their custom.

  Sechele listened to Livingstone’s preaching and it had a profound effect on him.  He said to the missionary, “You startle me.  These words make all my bones to shake.  I have no more strength in me.”  Sechele became a great reader of the Bible, loving especially the book of Isaiah.  He said, “He was a fine man, that Isaiah; he knew how to speak.”   In time to come, and with much caution, Livingstone felt that Sechele had been converted, and he baptized him.

  Next, Livingstone journeyed still further north, crossing the great Kalahari desert and discovering Lake Ngami.  Later he took Mary and his now three children there too.  Returning to Kolobeng, where the tribe had moved, a fourth child was born, but died of fever.

  Once, in a letter to his parents, Livingstone wrote: “I am a missionary, heart and soul.  God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and physician.  A poor, poor imitation of Him I am, or wish to be.  In this service I hope to live, in it I wish to die.”

  He pushed north again, eventually reaching the Makololo tribe under their chief, Sebituane.   But on their way to this tribe (it was 1851) his family almost perished as they were crossing the desert.  The Bushman guide was lost, and one of the servants had wasted their water.  Livingstone’s agony was recorded in his journal: “The idea of their [his children’s] perishing before our eyes was terrible.  It would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe, but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within.”  What a woman!  Truly Mary was a wife of whom any husband could be proud, and a true example of the way in which a Christian wife should behave towards her husband.

  On the fifth day, water was at last found, and they were saved from death by thirst.

Parting from His Family

  Livingstone very reluctantly accepted that he would have to send his family back to England for their health’s sake.  So they returned to the Cape Colony, where Mary and their young children (now including a new baby) sailed for England.  David sadly headed back into the interior, alone, in April 1852, at the age of 40.  The parting from his family for the sake of his work in Africa would always weigh heavily on him, and  meant a life of great loneliness.  But it was a sacrifice he knew he had to make.  In a letter he wrote: “The act of orphanizing my children… will be like tearing out my bowels, for they will all forget me.  But I feel it is a duty to Him who did much more for us than that…. Forbid it, that we should ever consider holding a commission from the King of kings a sacrifice.”  And he wrote to Mary herself: “My Dearest Mary, how I miss you now, and the dear children!  My heart yearns incessantly over you.  How many thoughts of the past crowd into my mind!…. You have been a great blessing to me.  You attended to my comfort in many many ways.  May God bless you for all your kindnesses!  I see no face now to be compared with that sunburnt one which has so often greeted me with its kind looks.  Let us do our duty to our Saviour, and we shall meet again…. I loved you when I married you, and the longer I lived with you, I loved you the better….Let us do our duty to Christ, and He will bring us through the world with honour and usefulness.  He is our refuge and high tower; let us trust in Him at all times, and in all circumstances.  Love Him more and more, and diffuse His love among the children.  Take them all round you, and kiss them for me.  Tell them I have left them for the love of Jesus, and that they must love Him too, and to avoid sin, for that displeases Jesus.”

 

The Livingstone family

  The Lord Jesus said in Matt. 10:37,38: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And he that taketh not his cross, and foloweth after me, is not worthy of me.”  David Livingstone fulfilled these words.  He was criticised for sending his family back to England, and for his long separations from them.  And he was also criticised for taking his family with him on his first missionary journey!  It just goes to show the truth of the saying that one cannot please all people all the time.  Some will find fault no matter what one does.  But the truth is that he dearly loved his family; he just loved the Saviour more, as all Christians are called to do.

  He had now spent 11 years in Africa.  What had he accomplished so far?  “He had penetrated further north from the Cape than any other white man.  He had discovered Lake Ngami and the upper reaches of the Zambezi River.  He had given Christianity a foothold among the Bakwains and the Makololo.  He had been used by God to help convert one of the most remarkable chiefs in Central Africa.  He had built three houses with his own hands and had taught many hundreds to read.  He had exercised the healing art to the relief and benefit of thousands.  He had made some progress in reducing Sechuana to a grammatical language and had even composed hymns in it.  He had made invaluable scientific research and had enriched our knowledge of the flora and fauna of Central Africa.  Finally, he had seen at first hand the horrors of the slave traffic, and had vowed himself to the ultimate destruction of this form of ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’  Eleven busy, arduous, and perilous years had brought him to mid-life.  He was now about to dedicate all his ripe experience and unique powers of head and heart to the cause of establishing Christ’s Kingdom in the hearts of those living in the dark interior of the continent to which he had consecrated his life.”[4]

Boers Destroy His Possessions

  Livingstone made enemies.  Any man living such an uncompromising life would do so, but it is sad to report that some of his enemies were Boers.  The Boers, later known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the first Europeans (the Dutch) to settle in South Africa, and they had migrated to this part of the country to escape British rule.  Some of them became raiders and pillagers, viewing the blacks as inferior beings and enslaving those they captured.  They hated Livingstone because of his opposition to slavery.  Still, it is utterly wrong and a gross injustice to tarnish the entire Afrikaner nation with the same brush, as is so popular today in South Africa (and indeed the world) now that a black Marxist government is in charge, and Livingstone himself did not do so.  He made a distinction between the Boer raiders and the majority of the Boer nation, of whom he wrote: “the Boers generally… are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry.”

  During his absence the Boer raiders had destroyed his house, papers and books, stolen his medicines, and killed some 60 of Sechele’s people.  It was a terrible thing and grieved him greatly.  But even in the midst of this great loss, to lighten the sadness he felt, he wrote: “We shall move more easily now that we are lightened of our furniture.  They have taken away our sofa.  I never had a good rest on it.  We had only got it ready when we left.  Well, they can’t have taken away all the stones.  We shall have a seat in spite of them, and that, too, with a merry heart which doeth good like a medicine.”  And: “the Boers have saved me the trouble of making a will.”

  His attitude to personal possessions was one of utter surrender of all to the will of God: “I will place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the Kingdom of Christ.  If anything will advance the interests of that Kingdom, it shall be given away or kept only in reference to whether giving or keeping will most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity…. I will try and remember always to approach God in secret with as much reverence in speech, posture and behaviour as in public.”  How modern Christians could learn from him!

Though Every Prospect Pleases, and Only Man is Vile

  He decided to go north again, to the Makololo tribe.  The journey had its own thrills, including the crossing of the flooded Chobe River, during which a hippo almost overturned his raft by surfacing beneath it.  Chief Sebituane was dead and his son Sekeletu was now chief.  He made Livingstone welcome at the Makololo capital, Linyanti.  There, despite suffering from malaria, he continued his explorations, travelling further up the Zambesi.  He revelled in the natural beauty all around him and wrote: “The sciences exhibit such wonderful intelligence and design in all their various ramifications, some time ought to be devoted to them before engaging in missionary work…. We may feel that we are leaning on His bosom while living in a world clothed in beauty, and robed with the glorious perfection of its Maker and Preserver…. He who stays his mind on his ever-present, ever-energetic God, will not fret himself because of evildoers.  He that believeth shall not make haste.”

  But ever present were the horrors of slavery and of inter-tribal warfare, which were a constant grief and trial to him.  In beautiful tropical Africa he saw the truth expressed in Reginald Heber’s great missionary hymn:

From Greenland’s icy mountains,
What though the spicy breezes

From India’s coral strand,
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;

Where Afric’s sunny fountains
Though every prospect pleases

Roll down their golden sand,
And only man is vile?

From many an ancient river,
In vain with lavish kindness

From many a palmy plain,
The gifts of God are strown;

They call us to deliver
The heathen in his blindness

Their land from error’s chain.
Bows down to wood and stone.

Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile. Livingstone, in the midst of all Africa’s pleasing beauty, saw vile heathenism in all its raw ugliness, and – unlike the blind, foolish advocates of the interfaith movement today who tell us that there are many ways to God, not to mention the anthropologists who criticise missionary work among the heathen as “destroying their traditional, harmonious way of life” – he remained always revolted by it, and utterly convinced of the need for the Gospel to be proclaimed with power among the heathen: “the more intimately I became acquainted with barbarians, the more disgusting does heathenism become.  It is inconceivably vile…. They need a healer.  May God enable me to be such to them.”

To the African West Coast and Back Again

  Now Livingstone desired to find a river highway from the African interior to the coast.  This, he believed, would help to destroy the terrible African slave trade, because if slaves were no longer needed to carry the ivory to the coast, the slave trade would die out.  He therefore determined to journey north-west to the coast at the Portuguese town of Loanda (today this city is in the country of Angola), by walking and by riding an ox.  It would be an incredible journey.  Sekeletu provided 27 porters, for Livingstone, although travelling as lightly as possible, still needed to take with him his few books, navigation instruments, firearms and provisions.  He also carried along a “magic lantern” (an early form of slide projector) and pictures of Bible stories, so that he could present the basic message of the Gospel to the villagers he met.  And indeed he did so in various villages along the way.

  Before setting off he wrote to his father-in-law, Robert Moffat: “I shall open up a path to the interior or perish.”  And knowing he might very well perish in the heart of Africa, he wrote to his own father back in Scotland as follows: “May God in mercy permit me to do something for the cause of Christ in these dark places of the earth.  May He accept my children for his service and sanctify them for it.  My blessing on my wife.  May God comfort her!  If my watch comes back after I am cut off, it belongs to Agnes [his daughter].  If my sextant, it is Robert’s [his son].  The Paris medal to Thomas [another son].  Double-barreled gun to Zouga.  Be a father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow for Jesus’ sake.”  As one biographer commented: “That was all.  Some Boers had relieved him of the necessity of willing any other belongings.  He had none.”[5]

  The party left on the 11th November 1853.  Despite being weak from bouts of fever, and riding a bad-tempered ox, Livingstone persevered on the amazing journey, pushing through sweltering tropical jungle.  Many chiefs demanded that he give them presents before they would permit him to travel through their territory, and he and his men were often threatened.  But this was a man of great courage.  On one occasion, when a chief and his men had surrounded Livingstone’s party, a young warrior rushed at Livingstone from behind, but Livingstone swung the muzzle of his gun round to the attacker’s mouth and he withdrew!  Unlike so many professing Christians today, who think that Christians have to be pacifists in all situations, Livingstone was quite prepared to defend himself from attack when this was required.  He was not being persecuted for preaching Christ, but merely attacked by would-be thieves and murderers, and in such situations self-defence is certainly permitted.

  There was another occasion when he and his men were attacked by tribesmen, slave traders, who surrounded them and would have killed them.  Livingstone had no choice but to order his men to return fire, and the aggressors scattered.  When this incident came to be known in Britain, many found fault with him.  In response, his brother Charles wrote: “If you were in Africa and saw a host of murderous savages aiming their heavily laden muskets and poisoned arrows at you, more light might enter your mind… and if it didn’t, great daylight would enter your body through arrow and bullet holes!”

  This is what Livingstone himself stated regarding war and peace: “I love peace as much as any mortal man.  In fact I go quite beyond you for I love it so much I would fight for it.  You who in a land abounding in peace and soldiery ready to catch every ruffian who would dare to disturb your pretty dwelling may think this language too strong, but your principles to be good must abide the test of stretching.  Fancy yourself here…. I can never cease wondering why the friends who sincerely believe in the power of peace principles don’t test them by going forth to the heathen as missionaries of the cross.  I for one would heartily welcome them from the belief that their conduct would have a good influence though it would never secure their safety.”

The Livingstone statue, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

  At last they reached Loanda, having covered something like 1400 miles in six and a half months, and having overcome hostile tribes, dangerous animals, rain, gloomy forests, 27 attacks of fever, and privation (sometimes having to eat roots, mice and moles).  He was reduced almost to a living skeleton.  A British warship offered to take him back to England, to be reunited with his family and recover his broken health.  But even though he longed for his family, he knew he could not abandon his men, who had so faithfully tramped across those hundreds of miles with him.  He had promised them, “We have stood by one another hitherto and will do so till the last.”  How could he return home while they were left in a strange town, with no way of returning to their own homes?  Furthermore, his work was not done: the route he had found to the coast was unsuitable for trade.  It was necessary to look for another route, this time to the African east coast.

