of our exertions ought to be conversion.”  There was no subject on which Livingstone had stronger feelings than on purity of communion.  For two whole years he allowed no dispensation of the Lord’s Supper, because he did not deem the professing Christians to be living consistently.  Here was a crowning proof of his hatred of all sham and false pretense, and his intense love of solid, thorough, finished work.

Hardly were things begun to be settled at Kolobeng, when, by way of relaxation, Livingstone (January, 1848) again moved eastward.  He would have gone sooner, but “a mad sort of Scotchman[26],” having wandered past them shooting elephants, and lost all his cattle by the bite of the tsetse-fly, Livingstone had to go to his help; and moreover the dam, having burst, required to be repaired.  Sechele set out to accompany him, and intended to go with him the whole way; but some friends having come to visit his tribe, he had to return, or at least did return, leaving Livingstone four gallons of porridge, and two servants to act in his stead.  “He is about the only individual,” says Livingstone, “who possesses distinct, consistent views on the subject of our mission.  He is bound by his wives:  has a curious idea—­would like to go to another country for three or four years in order to study, with the hope that probably his wives would have married others in the meantime.  He would then return, and be admitted to the Lord’s Supper, and teach his people the knowledge he has acquired, He seems incapable of putting them away.  He feels so attached to them, and indeed we, too, feel much attached to most of them.  They are our best scholars, our constant friends.  We earnestly pray that they, too, may be enlightened by the Spirit of God.”

[Footnote 26:  Mr. Gordon Cumming.]

The prayer regarding Sechele was answered soon.  Reviewing the year 1844 in a letter to the Directors, Livingstone says:  “An event that excited more open enmity than any other was the profession of faith and subsequent reception of the chief into the church.”

During the first years at Kolobeng he received a long letter from his younger brother Charles, then in the United States, requesting him to use his influence with the London Missionary Society that he might be sent as a missionary to China.  In writing to the Directors about his brother, in reply to this request, Livingstone disclaimed all idea of influencing them except in so far as he might be able to tell them facts.  His brother’s history was very interesting.  In 1839, when David Livingstone was in England, Charles became earnest about religion, influenced partly by the thought that as his brother, to whom he was most warmly attached, was going abroad, he might never see him again in this world, and therefore he would prepare to meet him in the next.  A strong desire sprang up in his mind to obtain a liberal education.  Not having the means to get this at home, he was advised by David to go to America, and endeavor to obtain