Without a doubt David Livingstone was one of the most famous Christian missionaries our world has ever known. In one of Livingstone’s most telling accolades Madeline Peña shared the following: “One article describes Dr. David Livingstone as ‘Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one.’”1
Livingstone (1813 – 1873), in his short sixty years of life, made a greater impact on the entire continent of Africa perhaps more than any man who ever lived. His discoveries and mapping of, at the time, this unknown continent, were instrumental in leading the way to England’s imperialism of several African nations during the 19th and 20th centuries. While Livingstone was first and foremost a missionary, sharing Christ, to the many unreached people groups of Africa, he was also an explorer, and an ardent abolitionist of the African slave trade.
According to Madeline Peña: “His findings were world-changing. Not only did he bring the Gospel to the lost, but he revealed the continent of Africa to the whole world. Livingstone explored and mapped out the uncharted continent. He also exposed the horrific, treacherous slave trade happening in Africa. These findings had never been known by the Western world prior to Livingstone. He is considered the greatest abolitionist for Africa’s former slave trade.”2
Livingstone studied both theology and medicine and received his medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1838. Livingstone believed that having a knowledge of medicine in addition to being a Christian missionary would make him welcome in foreign countries.
From the beginning of his walk with Christ Livingstone developed a deep passion for missions. But the thing that brought him to Africa was his meeting a Scottish missionary to Africa named Robert Moffat at a lecture in London. Moffat was already stationed at Kuruman north of Cape Town, South Africa, and in his lecture he shared the following: “In the vast plain to the north, I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages, where no missionary has ever been.”3 Livingstone at once felt here was a place he was needed and with the approval of the Missionary Society he sailed the 2,000 miles to Cape Town in Africa.
The rest of the story of David Livingstone reads like an enchanting novel. His life was full of romance – he fell in love and married Moffat’s daughter, Mary, who served with him until her untimely death from malaria in 1862. His love of travel and adventure, and the many stories he brought back to England, captivated the entire western world. He journeyed all across Africa discovering rivers, lakes, and even the great Victoria Falls; which he named after his queen. His great passion to abolish slavery led him to explore Africa and expose this great evil to the rest of the world. But above all else his true passion was to share Christ with all the Africans he met along his many journeys throughout the continent. In addition, he carried a medicine chest wherever he went so he could heal the diseases of the Africans he encountered.
Livingstone’s trials throughout his African journeys can be likened to what the Apostle Paul had to endure. Just listen to how Madeline Peña describes his travails: “From coast to coast, Livingstone and his men faced trials. The missionary experienced severe illnesses of many kinds such as malaria and terrible fevers. He often starved and had very little clean water. There were hostile tribal groups along his path, in which only the Lord could save him. Livingstone and his party were even attacked by the Dutch. These men wanted the slave trade to grow and hated what Livingstone was doing.”4
Throughout his amazing life Livingstone never viewed these trials for Christ’s sake a sacrifice, but rather a privilege. In closing I share how he addressed a classroom full of Cambridge University students in 1858:
“For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa… Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in… the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”5
1 David Livingstone: Missionary, Explorer, and Abolitionist (bethanygu.edu)
2 David Livingstone: Missionary, Explorer, and Abolitionist (bethanygu.edu)
3 John Hudson Tiner, For Those Who Dare (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, Inc. 2002), p. 172.
4 David Livingstone: Missionary, Explorer, and Abolitionist (bethanygu.edu)
5 David Livingstone: Missionary, Explorer, and Abolitionist (bethanygu.edu)