  “Fame had found the explorer.  The Geographical Society awarded him their highest honour – their gold medal.  The Astronomer-Royal at the Cape, Mr Maclear, commended his sightings and in a letter to Livingstone wrote telling him, ‘You have accomplished more for the happiness of mankind than has been done by all the African travellers hitherto put together.’  Despite such acclamation, Livingstone felt it his duty to return to the Makololo at Linyanti.”[6]

  And so it was that on the 20th September 1854 he set out with his men on the long and arduous return journey.  He deposited his journal, letters to his family, and scientific papers on a mail ship.  Imagine his feelings when he later learned that the ship had been wrecked and all his documents were lost forever in the sea!  The Lord had protected him and preserved his life.  As for his precious papers, knowing their vital importance he spent three months writing out his reports a second time.  And this is what he wrote: “These privations, I beg you to observe, are not sacrifices.  I think that word ought never to be mentioned in reference to anything we can do for Him who though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor.”

  The return journey was not easy, he suffered from rheumatic fever, and once again natives threatened him and his party.  Once, when a tribe fired on them, Livingstone, though weak from fever and barely able to stand, drew his gun and pointed it at the chief.   In writing of the incident afterwards, Livingstone’s humour again comes out: “The sight of the revolver gaping into his stomach and my own ghastly visage looking daggers at his face seemed to produce an instant revolution in his martial feelings.”  He told the chief to go home, whereupon the chief said he was afraid Livingstone would shoot him in the back.  To which Livingstone replied, “If I wanted to kill you I could shoot you in the face as well.”  Again showing his courage, Livingstone then deliberately turned his back on the man and went off, unharmed.

  At last, after an absence of almost two years, he brought his men safely back to their homes.  And there he found letters and supplies awaiting him from family and friends.

The Victoria Falls

  When he told Chief Sekeletu that he would now push east to see if the great Zambesi River would prove to be a good trade route to the coast, Sekeletu again provided men to accompany him – well over 100 of them.

  And it was on this journey that his guides took him to see the mighty falls of which he had heard many rumours, and which they called, poetically, Mosi-oa-Tunya, “the Smoke that Thunders”, because of the pillars of water vapour that rose up high into the air above the falls, and the deafening roar of the waters as they cascaded over the lip.  Livingstone gazed rapturously at the amazing sight, truly one of the wonders of the natural world.  He wrote, “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”  He named the falls after his queen, the “Great White Queen”, Victoria.   He carved his initials and the date on a tree.  And so the Victoria Falls became known to the world.

To the African East Coast

  Continuing on his journey, he came to the Batoka, or Batonga, tribe.  Sin and superstition had degraded them.  The men wore nothing at all, and Livingstone wrote, “they have even lost the tradition of the ‘fig leaf.’” He was shocked at their form of greeting: “They throw themselves on their backs on the ground, and, rolling from side to side, slap the outside of their thighs as expressions of thankfulness and welcome…. This method of salutation was to me very disagreeable, and I never could get reconciled to it.  I called out ‘stop, stop!  I don’t want that’; but they, imagining I was dissatisfied, only tumbled about more furiously, and slapped their thighs with greater vigour.  The men being totally unclothed, this performance imparted to my mind a painful sense of their extreme degradation.”  Anthropologists and others say missionaries must not “disturb” tribes with their Gospel message, but they should be left alone with their customs.  An incident like this serves to show just how foolish such sentiments are.  Only the Gospel lifts men out of degradation and superstition.

  As he proceeded eastwards he came across suspicious blacks who had suffered at the hands of Portuguese and Arab slave traders.  Once, to prove that he was British (for his face was now tanned very brown by the African sun), he opened his shirt to reveal his white chest.  It thrilled him to hear the blacks say, “You must be one of that tribe that loves the black men.”  O what God had done through once-Great Britain, the first nation in the world to outlaw slavery!

  But everywhere was evidence of savagery, slavery, warfare and desolation.  For example, he found an old chief living in a house surrounded with human skulls, including many children’s skulls, killed by the chief’s father to show how fierce he was.  Livingstone forged ahead under constant threat from savage tribes, at war with one another and seeking to be at war with him.  Once, when a large and angry force threatened to block his way, he wrote in his journal with his characteristic courage and resignation to the sovereign will of God: “Thank God for His great mercies thus far.  How soon I may be called before Him, my righteous Judge, I know not…. O Jesus, grant me resignation to Thy will, and entire reliance on Thy powerful hand.  On Thy Word alone I lean.  But wilt Thou permit me to plead for Africa?  The cause is Thine.  What an impulse will be given to the idea that Africa is not open if I perish now!  See, O Lord, how the heathen rise up against me, as they did to Thy Son.”  And then these lovely words: “Felt much turmoil of spirit in view of having all my plans for the welfare of this great region and teeming population knocked on the head by savages tomorrow.  But I read that Jesus came and said, ‘All power is given to Me in Heaven and on earth.  Go ye therefore and teach all nations – and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’  It is the word of a gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honour, and there is an end on’t.  I will not cross furtively by night as I intended.  It would appear as flight, and should such a man as I flee?  Nay, verily, I shall take observations for longitude and latitude tonight, though they may be the last.  I feel quite calm now, thank God.”  The next day he saw all his men safely taken across the river by canoe, and lastly he himself stepped into one, thanked his enemies, wished them well, and went on his way.

  Arriving finally at Tete (in present-day Mozambique) and very weak from fever, Livingstone knew he needed to return to Britain to recuperate.  He was not strong enough to take his men back to their own country, but he promised to return to them one day and lead them home.  Amazingly, when he was finally able to return three years later, they were there, waiting for him, confident that he would keep his word.

  He travelled to Quelimane, reaching it on the 20th May 1856.  He had not seen his family for four long years; and during this time he had travelled thousands of miles across the unknown continent, going north, then west, then east right across the continent, from shore to shore.  At Quelimane he boarded a ship for home.

In Britain Again After Sixteen Years

  Sixteen long years.  As he disembarked in England, he found that in his absence he had become a national hero, being acclaimed as one of the greatest explorers of all time.  Here he was reunited with Mary and the children, and what a joyful reunion it was.  He also journeyed to Scotland to see his parents, but was deeply saddened that his dear father had passed away not long before.

  Critics of Livingstone have poured scorn on him for the long separation from Mary and his children which his work entailed.  But when one reads the following beautiful poem, written by Mary herself when David returned to her, one sees the love between these two, and that in no way did she reproach him for doing what he believed was his duty:

A hundred thousand welcomes, and it’s time for you to come
From the far land of the foreigner, to your country and your home.

Oh as long as we were parted, ever since you went away,
I never passed a dreamless night, or knew an easy day.

Do you think I would reproach you with the sorrows that I bore?
Since the sorrow is all over, now I have you here once more,

And there’s nothing but the gladness, and the love within my heart,
And the hope so sweet and certain that again we’ll never part.

A hundred thousand welcomes!  How my heart is gushing o’er
With the love and joy and wonder thus to see your face once more.
How did I live without you these long long years of woe?
It seems as if ̓twould kill me to be parted from you now.

You’ll never part me, darling, there’s a promise in your eye;
I may tend you while I’m living, you will watch me when I die;
And if death but kindly lead me to the blessed home on high,
What a hundred thousand welcomes will await you in the sky!

  So many of today’s modern women, so insecure about their marriages, so caught up in their own careers, demanding that their husbands call them many times a day and tell them they love them, who get angry when their husbands have to be away from them for just a week, know absolutely nothing of the sacrifices made by Mary Livingstone so that her husband could carry out his great work.  She loved him, she did not hold him back, and she wrote admiringly of him, “He is certainly the wonder of his age.”

  The words spoken of Mary by Lord Shaftesbury, who chaired the reception held for Livingstone by the London Missionary Society, were so true and moving: “The lady was born a Moffat, and she became a Livingstone.  She cheered the early part of our friend’s career by her spirit, her counsel and her society.  Afterwards, when she reached this country, she passed many years with her children in solitude and anxiety, suffering the greatest fears for the welfare of her husband, and yet enduring all with patience and resignation, and even joy, because she had surrendered her best feelings, and sacrificed her own private interests to the advancement of civilization and the great interests of Christianity.”  Truly, Mary Moffat Livingstone was a wife in accordance with Prov. 31:10-12: “Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.  The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.  She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.”

  As a reluctant celebrity, Livingstone was whisked to receptions and dinners held in his honour all over the country, given a number of honorary degrees by universities, awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and was even granted an audience with Queen Victoria.  He told her that he would now be able to return to Africa and tell the Africans that he had met his chief.  And Victoria – monarch of the greatest and most extensive empire in the world – found it very amusing to learn that the first question the blacks would ask him would be, “How many cows does she have?”  For black Africans measure wealth by the number of their cows.

  Such fame could have gone to his head, but Livingstone declared: “None has cause for more abundant gratitude to his fellowmen and to his Maker than I have; and may God grant that the effect on my mind be such that I may be more humbly devoted to the service of the Author of all our mercies.”  His father-in-law Robert Moffat wrote to him: “the honours awaiting you at home would be enough to make a score of light heads dizzy…. You have succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectation in laying open a world of immortal beings, all needing the Gospel”.

  When addressing an audience at Cambridge University, these are the stirring words with which David ended his message: “I beg to direct your attention to Africa; I know that in a few years I shall be cut off from that country, which is now open; do not let it be shut again!  I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity: will you carry out the work which I have begun?  I leave it with you!”

  While in Britain he wrote a book about his travels.  Writing it was very difficult for him, and he said he would rather cross Africa than write another one.  But he completed it, and it became an immediate success.  It was called Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, and remains a classic.  And despite his reluctance he did write another one, years later, entitled The Zambezi and Its Tributaries.

  He loved getting to know his children, whom he had dearly missed.  “As a family they were a merry crowd…. The father, when free, was full of fun.  He had the most wonderful stories and knew how to tell them.  His custom was to take the children to the Barnet Woods and there act hunting scenes and teach them scout-craft as practised by the Makololo.  Sometimes, as a special treat, he would show them the marks of the lion’s teeth on his arm!”[7]

Back to Africa and the Next Expedition

  The London Missionary Society, under whose auspices he had originally gone to Africa, felt that the journeys he had undertaken were not missionary journeys as such.  Livingstone disagreed, believing that they were not just journeys of exploration, but missionary journeys as well, and would also open the way for others to go as missionaries to Africa.  But he resigned from the society.  Ready to return to Africa, he was placed in charge of an expedition and made British Consul for the East Coast of Africa.  Leaving Mary and his son at Cape Town due to poor health, and so that she could see her father Robert Moffat, was hard for David: “like tearing the heart out of one”, he wrote.  With his brother Charles he travelled to the Zambesi River, and there they actually put together a steamship out of parts they had brought with them, so that they could use it to travel up the great river!  This steamship was named the Ma-Robert, that being Mary’s name among the blacks.  It proved however to be a terrible ship, giving the men endless problems.  The team consisted of a few other white men, including a doctor, a geologist and a botanist.  Upon reaching Tete, great was the excitement of his Makololo followers.  They said, “Now our hearts will sleep.  We have seen you again.”

  Up the Zambesi the party now pushed, Livingstone still hoping that this river could be the highway for trade he longed to find.  He soon discovered that it would not do, because of the rapids and cataracts.  He then tried the Shire River, a tributary of the Zambesi.  When threatened by tribesmen with bows and arrows, he boldly approached them, unarmed, and said he had come to trade, not to take slaves.  They let him pass.  Eventually the party became the first white men to set eyes on the great Lake Nyasa (today Lake Malawi), on the 16th September 1859.

