LIVINGSTONE,
DAVID

(March 19, 1813–May 1, 1873), was a Scottish missionary and African explorer. He discovered: Lake Ngami and the Zuga River in 1849; the Zambezi River in 1851; Victoria Falls in 1855; and Lake Nyasa and Lake Shirwa in 1858–62. His wife, Mary Moffat Livingstone, died in 1862 and was buried at Shupanga. In 1866–73 he ventured forth searching for the source of the Nile, and was met by Henry M. Stanley, a correspondent of the New York Herald, at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in late 1871.

So loved was Dr. Livingstone by his African followers, that when he died on the shore of Lake Bangweulu in 1873, they buried his heart in Africa, and sent his body, packed in salt, back to England to be buried in Westminster Abbey. David Livingstone once declared:

All that I am I owe to Jesus Christ, revealed to me in His divine Book.2459

In his work, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, David Livingstone wrote:

Great pains had been taken by my parents to instill the doctrines of Christianity into my mind, and I had no difficulty in understanding the theory of free salvation by the atonement of our Savior; but it was only about this time that I really began to feel the necessity and value of a personal application of the provisions of the atonement to my own case. The change was like that of “colorblindness.”

The perfect fullness with which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in God’s Book drew forth feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought us with His blood, and a sense of deep obligation to Him for His mercy has influenced, in some small measure, my conduct ever since. This book will speak, not so much of what has been done, as of what remains to be performed before the Gospel can be said to be preached to all nations.

In the glow of love which Christianity inspires I soon resolved to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery.2460

David Livingstone expressed:

God had an only Son, and he was a missionary and a physician.2461

In 1872, Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904), the English correspondent for the New York Herald, found David Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in the heart of Africa. He greeted him with the now-classic salutation, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Henry M. Stanley described the famous old missionary:

Here is a man who is manifestly sustained as well as guided by influences from Heaven. The Holy Spirit dwells in him. God speaks through him. The heroism, the nobility, the pure and stainless enthusiasm as the root of his life come, beyond question, from Christ.

There must, therefore, be a Christ;—and it is worth while to have such a Helper and Redeemer as this Christ undoubtedly is, and as He here reveals Himself to this wonderful disciple.2462