DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 16192, 19 March 1913, Page 11

DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

A GREAT MISSIONARY

A CENTENARY APPRECIATION. (By REV JAMES MILNE, M.A.) Africa occupies a large place in the mind of the world to-day. This is very much by reason of the many noble men whose lives have been given to the development and opening to civilisation, more especially of the central and southern portions of the great continent. The country has its roll of honour, holding not a few illustrious names; and of these none is more deserving of being held in the, highest repute than that of the famous missionary pioneer and explorer, David Livingstone, who was born one hundred years ago to-day. This event will evoke much enthusiasm wherever the English tongue is spoken, and is likely to be specially appreciated in Africa, where his great work was done, and in Scotland, where he was born. Nor will it pass unnoticed elsewhere, for ties of humanity are more far-reaching than any one language, and Livingstone was no ordinary man. His fame so far has stood the test of time, which is more than provincial, and the course of years or even centuries does not fail to place the name of the really great man on the scroll of the immortals, who are not confined to any particular countrv or nation. Livingstone was born at Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, and it is not without suggestiveness of his remarkable influence that already in tho Shire district of Africa, near the sources of the Nile and the sceno of his pioneering labours, a thriving and progressive community of tho same name as his birthplace and with all the accessories of .modern civilisation has been established, out of respect to his work and memory.

EARLY LIFE AND STRUGGLES. The story, too, of his'early life and struggles is all in the way of pointing to that distinction which afterwards he so honourably won. A wonderful perseverance and stern, determination characterised tho conduct of the lad, who, after serving at the loom during the working hours of the day, was ready to devote his evening hours to that study which was to prepare him for his life's service to humanity. Consider that the mere boy who essayed this was but ten years old when ho left school to begin .work m the factory ; that he was the son of poor, although respectable parents; that his ambition was to qualify as a medical practitioner, so that ho might the better fit himself for, mission work, as ho hoped at the time, in China. Consider all this, and it is seen as at a glance that the thing had been sheerly impossible of fulfilment apart from the noble aspiration to which he set his life. Such aspiration may only be born of inspiration,, which is ever the accompaniment of greatness. Many a man who has attained to distinction has had reason to feel thankful for a poverty in early youth forcing him to struggle into a strong and youthful manhood; but something more than the struggle is necessary tor the attainment of greatness. _ lhe lite s story of David Livingstone is but one testimony among a multitude of how much many of the world's great men have owed to poor but upright parents; but such circumstance of birth never in itself sufficed to make them what they were. It is inconceivable for a man to be great, apart from a struggle ot some kind; yet have there been great men who have never known the difficulties associated with a poor estate. Possibly the most important and necessary possession and qualification tor greatness, is genius; winch has been variouslv and even indefinitely described from"" an infinite faculty for taking pains," to that of "taking an emoKl interest in work." Such definitions are necessarily imperfect because as is generally admitted, genius pertains to what psychologists call the Subconscious" in man's nature, which in human personality is very real but very mysterious. . LIVINGSTONE'S GENIUS. Certainlv the power which enabled Livfione to do what he accomphshedwl something more than ordinarily human; and is best and most adequately described, as far as the man himself was concerned in that work, as mspii atiori. It was nothing short of this which steeled his heart and Will for the long dreary drudgery of night classes and attendance at the Institute in Glasgow, whereby partly qualified himself for a doctor of medicine. Tlie samo brought him back_from London after a brief sojourn there, to fully qualify though taking his degree at the University of the Scottish city. It was the same influence which gave him heart to leave his native land, and sent him under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, and thwarted of his desire to work in China, to pioneer as a missionary in tho wilds of Amca. What China should have- been today had lie succeeded then m traversing her immense steppes, in navigating her great rivers, in bringing the light of civilisation to her millions; what, on the other hand Africa, in her sunken darkness of heathendom and gross cruelty of the slave trade, might have missed, are considerations which maj not be entered upon. Enough it is to indicate that Livingstone, in proceeding to Africa, answered a call which came with greater authority to his will than the desire in his great heart to alleviate the sorrows and sufferings or the humanity he went to enlighten. Therein again was revealed his greatness. There are not lacking many otlier proofs of the same, as manifest in the experience of his truly noble lite. HIS PERSEVERANCE. The fact that Livingstone, on entering the land of his adoption, stayed there at his work for sixteen years before returning home says not a little for his possession of that perseverance without which the man of the lofties„ aspiration mav not hope to perform much. That shortly after his arrival, and for the better expansion of his work, he saw the need of exploring the country; further, that while pioneering as a traveller, ho did not forget his duties as a missionary; such facts_ at once indicate both the prophetic and practical instinct generally, associated with the man, who, through

his grasp of the future and present, through his comprehensive and intensive mind, is deservedly esteemed as great.. That he remained on friendly terms with the London Missionary Society after severing his connection with them speaks of a magnanimity of mind to be expected in such a lofty nature as his; likewise the equanimity and fortitude with which he bore the many trials and vicissitudes incidental to his pioneering form of life with not a little psrsonal sorrow through bereavement and otherwise, all serve as sidelights to indicate the great man that lie was. TWO ACHIEVEMENTS.

To mention but two of the achievements of Livingston© in tho field of explftration, the work he accomplished as to Lake Nyassa and the discovery of tho Victoria Falls on the Zambesi; any one of the two, not to speak of other achievements m the same field, might have sufficed to establish his fame as an explorer. But to posterity he is more than that. Mr Stanley, [n his book, " How I Found Livingstone," tells how he triad to persuado the great traveller to return with him to England ; but Livingstone would only promise to go homo when his work was done. Faithfully he kept his word, but more in spirit than in letter; for on the first day of May, in the 1873, he was found dead on his knees in a hut by the shore of Lake Bangweolo, and so went right from the heart of Africa home to the heart of God! That his two nativo attendants should have buried his heart in tho land for which he gave his life before beginning their toilsome journey with his hudv to the was not otherwise than it should have been. So to-day ho is remembered as something more than an explorer. It is the nobler laurel of hero, missionary and martyr which, is entwined with the name of David Livingstone. His death was in conformity to his life, assuring for him what he had so truly, yet sternly, won, a deathless fame I His body was buried in Westminster Abbey. Round his tomb are -engraven tho words of Sacred Writ: " And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and tbero shall bo one fold and one shepherd." Tho words were chosen by Dean Stanley. They speak silently, yet trnronettongued, from the ground, regardless of .any or all creeds, to tho man who in the grey old Abboy by the Thames .may look upon the tomb of David Livingstone.