558 LIFE OF DA VII) LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



Church has not yet sought to gather souls. Our commerce is spreading, our 

 manufactures and our intoxicants, among barbarians to whom the Church has 

 not yet imparted the knowledge of salvation. 



" And is it to be said that missionaries cannot go where merchants go ? 

 And that men expose their lives for commerce, but there are not zeal and 

 conscience in the Church of Christ sufficient to carry the light of the gospel 

 into the darkness, but that the dread of contact with men so debased and 

 vile, and of breathing an atmosphere so pernicious to health, terrifies the sol- 

 diers of the cross of Christ ? There are those who say that it is wrong to 

 send missionaries to pestilential shores, so long as there are healthy regions 

 that have not been fully Christianised. Christ's commission does not except 

 unhealthy climates. If Christ's servants were expected to face other dangers 

 — those arising from the hostility of the devil and his brood — are they to 

 shrink from the perils of unhealthy climates ? The ' wisdom of the serpent' 

 was to guide Christians in taking proper measures to cope with the former ; 

 and may the same wisdom and good sense which we use in directing our 

 others affairs in these regions, not serve to guide us in our evangelistic enter- 

 prises in the same ? Nothing in the life and labours of our Lord and of His 

 apostles warrants us to expect that we can escape every sort of peril in ad- 

 vancing His kingdom. And such dangers as these do not warrant Christ's ser- 

 vants to refuse the knowledge of God to any people that does not drive it 

 away by violence. 



"Our commerce instructs us. It works by relays; it studies the health 

 and safety of its agents ; it does not overwork them ; it does not doom them 

 to protracted service ; it tries to alleviate the discomforts, and to lessen the 

 dangers, that must be faced on the coast of Guinea. It profits by the teach- 

 ings of experience, and is ready to adopt any expedient that will facili- 

 tate its aims. Many die in the service of commerce, but still others have 

 hitherto been found to take their places ; and we never hear the critics of 

 commerce condemn men as foolish in risking their lives for profit, as some 

 would blame us because we risk them for the kingdom of Christ and the sal- 

 vation of the elect, that they may obtain the ' eternal glory.' 



" The Church should select the fittest men and women for such a climate, 

 and the best means known should be used to preserve them. The laws of 

 health should be ascertained and obeyed; and the fact that there are those 

 who have laboured steadily on the coast of Africa for fifteen, twenty-five, 

 and even thirty years, shows that others may still do the same until the 

 divine blessing so prospers the work of their hands, that eventually Christian 

 churches shall have been formed, and native Christian teachers raised up, to 

 maintain and extend the enterprise. 



" There can be no doubt whatever that Africa within the tropics is most 

 unfavourable to European health. I would not say a word calculated to 



