Thus missions in South Africa had been commenced, stations among the Hottentots and others had been formed, good work had been done, and the way pioneered.  The field was opened and it was wide, but as yet the labourers were few.

At the time when Vanderkemp closed his eyes on this world, a lad was working as an apprentice to a Scotch gardener, rising in the dense darkness of the cold winter’s mornings at four o’clock, and warming his knuckles by knocking them against the handle of his spade.  He was passing through a hard training, but this lad was being prepared to take up the work which Vanderkemp had so well begun, though in a somewhat different sphere, and to repair the loss which had been sustained by the missionary cause through his death.  The name of this lad was Robert Moffat.

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CHAPTER II.

Childhood and youth.

Robert Moffat was born on the 21st of December, 1795.  His parents dwelt at that time at Ormiston, in East Lothian, Scotland.  They were pious God-fearing people; the mother though holding a stern religious faith, yet possessed a most tender loving heart, and very early sought to instil into the minds and hearts of her children the love of God and a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures.

Of the early childhood of the future missionary very little is stated.  In 1797 his father received an appointment in the Custom House at Portsoy, and in 1806 the home of the Moffats was at Carronshore, on the Firth of Forth.  At this time the family consisted of four sons and two daughters, besides the subject of this memoir.

A glimpse of the interior of their cottage, during the long winter evenings, is given, which shows how the mother by her gentle influence may become the means of sowing seed, which shall spring up in after years bearing fruit a hundred-fold.  The lads were gathered by the fireside learning to knit and sew, and while so engaged their mother, who took great interest in the missionary enterprises then carried on, read aloud, in such publications as she could obtain, the descriptions given of the work and sufferings of the pioneer labourers in heathen lands, more especially of the Moravians in Greenland and the East Indies.

Of educational advantages, Robert had but few in his early days.  One, “Wully Mitchell,” as he was popularly called, the parish schoolmaster was his first tutor; and “the Shorter Catechism,” the title-page of which contained the alphabet, his first instruction book.  His progress was but slow, his hands often being made to suffer for the dullness of his brains.  A boy living in the midst of shipping, his desires were more for nautical matters than for Wully’s books, and so he ran off to sea.  The captain of the ship on which he was, became much attached to the lad, so with his parent’s consent, he made several voyages in the coasting trade.  Many hairbreadth escapes fell to his lot, and at last he quitted the sea, as he states “to the no small joy of my parents.”