Tuesday, April 18, 2006

"David Livingstone I presume"



"I am a missionary, heart and soul," wrote Livingstone. "God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. A poor, poor imitation of Him I am, or wish to be." In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die." [David Lingstone]

On this day (April 18) in 1874, the body of David Livingstone was interred in London's Westminster Abbey. Livingstone had died almost a year earlier, on May 1 1873 in what is now northern Zambia. He died in a mud hut on his knees in prayer. London gave him a 21-gun salute and a hero's funeral among the saints in Westminster Abbey.

The inscription on his tomb in the Abbey contains the following:

DAVID LIVINGSTONE:
MISSIONARY,
TRAVELLER,
PHILANTHROPIST.
BORN MARCH 19, 1813
AT BLANTYRE, LANARKSHIRE.
DIED MAY 1 1873,
AT CHITAMBO'S VILLAGE, ULALA.
FOR THIRTY YEARS HIS LIFE WAS SPENT
IN AN UNWEARIED EFFORT
TO EVANGELIZE THE NATIVE RACES,
TO EXPLORE THE UNDISCOVERED SECRETS
AND ABOLISH THE DESOLATING SLAVE TRADE
OF CENTRAL AFRICA.
WHERE WITH HIS LAST WORDS HE WROTE,
"ALL I CAN ADD IN MY SOLITUDE IS,
MAY HEAVEN'S RICH BLESSING COME DOWN
EVERYONE, AMERICAN, ENGLISH OR TURK,
WILL HELP TO HEAL
THIS OPEN SORE OF THE WORLD."


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

On the "..abolishing the desolating slave trade of Central Africa...", It is hard to imagine this type trade ever evolving in regards to our education and legal process of today.

Takes ones breath away to realize how bad it must have been.

I learned, just this past year from an American summer-missionary who goes to Africa, that todays African thinks the American Africans hate them immensly. They have much guilt for the devastation they brought on their own kind as it was the power tribes that caught these poor soles and brought them to the coastal towns to sell into slavery. These power tribes were trying to get rid of their enemy and make money (or equal traded value) along with the deal.

It was not the sailors & ship captains that ramsacked the villages & ruined families to take them from their land. It was their own kind. One tribe fighting another, just like the rampage siege that killed so many thousands just a few short years ago in the Congo.

Think of all the rath the white American has had to carry due to this purging. Think of that "open sore of the World" that Dr. Livingstone tried to help. He was in Africa from 1843 to 1873 and our church was first organized in 1837 and the first santuary built in 1848.

I wonder if any of those original First Presbyterians knew of Dr. Livingstone since he was from Europe, considering communication at that time ?