Home > Today's Christian > People of Faith > Spiritual Giants
Today's Christian, July/August 2001
David Livingstone
Missionary, explorer, abolitionist
With four theatrical words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"—words journalist Henry Morton Stanley rehearsed in advance—David Livingstone was immortalized. Stanley stayed in Africa with Livingstone for five months and then went off to England to write his bestseller, How I Found Livingstone. Livingstone, in the meantime, got lost again—in a swamp literally up to his neck. Within a year and a half, he died in a mud hut, kneeling beside his cot in prayer.
Explorer on a mission
Born in Scotland in 1813, Livingstone spent his childhood working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill. At age 25, Livingstone responded to an appeal for medical missionaries to China. Before he finished his training, however, China closed its doors to outsiders.
Then he met Robert Moffat, a missionary in southern Africa, who enchanted him with tales of his remote station. Livingstone went there. In the next 10 years, he opened a string of stations, teaching school and superintending the garden with his wife, Mary.
From the beginning, Livingstone was restless. After his only convert returned to polygamy, Livingstone felt more called than ever to explore. During his first term in South Africa, Livingstone made some of the most
prodigious—and most dangerous— explorations of the nineteenth century. His object was to open a "Missionary Road"—1,500 miles north into the interior to bring Christianity and civilization to unreached peoples.
Light for a Dark Continent
On these early journeys, Livingstone's interpersonal quirks were already apparent. He fought with missionaries, fellow explorers, assistants, and (later) his brother Charles. He held little patience for missionaries who had absorbed the colonial mentality regarding the natives. When Livingstone spoke out against racial intolerance, white Afrikaners tried to drive him out, burning his station and stealing his animals.
He also had problems with the London Missionary Society, which questioned whether his explorations were distracting him from his missionary work. Throughout his life, however, Livingstone always thought of himself as primarily a missionary.
On an epic, three-year exploration, Livingstone was introduced to the 1,700-mile-long Zambezi River, home to Victoria Falls, Livingstone's most awe-inspiring discovery.
Despite its beauty, the Zambezi was a river of human misery. It linked the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, the main suppliers of slaves for Brazil, which in turn sold to Cuba and the United States. Though Livingstone sought to create a British colony, his primary ambition was to expose the slave trade and cut it off at the source. He hoped to replace slave economy with a capitalist economy: buying and selling goods instead of people.
Death denying
After a brief heroic return to England, Livingstone returned to Africa to navigate 1,000 miles up the Zambezi to establish a mission near Victoria Falls. Livingstone pushed his men beyond human endurance. His wife, who had just given birth to her sixth child, died in 1862 beside the river, only one of several lives claimed on the voyage. Two years later, the British government recalled Livingstone and his mission party.
A year later, he was on his way back to Africa again, leading an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society and wealthy friends to find the source of the Nile. Livingstone reveled in the possibility of proving that the Bible was true by tracing the African roots of Judaism and Christianity.
He disappeared for two years, reporting later that he had been so ill he could not even lift a pen, but he was able to read the Bible through four times. When Henry Stanley found Livingstone, papers carried special editions devoted to the famous meeting.
In August 1872, a frail Livingstone shook Stanley's hand and set out on his final journey of exploration and activism against slavery.
Buried in Westminster Abbey, his tombstone summarizes his life: "Brought by faithful hands over land and sea, David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade."
For more stories of historic Christians, visit www.ChristianHistory.net
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
Click here for reprint information.
July/August 2001, Vol. 39, No. 4, Page 15
Browse More Today's Christian
Home | People of Faith | Stories of Hope | Today's Culture
Build Your Faith | Laughing Matters | Archives | Contact Us
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Try Today's Christian Woman Free!
|
 |
|
No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only.
If you decide you want to keep Today's Christian Woman coming, honor your invoice for just $17.95 and receive five more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The trial issue is yours to keep, regardless.
Give Today's Christian Woman as a gift
Order a gift subscription!
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
| |
|
