There can be no doubt that David Livingstone’s heart was very thoroughly penetrated by the new life that now flowed into it.  He did not merely apprehend the truth—­the truth laid hold of him.  The divine blessing flowed into him as it flowed into the heart of St. Paul, St. Augustine, and others of that type, subduing all earthly desires and wishes.  What he says in his book about the freeness of God’s grace drawing forth feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought him with his blood, and the sense of deep obligation to Him for his mercy, that had influenced, in some small measure, his conduct ever since, is from him most significant.  Accustomed to suppress all spiritual emotion in his public writings, he would not have used these words if they had not been very real.  They give us the secret of his life.  Acts of self-denial that are very hard to do under the iron law of conscience, become a willing service under the glow of divine love.  It was the glow of divine love as well as the power of conscience that moved Livingstone.  Though he seldom revealed his inner feelings, and hardly ever in the language of ecstasy, it is plain that he was moved by a calm but mighty inward power to the very end of his life.  The love that began to stir his heart in his father’s house continued to move him all through his dreary African journeys, and was still in full play on that lonely midnight when he knelt at his bedside in the hut in Ilala, and his spirit returned to his God and Saviour.

At first he had no thought of being himself a missionary.  Feeling “that the salvation of men ought to be the chief desire and aim of every Christian,” he had made a resolution “that he would give to the cause of missions all that he might earn beyond what was required for his subsistence[6].”  The resolution to give himself came from his reading an Appeal by Mr. Gutzlaff to the Churches of Britain and America on behalf of China.  It was “the claims of so many millions of his fellow-creatures, and the complaints of the scarcity, of the want of qualified missionaries,” that led him to aspire to the office.  From that time—­apparently his twenty-first year—­his “efforts were constantly directed toward that object without any fluctuation.”

[Footnote 6:  Statement to Directors of London Missionary Society.]

The years of monotonous toil spent in the factory were never regretted by Livingstone.  On the contrary, he regarded his experience there as an important part of his education, and had it been possible, he would have liked “to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training[7].”  The fellow-feeling he acquired for the children of labor was invaluable for enabling him to gain influence with the same class, whether in Scotland or in Africa.  As we have already seen, he was essentially a man of the people.  Not that he looked unkindly on the richer classes,—­he used to say in his later years, that he liked to see