The Personal Life of David Livingstone eBook

William Garden Blaikie
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about The Personal Life of David Livingstone.

The Personal Life of David Livingstone eBook

William Garden Blaikie
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about The Personal Life of David Livingstone.

Livingstone had been disappointed with the result of his work among the Bakhatlas.  No doubt much good had been done; he had prevented several wars; but where were the conversions[24]?  On leaving he found that he had made more impressions on them than he had supposed.  They were most unwilling to lose him, offered to do anything in their power for his comfort, and even when his oxen were “inspanned” and he was on the point of moving, they offered to build a new house without expense to him in some other place, if only he would not leave them.  In a financial point of view, the removal to Chonuane was a serious undertaking.  He had to apply to the Directors at home for a building-grant—­only thirty pounds, but there were not wanting objectors even to that small sum.  It was only in self-vindication that he was constrained to tell of the hardships which his family had borne;—­

[Footnote 24:  When some of Livingstone’s “new light” friends heard that there were so few conversions, they seem to have thought that he was too much of an old Calvinist, and wrote to him to preach that the remedy was as extensive as the disease—­Christ loved you, and gave himself for you.  “You may think me heretical,” replied he, “but we don’t need to make the extent of the atonement the main topic of our preaching.  We preach to men who don’t know but they are beasts, who have no idea of God as a personal agent, or of sin as evil, otherwise than as an offense against each other, which may or may not be punished by the party offended....  Their consciences are seared, and moral perceptions blunted.  Their memories retain scarcely anything we teach them, and so low have they sunk that the plainest text in the whole Bible cannot be understood by them.”]

“We endured for a long while, using a wretched infusion of native corn for coffee, but when our corn was done, we were fairly obliged to go to Kuruman for supplies.  I can bear what other Europeans would consider hunger and thirst without any inconvenience, but when we arrived, to hear the old woman who had seen my wife depart about two years before, exclaiming before the door, ’Bless me! how lean she is!  Has he starved her?  Is there no food in the country to which she has been?’ was more than I could well bear.”

From the first, Sechele showed an intelligent interest in Livingstone’s preaching.  He became a great reader especially of the Bible, and lamented very bitterly that he had got involved in heathen customs, and now did not know what to do with his wives.  At one time he expressed himself quite willing to convert all his people to Christianity by the litupa, i.e. whips of rhinoceros hide; but when he came to understand better, he lamented that while he could make his people do anything else he liked, he could not get one of them to believe.  He began family worship, and Livingstone was surprised to hear how well he conducted prayer in his own simple and beautiful

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Project Gutenberg
The Personal Life of David Livingstone from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.