The Horrors of the Slave Trade

  At Lake Nyasa Livingstone came face to face with the unimaginable horrors of the African slave trade.  Arab slave traders took huge numbers of African slaves from around the great lake.  Livingstone wrote letters home, calling for missionaries and other workers to come out to Lake Nyasa and establish a British colony, where there would be no slavery.

  After returning to Tete, he decided to take his Makololo back to their own home, as he had promised.  This he did, and when he returned to Tete he found that a new steamship had been sent to replace the Ma-Robert.  The new one was named the Pioneer.  He began exploring up the Rovuma River, then the Zambesi and Shire again.  Everywhere the slave trade was evident.  Groups of slaves were yoked together and forced to march to the coast; villages were deserted or burned to the ground by the Muslim Arab slave traders; the paths were strewn with the bones and bodies of slaves who had died and had been left where they fell.  Even on the river, the paddles often had to be cleared of bodies that were caught in the floats at night.  The Roman Catholic Portuguese, too, were slave traders, as were many African chiefs themselves, who were only too willing to sell their own people into slavery.  Wherever he could, Livingstone freed slave parties.

The Death of Mary

  Livingstone then returned to the Zambesi to meet up with Mary, who, after giving birth to a daughter in South Africa and having taken the baby to Scotland to see her other children, was coming to join her husband.  Their reunion was a very happy one, but their joy was soon cut short when Mary caught a fever and died.  It was the 27th April 1862.  David was utterly crushed at this great loss.  He wrote, “For the first time in my life I feel willing to die.”  He also wrote: “It is the first heavy stroke I suffered, and quite takes away my strength.  I wept over her who well deserved many tears.  I loved her when I married her, and the longer I lived with her I loved her the more.  God pity the poor children, who were all tenderly attached to her.”  He buried Mary in a lonely grave in the African bush, and pushed on in deep sadness.

  David Livingstone had paid a very high price for his missionary and exploration work in Africa.  His health was poor; his wife was dead; his children were in far-away Britain.  Many criticised him for the great sacrifices he made; but in him was fulfilled the words of Scripture: “But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Cor. 7:20-31).  He had “led about a wife” (1 Cor. 9:5), and although he had loved Christ more than her, which is right, he still loved her as a husband should, with all his heart (Eph. 5:25).

An Astounding Indian Ocean Voyage

  Another little ship had been sent out to him, the Lady Nyassa, which he had bought himself; but before he could get her to Lake Nyasa, Livingstone was recalled by the British Government.  Hoping to sell the ship in Zanzibar, the only offers he had were from slave traders, to whom he refused to sell her.  So he took an astounding decision: he would sail her himself across the Indian Ocean to Bombay, India!  This was a man who had never sailed a ship on any ocean before.  He had a small crew, most of whom had never even been to sea before.  But against all odds, he succeeded!  The voyage took him 45 days and he arrived on the 13th June 1864.  “This voyage, through shark-infested seas, at the mercy of sun, wind, and waves, sometimes becalmed and sometimes lashed by storms, must rank as the most dangerous of all Livingstone’s adventures.  The bewildered people of Bombay refused to believe that this little ship had sailed 2,500 miles with such an inexperienced crew.”[8]

Return to Britain

  Livingstone then returned to Britain.  Although he received none of the fanfare or rapturous welcome of his previous return, for the press and the government were now cool towards him as he had angered the Portuguese authorities by his fight against their slave trade, he was still able to lecture on his work.  And most wonderful of all for him, he was with his children again – including five-year-old Anna Mary, whom he had never seen.  But even so his other children had grown somewhat apart from him, inevitably after such a long separation.  Still, he grew particularly close to his daughter Agnes, and she accompanied him while he was in England.

  Tragic, too, was what happened to his son Robert.  The boy, growing up without the presence of his father, had become something of a rebel, and after reaching Boston, Massachusetts, had been drugged, kidnapped and forcibly enlisted in the army of the North in the American Civil War. In a letter to his father Robert wrote, movingly, “I have changed my name for I am convinced that to bear your name here would lead to further dishonours to it.”  He was not even 19 years old when he was wounded, captured and died.  His father wrote that his son had been “made manure of, for those bloody fields.”

  Livingstone spent eight months in England in the home of a friend, and his health recovered.  But always his heart was in Africa and he longed to return to continue his explorations.  Although urged to return for purely geographical work, he made it very clear that this he would never consent to – first and foremost he saw himself as a missionary.  “I would not consent to go simply as a geographer,” he wrote, “but as a missionary, and do geography by the way, because I feel I am in the way of duty when trying either to enlighten these poor people, or open their land to lawful commerce.”

  And so it was that in August 1865, at the age of 52, David Livingstone left England, bound again (after first going to Bombay to sell his ship) for the Dark Continent, and holding the position of unsalaried Consul, with authority over the black chiefs on the African coast between Portuguese East Africa (today Mozambique) and Abyssinia (today Ethiopia).  He believed he would probably die in Africa.

Livingstone and Anna Mary

In Deaths Oft

  The Royal Geographical Society gave Livingstone a grant so that he could discover more about the central African rivers.  He himself longed to see the slave trade ended, and Africa opened up for Christianity and legitimate commerce.  He put together an expedition, consisting of Indian sepoys, freed African slaves, and other blacks.  He wrote that he planned to “make this a Christian Expedition, telling a little about Christ wherever we go.  His love in coming down to save men will be our theme… Good works gain the approbation of the world, and though there is antipathy in the human heart to the gospel of Christ, yet when Christians make their good works shine all admire them.  It is when great disparity exists between profession and practice that we secure the scorn of mankind.  The Lord help me to act in all cases in this Expedition as a Christian ought!”

  And so the expedition started.  He did not know “that before him lay the major test of his life.  He was about to embark upon one of the greatest epics of endurance that modern man has withstood.”[9]

  As they proceeded into Africa from the east coast, the evidence of the slave trade could be seen everywhere.  It was a path stained with blood that the intrepid explorer-missionary now traversed.  They would pass Arab slave traders who had put between 300 and 800 slaves in great pens.  Slave women, killed by the traders, were found tied to trees, or on the path.

  After four months they finally reached Lake Nyasa.  Some of his men deserted and when they reached the coast they said that Livingstone had been killed in the interior.  This news reached England and caused consternation, but a friend of Livingstone’s named E.D. Young travelled to Lake Nyasa and although he did not see Livingstone, he was able to report that the explorer was alive.

  As the year 1866 ended Livingstone wrote: “Will try to do better in 1867, and be better – more gentle and loving; and may the Almighty, to Whom I commit my way, bring my desires to pass and prosper me.  Let all the sin of ̛66 be blotted out for Jesus’ sake.”   He pushed on with only nine porters left, and the rainy season was beginning.  Two of the hired men then deserted, stealing his medicine box, two guns, and his dishes.  He came down with rheumatic fever but could not treat himself without his medicines.  He wrote, “I felt as if I had now received the sentence of death”.  Yet even so he sought every opportunity to preach to the natives he met.

  Some idea of the wonderful effect this amazing man had on the blacks he met can be gauged from an incident that occurred a decade later, in 1877, some four years after his death.  “In 1877 [Anglican] Bishop Chauncey Maples met at Newala on the upper end of the Rovuma Valley an old man who, with much ceremony, presented to him a coat ‘mouldy, partially eaten, but of decidedly English material, that had been given him, he said, ten years before by “a white man who treated black men as brothers and whose memory would be cherished along the Rovuma after we were all dead.  A short man with a bushy moustache and a keen piercing eye whose words were always gentle and whose manners were always kind, whom as a leader it was a privilege to follow, and who knew the way to the heart of all men.”’ The coat had been given him, he said, at Makatla, and he gave it to the Bishop as to one of Livingstone’s brothers.  A marvellous testimony it was to Livingstone’s influence and an extraordinarily accurate description of the man.”[10]

  He pushed on north, tired, wet, almost constantly hungry, so hungry that he tightened his belt three notches and wrote later that he was “frightened at my own emaciation”, pushing  “through almost trackless dripping forests and across oozing bogs”, but finally reaching Lake Tanganyika on the 1st April 1867, fever-stricken and unconscious much of the time.  “I feel deeply thankful at having got so far,” he wrote.  “I am excessively weak and cannot walk without tottering, and have constant singing in the head.  But the Highest will lead me further.” 

  He heard about another lake called Lake Mweru and decided to reach it, which he did in November.  He also then explored Lake Bangweulu.  He had left his stores in an African village called Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, and now he returned there, writing, “I am so tired of exploration without a word from home or anywhere else for two years that I must go to Ujiji on Tanganyika for letters before doing anything else.  Besides, there is another reason – I have no medicine.”  On the way he came down with pneumonia, and his porters had to carry him in a rough litter.  He reached Ujiji on the 14th March 1869, weary and very ill.  He had been in Africa on this expedition for three years.

  But to his dismay he found that Arabs had destroyed most of his letters from home.  They did this because he posed a great threat to their evil trade in human beings.  Most of his stores had been stolen as well.  He rested and recuperated in Ujiji before setting off again.  He had heard that there was a place where four rivers rose, and he wanted to find it.  This search occupied much of the rest of his life.

  But he was very ill and thin.  He wrote to his daughter Agnes: “I shall not hide from you that I am made by it very old and shaky, my cheeks fallen in, space round the eyes ditto; mouth almost toothless – a few teeth that remain, out of their line, so that a smile is that of a he-hippopotamus, a dreadful old fogie.”

  He eventually reached the Lualaba, which is the Upper Congo River.  At a place called Nyangwé, where there was a large market, servants of an Arab slaver killed a few hundred people, burned the houses down, and enslaved others.  There was nothing David could do about it, but after that many who thought he was a slaver too hurled spears at him.  On the return to Ujiji he crossed a river up to his waist, it was very cold and his health gave way completely.  He wrote later that he was “very ill all over; cannot walk; pneumonia of right lung, and I cough all day and all night; sputa rust of iron, and bloody; distressing weakness.”  His men carried him in a litter, which jarred his body terribly, for six weeks.  Reaching Ujiji he found what remained of his stores had now been stolen and the letters from home destroyed.  There was a conspiracy by the Arabs to either drive him out of Africa or see him die there, for he was the only man who stood in the way of their lucrative trade in human flesh.

  Like Paul, he could truly have said of himself that he had sought to serve Christ: “… in deaths oft… in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers… in perils by the heathen… in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea… in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness” (2 Cor. 11:23-27).  While other men sat comfortably at desks in far-away London and criticised him for doing too much exploring and not enough preaching, David Livingstone was tramping across the Dark Continent, alone, fever-ridden, in constant danger from hostile blacks and hostile Muslim Arabs, with no contact with his loved ones, yet always keeping before him the great goal of opening up Africa for Christianity and legitimate commerce.

  Livingstone now pushed on, seeking to discover the source of the Nile.  “For two years and a quarter he wandered on while the civilized world believed him to be dead; and, perhaps, if we had to name one period of his life which was more poignant and more fruitful than any other, it was this.  For out of its agonies, a new hope was born for humanity.”[11]

  As for his physical state: “He was only fifty-six, but he was worn out with hardship and privation.  He could not walk uphill without panting for breath.  His cheeks were hollow, and his teeth were broken or had fallen out from trying to masticate hard and sticky food. ‘If you expect a kiss from me,’ he writes to his daughter Agnes, ‘you must take it through a speaking trumpet!’”[12] This was the single-minded devotedness that carried this man through all he endured in the depths of the Dark Continent.

