Suggestions to Pastors for Sermons on David Livingstone By Cornelius H. Patton “To understand a drama requires the same mental operation as to understand an existence, a biography, a man. It is a putting back of the bird into the egg, of the plant into the seed, a reconstitution of the whole genesis of the being in question.” This remark of Amiel will serve to remind us of the seriousness of our task in placing be¬ fore our people this wonderful life of Livingstone. Ministers some¬ times think it is easy to prepare biographical sermons. If what they have in mind is simply to gather chronological material or to tell a story, then it is easy enough. But that is not biography. Biography is interpretation, and Amiel is right in classing interpretation among the arts. The minister must first discover the secret of Livingstone’s life and influence. It is not enough to say he followed Christ. Everybody knows that. But how did he follow Christ? Why did Christ have an effect upon him so different from that experienced by the majority of Chrstians who will listen to your sermon? In the last' analysis we must understand Christ if we would understand this great servant of his. Our first preparation then should be spiritual. Let Christ interpret to us this life which he himself inspired. I am a great believer in a minister filling himself full of a subject before he begins to put pen on paper. It is not merely a matter of gathering an abundance of material, but fully *as much of becoming- possessed by the material—having the subject own us, mind and soul. This is preeminently true of biographical discourses. If we are to preach on Paul, we must live with Paul. If we are to preach on Liv* ingstone, we must live with Livingstone. We must grow up with him at Blantyre and go with him to Africa. And what a life it is to live with! This man takes the subject of foreign missions into an entirely different sphere. We should have “the chance of our lives” in this Livingstone centenary. Here we can present a man of absolutely compelling interest, one whose career combines qualities, ideas, experiences, rarely found together, and all attractive in a high degree. This man can commend missions as can no other in modern times. He was an explorer, and every one loves an explorer, especially men and boys. He was a scientist, and that is very popular just now. He was a doctor, and if we follow the gen¬ eral opinion, that is one of the most useful vocations a man can fol¬ low. The most rabid objector to foreign missions believes in medical missionaries. Above all, Livingstone was a man—a man to admire, a man to believe in, a man to hold up before our boys as an ideal. Ask Stanley about that. His tribute to Livingstone and his account of how .Livingstone drew out his admiration, influenced his character, and led him to Christ is a tribute which the world cannot refuse. A man, a Christian man, and—let us never overlook this—a missionary. Livingstone has gripped the world strangely. There is nothing quite like it in modern life. A matter-of-fact business man was speak¬ ing about this the other day. He told how he was wandering about Westminster Abbey, and how disappointed he was to find that no thrill came to him as he passed from tomb to tomb. Great names— kings, queens, poets, philosophers, statesmen—on every side, yet no more impression than as if he were turning the pages of an encyclo¬ pedia. But as he sauntered through the nave his eyes fell upon the slab bearing the famous inscription: Brought by faithful hands over land and sea Here Rests David Livingstone Missionary, Traveler, Philanthropist No need of giving the rest. How many of us have stood chained to that spot, reading every word with moist eyes, and throbbing hearts! It was so with this plain man. He said it was the only thing in the Abbey which moved him, and this moved him profoundly. He had never read the life of Livingstone. He knew very little of his career. He was not in sympathy with missions. Yet he stood awestruck at the tomb of David Livingstone! « That reveals the power of the man we are to interpret on the one hundredth anniversary of his birthday. There is opportunity in this occasion. We may convert men to Christ; we certainly can con¬ vert men to Christ’s program for the Church. To be explicit, we ought to read the life of Livingstone. Silves¬ ter Horne will give us a good start in his delightful little volume, David Livingstone, but the minister needs more. He really ought to read W. G. Blaikie's The Life of David Livingstone, and then if he will take a dip into the Journals there will be no doubt about the abundance of material or as to his zest for the task. I had the rare experience of reading Blaikie in the heart of Africa night after night in my tent, while visiting mission stations in the valley of the Kwanza, where Livingstone made his first great journey, and where he had twenty-seven attacks of African fever. Would that every minister could experience the thrill of that great biography when read on one of Livingstone’s trails! It made this lonely herald of the cross seem doubly great. And the cost of it all—the sickness, the pain, the hunger, the danger—how can one understand these things when sit¬ ting in his easy chair at home? * The life should be made vivid to our hearers. There should be at least one good story, some striking incident, like his crossing the Loangwa River, where