vi PREFATORY LETTER. 



and heirs of His covenanted mercies; that the command to 

 spread^ the light of the Gospel through all the nations under 

 heaven had passed downwards on every honest Christian; and 

 that every son of man who passed under the Christian name 

 ought to receive the command as delivered to himself, and act 

 upon it according to the measure of his capacity and the 

 means that God had placed within his hands. 



Nor were his views of natural knowledge less wide and 

 generous. For he believed, with unshaken faith, in the ruling 

 providence of God — the Creator of all worlds and of the laws 

 whereby they are upheld: and, hence, he also believed, that 

 all true natural and material knowledge is but a knowledge of 

 one portion of the will of our Creator embodied in His works. 

 Hence, also, he practically believed that no parts of true 

 knowledge, whether sacred or profane, can, when rightly 

 used, ever be in mutual antagonism: nay, rather, that con- 

 sidered as a whole, they are at once the manifestation of our 

 Maker's glory and implements of good to our fellow-men. 

 With a faith like this acting on a brave heart; with the free 

 spirit of an honest Christian; with good stores of knowledge 

 which he longed to spread among his ignorant and suffering 

 fellow-creatures ; with a benevolence and love that made his 

 heart yearn towards the poor degraded and persecuted inha- 

 bitants of heathen lands ; with feelings and endowments such 

 as these, we cannot wonder that he put aside any dreams of 

 worldly ambition in his own country (if such he ever had), 

 and sought to devote his life to the humble duties of a Chris- 

 tian Missionary. No man, with powers like those of young 

 Livingstone, can be quite unconscious of them. When a boy 

 he may have dreamed of foreign lands without aim or pur- 

 pose. When come to manhood, under the promptings of his 

 conscience, he resolved, as we have seen, humbly to devote all 

 the powers which God had given him, and by which he had 

 risen to what he then was, to the service of his Redeemer 

 and to the spread of light in the lands of heathen darkness. 



