David Livingstone - Missionary

Livingstone, David 1813-1873. Congregational. South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania. David Livingstone Scottish missionary and explorer. He first came to South Africa in 1841 to found a mission station among the Quina of Setchel. Tired of working in one place, in the late 1840s he explored northern Botswana in search of new mission fields. In 1851 he reached the Zambezi River where Livingstone was enthused by the idea of opening a mission among the Kololo. He set as his life's work expanding Christian frontiers in Africa. Several years later he returned to the Kololo, now ruled by Sebetwane's son Sekalitu. With their aid he walked to Luanda on the west coast, and then to Quilomane on the east coast in search of a practical route inland. 1853-6. Along the way he saw and named the Victoria Falls. Livingstone returned to Britain to find his travels had caused a sensation, and he used his new fame to promote British interest in the Zambezi region. His lectures inspired the immediate founding of the University's Mission Society. His own London Missionary Society launched missions to the Kololo and to the Ndebele of Mzilikatsi. Royalties from his popular book, Travels and Researches, 1857, made him independently wealthy and enabled him to resign from the London Missionary Society. Livingstone returned to the Zambezi River as British Consul, in charge of an exploration expedition, 1858-63. His most significant achievement on this trip was his exploration of Malawi, which laid the basis for later British colonization. During his last major expedition, 1866-73, Livingstone travelled through western Tanzania, eastern Zaire, Malawi and Zambia. He resolved some questions about the source of the Nile and Congo rivers, but his real achievement was to publicize these regions to the outside world. His somewhat exaggerated descriptions of the slave trade encouraged European intervention and eventual occupation of eastern Africa. His reputation in Europe was boosted tremendously by Henry Stanley, who visited him at Lake Tanganyika, 1871, and then returned home to portray him as a martyr in the cause of African redemption. After his death, his body was returned to England by several African employees, the final touch to his legend. Livingstone's African career covers the middle years of the 19th century, from 1841-1873. It is not insignificant that this period is almost co-extensive with the Secretariat of Henry Venn at the Church Missionary Society. Despite the obvious differences of upbringing in churchmanship and their different spheres of operation, there is a remarkable similarity between the two men in their view of the missionary task and their understanding of its relation to human society. The period of their activity began as missions had become accepted in the public mind as a beneficent operation and established in all church thinking as a necessary one. No longer, as in earlier days, were missionaries assumed to be fanatics, sectarians, or subversives, nor were missions as uncertain of any solid, practical results. When Livingstone and Venn died, a new missionary period was dawning in which a tidal wave of eager young people and a host of new agencies would seek the evangelization of the world. When Livingstone and Venn began their work, a new consciousness of Africa was dawning in Britain, the first industrial nation, conscious as it was of a need for new raw materials and markets and of a surplus population. But official policy recoiled from expensive commitments and acquisitions of territory overseas. When their work was ended, the High Imperial Period was already at hand, when the Western powers would divide Africa among them and establish their hegemony over the rest of the world. They began their mission in a society where energetic Christian commitment was associated with strong sentiment against slavery and in favor of humanitarian causes, and where evangelical values counted in the nation as never before or since. At their end, the whole intellectual foundation of Christianity was being doubted where once it had been taken for granted, and a chorus of diverse voices would shortly call and question the whole validity of missions, even as they reached their peak of activity. Livingstone, like Venn, represents a sturdy, confident evangelicalism, secure in its place in national life, sure of its right and duty to influence public and government opinion, and, for all its emphasis on personal regeneration and personal religion, looking to the transformation of society as a normal fruit of Christian activity. David Livingstone, the E was added later, was born in 1813 in Blantyre, Lanarkshire, Scotland. The family was of Highland origin, and an incidental remark by Livingstone that at times within his family tradition the Highlanders were much like the Cape Caffers, one, reflects a David worked in a cotton-spinning factory from the age of ten, and at the factory school laid the foundation of a sound, though never a learned, education. His home was devout after the best model of traditional Scottish Calvinism, but he had no inclination for scholastic theology, and his intellectual curiosity and interest in science raised fears of his departing from the faith. Many major figures of the period were convened through reading Wilberforce's practical view. Livingstone was punished for refusing to read it. He did, however, read the works of Thomas Dick, 1774-1847, which proclaimed the harmony of science and faith, and the evangelical experience of conversion followed. His interest in China was kindled through the writing of Carl Gutzlaff, and he determined to serve in China as a medical missionary, a designation then newly developed with China specifically in mind. Factory work paid well enough to enable him to devote part of the year to the study of medicine, Greek and divinity in Glasgow, and to qualify in 1840 as a medical practitioner. In the meantime he had been accepted by the London Missionary Society, to which he was attracted by its non-denominational character. He was, however, quite prepared to dispense with any missionary society. It was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become in a measure dependent on others, and I would not have been much put about though my offer had been rejected. Thank you for watching, please share and subscribe.