  On the way back to Ujiji he came close to death on several occasions, for the Arabs and their black allies did not want him to reach civilisation again and report to the world the horrors of the slave trade which he had witnessed.  But he finally made it back, a walking skeleton.

“Dr Livingstone, I Presume?” Stanley Finds Livingstone

 It is one of the greatest tales of adventure, exploration and discovery: how Henry Morton Stanley found David Livingstone in the trackless heart of Africa.

  For a long time no news had been received about Livingstone, and all kinds of rumours were doing the rounds in Europe and America, for the great missionary-explorer had become an international sensation.  The world was hungry for news about him.  Where was he?  Was he even alive?  Search parties had been sent out, but none had found him.  Stanley was an American news reporter, who was sent by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the manager of the New York Herald, to find out if Livingstone was alive or dead and bring back the news to the outside world.  Stanley reported the interview as follows:

 “Mr. Bennett asked, ‘Where do you think Livingstone is?’  ‘I really do not know, Sir.’  ‘Do you think he is alive?’  ‘He may be, and he may not be,’ I answered.  ‘Well, I think he is alive, and that he can be found, and I am going to send you to find him.’  ‘What!’ said I, ‘do you really think I can find Dr. Livingstone?  Do you mean me to go to Central Africa?’  ‘Yes; I mean that you shall go, and find him wherever you may hear that he is, and to get what news you can of him, and perhaps’ – delivering himself thoughtfully and deliberately – ‘the old man may be in want:– take enough with you to help him should he require it.  Of course you will act according to your own plans, and do what you think best – BUT FIND LIVINGSTONE!’”

  When Stanley told Bennet the enormous cost of such an expedition, saying it could not be done for under £2500, a very large sum in those days, Bennet replied, “Well, I will tell you what you will do.  Draw a thousand pounds now; and when you have gone through that, draw another thousand, and when that is spent, draw another thousand, and when you have finished that, draw another thousand, and so on; but, FIND LIVINGSTONE.”[13]

Henry Morton Stanley

 

  Accordingly, Stanley set out for Africa and put together a large and well-equipped safari; and into Africa he plunged.  His was an epic adventure in itself, full of interest, but must be passed over here.

  One day, as Livingstone sat resting in Ujiji, his faithful servant Susi came running to him, shouting, “An Englishman!  I see him!”  It was of course the American, Stanley.  “Livingstone… saw the huge American flag followed by a retinue of people carrying sufficient stores to sustain a traveller for years.  Tin baths, tents, saddles, a folding boat, and an impressive array of gigantic kettles.  Whoever the leader of the party might be, Livingstone mused, he was ‘no poor Lazarus like me.’”[14] Stanley, for his part, wrote of pushing through “a living avenue of people” as he entered the village and walked towards Livingstone.  “As I advanced slowly towards him,” Stanley wrote, “I noticed he was pale, that he looked wearied and wan…. I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob – would have embraced him, but that I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what moral cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing – walked deliberately to him, took off my hat, and said, ‘DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME?’

  “‘Yes,’ said he, with a kind, cordial smile, lifting his cap slightly.  I replaced my hat on my head, and he replaced his cap, and we both grasped hands.  I then said aloud: ‘I thank God, Doctor, I have been permitted to see you.’  He answered, ‘I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.’”[15] It was the 10th November 1871.

  It was a wonderful meeting for the weary and sick explorer.  Stanley brought news of the outside world, food, medicine, clothes; and above all he brought letters, the first letters David had received in five years.  Stanley wrote, “The Doctor kept the letter-bag on his knee, then, presently, opened it, looked at the letters contained there, and read one or two of his children’s letters, his face in the meanwhile lighting up.”  When he asked Stanley to tell him news, Stanley replied, “No, Doctor, read your letters first, which I am sure you must be impatient to read.”  To which Livingstone replied: “Ah, I have waited years for letters, and I have been taught patience.  I can surely afford to wait a few hours longer.  No, tell me the general news: how is the world getting along?”[16]

  Stanley’s very presence buoyed Livingstone’s spirits.  He recovered his health rapidly.  The two men found they got on very well, despite the difference in age (Stanley was much younger).  After some time Livingstone felt well enough to explore again.  Stanley accompanied him to see whether or not Lake Tanganyika was the source of the Nile; and they proved that it was not.  Stanley suffered from malaria and Livingstone suffered from cut and blistered feet, in addition to being attacked by a swarm of bees and stung all over his head.  After reaching a place called Unyanyembe, Stanley tried to persuade Livingstone to return to England, but the latter felt he still had too much work to do, and that if he left now he would never return.  And for those who again find fault with him for putting what he truly believed was the service of Christ above even his own family, his daughter Agnes wrote to him: “Much as I wish you to come home, I would rather that you finished your work to your own satisfaction than return merely to gratify me.”  To which he wrote in reply: “Right and nobly said, my darling Nannie.”[17]  Evidently Christians in those times had a far greater sense of duty to their divine calling than many do today!

  Stanley, who was not a Christian, was deeply impressed with Livingstone’s Christian testimony.  He wrote: “His religion is not of the theoretical kind, but 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…. 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 tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman: the crude and wilful have been refined and subdued; religion has made him the most companionable of men and indulgent of masters – a man whose society is pleasurable.  In Livingstone I have seen many amiable traits.  His gentleness never forsakes him; his hopefulness never deserts him…. He thinks ‘all will come out right at last’; he has such faith in the goodness of Providence…. you may take any point in Dr. Livingstone’s character, and analyse it carefully, and I would challenge any man to find a fault in it.”[18]

  And: “Livingstone was a character that I venerated, that called forth all my enthusiasm, that evoked nothing but sincerest admiration…. 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 has utterly changed from the David Livingstone whom people knew as the reverend missionary… and it was reported, before I proceeded to Central Africa, that he was married to an African princess.  I respectfully beg to differ with all and each of the above statements.  I grant he is not an angel, but he approaches to that being as near as the nature of a living man will allow.  I never saw any spleen or misanthropy in him – as for being garrulous, Dr. Livingstone is quite the reverse: he is reserved, if anything; and to the man who says Dr. Livingstone is changed, all I can say is, that he never could have known him, for it is notorious that the Doctor has a fund of quiet humour, which he exhibits at all times whenever he is among friends…. As to the report of his African marriage, it is unnecessary to say more than that it is untrue, and it is utterly beneath a gentleman to hint at such a thing in connection with the name of David Livingstone.”[19]

  Stanley also noted that every Sunday morning, Livingstone gathered his little flock around him and held a simple service, and that his sermon was listened to with interest and attention. 

  “For four months and four days,” wrote Stanley, “he and I occupied the same house, or, the same tent… and the longer I lived with him the more did my admiration and reverence for him increase.”[20]

  One more quotation from Stanley, to show how Livingstone treated the black Africans who surrounded him: “He can be charmed with the primitive simplicity of Ethiop’s dusky children, with whom he has spent so many years of his life; he has a sturdy faith in their capabilities; sees virtue in them where others see nothing but savagery; and wherever he has gone among them, he has sought to elevate a people that were apparently forgotten of God and Christian man.”[21]

  Stanley’s testimony about Livingstone is wonderful.  There are multitudes of professing Christians, living in far more comfortable and congenial surroundings, whose lives do not exhibit such fruits of the Spirit, such marks of the new birth, as David Livingstone’s life did.

  The time came for Stanley to have to part from his friend, and he dreaded it.  “My days seem to have been spent in an Elysian field,” Stanley wrote; “otherwise, why should I so keenly regret the near approach of the parting hour?  Have I not been battered by successive fevers prostrate with agony day after day lately?  Have I not raved and stormed in madness?  Have I not clenched my fists in fury, and fought with the wild strength of despair when in delirium?  Yet I regret to surrender the pleasure I have felt in this man’s society, though so dearly purchased”.  On the 14th March 1872, when the time of parting came, Livingstone walked a little way with Stanley, who finally said to him, reluctantly, “Now, my dear Doctor, the best friends must part; you have come far enough, let me beg of you to turn back.”   “Well,” Livingstone replied, “I will say this of you: you have done what few men could do – far better than some great travellers I know.  And I am grateful to you for what you have done for me.  God guide you safe home, and bless you, my friend.”  “And may God bring you safe back to us all, my dear friend.  Farewell!”  “Farewell!”  Tears sprung to Stanley’s eyes as they shook hands.  He later wrote: “though I may live half a century longer, I shall never forget that parting scene in Central Africa.  I shall never cease to think of the sad tones of that sorrowful word Farewell, how they permeated through every core of my heart, how they clouded my eyes, and made me wish unutterable things which could never be.  An audacious desire to steal one embrace from the dear old man came over me, and almost unmanned me [i.e. almost made him break down and weep]…. I assumed a gruff voice, and ordered the Expedition to march, and I resolutely turned my face toward the eastern sky.  But ever and anon my eyes would seek that deserted figure of an old man in grey clothes, who with bended head and slow steps was returning to his solitude, the very picture of melancholy, and each time I saw him – as the plain was wide and clear of obstructions – I felt my eyes stream, and my heart swell with a vague, indefinable feeling of foreboding and sorrow…. I took one more look at him; he was standing near the gate of Kwikuru with his servants near him.  I waved a handkerchief to him, as a final token of farewell, and he responded to it by lifting his cap…. I never saw him more.”[22]

  Just some days later, on his birthday – 19th March – Livingstone wrote in his journal: “My birthday.  My Jesus, my King, my Life, my all!  I again dedicate my whole self to Thee.  Accept me.  And grant, O gracious Father, that ere this year is gone I may finish my work.  In Jesus’ name, I ask it.  Amen.”

His Alleged Illegitimate Son

  We must just pause for a moment to dispel the allegations which surfaced many decades after his death, regarding David Livingstone’s supposed “love-child”.  In the Victorian age and its aftermath, when many biographies were written about Livingstone by both Christians and others, any hint of him having fathered an illegitimate child in Africa would have destroyed his reputation; but no such scandal  was attached to him.  And this is not because his biographers would have wanted to cover up such a thing!  Christian men of that era would certainly not have upheld Livingstone as a Christian hero if he was truly guilty of fathering an illegitimate child.  It is only modern biographers, who love to cater to today’s sex-addicted society, who are always on the lookout for any whiff of sexual scandal which can be attached, however tenuously, to heroes of the past, especially Christian ones.  For in addition to an obsession with sex, many modern biographers so often have one other obsession: belittling and mocking Christianity.

  The 2003 biography entitled Into Africa: the Dramatic Retelling of the Stanley-Livingstone Story, by Martin Dugard, can be taken as typical in this regard.  Dramatic it certainly is, and the author inserts occasional “juicy” tidbits to appeal to modern readers who always want their books to contain some details of a sexual nature.  The modern mind simply cannot imagine it possible that a man could live for years without indulging in sexual activity.  In this book the author writes, “Livingstone, it was later documented, fathered at least one African child.”  Note the use of the word “documented”.  When people see this word, they usually read it as meaning “proved”, even though this is by no means automatically so.  It can simply mean a statement was committed to writing, as in this case.  And what was the documented “evidence” in this case?  Nothing more than what two Africans, in particular, claimed about him, many decades later.  One was Chief Chitambo’s nephew (Livingstone died in Chitambo’s village), who  swore in a deposition in the 1930s that when Livingstone came to Chitambo’s village, “He also had with him his son.  He was a half-caste.  The people said it was Bwana’s son.  He was respected by the others as the son of a chief.  I did not see the mother or any other woman with the Bwana’s people.”  And the other was a man named Mumana, who claimed to remember that “the Bwana had one son with him… his skin was quite white like a European child and his hair was fair.”  Dugard wrote: “The interviews of Chitambo and Mumana were conducted in October 1936.  Their signed affidavits are on file with the Royal Geographical Society.”[23]

  But these affidavits are not proof!  Firstly, they were made by two men, more than sixty years after Livingstone’s death.  Why did this “evidence’ not surface long before?  At such a distance of time, how can what these two men said be accepted as true, just because they said it?  Secondly, even if (and it is a big “if”) the men’s recollections of what they heard and witnessed were true, at least one of them (Chitambo’s nephew) was merely reporting what the people in the village had said about one of those accompanying Livingstone.  Village gossip is notoriously unreliable.  All it would have taken was for the local village “busybody” to whisper something, and the rumour would have spread.  We know there were men of mixed parentage travelling with Livingstone at times, but we cannot infer from this that he was the father of any of them!  Perhaps there was a fair-skinned person in Livingstone’s party at the time; perhaps not.  For all we know, the villagers saw an albino, and if they had never seen an albino before they might have assumed he was the son of a white man.  To imply, by the use of the word “documented”, that these affidavits are somehow real evidence for Livingstone having fathered an illegitimate child, as Dugard does, is preposterous.

