The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1913, Page 26

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26

brought to Christ; and that one would say, “See,
Tord Jesus, my being here I owe, next to Thy
boundless grace, to this friend’s endeavors. I was
a worldling who cared not for Thee; but I was
arrested on the road of sin by this friend who led
me to Thee, and thus I am now saved !”

Let none hear you idly saying,

“There is nothing I can do,”

While the souls of men are dying,

And the Master calls for you.

Take the task He gives you gladly,

Let His work your pleasure be;

Answer quickly when He calleth,

“Here am I, send me, send me!”

David Livingstone.

(Concluded.) %
During his one year’s stay in England, Living-
stone wrote The Zambesi and Its Tributaries. This
book was largely written to expose the African
slave-trade, but by its sale he also expected to make
enough money to enable him to establish a mis-
- sionary settlement at the head of the River Rovuma,
just beyond the Portuguese settlements.
The next year Livingstone returned to Africa,
and starting out from Zanzibar, headed for the
territory around Lake Tanganyika. He set out to
find the true sources of the Nile as an object sub-
ordinate to that which always was his main object,
namely, that of making Christ known to the be-
nighted natives and of promoting lawful trade to
take the place of the infamous traffic in slaves.
Livingstone was very unfortunate in the choice of
his attendants. In addition to this great misfor-
tune there was the enmity of the natives who in-
sisted upon believing that he was a slave-trader,
no doubt strengthened in this belief by the wily
“Portuguese, who were only too anxious to see Liv-
ingstone put out of the way. Almost worse than
all these troubles was the loss of his precious medi-
cine-chest and frequent attacks of fevers. Stores
of relief were sent him, but the men who were sent
with the stores, hearing that he was dead, stole the
stores on the way. For a long time nothing was
heard of him, and the whole Christian world was
anxious concerning his fate. Then it was that The
New York Herald sent out Henry M. Stanley at the
head of an expedition to seek him. Stanley finally
came upon him at Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, in
1871.. The brave man was actually upon the verge
of starvation when found. Yet such was his marvel-
ous tenacity of purpose that he refused to return

The Lutheran Pioneer.

with Stanley, but once more set out into the wilder-
ness to complete the work he had set himself to do,
Stanley having provided him with a new supply
of stores and a company of reliable attendants.
However, the heroic man’s strength was at an end;
fatal illness came upon him on the banks of Lake
Bangweola. There, in a wretched hut, the noble
soul left its mortal tabernacle on April 30, 1873.

His faithful attendants found him kneeling at his —

bedside; while praying, he had fallen asleep. His
faithful and loving servants, after removing and
burying the heart and other viscera, carried his body
more than a thousand miles to the coast, at an

almost unbelievable cost of danger and labor.

Greater funeral procession than this was never fur-
nished a mortal. His body was taken to England,
and buried in Westminster Abbey on April 18,
1874, where it lies among the great and noble of
his countrymen. But his great heart is resting in
Africa, among the people for whom it beat in such
great love. —

Livingstone is one of the imperishable names.
He looms up great in his achievements, greater as
a man, but greatest as a Christian. All the praise
of men and adulation of princes did not destroy
his humility; all the honors showered upon him
were not able to make him unfaithful to his mis-
sionary calling. He was ready to confess his Savior
in the palaces of the great, even as he was willing
to give his life to bring it to the savages of Africa.
It was not to solve the problems of the Nile, or to
complete the circuit of the inland lakes, that he
endured incredible hardships, marching with bleed-
ing feet and waning strength through swamp and
forest and blistering desert wastes. It was to end
the awful slavery of his fellow-beings, to save suf-
fering and perishing humanity, and, above all, to
preach the Gospel, in which, he well knew, lies the
only full and true freedom for man. He was a man
of prayer; his diary contains many most touching

petitions addressed to the throne of grace. He drew ©

his strength from the Word of God. During his
two years’ sojourn in the region along Lake Tan-
ganyika, he read his Bible through four times. He
let his light shine among men; in his dealings with
the natives he was ever kind and charitable, setting
them in every respect a shining example to follow,
showing in his life that the Gospel which he preached

had taken deep root in his own heart. Thus he -

won the hearts of the natives, and he is not for-
gotten among them to this day.
After his death, church after church hastened