Difficulties and Discoveries
OT only in these scenes of active missionary labor, but wherever he was, Livingstone was in the habit of preaching to the natives, and talking with them on religious topics, especially the love of Christ, the Fatherhood of God, the resurrection, and the last judgment. Dr. Moffat tells us that his preaching was simple, scriptural, interesting, very direct, and well suited to the capacity of the people. Livingstone never expected that the work of real Christianity would advance rapidly among the Bakwains, for they were a slow people and took long to move; but it was not his desire to have a large church of nominal adherents. “Nothing” he writes, “will induce me to form an impure church. Fifty added to the church sounds fine at home, but if only five of these are genuine what will it profit in the Great Day? I have felt more than ever lately that the great object of our exertions ought to be conversion.” For two years he allowed no celebration of the Lord’s Supper, because he did not deem the professing Christians to be living consistent lives. Jere was a crowning proof of his hatred of all sham and his love for thorough, finished work. To his father he writes (July 5, 1848): “For a long time! felt much depressed after preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ to apparently insensible hearts; but now I like to dwell on the love of the great Mediator, for it always warms my own heart, and I know that the gospel is the power of God — the great means which He employs for the regeneration of our ruined world.”
Je LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE.
Again he writes: “We have a difficult, difficult field to cultivate here. AJI I can say is that I think knowledge is increasing. But for the belief that the Holy Spirit works and will work for us, I should give up in despair. Remember us in your prayers, that we grow not weary in well-doing. It is hai to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be locked on vy most of those to whom our lives are devoted, as having some sinister object in view. Disinterested labor — benevolence —is so out of their line of thought that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view. But He who died for us, and whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. May we have grace to follow in His steps!”
One serious obstacle to the rapid spread of the gospel was the continued drought that followed the Bakwains even to Kolobeng. During two years the total amount of rain-fall was not more than ten inches, while there was an abundance of rain all around them. As the tribe had not suffered from successive droughts before the gospel was made known to them, it was natural that they should draw unfavorable inferences.
In his Missionary Travels, Livingstone writes: ‘The belief in the power of rain making is one of the most deeply rooted articles of faith in this country. The chief Sechele was himself a noted rain-doctor, and he often assured me that he found it more difficult to give up this superstition than anything else that Christianity required him to abjure. The Bakwains believed that I had bound Sechele with some magic spell, and I received deputations of the old counselors, entreating me to allow him to make only a few showers. ‘The corn will die if you refuse, and we shall become scattered. Only let him make rain this once, and we shall all, men, women, and children, come to the school, and sing and pray as long as you please”... The Bakwains still went on treating us with kindness, and I am not aware of ever having had an enemy in the tribe; but as they believed that there must be some connection between the presence of ‘God's Word’ in their town, and these successive droughts, they looked with no good-will at the church-bell. ‘We like you’ said the uncle of Sechele, a very influential and sensible person, ‘as well as if you had been born among us; you are the only white man we can become familiar with; but we wish you to give up that everlasting preaching and praying; we cannot become familiar with that at all. You see we never get rain, while these tribes who never pray as we do obtain abundance. ’”
Sometimes the attendance at the church services was exceedingly small. At one such time, we are told, a bellman of a somewhat peculiar order was employed to collect the people together. ‘Up he jumped,” continues the narrative, “on a sort of platform, and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Knock that woman down over there. Strike her, she is putting on her pot! Do you see that one hiding herself? Give her a good blow. There she is—see! see! Knock her down!’ All the women ran to the place of meeting in no time, for each thought herself meant. But, though a most efficient bellman, we did not like to employ him.”
During this period of life in Kolobeng, Livingstone’s ordinary missionary avocations of preaching, teaching, practicing medicine, and working at all manner of trades, were interrupted by several long journeys of 400 or 500 miles to the north, to visit the country of the Makololo, a large tribe, who, as he was told, were very desirious of having a missionary. It was becoming evident that Kolobeng must ere long be abandoned. Already the river was dried up, and the absence of water, and consequently of food in the gardens, made it necessary for the men to be often at a distance hunting, and for the women to be away collecting locusts, so that frequently there was hardly any one to come to church or school. If this station, too, had to be abandoned, where should Livingstone go next? It had not been his intention to remain always with the Bakwains, and it was certainly worth while to see if a suitable locality could not be found among the Makololo. If the new region were not suitable for himself, he might at least find openings for native teachers.
Driven back by fever and other obstacles, 1. was only in the third attempt that he succeeded in reaching the village of the chief of the Makololo, Sebituane. This man was very friendly to Livingstone, who thought him the best specimen of a native chief that he had ever met, and he had promised to select a suitable locality for a mission station, and would probably have used his great influence among his people on the right side. But almost immediately after Livingstone’s arrival, when the way of salvation had been proclaimed to him but once, Sebituane was seized with severe inflammation of the lungs, and died after a fortnight’s illness. Not being permitted by the attendants to turn the dying man’s thoughts to his Father in Heaven, all Livingstone could do was to commend his soul to God.
After several attempts, Dr. Livingstone saw no prospect of obtaining a suitable station, and with great reluctance made up his mind to retrace his weary way to Kolobeng. But these journeys were not wholly useless. While making his first journey, he discovered Lake N’gami, for which discovery he received the prize for that year from the Royal Geographical Society. ‘The journey which he made so successfully had hitherto baffled the best furnished travellers. The president of the society frankly ascribed Livingstone’s success to the influence which he had acquired, as a missionary, among the natives. This the explorer himself also thoroughly believed, saying that the lake belonged to missionary enterprise. The river Zambesi was another of his discoveries at this time. On two of these journeys his wife and family accompanied him, and were mercifully preserved, though nearly dying on the way from the African fever.
Meantime, amid all his countless labors, Dr. Livingstone’s mind was constantly busy with the scientific aspects of the country, and the great problem of its evangelization. Three things appeared to his mind essential tothe successful solution of this problem, and he urged them constantly upon the directors. They were the vigorous pushing forward of the work into the interior, the employment of native agency, and the establishment of a training-school where such agency might be qualified.
At length it became certain that the tribe of the Bakwains, among whom Livingstone had labored, must seek a new home. Added to the lack of rain was the threatening attitude of the Boers of the Transvaal, who hated Livingstone because of his attempts to christianize the natives, whom they regarded as without souls and made only to serve the white men, and who were seeking an occasion of quarrel as a pretext for breaking up the mission. It was plain that there was no hope of the Boers allowing the peaceable instruction of the natives at Kolobeng. When Sechele understood this, he sent his five children for instruction in all the knowledge of the white men to Dr. Moffat, at Kuruman, who kindly received them and their attendants into his own family.
Should Livingstone then seek some better location with this tribe among whom he had been laboring? His feeling in the matter is thus set forth: “If I were to follow my own inclinations, they would lead me to settle down quietly with the Bakwains, or some other small tribe, and devote some of my time to my children, but Providence seems to call me to the regions beyond.” Friends urge him to remain, and dloubtless had he been a man of only ordinary ability he would have done so, and in so acting would have done wisely. But his is a mind of larger scope. The great unevangelized interior of Africa beckons him on with irresistible power, and he dares not disobey what is beyond all doubt the call of God.
But this involves separation from his family. He dares not take them with him into that perilous fever country, while he again seeks a new and healthful site for the location of a mission station. Neither can he leave them alone among the natives, for fear of the disastrous influence upon his children. There is nothing for them to do but to return to England for the present, hoping to rejoin him at the end of two years.
And so they turn their backs upon Kolobeng. Sorrowfully must they have looked for the last time upon that A frican home; more sorrowfully still had they but known that they were never to be together in a home of their own again!