860 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



to complete the unfinished work of himself and Dr. Livingstone by enabling 

 future travellers to solve the great geographical problems regarding the lake 

 country west of Tanganyika and the vast basin of the Congo. 



The work was one in which commercial men, seeking new routes and 

 objects of traffic, scientific men, and geographers exploring un visited regions; 

 philanthropists desiring to civilise Africa by abolishing slavery and the sla- 

 very trade; and, above, all, missionaries bearing the gospel of peace to the 

 barbarous millions of Central Africa, were all deeply interested, and there 

 was no branch of the Church on which the work had greater claim than 

 on their own National Church. Other Churches were actively entering on 

 that vast and almost untouched field of labour. It behoved the English 

 Church not to be behind. The want of men which, until lately, had been so 

 keenly felt had, he was told, been supplied at least in part by the personal 

 exertions of Bishop Steere and the Church Missionary Society, but there was 

 still a very serious want of funds, especially for the Universities' Mission, 

 which, organised on sound Church principles and directed by one of the most 

 self-denying, able, and successful missionaries he had ever met with, he ear- 

 nestly commended to his fellow-churchmen in the Congress. At the same 

 time they should not neglect the great work of the Church Missionary So- 

 ciety at Mombassa, under the Rev. William Price. The Church might, he 

 believed, safely trust to the guidance of such men in the great work of convey- 

 ing to the uncivilised millions of Central Africa the truths of the gospel as 

 they had been taught in the English Church, since a similar work was first com- 

 menced under very similar difficulties on our own then barbarous shores by the 

 missionaries who had learnt the glad tidings of salvation at the feet of the 

 apostles. 



The Rev. W. S. Price read a paper on the same subject. He said that 

 scarcely three years ago the eyes of England, and of the whole civilised 

 world were opened to the fact that the interior of the vast continent of 

 Africa was not a boundless expanse or sandy desert, or dreary swamps ; but 

 on the contrary, a country of mountains and valleys, and embracing 

 some of the best scenery in the world — enriched with all the products of 

 nature, enjoying every gradation of climate, and with teeming millions of 

 human beings, made by God and endowed by him with the same feelings 

 and capacities as themselves, and, excluded from the brotherhood of nations, 

 were left to die and perish, no man caring for their souls — a people answer- 

 ing more than any other he knew the description of the prophet Isaiah, when 

 he spoke of a neglected people. 



No doubt the story of personal adventure, and the graphic descrip- 

 tion of countries before unnoticed and unknown, and the exposure of the evils 

 caused by the slave trade, brought to light by Burton, Speke and Grant, 

 drew attention to the matter; and when the news reached England that David 



