And afterward of theology, in the University of Glasgow, attending lectures
in the winter, paying his expenses by working as a cotton-spinner
during the summer, without receiving a farthing of aid from any one.
His purpose was to go to China as a medical missionary,
and he would have accomplished his object solely by his own efforts
had not some friends advised him to join the London Missionary Society.
He offered himself, with a half hope that his application would be rejected,
for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way
to become dependent in a measure upon others.
By the time when his medical and theological studies were completed,
the Opium War had rendered it inexpedient to go to China,
and his destination was fixed for Southern Africa.
He reached his field of labor in 1840. Having tarried
for three months at the head station at Kuruman, and taken to wife
a daughter of the well-known missionary Mr. Moffat, he pushed still farther
into the country, and attached himself to the band of Sechele,
chief of the Bakwains, or "Alligators", a Bechuana tribe.
Here, cutting himself for six months wholly off from all European society,
he gained an insight into the language, laws, modes of life,
and habits of the Bechuanas, which proved of incalculable advantage
in all his subsequent intercourse with them.
Sechele gave a ready ear to the missionary's instructions.
"Did your forefathers know of a future judgment?" he asked.
"They knew of it," replied the missionary, who proceeded to describe
the scenes of the last great day.
"You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake;
I have no more strength in me. But my forefathers were living
at the same time yours were; and how is it that they did not send them word
about these terrible things? They all passed away into darkness
without knowing whither they were going."
Mr. Moffat had translated the Bible into the Bechuana language,
which he had reduced to writing, and Sechele set himself to learn to read,
with so much assiduity that he began to grow corpulent
from lack of his accustomed exercise. His great favorite was Isaiah.
"He was a fine man, that Isaiah; he knew how to speak," he was wont to say,
using the very words applied by the Glasgow Professor to the Apostle Paul.
Having become convinced of the truth of Christianity, he wished his people
also to become Christians. "I will call them together," he said, "and with
our rhinoceros-skin whips we will soon make them all believe together."
Livingstone, mindful, perhaps, of the ill success of his worthy father
in the matter of Wilberforce on "Practical Christianity",
did not favor the proposed line of argument.
