1 841-43.] FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 57 



employing other two. On another subject he had a 

 communication to make to them which evidently cost 

 him no ordinary effort. In his more private letters 

 to his friends, from an early period after entering Africa, 

 he had expressed himself very freely, almost con- 

 temptuously, on the distribution of the labourers. There 

 was far too much clustering about the Cape Colony, and 

 the district immediately beyond it, and a woeful slow- 

 ness to strike out, with the fearless chivalry that became 

 missionaries of the Cross, and take possession of the vast 

 continent beyond. All his letters reveal the chafing of 

 his spirit with this confinement of evangelistic energy 

 in the face of so vast a field, — this huddling together 

 of labourers in sparsely peopled districts, instead of 

 sending them forth over the whole of Africa, India, and 

 China, to preach the gospel to every creature. He felt 

 deeply that both the Church at home, and many of 

 the missionaries on the spot, had a poor conception of 

 missionary duty, out of which came little faith, little 

 effort, little expectation, with a miserable tendency to 

 exaggerate their own evils and grievances, and fall into 

 paltry squabbles which would not have been possible if 

 they had been fired with the ambition to win the world 

 for Christ. 



But what it was a positive relief for him to whisper 

 in the ear of an intimate friend, it demanded the courage 

 of a hero to proclaim to the Directors of a great Society. 

 It was like impugning their whole policy and arraigning 

 their wisdom. But Livingstone could not say one thing 

 in private and another in public. Frankly and fearlessly 

 he proclaimed his views : — 



" The conviction to which I refer is that a much larger share of 

 the benevolence of the Church and of missionary exertion is directed 

 into this country than the amount of population, as compared with 

 other countries, and the success attending those efforts, seem to call for. 

 This conviction has been forced upon me, both by a personal inspection, 

 more extensive than that which has fallen to the lot of any other, 



