1813-36.] EARLY YEARS. 13 



term seems hardly credible, though with the Radical 

 opinions which he held at the time it may readily be 

 believed that he had no respect for the sanctity of game. 

 If a salmon came in his way while he was fishing for 

 trout, he made no scruple of bagging it. The bag on 

 such occasions was not always made for the purpose, 

 for there is a story that once when he had captured 

 a fish in the " salmon pool," and was not prepared to 

 transport such a prize, he deposited it in the leg of his 

 brother Charles's trousers, creating no little sympathy 

 for the boy, as he passed through the village with his 

 sadly swollen leg ! 



It was about his twentieth year that the great 

 spiritual change took place which determined the course 

 of Livingstone's future life. But before this time he had 

 earnest thoughts on religion. " Great pains," he says in 

 his first book, " had been taken by my parents to instil 

 the doctrines of Christianity into my mind, and I had no 

 difficulty in understanding the theory of a free salvation 

 by the atonement of our Saviour ; but it was only about 

 this time that I began to feel the necessity and value of 

 a personal application of the provisions of that atonement 

 to my own case." 1 Some light is thrown on this brief 

 account in a paper submitted by him to the Directors of 

 the London Missionary Society in 1838, in answer to a 

 schedule of queries sent down by them when he offered 

 himself as a missionary for their service. He says that 

 about his twelfth year he began to reflect on his state as 

 a sinner, and became anxious to realise the state of mind 

 that flows from the reception of the truth into the heart. 

 He was deterred, however, from embracing the free offer 

 of mercy in the gospel, by a sense of unworthiness to 

 receive so great a blessing, till a supernatural change 

 should be effected in him by the Holy Spirit. Conceiving 

 it to be his duty to wait for this, he continued expecting 



1 Missionary Travels, p. 4. 



