1 86 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. ix. 



unfair to judge of what these monasteries were in their 

 periods of youth and vigour, from the rottenness of their 

 decay. Modern missionary stations, indeed, with then 

 churches, schools, and hospitals, were like Protestant 

 monasteries, conducted on the more wholesome principle 

 of family life ; but they wanted stability ; they had 

 not farms like monasteries, and hence they required to 

 depend on the mother country. From infancy to decay, 

 they were pauper institutions. In Livingstone's judg- 

 ment they needed to have more of the self-supporting 

 element : — 



" It would be heresy to mention the idea of purchasing lands, like 

 religious endowments, among the stiff Congregationalists; but an endow- 

 ment conferred on a man who will risk his life in an unhealthy 

 climate, in order, thereby, to spread Christ's gospel among the heathen, 

 is rather different, I ween, from the same given to a man to act as 

 pastor to a number of professed Christians. . . . Some may think it 

 creditable to our principles that we have not a single acre of land, the 

 gift of the Colonial Government, in our possession. But it does not 

 argue much for our foresight that we have not farms of our own, equal 

 to those of any colonial farmer." 



Dr. Livingstone acknowledged the services of the 

 Jesuit missionaries in the cause of education and literature, 

 and even of commerce. But while conceding to them 

 this meed of praise, he did not praise their worship. He 

 was slow, indeed, to disparage any form of worship — any 

 form in which men, however unenlightened, gave expres- 

 sion to their religious feelings ; but he could not away 

 with the sight of men of intelligence kissing the toe of an 

 image of the Virgin, as he saw them doing in a Portuguese 

 church, and taking part in services in which they did not, 

 and could not, believe. If the missions of the Church of 

 Rome had left good effects on some parts of Africa, how 

 much greater blessing might not come from Protestant 

 missions, with the Bible instead of the Syllabus as then 

 basis, and animated with the spirit of freedom instead of 

 despotism ! 



