Towards the end of October, Moffat bade farewell to the Matabele king.  Moselekatse pressed him to prolong his stay, pleading that he had not seen enough of him, and that he had not yet shown him sufficient kindness.  “Kindness!” replied Moffat, “you have overwhelmed me with kindness, and I shall now return with a heart overflowing with thanks.”  Leaving the monarch a supply of suitable medicines to keep his system in tolerable order, and admonishing him to give up beer drinking, and to receive any Christian teacher who might come as he had received him, the missionary took his departure.  The long return journey was accomplished without any remarkable event, and in due course Moffat reached his home again in safety.

By this journey his health was much improved, his intercourse and friendship with the people of the interior were cemented and extended, and he looked forward with hopeful assurance to the early advancement of Christianity to those distant regions.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE SECHWANA BIBLE.

The great task was at length accomplished; the work of nearly thirty years brought to a close.  The Word of God in the language of the Bechwana people, in all its glorious completeness and power, was now in their hands.

To Robert Moffat the labour had been of a herculean character.  He had spared himself no labour or drudgery which its prosecution involved.  To accomplish it he had left his home and lived a semi-savage life for nearly three months, that he might perfect himself in the language.  Without any special training for the important undertaking, and under the greatest disadvantages, he had not only acquired the language, but reduced it to its elements, and then presented it in a synthetic and grammatical form.  Beyond that his earnest desire had been to render the whole Bible into the native tongue.

As age increased, the importance of finishing the work became more and more apparent, till even a minute spent in anything but purely mission-work, or his translation duties, seemed as wasted time.  Writing when the end was near, he said:  “When I take up a newspaper, it is only to glance at it with a feeling like that of committing sacrilege.  I have sometimes been arrested with something interesting, and have read it with ten or more strokes in the minute added to my pulse, from the anxiety caused by the conviction that I am spending precious time apart from its paramount object, while I feel perfectly composed over anything which I am satisfied has a direct bearing on the true object of the missionary.”

But the work was now accomplished, the last sheet had been passed for press, the last verse of the Old Testament completed, and now his mind, which had been for so many years strained under the weighty responsibility of translating the Word of God, was free.  Of his feelings on this occasion he made mention in a speech delivered some years later at Port Elizabeth, on the occasion of his final departure from South Africa.  We quote from the Chronicle of the London Missionary Society for August, 1870.