  Stanley lived in close contact with him and got to know him better than anyone else; and his testimony to Livingstone’s character, which we have deliberately quoted at length here, coming as it does from such a close and intimate acquaintance and, moreover, one who was not himself a Christian man when he found Livingstone, carries far more weight than the dubious testimony of two men many decades after they had briefly met Livingstone and his party.

  The biographer Dugard reads into Livingstone’s journals a supposed fascination with sex and with African women.  Just because he described the beauty of some tribeswomen in his journals (which he did as an explorer, a close observer of all that he saw around him, whether people, flora or fauna), Dugard states that the widower Livingstone was a man yearning for the company of a woman in his isolation, a man “fond of women – and sex.”[24]  At one point he even claims that Livingstone, in a letter to a friend, admitted to having three hundred women as wives – even though he provides no context to what Livingstone wrote, nor mentions that his words are capable of another meaning entirely, nor allows that such a careful man as Livingstone was, so conscious of his good name and reputation and a man who was very much a product of Victorian society, would hardly have committed the admission of such a sin to writing in a letter that could be read by others one day.[25]  But this is all so typical of today’s authors, wanting their books to sell and therefore catering to a sex-saturated society, to readers who always want something “juicy”, especially if that something depicts Christians as sexually-frustrated hypocrites.

  Is it possible that David Livingstone could have fathered an illegitimate child?  Even godly King David, in a moment of weakness, committed adultery with Bathsheba and a child was conceived, and godly King Solomon certainly sinned by taking many wives, so of course we know that it is possible for true believers to commit sexual sin as well as others, and many have done so.  But in David Livingstone’s case there is simply no real evidence that he ever committed this sin.  Travelling as he did throughout central Africa, living in extremely close proximity to the natives day and night for months and even years at a time, any hint of impropriety would have not only become known, but the news would have spread rapidly, to the great detriment of his mission and reputation.  This never occurred.  He was under the minutest observation by the Africans at all times; they watched him eat, sleep, bathe, everything.  Yet never did they charge him with any such misconduct.  Consistently, the testimony of the natives was that this was a man of high moral conduct, who always conducted himself properly.  This fact alone speaks volumes, and we can let the man himself have the last word in this regard, for what he writes is utterly true:  “No one ever gains much influence in this country without purity and uprightness.  The acts of a stranger are keenly scrutinized by both old and young, and seldom is the judgment pronounced even by a heathen unfair or uncharitable.  I have heard women speaking in admiration of a white man because he was pure, and never was guilty of any secret immorality.  Had he been, they would have known it, and untutored heathen though they be, would have despised him in consequence.”

His Death

  As he waited for the porters Stanley had promised to send to him, he gave much thought to the slave trade.  He wrote in a letter to the New York Herald: “All I can say in my solitude is, may Heaven’s richest blessing come down on every one – American, English, Turk – who will help to heal this open sore of the world.”  These words were later to be inscribed on his tomb at Westminster Abbey.

  While waiting he read much and reflected much.  He wrote: “I would say to missionaries, Come on, brethren, to the real heathen.  You have no idea how brave you are till you try.” Very true words which every Christian should take to heart!  You have no idea how brave you are till you try.

  When the porters arrived he set off again, searching for the source of the Nile.  He suffered greatly from dysentery and from internal bleeding, and did not eat for days at a time.  As they travelled towards Lake Bangweulu, the rainy season set in and they had to wade through water day after day.  David had to sleep in wet clothes, and food was very scarce.  By January 1873 he was too weak to walk, and his faithful men carried him on their shoulders through water that reached their mouths.  At one point he wrote in his journal: “If the good Lord gives me favour, and permits me to finish my work I shall thank and bless Him, though it costs me untold toil, pain and travel; this trip has made my hair all grey.”  In March he wrote: “Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.  I encourage myself in the Lord my God and go forward.”  In April they began to carry him in a wooden litter, he was so weak.  He was losing blood from an artery.  Even in the midst of this extreme suffering his sense of humour remained, for he wrote this masterly understatement: “it is not all pleasure this exploration.” 

  They finally reached Chitambo’s village in Ilala, where they laid him in a hut that was built for him.  “The imagination reverently dwells on every detail of the scene, for the old hero has made his last journey and is about to sleep his last sleep.  While he was lying on his litter outside and the rain was falling, curious villagers had gathered round…. This was the great chief who had come from far.  His fame they knew somewhat; they could not know that he was the best friend Africa ever had.  They gazed respectfully and wonderingly at the thin, pale, emaciated sufferer with the bloodless hands and lips, and the face distorted with sharp throes of agony.  Through the falling rain they watched him and in days to come would tell their children that they had seen Livingstone.”[26]

  And then came the morning when they found him kneeling at his bedside in an attitude of prayer.  He had died in the night as he was praying to the Lord.  It was the 1st or the 4th May 1873; the precise date is a little uncertain.

  And then began one of the most extraordinary journeys in recorded history.  This time it was only Livingstone’s body which made the journey, for his spirit was rejoicing with his Lord and Saviour in heaven.  But truly it was a journey as remarkable as any he had made in his adventurous life:

A Journey of Love

  His faithful men decided that his body must be buried in his own country.  But how could this be done?  They were in tropical central Africa, many hundreds of miles from the sea, and thousands of miles from Britain.  But they came up with a way.  First, they took out his heart and buried it in a tin box beneath a tree in Ilala; for they knew that his heart belonged in Africa.  Next, they dried the body in the sun for two weeks, in preparation for the journey they had in mind, wrapping it in calico and bark, and then sewing it into some sail-cloth.  His name and the date of death was carved by one of the men, Jacob Wainwright, on a nearby tree; for he could read and write.  And then, led by Chumah and Susi, his faithful men, they carried his body, bound to a pole, all the way to the east coast of Africa – a journey of something  like 1300 or 1400 miles!  And they did it by foot.  Such was the respect and admiration, nay love, which they had for this extraordinary man.

  “The procession of the body to the coast would mark the longest in history if completed and was not without its dangers.  Through forests, swamps, rivers and ravines they forged their way back… Sickness plagued many members of the cortege, which as a result was halted for over a month.  Ten men died during the march and many more were close to losing their lives when they had to fight their way out of a hostile village.”[27]

  It took them nine long months from central Africa to the coast.  But they made it.  After many adventures and dangers, they made it.  And on the 16th February 1874, Livingstone’s body was taken aboard ship, and eventually it reached England.

  And now came the reason for that lion attack so many years before, which had left Livingstone’s arm virtually useless.  In the providence of God, this was the very thing used by medical doctors in England to positively identify Livingstone’s remains!  There could be no doubt.  All things happen for a reason (Rom. 8:28).  Sometimes that reason is known only to God, and sometimes it becomes known to men long afterwards.  Such was the case with the lion attack.  It all made sense now.

His Burial

  On the 18th April 1874, a day of national mourning was declared in Britain for the missionary-explorer who had, indeed, opened up Africa for the Gospel and added a vast area of this previously unknown continent to the map.  As the funeral procession wound its way through London’s streets, huge crowds gathered to pay their respects.  Among the pallbearers were Henry Morton Stanley and Jacob Wainwright.  His body was buried in Westminster Abbey, where so many of Britain’s great men lie.  He was the only pauper ever to be buried there with full State honours.

  And among that vast congregation was the missionary Robert Moffat, David Livingstone’s aged father-in-law, the father of Mary, whose body David had buried in far-away Africa in a lonely grave so long before.  Truly, the price had been great.  But can any Christian say it was not worth it?

 The tomb in Westminster Abbey reads as follows, a fitting tribute to this man of faith:

Brought by faithful hands
Over land and sea
Here rests
DAVID LIVINGSTONE
Missionary
Traveller
Philanthropist
Born March 19, 1813,
At Blantyre, Lanarkshire,
Died May 1, 1873,
At Chitambo’s Village, Ilala:

For 30 years his life was spent
in an unwearied effort
to evangelise the native races,
to explore the undiscovered secrets,
to abolish the desolating slave trade
of Central Africa,
where with his last words he wrote,
“All I can add in my solitude, is,
may Heaven’s rich blessing come down
on every one, American, English, or Turk,
who will help to heal
this open sore of the world.”

  “David Livingstone had set himself the seemingly impossible task of opening up Africa and of smashing the slave trade.  It might be thought that he failed in his first aim for there was no great waterway, as he had hoped, that could form a highway from the interior to the coast.  Yet the information which he sent home, and that which was found in his journals, had a great influence on the colonization of Africa, which brought an entirely new look to the continent.  Nor did Livingstone live to see the results of his efforts to break the slave trade.  Yet his correspondence had been remarkably effective and, by strange coincidence, a naval patrol, whose special duty was to prevent the export of slaves, was started on the very day after his death.  In fact, had he lived for another few years, he would have seen the trade almost at an end.”[28]

  Like Paul, David Livingstone could have said: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7,8).

  “The world still argues and disputes as to what it is that constitutes the highest form of greatness.  In the common accepted meaning of the term, Livingstone was not a man of genius.  He was not brilliant; he was not strikingly original.  What he achieved was done by the simple Christian virtue of compassion – he cared for people, body and soul.  Nevertheless, this we may surely say: If human greatness consists not in any natural endowment alone, but rather in all the powers and faculties of a man’s nature brought into subjection to one supreme and unselfish ambition for the glory of God and the good of man, then few greater men have ever walked this earth than David Livingstone.”[29]

  The following lines appeared in Punch magazine, April 25th, 1874.  The wording is slightly different to the wording at the beginning of this article, for we have seen both versions.  They are a deeply moving and fitting tribute to this greatest of all explorers and this Christian gentleman :

Open the Abbey door and bear him in
To sleep with king and statesman, chief and sage,
The missionary come of weaver kin,
But great by work that brooks no lower wage.

He needs no epitaph to guard his name,
Which men will prize while worthy work is known.
He lived and died for good, be that his fame;
Let marble crumble: this is Living-stone.

Some Arminianism in His Doctrine

  What of his doctrine?  He wrote very little of a doctrinal nature, concentrating in his book, Missionary Travels, on precisely that – his travels, observations, etc.  But Livingstone was a Scottish Protestant, raised at first within Presbyterianism, after which he joined a Congregationalist church; and thus much of his doctrine was very sound.  His own account of his conversion, given earlier, is a statement of the work of Christ in the soul, and there is no reason to doubt that he was truly converted, for his life gives so much evidence of it.

  When answering questions for acceptance as a missionary with the London Missionary Society, he wrote: “The Bible treats him [man] as a moral and accountable agent.  Salvation is freely offered to him.  Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved – faith in the work of Jesus Christ is all that is required to shield him from everlasting punishment.  Yet he will not believe it, unless the Holy Spirit exerts his influence over his will by convincing him of sin, shewing him the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of his own heart, the folly and danger of living in sin and exhibits to his view the beauty of holiness.”[30]  This statement was biblically sound.  He plainly stated that only if the Holy Spirit works within the sinner to convince him of his sin, will he actually believe in Christ and be saved.

