Missionary Statesman “The Life and Labors of David Livingstone”

Some years ago I became committed to the idea of becoming familiar with at least one great missionary figure. This year, I selected David Livingstone. I turned to two excellent works on his life that were on my shelf. The first is the short popular biography written by Sam Wellman entitled David Livingstone, Missionary and Explorer. Wellman does a wonderful job presenting Livingstone’s commitment to reach the African people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Wellman crafts his biography around the well known statement, “The smoke of a thousand villages beckoned him . . . and where there’s smoke, there someday would be fire.” His brief biography is an excellent overview of Livingstone’s life and ministry and is suitable for a youth group or committed Christian teenager to read. However, by far the best biography on Livingstone is W. Garden Blaikie’s book entitled The Personal Life of David Livingstone. Initially published in 1880 by Flemming H. Revell Company, this work is currently out of print. One of the features which makes Blakie’s biography invaluable is the extensive quotations drawn from Livingstone’s journal entries and correspondence. He weaves Livingstone’s own thoughts in with the narrative so skillfully that one finds himself drawn up in the story and transported back to the caravan traveling with Livingstone through Africa.

David Livingstone was born to Christian parents living in the small Scottish village of Blantyre in 1813. Raised by good Christian parents, David demonstrated his aptitude as a student early on in life. He was awarded a New Testament at the age of nine for memorizing the entire 119 Psalm. At the age of twelve, he became concerned about his state as a sinner but it was not until he was in his early twenties that he made his salvation sure. During these years that he became committed to be a foreign missionary. Blaikie records this event in the following paragraph.

At first he had no thought of being himself a missionary. Feeling that the salvation of men ought to be the chief desire and aim of every Christian, he had made a resolution that he would give to the cause of missions all that he might earn beyond what was required for his subsistence. . . It was the claims of so many millions of his fellow-creatures, and the complaints of the scarcity, of the want of qualified missionaries, that led him to aspire to that office. From that time–apparently his twenty-first year–his efforts were constantly directed toward that object without fluctuation (p. 30)

Livingstone prepared himself for this task by completing a medical degree from the University at Glasgow. Intending initially to go to China as a missionary, he applied as a candidate to the London Missionary Society. After provisional acceptance, he was denied his initial desire to go to China and appointed instead to go to Africa. Early on in his early years of training, one enduring mark of David Livingstone’s character began to surface – his absolute commitment to keeping his given word. This character quality would stand him in great stead as a representative of Christ to heathen lands where honor and integrity were virtually unknown concepts.

Upon arrival in Africa, Livingstone anxiously awaited directions from the Society as to his permanent place of ministry. He wrote these words to a friend back home, “Whatever way my life may be spent so as but to promote the glory of our gracious God, I feel anxious to do it . . . My life may be spent as profitably as a pioneer as in any other way” (p. 58). During these first two years of ministry in Africa, two events occurred that profoundly impacted Livingstone and served as the impetus for a life-long commitment to reaching Africa for Christ. While visiting with the Bamangwato tribe in the great Kalahari desert he witnessed a gruesome lion attack on a native woman.

A woman was actually devoured in her garden during my visit, and that so near the town that I had frequently walked past it. It was most affecting to hear the cries of the orphan children of this woman. During the whole day after her death the surrounding rocks and valleys rang and re-echoed with their bitter cries. I frequently thought as I listened to the loud sobs, painfully indicative of the sorrows of those who have no hope, that if some of our churches could have heard their sad wailings, it would have awakened the firm resolution to do more for the heathen than they have done (p. 63).

Interestingly enough, Livingstone himself would suffer a severe injury from a lion attack later on in his ministry which maimed his arm and marked him for life. The second event took place when the chief of the tribe, Sekomi, paid him a visit in his hut.

On one occasion Sekomi, having sat by me in the hut for some time in deep thought, at length addressing me by a pompous title said, “I wish you would change my heart. Give me medicine to change it, for it is proud, proud and angry, angry always.” I lifted up the Testament and was about to tell him of the only way in which the heart can be changed, but he interrupted me by saying, “Nay, I wish to have it changed by medicine, to drink and have it changed at once, for it is always very proud and very uneasy, and continually angry with someone.” He then rose and went away (p. 63).

Blaikie’s book recounts Livingstone’s many expeditions and the incidents that occurred to him and around him during these journeys. You will wonder as you see Victoria Falls through Livingstone’s eyes – the first time they were ever seen by a white man. You will feel every step of the trail and sense the exhaustion and physical weariness that was his constant companion for the almost 40 years spent in Africa. His wife, Mary died and was buried in African soil not many years after his final return to the land he had come to love as home. For several years he was presumed lost until an American journalist undertook an expedition to settle the matter. The details of the famous meeting between Stanley and Livingstone are worth the price of the book. His final days and the discovery of his body kneeling by his bed in prayer give evidence that Livingstone never lost his passion for missions. Perhaps no one passage in the book better depicts the motivation that fueled Livingstone’s passion for reaching Africa for Christ than the following account of a discussion he had with Sechele, one of the more powerful village chiefs early on in his ministry in Africa:

“Since it is true that all who die unforgiven are lost forever, why did your nation not come to tell us of it before now? My ancestors are all gone, and none of them knew anything of what you tell me. How is this?” “I thought immediately,” says Livingstone, “of the guilt of the church , but did not confess. I told him that multitudes in our own country were like himself, so much in love with their sins. My ancestors had spent a great deal of time in trying to persuade them, and yet after all many of the by refusing were lost. We now wish to tell all the world about a Saviour, and if men did not believe, the guilt would be entirely theirs” (p. 69).

These words penetrated deep into my own heart and caused me to reflect on my own guilt in failing to tell those that God has called me to reach. Combined with the “rest of the story,” the reader is left with a heart stirring and soul searching question – what would God have me to do about reaching the world for Christ It is the reading of such a call that produced a Livingstone for Africa. Perhaps another Livingstone will be stirred and produced by the reading of his life story.