Next day, December 5th, Dr. Livingstone addressed a very crowded audience in the Town Hall, the Mayor presiding.  Referring to his own plans, he said: 

“I contend that we ought not to be ashamed of our religion, and had we not kept this so much out of sight in India, we should not now be in such straits in that country” [referring to the Indian Mutiny].  “Let us appear just what we are.  For my own part, I intend to go out as a missionary, and hope boldly, but with civility, to state the truth of Christianity, and my belief that those who do not possess it are in error.  My object in Africa is not only the elevation of man, but that the country might be so opened that man might see the need of his soul’s salvation.  I propose in my next expedition to visit the Zambesi, and propitiate the different chiefs along its banks, endeavoring to induce them to cultivate cotton, and to abolish the slave-trade:  already they trade in ivory and gold-dust, and are anxious to extend their commercial operations.  There is thus a probability of their interests being linked with ours, and thus the elevation of the African would be the result,

“I believe England is alive to her duty of civilizing and Christianizing the heathen.  We cannot all go out as missionaries, it is true; but we may all do something toward providing a substitute.  Moreover, all may especially do that which every missionary highly prizes, viz.—­COMMEND THE WORK IN THEIR PRAYERS.  I HOPE THAT THOSE WHOM I NOW ADDRESS WILL BOTH PRAY FOR AND HELP THOSE WHO ARE THEIR SUBSTITUTES.”

Dr. Livingstone was thoroughly delighted with his reception at Cambridge.  Writing to a friend, on 6th December 1857, he says:  “Cambridge, as Playfair would say, was grand.  It beat Oxford hollow.  To make up my library again they subscribed at least forty volumes at once.  I shall have reason soon to bless the Boers.”

Referring to his Cambridge visit a few weeks afterward, in a letter to Rev. W. Monk, Dr. Livingstone said:  “I look back to my visit to Cambridge as one of the most pleasant episodes of my life.  I shall always revert with feelings of delight to the short intercourse I enjoyed with such noble Christian men as Sedgwick, Whewell, Selwyn, etc. etc., as not the least important privilege conferred on me by my visit to England.  It is something inspiriting to remember that the eyes of such men are upon one’s course.  May blessings rest upon them all, and on the seat of learning which they adorn!”

Among the subjects that had occupied Dr. Livingstone’s attention most intensely during the early part of the year 1857 was that of his relation to the London Missionary Society.  The impression caused by Dr. Tidman’s letter received at Quilimane had been quite removed by personal intercourse with the Directors, who would have been delighted to let Livingstone work in their service in his own way.  But with the