  But Livingstone was unfortunately influenced in his youth by the teachings of the American Arminian “revivalist”, Charles G. Finney,[31] who took Arminianism to its logical conclusion and taught outright heresy.  Even some years later, in 1841, he was urging a friend to read Finney’s works.[32]  But this does not mean Livingstone held to all of Finney’s teachings (clearly he did not!).  Many good men at times recommend books by bad men, which is a great pity.  But often they have simply either not read the books properly themselves, or not understood the errors sufficiently.  Large numbers of otherwise sound Christian ministers, for example, have often recommended the writings of the Roman Catholic “saint”, Augustine, simply because he taught predestination, although he was as far from being a true Christian man as it is possible to be.  And Charles Haddon Spurgeon, to whom I will refer more than once in the following pages, was not alone in speaking very highly of John Wesley,[33] the arch-Arminian, a man who hated the truth and fought against it, and against the Lord’s ministers, with all his might.[34]  Spurgeon is highly esteemed as a man sound in the faith; and yet he greatly erred in his praise of Wesley.  So the fact that Livingstone recommended Finney at times, though to be greatly regretted, is not in and of itself a reason to write him off.  Were we to do that, we would be forced to write off likewise many other Christian men because of their errors in recommending or speaking well of men who should never be so spoken of.

  That Livingstone’s doctrine was tainted, to some extent at least, with aspects of Arminianism is clear.  For example, in his book Missionary Travels he wrote: “Walking down to the forest, after telling these poor people, for the first time in their lives, that the Son of God had so loved them as to come down from heaven to save them…”[35]  This is the erroneous Arminian use of Jn. 3:16.  Arminians take this verse to mean that God so loved every human being who has ever lived, that He gave His only begotten Son to die for each and every one of them.  This is not the meaning of the verse at all, for this, if it were true, would contradict the clear teaching of God’s Word in numerous places, that Christ loved and died for the elect and no others.  Jn. 3:16 is indeed a lovely verse, but the “world” as used in it means all the nations of the world (as opposed to the Jews only); it does not have the unlimited meaning of every single human being in the world, but is limited in its meaning, just as in other places in Scripture.  For this reason it is simply incorrect to say to all men indiscriminately, “God loves you; Christ died for you.”  God loves the elect throughout the world, and Christ died for the elect throughout the world; but until a man is actually converted, neither he nor anyone else can be sure of the love of God towards him.  The one who truly comes to Christ by faith can most assuredly say, “God loves me.”

  However, we have read similar statements by men who were not Arminians, but held to the doctrine of election, and yet at times expressed this inconsistent view of the doctrine of Christ’s redemption.  It may be that Livingstone was one of them.  Though in error on this, at least partially, the evidence of his life shows him to have been a true believer, and to have served his generation well by the will of God.

His Error Regarding the Age of the Earth

  Livingstone was a creationist, most certainly; but he was what today would be termed an old-earth creationist.  That is to say, he had sadly imbibed some of the theories that were just starting to really make an impact in his day, regarding the geological age of the earth.

 He wrote: “We took a glance back to this valley… and thought of the vast mass of material which had been scooped out and carried away in its formation.  This naturally led to reflection on the countless ages required for the previous formation and deposition of the same material (clay shale); then of the rocks, whose abrasion formed that, until the mind grew giddy in attempting to ascend the steps, which lead up through a portion of the eternity before man.  The different epochs of geology are like landmarks in that otherwise shoreless sea.  Our own epoch, or creation, is but another added to the number of that wonderful series which presents a grand display of the mighty power of God: every stage of progress in the earth and its habitants, is such a display.  So far from this science having any tendency to make men undervalue the power or love of God, it leads to the probability that the exhibitions of mercy we have in the gift of His Son may possibly not be the only manifestation of grace which has taken place in the countless ages, during which works of creation have been going on.”[36]

  He also wrote: “The gigantic pillars of Punge Andongo have been formed by a current of the sea coming from the S.S.E., for, seen from the top, they appear arranged in that direction, and must have withstood the surges of the ocean at a period of our world’s history, when the relations of land and sea were totally different from what they are now, and long before ‘the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy, to see the abodes prepared which man was soon to fill.’”[37]

  In Livingstone’s day these false “scientific” theories had begun to make their appearance and take root in men’s minds in England; and quite evidently he had imbibed them, at least to some extent.  That he was a creationist is beyond doubt, believing that God created the world and everything in it, and often writing rapturously of its beauties as displaying the greatness of God; but at the same time he held to the false notion that the world had been divinely created long before the events of the six days described in Genesis 1.  It appears that he believed Genesis 1 describes some kind of re-creation, or re-fashioning, of the world, to make it habitable for man; but that long ages had passed before this, and that during those long ages of pre-history, God had manifested His grace in unknown ways, hidden from man’s view because God had not revealed them in His Word.

  A terrible doctrine!  And today, with so many more years of this kind of thing behind us, and full-blown evolution (whether theistic or atheistic) having run rampant over the professing “Church”, we see the terrible effects of it, which to Livingstone, however, were simply not visible in his day.  He felt he could reconcile a “long-age earth” with divine creation, as many others have mistakenly believed they could do, both then and ever since.

  But before we judge him too harshly for this error, bear in mind that others, men sound in the faith overall, have held to such errors as (for example) the so-called “gap theory” to which it appears Livingstone subscribed: the erroneous view that between Gen. 1:2 and Gen. 2:2, vast ages of time went by.  But in an age before the widespread evil of evolution, holding to such an error, while certainly contrary to Scripture, did not have quite the serious consequences as it does today.

  Just to cite one example of a good and generally sound preacher of the Word who held a similar error to Livingstone, and in the same century, we need look no further than C.H. Spurgeon.  Take note of these words of his, delivered in an otherwise excellent sermon entitled The Greatest Fight in the World, sometimes referred to as his “final manifesto” because it was his final annual address to his pastors’ college, in 1891:

 “The mistake made by such men [those he terms “unscientific Christians”] has been that in trying to solve a difficulty, they have either twisted the Bible, or contorted science.  The solution has soon been seen to be erroneous, and then we hear the cry that Scripture has been defeated.  Not at all; not at all.  It is only a vain gloss upon it which has been removed.  Here is a good brother who writes a tremendous book, to prove that the six days of creation represent six great geological periods; and he shows how the geological strata, and the organisms thereof, follow very much in the order of the Genesis story of creation.  It may be so, or it may not be so; but if anybody should before long show that the strata do not lie in any such order, what would be my reply?  I should say that the Bible never taught that they did.  The Bible said, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’  That leaves any length of time for your fire-ages and your ice-periods, and all that, before the establishment of the present age of man.    Then we reach the six days in which the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and rested on the seventh day.  There is nothing said about long ages of time, but, on the contrary, ‘the evening and the morning were the first day’, and ‘the evening and the morning were the second day’; and so on.  I do not here lay down any theory, but simply say that if our friend’s great book is all fudge, the Bible is not responsible for it.  It is true that his theory has an appearance of support from the parallelism which he makes out between the organic life of the ages and that of the seven days; but this may be accounted for from the fact that God usually follows a certain order whether he works in long periods or in short ones.  I do not know, and I do not care, much about the question…”[38]

  For the most influential preacher in England in the nineteenth century to say, near the end of his life and after Darwin’s lying theory of evolution had been around for decades already, that he allowed there could have been “any length of time” between Gen. 1:1 and the rest of the chapter; that “it may be so, or it may not be so”, and that “I do not know, and I do not care, much about the question” of whether or not the earth is old or young, makes the heart of the young-earth creationist sink today.  It was a huge error on his part, and would have given much encouragement to old-earth geologists and even to outright evolutionists (even though Spurgeon did not believe in the evolution of animals or man), and caused weak or untaught Christians to assume that, after all, there might be something in the whole idea, and that it was not an important issue anyway.  What a tragedy!  It is highly likely that if Spurgeon could have seen just a few decades into the future, he would have come out far more strongly against the long-geological-age concept.  But he simply did not recognise the importance of it, nor fully appreciate the dangers of this kind of “don’t know don’t care” approach. 

  And therefore, in considering David Livingstone’s error in this regard, it is much less culpable than Spurgeon’s.  For Livingstone was buried deep in Africa, far from civilisation, without access to much sound doctrine in the way of good Christian books, nor sound preachers; whereas Spurgeon was based in London, one of the world’s great cities, and surrounded by thousands upon thousands of excellent Christian books in his very own immense and well-stocked study.  Accepting, then, that despite this error in his teaching Spurgeon was still a man of God, greatly used of God, we can surely do no less than accept David Livingstone for the very same reason, despite this doctrinal error of his.

  One is saved, after all, by God’s grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; and while one must have a basic understanding of the Gospel before one can be saved, nowhere are we told in God’s Word that before one can be saved from sin, one must know that Christ died for the elect only; or that there were no long ages before the six days of creation.  To be saved, a man must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.  He will not have a perfect knowledge of Christ before he is saved, although he will certainly have some knowledge of Christ – of who He is, of His work of salvation, and of the truth that salvation is by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ, and not by works.  Faith in Christ is what saves!  Salvation is not by believing that only the elect will be saved, even though this is true, but by believing in Christ.  Salvation is not by believing that there were no long ages before the six days of creation, even though this is true, but by believing in Christ

  Of course, once a person is saved, the truth about these things (and many others in addition) may come to be embraced by him, once he is properly taught them; but if he is not properly taught them, he may continue to be in error about them.  Apollos was a true Christian, “an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures”, a man “instructed in the way of the Lord”, who “spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord”; but he did so, “knowing only the baptism of John.”  He preached faithfully according to the measure of light which he had; but his knowledge was deficient, and to that degree his doctrine was not sound.  But when Aquilla and Priscilla “expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly”, then he embraced the truth he had not known before (Acts 18:24-26).

  As J.L. Dagg put it: “A perfect knowledge of Christ is not necessary to true faith; otherwise true faith would be impossible…. But the true believer [note that: the true believer!] delights in Christ, just so far as he has knowledge of him; and desires to know more of him.”[39]  David Livingstone delighted in Christ, just so far as he had knowledge of Him, and desired with all his heart to know more of Him.

His Statements About Roman Catholicism

  Livingstone commented on what he saw of Roman Catholicism in Africa, which essentially was Portuguese Roman Catholicism, on a number of occasions in his book, Missionary Travels.  At first reading, some of these statements can appear quite troubling.  But upon carefully examining what he wrote, and allowing for his somewhat poor writing abilities, as well as the manner in which nineteenth-century Christians often expressed themselves, we find that the bulk of what he wrote about Popery was not in any way an endorsement of it.  In most of what he wrote about Romanism he was not actually speaking well of it, merely pointing out some facts; but he did not always express himself clearly.  Although we  wish he had been clearer, and much stronger, in his condemnation of it, there is in fact only one sentence which is really inexcusable, and this is the last one we will consider.  But first, a look at the others:

  When read correctly, Livingstone made it very clear that Romanism is a false religion.  While he was in Angola, he and his men watched a Romish procession and mass.  He wrote:  “There is an impression on some minds, that a gorgeous ritual is better calculated to inspire devotional feelings, than the simple forms of the Protestant worship.  But here the frequent genuflexions, changing of positions, burning of incense, with the priests’ backs turned to the people, the laughing, talking, and manifest irreverence of the singers, with firing of guns, etc., did not convey to the minds of my men the idea of adoration.  I overheard them, in talking to each other, remark that ‘they had seen the white men charming their demons’; a phrase identical with one they had used when seeing the Balonda beating drums before their idols.”[40]  It is evident from this that Livingstone agreed with his men about the demonic nature of what they had witnessed.

