300 DAVID LIVINGSTONE, THE BELOVED MISSIONARY 



he passed to and fro at his work, he would catch, now a word, and now 

 a sentence from its open page. With learning came the appetite for 

 learning; and every evening, after the factory work was done, the lad 

 would pore over his books till midnight, and even later. Here we see 

 the strength and tenacity of the Scottish character, for he had to be 

 at work in the factory by six o'clock next morning, and he did not 

 leave it before eight o'clock at night. Fourteen hours of labor, with 

 but two intervals for meals, might well have taken all the strength 

 and sapped all the determination of a lad of ten; and it is, indeed, a 

 pleasant reflection that the humane legislation of later years has ren- 

 dered such a state of things impossible, or at any rate illegal. 



Livingstone was about nineteen years of age when he determined 

 to prepare for the life of a medical missionary, and it is again charac- 

 teristic of his nationality that he should have set about this task, 

 infinitely more difficult then than now, without seeking aid or influ- 

 ence from any person or society. He was by this time a "spinner," 

 and the wages he earned in summer sufficed to support him in winter 

 at the neighboring city of Glasgow, whither he went to get the benefit 

 of the Greek divinity and medical lectures of its university. His first 

 session was in the winter of \^7,6-7,y, and on its conclusion he returned 

 to his labor at the Blantyre mill. 



During the two years at Glasgow, Livingstone largely developed 

 the scientific side of his nature. His very liljerality in theology was 

 owing to his perfectly impartial method of testing every question. 

 Had he been more of a theologian, it is quite conceivable he might have 

 lost much of that primitive Christian spirit which marked his whole 

 life, and without doubt contributed largely to his success in dealing 

 with the raw African. He has told us himself that, when he was 

 advised to join the London Missionary Society, he was attracted by 

 its "perfectly unsectarian character." "It sends," he wrote, "neither 

 episcopacy, nor presbytcrianism, nor independency, but the Gospel of 

 Christ, to the heathen. This," he adds, "exactly agreed with my ideas 

 of what a missionary society ought to do." 



During his second season at Glasgow, Livingstone forwarded an 

 application to this Society, and, his ofifer being provisionally accepted, 

 he went to London in 1838 to further his interests. He was sent by the 