his faith and courage were sorely tried—per¬ haps the most characteristic experience of his life. This was where Livingstone recalled the last command of Christ, with the great prom¬ ise, and wrote in his journal: “It is the word of a Gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honor, and there’s an end on’t.” The sufferings should be brought out, but not dwelt upon. For this, the closing scenes of his life are the best—those wonderful last entries in his diary—is there anything like it in literature? As for the scientific achievements and the explorations, they can easily be summarized in a paragraph. The Stanley episode should, of course, be alluded to, on account of its American connection, and in order to quote what Stanley has said. The Westminster inscription, I think, should be given in full, certainly these lines: “All I can say in my solitude is, May Heaven’s rich blessing come down On every one, American, English, or Turk, Who will help to heal This open sore of the world.” Undoubtedly the most remarkable thing about Livingstone was the impression he made upon the natives. To bring this out, the preacher will naturally tell the pathetic incident of the faithful men who carried the body from the interior of Africa to the coast, the like of which is not to be found in the annals of heroism and devotion. To set before our people this remarkable man, and to draw the appropriate lessons, will be a notable thing in any church. But we must not stop there. We must connect our narrative with the needs of Africa to-day. Eighty million pagans, and possibly not more than four millions of them brought under the gospel. Africa is still the Dark Continent. The Unfinished Task is of colossal proportions. Liv¬ ingstone opened up this vast area ; he pointed the way. It is for us to gird ourselves with his faith and heroism as we follow on till the continent is redeemed. The last suggestion is that the preacher should acquaint himself with the present-day problems and needs of Africa, and in case the Board of his church is engaged in work in this continent he should not lose the opportunity to mention the work and to impress upon the people their own relation to it. The test of these sermons, brethren, will be, not the complimentary words which may be said about the preacher (God forbid!), or even about Living¬ stone himself, not even the thrills which may be produced; the test will be whether the people go out of the church saying: What Can I Do to Help Save Africa? Suggested Books for Reading, Reference and Study Horne, C. Silvester. David Livingstone. 248 pages. Lully illustrated. Cloth, 50 cents, net; postage, 8 cents extra. • A new popular life of Livingstone, published especially for this Centenary. It is an absorbing book written with energy, spirit and power, by the well-known Congregational minister and Member of Parliament. Blaikie, W. Garden. The Life of David Livingstone. New Edition. 424 pages. 50 cents, net; postage, 8 cents extra. This standard reference book reveals the character of Livingstone, the strength of his affections, the depth and purity of his devotion, and the intensity of his aspirations as a Christian missionary. Extensive, but exceedingly stimulating, because it contains many quota¬ tions from Mr. Livingstone’s journals. Naylor, Wilson S. Daybreak in the Dark Continent. Livingstone Edition. 315 pages. Illustrated. Cloth, 50 cents; paper, 35 cents; postage, 8 cents extra. The best brief, yet comprehensive survey of conditions in Africa. It has been revised and republished with an entirely new chapter on Livingstone. New photographs are used for illustrations. Prayer-Meeting Outlines Livingstone’s Life of Prayer By Robert E. Speer The whole world knows that Living¬ stone ended his life in prayer. When his men found him dead in the hut at Ilala, where they had brought him on the last of all his journeys, he was kneeling by his bedside in prayer. That worn figure at prayer is both illustration and appeal in the matter of the relation of prayer and missions. “How thankful I am,” says Major Mahan, “that Livingstone was found on his knees! Does it not tell us whence came the power for his self-denial, his courage, his endurance?” And as his life ended, so it began. While a student at the missionary training school at Ongar he was not a great success as a preacher. One of his fellow students writes: “One part of our duties was to prepare sermons, which were submitted to Mr. Cecil, and, when corrected, were committed to memory, and then repeated to our vil¬ lage congregations. Livingstone prepared one, and one Sunday the minister of Stan¬ ford Rivers, where the celebrated Isaac Taylor resided, having fallen sick after the morning service, Livingstone was sent for to preach in the evening. He took his text, read it out very deliberately, and then— then—his sermon had fled! Midnight dark¬ ness came upon him, and he abruptly said : ‘Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say,’ and hurrying out of the pulpit, he left the chapel.” But he knew how to talk with God. “Each student of Ongar." says the same friend who wrote about his preaching, “had also to conduct family worship in rotation. I was much impressed by the fact that Livingstone never prayed without the peti¬ tion that we might imitate Christ in all his imitable perfections.” This was his constant prayer. At the age of twenty-six he writes to his sister : * “Let us seek—and with the conviction that we cannot do without it—that all selfishness be extirpated, pride banished, unbelief driven from the mind, every idol dethroned, and everything hostile to holi¬ ness and opposed to the divine will cruci¬ fied; that ‘holiness to the Lord’ may be engraven on the heart, and evermore char¬ acterize our whole conduct. This is what we ought to strive after; this is the way to be happy; this is what our Savior loves —entire surrender of the heart. May he enable us by his Spirit to persevere till we attain it! All comes from him, the dispo¬ sition to ask as well as the blessing itself. “I hope you improve the talents com¬ mitted to you whenever there is an oppor¬ tunity. You have a class with whom you have some influence. It requires prudence in the way of managing it; seek wisdom from above to direct you; persevere — don’t be content with once or twice recom¬ mending the Savior to them—again and again, in as kind a manner as possible, familiarly, individually, and privately, ex¬ hibit to them the fountain of happiness and joy, never forgetting to implore di¬ vine energy to accompany your endeavors, and you need not fear that your labor will be unfruitful. If you have the willing mind, that is accepted; nothing else is ac¬ cepted if that be wanting. God desires that. He can do all the rest.” After he reached Africa, he was always anxious to have people at home praying for him. “You must remember me in your prayers,” he wrote to Dr. Bennett, “that more of the spirit of Christ may be im¬ parted to me.” He has to go forward for a year away from his wife. “I intend (D. V.) to go next year and remain a twelve-month. My^/ife, poor soul—I pity her!—propose^ to let me go for that time while she remained at Kolobeng. You will pray for us both during that period.” Again he writes: “But for the belief that the Holy Spirit works, and will work for us, I should give up in despair. Remember us in your prayers, that we grow not weary in well¬ doing.” And lie practised prayer at the same time that he besought it. On July 10, 1845 , he writes in his journal: “Entered new house. A great mercy. Hope it may be more a house of prayer than any we have yet inhabited.” And his journals are full of prayers, some brief and some extended. “O, divine love, I have not loved thee strongly, deeply, warmly enough.” The cool, self-contained Scotch¬ man poured out his heart at least to God. Here is a long prayer in his journal of January 14 , 1856 : “At the confluence of the Loangwa and Zambezi. Thank God for his great mer¬ cies thus far. How soon I may be called to stand before him, my righteous judge, I know not. All hearts are in his hands, and merciful and gracious is the Lord our God. O Jesus, grant me resignation to thy will, and entire reliance on thy power* ful hand. On thy word alone I lean. But wilt thou permit me to plead for Africa? The cause is thine. What an impulse will be given to the idea that Africa is not open if I perish now! See, O Lord, how the heathen rise up against me, as they did to thy Son. I commit my way unto thee. I trust also* in thee that thou wilt direct my steps. Thou givest wisdom liberally to all who ask thee—give it to me, my Father. My family is thine. They are in the best hands. Oh! be gracious, and all our sins do thou blot out. A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On thy kind arms I fall. Leave me not, forsake me not. I cas-t myself and all my cares down at thy feet. Thou knowest all I need, for time and for eternity. “It seems a pity that the important facts about the two healthy longitudinal ridges should not become known in Christendom. Thy will be done! . . They will not furnish us with more canoes than two. I leave my cause and all my concerns in the hands of God, my gracious Savior, the Friend of sinners. “ Evening . Felt much turmoil of spirit in view of having all my plans for the wel¬ fare of this great region and teeming popu¬ lation knocked on the head by savages to¬ morrow. But I read that Jesus came and said: 'All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations—and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’ It is the word of a Gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honor, and there is an end on’t. I will not cross furtively by night, as I intended. It would appear as flight, and should such a man as I flee? Nay, verily, I shall take observations for latitude and longitude to-night, though they may be the last. 1 feel quite calm now, thank God.” Nine days later he was threatened again. On January 23 he writes: “To thee, O God, we look. And, oh! Thou who wast the man of sorrows for the sake of poor, vile sinners, and didst not disdain the thief’s petition, remember me and thy cause in Africa. Soul and body, my family and thy cause, I commit all to thee. Hear, Lord, for Jesus’ sake.” He was accused by some of abandon¬ ing the missionary cause when he began his exploration and some spoke of him as “secularized.” But would that all of us were as secularized as the man who wrote thus in his diary of March 6, 1859 : “Teaching Makololo Lord’s Prayer and Cieed.” “Prayers as usual at 9.30 a. m. When employed in active travel my mind becomes inactive and the heart cold and dead, but after remaining some time quiet the heart revives, and I become more spir¬ itually minded. This is a mercy which I have experienced before, and when I see a matter