  He wrote at another point: “No missionary with whom I ever came in contact traded; and while the traders… waxed rich, the missionaries have invariably remained poor, and have died so.  The Jesuits, in Africa at least, were wiser in their generation than we; theirs were large influential communities, proceeding on the system of turning the abilities of every brother into that channel in which he was most likely to excel…. We Protestants, with the comfortable conviction of superiority, have sent out missionaries with a bare subsistence only…”[41]  In this quotation Livingstone was simply seeking to show that the Jesuits acted with more wisdom than Protestants in this matter of supporting their mission work.  It is not a quotation in favour of Jesuitism or Popery, merely of the way in which they conducted themselves in this business.  This is shown, also, by his words, “The Jesuits were wiser in their generation than we”; for this was a reference to Christ’s words in Lk. 16:8, where He said, “the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”  Livingstone, then, was in fact calling the Jesuits the children of this world, not the children of light (true Christians).

  In his book he wrote that the Jesuits and Capuchins were well spoken of at a certain place for their education of children.[42]  But this is not praise for the false “gospel” they preached; he was merely recording what others said of their teaching of children.  He wrote similar things about the Jesuits and Capuchins in another part of his book, mentioning how they taught the people to read and write, and saying they were devoted to their work and were held in high esteem.[43]  But again, this was merely pointing out the good work the priests had done in teaching the natives to read and write.

  Once, Livingstone wrote of a very kind Roman Catholic commandant, who gave Livingstone’s little daughter a rosary as a gift.[44]  He does not say the rosary was a good thing at all; merely that it was a token of the Roman Catholic man’s kindness.  Most of us, at some point or another, have been given a gift by someone, a token of their affection for us, which we cannot approve of; but there is a time and a place for saying something about it to the giver.  Livingstone did not teach his daughter to use the rosary!

  Livingstone also wrote of the kindness of a Romish bishop towards him in Africa, at a time when he had been very ill.  This man, Livingstone recorded, did not believe in persecuting Protestants, claiming (of course unbiblically) that there were various ways to God.  Livingstone said the man had a good influence in encouraging marriage among the natives, and promoting schools which (Livingstone added) would doubtless be “a blessing.”[45]

  While we deplore their false religion, it must be acknowledged freely that many priests and nuns are kind, generous, and genuinely concerned for the well-being of the sick, carrying out selfless work in mission hospitals around the world, often in appalling conditions.  Livingstone was a man of a large and very kind heart, which was naturally drawn to men who displayed the same virtues.  As for Livingstone writing of the man’s “good influence”, he was simply reporting what he had been told about him.  Livingstone limited this “good influence” to establishing schools and encouraging marriage instead of living together – which, it has to be acknowledged, many Romish missionaries have accomplished.  Livingstone was certainly in error in thinking Romish schools would be a blessing, even though he probably meant in the sense of teaching the natives to read and write, rather than to their influencing the pupils towards embracing Romanism.

  At one point in his book Livingstone wrote, “I could not help wishing that these our Roman Catholic fellow-Christians had felt it to be their duty to give the people the Bible, to be a light to their feet when the good men themselves were gone.”[46]  Calling them “good men” can be easily taken in the sense that nineteenth-century English-speakers often referred to men.  But then he called them “our Roman Catholic fellow-Christians”!  At first one is shocked upon reading this.  Yet is there anything we can say in mitigation of it? 

  Actually, yes; there is.  Many writers of earlier generations (and many writers today as well!) often used the word “Christian” in two senses.  The first sense, of course, was as meaning true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.  But the second sense was as meaning, in general, those who are not pagans, Muslims, Hindus, etc.  In other words, they used it as meaning those who would identify themselves as being “Christian” (without necessarily meaning they really were true Christians).  Thus, they would often speak of “the Christian world”, as meaning that part of the world that was not Muslim, Hindu, etc.  This was a most unfortunate use of the word, and has often caused great confusion, especially among newly-converted Christians; but nonetheless it was commonly done.  Livingstone wrote and spoke using the terminology of his own day.  Far better to speak of “Christendom” than “the Christian world”, and “false professing “christians” than “Christians” (when Papists are meant)!  But sadly this was not, and is not, always done.

  It has to be confessed that there have been many other Protestants, even men sound in the faith in many ways, who have made similar remarks.  Sad to say, even some of the greatest writers against Popery have done so, sending thoroughly mixed messages to their readers and doing much harm thereby.

  After spending time with some Portuguese militia men, Livingstone wrote: “They had also a few tracts containing the Lives of the Saints, and Cypriano had three small wax images of saints in his room.  One of these was St. Anthony, who, had he endured the privations he did in his cell in looking after these lost sheep, would have lived to better purpose.”  In this we see Livingstone’s sense of humour, and certainly he was not in favour of these things, although we could wish his words were far stronger.  He went on: “Neither Cypriano nor his companions knew what the Bible was, but they had relics in German-silver cases hung round their necks, to act as charms and save them from danger by land or by water, in the same way as the heathen have medicines.”  He knew it was heathenism, and he clearly had no time for such heathenism, even in its Popish form.  He continued: “It is a pity that the church to which they belong, when unable to attend to the wants of her children, does not give them the sacred writings in their own tongue; it would surely be better to see them good Protestants, if these would lead them to be so, than entirely ignorant of God’s message to man.”  This shows an ignorance of Popery’s utter enmity to the written Word of God, and a naive understanding of how Papist leaders view Protestants; but that is all.

  It is the next statement, however, made immediately afterwards, which is the one we said earlier is inexcusable: “For my part, I would much prefer to see the Africans good Roman Catholics than idolatrous heathen.”[47]  O how we could wish that Livingstone had never written such a thing!  There is nothing that can be said to put a more favourable light on it.

  And yet, it must be confessed with sorrow, it is a common error, made even by some men sound in the faith in other ways.  The thinking behind this seems to be, “At least, if they are Roman Catholics, they are hearing the name of Christ, they are hearing some truth, etc.”  But this is a most dangerous and unbiblical view.  A Roman Catholic is just as heathenish in religion as any other heathen.  Popery is nothing but “baptized paganism”.  It is heathenism dressed up to make it appear Christian, but it is as far from true Christianity as it is possible to get.  It is sad indeed that so many, even men sound in the faith, have taken this approach to Popery.

  We will give just one example, of many that could be given, of a well-known and highly-esteemed minister of Christ, sound in the faith overall, who nevertheless was at times so weak on Roman Catholicism that we cringe to read his words.  The example is that of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  When we read things such as the following from Spurgeon’s pen, we gasp in sheer amazement that he could utter such blatant and unscriptural nonsense, to the great detriment of the cause of Christ which as a general rule he so faithfully maintained!

  In his autobiography, Spurgeon wrote: “In Brussels, I heard a good sermon in a Romish church…. the good priest – for I believe he is a good man – preached the Lord Jesus with all his might.  He spoke of the love of Christ… and my heart kept beating within me as he told of the beauties of Christ and the preciousness of His blood, and of His power to save the chief of sinners.  He did not say, ‘justification by faith,’ but he did say, ‘efficacy of the blood,’ which comes to very much the same thing.  He did not tell us we were saved by grace, and not by our works; but he did say that all the works of men were less than nothing when brought into competition with the blood of Christ, and that the blood of Jesus alone could save.  True, there were objectionable sentences, as naturally there must be in a discourse delivered under such circumstances; but I could have gone to the preacher, and have said to him, ‘Brother, you have spoken the truth;’ and if I had been handling his text, I must have treated it in the same way that he did, if I could have done it as well.  I was pleased to find my own opinion verified, in his case, that there are, even in the apostate church, some who cleave unto the Lord – some sparks of heavenly fire that flicker amidst the rubbish of old superstition, some lights that are not blown out, even by the strong wind of Popery, but still cast a feeble gleam across the waters sufficient to guide the soul to the rock Christ Jesus.”[48]

  After reading this, who would dare to write off Livingstone for his sometimes ill-considered and occasionally decidedly incorrect remarks, when C.H. Spurgeon, one of the most faithful of the Lord’s preachers, went so much further than Livingstone in these remarks of his?  It is one of the most shocking and disgraceful paragraphs we have ever read in the writings of a Christian man, and we could weep that such a man ever uttered such error; but he did.  Who knows what immense harm was done by these words to some poor soul, or souls, newly converted or just beginning to be enlightened about the true antichristian nature of Roman Catholicism?  To call a priest of Rome “brother”; to claim that he preached the true Gospel of Christ; and to state that this proved there were true Christians within the heathenish religion of Popery – it is, as we said, disgraceful.  Spurgeon said, “True, there were some objectionable sentences” in the priest’s sermon; and yet what Spurgeon himself wrote here was as objectionable as anything that priest might have said, if not more so, for it came from the pen of a Protestant, a fine preacher, a true Christian man!  A man, moreover, who preached and wrote so well against Popery on numerous occasions![49]  His many warnings against Popery have opened many eyes, and for that we thank God; he displayed a strong sense of the evil of it for the most part, recognised the great danger of a resurgent Popery in England, and issued many warnings about it.  And yet at times he sent such mixed messages as this to his uncounted multitudes of readers.

  Let us bear in mind the true saying that “the best of men are but men at best”.  They make mistakes, they say things they ought not to say.  The Bible contains so many instances of the errors of God’s saints, both in doctrine and practice.  Godly King Jehoshaphat of Judah “joined affinity with Ahab”, the wicked king of Israel (2 Chron. 18:1), and spoke words which were full of error when he said, “I am as thou art, and my people as thy people” (v.3).  He said this, doubtless, because the people of Judah and the people of Israel were all descended from the same patriarchs; but Israel had departed from the Lord, was not worshipping the true God, and was in fact committing gross idolatry.  They were not, therefore, the same people.  This was great error on Jehoshaphat’s part.  Good and godly men hold to wrong notions, and do wrong things, at times.

Livingstone’s Legacy

  Let us consider, in closing, the legacy of David Livingstone.  So much more could be said; the following is of necessity a very brief treatment.

  Livingstone’s first legacy relates to mission work.  He was a pioneer missionary in the Dark Continent.  As he said in addressing people in Britain: “I beg to direct your attention to Africa; I know that in a few years I shall be cut off from that country, which is now open; do not let it be shut again!  I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity: will you carry out the work which I have begun?  I leave it with you!”

  Does Livingstone’s ringing call touch your heart, Christian?  It should!

  He prepared the way for missionaries to come to Africa in the years that followed.  They did; and gradually the Dark Continent began to receive the light.  Just as, in the first century AD, the Roman Empire facilitated the spread of the Gospel, because it provided a universal language, efficient means of communication and transportation, etc., so too in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, the British Empire facilitated the spread of the Gospel into the vast areas which came under its dominion.  In Livingstone’s wake, Africa opened up to Europe, and especially to Britain; and into the newly-created British territories missionaries of the cross of Christ flowed.  The story of missionary work in Africa in the wake of Livingstone’s pioneering work is a wonderful and exciting story indeed.  The many tribes of this hitherto savage, heathen continent began to hear of the One who came to save sinners, and a great work was accomplished in so many souls.  In 1928 a missionary named Miss Shaw wrote of how a very old black African had described meeting Livingstone.  He said, “He laughed, there was love in his eyes, he was not fierce.”  And turning to Miss Shaw he said with misty eyes, “He made a path through our land, and you his followers have come, God’s Light-bringers; and more come today.”[50]  This was what David Livingstone did for Africa.

