The missionary work was yet to be done.  It belonged to the future, not to the past.  By showing what vast fields there were in Africa ripe for the harvest, he sought to stimulate the Christian enterprise of the Churches, and lead them to take possession of Africa for Christ.  He would diligently record facts which he had ascertained about Africa, facts that he saw had some bearing on its future welfare, but whose full significance in that connection no one might yet be able to perceive.  In a sense, the book was a work of faith.  He wished to interest men of science, men of commerce, men of philanthropy, ministers of the Crown, men of all sorts, in the welfare of Africa.  Where he had so varied a constituency to deal with, and where the precise method by which Africa would be civilized was yet so indefinite, he would faithfully record what he had come to know, and let others build as they might with his materials.  Certainly, in all that Livingstone has written, he has left us in no doubt as to the consummation to which he ever looked.  His whole writings and his whole life are a commentary on his own words—­“The end of the geographical feat is only the beginning of the enterprise.”

Through the great success of the volume and the handsome conduct of the publishers, the book yielded him a little fortune.  We shall see what generous use he made of it—­how large a portion of the profits went to forward directly the great object to which his heart and his life were so cordially given.  More than half went to a single object connected with the Zambesi Expedition, and of the remainder he was ready to devote a half to another favorite project.  All that he thought it his duty to reserve for his children was enough to educate them, and prepare them for their part in life.  Nothing would have seemed less desirable or less for their good than to found a rich family to live in idleness.  It was and is a common impression that Livingstone received large sums from friends to aid him in his work.  For the most part these impressions were unfounded; but his own hard-earned money was bestowed freely and cheerfully wherever it seemed likely to do good.

The complaint that he was not sufficiently a missionary was sometimes made of his speeches as well as his book.  At Carlisle, a lady wrote to him in this strain.  A copy of his reply is before us.  After explaining that reporters were more ready to report his geography than his missionary views, he says: 

“Nowhere have I ever appeared as anything else but a servant of God, who has simply followed the leadings of his hand.  My views of what is missionary duty are not so contracted as those whose ideal is a dumpy sort of man with a Bible under his arm.  I have labored in bricks and mortar, at the forge and carpenter’s bench, as well as in preaching and medical practice.  I feel that I am ‘not my own.’  I am serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men, or taking an astronomical