to be duty I go on, regardless of my feelings. I do trust that the Lord is with me, though the mind is engaged in other matters than the spiritual. I want my whole life to be out and out for the Divine glory, and my earnest prayer is that God may accept what his own Spirit must have implanted—the desire to glorify him. I have been more than usually drawn out in earnest prayer of late—for the ex¬ pedition—for my family—the fear lest -’s misrepresentation may injure the cause of Christ—the hope that I may be permitted to open this dark land to the blessed gospel. I have cast all before my God. Good Lord, have mercy upon me. Leave me not, nor forsake me. He has guided well in time past. I commit my way to him for the future. All I have received has come from him. Will he be pleased in mercy to use me for his glory? I have prayed for this, and Jesus himself said, ‘Ask, and ye shall receive,’ and a host of statements to the same effect. There is a great deal of trifling frivolousness in not trusting in God. Not trusting in him who is truth itself—faithfulness—the same yes¬ terday, to-day, and forever ! It is presump¬ tion not to trust in him implicitly, and yet this heart is sometimes fearfully guilty of distrust. I am ashamed to think of it. Ay, but he must put the trusting, loving, childlike spirit in by his grace. O Lord, 1 am thine, truly I am thine. Take me. Do what seemeth good in thy sight with me, and give me complete resignation to thy will in all things.” Every fresh need was to him a fresh oc¬ casion of prayer, and toward the end of his life he seems to have made each birth¬ day an occasion of some special prayer of consecration. On his fifty-ninth birthday, March 19, 1872, he writes: “ Birthday .—My Jesus, my King, my Life, my All; I again dedicate my whole self to thee. Accept me, and grant, O gracious Father, that ere this year is gone I may finish my task. In Jesus’ name I ask it. Amen. So let it be.—David Livingstone.” On the first of May, just one year pre¬ cisely before his death, he finished a letter for the New York Herald, and asked God’s blessing on it. It contained the memorable words afterwards inscribed on the stone to his memory in Westminster Abbey: “All I can say in^my solitude is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one—American, English, Turk—who will help to heal this open sore of the world.” As Dr. Blaikie, his biographer, says: “Amid the universal darkness around him, the universal ignorance of God and of the grace and love of Jesus Christ, it was hard to believe that Africa should ever be won. He had to strengthen his faith amid this universal desolation. We read in his journal: “13th May.—He will keep his word— the gracious One, full of grace and truth; no doubt of it. He said: ‘Him that com- eth unto me, I will in no wise cast out’; and ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will give it.’ He will keep his word; then I can come and humbly present my petition, and it will be all right. Doubt is here inadmissible, surely.” And he took great comfort from the prayers which he asked of the people at home. In his famous paper on “Mission¬ ary Sacrifices,” he wrote: “It is something to be a missionary. He is sometimes inclined, in seasons of despondency and trouble, to feel as if for¬ gotten. But for whom do more prayers ascend?—prayers from the secret place, and from those only who are known to God. Mr. Moffat met those in England who had made his mission the subject of special prayer for more than twenty years, though they had no personal knowledge of the missionary. Through the long fifteen years of no success, of toil and sorrow, these secret ones were holding up his hands. And who can tell how often his soul may have been refreshed through their intercessions?” And having lived and loved in a long life of prayer, he died, as we have seen, in the act of prayer. The faithful black men had brought him through the swamps and rain to Chitambo’s village, in Ilala, where they laid him under the eaves of a house while they built for him a little hut. “Then they laid him on a rough bed in the hut, where he spent the night. Next day he lay undisturbed. He asked a few wandering questions aj^out the country— especially about the Luapula. His people 'knew that the end could not be far off Nothing occurred to attract notice during the early part of the night, but at four in the morning, the boy who lay at his door, called in alarm for Susi, fearing that their master was dead. By the candle still burn¬ ing they saw him, not in bed, but kneel¬ ing at the bedside, with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. The sad, yet not unexpected truth, soon became evident; he had passed away on the fur¬ thest of all his journeys, and without a sin¬ gle attendant. But he died in the act of prayer—prayer offered in that reverential attitude about which he was always so par¬ ticular—commending his own spirit, wfith all his dear ones, as was his wont, into the hands of his Savior, and commending Africa —his own dear Africa—with all her woes and sins and wrongs, to the Avenger of the oppressed and the Redeemer of the lost.” So, He climbed the steep ascent of heaven, Through peril, toil, and pain ; O God! to us may grace be given To follow in his train. As he prayed, so also may we! Do not his missionary successors in all lands have a right to expect of us such prayer as he relied upon to sustain him?