  What a tragedy that Africa, for a few brief decades open to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, shut so soon.  Livingstone died in 1873; missionaries followed him and preached Christ; souls were saved, churches established.  But already, within the first few decades of the twentieth century, the enemy of souls worked on two major fronts: firstly, via the beginnings of an indigenous, cultic mixture of Christianity with African traditional religions, which has spread like wildfire across the continent; and secondly, via the rise of what would later be called “liberation theology”: a radical, political “gospel” of false “salvation” from the real and perceived oppression of the European “colonialists”.  These two false “gospels” have proved to be a huge blight on Africa’s religious landscape and have done incalculable harm.  David Livingstone would have been shocked to see how briefly the door for the Gospel was open in Africa.  Today we have a great need for faithful missionaries, proclaiming the true Christ of the Scriptures through the length and breadth of Africa again! 

  But we rejoice that, for an all-too-brief period of time, large numbers of Africans heard the true Gospel, and were converted; and that even today, as dark as the scene again is, there are still, here and there, faithful Christians and churches amidst the sea of error.

  Livingstone’s second legacy was what he accomplished against the slave trade.  For this reason he, unlike so many other Europeans, is still to this day deeply revered by many black Africans.  “In many countries where independence from colonisation has occurred, the names previously given to streets, buildings and even towns bearing the names of early pioneers have been withdrawn and replaced.  This has not been the case with Livingstone.  In Zambia, a town near the Victoria Falls bears his name, and Blantyre, the capital of Malawi, was named after Livingstone’s home town in Scotland.  Countless streets and buildings throughout Africa still bear his name.  On the edge of the Zambezi River I questioned an African on Livingstone.  I was told, ‘Ah, Livingstone, he has a good name.’”[51]

  His third legacy was his exploration of previously-unknown, mysterious Africa.  Before Livingstone, the interior of Africa, its rivers, mountains, jungles, deserts, its flora and fauna, and its many peoples – all were unknown to the rest of the world; after Livingstone, it had all changed.  “Twenty-nine thousand miles Livingstone had travelled through Africa, adding a million square miles of territory to what was known of the earth.”[52]  Sir H.H. Johnston, a man who explored Portuguese West Africa and the Congo in 1882-3, commanded a scientific expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro in 1884, and had a part in founding the British Central African Protectorate in 1889, said of David Livingstone: “Until I travelled in Livingstone’s footsteps and entered minutely into the recorded details of Livingstone’s work in Africa, I realized but feebly the debt which African civilization owes to that great man and the permanent and solid value of his careful researchers into the physical conditions and natural history of the Dark Continent.”[53]

  And Livingstone’s fourth legacy was that he opened up Africa not only for commerce with the rest of the world, primarily Europe, but also for greater European settlement in Africa than ever before.  In his wake, people from Europe began to flow into Africa, bringing with them their vast knowledge, their technology, their energy, their drive, their systems of law, their systems of government, their medical expertise, their roads and railways and buildings and everything else.  And Africa was transformed by these things.  Today, African nationalists and Marxists constantly belittle the work of European colonists, white immigrants, to Africa, and all they achieved – even while they readily enjoy the fruits of that colonisation and settlement every day of their lives.  To listen to them – and sadly, liberals and leftists the world over listen to them a great deal – one would think that the coming of Europeans to Africa was the greatest disaster to ever befall this continent.  In truth, despite the inevitable undesirable aspects of it which none can deny, the coming of people from Europe to settle in Africa, their descendants becoming Africans themselves, was, next to the coming of the Gospel of Christ, the greatest of all blessings Africa has ever experienced!  What Chas Lotter, a Rhodesian war poet, wrote of his own people, Afrikaners from South Africa (one of the two “white tribes” of Africa), could with equal truth be applied to many other Africans of European extraction who settled in Africa and made it their home: “my tribe woke a continent and thrust it into tomorrow.”[54]

  Yet today, white Africans are a dying breed, being pushed out of the continent of their birth by militant black African nationalism coupled with Marxism.  Livingstone longed to see white and black living and working together in Africa for the good of the continent; but alas! today his dream is all but dead.  This aspect of his great legacy had a short life, and Africa is the poorer for it.   Journalist Stephen Taylor wrote a book in 1999 entitled Livingstone’s Tribe.  He wrote: “This is an account of a journey in search of a dying tribe.  Even at the time I was travelling [from Zanzibar to the Cape], in 1997, it was clear that whites as an ethnic minority were doomed in most parts of Africa.  It seemed as though the colonial era had belonged to another century rather than to the previous generation.  In Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia the whites had all but disappeared; in Kenya they clung on diffidently.”  As for Zimbabwe – once-prosperous Rhodesia – it followed the rest of black Africa into chaos, looting, destruction, and murder.  And Taylor wrote: “At the end of my journey I reflected that only time will tell whether whites are capable of enduring in Africa.  In just three years the prospects look less auspicious than they did even then.  Increasingly parents, not only in Zimbabwe but also in South Africa, see their children attempting to make lives abroad.  Inevitably, it is those with abilities and qualifications who are best able to leave.  And as the brightest and most adventurous depart, the chasm between Africa and the developed world continues to widen.”[55]

  Indeed, as white Africans emigrate for more welcoming shores, the chasm between Africa and the developed world continues to widen.  What a tragedy for black Africa that this fourth legacy of Livingstone lasted for such a brief period.

  Seventeen years after David Livingstone died, a pioneer column pushed into a new territory in Africa and established itself at Fort Salisbury.  This was the beginning of the land which came to be known as Rhodesia, and is today Marxist Zimbabwe.  I was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia.  I, therefore, like so many millions of other white Africans, am part of the legacy of David Livingstone; I am a member of what Stephen Taylor called “Livingstone’s tribe.”  Although my ancestors came from South Africa and before that from England and Scotland, my parents were able to settle in Rhodesia because of the work David Livingstone had done.  His pioneering work opened the continent to settlement by people from Europe, and they became as African as any black tribe living in Africa.  But evil ideology and narrow-minded, short-sighted selfishness and envy have pushed Livingstone’s tribe to the brink of extinction in their own land.  And that is proving, and will yet prove, a disaster of incalculable magnitude to the other tribes of this complex, violent, and still so heathenish continent.

  May God yet raise up men like David Livingstone, sounder in doctrine than he was but with the same fearlessness, the same compassion for suffering mankind, the same dogged tenacity and perseverance, and the same longing to see men converted!  Truly, this is what Africa – and the world – needs!

Shaun Willcock is a minister, author and researcher.  He runs Bible Based Ministries.  This pamphlet was first published in 2013.  For other pamphlets (which may be downloaded and printed), as well as details about his books, audio messages, articles, etc., please visit the Bible Based Ministries website; or write to the address below.  If you would like to be on Bible Based Ministries’ email list, please send your details.

ENDNOTES:


[1]. Missionary Travels, by David Livingstone, pg. 4.  Ward, Lock and Co., Ltd., London, 1910.

 

 

[2]. David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, by C. Silvester Horne, M.P., pg.8.  Christian Liberty Press, Arlington Heights, Illinois, USA, 1999.

 

 

[3]. Quoted in David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, pg. 16.

 

 

[4]. David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, pg. 27.

 

 

[5]. David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, pg. 32.

 

 

[6]. David Livingstone: the Truth Behind the Legend, by Rob Mackenzie, pgs. 31-32.  Figtree Publications, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe, Eighth Edition 2005.

 

 

[7]. Livingstone the Liberator, by James I. Macnair, pg.200.  20th Century Distributors Ltd., Johannesburg, South Africa.  Undated.

 

 

[8]. Doctor Livingstone, by Rowland W. Purton, pgs. 38-9.  McGraw-Hill Far Eastern Publishers (S) Ltd., Singapore, 1970.

 

 

[9]. David Livingstone: the Truth Behind the Legend, pgs. 305-6.

 

 

[10]. Livingstone the Liberator, pgs.302-3.

 

 

[11]. David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, pg. 85.

 

 

[12]. David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, pg. 85.

 

 

[13]. How I Found Livingstone, by Henry Morton Stanley, pgs. 7,8.  White Star Publishers, Vercelli, Italy.  2006.

 

 

[14]. David Livingstone: the Truth Behind the Legend, pg. 345.

 

 

[15]How I Found Livingstone, pg. 358.

 

 

[16]. How I Found Livingstone, pg. 362.

 

 

[17]. Doctor Livingstone, pgs. 48-9.

 

 

[18]. How I Found Livingstone, pgs. 382-3.

 

 

[19]. How I Found Livingstone, pgs. 378, 380.

 

 

[20]. How I Found Livingstone, pg. 544.

 

 

[21]. How I Found Livingstone, pg. 389.

 

 

[22]. How I Found Livingstone, pgs. 542-4.

 

 

[23]. Into Africa: the Dramatic Retelling of the Stanley-Livingstone Story, by Martin Dugard, pgs. 303,325.  Bantam Press, London. 2003.

 

 

[24]. Into Africa, pgs. 140-1.

 

 

[25]. Into Africa, pg. 142.

 

 

[26]David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, pgs. 109-110.

 

 

[27]. David Livingstone: the Truth Behind the Legend, pg. 369.

 

 

[28]. Doctor Livingstone, pg. 53.

 

 

[29]. David Livingstone: Man of Prayer and Action, pg. 123.

 

 

[30]. David Livingstone: Mission and Empire, pg. 17.

 

 

[31]. David Livingstone: Mission and Empire, pg. 17.

 

 

[32]. David Livingstone: the Truth Behind the Legend, pgs. 31-32.

 

 

[33]. The Two Wesleys, by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  Pilgrim Publications, Pasadena, Texas, USA.  1975.  And George Whitefield’s Letter to Wesley on Election. Free Grace Publications, Canton, Georgia, USA, 1987.

 

 

[34]. See, for example, many places in The Complete Works of Augustus Toplady.  Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA.  1987.  And Arminianism – Another Gospel, by William MacLean, pgs. 7-10.  Westminster Standard, Gisborne, New Zealand. 1976.

 

 

[35]. Missionary Travels, pg. 460.

 

 

[36]. Missionary Travels, pgs. 325-326.

 

 

[37]. Missionary Travels, pg. 362.

 

 

[38]. The Greatest Fight in the World, by C.H. Spurgeon, pgs.31-32.  Pilgrim Publications, Pasadena, Texas, 1990.

 

 

[39]. Manual of Theology and Church Order, by J.L. Dagg.  Gano Books, Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. 1982.

 

 

[40]. Missionary Travels, pg. 339.

 

 

[41]. Missionary Travels, pg. 29.

 

 

[42]. Missionary Travels, pgs. 353-354.

 

 

[43]. Missionary Travels, pg. 330.

 

 

[44]. Missionary Travels, pg. 547.

 

 

[45]. Missionary Travels, pg. 340.

 

 

[46]. Missionary Travels, pg. 330.

 

 

[47]. Missionary Travels, pg. 317.

 

 

[48]. C.H. Spurgeon Autobiography Volume 2: The Full Harvest 1860-1892, pgs.21-22.  The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, UK, reprinted 1976.

 

 

[49]. Geese in Their Hoods: Selected Writings on Roman Catholicism by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, compiled and edited by Timothy Kauffman.  White Horse Publications, Huntsville, Alabama, USA, 1997.

 

 

[50]. David Livingstone: the Truth Behind the Legend, pg. 374.

 

 

[51]. David Livingstone: the Truth Behind the Legend, pg. 16.

 

 

[52]. Pathclearers of Central Africa, by J.J. Ellis, pg. 95.  Pickering and Inglis, London.  Undated.

 

 

[53]. David Livingstone, by Sir H.H. Johnston, “Note” at front of book.  Charles H. Kelly, London.  Undated.

 

 

[54]. Echoes of an African War, by Chas Lotter, pg. 13.  Covos-Day Books, Weltevreden Park, South Africa.  1999.

 

 

[55]. Livingstone’s Tribe, by Stephen Taylor, pgs. ix,x.  HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 1999.

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